There remains to this day a significant religious minority in Israel which has a particular direction they are pushing policy. I am not claiming they are the only force in Israeli politics, but they are significant. Being that my point was religion and conflict can go hand-in-jand, especially since ...

If you want to talk about the bible then create a thread about it. If you want to talk about the one state which is controlled by right wing, some would say extremists, adherents of the Jewish faith, using their past to justify committing genocidal acts against an oppressed population. Then by all m...

If the option was "do nothing and watch deaths mount" or "try rolling out a vaccine to as many people as possible" which would you choose? Given that the vaccine had some effects, it did also have risks, but they were lower than the risk of catching covid at the time, so vaccinations everyone instea...

Is the Right Wing fascination actually not so much about the state, it is about having a single strong leader, which they see as able to do no wrong? Like cult worship? It is fascist leaning (also an ideology associated with authoritianism) rather than Communist Authoritarian. But it follows all the...

That said "Comminism" explicitly has only ever been formed by revolution taking power and redistributing wealth, usually in the name of the people but actually in practice the state was the main beneficiary, and the party/state. One party states tend towards authoritarian, though examples like the S...

Let's be clear, any economic model can be authoritarian. Like a monarch with complete control of the state. They could implement whatever type of system they wanted for the economy. That said, a system where the monarchy retains power has to take into account the material reality of that state. Cont...

You appear to be confused, Brainbomb. Russia today is not communist or socialist at all. The USSR ceased to exist in 1991. Putin's Government is quite conservative and has much in common with US Republicanism, in fact. I was under the impression that Russia is still run by Oligarchs or an Authorita...

If you want to discuss the past litics of the bible, feel free to create a thread, and we can focus on bashing the bible bashers there.

That is off topic for this thread.

Small difference? It went from a clear majority (45 to 38) in favour of national service to an even clearer majority (48 to 34) against. A 21 point swing is pretty significant in any context, and if error bars are big enough to hide it then it's pointless doing any polling at all. Elections are typ...

with the downside risk that Trump actually achieves some of his plainly stated goals (an end to rule of law vis-a-vis the President, an end to term limits, etc.) I'd actually really like to see where Trump has said these things. People talk about it all the time, but he didn't do it when he was Pre...

Enjoyable, very small difference though.

How big do you think the error bara are?

Can we compare the same question to just asking 5 unrelated questions in advance of the final ones?

No one? That seems odd in itself. You do not get to be a prominent Russian politician by being nice. He may well have been a better man than Putin (which is a very low bar) and he was certainly charismatic, but I struggle to believe fully in the saint like champion of western style democracy narrat...

I totally agree that we have a special obligation to speak out about our own country's misdeeds like I said, Chomsky's argument there. I would suggest this argument should apply beyond just military aid - we are heavily complicit in the crimes of Saudi Arabia and China by maintaining deep trade and...

I don't for a moment believe that the powers that be in Russia would think twice about murdering Navalny if it was in their best interests, but I'm not at all convinced that it was. The timing of his death, if it was murder, seems a little odd. Why now? It's not as if he's been a threat recently. T...

But you are right, we should also criticise the Chinese treat of Uighars and Tibetans and anyone other 'unruly' group within their borders, the genocidal Russia behaviour (stealing children, changing their dates of birth, and giving them to Russian families for adoption - which entirely fits the def...

The second argument is weaker here, but it is a responce which Chomsky often uses as to why he criticised the US more than the abused of (say) China. As a US citizen living in a fairly democratic country, his voice can actually make a difference by criticizing American policy, while he can't make a ...

There is a good reason to hold Israel to close scrutiny, A) as a relatively liberal country, they may be more likely to be affected by what we say. B) among the most advanced weapon systems in the World, Israel has more power, and thus capacity to abuse that power, so should be called to account. I ...

Carlson being a paid mouth piece for Russian propoganda and not in the US national interest, because he holds some serious political sway with, one hopes a minority. However that minority appears to hold far too much power at the moment - which is an actual problem for the US (and anyone else who op...

Source? "israel toilet sticker razor" returns no results on Google. Internal railway safety brief. Thinking about it, it is very curious that something that is very newsworthy and rather important from a safety of the public point of view hasn't actually been taken up by any news services. It's lik...

While I do not share your glee at the UK sabotaging its economy and isolating itself on the European stage, and whilst I also have no love for Viktor Orbán because he's a fucking fascist.... I must say that should this FT story prove to be true, I would share your concerns, genuinely. I am amused t...