There won’t be a pot of gold for Truth Social….not that it cares about its people.

It lost nearly 1/3 of its value this morning the instant they revealed their near $60 million losses last year with only 4 million users and no advertisers but is lavishly paying its officers (who are all top maga officials) up to a million a year. It’s going to be worse when maga investors realize it’s being propped up by China as a way to bribe Don Poorleon and maga officials like Cash Patel.
This is the kind of “good job” you get from maga…economic collapse and job market collapses paired with a million dead Americans…all failed attempts to con leading to total collapse. Imagine 4 more years of 2020…the Congo would rank above us by every metric after that, and China and Russia would fight over how to split us up.

No one outside the cult thinks trump did better than Biden on anything, and you have to ignore all statistics and facts, the failed coup, the big lie, and the year 2020 to believe it.
If only Obama would run the election would be over.

Hey Mr cranial rectosis,
We live in a democratic republic....where do you live that's a republic? The republic of Congo?

Election fraud was miniscule, far less than in the election in 2016 that put a feeble old delusional narcissist in office.

Zero evidence of any systemic fraud was found, zero presented in court. Also no evidence of interference with poll workers. Only wild accusations no one would make under oath by people who have no idea how elections work. All that was found was a few Trumpsters voting twice or more. Nothing else at all. Nada. Zip. Zilch. None.

Trump is a treasonous traitor. String him up...String him up....String him up.

Gotta love a music video with lyrics that really doesn't help you understand the lyrics!
Self *promote because I'm loving this song, play it loud like the drums in a Congo.

Another group discovered through tv commercials, like Bomba Estéreo
https://videosift.com/video/Bomba-Estereo-Soy-Yo-Official-Video
Or Marian Hill.
https://videosift.com/video/Marian-Hill-Down-YouTube-Music-Foundry

Heck, an armed populace is harder to oppress is really all I was ever suggesting on the count of common ground. One point of commonality.

On Rwanda, the genocidal former government of Rwanda kept their arms and just retreated into the Congo jungle. They've basically kept their "freedom" in the process and subsequently no small reason the DRC has been plagued with horrific violent crimes against humanity the last couple decades.

On Kagame I suppose it depends who you ask about being a tyrant or not. Perhaps pragmatic dictator would be the closest a majority of dissenting experts might agree on? That said, make no mistake that supporters of the former regime weren't allowed to remain armed where Kagame had the ability. Because of the genocide the world largely disregarded it, Kagames forces made large numbers of 'violations' of DRC borders raiding for former genocidairres.

Congo rats!

@Asmo

Don't really want to get a more general argument about the history of US foreign policy, I was talking more about the present day. The US's rationale for intervention during the Cold War was an exaggerated sense of the spread of communism and later to prevent anything that might precipitate an oil price spike like in the 1973-74/79. Nowadays with greatly expanded US shale oil supply and no Cold War I simply don't see any real incentive, if anything with the furore over debt, quite the opposite.

@enoch

Successful US intervention in the previous century generally involved large sums of money, whether it be propping up a government (Zaire/Congo) or funding an insurgent militia (Guatemala). Same thing with the USSR (North Korea). The ability to influence public opinion or mount credible propaganda campaigns in my opinion is generally exaggerated especially in a large, modern and educated country like Iran. It's also the conspiratorial myth that repressive regimes (like Iran, Russia) frequently turn to when they need to discredit dissent. A good example is:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2013/11/arab-conspiracy-theories

I mention Russia because this is the line pushed aggressively to both his domestic audience by it's wholly state controlled television media and to a mix of foreign and expatriate audiences (of which Russia Today is most successful) through a web of shadowy funding and home grown sounding organisations (see link below for a nice overview, e.g. http://www.globalresearch.ca/). It's pretty important to view what he says as part of a narrative to vastly exaggerate US and western intervention in Ukraine and previously Georgia, because that allows him to construct his myth of being a counterbalance to present day western imperialism.

https://criticusnixalsverdruss.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/propagramm3.jpg

Please do give us a closer look at ISIS is doing. Massacres, torture, rape, collective punishment and on, correct? Maybe killing what, 100 people at a time in the worst instances? That doesn't distinguish them from Saddam. Within Saddam's rule those crimes are what guys like yourself colloquially referred to as Saddam's 'firm' hand. They are his, so to speak, lesser and more routine crimes. I'd left them beneath mention thus far.

If you must insist on parroting your ignorance of Saddams al-Anfal campaign I'll resort to posting excerpts as evidence that the gassing was but a small part of it.

4,500 Kurdish villages were destroyed by Saddam, that's entire villages turned to rubble.
182,000 dead civilians by counts gleaned from Saddam's own records of how many Kurds his forces had succeeded in eliminating.
The concentration camps Saddam ran were pretty clearly modeled after Hitler's:
With only minor variations ... the standard pattern for sorting new arrivals [at Topzawa was as follows]. Men and women were segregated on the spot as soon as the trucks had rolled to a halt in the base's large central courtyard or parade ground. The process was brutal ... A little later, the men were further divided by age, small children were kept with their mothers, and the elderly and infirm were shunted off to separate quarters. Men and teenage boys considered to be of an age to use a weapon were herded together.

The conditions within the camp were terrible and torture, abuse and beatings were routine. The men of fighting age though were sorted for the express purpose to later drive them out into the desert by bus or truck for mass execution. This is how Saddam carried his genocide of the inhabitants of the 4,500 villages he'd destroyed.

Anyone interested in more or questioning the veracity of the above account can find more and endless references and evidence here:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/index.htm#TopOfPage

As for American policy, I don't quite see where I suddenly bear personal responsibility to clean up the world if I choose to form my opinions on world events independently of it's 'fit' to American policy.

I don't care much if it was Bush or Putin that took Saddam out of power aside from hedging on which would leave a better Iraq, either would be tough not to be an improvement from Saddam. Similarly for Sudan or the Congo, I'd be rather glad if world powers finally cared enough to try and spare the people there suffering under brutal military repression and endless war crimes. I'm not quite sure why you wouldn't share such a view?

Gassing them was considered the worst part of what he did by most, agreed he did evil for decades, and that equated to more than a single (or campaign) of gassing, but as far as single events go, it was the worst.
As I said, just give ISIS time, they are more hard line and eager to kill than Saddam seemed, and on the rise fast. If YOU want to champion ISIS as a lesser evil, you should bother to study what THEY are doing now, with an insanely smaller group and less power than Saddam, if they gain power and people, I see them as likely being worse.
American policy should concern anyone who's discussing it, which is what we've been doing. If American policy doesn't matter to you, why are you not on your way to the Sudan or Congo to remove those dictators that are committing genocide yourself? When discussing what America's military did and does, American policy matters.
All Iraqi's live in fear today, as do their neighboring countries.
Saddam wasn't 1/10th the 'evil dictator' Pol Pot or Hitler were, and was never a threat to anyone but his neighbors. If you really think he was (1) I must assume you spent the 90's in Iraq trying to assassinate him, right? and (2) you really need to read some history.

Bad Ass Motherfuckers of the Congo, baby. Style is everything, fuck about all your poncy power and money.

@VoodooV

I don't think you mean to be as callus as your statement seems. The world did follow your advice with Rwanda and let 'them' fight their own battles. It never actually settled anything, instead the main participants in the genocide just moved over to the jungles of the Congo. It's not coincidental that hundreds have been raped every day there ever since. Before advocating we not get involved watch the PBS documentary Ghosts of Rwanda, it's on the sift. It's as brutal as Schindler's List, but that it consists entirely of actual footage taken during the genocide. IMHO it should be required viewing in all public education systems.

@RedSky,

I really hear what you are saying. When faced with Rwanda though, I just can not agree that the world response of doing nothing, even to the point of refusing to use the term genocide, was 'better' than an intervention, even a unilateral one. I know it's maybe not a strong logical, factual argument, but standing aside while a genocide takes place is to me morally wrong and unacceptable.

I also don't see any strong argument that an intervention would have made things 'worse' in the long run. The forces that committed the genocide were never actually stopped or apprehended. They just moved out of Rwanda and into the jungles of the Congo, where it's worth noting they continued to commit horrendous atrocities, all the way up until today, and no doubt tomorrow and years from now.

@bcglorf @Fairbs

I used to hold the same view on military intervention. If only it were applied impartially by a nation or alliance, then any would be genocidal leader would be deterred by threat of imprisonment or death.

However we all know that in reality this is stymied by the lack of altruistic intentions, the political dimensions of risking soldiers' lives in foreign wars and the unintended consequences of even fully altruistic intervention.

I can't really argue against there being a case for intervention in Rwanda or after Saddam gassed the Kurds.

A sufficiently large force by the US/NATO would have probably deterred the Hutu militias in Rwanda from waging their genocide. Had the international community demanded Kurdish sovereignty from Iraq following the gas attacks, Saddam would have probably accepted it coming off the Iran-Iraq war for fear of being attacked by Iran while he waged a civil war.

In either case I can also play devil's advocate. Would the inevitable Tutsi government set up by intervening forces in Rwanda have been seen as legitimate by its people? Would reconciliation really have been effective if it was effectively imposed by outside powers? Would civil war have reignited? Even with how things turned out in the absence, we know that Kagame's government is increasingly authoritarian and has supported militias like M23 in Congo against the remnants of Hutu militias which has itself been a source of much death and violence. In the case of the Kurds, what if calls for cession resonated in the Kurdish population in Syria and Iran and the opposition turned violent in those countries?

In most cases, while hypothetical intervention may appear the clear moral ground I just can't be certain the outcome would have been better. In the case of Rwanda, probably, a large portion of the 500,000 lives lost would have been spared. In the case of the Iraqi Kurds, no intervention would have pre-empted the initial gas attack, however inciting the situation could have resulted in more people dying in violent struggle and resistance.

Regimes supported

Juan Vicente Gomez, Venezuela, 1908-1935.
Jorge Ubico, Guatemala, 1931-1944.
Fulgencio Batista, Republic of Cuba 1952-1959.
Syngman Rhee, Republic of Korea (South Korea), 1948-1960.
Rafael Trujillo, Dominican Republic, 1930-1961.[citation needed]
Ngo Dinh Diem, Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), 1955-1963.
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran, 1953-1979.
Anastasio Somoza Garcia, Nicaragua, 1967-1979.
Military Junta in Guatemala, 1954-1982.
Military Junta in Bolivia, 1964-1982.[citation needed]
Military Junta in Argentina, 1976-1983.
Brazilian military government, 1964-1985.
François Duvalier and Jean-Claude Duvalier, Republic of Haiti, 1957-1971; 1971-1986.[citation needed]
Alfredo Stroessner, Paraguay, 1954-1989.[citation needed]
Ferdinand Marcos, Philippines, 1965-1986.[8][9]
General Manuel Noriega, Republic of Panama, 1983-1989.
General Augusto Pinochet, Chile, 1973-1990.
Saddam Hussein, Republic of Iraq, 1982-1990.
General (military), Suharto Republic of Indonesia, 1975-1995.
Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaire/Congo, 1965-1997.
Hosni Mubarak, Egypt, 1981-2011.
Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, Kingdom of Bahrain, 2012.
Saudi royal family, 2012.
Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan, 1991-2012.[10]
Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia, 1995-2012.[11]
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Equatorial Guinea, 2006-2012.[12]

He also seems to be talking about the whole of Rwanda and the Congo. The whole area is facing an uncertain future after tearing themselves apart with civil war and genocide. These countries need the "old men" to act as father figures to all, but they just aren't there.

Not only can a chimpanzee draw, but Congo the Chimpanzee had better art sales than 'Naked Ape' author (and artist) Desmond Morris, who put him up to it: