It is common sense. When I am unarmed and someone is coming for my life, I have virtually zero chance of survival. With a firearm it will be significa...
That is down to practice. If you live in a safe area then there indeed seems little reason to invest time in familiarizing yourself with a firearm. Bu...
Where I live, the police are undermotivated, underpaid, understaffed and underpriviledged to effectively fight crime. They cannot reasonably keep peop...
I'm not sure about Britain specifically, but left/right seem like outdated terms these days - warped and abused to score quick points with easily-misl...
The most worrying thing about this isn't Trump. This is way, way bigger than Trump. The implication is that these (virtually unaccountable) intelligen...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U-m56KJYlo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GK114NGCM8 Assuming it is true, it would explain a thing or two. For the ...
If one were to take a historical approach to Christianity, it would lead one to the various schools of thought that actually have things in common wit...
This is down to what people have been taught over centuries, and not down to people critically analyzing the two and concluding they are compatible. G...
No idea what that means, but in fact I am secular and simply thought the New and Old Testament being incompatible was a matter of the most basic logic...
It's not even that interesting of a question, really. Anyone with eyes to see can tell that the teachings of Christ are completely incompatible with t...
The reason is obvious, and I'm glad you asked - Saudi Arabia, with its population of only roughly 30 million, is the perfect US "ally" because it is n...
US Middle-East policy has been incredibly successful for many decades. Let me list the successes: - For decades the US successfully prevented regional...
It's irrelvant. US power in the Middle-East would be waning anyway as a result of the shifting balance of power, but the key here is that none of thos...
I wouldn't quite agree. To make such a statement, one must first understand what the principal US goals have been in the Middle-East. In my view, it i...
The average American can afford to not give a fuck, until they cannot. Geopolitically, the United States is destined to be a sideshow, and that's wher...
I'm not looking to get into a semantic discussion about the word 'disaster', but it made a bad situation worse in every conceivable dimension. The onl...
So, basically the 12-Day War has turned out as a complete disaster for the United States and especially for Israel. Neither of two possible goals (reg...
Israel started looking critically vulnerable as purportedly the economic damage it suffered threatened to cause a crisis after only twelve days of war...
As I noted to Benkei, this is not a change of strategy, but a change of method. It was never a feasible alternative to the stick, because why would Ir...
You're making it sound a little more esoteric than it actually is. I'm talking about the US foreign policy establishment, aka "the Blob", the neocons,...
Strive to be humble, and make small positive contributions to the lives of the people around you. That's already hard enough for most. Overly lofty go...
Oh, and this is nonsense too. I'm repeatedly trying to start a conversation about actual geopolitical realities - ergo the 'root causes' - but you've ...
What a curious strawman. Is the thought that phoney amends are made to buy time such a strange thought to you? The Minsk accords were done in the exac...
Iran wasn't the only threat in the region during the time the JCPOA was established, so this could easily be explained as an attempt at placating Iran...
There's nothing unfair about it. It's simply a strong theory. I point towards a long-term trend and give the deeper geopolitical dynamics that have sh...
I both agree and disagree. A long-term strategy does not have to be absolutely uninterrupted - there can be many practical reasons for why it must be ...
I don't think it's an oversimplification. Every theory ultimately is a simplification, and the argument "reality is more complicated" is not an argume...
The calculus is simple. Iran is a large country, rich in oil, with strong allies, with a large, well-educated population, situated on a geopolitically...
Following comments by Medvedev, it looks like the Russians might be floating the idea of giving Iran nuclear weapons. Medvedev stated "several countri...
Well, my point isn't that US strategy is wickedly brilliant. Especially today it appears the US is being outplayed by China and Russia. But it does ha...
On page 5 of this thread I give a more in-depth analysis. I'm not sure what you believe is lacking. If you're expecting me to produce hard evidence th...
Conflict with China looms, and the US needs to 'cut Iran down to size' so that it cannot exploit the power vacuum the US will leave behind when it ful...
There's a lot at stake in the Middle-East. US influence is on a heavy down slope, and the BRICS are ready to swoop in to lay claim to all of the trade...
The worst part about it is that the American people will be happy to blame the president, and pretend that when he leaves office all the evil leaves w...
One important factor in this is that while Israel is the US' preferred partner now, it needn't stay that way. If Iran shows its willingness to coopera...
The crucial thing to understand is that the balance of power in the region is shifting (just like it is shifting globally) away from the United States...
The current Israeli government and the people they represent aren't really all that extreme in their religious beliefs. They're extreme in their natio...
Even though this is the conventional wisdom, I don't think it's actually the case. It's a narrative oft repeated that the United States somehow is beh...
Neo-nazis are some fringe group with no power whatsoever. They're also hella useful to vilify any threat to the establishment - something which you're...
"Neo-nazi master plan", Benkei are you even listening to yourself talk? I've seen this game played by various establishments over time and frankly I h...
What do you expect me to make of the 'secret nazis' canard? I've listened to that drivel coming from the Dutch establishment vis-á-vis populist partie...
A previous poster already mentioned the Springer quote. Some populist politician said something inflammatory - big whoop. All this is is scrouging tog...
You can read their site if you want to know what their policy ideas entail, and they're nothing like you're making them out to be. AfD is a populist p...
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