The only country that can be blamed for destroying Iraqi industry is the USA. Two decades of war, one decade of sanctions and another decade of war (by Saddam against Iran) sponsored by the USA in the 1980s.

Obviously, Iranian industry will outcompete Iraqi industry at this point in history.

Iraq needs to rebuild and they need outside help.

I’m not gonna defend Iranian war mongering. And neither will I defend Turkish war mongering, or IS, USA or Israeli war mongering.

But the only path forward for Iraq is by making peace with the two power brokers in the region: Turkey and Iran.

And that’s what the current government is trying to achieve. The Turkey-Iraq corridor and the new port they are building are going to lay the foundation for their future prosperity.

As for Iran, Iran is desperate for allies. It won’t be that difficult to find some mutually beneficial relationship with them.

It’s more-or-less geographic destiny that Iran and Turkey will become the dominant powers in Western Asia.

They both basically ruled the area for most of history.

The best we (the West) could do is nudge them towards human rights and peace and friendship. For Turkey, that’s mostly a done deal.

For Iran, that was exactly what Obama tried to do. And it’s also what Iran has been trying to get for the past 25 years.

Iran is inherently on a path towards secularisation and more dovish policies. It’s the threat of war by the US and Israel that keeps the defense hawks in power.

Iran, especially, will never fully trust the USA - and for good reason. But they do want better relations with the USA. They just don’t want to get burned or bombed.

The US never did anything about Rachel Corrie or the USS Liberty or Hersh Goldberg-Polin. And we can probably add hundreds of Palestinian Americans to the list, but even their names aren’t known in the mainstream media.

It seems the USA capacity to care depends on how much AIPAC will allow it to care.

They aren’t combatants or PoW, taking them hostage was a human rights violation from the beginning.

But Israel can’t really expect Hamas to follow Geneva conventions when they themselves violate it a hundreds times as often.

Hamas is trying to keep as many alive as they can.

But (a) 2000 pound bunker busters don’t discriminate between Palestinians and Israelis and (b) if the IDF comes too close to the hostages, their guards have to decide whether to let them go alive or to kill them.

In the case of the Druze guy, I can definitely see Hamas choosing not to kill him. But in cases of Israelis who also served in the IDF, the rational choice is to kill them instead of giving the IDF a propaganda win.

And finally, sometimes the IDF probably accidentally kills them and tries to blame Hamas if they can get away with it.

They could have had all the hostages back in October. Hamas just wanted back the hostages that Israel holds.

And again, they could have had all the hostages back in May.

Netanyahu seems committed to genocide and the hostages are collateral damage.

It’s deranged and I am ashamed our western leaders are cheerleading this.

It always surprised me that the country that pioneered Lean production techniques has always had such an enormous waste of labour resources in their office culture.

They have one of the lowest GDP per hour worked of all Industrial nations.

Italy, Spain and Germany have way higher labour productivity, while even Turkey edges out Japan.

One thing I don’t understand is, how can polio resurface after 24 years?

I am tempted to think that it was intentionally released, but perhaps someone has a less evil explanation?

I agree, but I saw you had some down votes.

/s

Just gonna put that there, since it seems some people are missing the meaning of your comment.

They know this and encourage it.

Every time the Palestinians kill an Israeli, that gives them permission from the Americans to kill a thousand Palestinians.

And that’s their plan to take all the land. Offer up a few thousand Israeli lives to genocide a few million Palestinians.

I totally agree.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, they were handed everything they wanted on a silver plate.

They could have been Poland on steroids.

But they chose to reject it, so stupid.

The ICJ ruling will take years though.

I think the most similar genocide to the Gaza genocide is the Bosnian genocide. The Srebrenica massacre took place in 1995 and the ICJ ruled in 2007.

So, the Gaza genocide might take until 2035 before it is all legally settled.

In the interim, Wikipedia and all of us need to decide what to call it.

Since it looks like a genocide and the initial findings support the case that genocide is likely being committed, it seems to border on genocide denial to call it anything else.

Edit to add: I also don’t see people complaining about Wikipedia calling the Rohingya genocide a genocide, even though it is legally in the same phase as the Gaza genocide.

Damn, then it’s even worse than I thought.

I am fully aware of that.

But in the German context, I am not sure if it is effective.

Perhaps someone can make a nice rhyme against genocide.

“Germany sides against genocide”, or something. Maybe something that rhymes in German.

Free speech in Germany is dead.

That said, if I were in Germany, I would use a different phrase. Maybe “stop the genocide in Gaza, ceasefire now”.

That would just be way more effective in actually rallying support.

But I’m not in Germany, so Free Palestine, from the river to the sea.

With this kind of crab mentality, it’s going to be a race to the bottom.

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The way the US political system works is that it really requires solid majorities to want something.

So it will take a long time where nothing seems to happen and then suddenly big changes can happen.

I remember back in the 90s, it seemed impossible to ever get a black president, gay marriage or legal marijuana.

Or look at student loans or universal healthcare. Not perfect, but steps have been made.

So yeah, I do think the USA will lag for a long time and then suddenly surprise us all.

Once the alternatives become more profitable, they will move to legislate in their favour.

Here in Europe, we already have billions in subsidies for wind and solar energy.

Will it go smoothly, or fast enough?

No, I think 3 degrees warming is basically inevitable at this point.

But it will happen, about five decades later than it should have happened.

Guess we will see in the next two decades.