We have an incredibly dumb political class. The Americans just killed non-proliferation, particularly in Asia. They’ve visibly demonstrated countries are only sovereign if they have nuclear weapons.
China’s political class thinks in decades, ours in news cycles. It really shows.
I don't think anyone expected him to say anything better.
But he'd probably have been better maintaining his usual silence.
Iran were negotiating - when Israel launched a war on them. The US joined in - and now our Prime Minister basically says "well they were asking for it.'
Greek doctor Christos Georgalas on his stint in Gaza:
"I can’t say I went to war. War is a very different thing. There was no war in Treblinka, there was no war in Auschwitz. War has two armies. Here you have a population that is mainly civilians and women and children, who have no way of escaping. And bombs are systematically raining down from the sky. They hit hospitals, they hit journalists."
Mexico's left-wing President Claudia Sheinbaum (who has 80% approval) has officially recognized Palestine as a state and welcomed the Palestinian ambassador.
This is very symbolic, because Sheinbaum is Jewish. She supports Palestinian human rights and criticized Israel's attacks
The entire purpose of corporate media capture and defunding of education is to get these exact results. Americans exist in a context in which damn near anyone would make the same poor decisions. Its not their fault, its just the system running its course.
All the takes are correct and yet they also miss the point.
Yes, it was insane for the Democrats to think they could win by running a soulless candidate, without a shred of progressive policy vision, pursuing endorsements from neocon war-hawks everybody hates, while arming and funding a genocide, and belittling and crushing those who have enough morality to protest it. It is enraging that the Democrats are so smug and blind to this.
But these are all just symptoms. The deeper reality is that liberalism has failed, liberalism is dead, and people urgently need to wake up to this fact and respond accordingly. It is a defunct ideology that cannot offer any meaningful solutions to our social and ecological crises and it must be abandoned.
Democrats have proven over and over again that they cannot accept even *basic* steps like public healthcare, affordable housing, and a public job guarantee - things that would dramatically improve the material, social and political conditions of the working classes. And they cannot accept a public finance strategy that would steer production away from fossil fuels and toward green transition to give us a shot at a liveable future.
Why? Because these things run against the objectives of capital accumulation. And for liberals capital is sacrosanct. They will do whatever it takes to ensure elite accumulation, it is their only consistent commitment. At home, they suppress and demonize progressive and socialist tendencies. Abroad, they engage in endless wars and violence to suppress input prices in the global South and prevent any possibility of sovereign economic development.
The Democrats have done all this purposefully and knowingly, for my whole life, not as some kind of "mistake" but in full consciousness that it is in the interests of capital.
And because liberalism cannot address our crises, and because it crushes socialist alternatives, it inevitably paves the way for right-wing populism. They know this pattern, and yet they risk it every time - this election being only the most recent example. They did it in 2016, when they actively crushed the Sanders campaign and sent Trump to the White House. They do it because ultimately they (and I mean the liberal ruling class here) don't really mind if fascists take power, so long as the latter too ensure the conditions for capital accumulation. They 100% prefer this to the possibility of a socialist alternative.
So, progressives have to face reality. The dream of "converting" the Democratic party is dead. This is now a fact and it must be accepted. The only option is to build a mass-based movement that can reclaim the working classes and mobilize a political vehicle that can integrate disparate progressive struggles into a unified and formidable political force and achieve substantive transformation. This will take real work, actual organizing, but it must be done and that process must begin now.