You point to poorly sourced telegraph articles and you expect to be taken seriously?

This is such a wildly naive and orientalist view of the Middle East. If you actually studied the modern history of the region you would know that since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire western powers have ceaselessly meddled in the affairs of the people there.

They’ve supported coups in order to overthrow democratic governments. They funded right wing jihadis including the precursors to and allies of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. They’ve enabled war crimes left and right. They even invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and continues to bomb the whole region with an extensive and secretive drone program. Even now the west continues to defend authoritarian and genocidal regimes like Saudi Arabia or Israel as long as they serve their western interests regardless of their destabilizing effect.

The reality is you have no idea what a Middle East would look like without western intervention. To pretend that you do only reveals your complete ignorance and racist arrogance.

The problem here is western nations use orientalist and racist narratives to pretend as if their meddling in the Middle East is not the primary cause of modern conflict in the region. People just accept those natives uncritically and assume they must be the smart ones for having read articles in the NYT about it. Never do they study the modern history of the region and the ways in which western powers are constantly intervening.

Growth isn’t a problem when it’s sustainable. However, there are natural limits to how far and how fast technological development and resource extraction will allow us to grow the economy.

Additionally, competition within capitalism forces the wealthy to seek out any and all means of growth. If they do not they actually risk all of their wealth becoming devalued. This drives innovation but it also is the driver of imperialism, exploitation, environmental degradation, all of which grow the economy.

When growth because less attainable due to various natural constrains, the wealthy start to cannibalize the systems that keep society stable. Again, they can’t help themselves. If they don’t their class position is threatened as some other capital owner beats them to the limited profits that come from privatization and austerity.

This usually results in mass unrest across all the various classes in society. That includes some of the middle classes who also rely on exploitation to maintain their standard of living. In response to threat of social unrest, the wealthy usually align themselves with right wing authoritarians that claim to be able to bring order to the chaos and renew growth through imperial expansion. This kind of politics is often supported by some of the downwardly mobile middle classes. That’s how we get fascism.

she had absolutely nothing to do with […] any regime changes

That’s certainly not true if you if you know anything about recent Balkan history.

Between 1993 and 2001, Alexander was USAID’s deputy for the Europe region, focusing on immediate post-conflict reconstruction in the Balkans.

USAID financially supported anti-government organizations in the Balkans in order to foment regime change during her tenure. This isn’t a secret either. That information is publicly available. If she was working at USAID during that time at best she was only tangentially involved.

The Carter Center is literally run by a woman who worked for much of her career at USAID, an agency that has directly supported regime change efforts in Latin America.

You don’t have to white wash Carter’s foreign policy to criticize Maduro.

Carter’s own national security advisor tried to legitimize Pol Pot for fuck’s sake. That’s not to mention Carter continued support for the Indonesian dictator as he carried out a genocide in East Timor. Oh and we shouldn’t forget the Carter administration started the program which funded and armed the right wing islamist progenitors of the Taliban in Afghanistan. More relevant to Latin America, Carter’s support for the El Savadoran military dictatorship was critical for its stability as it committed unspeakable atrocities.

Don’t be confused by Carter’s outward humanitarianism in his post presidency. He was not an aberration when it comes to US foreign policy and I wouldn’t expect the Carter center to be either. It’s literally run these days by a woman who spent much of her career working for USAID.

AMLO is explicitly rejecting the idea that there is evidence of fraud which is what the article is about. The title is accurate even if AMLO is not taking sides.

Well part of it is China was a severely underdeveloped country. They had to play catch up and so they traded access to their large labor market in exchange for technology transfers agreements.

That said, I think it would be incorrect to say their economy is currently based on copying. They publish more high impact research papers these days than any other country and are technological leaders particularly in green energy. This has been such a rapid change though that I think people’s perceptions of the Chinese economy lag the reality.

I imagine that’s the likely reason the IDF was attacking and occupying hospitals in Gaza. If there is nobody to count the bodies then Israel can keep the reported death count low as they continue their genocide.

That’s not so obvious. The US heavily supported the Saudi’s military campaign against Ansar Allah which ultimately failed. The US has since bombed them directly which has also failed. Like if the US didn’t have the capacity institutionally or otherwise to eliminate the Taliban why would Ansar Allah be any different?

The die was cast long before that when the US decided to fund the mujahideen to fight the Soviets. That destroyed the possibility of a secular Afghani state. The US later found that the easiest way to pacify the country was to simply bribe Taliban aligned warlords. Once the money spigot was turned off, a Taliban resurgence was inevitable. Every administration from Reagan to Biden shares some blame in what is happening today.

Exactly how is a slow genocide any better than a quick one?

In all likelihood, Biden is starting to pay lip service to the call for a ceasefire as the people around him realize his support for Israel’s genocide may hurt his chances of reelection. I’m not holding my breath for him to actually do anything about it. Words are cheap.

Biden gave material support to Israel’s genocidal campaign which has killed over 30,000 people. You’re delusional if you think paying lip service to a ceasefire while still actively supporting the genocide is going to satisfy anyone.

Well that’s exactly the problem. If people use AI generated images for commercial purposes they may accidentally infringe on someone else’s copyright. Since AI models are a black box there isn’t really a good way to avoid this.

The CCP does not want to go to war though. They’re far more risk averse than most people seem to think.

Exactly. It’s clear they did not foresee how rapidly their economy would expand following economic reform. An aging population and declining birth rates are some of the many growing pains that they’re currently figuring out how to manage.

The accusation that the Houthis support slavery comes from Saudi Arabia and shouldn’t be taken as fact. It deserves to be downvoted.

There’s no evidence Hamas beheaded children. IIRC that was a rumor originating from the IDF which remains unsubstantiated.