Mate I’ve got briefs that are two decades old

I don’t think I would do that. I kinda like having new-ish underwear.

Yeah, exactly.

They last two or three years and I throw them out as they wear out. Six briefs is my annual top up. They come in packs of six.

Fruit of the Loom men’s briefs.

I buy a six-pack from Walmart every year. I don’t think I’ve ever been so loyal to a brand.

Up until 1967, the bad guys were Britain.

Britain seized Palestine from the Ottomans during WWI with the help of the local Palestinians, promising the Palestinians sovereignty in exchange for their help overthrowing the Ottomans.

At the same time, Britain promised to create a homeland for Jews in Palestine (in the Balfour Declaration), and Jewish refugees from Europe began settling in Palestine. Britain did this because they thought they might gain the support of Jewish financiers for their war efforts.

The Balfour Declaration was deliberately vague about whether Britain was giving all of the land to the Jews or just some of the land. It was vague because Britain wanted to appeal to Jewish Zionists (who wanted all of Palestine) while not alienating the Palestinians.

Britain never did divide the land, resulting in two different populations who felt they legally owned the land, one who had always been there, and one who mostly arrived as refugees.

When Britain left following WWII, a civil war broke out for control of the land. A border was eventually drawn at the line of control (which ran through the middle of Jerusalem), and Israelis declared the new State of Israel, while Palestinian refugees fled to their side of the border or neighbouring states. That was in 1948.

So, up until then, it’s a messy situation created by Britain, but one which eventually resulted in the land being split (albeit violently), with both Israelis and Palestinians having a state, and each having part of Jerusalem. The world accepted this as the new status quo and hoped it would be sustained peacefully.

That changed in 1967 when Israel annexed the Palestinian lands (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) in the Six Days War. Since then, Palestinians have been living under a harsh Israeli occcupation as a stateless people (meaning no citizenship), with their rights and freedoms strictly curtailed. Palestinians have been resisting through a number of resistance movements, usually designated as terrorist groups in the Western media.

There was a political movement towards peace and repartitioning of the land that peaked in the 1990s, but since then it has been held up by a series of right-wing governments in Israel. Meanwhile, Israel has been aggressively building Jewish neighbourhoods (called settlements) in the formerly Palestinian lands of the West Bank.

So since 1967, Israel has pretty clearly been the bad guy.

The terrorist attack that killed 1200 young Israelis was horrific, and we should all hope nothing like that ever happens again. But the root cause of the attack was Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. The way to prevent future terror attacks is to end the oppression of the Palestinian people.

They’ll both be disasters for the USA.

Trump will be a disaster because millions of Americans who are currently on the brink of poverty will sink into poverty under his policies, amplifying all kinds of social problems and civil unrest.

Harris will be a disaster because she will escalate unpopular military conflicts, overextending the military, further lessening the prestige of the US, and encouraging countries to de-dollarize.

The next four years are going to be rough. There’s no avoiding it.

Ghettoes were neighbourhood where Jews were forced to live in Nazi Europe, so I’d say that sounds worse.

I hoped I might be eligible for Irish citizenship through my grandfather, and recently found out that I’m not.

My visa runs out soon and I have to return to the imperial core.

There’s good evidence that Russia was behind the pro-Brexit sentiment in the UK as well.

You mean that Russia supported pro-Brexit sentiment, right?

You’re not saying Russia was the source of pro-Brexit sentiment, are you?

I keep wondering if he would have sat quietly while Biden commits a genocide in Israel, and I feel certain he wouldn’t have. He was pro-Israel, but not like that.

The party has definitely changed.

It’s okay, guys. She might have just been talking about pizza!

By the way, the Democrats didn’t become this way overnight. They were steered this way by their leadership.

The party in general follows the direction of the leaders. The people here are calling Gabbard a Russian agent because Hillary Clinton did that in 2016. The people here are okay with supporting Israel’s genocide because Biden said he supports Israel.

I will be watching over the next two months to see if Harris and Walz can steer the party back to sanity, but so far it’s not looking good.

However, we are NOT MAGA […] we want what’s best for everyone in this country, including those on the Right.

Are you sure? Because, by the way, people in this thread have called me dipship, shithead, idiot, moron, puppet, troll, and told me to fuck off multiple times, invariably with a slew of upvotes.

And why? Because I said I don’t think Gabbard is a Russian asset? They’re making excuses for supporting genocide, but I’m the one who deserves abuse?

And you want me to believe that Democrats aren’t like MAGA? It sure looks like MAGA to me, and you’re telling me to not believe my own eyes. (Maybe easy for you when you’re not the one being abused for the crime of disagreeing with people.)

Maybe the Democrats have become MAGA and you just don’t want to notice it.

Behold the Democrats. They love war, they love doubling down on war, and anyone who opposes their war agenda must be loudly denouced as a Russian.

None of them even tried to argue that the Democrats value peace (because they can’t, can they?). They just tried to say Russia is worse.

Yeah. It sure is great watching Democrats turn against the most benign, inoffensive, and liberal-friendly news channel in the country because they attempted the most basic level of neutral journalistic rigor (and even had to explain in their article the concept of neutral journalistic rigor).

Makes me super-optimistic for the future of democracy.

I can’t wait for Democrats to accuse NPR of being Russian assets.

You seem to think that everything is black and white.

The person I replied to likened me to a Nazi.

(Even though they’re the one supporting a party conducting a genocide.)

this bs

It’s NPR.

If you run into assholes all day…

Then you must work in politics.

‘mate’

Lol. You’re Australian.

People, this guy isn’t here to honestly debate us. Keep up the good work calling his bullshit out, though!

You know, I used to do quite a lot of volunteer organizing work for the Democrats when I was younger. I was even on the Christmas card list of a federal senator. (I mean, it’s not a big deal, but I valued it. I held onto those cards until last year.) I spent years of my life on that.

Boy do I regret that now.

Oh. My apologies for not recognizing your username.