functor
3mo ago
The fact that they achieved peace and created a functioning society in which many protestants live. Subjegating Palestinians is never going to work as the conflict isn't going to end if there is no deal for the Palestinians to accept. You can't have a large portion of the country that fundamentally doesn't accept the current order and have no reason to do so.
They could find some plot of land in Africa or Latin America with a far lower population to resettle to. Their claim to Israel is that they bought the land in exchange for half the skin on their babies pensises which is a rediculus premise for a country.
functor
3mo ago
So in other words Israel's only strategy would be creating a giant refugee crisis 300 km from Europe. Nobody wants that. Israel is a small state that is going to be in constant conflict with everyone and everything around them.
Rhodesia and French Algeria existed longer than Israel and had people who had lived there for generations. Jews are rootless cosmopolitans and should find a new home.
functor
3mo ago
Creating a jewish state by genociding all the people living there including a large portion of Christians is abhorrent. Palestine's best asset is jews posting content in English and showing the world what Talmudic logic is like.
functor
3mo ago
The differential between Palestine and Israel in terms of military capacity is greater than ever:
Far from it. Missile tech and drone tech is more dispersed than ever. Israel can't even occupy an area smaller than a municipality in almost two years even with exceptional brutality. Israel is a small country stuck in the same quagmire as South Vietnam, French Algeria or Rhodesia. They are never going to be a functioning country and permanently stuck in a state of emergency.
It is chutzpah of the highest order to rely on the charity and good will of your enemy to feed your people.
Expecting an enemy not to commit war crimes is normal. Israels behaviour has taught a sizeable portion of goyim what jewish mindset is and that the jewish view on this is fundamentally incompatible with a western mindset. The winning Palestinian strategy is to show the world what a bunch of religious fundamentalists on the west bank are actually like. There is a reason why western civilization despised these people for 2000 years and having them quoting biblical genocides while massacring starving Christians is an excellent way to bring back the west to our historical view of them.
Millions of Afghans died in the 80s. Millions of Vietnamese died, France was brutal against the Algerians. Being brutal against the locals is not an effective way to win. The British counter insurgency in Northern Ireland was far more effective.
functor
3mo ago
I have never understood why green parties are woke. Their ideology is naturally anti woke.
Remove fossil fuels from society and you are going to have a society that reflects that material basis. A society without fossil fuels doing most of the work is reliant on male physical strength. If agriculture is going to be entirely organic and sustainable people are going to be skinny. Much of feminism builds on people leaning on the state or insurance companies for their old age and care instead of family. Social structures are seen as oppressive by the left if people can recieve a pension and be cared for by the state. A large state that takes care of people requires industrial civilization. Without a huge state people need families, children, and social structures for support.
functor
4mo ago
Duties are owed to those higher up; parents, church, community. Even those things owed to another person of similar rank or lower down are not owed to them per se, but owed to them because it is ones duty to society to provide it.
The flip side is that the higher in the hierarchy you go, the higher the demands. A king has far, far more virtues to live up to and a far heavier burden to carry than a peasant. Being a priest puts far higher demands and far higher responsibilities on a person than being a layman.
functor
4mo ago
China is likely trying to achieve world domination, and Europeans would much prefer the US as a hegemon,
Would we? How many refugee waves have China pushed into Europe? How many sanctions does China impose on the world compared to the US? China is on the other side of Eurasia and has little interest in countries outside of itself except for transactional trade deals. There is no historical animosity toward China as Europeans historically have had limited interactions with China.
Neocon elites pushed by the US to hate China are different from Europeans. Ursula von der Leyen would have been fanatically pro invading Iraq if she was around in 2003 and if the US was invading Fiji she would be ranting and raving about how it needs to be utterly destroyed. Americans start talking trans issues and the EU elite will be fanatically trans. If the washington establishment says grass is blue than grass is blue.
functor
4mo ago
Beards being leftists are hardly a universal rule. European nobility and royalty have historically often been bearded. Beards are masculine.
What is dying is the 80s Reagan conservatism/enterprise institute style conservatism. The strange mix of trying to cosplay southern baptist and business elite at the same time isn't working anymore. The conservative INC aesthetic won't work forever and will have to change. Mitt Romney and JD Vance have a larger age gap than most men have between them and their fathers. Most guys aren't looking and dressing like their dad.
The left transformed in less than 50 years from Russian revolution to hippy movement. It shouldn't be shocking that the right can morph in a similar timespan.
functor
4mo ago
Question:
How do you have so many photos of yourself? I have three photos a year taken of me. Are you taking loads of photos? Did you take a weekend photo shoot?
functor
4mo ago
Have you really missed naval remote-controlled boats that resulted in Russia losing naval war to navy that has no active traditional surface vessels?
The Starlink ones developed by the US for the defence of Taiwan that are sent to targets located by US surveillance? The Ukrainian naval projects also have a strong British component.
Ukraine's main arms production is assembling Chinese drone components. This is mainly a cottage industry of building parts made to fit together into a small plastic drone. That is fairly far from large scale industry.
functor
4mo ago
Not unlikely. People are going to be more focused on looks if they are choosing a partner for themselves rather than trying to find a partner for someone else.
functor
4mo ago
Pope Leo XIV has been pope for two months now. How has his first two months been and has your view of him shifted since he became pope?
functor
4mo ago
Effectively there are too many people that have to be pleased by the budget for it to pass. Congress, senate and a bunch of other influential people have to agree to it. These people aren't fully autonomous but are being pulled in various directions by people around them. The result is not much can actually be done to cut spending as each cut will be fought by someone. Musk was probably right from an idealist perspective that the bill increased the debt. However, his view is too based on the corporate world in which he doesn't need to get hundreds of people to agree in order to set policy.
The bill highlights one of America's greatest issues, the inability for someone to ram something through and get it done.
functor
4mo ago
Israel killed as many civilians in two months as Russians killed in 3.5 years of fighting against a far more competent opponent.
functor
4mo ago
They have effectively beaten NATO in a conventional land war. They are fighting an enemy in which every operation is run by NATO, the equptment is NATO, thousands of NATO mercs are running things on the ground.
While Israel and the US can't take an area the size of a municipality in Gaza against enemies with no resources Russia took the area the size of Denmark in a week against an enemy with 3x larger force.
functor
4mo ago
NATO will inherit the rump state of what is left of Ukraine which is the part without the mines and the good agricultural land.
functor
4mo ago
A regime change operation in Ukraine with the goal of pushing the US sphere of influence right into Russia's back yard even though they repeatedly warned against it. The US was doing everything it could to get a war and the war has gone a lot worse than reported.
The cost will be in the multiple trillions as interest rates have gone up sharply since the start of the war and the equipment that is replacing the stuff sent to Ukraine costs multiples of the equipment sent to Ukraine. Not to mention that NATO is inheriting a basket case nation that makes nation building in Afghanistan look like a cake walk. NATO now has to finance a military a quarter the size of the US military that is supposed to be capable of fighting a high intensity war in a country that has no arms production and now tax base to support it. Ukraine is going to be an endless foreign aid black hole
Iraq was definitely different. It was a completely unprovoked land grab on the other side of the planet. It wasn't really any different then the Belgians grabbing the Congo. The goal was to occupy and control Iraq while giving them zero legal status within the empire.
functor
4mo ago
What amazes me is the number of people who understand that the Iraq war, Vietnam war and Afghanistan war were spectacular fiascos and the whole establishment lied. But the next time the media sells a war they get all hyped up for it! This time there is a new supervillan who for absolutely no reason and with absolutely no historical context just behaves like a cartoon villian and we have to take him out now!
During Iraq there was at least some critical media and Baghdad bob was at least allowed on CNN. In Ukraine there are now dissenting opinions allowed. The people who spent 120 000 000 000 dollars building a 300 000 man army in Afghanistan and then told us the troops didn't exist yet the spending did, are supposed to be trusted blindly.
One of the main reasons why politicians are so freaked out about Ukraine is that they lied as much about Ukraine as they lied about every other war and they are afraid of the piles of lies being exposed. One day would could have a Ukrainian Ed Snowden or Bradley Manning.
functor
4mo ago
Mainstream leftism is just more power to the elites.
Populist leftism isn't. Opposition to the military industrial complex and the surveillance state would increase our freedom.
functor
4mo ago
functor
4mo ago
One of the greatest mistakes many progressives such as feminists make is using what they want as a starting point instead of thinking what incentive structures they are creating. The thinking easily becomes I want x while completely ignoring what incentive structures they are creating.
The reasoning becomes "I want to wear whatever I want". There is not enough thought put into that women are competitive and that the end result is going to be thongs becoming standard swimwear for women and that the hyper sexualization caused by a race to the bottom of who can get the most attention will be harmful.
functor
4mo ago
So these Hamas rockets that have barely been able to kill anyone leveled an entire hospital during Israeli bombing. Seems like something AIPAC cooked up.
As for October 7 Israel was engaging in military operations against Gaza, they had murdered hundreds of civilians and taken thousands of hostages.
There war a roughly 50% civilian death rate on the Israeli side. Is 1 civilian death for every military death acceptable or not? Why isn't it terror when Israel kills more than one civilian for each military casualty?
Israel has engaged in military action against Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen and Iraq. Who else comes close to that much war?
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