SpankyMcFarland

All religions are the inventions of men.

If Republicans want to make Biden’s age an issue they would be far better off choosing Haley.

Approval ratings mean nothing in an authoritarian state where he controls the media.

Haley drew attention to the age of both Trump and Biden tonight. Trump made some howlers in recent speeches, eg confusing Haley with Pelosi and trailing into gibberish about forts. He repeats the same line multiple times too. If anybody can tell him anything, they should advise him to cut the speeches in half at least.

Are you an open borders type of guy? I presume you understand the potential for trouble when massive numbers of foreigners are allowed into a country with no consultation whatsoever with the people of that country? That is what happened under the British in Palestine. And lots of Arabs were killed too, obviously. If the British were so concerned with the plight of European Jews, why didn’t they take them in Britain, a country far better able to absorb such numbers than Palestine? You think Russian Jews wanted to make ‘the desert bloom’, as the nonsense went, over living in London? The truth is that Palestine became a refuge of last resort because no Western country or empire would take anywhere near enough of them.

The RC church hasn’t been at the centre of power since the appearance of the nation-state. Since 1800, of the great powers only France and Austria-Hungary were Catholic and France had a decidedly ambivalent approach to any religion in the running of the state. Yes, Hitler and many Nazis were born Catholic but they were running a country that had been stridently anti-Catholic under Bismarck. Hitler had strong support among working class Protestants. I brought up Luther just to illustrate that Christian anti-Semitism is a widespread phenomenon not confined to any particular denomination.

No. What I am saying is this: the whole of Christianity and Europe had a problem with anti-Semitism, not just Catholics but Protestants and Orthodox Christians too. Both sides say it. Only one side actually did it.

Well, he certainly wasn’t correct on the Jews for starters. What I mean is you can’t blame the Catholic Church for all the other acts of anti-Semitism in Christianity, eg Russian Orthodox Church, Luther et cetera. Indeed, such madness persists in Russia to the present day. How many Catholic priests would get away with an accusation as outlandish as this? https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/in-russia-an-old-anti-semitic-blood-libel-gains-political-traction That’s a very poor excuse. Luther made things much worse for Jews in Germany, a problem that persisted for many centuries afterwards. For all his other faults, Cromwell was famous for his philo-Semitism and welcomed them. Where did many Jews go after the Reconquista in Spain? To the Ottoman Empire. Things weren’t ideal there but they were much better than in Catholic Spain.

The right is just as woke as anybody when it suits them but young people aren’t as easy to intimidate by accusations of anti-Semitism as older people. What does that statement mean to an atheist?

I am aware of that. Do you agree about Luther? The record is hard to deny there and the Catholic Church can hardly be blamed for it. Instead of turning the page on such hatreds he doubled down on them.

How many failing states have you visited recently? Places without power, water, law and order? Canada is not one of them.

I’m just trying to explain a very basic point. A car company CEO can’t talk to himself or the teachers’ union to sort out a labour dispute. The parties involved have to reach a deal or else it is nonsense. I know the Palestinians don’t have good leadership right now, so why not park the big matters there and focus on confidence building measures e.g. freezing settlement activity in the West Bank? Otherwise there’ll be nothing left to negotiate which is what Likud wants.

If you want a deal between A and B you really have to go to them for it. This ain’t 1917 any more.

With whom was this deal negotiated? Usually a bilateral matter is worked out out by official representatives of both entities. In this instance, it sounds like another stitch-up along Balfour Declaration lines where only party was at the talks.

I’d say those concerns are mixed together. There is a visceral fear of receiving an animal’s organ that is understandable.

These unsavoury Arab regimes have no skin in the game. The only potential problem is explaining to their cowed populations what they are up to.

An Israeli-Palestinian peace proposal negotiated with whom exactly?

Firstly, I wouldn’t be singling out the Catholic Church alone there among Christian denominations although it certainly played a big role. One person who did try to stop the blood libel hysteria was actually a pope, Innocent IV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel Unfortunately, Martin Luther was fanatically anti-Semitic. Not a great start to the Reformation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_antisemitism Secondly, the impetus for a Jewish state arose from the plight of European Jews, above all in the Russian Empire after the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. Fleeing the pogroms, a great wave of migrants headed west. It is curious that Arthur Balfour as Prime Minister oversaw the passing of the Aliens Act in 1905 which, despite his protests to the contrary, had the particular effect of preventing many of these refugees coming to Britain itself, not exactly what one would expect from someone often described as an ardent Zionist. It seems such ardour ended at the cliffs of Dover. Instead he offered a piece of Palestine to them in his infamous 1917 letter to another posh Brit whose text was finalized after extensive discussions with Zionists but absolutely none with Palestinian Arabs. We don’t know how serious the British were about this - at the time they were promising sun, moon and stars to everybody to save their hides in the Great War, including the Turks - but Balfour’s contempt for the wishes of the ‘existing non-Jewish communities’, as he described them in his declaration, seems to have been genuine enough. It mystifies me how anybody can be devoid of sympathy for Palestinians watching powerlessly as their land was swamped by migrants, especially those who propose restrictions on immigration to Canada. Essentially, in their thirty years in charge, the British set up a situation where conflict was well nigh inevitable.

I think a lot of people in North America are genuinely ignorant about Likud’s implacable hostility to a two state solution. There are two reasons for this. Party leaders in Israel took care not to emphasize it in their speeches and interviews in English and American journalists, anxious to avoid trouble, took care not to publicize it. Here’s the party platform from nearly fifty years ago: Above all his predecessors, Netanyahu has played this game of ambiguity in English similar to the nuclear weapons policy. But now the mask is off. Why not divide Democrats over Gaza and help his buddy Trump if he can?

I think such activity is always with us. Politicians can’t help themselves and in the US they have to make a fortune to stay in the game. One of the worst for this is RFK Jr. who isn’t even an elected politician. He’s made a lot of money from his various crusades, esp. the anti-vaxxer stuff.

But what about adaptation? Have you given up on that too? All regions of this country with trees face the threat of unprecedented wildfire frequency and severity. We have to take much more serious action to fight this ever growing threat. If we don’t the Americans will step in and make us do it.

Any mature person should see the world and its past as clearly as possible. Human history is tragic and climate change is extremely serious, becoming more so each year. That doesn’t stop a person from marvelling at the beauty and preciousness of life. If anything, the fragility of our plight makes life even more valuable. For all I know, conservatives in general may be happier by some measures. I doubt some of the ones who post here are happier, though. They show little sign of it.

Actually, I see quite a lot of that activity on the right too. What do you think DeSantis is doing to educational institutions in Florida. These vices are human ones. I’ll leave it to others to decide which of us exhibits more anger in their posts.

Would you consider yourself an angry person? Do you ever wonder whether people might see your posts that way? To any genuine socialists out there - I know it’s absurd to consider me left-wing.

So you’re going to revoke citizenship for what, attending a demonstration? Would that be a positive development? There might be repercussions across the political spectrum in due course.