BJ 🌲

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

The message of a protest is "we don't like this".

The message of a riot is "we don't like this, and we're able to do something about it".

People who unconditionally call for peace and calm, regardless of the provocation, don't fundamentally understand how politics works in the real world.

They do understand that the purpose of politics is to provide an alternative to violence, but that's as far as their understanding goes. They don't think through the implications, usually because they are quite comfortable with things as they are.

If politics is an alternative to violence, then politics is a proxy for violence.

And that means you have to dole out power in proportion to capacity for violence. Or someone's going to figure out they can do better by flipping the table.

Monarchy wasn't replaced by democracy because of fine-sounding philosophical ideals and eloquent documents declaring this or that.

Democracy happened because if you added rifling to the flintlock firearm, suddenly a individual farmer with a tube was the pinnacle of military technology, and now you had to keep all the farmers with tubes happy by giving them political power.

(Ancient Greek democracy had a similar relationship with the hoplite warrior.)

When political systems work well, for a while, the violence they represent becomes further and further from people's minds, and those who can't effectively commit or direct violence worm their way into power, and begin to take it away from those who can.

And they'll defend their position by saying that violence is unthinkable, barbaric, always bad, must be disavowed at all costs, etc.

This isn't some sort of high-minded principle on their part. It simply means one of two things. Either "the status quo works for me, so I don't want you to upset it", or "I suck at violence, and I don't want to have to fight".

They want young men demoralized, so that their artificial meritocracy of spreadsheets, or their non-meritocracy of patronage networks, can be protected from the natural meritocracy of conflict.

This means that riots aren't actually for achieving any specific material aim. They are for reminding the comfortable that judges and bureaucrats and policemen have home addresses and families. And that violence is always on the table.

A protest would only send the message that the Irish don't want to be ethnically cleansed. But the bureaucrats and judges and lawyers already know that. They just don't care.

A riot reminds them that they have to care, because the Irish have a long tradition of doing something about it.

[Chelsea Dan @ChelseaDan5]

Outside drinking weather so I'm plotted up outside a Proper Boozer Angies Maida Hill W9 with this exceptional £4.80 Staropramen in the right glass,To think some people are paying £8 a Pint in some soulless Pub round the corner,Support Proper Boozers with Pints under a fiver☀️🍻👌

[Ozymandias𓆏 @0zmnds]

Janet Elizabeth Aulisio

[Nicola Duke @NicTrades]

“Drone lodged between pilots but didn’t explode”
As fantastical as the downed F15E in Iran that hiked 100 miles up a hill with a broken leg on 03 April

[RM.tv🇮🇪 @RealMessageEire]

@GerryAdamsSF Gerry, You're brother is a nonce and you are a tout MI5 ratbag, Who took the 'kings shilling'

A marxist knacker! Who woukd watch the last White Gael die, So you could bring in more Africans & Muslims

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

War and profit are intimately tied together. The billionaires cannot secure their profits without war, or the threat of it – whether against workers at home or against other nations abroad.

Read my latest here: https://t.co/KKv6Hqoknl

[Morgoth @MorgothsReview]

''He could be Sudanese and not Somali.''

As if anyone gives a fuck these days.

[Jonatan Pallesen @jonatanpallesen]

In fact, the more violent the immigrants are, the more we pay to have them live here

[Furkan Gözükara @FurkanGozukara]

🚨 WTF?! Top congressman Thomas Massie confirms US fighter jets were launched to save the USS Liberty from the Israeli attack, but Washington inexplicably recalled them.

The Pentagon intentionally abandoned their own men for 17 hours to protect Zionist regime! Total betrayal.

[Curse @encoresalad]

Trump issued a public warning to Israel last week not to bomb Beirut so he could negotiatiate a deal with the Iranians, but Israel bombed Beirut anyway.

Point 1: The Chomskyites will eventually have to concede that the tail wags the dog - i.e. Israel has more influence over the US than vice versa.

Point 2: The retarded philosemites who desperately try to pin Israel's intransigence on Netanyahu can't explain why this exact scenario played out in 1982 under Menachem Begin. They can only hope you are ignorant of history.

From Ronald Reagan's autobiography, An American Life:

"On August 4, two days after I'd met with Israeli Foreign Minister, Yitzhak Shamir in the Oval Office and appealed to him in the strongest words I could think of for Israel to use restraint, I was awakened at 6:30am by my national security advisor. He said that the Israelis had just moved into new positions within West Beirut and were shelling the city with a savage ferocity that was killing more and more civilians. Outraged, Phil Habib telephoned me from Beirut and said that the shelling was so intense and so unrelenting that he was unable to get to meetings he had scheduled to negotiate a settlement to the dispute. I decided to appeal personally to Menachem Begin to stop the fighting and abide by the ceasefire so that Habib could complete his work. I suggested to Begin that if he didn't, he could expect a drastic change in Israel's relationship with the United States. 'This disproportionate bombing of West Beirut,' my message stated, was exacting 'unacceptable human costs and making negotiations impossible.' If it continued, I said, it would be impossible for me to defend the proposition that Israel used American-made weapons for defensive purposes only...Each time I communicated with them, however, I emphasized my personal committment and that of the United States to the support of Israel. I supported its right to defend itself against attack, but appealed for Israel not to go on the offensive unless it was the victim of a provocation of such magnitude that the world would easily understand its right to retaliate. Israel's response was, in effect: Mind your own business. It is up to Israel alone to decide what it must do to ensure its survival."

It is important to understand that Reagan is candidly admitting that Israel was using American-made weapons for offensive purposes, which is a violation of the Foreign Assistance Act, Arms Export Control Act, Leahy Laws, etc. In fact, Reagan admitted Israel was in violation in his autobiography:

"Technically, Israel had violated an agreement with us not to use US-made weapons for offensive purposes, and some cabinet members wanted me to lean hard on Israel because it had broken this pledge. We sent a note to the Israeli government criticizing the raid, and delayed shipment of several additional military aircraft as a show of our displeasure."

Point 3: It should now be clear why Israel favors moving away from military aid to a "partnership." Israel wants to remove what they call the "golden handcuffs" so they can cleanse all of their neighbors without the US using its military aid as a carrot to exert any influence over it. However, abandoning aid in favor of a partnership creates a dependency on Israel for US national security. This will further tie the US's hands in restraining Israel so as to avoid any disruptions to its own defense ecosystem.

[Rush @exRAF_Al]

The same Lewis Hamilton who used a corporate leasing structure to save money on taxes (around £3.3 million in VAT) when acquiring his Bombardier Challenger 605 private jet in 2013? The same Lewis Hamilton who bought the £16.5 million jet through his British Virgin Islands company (Stealth Aviation Ltd) and who then set up an Isle of Man leasing company (Stealth (IOM) Ltd, to import it into the EU and sub-leased it to a UK jet management firm (TAG Aviation), which in turn provided it back to Hamilton and his Guernsey company under charter agreements? *That* Lewis Hamilton?

[Frank Wright @frankwrighter]

The revolutionary political technique of the 20th Century promised progress whilst impoverishing our lives.

Find out how the mass mobilisation of desire has destroyed our Church and State:

[Black Hole @konstructivizm]

The Brain Nebula (LBN 576)

This is an expanding shell of gas left behind by the explosion of a massive star in the constellation Cassiopeia about 10,000 years ago.

This supernova remnant is very faint in the sky, so a 66-hour exposure was required to capture this image.

[Lee Hurst @LeeHurstComic]

For maximum UK police protection.

[EndGame Macro @onechancefreedm]

This is what happens when childcare alone can eat 20% of household income nationally, and in places like Houston can run over $2,500 a month for infant care, nearly half the local median household income.

Families are not avoiding homeownership because they suddenly stopped wanting stability, children, or a backyard. They are being squeezed by housing, childcare, insurance, food, energy, and rates all at once. When the cost of raising kids collides with the cost of owning shelter, household formation breaks and family life slowly becomes a luxury product.

[Raymond Duck @RaymondDuck6]

@tleilax___ Yup:

[sarah @sahouraxo]

Israel dropped a bomb on Mona’s home in Mansouri, South Lebanon, today.

Mona is not a fighter.

She is an environmental activist who dedicated her life to protecting endangered sea turtles.

Because of Israel, Mona is now fighting for her life in a hospital bed.

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

In September 2007, a bird weighing barely more than a pound lifted off from Alaska and flew across the Pacific Ocean without stopping once.

No landing.
No food.
No water.
No sleep on the ocean.

Seven days and nine nights later, she arrived in New Zealand.

Her name was E7.

She was a bar-tailed godwit — a shorebird small enough to fit comfortably in your hands.

Scientists had long suspected these birds made one of the greatest migrations on Earth, but nobody had ever tracked an individual bird across the entire journey in real time.

E7 became the proof.

Researchers fitted her with a tiny satellite transmitter before migration season began.

Then they watched in astonishment as the signals kept moving south.

And south.

And south.

More than 7,000 miles across open ocean with no break.

What makes the journey even more unbelievable is how a godwit prepares for it.

In the weeks before departure, the bird transforms itself into a living fuel tank.

E7 spent late summer eating constantly, nearly doubling her body weight in fat reserves.

Then something extraordinary happened inside her body:

Her digestive organs began shrinking.

Her stomach and intestines partially atrophied because they wouldn’t be needed during the flight.

At the same time, her heart and flight muscles grew larger and stronger to handle the nonstop effort ahead.

By the time she launched into the sky, her body had essentially rebuilt itself for one purpose:

Survival in the air.

Once E7 left Alaska, there was no room for mistakes.

A bar-tailed godwit cannot rest on the ocean like a seabird.

If she landed in the Pacific, she would drown.

So she kept flying.

Hour after hour.
Day after day.

She navigated using the sun, stars, Earth’s magnetic field, and atmospheric patterns scientists still don’t fully understand.

She rode favorable winds southward while slowly burning through the fuel stored inside her body.

And when the fat reserves finally ran low, her body began consuming its own muscle tissue to keep her alive.

After more than 200 straight hours in flight, E7 finally descended onto the mudflats of New Zealand.

She had lost over half her body weight.

Her digestive system had effectively shut down.

Her muscles were severely depleted.

But she survived.

Within hours of landing, her organs began rebuilding themselves again.

The tiny bird that crossed the Pacific started eating, recovering, and preparing for the next stage of life as though this impossible journey was simply normal.

And that’s the part scientists found most humbling.

E7 wasn’t some miraculous exception.

She was just the first godwit carrying technology that allowed humans to witness what her species had quietly been doing for thousands of years.

Every year, tiny birds rise into the Arctic sky and cross an entire ocean powered only by instinct, endurance, and a body engineered by evolution to do something that still feels almost impossible.

A one-pound bird.
Seven days nonstop.
Over 7,000 miles of open ocean.

And somehow, she knew exactly where she was going.

[Paulo Macro @PauloMacro]

So lifelong scientists have been hammering out the details of the nuclear issue with Iran for 30yrs.... but two real estate guys from Boca are going to take a crash course to straighten it out