Maeve, maeve@kbin.earth

If you’re a liberal you oppose the idea of children being killed and starved in the abstract, because thinking of yourself as a moral person allows you to feel nice feelings about yourself, but you have no interest in taking a well-defined stand against the empire which routinely kills and starves children via genocides, wars of aggression, and siege warfare.<br/> You don’t want families living in poverty because it would make you feel like a bad person if you did, but you also don’t take a concrete stand against the capitalist system whose very existence depends on the perpetual creation of poverty and scarcity.<br/> You kinda-sorta want everyone to have happy and plentiful lives free from fear and tyranny, but you don’t want to consider the possibility that your own country is responsible for abusing, terrorizing and exploiting the global south. Because that would make you feel uncomfortable feelings.<br/> It’s not about wanting to actually help humanity and fix the world’s problems, it’s about you and your feelings.

If you’re a liberal you oppose the idea of children being killed and starved in the abstract, because thinking of yourself as a moral person allows you to feel nice feelings about yourself, but you have no interest in taking a well-defined stand against the empire which routinely kills and starves children via genocides, wars of aggression, and siege warfare.<br/> You don’t want families living in poverty because it would make you feel like a bad person if you did, but you also don’t take a concrete stand against the capitalist system whose very existence depends on the perpetual creation of poverty and scarcity.<br/> You kinda-sorta want everyone to have happy and plentiful lives free from fear and tyranny, but you don’t want to consider the possibility that your own country is responsible for abusing, terrorizing and exploiting the global south. Because that would make you feel uncomfortable feelings.<br/> It’s not about wanting to actually help humanity and fix the world’s problems, it’s about you and your feelings.

By Brian Berletic - April 3, 2026 The US has not only threatened the existence of Iran as a nation-state as well as the security of the entire Middle East, but the death and destruction it has caused has already begun to radiate out across the world in terms of disrupted or destroyed energy exports...

By Brian Berletic - April 3, 2026 The US has not only threatened the existence of Iran as a nation-state as well as the security of the entire Middle East, but the death and destruction it has caused has already begun to radiate out across the world in terms of disrupted or destroyed energy exports...

Former Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi was reportedly trying to organize negotiations with JD Vance.

And I was watching an interview with a representative of the Cuban Foreign Ministry the other day, and they looked into the camera and said something that has made me think. They invited the reporter to go out into the streets of Havana. ‘Look around’, he said. ‘See for yourself. Does this look like a country on the verge of collapse?’<br/> The reporter agreed. It didn’t.<br/> And yet, for three months, Cuba received no oil. Not one singular drop. Since January, when the United States kidnapped Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro from his home, the pipeline that kept Cuba running was severed. The US then threatened tariffs on any country that dared to sell fuel to the island. Mexico, which had been sending oil in solidarity, stopped. The message from Washington was clear: starve them, break them, make them beg.<br/> And then this week saw a Russian tanker called the Anatoly Kolodkin docking at the port of Matanzas, carrying 730,000 barrels of crude oil. The White House says it ‘allowed’ this shipment through. The word ‘allowed’ is doing some truly Olympic-level heavy lifting there. The United States, which has two Coast Guard cutters in the region that could have intercepted the tanker, chose not to, and not because it wanted to be kind, but because it was in no position to start a fight with Russia while its fleet is already stretched thin bombing Iran.

And I was watching an interview with a representative of the Cuban Foreign Ministry the other day, and they looked into the camera and said something that has made me think. They invited the reporter to go out into the streets of Havana. ‘Look around’, he said. ‘See for yourself. Does this look like a country on the verge of collapse?’<br/> The reporter agreed. It didn’t.<br/> And yet, for three months, Cuba received no oil. Not one singular drop. Since January, when the United States kidnapped Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro from his home, the pipeline that kept Cuba running was severed. The US then threatened tariffs on any country that dared to sell fuel to the island. Mexico, which had been sending oil in solidarity, stopped. The message from Washington was clear: starve them, break them, make them beg.<br/> And then this week saw a Russian tanker called the Anatoly Kolodkin docking at the port of Matanzas, carrying 730,000 barrels of crude oil. The White House says it ‘allowed’ this shipment through. The word ‘allowed’ is doing some truly Olympic-level heavy lifting there. The United States, which has two Coast Guard cutters in the region that could have intercepted the tanker, chose not to, and not because it wanted to be kind, but because it was in no position to start a fight with Russia while its fleet is already stretched thin bombing Iran.

a million people displaced. Journalists killed. Tanks burning in ambushes. And the open, unapologetic talk of annexation from genocidal officials who have decided the mask is no longer necessary.

a million people displaced. Journalists killed. Tanks burning in ambushes. And the open, unapologetic talk of annexation from genocidal officials who have decided the mask is no longer necessary.

Israel has declared its intent to expand into the geostrategic Red Sea Region by recognizing Northern Somalia’s secessionist state, but Somalia and much of the rest of the world are pushing back...

Surcharge, spurred by oil price spikes due to the Iran war, is set to take effect on 26 April and run until January 2027

The new estimate comes amid warnings that the war, now in its fourth week, could "cost the US trillions of dollars in the decades to come."

The new estimate comes amid warnings that the war, now in its fourth week, could "cost the US trillions of dollars in the decades to come."

and that of the rest of the world.

and that of the rest of the world.

My enemies are not in Iran. My enemies are in Washington and Tel Aviv. In London and Canberra.<br/> My enemies are the western oligarchs and empire managers who are poisoning my society and making everything awful while slaughtering human beings with the help of my tax dollars.<br/> My enemies are the tyrants who are turning our civilization into a mind-controlled dystopia where it is increasingly illegal to criticize the abuses of my government and its allies, and increasingly difficult to find information which runs counter to the imperial narrative.

'Quakers have been oppressed by the state for over 350 years. We'll continue to hire space to nonviolent groups, just as we always have.'