I do remember 2020 and 2021, and I was in fact in the Gulf at the time and talked to people with knowledge of back-channel negotiations between the US and Iran. The only difference between the Suleimani situation and today is that the Biden admin supports Israel’s assassinations rather than carrying them out directly. But no one is fooled here - we know they are equal part American assassinations. This “assassination as coercive diplomacy” shit didn’t work for Trump, who was pushed by the belligerent, compromised, Israel/Saudi bought GOP fanatics to ditch the JCPOA and go for violence.

Do you know what the goal of those back channel negotiations was, by the way? The US was demanding that Iran reduce it’s self-imposed 2000 kilometer missile distance limit to be far shorter so that it couldn’t strike Israel.

Well here we are in 2024, with a Biden administration that has gotten use to a point where Iran and Israel are striking each other’s military bases directly. Everyone you talk to in Kuwait City, Istanbul, Manama, Doha and so on will tell you that Iran would be absolutely insane not to prioritize nuclear armament, and some suspect that they may already have some nukes stowed deep.

The Gaza genocide and its regional implications have been a bigger policy failure than anything Trump did.

To claim Trump is “isolationist” in 2016 is one. To claim it in 2024 is simply denying the facts. Trump was and remains not that much different to Biden on international policy. The key difference is diplomacy. Trump fails at diplomacy while keeping within many of the same policies.

There is a reason that Biden foreign policy has doubled down or refused to undo Trump era policies that Democrats considered to be mistakes, like leaving the JCPOA, playing around with Taiwan ambiguities, enabling Israeli liquidation of a nascent Palestinian state, etc.

There is actually little daylight between Biden and Trump on an international level. The real difference is between the parties. If you’re American I can 100% understand why you’d never want the GOP anywhere near education, healthcare, climate policy etc. Their religious zealotry, genocidal inclinations towards Muslims (which is present but far more muted among Dems), racial antipathy and paranoia of black people and anti-intellectualism are a recipe for national decline and unrestrained global abuse of non-white, non-Christian peoples.

The Democrats have a neoconservative problem which also threatens the entire world. But sadly the responsible and sensible side of America is stuck with them.

I never understood the obsession with big oil. Oil and gas firms have strong lobby power but it’s actually the economics of cheap fossil fuels and nations’ desires to out-compete each other in growth and industry that are driving the demand.

Siezing land is literally Israel’s raison d’etre and raison d’etat. “Concerns that the Jewish Lebensraum project is may be doing what it was created for.”

Put Lina Khan in charge of all these agencies.

It’s like nuclear fusion, always just around the corner…

The Catechism of the Catholic Church reads:

The forms taken by modesty vary from one culture to another. Everywhere, however, modesty exists as an intuition of the spiritual dignity proper to man. It is born with the awakening consciousness of being a subject. Teaching modesty to children and adolescents means awakening in them respect for the human person." (C.C.C. # 2524)

People here are not serious, they repeat slogans and polemics very superficially. The nipple taboo is found across pre-Christian and non-Abrahamic societies, probably because of breasts’ association with fertility. I.e

When did bare breasts become taboo in Western civilization?

Probably around 3,000 years ago. Women are displayed with exposed breasts in Minoan artwork from 1500 B.C. Some historians believe that these ancient women went topless only during religious rituals—bare-breasted, buxom goddesses have been worshipped since the dawn of civilization—but some of the artworks depict everyday activities, suggesting that bare breasts may have been commonplace. Just across the Mediterranean, ancient Egyptian women sported elaborate dresses that could either cover the breasts or leave them exposed, depending on the whim of the designer. Over the next few centuries, however, breasts become strictly private parts. Ancient Athenian women were wearing flowing, multilayered robes that concealed the shape of the bosom by the middle of the first millennium B.C. Spartan attire was more risqué, exposing the female thigh, but breasts were always covered.

Not the one weiting paragraphs calling people dicks dude. Take your own advice.

Their argument is that “gender is just a social construct”, without acknowledging that some of the most paramount aspects of human existence are “social constructs” (i.e language) and that gender is one of them. And without addressing why sexual taboos (like public nudity) are gendered - to them its a form of irrational injustice. But expore the social ramifications -through real and hypothetical examples- and you quickly find that it is indeed rational to treat bodies different according to their gender, and that human social psychology does have strong roots in human phsyiognamy.

If you don’t like “combative” questions about your prescriptions for the entire social structure of the world, then do us all a favor and stop interacting with people who have an iota of skepticism towards them. Stick to your own bubble instead of moralizing about how we wouldn’t have landlords if people would just stop challenging you. And no, Kropotkin doesn’t answer what I asked regarding the organization of housing. He quite literally just claims that workers are inherently unselfish and “volunteers” will rationally alot it according to need.

“I’ve definitely learned that gender classifiers are an unreliable and flawed technology, especially when it comes to trans people’s gender expression,” Ada Ada Ada said. “I regularly see my algorithmic gender swing back and forth from week to week.

Says the person changing themselves week to week to fit different classifications?

Bad faith questions like “why does Kropotkin assume what he assumes.” Sure. You’re like a religious zealot, dodging around the tough questions deservedly asked of your text and blaming naysayers for the evil in the world.

If you’re going to rely on private firms for your aerospace espionage endeavors, maybe factor in their leader’s sanity before you sign the contract with them.

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I know its name and I read it years ago. It’s filled with silly propositions. And what I said about the Pairs Commune is actually uncontroversial. It was in fact greatly romaniticized by Europe’s dissident left.

If by “ingenuity and patience” you mean divine intervention, maybe. What he describes is spontaneous abolition of rent followed by well-meaning volunteers creating statistics for use in a program that would determine who gets to live in what house. It’s laden with romantic claims about the selflessness and infallibility of the masses, and a rosy view of the Paris Commune typical of the times.

Just the first line raises so many basic social questions:

Do all the workers who contributed to the building of the home own it? If so, do they all get to live in it? If not, must they then communally determine who lives in it? How would that be organized? Majority opinion? A reversion to primitive village social structures? What’s the purpose of supposing they get a minimum wage? What does it change about their contribution if they were highly paid by the owner? If you admit that their labor was commoditized to build the house, and they were compensated by the owner according to the socially agreed value of their work, then what does it matter if the owner didn’t build it and why does that prevent the owner from claiming it as his private property? What if the owner overpaid them - i.e paid each the amount it would cost to commission laborers to build their own similar home? Are they then self-exploiting if they use the money their labor earned to buy the labor of others to build homes?

So we’re just whitewashing Hitler now. Cool.

I’d say that if you live in literally any nation that doesn’t directly border them or isnt married to the Pentagon, they haven’t proven to be much of a concern at all. Except maybe to your exports. As far as “free world” gibberish goes, they aren’t the ones defending the Saudi monarch from his own people.