 Syrians have every right to attack US occupiers, notes from the edge of the narrative matrix. The Western world is solemnly commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion by blindly following the US into more conflict and militarism while repeating all the same kinds of mass media malpractice. If you think it's a coincidence that the Western world suddenly got super-duper interested in China's human rights record right when China began threatening US planetary domination, then you're a bootlicking moron who deserves to be shamed in public. A leaked 2017 State Department memo explicitly acknowledged that it's the US government policy to ignore the human rights violations of US-aligned nations while attacking them in nations like China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. Stop buying into this performance. China has been sorting out China's internal affairs for thousands of years. They don't suddenly need help from a bunch of white, stuffed shirts in Washington, London, and Canberra just because a few sociopathic think tankers say so. Leave China's issues to the Chinese to address. People who live in the Middle East have every right to attack the occupying forces there whose presence they oppose, and those occupying forces do not have any legitimate right to retaliate. Every American who is killed or injured by those opposing US military occupations was killed or injured because the US Empire put them there. What happens to them is the Empire's fault, not the fault of those rightfully resisting a hostile occupation. Claims that attacks on US occupiers in Syria are backed by Iran should never be taken on blind faith, but to be clear it is entirely legitimate for Iran to defend itself in this conflict. Iran is an ally of Syria, and is in Syria with the Syrian government's permission. Neither of these things are true of the US. Perhaps more importantly, Iran is in the Middle East, and therefore has infinitely more legitimacy than the US in making the Middle East its business. There's an article from the cradle, two more US bases in Syria attacked by drones. Even if everything US pundits and politicians are saying about TikTok is true, and of course it isn't. It's still far less scary than what the US government does to us with American apps, and it's still far less scary than giving the White House massive new censorship powers. If you live anywhere under the thumb of the US Empire, then any information gathering or censorship policies the US government sets for itself have real relevance to your life, because the US government has actual power over you. The Chinese government does not. This is obvious to anyone who doesn't have soup for brains. It's crazy how the First Amendment explicitly says, Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech or freedom of the press, and yet Congress is preparing to do literally exactly that with all American TikTok users. It's also crazy that US congressmen who don't understand any technology more advanced than a shovel and think the internet comes from magic beans are making decisions about online platforms that affect everyone. The problem is not that Australia's corrupt media are saying the nation will have to follow the US into war with China. The problem is that they're almost certainly correct. This means Australians must demand we immediately exit our alliances with the US that would lead to this. They're not being dishonest when they say we'll have to follow the US into war against China. They're being dishonest in their failure to immediately begin asking, okay, so how do we get the fuck out of this batshit and sane situation right this very instant? Because that's the only sane response to finding out that your nation will have to go to war with its primary trading partner to facilitate some dopey agendas cooked up in Washington, Arlington, and Langley. Asking how the fuck do we get ourselves the fuck out of this situation? What do we need to do? What alliances need to be shredded? Whose offices do we need to storm? And whose desks do we need to pound on? Failure to ask these questions is malpractice. Because going to war with China will destroy our country. Absolutely destroy it. It cannot happen. The Australian media aren't criminal in telling us the US is going to drag us into a war of unimaginable horror. The Australian media are criminal for telling us we need to just accept that and get comfortable with the idea. Fuck you. No. Get us out of this World War III trap immediately. Never in history has hard-hitting adversarial journalism been so urgently needed in Australia as it is right now, and never in history has the Australian media been less fit for the job. If you're wondering why I've been writing so much about my home country lately instead of focusing on the hub of the empire in the US like I normally do, that's why. It's because our worthless, bootlicking press aren't doing their fucking jobs right when it's most urgently important that they do.