That interview is infuriating. The suggestion at the end that Palestinians are responsible for their own subjugation is genuinely shocking to me.

It's a good point, but I think we have to be open to the idea that the people running the show are not rational, not intelligent, and perhaps even in the throes of hubris. Perhaps they have an exaggerated sense of their own capability and a mistaken belief in the power of their bombs and drones. Maybe they think they can defeat Iran easily, even if their generals tell them otherwise. And they believe that they need to clear the board before engaging with China, to pick off China's potential allies ahead of time.

The only evidence I can give for this hypothesis is that they do seem to believe that by giving Ukraine an unlimited number of missiles, that Ukraine can expel Russia from its borders. That is without going into the absurd predictions being made at the onset of the war about Russia's imminent total economic and industrial collapse. They have not (recently) proven themselves as being able to, uh, calculate.

I'm not of that age, but imo it's more a technological thing than a generational thing. People, of any age, cannot put their phones down. I personally have to make the conscious decision to disconnect if I'm going to read something or watch a movie or whatever. I imagine that for people who grew up with smartphones, that's like cutting off a limb.

Every day I wake to the news that Biden hasn't yet contracted ebola and feel dispair.

I dunno what gave you the idea that the UK was less racist than the USA or France. Race relations are... different here in the UK than in the states. British identity is coded exclusively white. There is an assumption that "British values" are a thing that exists, and that, for example, Islam is incompatible with them. In general, the conception of what makes someone British is very narrow, whereas US identity is necessarily broader. On the other hand, our cops don't generally make exterminating non-white people their primary goal.

I distinctly remember a Labour MP - I think it might have been Yvette Cooper actually - going on BBC Newsnight... This was maybe ten years ago... And saying, point-blank, that multiculturalism had failed. This was in the context of David Cameron banging on about instilling British values in prospective immigrants and the need for "integration" (conformity) and the like. It was the moment Labour lost me and become a for-the-whites party. This was before Corbyn even. Labour saw their record on immigration as something to apologise for.

For the past five years, to distract from the terrible failures of neoliberalism and austerity, both main parties and our entire media establishment have laser-focused on the few thousand "small boat" refugees that arrive on our shores from countries we've bombed and sanctioned. It was, for some reason, the dominant issue of the election, and prior to this, the key benchmark on which the Conservative party was being judged was in their ability to enact a performatively cruel plan to deport refugees to Rwanda while their claim is being processed (keep in mind, for example, that some of these refugees will be turning up because they're gay, and Rwanda does not enshrine their protection against discrimination and public attitudes towards homosexuality are negative). Both parties pledged to "stop the small boats". Keep in mind, the spectacle of small boats only exists because the UK refuses to allow people to claim for asylum from afar. Anyway, on the first day of these riots, what were people chanting? "Stop the small boats". The media's response is to suggest that it's all Russia's fault.

But yes, also as Awoo says, there is a violent subculture that exists within British society that is always itching for a fight regardless, and that might be a key difference as well.

The idea is that if you can receive live television, you have to pay it. The license funds the official state propaganda apparatus.

They like to make a lot of threatening noises about how they can detect that you're viewing live TV or whatever, but it's all nonsense. They send "officers" out to check (these are people most likely employed by firms like Crapita that magically receive all government contracts regardless of the nature of the work). People don't have to let them in, although the officers like to pretend otherwise. In rare cases they can get a warrant to enter, in which case they are accompanied by pigs.

I believe we're allowed to avoid paying even if we have a TV as long as the TV isn't hooked up to a device that can receive live television. The existence of the internet makes this confusing.

I had 1% hope, and I still feel stupid for it.

Here we have the king of libs himself admitting that his most erotic fantasy is to see democrats rally around a republican.

Dronerbox is with him as well I think. You know, just in case we want to objectively and scientifically measure the potential funniness that Hamas could inflict.

Is it true that if someone takes a kid hostage, you're justified in killing the kid? Sounds fucked up, the idea that killing someone who is doing Bad Things is more important than protecting the life of an innocent child. Hmm. Not sure about this "international rules based" order the crackers keep talking about.

Once their quants decipher our emojis we're cooked

DIE GERMANS