The Ba’ath Party was in for almost that long in Iraq. It didn’t help them.

Though the Iranian theocracy has more rule by committee, so they’re probably more resilient than a paranoid one-man dictatorship.

Air supremacy, on its own, doesn’t win wars. It does, however, lead to massive civilian casualties.

So now the Iranian people will bleed because someone wants the imams gone, just like most of the Iranian people do.

“But he kept us out of war!!!”

Fucking idiots.

I just saw that Trump has posted that the US is involved directly with the war.

That means the US is not involved directly with the war.

Remember the Iranian general he vaporized in his first term? Pigboy’s got form.

Non-participant making demands. Sounds like what he was doing to the Ukrainians.

Trump’s a vulture. Let someone else kill it, then feast on the rotting carcass.

In stricter Muslim countries, the chess pieces are more abstract-looking. That’s not really the issue.

The real issue is that they hate anything that makes life enjoyable.

And let’s not forget that it encourages thought, which terrifies religious conservatives.

Wazir (Vesir in some languages) is a king’s advisor. Consultant doesn’t really fit. The role’s more like a medieval chancellor.

And boys.

The Taliban are ultra-reactionary religious conservatives. In other words, scum.

Anything that looks like a good time, they ban. Though they still rape boys for fun, since that’s just Pashtu culture.

I am not Jewish, nor have any ties with Israel,

All the less reason to be repeating propaganda, then.

the Palestinian leadership, in all its “elected” forms has been incredibly toxic over all these decades

Israel had an open policy of killing off the moderates. That’s what you have left when you do that.

Israel also provided support to Hamas to weaken the somewhat less insane Fatah. And now they’re resorting to genocide to deal with the blowback.

If they want sympathy, it’s in the dictionary between shit and syphilis.

It wasn’t the Palestinians’ own country yet

Really? Who else was living there?

So you’re saying, under the dead hand of the Ottomans, that Greeks weren’t Greek, people in the Balkan weren’t Balkan, Egyptians weren’t Egyptian?

And what about Italy prior to its unification? Was that fair game for colonists too?

One of the few positive consequences is that Russia is likely to lose its supply of Shahid drones that Iran was manufacturing.

They should bulldoze her into a landfill.

Don’t assume logical coherence matters to those whackjobs.

Words, to them, are not to convey meaning. They’re like squid ink to obscure that they’re really up to.

Catholicism is derived from one of the few original Christian traditions that survived.

And the Greek Orthodox church has as much claim to that lineage.

One could argue that the Nestorians, the Copts and/or the Ethiopian church might be closer to the original.

Humans are a communal species by nature.

Humans are both communal and competitive by nature. That makes things much more complicated.

Regardles, David Graeber was a wonderfully insightful author and lecturer.

At least we might get some decent music.