aspro said:
If you are an arms dealer, then war is a success. If you are in power and war further extends your power then war is a success. Goes without saying, but perhaps not.
Well, one side of the political spectrum is in power...and tends to have a lot of money going in and out with arms dealers, so it makes sense why they'd be for many wars?
Ellyoda said:This is the one political sphere I give myself a break from. The only input I like to provide is that in the US, the obsession with Israel is driven by Evangelical Christians who see a thriving Israel as a necessary part of Biblical prophesy to bring about the end times. So when you look at the American right, which is in every other way perpetually antisemitic, being hyper-defensive of Israel, that's why.
I heard about that shit. They want Jewish people there so it will enable the end of days where the Apocalypse happens.
robio said:It's just so damn complex that it's hard to really come to a conclusion. Depending on who you talk to, this is about 70 years of oppression, or several thousand years of oppression. That's a clash in perspective that's not difficult to grasp, and probably impossible to resolve. Anyway I'm kind of with Elle. There's so much history, so many moving parts, and so many interfering parties that it's hard to feel like you've got the right opinion.
It's not complicated though. I used to feel the same way as you. It was all so complicated that I didn't really feel compentent to comment on it. It's really simple actually.
Bear in mind that I'm no history professor, so some dates or locations may be off but the general gist of it is:
Palestine was an existing country with existing people, there was steady immigration by Jewish people to Palestine from roughly the turn of the century to 1948.
Encouraged by a Zionist movement to establish a Jewish homeland. So in Palestine in 1948 roughly 10% of the population were Jewish, 90% were Arabs made up of different religions. The zionist movement, backed by America, declared that -hey bitches - this is Israel now. Jewish militias forcibly moved over 700'000 people from their homes and Jewish militias massacred various villages. Then burned, destroyed and in some cases planted trees over them and renamed everything to Jewish names.
The new U.N made this plan to split Palestine between Jewish people and Palestinians. The Palestinians didn't accept this as the Jewish population was given a disproportionately large portion of lands the existing population already lived in.
Arab countries tried to move in, in a war to stop this. They lost, partly because the Israelis were better funded and equipped by western governments.
Then later in the 60s Israel, under the pretense of a pre-emptive strike invaded and occupied more territory, the Golan heights, the West bank, Gaza. The part of Egypt, then later gave back.
They have occupied the other parts from then to this day
Sadly I've had to edit the rest of my post so some Psycho doesn't give me shit about facts.
Hahaha. Giuliani, get fucked! Too bad he will declare bankruptcy.
travo said:Hahaha. Giuliani, get fucked! Too bad he will declare bankruptcy.
I'm sure Trump will cover it. He and Rudy are buddies.
Giuliani sure is a nut job alright. That guy definitely went all in on riding the Trump train.
Ravenprose said:I'm sure Trump will cover it. He and Rudy are buddies.
yeah, I doubt that. He didn't contribute to his defense fund. I think maybe through a dinner fundraiser for him, but that was the extent of it. Guliani is on his own with this bill.
Not politics per se, but this rant isn't worthy of a seperate thread.
A couple of years ago, a kid died during very humiliating tests to enter a fraternity club of advocacy students. After that, the members who were in charge tried to minimize their responsabilities. After a long trial, they got off the hook with civil service work sentence, which won't show on their permanent record. There was a lot of upheaval about this in society, the feeling being that justice wasn't equal for all and that they would have received much worse punishment if they hadn't been come from wealthy families. So far, so predictable.
After the facts, some rather big shot local influencer made public the names of these students in one of his video's, resulting in a lot of harrasment to the families of the students. One of those families sued this influencer and today was the day of his trial. After declining a civil service sentence, he received a small fine, 3 months of suspended prison and he needs to pay up €20k for damages to the restaurant of one of the families. Of course he's now going to blow this up and milk it for all it's worth, pretending to be the little guy who got punished much worse for a much smaller crime.
This sickens me. I'd be willing to bet that he didn't settle for a civil service just so he could moan about how unfair the system is. I can also believe that he just didn't want to do any actual work. He'll now get many more clicks and thus earn much more money on many more video's of how outrageous this all must be for poor little him. He looks like just the kind of type who, in differrent circumstances, could also have been part of said fraternity and who probably would have done the exact same thing. Blech.
So the guy that exposed the guys who killed the other guy, you think is worse than the guys that killed the guy who got away with very little punishment? Sorry if I am getting this wrong, I've been up for a while with a headache 
I think the guys responsible for the death of guy #1 are bigger douchebags than the guy exposing them. I'm only going off the fact you relayed. I don't support any abuse of the families of the guys that killed the guys though. If the guy who exposed the douchebags doxed the families, then that's not endorsed by Aspro Enterprises Pty. Ltd.
I will say that profiting from this sad situation, beyond covering his legal costs makes the exposer a douche as well, any funds in excess of the legal costs should be given to the family of the victim, or if they don't want it a charity that supports anti-bullying. In general, it is very sad that a young man lost his life. Very sad.
But I take umbrage at the influencer who doxed them probably thinking it'd boost his views. He could have questionned the working of the judicary system, but he went the populist route and is now acting as if he's some kind of martyr. His petty crowdfunding has already raised over 100k, while he most likelt has the funds to pay fir the expenses himself. In the end he's profiting from this from all angles while crying 'poor me'.
It sickens me.
Not to stir things up, and looking at only the horse race component of this, and not ideology:
Trump-Biden rematch. I've been watching this trainwreck in slow motion for over a year now, and here we are at the result which is somehow both inevitable and unimaginable.
I've been secretly hoping Biden would resign for his own good and they could put in a better candidate than Harris (and that Trump would just go away for the sake of calming things down for the betterment of the country).
Maybe voter turnout will be, what, 30% with Trump winning?
As an armchair analyst with no actual knowledge of the matter, I'd assume turnout would be pretty high. Not because voters on either side would want their candidate to win per se, more because they can't phatom the idea of having the other candidate be president for another 4 years.
SupremeAC said:As an armchair analyst with no actual knowledge of the matter, I'd assume turnout would be pretty high. Not because voters on either side would want their candidate to win per se, more because they can't phatom the idea of having the other candidate be president for another 4 years.
I stupidly think there are enough real democrats and republicans who could not bring themselves to vote for the candidate their parties have put forward. But I am an immigrant US citizen who bought into the dream and voted Nader. So I am, for as much as I follow US politics, disconnected from the voting public.
I think leaving Florida is a good start for us, but I'm still not 100% sure where we're going to end up. I suspect it'll be somewhere around Atlanta, but I would be lying if I said I haven't spent about a dozen hours researching expat communities in Spain.
robio said:but I would be lying if I said I haven't spent about a dozen hours researching expat communities in Spain.
For the palm trees, right?
edit: anyway, I'm not sure Spain is that much better. Franco isn't that long ago and conservatives are in power there too.
Anyway, we looked at Spain because they have pretty easy immigration policies and my wife is a fluent Spanish speaker. But the reality is we're probably not leaving the continent permanently.
I’m not thrilled with Biden. I’d much prefer that he’d step down to pave the way for someone like Newsome to run. I do like a lot of things that he got done like wiping out a ton of student debt, capping off pharmacy prices, and taking on predatory banks and credit card companies and their shitty overdraft fees.
robio said:
I think there is enough voter apathy right now that we will see Trump re-elected. I don't like that at all. As a parent of a gay child, it actually scares me to death because he just emboldens the worst and dumbest people out there.
Ugh, the voter apathy pisses me off so much. We have a convicted rapist, insurrectionist with 90 indictments and people are like "I think I like him because he speaks the truth."
Ravenprose said:I'll vote third party again. Fuck this two party system.
I voted for Obama the first time, but for all other presidential elections, I've voted third-party.
If you are an arms dealer, then war is a success. If you are in power and war further extends your power then war is a success. Goes without saying, but perhaps not.