Actually I think this comment unintentionally answers OP’s question.

I think a common tankie story is:

1. Realization that much of western media is propaganda or influenced by propaganda.

2. Finding that enemies of the American empire (and Europe) with some semblance of power agree that western media is propaganda, and these people are MLM communists.

3. After they’ve established credibility with their accurate criticisms of western capitalist society, tell you that, oh, by the way, those propaganda outlets in the west also lie about us, actually almost all of what we do is awesome and people who claim otherwise are automatically suspect.

Number 3 is a mistake, I think, but it’s an understandable one. This isn’t super fair to tankies but the analogy I’d give is to people who fall under the spell of someone like Jordan Peterson: he sounds smart, and he lulls you into a sense of security with good advice about taking care of yourself, keeping your house clean, etc., and then once he’s gotten your trust he gently introduces stuff like “oh by the way evolution proves that men and women shouldn’t work together” or whatever, and because he’s made sensible points up until then, your guard is down and you don’t critique it in your head before accepting it.

https://reason.com/2025/12/26/here-are-5-wars-trump-started-or-expanded-in-2025/

Working now for me too, thanks!

Yeah, it’s back for me too. @jwr1

Thank you, sorry for being stupid :)

Thanks jwr! By the way - is there a way to donate to you for server costs or your hard work in general?

Thanks jwr. As always, wonderful that you are so on top of things.

Question - is there a non-techy way to check the version of a given instance? Asking because I have an account on another instance.

Adding another thank you for all of your hard work!

Thanks for this post. This happened once before, maybe about a month ago, and seemed to fix itself after a day. Hopefully it won’t be an issue too long - can someone ping the admin?

I just want to say that I love Devils Panties. I love that it is like half the time political and half the time not. I don’t really know why, I just like that every day you don’t know quite what to expect, but it is pretty consistently good.

Seconded!

It looks like the Wayback Machine archive of the original article is down now too, presumably at the request of The Daily Beast… :(

I got you rosahaj! I’ll try to be better this year!

I love Michael Parenti, but is this the right sub for this?

I’m not sure why the current map doesn’t show them, but no, the stations are not gone. I ride the Amtrak from Chicago far out west quite often, it still stops in all of the places that the old map says.

Jesus Christ, that’s so awful…war is so horrendous

Your mama

I think that they are pro-Israel because they want all the American Jews to move there to rid them of “the problem” of American Jews. Think of them like national segregationists - they don’t mind Jewish people existing as long as they are “over there”. And it’s also in Israel’s interest to project themselves as the only place in the world where Jews can be safe.

I think Bibi knows that Biden isn’t going to change course before the election, so he is using this month to escalate things enough to keep them going as long as possible afterwards. In Israel, once things calm down, there will be elections, and Bibi knows he probably won’t win.

On the other hand, domestically, invading Lebanon is very popular - even most of the left wing Jewish opposition supports it. It’s crazy making, and frustrating, believe me. But if you only read the Hebrew media and aren’t a good enough English speaker to read the international news, it’s almost like you live in a different reality where all of the awfulness of Israel goes unmentioned while the awfulness of Hamas and Hezbollah gets talked about 24/7

Right. Like the whole point of treating juveniles differently is that they are incapable of understanding the magnitude of what they are doing. If anything, the argument for treating them differently is the strongest when applied to very serious crimes like murder.