The economic system we have divides all adult citizens into employers and employees.
Is this the best possible economic system?
Is this the best possible social organization?
Can anyone think of alternative arrangements that might work better? — Vera Mont

Yes— co-ops. There are plenty of examples, even in the US. The workers own and run the enterprise— they act as their own board of directors.

This is the difference between capitalism and socialism, in my view.

But I have given up hoping that sense and decency will prevail in the near future; rather, starvation, war, and greedy stupidity will do the job instead. — unenlightened

Okay. In that case I mostly agree in theory— in practice I have to adopt more optimism, otherwise I guarantee it happens. But history seems on your side, yes.

Don't take it personal, but I do get a bit fed up with being told my language — unenlightened

Seems like you took that personally.

I wasn’t talking about you, I was talking about the effects of defeatism. Maybe you feel it’s already over. In that case, fine— but I’m not sure that’s true yet. Seems a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Game". A 1997 seldom-known, underrated gem starring Michael Douglas. — Outlander

A great movie. One of Fincher’s lesser known. Just re-watched it a year ago or so.

Funny the movies you choose to re-watch. As you get older, it’s as if you’ve never seen them— especially if you only viewed one time. It’s interesting how movies I once thought were the greatest thing since sliced bread (Shawshank Redemption, Thin Red Line) now becomes merely OK, while others I thought were good (The Insider, Jackie Brown) are now excellent. Guess it happens to everyone. An obvious observation, but whatever…

A weird response, given the 5 years worth of my posts. But have your strawman if you wish.

How is Diana Ross only 79?

If we can leave out terms like "point of no return", we won't play into their newest but equally stupid position against mitigation projects. — Christoffer

There’s plenty we can do to mitigate even worse effects. Some warming is locked in— and we’ll likely blow past 1.5 — but it’s not too late for 2C. Anything that can be done should be done.

When scientists warn about catastrophe, they’re mostly talking about tipping points. There’s potential that if these are triggered, we’re toast. There’s a lot of denial about that, even on these very pages, similar to those arguments about how nuclear war isn’t an “existential” threat because, after all, some human beings would survive.

But ignoring moronic stuff like that, it’s important to acknowledge the level of threat we face. But doomism and defeatism isn’t the answer.

Trump supporters calling out others as “dupes.” :rofl:

Drone footage raises questions about Israeli justification for deadly strike on Gaza journalists

No worries— they still had the best intentions. That’s all that matters.

All this was obvious long ago. No one took him seriously within the business community. He’s been good at leveraging debt and building an image. Now that it’s crumbled, his cult following is really all that’s left in terms of believing he’s been anything but a degenerate, sociopathic, narcissistic con man. The rest vote for him because they’ve been convinced Biden and democrats are worse, but who otherwise are rightly embarrassed by him.

Anyway — at this point if Trump wins it’ll be because most people stay home, thanks in part to Biden choosing to run again.

Either 7 more months of Trump or 4 years and 7 months of Trump. But either way, he’ll be history soon enough.

While the several genocide apologists continue their useful work for Likud on this thread, I once again remind the rational and humane participants — or at least those with some decency — of how the world, including the US, isn’t buying their bullshit.

New Polling Shows How Much Global Support Israel Has Lost

Net favorability—the percentage of people viewing Israel positively after subtracting the percentage viewing it negatively—dropped globally by an average of 18.5 percentage points between September and December, decreasing in 42 out of the 43 countries polled.

Half of US adults say Israel has gone too far in war in Gaza, AP-NORC poll shows

Must be that super-powerful Palestinian lobby. Definitely not the simple arithmetic and imagery. Too bad they trust their own eyes and not Israeli propaganda.

Anyway, I look forward to more world war II comparisons and justifications for collective punishment for the foreseeable future…

"The function of Existentialists values is to liberate humankind from craven fear, petty anxiety and apathy or tedium. Existentialists values intensify consciousness, arouse the passions, and commit the individual to a cause of action that will engage their total energies." — Rob J Kennedy

Pretty awful definition.

Heartwarming to see the genocidal, settler-colonial state of Israel becoming a pariah the longer their murders continue. Watching the flimsy excuses crumble is also encouraging.

Too bad for their racist apologists.

Ehhhhhh

Will is required in both camps to improve the situation regardless of partisanship, yes? — jorndoe

Yes, as was true of the European colonizers and the indigenous peoples. Sure, will was required for peace by “both sides.”

At best it’s truism, and trivial, at worst it’s just another attempt to ignore power inequality.

I’m more interested in why this has become such an issue at all. More culture war stuff. I seem to remember it starting with bathroom bills, though obsessions with gender were already around long before.

There’s two sexes, male and female. Gender is more fluid, but is in many ways grounded in sex. “Identifying” is one’s own business, but identity doesn’t magically change reality. Also, if sex is “assigned,” then we’ve officially rendered these words meaningless.

I can’t wait when this social media-created nonsense goes away. Treating the (statistically) rare trans person with basic respect and dignity should be a given. That sex is a biological fact should also be a given. The rest is a stupid waste of time, which I now have unfortunately contributed to. Seems unavoidable these days.

I consider Israeli actions to be simply a police action — tim wood

Yeah, 30,000 + people killed and a mass starvation underway — easily seen as collective punishment by anyone who hasn’t carefully avoided ideologically recalcitrant information for several decades — is just a “police action.”

It’s all Hamas’ fault. When Israeli soldiers kill the hostages, that’s not them pulling the trigger— it’s Hamas. When dropping bombs from planes — the pilots are all hamas. When orders come from Netanyahu, he’s also hamas. Netanyahu’s sick Likud ideology — his neurons, upbringing and education is … Hamas?

Yeah basically it’s Hamas murdering 30,000 people. Makes perfect sense.

Just to update anyone new on this thread, here’s the synopsis of 198 pages:

(1) When Israel kills people, it’s unintentional/accidental. In this they have a near perfect record.

(2) When Palestinians (whether Hamas or whomever) kill people, it’s terrorism. Why? Because even though they’re the oppressed people in this scenario — living for decades in concentration camp conditions under a superpower-backed colonial state — and have killed FAR less people, they do it intentionally.

So how many innocent Palestinian children need to die before Israeli actions count as terrorism/“bad”? No limit— because even if they dropped a hydrogen bomb on Gaza, it would be unintentional and, moreover, Hamas’ fault, since they live amongst the civilians.

Yes, that’s really what people believe.

What Israeli terrorism? […] I know of lots and lots and lots and lots of murderous Palestinian terrorism. — tim wood

No kidding. Your ignorance is your business.

Have you even read the news of what happened on 7 Oct.? What do you think happened on that date? — tim wood

Says the guy who has apparently managed to avoid all information about Israeli terrorism for 50+ years.

Yes, I know what happened. And because I’m a normal human being, I can very easily condemn the deliberate murder of innocent Israeli people.

I can also condemn the deliberate murder of 30+ thousand innocent Palestinian people.

The latter strikes me as worse, especially considering the perpetrators are also the oppressors.

maybe so many Palestinian women and children would not be killed if those brave Arabs, those courageous Hamas, would stop hiding under skirts and behind children. — tim wood

:snicker: Yeah, this was already covered.

Japanese and Germans — tim wood

Yep. Check.

Every death since Oct. 7 on the heads of Hamas and the Palestinians and every one of them unnecessary! — tim wood

And check. So the propaganda mentioned earlier has worked for you. Cool. :up:

I love the line of “Hamas could end this war immediately,” as if every innocent child Israel murders, deliberately and intentionally, is really the fault of Hamas. Like a law of nature. — Mikie

Saddam, by his actions, chose to be invaded." A weird denial of agency. — bert1

Right. A good example. Responsibility is removed, because what they do is inevitable, as if a law of mechanics.

Give the hostages back once Israeli have undone as much of the harm as they can, got all settlers out of West Bank, etc — bert1

I love the line of “Hamas could end this war immediately,” as if every innocent child Israel murders, deliberately and intentionally, is really the fault of Hamas. Like a law of nature.

But saying something like the above is considered absurd.

No wonder the world is condemning Israel. Easy to see through such stupid propaganda.

After all, none of this horror happens but for Hamas's attack on 7 Oct. — tim wood

And October 7th doesn’t happen but for decades of Israeli terrorism. But go on conveniently starting the clock if you want.

Their movement had hungered for this moment for years, but now, after Oct. 7, they felt it was just a matter of time before Jews would be living in Gaza again. "It is ours," said David Remer, 18. "[God] said it is ours."

Israel’s religious right has a clear plan for Gaza: ‘We are occupying, deporting and settling’

What a shocker.

You side with the team that intentionally murders the innocent. — BitconnectCarlos

And you side with the team that murders tens of thousands more innocents, intentionally — but they say it’s unintentional, so it’s all good.

So ask yourself who would be the Hitler apologist. Nazis were by far the greater force, but gave all kinds of justifications. According to you, if they said the magic word, “unintentional,” it’d be fine. No thanks.

The degree of personal brutality exceeds anything the IDF has ever considered. Hamas is much, much more brutal then the IDF — BitconnectCarlos

Yeah, too bad Hamas hasn’t learned to kill tens of thousands of people the right way.

Anyway, the Israeli terrorists have now killed over 30,000 people, mostly women and children. With more to come, thanks in part to apologists like we see here.

So when Ukraine loses this war, as they’re currently doing and bound to do, all that the US — the instigator of the war — will have to show is lots of profits for Lockheed Martin and company.

Guess when it’s Ukrainian lives it doesn’t matter. It’s easy to undermine peace talks and be uncompromising in that case.

but I really don't think it makes sense to declare that anything that exists is 'a being'. — Wayfarer

Good lord.

Being is a very complex word when it comes to philosophy — Abhiram

No kidding. I’ve only been discussing it at length for 5 years. So with all due respect, spare me.

Another 8 months of this crap. Overthinking it, overdramatizing and overanalyzing it.

Should take 30 seconds: vote Biden. 30 minutes to go vote. 30 minutes and 30 seconds. That’s all the time one needs. In a rational world.

Meanwhile, Arctic sea ice may be gone within the decade.

Bunch of animals. — RogueAI

Yeah, Hamas should double their efforts and take these animal murderers of 15000 children out. :up:

That you’re still going on about this is borderline insane.

A being is anything at all. It can also mean exclusively sentient beings. The latter is not what’s used in ontology, whether Aristotle or Heidegger. Trees rocks and ideas are all beings.

And yet the vast majority of the top universities in the world are in the U.S. — RogueAI

And…?

Nevermind, I’ll make it easy: most people don’t go to universities, and of those who do, few get into the best ones. Of that small group, most are morons.

The Supreme Court will indeed find whatever they want to find, as long as it helps Republicans. But this isn’t one of them. Trump shouldn’t be removed from the ballot until he’s convicted. Americans should get the chance to vote for this asshole, if they really want to. He seems ahead in the polls, so it seems there’s a chance they will.

The US is a very stupid country, you see. Or, better, extremely ignorant and desperate.

Easy case. Decision as expected. I’m happy to see it.

If the dopey US wants another four disastrous years of Donald Trump, they should have the chance to vote for it.

This is great. Just released yesterday.



“There’s been an uptick in arguments claiming that any or all solutions are expensive, harmless, and ultimately pointless. Like Madame Web.”

From the highway into Vanderbijlpark, you can see the heavy veil of smoke that cloaks Africa’s biggest steel mill. To the southeast, near the town of Vereeniging, the Lethabo coal power plant, whose name means “happiness,” joylessly belches out ash and toxic sulfur dioxide. Further south, outside a petrochemicals plant in Sasolburg, an adjacent neighborhood regularly reeks of rotten eggs from hydrogen sulfide in the air.

The plants offer steady work for residents at a time when one in three South Africans are unemployed, yet they’re also pumping out harmful emissions at levels so high that Vereeniging is by some measures the most polluted city in the world. The toxins are causing hundreds of premature deaths every year across the Vaal Triangle, and respiratory disease for many of those still breathing. The situation is a stark reminder of the toll the world’s dependency on steel, oil and coal is having on human health – and the difficulty a green transition faces if it costs the livelihood of the workers who depend on old economy jobs.

https://apple.news/AuadVxyMFSHG6_svjlnIj4g

Israeli forces opened fire on Thursday as a crowd gathered near a convoy of trucks carrying desperately needed aid in Gaza City, part of a chaotic scene in which scores of people were killed and injured, according to Gazan health officials and an Israeli military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The details of what happened were unclear, with officials from both sides offering starkly different accounts of the event. The Gazan health ministry said in a statement that more than 100 people were killed and more than 700 injured in a “massacre.” The Israeli official acknowledged that troops had opened fire, but said most of the people had been killed or injured in a stampede several hundred yards away.

Gazans, especially in the north of the territory, have become increasingly desperate for food. The United Nations and other relief groups are struggling to deliver supplies amid Israel’s nearly five-month-old military offensive, as law and order breaks down and Israel imposes restrictions on deliveries.

The official Palestinian Authority news agency, Wafa, reported that “Israeli tanks had opened fire with machine guns at thousands” waiting for aid to arrive.

Around 100 people with gunshot wounds were brought to Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza City, according to its director, Husam Abu Safiya, and injured people were being brought to other hospitals in the north. Mr. Abu Safiya said that the hospital had also received 12 bodies of people killed by gunfire.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/29/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

@Punshhh

I’m going to reserve judgment until we know more. But it’s absolutely tragic.

400,000 muslims dead in yemen. 500k-1 mil dead by assad. 1 mil muslims in concentration camps in china. much greater muslim suffering across the world — BitconnectCarlos

More pathetic deflection. Cool.

but how dare 1 jewish missile inadvertently kill a palestinian child — BitconnectCarlos

Thousands of bombs, and thousands of children.

But a really good try. “Inadvertently.” Lol.

And it will continue indefinitely. With US support.

Link didn’t work. Verified what?

Edit: never mind-I see it now. If this is true I won’t hold my breath for the Times to report it

30,000 now dead— likely an undercount. Vast majority women and children.

Just to remind everyone of the justification: to eradicate Hamas. Which won’t be done, and can’t be done — unless you wipe out the Palestinian population. Which is, I guess, the real goal.

“Hamas terrorists can surrender completely!”

Yeah, and Likud (deadlier and better funded terrorists) can all resign from office immediately. Sounds equally probable.