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It’s depressingly predictable that this article doesn’t talk at all about the push to restore the Brazilian military presence in Ecuador. That was a huge aspect of the national discourse around this topic that is strangely ignored in pretty much all the english-language reporting on this issue. It feels very much like this was written not to celebrate the victory for Ecuadorian independence, but to claim a loss for the US on a topic I do not know if a single major american news outlet has even mentioned. Most people in the US can’t find Ecuador on a map, the trump officials doubtlessly included. It’s a damn miracle Kristi Noem managed to land in the right country.

There was little real push from the US to even allow bases again, which is part of why this failed so spectacularly - nobody, noem seemingly included, is entirely clear on why Noboa was so heavily invested in getting the US back except because it was the only way he could see to signal his allegiance to trump. It was just extremely odd all around, and a spectacular demonstration that Noboa and his far right cronies have no idea what the hell they’re doing.

They’re non-harmful if you eat them, but they’re also not compostable and need to be removed before being disposed of.

Current gen of samsung phones has removed it entirely, fwiw.

Absolutely correct. They barely consider Palestinians human as it is.

Absolutely! It’s not about binaries, and I’m not and never have been advocating for a regime change.

You yourself have described them as socially conservative:

their social conservativism isn’t intrinsic to being Yemeni but is a consequence of nationalist resistance to imperialism

And I continue to agree - and the reality is that right now, as a consequence of the imperialist system they’re forced to exist within, they are a socially conservative government that supports authoritarian actions as a consequence of outside pressures. I don’t think either of us think they intrinsically are that way, but they are that way right now - and the result is a situation I am absolutely comfortable describing as a “nightmare” for queer people to live within.

I don’t think that every aspect of Yemen is a nightmare, nor that it is a nightmare for every Yemeni citizen. But it is for some of them, and carrying that through as a description since the originating topic was based on the plight of queer yemeni is not particularly unreasonable.

Okay, I’m glad we have that sorted out!

Okay and we shouldn’t excuse the western powers behavior, but unless the US was persecuting queer Yemeni on behalf of the Yemeni government, it’s still not relevant to the topic being discussed here.

I think you’ve misunderstood - what I said was that the US being the “paragon” of humanitarian aid doesn’t excuse the crimes they have committed, much as Yemen’s agreement to aid colombia in this should not mean we overlook their history of human rights abuses.

I’m… not sure what bearing that has on this conversation. As far as I’m aware, the west is only involved in this by supporting Israel.

Where have I done that?

That’s the exact opposite of the point I was making.

Well… yes.

That’s pretty much exactly what I’ve been saying this entire time. To borrow your langauge: Reducing the situation to a simple binary (good/evil, “peak”/“struggling”, etc.) itself reinforces an imperialist narrative that removes the realities of the situation. By ignoring the actions they take that are negative, we allow that binary narrative to be forced upon them, removing any semblance of agency and reducing “conservative authoritarian nightmare” from a criticism of their government to a criticism of the country as a whole.

They cannot free themselves from imperialism if we use imperialist ideas like “Good vs. Evil” to quantify them.

I don’t believe I’ve made any such claims about yemen being “bad” nor that that would somehow justify imperialism. I referenced your use of pronouns to point out that you also can understand that supporting a cause is more complicated than simply ticking a box labeled “Support/Depose”, because you have a vested personal interest in the multifaceted nature of the topic.

My point throughout this has been that we should not excuse the bad things just because good things exist - that was the entire reason I called the US “The paragon of humanitarianism” or somesuch. It’s undeniably true that they give out more humanitarian aid than any other country, but that simple claim is both clearly not the full picture, nor does it somehow mean we should ignore their crimes.

If we’re going to support progressive social movements in Yemen, we must inherently accept that there is a state that warrants us progressing from. They are a socially conservative authoritarian nightmare, who tortuously put to death people extremely similar to both you and I. And yet despite that I still support their actions here. We should not hail them as a paragon of human rights, because they clearly are not, and doing so would invalidate the work of so many people who stand their lives against the social order in their country to try and secure a better life for people who have done nothing wrong. But we should also praise that “conservative authoritarian nightmare” regime’s actions here, because they have done something undeniably good.

The world is too complicated to have true paragons, and doing so oversimplifies reality to the point where we become comfortable with tragedy just because the binary says we must be.

The US Empire isn’t giving out true aid, though.

I’m curious what you consider ‘true’ aid - not within the context of the US’ behavior, but because you appear to have given this a great deal of thought and I’m curious about your thoughts on how the “idealized” (for lack of a better term) way to distribute aid should work. I have long opinions of my own I’ll spare you (in short NGOs are not in of themselves inherently bad to work with, especially when the government in question is dubiously moral), but I am quite curious about your thoughts on this.

Yemeni human rights abuses are in the context of victims of imperialism

Yes, absolutely. But while that does make them understandable, it does not make them justifiable. You yourself use gender neutral pronouns, which in many countries would see you subject to at best social persecution. While I can understand the reasons why they may persecute you for that, much as with the hyper-religious ‘christofascists’ of the US conservative movement, I cannot condone their actions nor agree that their justification is acceptable. That victims of abuse may themselves become abusers isn’t disputed, but it also does not make their victims any less victimized, or them any less guilty of that abuse.

Sure, and I quite agree that it happens - the only thing I’ve claimed is that the claim you’ve made (that it’s “usually just given to compradors as bribes”) is unsubstantiatable. You can’t prove it because nobody can, and what you provided me to support that claim is not actually evidence. It’s theory, not analysis, but it’s still important to be discussed.

Regardless of that though, I think you’ve misunderstood my initial point - That eventually there are sacks of grain with comedy US flags printed on them given out and that the existence of those grain sacks, or how they are used, does nothing to negate the myraid of crimes the US has committed. Much as how the Yemeni government joining a military coalition with a noble goal does nothing to erase the three decades of human rights abuses that has followed Yemeni unification.

If we are to hold ourselves over our enemies as morally superior, we have to hold ourselves to the same standards we condemn them with. Otherwise, we’re just the hypocrites so many people accuse us of being.

Okay: while I’m not arguing that it definitely happens, or arguing that if altruism can even exist, I’d like to point out that both those articles are written to present the perspective about why it happens, they do not present evidence for either how it happens nor it’s effectiveness in furthering imperialist goals.

It’s a bit of a gotcha question on my part, I admit - the evidence you would need to present to conclusively prove those claims doesn’t exist (or, rather, it does exist and it’s not reported). There’s many reasons for that, the first ones people arrive at being usually “that would prove it and the US obviously doesn’t want it proved” (legit) and “reporting which NGOs have cash on hand would make them targets” (also legit but a lot more complicated, leat of all because imperialist countries generally use the turmoil/“lawlessness” that created the problem itself as a tool of imperialism).

Okay. Do you have any evidence to support that claim?

Then I really don’t understand why it’s so hard for you to understand that those people are very faithful to god’s word and that sharia law has all logic to them.

I’m sorry, that’s not at all what I was trying to say. I understand the culture that this situation exists within, but while I understand how it happened, I do not think it is good that it has happened, or that we should respect that they kill people just because of the strength of their beliefs.

I don’t see how Islam can change in that regard

I know many queer muslims, and while I do not see a path forward for implementing queer rights in most muslim countries right now, the existence of so many different muslim groups should show that the quran is not a true monolith - this gives me hope that one day, there really can be peace.

by simply committing far less evil than the rest

So you do agree that they’re doing evil things. But you’re willing to overlook them, because in your eyes they are doing less of it than other people. While I doubt the strict accuracy of that claim (yemen does a lot of human rights violations and there are many other countries that simply do not have the population to compete with them in volume), I am glad we can agree that their doing good things does not negate the evils they also commit.

Take the US: it’s done undeniably evil things

I’m not sure how I could be more explicit about acknowledging the evil things done by the US than to say “They have done undeniably evil things”. But while I’ve repeatedly done that, and lauded how Yemen’s involvement in this coalition is a morally correct choice, you have repeatedly avoided addressing that Yemen’s persecution of queer people is wrong, while falsely claiming that I’m somehow denying the west’s evils.