clara dapena

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Trump is as evil as Biden. Biden was as evil as Trump. If you can't see this by looking at the raw data of the behavior of their administrations, it's either because you're looking at incomplete data or because you're letting your political biases do your thinking for you.

Both presidents are guilty of extreme evils, and you can't separate the evils of one from the evils of the other. Biden spent the latter part of his term incinerating Gaza, and then Trump began working to clear it of Palestinians. Trump managed to secure the Gaza ceasefire that Biden spent 15 months avoiding, but then he immediately began sabotaging that very ceasefire as soon as he took office. Biden has been waging a dangerous proxy war in Ukraine that Trump helped provoke in his first term, and now that he's back in office Trump is tasked with winding that war down to focus on new wars.

The crimes of the Republican and Democratic parties are inseparably intertwined with each other. It's not that they're the same — there are some differences — it's that they work in conjunction to advance the same evil agendas. Saying the Democrats are better than Republicans or vice versa is like saying the top teeth of the shark are nicer than the bottom teeth; they might look and function a bit differently, but they're used toward the same deadly end.

[Alternative News @AlternatNews]

On Croatian Television channel 4. Vladimir Putin was allowed to speak.

He addressed the Europeans: "Russia has never been and will never be your enemy!

We do not want European raw materials and wealth, we have our own raw materials and wealth, we absolutely do not need your raw materials. Russia is the richest country in the world in terms of raw materials.

We do not want your land or your territory. Look at how wide Russia is on the map. Russia is twice the size of the whole of Europe in one place. What would we need your land for, what do we do with it?

Why do you think Russia is an enemy of Europe? What damage has Russia done to you?

Have we sold you gas and raw materials at lower prices than the prices at which your "friends" are currently selling you? YES

Did Russia sacrifice 20 million people in World War II to get rid of the Nazis? YES

Was Russia the first country to help Europe during the Covid pandemic? YES

Did we help Europe when there were fires and natural disasters? YES

What has Russia done to you that you hate it so much?

Russia is not your enemy; your real enemies are your leaders, those who lead you!”

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

As The Gaza Agenda Moves Forward, The Imperial Narrative Shifts With It

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt acted shocked and appalled by questions from reporters about Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza on Wednesday, saying it was “evil” to suggest that these poor victims of Israel’s destruction should be allowed to stay somewhere that’s been completely demolished.

“Again, it’s a demolition site right now,” Leavitt said. “It’s not a livable place for any human being. And I think it’s actually quite evil to suggest that people should live in such dire conditions.”

Of course the question of whether or not it was evil for the US and Israel to deliberately create those conditions in the first place is never raised by the obedient press gaggle.

It’s been truly remarkable watching the official imperial narrative pivot from (A) claiming it’s outrageous to suggest Israel was waging a genocidal campaign of annihilation on Gaza, to (B) saying obviously everyone in Gaza needs to leave because the entire place has been annihilated and how dare you suggest otherwise.

This comes as Donald Trump himself proclaims on Truth Social that under his plan the Gaza Strip “would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting.” Such a land transfer would require Israel to forcibly seize all of Gaza in order to cede the territory to the US. If Gaza becomes as a US territory it would of course no longer exist as a Palestinian territory, and would have already been purged of all Palestinians.

And it’s just so surreal how the narrative is changing now that the agenda has moved from destroying Gaza to ethnically cleansing it. It’s requiring some real Orwellian doublethink revisionism.

Israel apologists in 2023–2024: The IDF is the world’s most moral army! It’s a war of defense! They’re taking extraordinary measures to protect civilian lives!

Israel apologists in 2025: Well obviously Gaza’s an uninhabitable wasteland that’s been carpet bombed to oblivion, duh.

Israel apologists in 2023–2024: Israel would never deliberately target civilian infrastructure!

Israel apologists in 2025: We need to move the entire population of Gaza to Egypt and Jordan because all of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure has been completely destroyed.

Israel apologists in 2023–2024: How dare you suggest that Israel is deliberately destroying healthcare facilities, you blood libeling antisemite!

Israel apologists in 2025: You can’t expect people to keep living in Gaza! Don’t you know there’s no healthcare there?

Israel apologists in 2023–2024: Israel is only targeting Hamas! The only locations with civilians in them that have been bombed are the ones where they’re being used as human shields!

Israel apologists in 2025: These poor Gazans need to be evacuated immediately! The entire strip is a demolition site with hardly any buildings left standing!

Israel apologists in 2023–2024: Israel is taking the utmost care with its airstrikes to only target terrorists with the most pinpoint precision.

Israel apologists in 2025: Gaza’s not safe for civilians, the whole place is covered with thousands upon thousands of undetonated ordinances!

Israel apologists in 2023–2024: This will all be over as soon as Hamas releases the hostages.

Israel apologists in 2025: Now that we’ve got our hostages back it’s time to end the existence of Gaza as a Palestinian territory and fill it with Jewish settlements.

Israel apologists in 2023–2024: Blame Hamas! Hamas caused this with their unprovoked attack on October 7!

Israel apologists in 2025: The only possible solution to all the death and devastation that’s been inflicted on Gaza is to advance an ethnic cleansing agenda that we’ve been chasing for generations.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. When the needs of the empire change, so do the narratives.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Xiaohongshu and then DeepSeek have had an unusual volume of westerners speaking positively about China for the last couple of weeks, which of course means we're also seeing many westerners falling all over themselves to say "Well actually China is actually quite bad actually" in response.

Western liberals who fancy themselves enlightened and critical of power tend to get very squirmy and uncomfortable in their skin when they hear people saying positive things about the PRC, and love nothing more than to tell you that China is just as evil and tyrannical as the western power alliance, if not worse.

This is objectively, measurably false. China hasn't spent the 21st century killing people by the millions in wars of aggression. China isn't circling the planet with hundreds of military bases while working to destroy any nation or group anywhere in the world who disobeys it. China isn't strangling nations around the world with starvation sanctions for refusing to bow to its dictates. China didn't just spend 15 months lighting the middle east on fire and backing a live-streamed genocide. China hasn't spent the last three years endangering the world in frequently terrifying acts of nuclear brinkmanship with a rival nuclear superpower. Only the US-centralized empire has done this.

Whenever I point this out I get empire apologists going "Well yeah, SO FAR! We haven't seen China doing all that evil foreign policy shit YET because they're still not powerful enough!" Which is just silly. China absolutely is powerful enough to be a whole lot more abusive and murderous abroad, and it simply isn't. Westerners love to claim that China has secret agendas to conquer the world someday (hilariously implying that these hypothetical future abuses make China morally comparable to the US empire's current known abuses), but if you actually dig into the evidence for these claims what you'll find every time is that all they provide evidence for is China's openly stated goal of a multi-polar world that isn't ruled by Washington.

Our ancestors set sail to conquer the world; their ancestors built a wall. This notion that China has an interest in ruling over a bunch of white foreigners has as much rational basis as old racist superstitions that black and brown people wanted equal rights so that they could come and steal white men's wives and have sex with their daughters.

They're just a better civilization than ours — not because theirs is miraculous or perfect, but because ours is just that murderous and dystopian. They simply do the normal thing while we do the freakish thing: they make the lives of their citizens better and better and avoid unnecessary wars, while western governments make the lives of their citizens worse and worse while plunging into new acts of mass military slaughter every few years.

Any criticisms you could level at China — that their domestic policy is more authoritarian than ours, that their culture is more conservative, etc — are eclipsed in moral terms by the depravity of our own western governments by many orders of magnitude. And why would you even level such criticisms while living under the single most bloodthirsty and tyrannical power structure on earth? That would be like a German living under the Third Reich looking overseas and bitching about Brazil.

I find nothing more pathetic than a westerner who lives under the shadow of the US empire spending their time and energy criticizing the abuses of nations who lie outside that power structure. It's an embarrassing, bootlicking way to live. Focus on criticizing the far greater abuses of the far greater evil that you actually live under, loser.

[Megatron @Megatron_ron]

🇮🇱🇵🇸 Basically, all media outlets and journalists in Israel are declaring that this is a heavy defeat for Israel

They also blame Donald Trump for this forced deal which they refused to accept for a whole year.

High-ranking IDF Official, speaking on the condition of anonimity:

"This is an absolute disaster deal. For over a year, we resisted against a deal like this. It renders any progress we made in Gaza as useless and in vain.

There is no mechanism to remove Hamas from power. According to this deal, the way it is structured now, Hamas will keep ruling the Gaza Strip. They will likely rearm and recruit more fighters than before.

I tell you one word: Embarassment. We surrendered to the terrorists of Hamas."

Gaza is destroyed, many children and civilians slaughtered but now Hamas, according to Blinken is fully restored, has more fighters than before and will be in total control of Gaza.

Why did Trump insist so much on a ceasefire? Because the US already has enough domestic problems, and the fact that even after more than a year of massive amounts of weapons and resources being spent, Hamas is not even remotely defeated.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Thoughts On The Ceasefire Deal

As usual, Israel appears to be ramping up its aggressions to kill as many people as possible before the fighting comes to an end. These next few days will be an especially terrifying time to be living in Gaza.

Reading by Tim Foley.

[VBL’s Ghost @Sorenthek]

“Economic Hit Man” describing the process by which the G7/ US uses the IMF to make debt slaves out of nations whose resources we want.

[Almut Rochowanski @rochowanski]

🎵All I want for Christmas is...
militarism, death from the skies, climate catastrophe and faux-feminist Swedish war Barbie 🎵

[Richard @ricwe123]

Washington's main objective was to sever the bond between Germany and Russia.
The goal has always been to undermine their ties.
Now, Germany’s economy is struggling without the cheap Russian natural gas it once relied on.
Brainwashed Ukrainians are now paying the ulitmate price.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Taliban In Afghanistan Bad, Al-Qaeda In Syria Good

It’s pretty wild how the west went directly from “We need to occupy Afghanistan for two decades to prevent it from being taken over by the Taliban” to “Yay! Syria’s been taken over by al-Qaeda!”

Reading by Tim Foley.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

It's just a fact that major world events do not occur independently of the actions of the major world powers who have a vested interest in their outcomes. Maybe it bothers you when people point out the involvement of the US power alliance in Syria, and maybe you would prefer to believe that a plucky band of heroic freedom fighters bravely overthrew an evil supervillain dictator all on their own like some Hollywood movie. But real life doesn't move in accordance with your preferences. In real life, the globe-spanning empire that is centralized around the United States will reliably be deeply involved in such events.

When I say this you may want to believe I am "denying the agency of Syrians" and that "denying agency" is the worst sin a person can possibly commit, but nothing I'm saying actually contradicts the idea that Syrians have their own agency. Obviously there were many Syrians who wanted Assad gone, and obviously there were many people who had their own reasons for fighting him which had nothing to do with the US empire. There is no contradiction between this obvious fact and the well-documented reality that the US-centralized power structure has been balls deep in Syria from the very beginning of the violence in 2011, and that its involvement led to the events we are seeing today.

The claim isn't that the US empire controlled the minds of Syrians and forced them to turn against their government with no agency of their own, the claim is that the empire put a big fat thumb on the scale to ensure that one group of Syrians got their way instead of a different group.

You can argue that western regime change interventionism will lead to positive results this time (so long as you're prepared to ignore mountains of historical evidence consistently demonstrating the opposite), but what you cannot do on any rational basis is deny that western regime change interventionism occurred here.

Western liberalism is funny in that its adherents lean heavily on their ability to psychologically compartmentalize away from the actions of the western empire, and indeed away from the very existence of that empire. The western liberal lives in an imaginary alternate universe where western powers pretty much mind their own business and western leaders passively watch violence and destruction unfold around the world whilst pleading for peace and diplomacy from their podiums. They pretend the empire does not exist, and that it is only by pure coincidence that conflicts, coups and uprisings keep occurring in ways which favor the strategic interests of Washington.

In reality it is impossible to understand what's going on in the world unless you understand that the US is the hub of an undeclared empire which has been working tirelessly to bring the global population under a single power umbrella over which it presides. The few countries who have successfully resisted being absorbed into this imperial blob are the Official Bad Guys we westerners are all trained to hate: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and a few socialist states in Latin America. I used to include Syria in this list, but that's over now. Syria has been absorbed into the blob of the empire.

And tomorrow the imperial blob will move its crosshairs on to the next unabsorbed nation. That's the underlying dynamic behind all the major conflicts on earth. This dynamic gets redacted from the mainstream western worldview with the assistance of the western propaganda services known as the mass media, as well as the western indoctrination system known as schooling. This dynamic is redacted from our worldview and hidden from our attention by the plutocrats and empire managers who work to manipulate our information systems, because otherwise we would realize that the US empire is the most tyrannical and abusive power structure on this planet today.

And it unquestionably is. No other power structure has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions in wars of aggression while circling the planet with hundreds of military bases and working continuously to crush any group which opposes its dictates anywhere on earth. Not China. Not Russia. Not Iran. Not Cuba. Not Bashar al-Assad. Only the US empire has been tyrannizing and abusing the world to this extent in modern times.

And now the imperial blob rolls on to absorb its next target, having grown one Syria-sized increment larger after spending years digesting that nation via proxy warfare, starvation sanctions, and a military occupation designed to steal its oil and its wheat.

Our world cannot know peace as long as we are ruled by an empire that is fueled by endless rivers of human blood.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

I personally don't blame people for getting Syria wrong. Some of my favorite analysts got Syria wrong at first. It's a complicated issue. It's hard to sort out the true from the false, and it's hard to sort through the moral complexities and contradictions of it all as a human. What matters is that you stay curious and open and sincerely dedicated to learning what's true instead of bedding down and making an identity out of your current understanding.

For years Syria was awash with some of the most complex psychological operations and hybrid warfare the world has ever seen. It's okay if you didn't understand it at first. The world is a confusing place, and is rapidly becoming more so. Just do your best, stay curious, and keep learning.

[sarah @sahouraxo]

This is not Gaza.

This is not Beirut.

This is Damascus.

Israel is bombing Syria’s capital—one of the oldest cities in human history, standing for over 11,000 years—with some of its heaviest bombardments ever.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

The US media, 2001-17: We must radically restructure our foreign policy and civil liberties to vanquish the existential threat of Al Qaeda.

The US media, this week: Meet the glamorous, reformed, media-trained, wise, diverse, borderline-woke AQ leader prepared to govern Syria.

[La Villana de Vallekas @lavillanavk]

El @CSO_Atalaya era un colegio público en Vallekas abandonado durante años. Se okupó en 2014 y lleva 10 AÑOS aportando a la organización de asambleas, ocio, conciertos... tiene rocódromo, gimnasio, taller de bicis...

22 lecheras ahora mismo para volver a dejarlo VACÍO 🤬👇🏽

[Carlos @agent_of_change]

At the G20 Summit, Xi Jinping makes a powerful call for peace, development and sustainability

As the US deepens its commitment to the Project for a New American Century - sponsoring a genocide in Gaza, fuelling a war in Ukraine, fomenting conflict across West Asia, imposing cruel sanctions on Cuba and several other countries, and engaging in economic coercion worldwide - China always flies the flag for peace, development, and cooperation.

In his speech at the G20 Summit in Rio, President Xi called for the bloc to "see the world as one community with a shared future, and shoulder our responsibility for history, take historical initiative and move history forward."

He insisted:

1️⃣ Global inequality is a major challenge that must be addressed.

2️⃣ There must be support for more developing countries to achieve modernisation.

3️⃣ There must be support for developing countries to adopt a sustainable development path.

4️⃣ There must be global cooperation on climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution.

5️⃣ There must be support for developing countries to integrate digital, smart and green development to bridge the North-South gap.

Towards these goals, China will:

1️⃣ Share its experience in poverty alleviation with the world.

2️⃣ Provide US$20 billion of development funds to support developing countries in poverty reduction and food security.

3️⃣ Help the Global South to gain better access to global advances in science, technology and innovation.

4️⃣ Provide least developed countries with zero-tariff treatment for 100% of their products.

5️⃣ Launch a multidimensional Belt and Road connectivity network, including a Green Silk Road.

The world is at a crossroads: we can pursue the Project for a New American Century, or we can pursue a Global Community of Shared Future. The choice is ours.

[Going Underground @GUnderground_TV]

🚨BREAKING: The United States🇺🇸 VETOED a UN Security Council draft resolution that would have demanded an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and the release of all hostages

RESULT
In Favor: 14
Against: 1 (US)

Once again, the US stands isolated before the international community, the architect of the Gaza genocide, and the enabler of Israel’s crimes against humanity. This is what the US voted to continue.

[Going Underground @GUnderground_TV]

PUTIN🇷🇺: “What don’t you understand? Are we putting missiles near the borders of the US? No. It’s the US with their missiles coming to our home. They’re literally on our doorstep. Is this really too much to ask? No more strike systems on our doorstep”

If Vladimir Putin did not tolerate having NATO missiles on Russia’s doorstep, what makes you think he’ll tolerate NATO missiles actually being fired at Russia from Ukraine?

The callous stupidity of the Biden Administration is risking World War 3.

[Adam @AdameMedia]

The word you’re looking for is ‘concentration camp’ @Telegraph

[Zlatti71 @Zlatti_71]

🇮🇹 Professor Emmanuel Todd: "I am not pro-Russian, but if Ukraine loses, Europe will win."

"The outcome of this war will decide the fate of Europe. If Russia is defeated in Ukraine, the subordination of Europe to the Americans will last for a century. If, as I believe, the United States is defeated, NATO will disintegrate and Europe will remain free. Even more important than Russia's victory will be the halting of its army on the Dnieper. It will have neither the means nor the desire to expand once it has restored itself to pre-communist borders. The Western Russophobic hysteria, fantasizing about Russia's desire for expansion in Europe, is simply laughable to a historian. The psychological shock that awaits Europeans will be the realization that NATO was created not to protect us, but to control us."
- FRWL