Proyecto de científico loco y orgulloso médico de callejón oscuro. No existe cirugía que no pueda lograr con mi pericia y falta de escrúpulos. Quieres una cita?
This lie was completely debunked twenty years ago. Even Israel's chief negotiator during Camp David II and the Taba Summit, Shlomo Ben-Ami, has admitted that if he was a Palestinian he "would have rejected Camp David". Both sides had issues with the Clinton Parameters, but the Israelis were actually first to withdraw from the negotiations. Ben-Ami even acknowledges that his coalition was about to be voted out and the next PM (war criminal Ariel Sharon) was guaranteed to rip up any agreement anyways!
"Por qué los españoles que había sido el pueblo más religioso del mundo sé pusieron a odiar a Dios? lo fácil es echar la culpa al comunismo pero la culpa la tuvo la montaña de injusticias contra el pobre de una derecha rapaz"
Juan Manuel de Prada
This is likely the earliest Christian symbol, exactly as it appears in the oldest manuscript of the Gospel of Luke (c. AD 200). It is a clever ligature — superimposing the Greek letters tau (Τ) and rho (Ρ) to depict a man hanging on a cross. Even better, the scribe formed this image within the Greek word for "cross" (ΣΤΑΥΡΟΣ, stauros) in the words of Jesus: "Whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:27). And, yes, this is my next T-shirt.
> be Alexandra Elbakyan
> be born in Kazakhstan in 1988
> start coding at 12
> hack your internet provider at 14
> hack MIT Press at 16 to download neuroscience books you can't afford
> get a CS degree from Satbayev University
> intern in neuroscience at Georgia Tech
> speak at Harvard on brain-computer interfaces
> notice researchers can't read the papers they need
> notice academic publishers charging $30 a paper
> notice peer reviewers worked for free
> notice editors worked for free
> notice universities funded the research with billions of dollars of public money
> build Sci-Hub in 2011
> upload nearly every paywalled research paper ever published
> give it away for free
> get sued by Elsevier
> get hit with a $15 million judgment
> don't give a flying f*ck
> keep Sci-Hub up
> get domain after domain seized
> register a new one
> keep Sci-Hub up
> get investigated by the US Department of Justice
> don't give a flying f*ck
> get accused of working for Russian intelligence
> don't give a flying f*ck
> have the FBI subpoena your iCloud
> get named one of Nature's ten people who mattered in science
> get a parasitoid wasp named after you
> get a deep-sea snail named after you
> get the Electronic Frontier Foundation Award for Access to Scientific Knowledge
> become a legend
If you are in a dive bar & someone tells you they were born into affluence, this is someone worth talking to.
If you are in an elite enclave & someone tells you how they came from nothing— run! That person will do ANYTHING!
Left-wingers, especially those from the aging generations, define themselves by their self-image as the counterculture. If they actually stop to acknowledge that they've firmly held the establishment for at least a decade, arguably two or more, then not only do they lose the justification for their activism, they lose what they see as their purpose in life. So, they have to hold up this larp that they're still sticking it to their bible thumping grandpappy who died twenty fuckin' years ago to feel better about stomping on the right-wing youth who grew up under their near-unchallenged reign.
Anglophone X is now flooded with Americans explaining how Europe was freeloading off the American empire, and cheering its coming end.
I'm cheering too, so we're on the same side.
But here's the funny part: MAGA has actually gaslit itself into believing the American Empire was a bad deal for America and a gift to Europe. (And that it was always this way - meaning they genuinely think their parents and grandparents were either idiots or naive philanthropists who, having Europe in the palm of their hand, decided to set up a system that worked against them.)
As a result, MAGA is now dismantling its own empire. We haven't seen a self-own this spectacular since Germany blew up its own nuclear plants.
There's always a moment in history when the metropole gets tired of paying for empire and loses sight of what it's getting out of it. We're there now.
It's going to cost Europe dearly to exit its semi-protectorate status. But in the end, it'll be far better off for it.
I put together a quick scorecard of what each side - America and Europe - gains and loses from the status quo.
I'd encourage my American friends to take a look. So many of you have no idea how your own empire actually works. (1/2)
When Luis García Berlanga's "Welcome Mr. Marshall!" (1953) was screened at Cannes, protest came not from the Spanish Government but from the Americans. The Jury member Edward G. Robinson, who, incidentally, had been one of the victims of Joseph McCarthy's Un-American Activities Committee, protested at the anti-American nature of the film, and tried to prevent it being shown.
The tensions were aggravated when Berlanga and the producers decided to use a promotion stunt at the festival for which they printed a large number of notes resembling one-dollar bills. Instead of George Washington, the picture on one side of the bill was the actor José Isbert and on the other was Lolita Sevilla. When the film was finally screened, only one scene had been cut: a shot of an American flag floating down a stream after the “Yank fever” in the village has subsided. "Welcome, Mr. Marshall" won one of the Special mentions at Cannes.
("Behind the Spanish Lens", Peter Besas, 1985)
P.S: On this day, 73 years ago, "Welcome Mr. Marshall!" (1953) premiered in Madrid, Spain.
@ripplebrain "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a brown woman calling you a third worlder because you don't want to die for Israel, forever."
Trump’s biographer, Michael Wolff: “He [Trump] has no plan. He doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s not capable of formulating a plan. He likes to create Media cliffhangers: “No one knows what I am going to do next… So, everyone is afraid of me. Having no plan becomes the plan.”
Wolff on Trump as actor. He’s on stage and he’s making it up as he goes along: “We’re going to stop the war. We’re going to start the war. We’re going to bomb them; we’re going to negotiate; we’re going to have an unconditional surrender..."
Wolf: “Nothing happens without emanating from him [Trump]. And that changes on a moment-by-moment basis. The only metric that matters for Trump is to be seen as a winner.”
[But the Iranians, who are determined to defend themselves at any cost, have a vote on when the war ends. And they are saying they have just gotten started.] #IranWar
Under the old law of war that existed prior to WWII, outright assassination of a foreign head of state was condemned by all civilized powers.
The goal was to limit violence by "bracketing" off the government and people as lawful targets. Militaries fight militaries. Governments are off limits. There was a hard headed reason for this.
Keeping the opposing government in place made wars less brutal and existential by preserving the continuity and stability of power that made effective peace treaties possible.
But now that every enemy of the United States is a "terrorist" there is no ground for negotiation or lasting peace.
None of this has anything to do with whether the Ayatollah was a "good" man. Those judgments, between sovereign powers, mean nothing. Everyone thinks he is good and his enemies bad.
In light of this reality, the goal should be to limit the destructive effects of those moral claims by removing them as a subject of warfare.
By assassinating the Ayatollah, the United States has set a precedent for future wars that threatens to make those conflicts even more radical and violent than they should be.
That move was a mistake and we should say as much.