This is the effect of having an authoritarian in charge. The propaganda that gets produced is done to convey a sense of power of the person/party, its popularity, and the scale of the internal and external “enemy threat.”

I think a lot of people have their fingers crossed on this one.

I really think there are two different aspects to the classification of the threat. It’s actually pretty analogous to the Afghanistan War.

First, neither Al Quaeda nor Hamas represent an existential threat to their opponents. The US hasn’t really faced a believable existential threat since the collapse of the USSR, Israel hasn’t really faced one since the 80s. Countries in Eastern Europe face an existential threat from Russia. And so on. Killing 1200 (or 3000) people, no matter how brutally or unjustified or evil it seems, it does not threaten to destroy the state of Israel. It is, of course, now an existential threat to Netanyahu, which is one reason why it’s being pursued with such enthusiasm.

The second aspect builds from the first and questions whether the solution pursued by Israel (and the US) were both efficient (ie proportional to the threat so as not to divert attention and resources from other threats) and effective. They have to be expected to achieve specific and measurable goals and timelines.

The ability to pull off an Oct 7th might have been equally well but more efficiently and effectively with intelligence and commando units, and Israel would have been given free rein by most of the planet to do so.

Hamas never posed an existential threat to Israel.

Syncs can be really weird. I have an account on another instance which constantly runs far behind .world. I’ve made double edits only to have the last one take.

I’ve never been out in Russia, but I know we’re persecuted there. Same for Poland. I’ve never been out in Uganda (I haven’t been there yet), and although I’ve been to India the social circles I moved in meant I didn’t encounter anything like what the community members find there.

What I find curious is that Americans use this as a lash particularly against Islam, while at the same time a large part of their population not only supports LGBT-phobic legislation in the US, but also the evangelical community that actively lobbies for the death penalty for being LGBT in Africa. I can sympathize with the plight of Russians under the violent and murderous dictatorship of Putin without saying that the average Russian is correct on their opinion about the LGBT community. If Russia were to invade Uganda and kill 50k civilians, there would be an outcry against it and anyone who said “But they hate The Gays” would hopefully be ushered peacefully out of the room, as the two are orthogonal.

Is Israel killing 40-50k people to secure gay rights in Gaza? Or have they been supporting Hamas because it allowed them to avoid a two state solution?

Trust me - we are not strangers to the idea that other oppressed communities have parts that are still prejudiced against us. That neither justifies genocide nor does it relieve us as individuals from acknowledging such extreme moral wrongdoing. If an unarmed person shot by police turned out to have opposed marriage equality, that doesn’t excuse the moral requirement to oppose that action.

So unless you think that anti-LGBT legislation and violence justifies terrorist activity including the slaughter of civilians within the US (it does not), I respectfully suggest you review your premises.

Do Americans hate us? The only people I’ve been verbally and physically assaulted by have been Americans.

So are you saying that Orthodox Jews and conservative Christians aren’t transphobic, or that we should go Gaza on Texas?

Robert Earle Parry (June 24, 1949 – January 27, 2018)[1] was an American investigative journalist. He was known for his role in covering the Iran–Contra affair for the Associated Press (AP) and Newsweek, including breaking the Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare (CIA manual provided to the Nicaraguan contras) and the CIA involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking in the U.S. scandal in 1985.

Just some additional additional context.

Externalized costs to subsidize profits for fossil fuel companies?! In my grocery cart?!

By whom?

Do you think the Palestinians are going to fire on aid vessels? Do you think Israelis will fire on American military vessels?

I’m actually pretty well read on the subject, both from the 18th to 19th century literature and from modern Marxist and other socialist economists. I’m also a biologist who has a bit of a specialization in pro-social models of behavior from a mathematical perspective and who derives data from real world observations and experiments.

The idea that capital controls the labor market is fairly central to the Marxist approach to capitalism. Both Marx and Adam Smith attributed dynamics to conscious actions that today we, as sophisticated systems theorists, would come up with better models to explain. They had an attitude towards human action that in some ways were the forerunner to modern sciences of collective behavior, but they’re still ridiculously primitive compared to modern theory.

Again, I am not the only academic to make this point. You find it is ubiquitous in modern Marxist literature. There are still some traditionalists, of course. I’m sure you know a particular white bearded professor who has what I honestly believe is the best introduction/course on Capital ever created. I honestly really like his work.

But what I don’t like is when communists or socialists refer to themselves as “Marxists.” I particularly don’t like it when they shoot down an idea using something that was written by someone in the 19th century, as if we haven’t had multiple revolutions in understanding economics and the science of complex systems since then.

What I’m saying is that you can read Marxist forums on line, and you can read Marxist academics publishing papers in Marxist journals, who argue that so-and-so is wrong because Marx(or whomever) said X. Nobody, and I mean nobody, quotes Darwin to refute a point in biology. Darwin was a genius, but he was a product of his time and got some very basic and very important stuff completely wrong. Ask a biologist about it and they’ll tell you it’s completely wrong and we figured it out a hundred years ago. They won’t canonize Darwin, even if they really really want a Darwin bobblehead for their desk.

Again, and I cannot make this more plain and I am not the only academic to say this: it’s called evolutionary biology, not Darwinism. I have friends and colleagues at places like the econ department at the New School, and they refer to what they do as “economics.” That’s where I’d prefer things to go.

One of the most frustrating things about academic Marxism is that it hypothesizes that “capitalists” (whom they bung together with remarkable aplomb) do things like figure in the reproduction cost of labor. They don’t. They’re focused on the next quarter and maybe the next year. Maybe even the next five years. But no one ranging from Elon Musk to (not sure who his opposite would be so I’m kinda taking a stab here) Warren Buffett is thinking in terms of generational replacement. First, they’re not going to live that long. Neither are their shareholders. Plus capital is mobile - it’ll just go someplace else.

This is a headline precisely because it’s a man bites dog story. If your company gives you paid parental leave it’s either because it’s legally required or for retention. It’s not in the hope that the little toy will become a software engineer at the company in 25 years.

The joke isn’t the primaries, dude. The joke is that they’re complaining about the US candidates being two bad choices, when they have no choices.

You know the joke is that they’re not a democracy, right?

Who were the candidates again? Was it a close election? I wasn’t following so I’m not sure which candidates won the primaries for their parties.

How’s the Chinese election looking? Who are the major candidates and who is in the lead?

Yeah, I recognize that it’s a deplorable thing and I am very much in favor of allowing for far more open immigration.

I also know that there’s an old Jewish joke about Germany and Russia about the difference between an optimist and a pessimist. The pessimists lived.

If that means spending $600k on a house in Portugal in order to get a resident visa, I’m going to do that if I need to in order to protect myself and my loved ones. I worry that people don’t realize how quickly things can get bad, or how bad they can get, and the answer isn’t “buy a gun.” I’ve been shot at and I didn’t like it. I’d rather move to someplace on the Mediterranean and drink cocktails. I will never stop working for civil rights, including the rights of migration, but if this is the only way to GTFO, I’m going to do it if I need to.

I get the bit about people parking money overseas using these programs, but humanitarian immigration is being eroded year after year. We need to fix that, but until we can, I need to make sure I’m considering all of my options.

I very much agree but have two points of clarification for more general audiences.

First, this is the job of these ships. They shoot down missiles. The countries that deploy these ships have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on sophisticated electronics and weapons platforms so that these ships can protect other ships. The weapons platforms being deployed against them don’t represent a major threat - I mean, never say never - but there was a point in the Falklands war where navies really internalized the risks presented by land based anti-ship missiles and things started to get taken very seriously.

The only other thing I’d say is that the loitering drones are probably going to be getting more use than traditional counter battery fire. The shoot and scoot systems - as opposed to in place systems - are less vulnerable to counterattack, but can and are being attacked by simply parking some flying bombs that just continue to fly in circles until they find something that someone wants to make a hole in.

Honestly, my partner and I are actively looking into golden visa programs. We are like a United Colors of Benetton ad of sexual, ethnic, and racial minorities, and the worse things are getting in the US, the more attractive emigration becomes.

That said, I would not even entertain the idea of moving to Australia. Maybe it’s just an outsider’s perception, but they don’t look like they’re heading in a particularly good direction either.

This article is bullshit.

The War Powers Resolution requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, with a further 30-day withdrawal period, without congressional authorization for use of military force (AUMF) or a declaration of war by the United States.

The president can engage in airstrikes or in naval or ground warfare as long as they notify Congress after the fact within two days, and then can carry on operations for three months without congressional approval. It is used all the time.

US armed forces came under attack by Houthi forces on multiple occasions. Biden is well within the law in committing military forces to action, and could do anything up to and including a ground invasion of Yemen with a hundred thousand marines (although he won’t - this is going to be bombs and drones).

You can argue that Congress should not have abdicated its responsibility to declare war back in 1973 (I think it was a stupid idea and has been ripe for abuse), but this is what every president has used since it was passed.