Exactly. His relationship with the US is just as cynical as it is with Russia, and as it is with any country or people (including his own). He will do or say anything that gets him more power. That means he’ll be a solid US ally as long as the US is completely stable and functional, and he will take advantage of any weakness (like he did with Trump letting him murder Kurds in Syria).

I think we’re in violent agreement about the overall with perhaps subtle difference in the details.

Erdogan has been close to Putin for a long time. He’s one of the most extreme authoritarians in the NATO alliance. The US has armed it’s enemies in the past, and I don’t think it’s short sightedness has changed.

I don’t believe that Erdogan will help Palestinians, but he very well may materially support Hamas as long as he doesn’t do it openly enough to cause problems. I mean, Netanyahu propped up Hamas for years in order to forward his interests. No one would care if Erdogan helped justify continuing the genocide by making Hamas more dangerous to Israelis, as long as he didn’t send any American weapons to them.

But perhaps I’m just extremely cynical.

It would have been more accurate for me to say that he’s not really aligned with anyone. He works with Israel and the US when it benefits him, he works with Russia and Hamas when it benefits him. He does whatever will get him more regional power.

Erdogan is a fascist who’s responsible for genocide in Northern Syria. He doesn’t give a fuck about Palestinians or the genocide Israel is carrying out against them. He is aligned with Hamas and terrorism because disrupts regional power and gives him opportunities. This is an opportunity for him, and nothing more. His government backed Isis before. This is the same.

It has nothing to do with the very real need to end the genocide of Palestinians or the legitimate desire of Palestinians to resist their oppression. He aligns himself with horrible people because he is himself horrible.

Capitalism is a pyramid scheme.

Not directly, but they have an indirect effect. The more one aligns with the state, especially in a fascist state like Israel, the less likely they are to experience violence. The less trauma they have. The more access they have to good and stable jobs.

So oppositional groups tend to be more fragmented (so more subcultures) and have less money. So, no, not directly but there’s definitely an indirect relationship.

Governments and their people rarely agree. Those that do agree are a vocal minority that’s always amplified. While I don’t believe Israel should exist, a county isn’t it’s government and its dominant group.

There are Israelis risking prison and possibly their lives trying to stop what their government is doing.

They don’t care about profits any more than feudalism did. It’s about domination and sadism. Read “Bullshit Jobs” if you want to understand the dynamics here. Profit had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Employees aren’t afraid anymore so companies are trying to reinstate fear.

Ebikes fix that problem in most situations.

I can’t organize it, but I’d be happy to help workout the logistics of something like this. I have minimal time but I do have some experience helping organize big projects. This is a cool project, a community fork would be awesome.

Oil.

The Fins bike throughout winter. The Dutch and apparently also Germans have a saying, “you’re not made of sugar.” There’s a Scandinavian saying, “there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.” Unless you’re farther inside the Arctic circle than Finland, you probably just need to get better cold weather gear.

But even if you only used it in the summer, you’d still be making the world a better place by taking one car off the road even for a single season.