What race? You don’t even have the ability to race because you’re sabotaging yourself at every opportunity like you’re Dick Dastardly in Wacky Races. 
The hearing before the committee chaired by Cruz, Commerce, Science, and Transportation, included the usual mishmash of parochial politics, lobbying for traditional space, back slapping, and fawning—at one point, Gold, a Star Trek fan, went so far as to assert that Cruz is the “Captain Kirk” of the US Senate.
they lost the first space race too though
death to America
We’re already dying. Fuck off.
Now your dreams will never again be so peaceful. You will see capital in your nights, like a nightmare, that presses you and threatens to crush you. With terrified eyes you will see it get fatter, like a monster with one hundred proboscises that feverishly search the pores of your body to suck your blood. And finally you will learn to assume its boundless and gigantic proportions, its appearance dark and terrible, with eyes and mouth of fire, morphing its suckers into enormous hopeful trumpets, within which you’ll see thousands of human beings disappear: men, women, children. Down your face will trickle the sweat of death, because your time, and that of your wife and your children will soon arrive. And your final moan will be drowned out by the happy sneering of the monster, glad with your state, so much richer, so much more inhumane.
—Carlo Cafiero, Summary of Marx’s Capital (1879)
The flamethrowers came in and we burnt the hamlet. Burnt up everything. They had a lot of rice. We opened the bags, just throw it all over the street. Look for tunnels. Killing animals. Killing all the livestock. Guys would carry chemicals that they would put in the well. Poison the water so they couldn’t use it… They killed some more people here. Maybe 12 or 14 or more. Old people and little kids that wouldn’t leave. I guess their grandparents. People that were old in Vietnam couldn’t leave their village.
[…]
So at that time they had this game called Guts. Guts was where they gave the prisoner to a company and everyone would get in line and do something to him… So they took the NVA’s clothes off and tied him to a tree. Everybody in the unit got in line. At least 200 guys. The first guy took a bayonet and plucked his eye out. Put the bayonet in the corner of the eye and popped it. And I was amazed how large your eyeball was. Then he sliced his ear off. And he hit him in the mouth with his .45. Loosened the teeth, pulled them out. Then they sliced his tongue. They cut him all over. And we put that insect repellent all over him. It would just irritate his body, and his skin would turn white…. I don’t know when he died. But most of the time he was alive. He was hollering and cursing. They put water on him and shaking him and bringin’ him back. Finally they tortured him to death.
from https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2018/07/what-we-did-in-vietnam
“I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States,” General Jacob H. Smith said.
Since it was a popular belief among the Americans serving in the Philippines that native males were born with bolos in their hands, Major Littleton “Tony” Waller asked, “I would like to know the limit of age to respect, sir.”
“Ten years”, Smith said.
“Persons of ten years and older are those designated as being capable of bearing arms?”
“Yes.” Smith confirmed his instructions a second time.
There’s a documentary from 1972 called Winter Soldier, where veterans of the US invasion of Vietnam attested to their war crimes. Here are a few excerpts of the transcript: http://links.org.au/node/3343
Consider the following recollection of Vietnam-style “counter-insurgency” warfare, provided by Scott Camil, a former member of the 1st Marines:
Anybody that was dead was considered a VC. If you killed someone they said, “How do you know he’s a VC?” and the general reply would be, “He’s dead,” and that was sufficient. When we went through the villages and searched people the women would have all their clothes taken off and the men would use their penises to probe them to make sure they didn’t have anything hidden anywhere and this wasremoved but it was done as searching… The main thing was that if an operation was covered by the press there were certain things we weren’t supposed to do, but if there was no press there, it was okay. I saw one case where a woman was shot by a sniper, one of our snipers. When we got up to her she was asking for water. And the Lt. said to kill her. So he ripped off her clothes, they stabbed her in both breasts, they spread-eagled her and shoved an E- tool up her vagina, an entrenching tool, and she was still asking for water. And then they took that out and they used a tree limb and then she was shot.
An ex-machine gunner with the 1st Air Cavalry detailed the routine violence that accompanied cargo runs on his CH-47 “Chinook” helicopter:
It was quite usual that there would be a sniper outside a village in the foliage, in the trees, and if we took fire from one sniper we’d return fire on that sniper and then continue to spray the entire village with machine gun fire and M-16 ammunition until we either ran out of ammunition or we had flown so far away from the village that we could no longer reach them with the weapons…The free fire zones were posted on the operation map in the operations tent and this gave us a policy to kill anything that moved within that area.
Sadistic games at the expense of civilians were used to spice up the day:
Rotor wash was also used to blow down the huts, literally blow down the villages….So we’d come in and flair on a ship and just blow away a person’s house. Also, the Vietnamese, when they’ve harvested a crop of rice, put it out on these large pans to dry and that harvest is what is supposed to maintain them for that season— what they’re supposed to live on. We’d come in to flair the ship, and let the rotor wash blow the rice, blow their entire supply of food for that harvest over a large area. And then laugh, as we’d watch them running around trying to pick up individual pieces of rice out of a rice paddy.
While it was unusual for hundreds to be gunned down in a single location (as occurred infamously at My Lai in April 1968), the Winter Soldier testimony confirms that it was nothing out of the ordinary for dozens or scores of civilians to be slaughtered in “search and destroy” missions:
We moved into a small hamlet, 19 women and children were rounded up as VCS— Viet Cong Suspects— and the lieutenant that rounded them up called the captain on the radio and he asked what should be done with them. The captain simply repeated the order that came down from the colonel that morning. The order that came down from the colonel that morning was to kill anything that moves, which you can take anyway you want to take it… I turned, and I looked in the area. I looked toward where the supposed VCS were, and two men were leading a young girl, approximately 19 years old, very pretty, out of a hootch. She had no clothes on so I assumed she had beenremovedd, which was pretty SOP [Standard Operating Procedure], and she was thrown onto the pile of the 19 women and children, and five men, around the circle, opened up on full automatic with their M-16s. And that was the end of that.
Are you Vietnamese? That stuff is all terrible. Who was the Viet Cong?
Thanks for sharing. Those were sobering tales. I am still not sure why that Pinochet guy was included in your commentary. I hope you do not wish those things on anybody. I was not born during those times. We can not be held responsible any more than Palestine kids can be held responsible for Hamas. Or Israeli kids responsible for the Genocide. Humanity sure could use some help right now.
I am still not sure why that Pinochet guy was included in your commentary.
I am still not sure why you think you get to have opinions about me saying “death to America” when you are this ignorant of history.
We can not be held responsible
Humanity sure could use some help right now.
I wonder how we got here? well, better not look into it too closely
What do you want us to do? We have had decades of mass protests and racism is worse, human rights violations are worse, and income equality is worse. When you want to get violent and challenge the military that roams our streets now, I’ll start listening. Our ctizens are not as powerful as rulers. The constant judgement does not help. Did you see the Vietnam protests? Did you see the response during Occupy Wall Street or the response to George Floyd? We think of the individual as much as you do. “Othering” people is not productive in this case.
What do you want us to do? We have had decades of mass protests and racism is worse, human rights violations are worse, and income equality is worse.
Sounds like completely ignorable protests are not an effective tool in this regard, and you should instead do something less ignorable.
They will just incarcerate everyone. Presently, they are deploying the military to the streets and basically causing martial law. A guy shot a CEO, nothing happened, and he is still in jail. What is the point? Americans have been complaining about Israel’s aid since I can remember, and they still send taxpayers money there even as common people here struggle. That has been the case since I was a kid. This thing that happens that we hate is something that seems to never end. It is basically theft and extortion at this point.
I am still not sure why that Pinochet guy was included in your commentary.
Pinochet was installed and supported by your empire.
We can not be held responsible any more than Palestine kids can be held responsible for Hamas.
Hamas hasn’t done anything atrocious, though, unlike Pinochet.
If you support the rulers of your empire, you should absolutely be held responsible for things like Pinochet, Park, Pissrael, the countless invasions, coups, the kidnapping and torture, etc.
Detainees were blindfolded on arrival and left that way throughout their stay in overcrowded cells. Music blared non-stop to drown out the sounds of torture – earning the centre the wry nickname “The Disco.”
“Here resounded our screams, our cries,” Bataszew told AFP on a recent visit to the place of her nightmares.
The building today is a private residence despite being earmarked as a memorial site. On the street outside, an improvised metal monument displays photographs of women who never came back from “The Disco.”
‘More viciousness’
“Women were a tough nut to crack and… punished with much more viciousness than men,” said Bataszew.
More than 40,000 people were tortured and some 3,200 were killed or made to disappear in the 17 years of Pinochet’s post-coup rule from 1973 to 1990.
Torture was different for women than for men. Some of the methods includedremoved them in front of their partners, or inserting live rats into their vaginas.
Some 35,000 victims of the military junta gave evidence to the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture in 2005, of which nearly 13 percent (3,399) were women – almost all of them subjected to sexual violence.
Victims testified of electric shocks to their genitals, or beingremovedd with dogs trained to perform this vile act.
[…]
Cristina Godoy-Navarrete, now 68 years old and a retired immunologist, was one of the first captives at “The Disco,” which was also known as “Venda Sexy” for the nature of the abuse meted out there.
“When I arrived there were only two other women. They took you to an underground area where they had equipment to apply electricity… and where they had the trained dog [for theremoveds],” she told AFP from London, where she went into exile after being freed a year after her arrest in 1974.
Some of the worst punishments involved women’s loved ones.
The report produced by Chile’s torture commission recorded evidence of men being forced toremoved their daughters or sisters.
“They held me to be tortured in front of him, as his wife,” recounted Erika Hennings, wife of Alfonso Chanfreau – a philosophy student and an MIR leader still listed as “disappeared.”
The retired teacher, 69, said she was detained for 17 days at the torture centre known as “Londres 38” after its street address, crammed into a room with 80 other people without beds and blindfolded for 24 hours.
“Londres 38 was a center of repression, torture… where I first encountered evil and cruelty,” she recounted.
She said she was “used as a woman” to put pressure on Chanfreau.
‘I get angry’
At Villa Grimaldi, yet another torture chamber, Shaira Sepulveda was held for 10 days.
“They got a special kick out of trying to denigrate, to destroy women,” the 72-year-old told AFP.
Michelle Bachelet, a former president of Chile and now UN Commissioner for Human Rights, was also held at Villa Grimaldi in the 1970s with her mother Ángela Jeria.
“I get angry, I get angry, I get angry to see how they took advantage to destroy and kill our companions,” Sepulveda said as she recently toured a rose garden created at the center in memory of female victims of the junta.
“They didn’t get what they wanted and I hope that someday we can have justice because they (the women) deserve it.”
Well they lost the fucking first one too so
Just like the first space race, the US imposed this supposed competition on themselves while their peer rival (the USSR and now China) never actually cared about racing anyone and just wanted to do space exploration for the benefit of Humanity.
And it can be argued the US didn’t really “win” the first race either, because the Soviets achieved many more milestones in space exploration before the Americans, it’s just that they got someone on the moon first and decided themselves that the race was ‘won’ and over.
“Likely?” Implying there is even a chance is cope.
“Wait, why are these people outworking me?”
Says retired man.
what a bizarre take
Analogy is that the US gave up on working, and as such has no right to complain that China is outpacing them.
Might as well retire and resent people still working. Just enjoy your retirement.
Ah, thanks. I just interpreted it as holding this guy responsible for the space program. I didn’t look into this guy but given how they are gutting NASA & government funded science in general “retirement” might just be polite or reading the writing on the wall so I was confused. I imagine most people who were working in these fields are pretty bitter about the recent scrapping of their life’s work.
The copium-industrial complex is very powerful.
Have you tried hiring people?
Have any of you people whining about “being competitive” ever consider ACTUALLY putting the millions of young Americans just raring to go to work?
Tell porky to stop sleeping on the job and hurry up with that job creation crap.
There’s only one thing to do. Beat them in the putting the first man on mars contest that they’re not even really in (just like the US “beat” the USSR by landing men on the moon). I suggest a one-way trip for Elon. The whole world will golf-clap at this monumental achievement. Oh we should also invest all our national resources in this, strip the defense establishment bare if need be for the materials and people and money to do this.
Cruz is a Pakled at best. And likely more of a Cousin Gaila.
At least Gaila was successful enough buy his own moon, whereas Cruz will be remembered for liking Twitter incest porn on 9/11.
No shit. Cheeto Nazi just signed an executive order making NASA primarily an intelligence agency. That will eliminate their ability to have international collaboration. Also, intel is not space exploration.
there’s a dang CHEETO in the white house
Maybe if Biden/Harris hadn’t been so obsessed with slaughtering children in Gaza, the dang cheetoh would have lost the election?
It certainly did not help. Most Americans are against it. I keep hearing that Republicans are okay with aid to Israel, but even the big Trumpers I know are against it. Which begs the question, who tf is actually on board with aid to Israel right now, and why? I can see taking sides in a conflict, but this is insanity. Horrible and disgusting.
Most Americans are against it.
Considering that USians are almost always for things like this (more than 70% were in favour of invading Iraq for the second time, for example), this claim seems dubious.
Do you have any source that supports the claim?Every American I know makes fun of how stupud we all were to support the knee jerk reaction to invade Iraq over nonexistent WMDs. I was really young then. Barely an adult. I have no idea why more educated, older adults supported it other that they lied to everyone about the weapons.
So yes, even die hard MAGAs are pissed about the genocide. I know a Trumper that is turning on Trump over it. It is happening everywhere.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/08/16/israel-criticism-americans-gaza-shift-00506649
Every American I know makes fun of how stupud we all were to support the knee jerk reaction to invade Iraq over nonexistent WMDs.
That wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction. That was a calculated move to further subjugate Iraq. Surely you don’t think that your empire’s leadership actually believed their own lies, do you?
I have no idea why more educated, older adults supported it other that they lied to everyone about the weapons.
Because robbing the rest of the world is how your lifestyles have been fueled so far, coupled with indoctrination into racism. That is also why so many of you complain about Hamas, by the way.
So yes, even die hard MAGAs are pissed about the genocide. I know a Trumper that is turning on Trump over it. It is happening everywhere.
That’s actually more than can be said about die-hard dems, it seems:
I agree with all that.
Did you vote for harris?
Loaded question. Everything is not about Palestine and AIPAC are not the only lobbyists fucking things up. I am in a marginalized group myself, and I can not make as much of a difference if I am disenfranchised. We have been in the lesser of two evils situation for a long time now.
So you voted for genocide.
As opposed to voting for genocide AND all the other bad shit. If I give you the choice of only cutting off your balls OR both cutting off your balls and your right hand, which are you going to choose? If you choose not to choose, then you can’t complain when you lose both your balls and your right hand because you did not take action to save your hand.
You could have voted for PSL instead of genocide.
How does voting for nazism help anyone except nazis?
We have been in the lesser of two evils situation for a long time now.
USian ‘democrats’ aren’t a ‘lesser’ evil in this context, though. They are just as genocidal and are just as bent on maintaining colonial hold over the world.
The dems are absolutely the lesser of the two evils, although we were doomed with both. Our election choices are set by the rich. This absolutist thinking is illogical and counterproductive. You might as well say every American vote since I was born was a vote for genocide. Nobody is getting around the AIPAC lobby. They will steal from us no matter what. It has been a given since way before I was born and probably since before my parents were born. Israel owns this place.
The dems are absolutely the lesser of the two evils
They aren’t. Again, they are just as harmful to the vast majority of people on the planet as the other brand of your fascists.
This absolutist thinking is illogical and counterproductive.
Going to point out that the word ‘illogical’ is just a derogatory buzzword.
You might as well say every American vote since I was born was a vote for genocide.
Every vote for either of the faces of your uniparty has been a vote for colonialism and genocide since before you were born.
Nobody is getting around the AIPAC lobby. They will steal from us no matter what. It has been a given since way before I was born and probably since before my parents were born.
Okay, if you are, in fact, powerless to do anything, then you have even less ground to demand that the rest of the world resists you a certain way. Especially not when it comes to the Palestinian resistance to your genocide.
Israel owns this place.
This is an incredibly silly claim. Do you seriously think that the state with the most expensive military, espionage, and propaganda tools in the world is owned by a glorified USian province?
Democrats are trying to get AIPAC lobby under control. I have no idea where you people get info that causes you to think dems, who have been protesting this to the point that Trump has abducted protestors and defunded universities over it, are worse than Republicans. Do not lose hope. Tides are turning. Israel has gotten away with things by using the Halocaust to make any critism “antisemitic” and taboo, and people are getting fucking sick of it. I have put up with it my whole life and I’m pissed. I can tell you that “poor me Halocaust I can now get away with everything” is not working any longer.
Also, the courts ruled that Harvard can have their funding back. Hope is not lost.
Democrats are protesting genocide by committing genocide? Why do liberals have such short memories? Tens of thousands of children at minimum died in Gaza while Biden/Harris were in the White House funneling piles of money and weapons to the nazis running “israel” and Ukraine.
Democrats are trying to get AIPAC lobby under control.
You are trippin if you think this is true. Maybe their voters lament their reps being thirsty for genocide, but the Democratic party as an institution is doing absolutely nothing to fight the control the Israel lobby has on their party.
Do not lose hope.
There never was any hope. Neither of the two bourgeois parties will ever do anything to resist any imperial project of the west. The only hope is revolution.
