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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: September 21st, 2024

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  • I do remember 2020 and 2021, and I was in fact in the Gulf at the time and talked to people with knowledge of back-channel negotiations between the US and Iran. The only difference between the Suleimani situation and today is that the Biden admin supports Israel’s assassinations rather than carrying them out directly. But no one is fooled here - we know they are equal part American assassinations. This “assassination as coercive diplomacy” shit didn’t work for Trump, who was pushed by the belligerent, compromised, Israel/Saudi bought GOP fanatics to ditch the JCPOA and go for violence.

    Do you know what the goal of those back channel negotiations was, by the way? The US was demanding that Iran reduce it’s self-imposed 2000 kilometer missile distance limit to be far shorter so that it couldn’t strike Israel.

    Well here we are in 2024, with a Biden administration that has gotten use to a point where Iran and Israel are striking each other’s military bases directly. Everyone you talk to in Kuwait City, Istanbul, Manama, Doha and so on will tell you that Iran would be absolutely insane not to prioritize nuclear armament, and some suspect that they may already have some nukes stowed deep.

    The Gaza genocide and its regional implications have been a bigger policy failure than anything Trump did.


  • To claim Trump is “isolationist” in 2016 is one. To claim it in 2024 is simply denying the facts. Trump was and remains not that much different to Biden on international policy. The key difference is diplomacy. Trump fails at diplomacy while keeping within many of the same policies.

    There is a reason that Biden foreign policy has doubled down or refused to undo Trump era policies that Democrats considered to be mistakes, like leaving the JCPOA, playing around with Taiwan ambiguities, enabling Israeli liquidation of a nascent Palestinian state, etc.


  • There is actually little daylight between Biden and Trump on an international level. The real difference is between the parties. If you’re American I can 100% understand why you’d never want the GOP anywhere near education, healthcare, climate policy etc. Their religious zealotry, genocidal inclinations towards Muslims (which is present but far more muted among Dems), racial antipathy and paranoia of black people and anti-intellectualism are a recipe for national decline and unrestrained global abuse of non-white, non-Christian peoples.

    The Democrats have a neoconservative problem which also threatens the entire world. But sadly the responsible and sensible side of America is stuck with them.








  • The Catechism of the Catholic Church reads:

    The forms taken by modesty vary from one culture to another. Everywhere, however, modesty exists as an intuition of the spiritual dignity proper to man. It is born with the awakening consciousness of being a subject. Teaching modesty to children and adolescents means awakening in them respect for the human person." (C.C.C. # 2524)

    People here are not serious, they repeat slogans and polemics very superficially. The nipple taboo is found across pre-Christian and non-Abrahamic societies, probably because of breasts’ association with fertility. I.e

    When did bare breasts become taboo in Western civilization?

    Probably around 3,000 years ago. Women are displayed with exposed breasts in Minoan artwork from 1500 B.C. Some historians believe that these ancient women went topless only during religious rituals—bare-breasted, buxom goddesses have been worshipped since the dawn of civilization—but some of the artworks depict everyday activities, suggesting that bare breasts may have been commonplace. Just across the Mediterranean, ancient Egyptian women sported elaborate dresses that could either cover the breasts or leave them exposed, depending on the whim of the designer. Over the next few centuries, however, breasts become strictly private parts. Ancient Athenian women were wearing flowing, multilayered robes that concealed the shape of the bosom by the middle of the first millennium B.C. Spartan attire was more risqué, exposing the female thigh, but breasts were always covered.



  • Their argument is that “gender is just a social construct”, without acknowledging that some of the most paramount aspects of human existence are “social constructs” (i.e language) and that gender is one of them. And without addressing why sexual taboos (like public nudity) are gendered - to them its a form of irrational injustice. But expore the social ramifications -through real and hypothetical examples- and you quickly find that it is indeed rational to treat bodies different according to their gender, and that human social psychology does have strong roots in human phsyiognamy.


  • If you don’t like “combative” questions about your prescriptions for the entire social structure of the world, then do us all a favor and stop interacting with people who have an iota of skepticism towards them. Stick to your own bubble instead of moralizing about how we wouldn’t have landlords if people would just stop challenging you. And no, Kropotkin doesn’t answer what I asked regarding the organization of housing. He quite literally just claims that workers are inherently unselfish and “volunteers” will rationally alot it according to need.