China and India were the most important places on Earth for almost all of history. The "Near East," the "Far East," Africa, and the Americas all had advanced empires at times, and most outstripped Europe technologically for most of history. The Ottomans famously made use of gunpowder before Europeans, but the Chinese were (of course) the first to weaponize it.

So what enabled Europeans to so successfully dominate the world? Obviously it wasn't their exceptional genetics or superior "culture," or even, I think, the massive experience in organized murder from Europeans all killing each other. Was it Capitalism? Industrialization? Agriculture? Did the massive trade network encompassing half the globe create a population with a huge array of immune disease carriers?

Notably, the "Scramble for Africa" happened much later than the settling of the Americas. Did the wealth sucked out of the Americas allow the Europeans to do something that would've been previously impossible (or at least not worth the effort)?

I know this is kind of a massive question to answer and I'm sure it's very contested, but I'd appreciate any responses and any book recommendations.

Harry, you don't need to sell it to me

An argument that RadLibs have been making lately is that there's no universe in which a pro-Palestinian candidate gets in reach of the presidency, so you're obligated to support the least-bad option. So true!

Now let's do a little extrapolation.

Anyone who's glanced at even a single page of climate science knows that there is no universe in which the American people and a stable, sustainable global ecosystem coexist. Given this unfortunate but unavoidable reality, it is everyone's duty to support the Harm Reduction of exterminating 330 million Americans.

Since the odds of humanity going extinct in the next century are approaching 100%, there is no scenario in which zero people die to climate catastrophe.

Given that people are obligated to vote for the candidate who would ensure that 99.9% of Gazans are killed instead of 100%, it is equally true that you must throw all your weight behind the scenario that ensures only 330 million deaths instead of of 8 billion.

If you oppose this Politically Unavoidable Genocide, you are simply a privileged purity Leftist who doesn't care about Harm Reduction!

And then continue to not reduce any harm

Wasn't sure what comm to put this in.

Douglas Valentine's The CIA as Organized Crime is one of the best books I've ever read. His thesis on the Phoenix Program is extremely persuasive. It's got me thinking that everyone is missing the forest for the trees when they talk about Gladio and especially "domestic Gladio." The point of the Strategy of Tension wasn't to do Joker crazy bad guy stuff, it was to do Joker crazy bad guy stuff in order to acquire Phoenix Program-style powers.

When Valentine lays out the history of the agency and this single through-line, it really feels revelatory. Phoenix is the blueprint for all occupation and counter-insurgency. Assassination of MLK (and Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, etc), the war on and dismantling of the Black Panthers, Israel's war on Palestine, Operation Condor, the occupation of Afghanistan, the militarization of the police, everything done in response to Black Lives Matter and the earlier movement in Ferguson (remember the mysteriously disappearing and dying activists), every level of government absolutely littered with "former" spies. Just about every tool we see the ruling class use was pioneered or refined in the Phoenix Program.

I'm excited to read The Phoenix Program (after I finish Family of Secrets) to really get into the weeds.

Sorry if this is incoherent, I got three hours of sleep.

So I hate airports. I got overwhelmed and didn't pack my CPAP for a vacation. Does anyone know of anywhere around LA that I can go to to rent one? I can get one shipped overnight, but I'm trying to avoid paying $90 for that if possible.

It turns out that accommodating spoiled aristocrats who order shit they don't need from halfway across the Earth on a whim has a cost, and let me tell you: that cost isn't coming out of the executives' salaries!

Every time you return something, you are adding data to a spreadsheet that returns the value of "fuck you."

• Given billions by the US to occupy stolen land and increase arms manufacturer profits
• Cartoonishly heavily armed
• Convinced everyone on Earth is out to get them
• Cowards who can't do anything without calling for overwhelming firepower
• White supremacists
• American news unconditionally carries their water
• Kill children all the time
• Beloved by Germans

Entire nation of cops

Dole doing land acknowledgements on their plantations.

I've been making my way through The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, and I've never struggled to finish a book this much. Just unbelievably harrowing.

I had a realization that's really stuck with me. Zionism is explicitly a response to European anti-semitism. No one has committed more pogroms than Europeans. Almost all of Europe gleefully participated in the Holocaust.

And yet to the average Westoid, Arabs are a uniquely anti-Semitic people because of the extremely mildly violent response some have had to ethnic cleansing. Palestinians manage to kill a single Israeli with a rocket every decade or two and it's "my god, these barbaric people have nothing in them but hate for the Jews." Europeans commit the GREATEST GENOCIDE IN HISTORY and yet they get to remain wholesome civilized people whomst have never harmed a Jew. Far-Right parties are sweeping into power all across Europe, but noooooo that doesn't say anything about our glorious Western Civilization.

Maybe if Arabs sweep the globe and rule with an iron fist for a few millennia they can catch up to the Jewish death toll inflicted by Europeans.