What truth?
Fauci did his best to protect the US against 'the wuhan virus', which was his JOB.
If there was a conspiracy, it was Trump and right-wing media causing over a million
dead Americans. It was clear that they understood the danger to American citizens,
but they ignored and denied it, for political reasons.

Trump himself has admitted doing that, and there is documented evidence of close interaction and broadly aligned messaging between the Trump administration and parts of right-leaning media during COVID-19, to deny the broad scientific consensus, resulting in harm to the American citizens. I would say that is textbook 'criminal conspiracy'.

YOU cannot define a "woman", without ignoring the definition of "female".
It's a circular definition.

'They' CAN define "woman", you just don't agree with 'them'.
You insist that a "woman" should be biological "female", without there existing
a 100% accurate definition of "female", and say people that disagree with you
can't define "woman", while they have a more consistent definition than you.

When a doctor assigns the sex of a baby at birth, they don't perform chromosome testing or an echocardiogram of internal sex organs. They just see a willy and say 'male' or see a pussy and say 'female'. This is only about 95% accurate.
It's even more inaccurate if you use the simple idea of 'male + female = baby'
as basis for the definitions of the sexes, because gay, lesbian and asexual people do not have the biology matching sexual attraction for that to happen "naturally".

This is the definition that most of 'them' can agree on: "A woman is someone who
is socially perceived and treated as a woman based on gender presentation and expression in a given context."

It's basically: "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck."

It's ALSO circular, but it's more accurate. You are denying reality; that people exist who do not conform to a constricting idea that sex is 100% 'binary'. Biology is much more complex than that, but you choose to believe something that isn't true.
'They' have definitions that do include biological variations.
'They' understand the difference between 'sex' and 'gender', you deny reality.

Sex = biological traits, which are multidimensionally complex
Gender = identity and social meaning

Of course you will point to some some fringe minority, but people were talking
about "Democrats". The large majority of "Democrats" agree with the definition
that I provided. Probably not the exact one, but the broad idea behind it.
I can say "Republicans" are wrong, because most of them are very ignorant about the biology of the sexes and the widely accepted sociological concept of gender.

It's sad how much your primitive thinking is creating future historical regrets.
That is to say if humanity survives your primitive thinking.

Stephen Hawking did visit the private Caribbean island owned by Jeffrey Epstein in 2006.
He was there as part of a scientific conference on gravity and cosmology that Epstein funded. Several other well-known physicists also attended.
There are photos from that trip showing Hawking in his wheelchair on a beach, sometimes with assistants and other attendees nearby.

This is called a 'False equivalence'. It's also 'Whataboutism (tu quoque)' and 'Guilt by association'.

Are there photos of him having a good time with Epstein himself?
Are there claims that he committed crimes, in the files?
Are there victim accusations of him?
Does he appear in Epstein’s contact book and social network records?
Are there emails of him to Epstein showing they were in an ongoing relationship?
Is he on record speaking about Epstein in a familiar and friendly way?
Is he on record presenting knowledge about what Epstein was doing?
Did he send him a very personal birthday postcard with a drawing of a female nude?

You associated the man with wrongdoing on nothing at all, while you deny any wrongdoing of Trump, denying piles of evidence, credible testimony and many longstanding rumors that Trump was close with Epstein, aware of what he was doing, and involved with it.

Eh, they get really really wealthy?
And then they start buying everything.
And then everything you need and do enriches them further.
The time of the middle class is ending, and we are going back
to a system of the poor working for the wealthy elites.
Peasants once fought for their freedom and a decent quality of life
but now they give it back to the wealthy elites.

What happens when you stop taxing really rich people
only registered users can see external links

Are you supporting the criminalization of tobacco or alcohol?
You are SO incapable of learning from history.
And you don't give a shit about freedom either.

Meat and butter is damn BAD for you. Do you want to make that illegal?

Have you heard of democracy? A large majority of people want legal pot.

"Great Britain facilitated the creation of a Jewish national home, while managing intense conflict that led to the exile of Palestinian political leadership and the eventual mass displacement (Nakba) of over 750,000 Palestinians. British policy, shifting between promises to Zionists and Arabs, ultimately set the stage for Israel's establishment."

You just copy-paste this, and your brain doesn't even process it.
This clearly describes war crimes. Your lack of thinking is MAD!

How many 'armed groups' does Israel have?
Palestinians have the right to defend themselves too.

You are showing clearly how the land of the Palestinians has been stolen,
and your brain doesn't even process it. It's mad!

YOU CANNOT GIVE AWAY SOMEONE ELSE'S LAND!!!!

How about the next Democratic president gives away Wyoming to Ukrainians
who had to leave Crimea or the Donbas, when Russia stole it?

Did WW1 turn some of them into Muslims and others into Jews?

"Before WW1, the region we now call Israel/Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. When that empire sided with Germany and lost the war, its territories were carved up by the victorious powers, especially Britain and France."

"Before World War I, the region of Palestine (then under the Ottoman Empire)
was religiously diverse, but with a clear majority-minority structure:
1. Islam (dominant majority)
The largest group was Muslim, mostly Sunni Muslims.
They made up roughly 85–90% of the population.
2. Christianity (significant minority)
Christians were a smaller but important minority, around 8–10%.
3. Judaism (small but historically rooted minority)
Jews made up about 3–5% of the population"

Nothing here that makes sense with your 1200BC nonsense.
Of course there were no Muslims in 1200BC, because that religion didn't exist yet,
but for most of history, Judaism was NOT the dominant religion across the Levant.

"After WW1, the League of Nations gave Britain control over Palestine through the British Mandate for Palestine. Britain was now responsible for implementing both Arab independence aspirations and the Jewish national home, an inherently contradictory task."

After World War II, Britain withdrew, and the United Nations proposed partition. In 1948, the state of Israel was declared, leading to war with neighboring Arab states and the displacement of many Palestinians, events still central to the conflict today.

The root cause of the problem is that Israel was allowed to declare itself a Jewish nation, while that area never was by majority Jewish. It was designed as an 'apartheid state', and Jews got away with it, because of world-wide guilt over the holocaust.
That wrong doesn't make their wrong right. Arab nations were right to be angry.

As a former important atheist, Maher should know better than to support the religious dominance of one religion in an area. He has always been a supporter of the separation of church and state. The whole problem of Israel is because it violated that, and he is too dumb to recognize it.
Since you hold him up as a supporter of your Israel ideology, do you also listen to his progressive positions on issues like drug policy, abortion rights, and separation of church and state?

Your justification is that Great Britain fabricated it?
Was that in 1200 BC? Damn, you are dumb.

Palestinians and Jews (at least some of them) ARE THE SAME PEOPLE.
It's just THEIR FUCKING STUPID RELIGIONS that divide them.

Fuck you stupid bitch.

In 1967, ISRAEL STARTED!!!

What led up to the war:
In May 1967, Gamal Abdel Nasser moved Egyptian troops into the Sinai Peninsula.
Egypt expelled UN peacekeepers who had been stationed between Egypt and Israel.
Egypt then closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping (Israel had previously said this would be considered an act of war).
Egypt, Jordan, and Syria formed military agreements, and rhetoric about confronting Israel intensified.

Who fired first:
On June 5, 1967, Israel launched a preemptive air strike against Egypt’s air force, destroying much of it on the ground.
This is generally considered the first major military action of the war, so in that narrow sense, Israel “started” the shooting.

Israel has been murdering Palestinians and stealing their houses and land for decades. They had walls around Gaza with snipers on guard towers killing children any time they felt like it. Then when it leads to a terrorist attack, to use it to do a complete genocide. When this leads to anger and action from Hezbollah, they use that to bomb citizens and steal land from Libanon.
They are fucking Nazi's!

Modern international law prohibits acquiring territory by force.
By international law, Israel is guilty of war crimes.

So did the Palestinians, dumbass.
Original Jews and Palestinians are genetically indistinguishable.
However, most Jews have mixed with European ancestry.
Meanwhile, Palestinians show much stronger genetic continuity
with ancient Levantine populations.
The religion moved in, not the people.

How many people OD on marijuana?
THC is less addictive than nicotine, alcohol, and opioids.
Cigarettes and alcohol are legal, so why not marijuana?
Opioids are needed for people in pain, that's why they are legal.
Marijuana has various medical uses as well. It helps many people.
When has imprisoning dope users ever helped to bankrupt dealers.
The US has the worst drugs problem in the world, because of your flawed thinking.

The first time Trump gets something right, you don't agree.

No, you are, by believing this nonsense.
They could have easily have had a nuke, if they had wanted to.
They stopped the development for years.

I don't really thinks so, but it's a popular conspiracy theory. It looks like there are more
ex-Trumpers than liberals and lefties who believe that there is something ongoing other than what is the official story. A full hoax is far-fetched to me, but Trump is sure acting unlike himself. He loves to praise himself in a nauseating way, taking credit for things
that are not true, but he has abandoned the only occurrence in which he looked brave
to everyone. He is incapable of that kind of humility, so I think he has something to hide.

Your political side has turned its followers into conspiracy thinkers.
This can turn against them when they are in power.
Also, there is lot of shit going on in this regime that cannot bear the light of day.

- At least half of the Epstein files being buried.
- Facts around Epstein's death not aligning with suicide.
- Trump's Indictments getting or attempted to be buried (why? there was no case, right?)
- Trump pardoning lots of white collar criminals who donate to him.
- Trump and his family getting fully into crypto scam companies.
- Very obvious insider trading going on, every time just before Trump announces something like tariffs or international aggression.
- Trump doing everything that Putin wants, like Putin owns him.
- Details around Charlie Kirk's assassination getting even more suspicious.

At some point even some of his most loyal followers cannot suppress this anymore.

My employer is training us regularly on phishing attempts.
They occasionally send simulations of phishing emails to everyone. If you then click on the "phishing alert" button, you get a message "Thanks for being vigilant and not being tricked by our phishing simulation.".

I agree that it would be safer, but it would be damn annoying if you had to use Authenticator every time you wanted to check WhatsApp.

Still, it should support a blocking and recovery option in case of a scam or hack.
We sent 2 emails to support@whatsapp.com 2 days ago, and they have not reacted yet.

Ex-Donald Trump backer clarifies Butler assassination hoax stance: ‘A lot questions’
only registered users can see external links

Indeed a lot doesn't make sense. I would not say that this ex-trumper is much useful to question this event, but with the help of ChatGPT, I came up with a list that it accumulated from reputable investigative journalism sources, and is verifiably based on Official / primary law enforcement sources.


🧾 Legitimate confirmed issues (Butler incident)

* Shooter gained access to a rooftop within effective firing range of the rally
* Perimeter security did not fully prevent high-elevation vantage point access
* Threat was not identified and neutralized before the first shot was fired
* Delays occurred in detection, escalation, and response to the shooter
* Coordination issues existed between Secret Service and local law enforcement elements
* Breakdown in real-time communication and situational awareness across security teams
* Post-incident reviews identified a cascade of preventable security failures
* Accountability actions were limited and became a subject of official and congressional criticism


If we compare the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Trump with the 1981 Reagan assassination attempt, there are very significant differences:

* Immediate response: Shooter was caught on the spot; no ambiguity about what happened
* Unified investigation: FBI + Secret Service acted immediately with a clear suspect and clear facts
* Clear accountability: Led to formal internal review and major long-term security reforms
* No competing narratives: Public understanding of the event stabilized quickly


Even among Trump’s own supporters, there has been visible skepticism and calls for further investigation into the Butler assassination attempt, while Trump himself has not kept it as a sustained political focus and has at times signaled that the issue should not be dwelled on.

This stands out because Trump’s political communication style has typically emphasized:
* repeatedly amplifying events that reinforce his political narrative
* keeping high-salience incidents in the public conversation for extended periods
* using major events as long-term rhetorical leverage

In that context, the relatively limited ongoing emphasis on this incident is not typical of his usual communication pattern, where major events involving him tend to be politically extended rather than deprioritized.

Please stop with that nonsense; no regime ever wanted to commit suicide.
Powerful people send gullible people to die for them, even the most extreme Islamists. That's what religion is intended for. It's time you learn that.

Religious leaders use religion to STAY IN POWER.
Being vaporized doesn't help them do that.
Even if they hide in a bunker, there is nothing left after to stay in power over.

Look at the amount of lies that you gaslight yourself into believing
to keep supporting a conman who is going against everything he promised.

Funny, but the US has been dropped bombs costing ~$50 billion so far
and they're not back in the stone age yet.

~$50 Billion is 2.5 years of Universal Childcare (Build Back Better).
But bombing people in other countries is more 'America first', right?

True, all those applications are a major security and privacy risk.

However, WhatsApp has turned into a vital communication tool for many people.
Personally, I use my phone as a phone at maximum once per month, and the rest
of the time it's a WhatsApp, email, banking and trading and navigation device.

WhatsApp is just too damn vulnerable to these simple scams, they offer no secure procedure to restore an account on another device when it has been scammed,
and their 'service' is very slow to respond.

Why are we trusting these big companies, who only think about their bottom line,
to handle vital communication tools? They should at least be controlled more.
Regulation is important. If they won't make it secure, they should lose it.
(I'm not saying directly controlled by the government, but handled like most vital utilities are handled, in the common sense part of the modern world.)

Sure, if Trump can get rid of that horrible regime, I'll applaud it.

It was Bush who attacked Iraq over lies, not Obama and Hillary.
It was also Obama who finally found and killed Bin Laden.
If you don't know that you're lying, your completely messed up.

Why do you want Iran to have a constitutional democracy, while Trump is destroying yours?

I see Trump threatening to bomb bridges and power-plants. Not only is that a war crime, because that's attacking CITIZENS, it will NOT stabilize Iran for it's citizens,
it will return their country to the stone age. How do you expect a stone age country
to create a constitutional democracy?

It's all nonsense, because this war is NOT about freeing the people of Iran,
this is ONLY intended to rid Israel of their enemy, so they can conquer all the land that they think of as the promised land.

It's definitely not COMMON sense, because most people in the world hate him
and in your country his ratings are historically weak for a modern president at this stage.

It's a cult. Your love for the man is unconditional, and that's STUPID.
That's you not understanding democracy. You're supposed to be critical
of all your elected representatives.

If the 'one's with common sense love him', why didn't he get them then?
I'll answer it; because he likes people who don't have any principles.

They're very consistent in having no principles, besides their own money and power.

Taking a oath doesn't guarantee that he does it. Trump has disrespected his oath in many ways. His administration is checking off all amendments to violate one by one or all at the same time.

Interesting story: During his second oath on January 20, 2025, he did not place his hand on the Bible. Personally, I don't care, because Christians are lying their pants off just as easily, but it seems like there is some part of Trump who believes in some form of god. If he didn't care, he wouldn't talk about probably not getting into heaven. That makes it a red flag to me, when a person like that doesn't swear ON the bible. He might be thinking that breaking that oath would send him to hell for sure. He's very much aware that he is breaking his oath.

I'm guessing you are referring to Clinton not asking approval from Congress. True, he didn't, but the scale of Kosovo (1999) was far less than Iran now. He was not attacking a country and the operation was decided collectively by NATO members.
Haiti cannot be called a 'war' by any stretch of the imagination.
And the UN Security Council authorized the intervention.
Iraq was just a continuation of what Bush before him started.
At least Bush had Formal congressional authorization. Clinton relied on earlier Gulf War authorization + UN resolutions. It was also just limited air/missile strikes, not a new war.
Nothing that Clinton did was anything close to what Trump started.
And he didn't run on NOT DOING EXACTLY THAT.

Russia has been an actual nuclear threat for decades. It never resulted in nuclear war, because that would be suicide. Every action of Iran in the past decades shows that they prioritize self preservation in the exact same way.

Trump is NOT doing his job. He is going against everything he promised. Even on 'the illegals' he is failing. The people he is deporting are mostly not the illegals that he was talking about. Where are those 20 million criminals and rapists? At best he deported ~700,000 immigrants and most of them were never arrested for any violent offense. Most of them were in the immigration process and most of them were working and paying taxes and getting nothing back. You might think that's a succes, but he has passed NO IMMIGRATION REFORM LAWS. When he was running for president, he had his cronies block the BIPARTISAN immigration bill, and since then he has done NOTHING to come up with something better. Doing his job also means making sure Congress is doing their job, but under Trump they have been pretty damn useless. Both Obama and Biden had a higher success-rate, while having much more resistance in Congress.
Understand that all Trump's executive orders can be eliminated with a stoke of the pen, by the next president. That means that Trump is NOT doing what you elected him for. It makes me happy that he and his regime are so damn incompetent, but it should annoy you.

No country in Europe is still interested to listen to Israel, because
we all see who the worst aggressor in the region is; they are.
They are just in it to take more land.

He is ACTING like a king. He had the Supreme Court make him immune, and he is doing everything he wants with Executive powers, while a spineless minute majority in Congress is letting him do it.

It's the job of Congress to legislate, and it's the job of Congress
to declare war, because Congress should represent the people,
not the president. At least not in your Constitutional democracy.

When you are saying:
"Are the "people" really smart enough to know what is best for them?",
that's you supporting a dictatorship, over democracy.

Here is an important tip to avoid falling for a common scam.
(One of our friends just got scammed, and I'm trying to help)

Someone will call you on your mobile phone, to invite you to a Zoom call.
If they already have information from you, it could sound believable.
Then they say: "I have just sent you a code for the Zoom call, can you repeat it?"
Than they can get into your WhatsApp, because it is the verification SMS-code
for WhatsApp.

Then they will send everyone you know scam calls asking for money, or something.
And they have all the phone numbers of your contacts, to try the scam on them too.

It took me an hour of 'interrogation', to figure out that she gave that SMS-code
to the scammer. With the help of ChatGPT, I figured out the rest.
The only thing I could do is email WhatsApp support to block the account.
The scammers will block the SMS-verification, by trying it over and over.
Maybe she gets one chance to get it back, 12 hours from last tried.
She is now calling everyone she knows to warn them, to not trust her messages.
It's hours of your life that you can't get back.

Poor little Pluto. I admit, this hurt me too.

In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) created a formal definition.
A planet must:
1) Orbit the Sun
2) Be spherical due to its own gravity
3) Have “cleared its orbital neighborhood” (meaning it dominates its orbit gravitationally)

Pluto meets the first two criteria, but not the third. It shares its orbital region with many other Kuiper Belt objects and doesn’t gravitationally dominate its neighborhood.

So Pluto was reclassified as a 'dwarf planet', along with objects like Eris.
I would say that this only strengthens it's 'Disney status'.

That was Henry VIII, but he was actually King of England, not France.
Please do, because ignorance about the past results in people who make history repeat itself.

"Are the "people" really smart enough to know what is best for them?"
You're arguing against the foundational statement of American ideals.
Remember when Republican wrapped themselves in the United States Declaration of Independence and The United States Constitution?
You are now using it as toilet paper.

And then you are aggrieved when millions of TRUE AMERICANS
have NO KINGS protests.

Obviously not, because you are still supporting King Louis XVI.

Now who does story about the golden eggs remind me of?
People who enjoyed liberal democracy, with a sprinkle of socialism,
but then let Republicans replace it with plutocracy?

In a democracy, the people decide who benefits from robot technology.

They will either starve, or they will learn that billionaires were not elected
to rule the people.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed… with certain unalienable Rights…
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Look at history of the type of 'reset' that resulted from that.
I suggest you look at France, around 1794.
Do you pick the side of King Louis XVI or of the people?

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…”

No dumb-ass, people are NOT too lazy to work, they just want to be DECENTLY PAID for their work, so they can LIVE on their income.

How will the world be saved from robots putting people out of work?
Where will people get the money to LIVE?

In your bottom paragraph you exactly showed the problem; double profits for companies, nothing for workers. Don't you understand why that is a problem? Maybe you understand it this way: who is going to buy the products of those companies, if PEOPLE are replaced by robots?

Iran had a GDP of about $430 billion and a debt of about 30–40% of GDP.
They don't need investors to get oil out of the ground.

Here is another story about what Trump's admin is doing when you're distracted
with all the horrible shit they are doing and causing:
only registered users can see external links

Not only is Trump using the DOJ as his personal guard dog and and attack dog,
his administration is destroying it's actual purpose; defending the public interest by:
- Enforcing laws
- Protecting civil rights
- Prosecuting crimes

only registered users can see external links

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It's just one of the many things to consider when you VOTE.
If you want peace and stability in the world, you vote for
representatives who care about how corporations treat people.

An oil field shouldn't just giving some money to their employees.
It's the natural resource of that country, and therefore it should greatly benefit
the people of that country, instead of the billionaires of some foreign country.

Why do you care that American farms are owned by Americans, and not China?
Same thing! One difference; the US used force to try to fully exploit Iran,
while China is just buying up what your own system sells them.
That's your own ideology turning against you.

Either you support greedy capitalism, which means that you shouldn't care when China buys your farms. And why China? They own only 1% of that foreign owned land. Canada owns 33% of it. Here is the list:
Canada – by far the largest (~33% of all foreign-held land)
Netherlands – second largest (~10–12%)
Italy – around 6–7%
United Kingdom – about 5–6%
Germany – about 5–6%
So why are you only worried when it's China?

When American farms go bankrupt, someone buys up the property.
Buyers can include several groups:
- Nearby farmers
- Individual investors (like Bill Gates)
- Institutional investors (Private Equity, multiple Bill Gates)
- Agricultural companies
- Foreign investors
If you only want family farmers to own farmland, you are NOT a 'capitalist'.

If you do think that capitalism hurts people you care about, why don't you extend that insight to the rest of the world? People getting hurt in other countries will always have an effect that comes back to hurt you. Iran is just one of the many examples. Another is immigrants; when capitalism hurts whole groups of people, they are not going to passively suffer their exploitation. Many of them will find a better place to live. I would say that they are justified to go to the place where the benefits of their former exploitation ends up.
The exploitation doesn't end up with YOU, because you are just Working Class who is exploited too, but that's the result of your Owner Class. You care about illegals, but the Owner Class don't. For them they are cheap labor. When they prop up Trump, they know he's not going to take their cheap labor away, because IF it's not illegals, they will just make the American people as cheap as they want. Haven't you noticed?

Apparently, American people are NOT cheap enough, so they make robots.
The American people will need to become very cheap to compete with robots.

This is how capitalism works; it definitely creates prosperity, but it always does it at the cost of others, because it's exploitative by design. The benefits always mostly flow to the top, and it always leave the rest with losses and damage.
It is a scourge on humanity and nature. Humanity either choses to improve on capitalism, or it WILL destroy humanity.

I meant you are OK with exploitation, not slavery.
However, there is something very similar to slavery nowadays,
like the children working in cobalt mines. You were OK with that.
You whitewashed that as them having a job, which is better than starving.
The same can be said about slaves, because everything is better than starving. That's how you sugar-coat slavery and horrible exploitation.

Your feelings about the matter isn't representative.
When a corporation is making billions of dollars in profit, while all their employees are struggling to survive, that's exploitation.

I would know better, if you had ever supported people having rights.
If you think that there is no such thing, than all exploitation, including slavery, is OK.

If you understand their thought process, which you said now twice, please describe their thought process.

I don't feel exploited on my job. That's mostly because I have a good education and I live in The Netherlands. People with poor educations
are exploited in my country too. I do feel my employer exploits people, but that's mostly related to pharmaceutical companies making too much profit on healthcare.

Sugar-coating is exactly what you are doing.
"the thought process's of the time slavery was in place" was simple:
"We can exploit people for our own profit, so let's do that!".
You are OK with it from that period, because you are OK with it now.

You are very consistent in the opinion that people have no rights and their value is only in how much they serve the powerful and wealthy elites.
I will never understand WHY you have this opinion, other than you were born into it and you have listened to people who tell you this all your life.

Have you seen JD Vance lately? This is what he was doing in the shadows;

Pushing a case called "National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC." towards
the U.S. Supreme Court.

It is designed to eliminate the last Federal limits on “coordinated spending” between political parties and candidates.

Why these limits exist: To stop donors from bypassing individual donation caps by routing money through political parties.

It would basically make RANK CORRUPTION EVEN EASIER!

Even mainstream outlets like Reuters say this case would weaken campaign finance limits, and legal arguments warn it lets wealthy donors route money through parties to get around caps, making dark money influence even harder to control.
only registered users can see external links

Answer me this: If Republicans think corruption is a problem, why is JD Vance pushing
to remove one of the LAST LIMITS on coordinated political money?

Why isn't Fox'News' shouting: "Why is JD Vance helping George Soros ?!?"

Trump's admin HATED HIM before they were chosen
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A bunch of spineless cowards choosing money over principles.

'Them' have not all committed terrorism against you.
I keep trying to make you understand how YOUR OWN ACTIONS
have resulted in so much hate that people commit suicide to kill you.
Mostly, so you stop supporting those same mistakes again and again.

OMG! THE US IS STEALING THEIR OIL!!! Are you gaslighting or actually this ignorant?
The only people who are paid handsomely are the dictator friends of the US.
The people of those countries are living in horrible poverty.
The US has toppled leaders who shared some of the oil profit,
and propped up dictators who control their people with violence and religion.
Behind your back, those dictators are BLAMING YOU for their poverty.
Everything happening in that regions WAS CAUSED BY THE US (and Israel).

The US would have the right to fix your own problem, but you don't; everything you have been doing is making the hate breeding ground even more fertile. The people of Iran asked you to topple their government, because it is legitimately evil.
Have you done that? NO!!! The same evil regime is still in power. You have killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and left it in the hands of son Mojtaba Khamenei,
WHO IS WORSE!!

Meanwhile, you have killed a school full of children and bombed large parts of Tehran. What do the Iranian people think of your president, when he has threatened to blow up all the bridges and says: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”?
Do you think they trust the US more now?

You have left them with a worse dictator, who will probably have to defend
his power from adversaries with lots of violence, lots of dead loved ones,
and a country in economic stress. They will only be worse off, AND THEY WILL OBVIOUSLY BLAME THE US FOR ALL OF THAT.

Russia already tried that. Didn't you know?
Their actions, combined with the actions of the US, resulted in that Islamist terrorism. Before that, it was just civil war, religious wars, political conflicts and conflicts over territory, just like everywhere else in the world.

Besides the nonsense idea that Islam will result in terrorism by necessity,
the complete lack of morality of you suggesting to subjugate the whole of the
Middle East, is stunning. What makes you think you have the right?

Then there is the complete lack of practical thinking. If you add up the land area of countries where Islam is the dominant religion (North Africa, the Middle East, parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, and much of Central & Southeast Asia), you get roughly 30–35 million kmІ. That's about 3 to 3.5 times the land area of the U.S (~9.8 million kmІ).
Globally, there are about 1.9 to 2.0 billion Muslims today. How do you suggest the US keeps them all under control? They outnumber you 6 to 1.

You have a real strange idea about liberals? No one thinks what you are saying. It just takes a right-wing brain to think that you can improve how they feel about you, by bombing their families to death and putting their countries in utter chaos. Living under tyranny isn't fun (although some of you seem to think it's great), but it's better than chaos. Every time your country tries to wage war on terror, you are creating the exact breeding ground for it. You eliminate the little stability they have, and make the people who lost their loved ones hate you.
You ridicule the lack of solutions from liberals, but at least liberals and lefties don't make the problems so much bigger, like your side does.

It also costs a fuck ton of money; Trump has recently proposed a U.S. defense budget of about $1.5 trillion per year, which is roughly a 40–50% increase over the current budget. When is someone asking: "How are you going to pay for that?"?

ChatGPT:

Good instinct to check the source—because that page is a clear example of a fringe or revisionist interpretation, not mainstream history.

What that website actually claims

The page you linked explicitly argues:

“The tariff…was the sole cause of the war”
Slavery was basically a political trick or distraction

So yes—your friend is repeating that site pretty directly.

Why historians reject that explanation

The problem isn’t that tariffs never mattered—they did at times. The problem is that the site’s core claim contradicts primary evidence from the 1860s.

1. It ignores what the seceding states themselves said

The most important sources are the official declarations of secession. These are not later interpretations—they’re statements written by the people who started the war.

They overwhelmingly point to slavery, not tariffs.

Example (short quote):

Mississippi: “identified with the institution of slavery”

That’s about as explicit as it gets.

2. It conflicts with the actual political conflicts of the time

The biggest national crises leading up to the American Civil War were about slavery:

Expansion into new territories (e.g. Kansas–Nebraska Act)
Violent संघर्ष like “Bleeding Kansas”
Court rulings like Dred Scott
The election of Abraham Lincoln

All of these revolved around slavery—not export taxes on cotton.

Mainstream summaries consistently describe slavery as central to the conflict and political tension .

3. The tariff argument doesn’t match the timeline
The biggest tariff crisis (the Nullification Crisis) happened 30 years before the war
By 1860, tariffs were not the dominant national issue
There’s no strong evidence that taxing cotton exports to Europe triggered secession

4. The site itself shows red flags

Even without outside knowledge, the page has warning signs:

It claims all historians are wrong (huge red flag)
It offers a single-cause explanation for a complex event
It suggests a kind of conspiracy among historians
It provides little engagement with mainstream scholarship

That doesn’t automatically make something false—but in history, that pattern is typical of non-credible or ideologically driven sources.

Bottom line

The website is promoting a minority, non-accepted theory that:

contradicts primary sources
contradicts decades of historical research
and oversimplifies the causes of the war

The strongest evidence we have—what people at the time actually wrote and argued—shows that slavery was central from the beginning, not something “added later.”

Just on your last paragraph; there were indeed slaves in the North as well.
The difference is that they respected the new laws and the South didn't.

"why would the north oppose that when they were getting even richer from them??" Any evidence for that claim?

Here’s what the historical record shows:

1. Southern states said explicitly why they seceded
When states like South Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas left the Union, they published declarations explaining their reasons. These documents repeatedly and clearly identify the preservation of slavery as the main cause.

Mississippi’s declaration: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery…”

2. The political conflict was about slavery’s expansion
The major national disputes leading up to the war—like the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas–Nebraska Act—were about whether slavery would expand into new territories.

3. The election of Abraham Lincoln triggered secession
Lincoln opposed the expansion of slavery. His election in 1860 led Southern states to secede before he even took office, fearing slavery would be restricted.

4. Economic issues existed—but were secondary
There were longstanding disputes over tariffs (taxes on imports), especially earlier in the 1800s during events like the Nullification Crisis. But by 1860, tariffs were not the main driver of secession, and there’s no solid evidence that taxing cotton exports to Europe sparked the war.

5. Slavery was not “added later”
Slavery was already deeply embedded in Southern society and economy. It was the foundation of the plantation system, especially for cotton production, and the core issue dividing North and South for decades.

Bottom line:
The idea that the Civil War started over cotton taxes and only later involved slavery is a misconception. The strongest primary sources—from the seceding states themselves—show that protecting slavery was the central cause from the beginning.

Slaves don't run on oil, slaves run on horrible punishment if they don't.
They were fed enough to stay alive, which was similar to pig feed.

Slaves were indeed expensive, so that was an incentive to get the maximum value out of them. That means working them as hard as they could survive, while spending as little as possible to keep them alive. Their wellbeing did not add any value, while whipping them into submission was free.

The working class was indeed exploited too. There are some differences;
they were allowed to go and the employer is not allowed to torture them,
when they didn't want to work anymore.

There are piles of evidence refuting everything you say.
Do some actual historical research, instead of parroting lies.
You are clearly showing that you are just choosing to believe what you
find comfortable to believe, instead of being interested in the truth.

These websites provide actual historical evidence, for horrible abuse.

Library of Congress – “Born in Slavery”
only registered users can see external links

Project Gutenberg – Slave Narratives (free books)
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Gilder Lehrman Institute (primary documents)
only registered users can see external links

No one is denying that there were Africans complicit.
When there is a demand, there are always suppliers.

Overall reality:
Slavery in the U.S. was a system of forced labor backed by violence. Enslaved people were legally treated as property, not citizens, which meant owners had broad control over their lives.

Work conditions:
Worked from sunrise to sunset, often 12–16 hours a day
Very little rest; work continued even during illness or pregnancy
Children were often put to work as young as 5–7

Living conditions:
Small, crude cabins with dirt floors
Overcrowded; multiple people sharing one room
Limited clothing, often one or two outfits per year
Food was minimal (cornmeal, pork scraps, whatever they could grow)

Violence and control:
Violence wasn’t occasional, it was built into the system.

Common punishments included:
Whipping (often severe and repeated)
Beatings with tools or sticks
Branding or mutilation in extreme cases
Shackling or confinement

Enslavers used violence to:
Enforce productivity
Punish attempts to escape
Instill fear in others

Sexual violence, especially against enslaved women, was also widespread and largely unpunished.

Family separation:
One of the most devastating parts:
Families could be sold apart at any time
Children were frequently separated from parents
Marriages were not legally recognized
Many formerly enslaved people described this as one of the most traumatic aspects of slavery.

Health and mortality:
Conditions led to serious health consequences.

Common issues:
Malnutrition
Disease (cholera, dysentery, tuberculosis)
Injuries from overwork or punishment
Medical care was minimal and often experimental or neglectful.

Life expectancy:
Life expectancy varied, but overall it was much lower than for white Americans.

In the early 1800s, average life expectancy at birth for enslaved people is often estimated around 20–30 years (heavily affected by infant mortality)
Those who survived childhood could live longer, sometimes into their 40s or beyond
Infant mortality rates were extremely high
On particularly brutal plantations (like rice or sugar), death rates were even worse due to harsh environments.

How people died:
Common causes of death included:
Disease and infection
Exhaustion from overwork
Malnutrition
Violence or punishment
Poor living conditions
In some regions (especially Caribbean sugar plantations), death rates were so high that populations had to be constantly replenished through the slave trade. In the U.S., the population grew more through birth, but conditions were still severe.

Important nuance:
Not every enslaved person had the exact same experience. Conditions varied depending on:
Location (Deep South vs. Upper South)
Type of labor
Individual enslaver
But across these variations, coercion, lack of freedom, and violence were consistent features of the system.

You are describing exceptions. The general situation was BRUTAL.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Where the slaves came from:
Most enslaved people were taken from West and Central African societies like those in present-day Nigeria, Ghana, and Angola.

Life there (before enslavement):
Lived in organized communities and kingdoms such as the Oyo Empire or Kingdom of Kongo
Mostly farmers, traders, craftsmen
Had families, land, culture, religion, and personal freedom
Some regions had cities and long-distance trade networks

They were not living in chaos or constant misery, they had structured societies and normal human lives.

What changed in America:
Lost freedom completely (treated as property)
Forced into hard labor under threat of violence
Families could be separated at any time
No legal rights, autonomy, or control over their lives

Bottom line:
Even if living standards varied, being enslaved in the U.S. meant losing your freedom, safety, and family by force. That’s not “better off” by any meaningful historical or human standard.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How people were captured:

Most enslaved people were taken through:
1. Warfare and raids
Armies or raiders attacked villages and took captives
This was common in regions around states like the Oyo Empire and Kingdom of Kongo

2. Kidnapping
Smaller-scale abductions by raiders or traders
People could be seized while traveling or working

3. Punishment or debt (less common for Atlantic slavery)
Some were enslaved for crimes or debt, then sold onward
“Sold by their own people?” — what that really means. This phrase is partly true but misleading.

Africa was (and is) made up of many different ethnic groups, languages, and political states.
Captives were usually taken from rival groups, not their own community.
So it wasn’t like neighbors casually selling neighbors—it was often conflict between different societies

Also important:
Some African rulers and traders did participate in selling captives.
But this system expanded massively because of European demand and weapons trade.

The bigger picture:
The transatlantic slave trade worked as a system:
Europeans (from countries like Portugal and United Kingdom) created huge demand for labor in the Americas
They generally did not capture people inland themselves
Instead, they bought captives on the coast from intermediaries

This demand:
Encouraged more warfare and raiding
Destabilized regions
Turned people into commodities on a large scale

Bottom line:
Many enslaved people were indeed captured by other Africans, often in war or raids
But they were usually outsiders or enemies, not “their own people” in a close sense
And the entire system was driven and massively expanded by European demand for enslaved labor

This is the kind of completely corrupt judges that Republicans are pushing
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Fully on the payroll of the billionaires.

"deal with the middle east"?
What exactly are you imagining?

They are NOT not considered irrelevant, they are considered humiliating
by your side of politics. It's when America fought for freedom and independence from British rule, by a KING and when that new independent country fought for FREEDOM FOR ALL PEOPLE, while the South wanted to maintain slavery.

Your side calls that "Critical Race Theory", but it's just HISTORY.

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Laws banning these topics exist in more than a quarter of U.S. states.
"Teachers don't know how to interpret them, affecting day-to-day history lessons."
Actually, it means that they cannot tell the TRUTH, if they follow those laws.
So rather than being forced to LIE, they just stop teaching about the topics.

And that's exactly how it was intended; right-wing teacher teach lies to their kids and liberal teachers just avoid the topic, to not get into trouble.
It's the authoritarian playbook.

Dennis Prager getting set straight on the Church in WWII
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Sorry bud, he's only going to do a lot more damage to the US
probably kill more Muslims, and then kick the bucket. He's on borrowed time.

He likes the Netherlands, because we have Rutte, and our King and Queen
sucking up to him. We are cheap-asses, we don't want to give him a plane.
Our gay PM is coming with them as the 'bad cop'. He suckered the most votes out of the people, promising he was any different than the right-wing corporate party, so he will get something from Trump.
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We play Trump. Nothing he does helps you, he only cares about his ego.

Thank you Donald Trump! Say it back now.
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