So you mean to tell me that when corporations, bigger, richer and more influential than entire governments and countries, are left unregulated to manufacture and advertise products designed by psychologists and behavioural scientists to capture as much of our attention as possible, our attention is captured and we can’t spend time on beneficial hobbies? That’s really unexpected…
Enough so that I can pay the AC bill during the night, cause healthy sleep requires low temperatures.
Besides that, I will ask for as much as I can get away with.
Depends really. What do you value in your life? What ethical framework do you use? Do you value freedom and self determination, do you value people different from you as much as people of your nationality/race? Or perhaps do you value the Western stability, growth, dominance and wellbeing at the expense of the economic South more? There’s no objective answer, it depends on you and your viewpoint.
If we do away with the propaganda and misinformation we are left with this question. Because the US and Europe would never support anyone for the sake of them being the only democracy in the middle east or fighting terrorists or whatever. If that were the case the US wouldn’t have been complicit with the dictatorships of the gulf countries or any other of the innumerable dictatorships they have established throughout the years in the world. And they would also not be funding the ISIS or other terrorist groups in Columbia, Cuba, Nicaragua and so many other countries.
No dominant organisation in the world like the US state would give a significant amount of money(like it does for Israel) for something that doesn’t serve their material interests, namely the perpetuation and/or increase of their power and influence.
So what do you value? Freedom and dignity for all, or more power for the Western states and corporations (- and whatever religious crap you want to excuse colonising and ethnically cleansing a nation)?
If you see this, it’d save you a lot of time from arguing about every single event of the conflict. If you see every human in the world as equal and deserving of freedom, then you’d see that Israel and the West is bringing these people at the brink of extinction, torturing, killing, humiliating, starving them, expelling them from their land, destroying their vital civil infrastructure, stealing their land and property for 75 years now. And when you see all this (not from Western mainstream media though), you’d recognise the right for armed struggle against a colonizing entity that Israel is. No civilian casualties are acceptable, but the ones affected in 7/10/23 would have to turn against their government for ethnically cleansing Palestinians, bringing them to that desperate point of retaliation, not Palestinians.
Because it’s a far right party. Trump happens to be more far right, but that doesn’t change that fact. I’m not voting for far right, neoliberal, genocidal freaks.
At how many genocides do you draw the line? If the democrats committed a second one along with the Palestinian genocide they are committing right now? You’d again say trump would be worse, vote for Harris. If they committed three? Four? No matter what they do, Trump would do worse, so again you’d tell us to vote for Harris.
I draw the line at a genocide and at everything this neoliberal party stands for. I am not giving that party my approval because it is going in the exact opposite direction of what I stand for. At some point, the lesser evil is too evil.
Some other country would be in their place. (Almost) Every country given the chance commits atrocities. Sometimes I wonder what the world would be without countries.
Ayn Rand’s fountainhead, by a fat mile. I was young and didn’t know better
That’s fair, but I believe cities can’t be like that regardless. It’s where you live everyday, the forests do not fix that. Your surroundings everyday affect mental and physical health (and these two interact with each other as well) and although a Sunday walk in nature is important, it will be negligible.
You have a much higher chance of living a sedentary life because you have to be in a car all day, so statistically less exercise, more obesity, worse quality of sleep (shown in scientific studies) all of which lead to mental health deterioration. There is also more noise pollution the more cars there are and the less trees there are, not only in the house(let’s suppose you have good insulation) but also when you are out of the house. This is causing stress (you can’t always realize this but it’s happening), so high blood pressure, mental health issues etc. And of course air pollution. Besides all that, there are also less interactions with other people, less public spaces, so less socialization which is also a big factor in mental health and overall wellbeing. I personally really value the latter.
I’m not trying to throw shade to the country, I wish the way of life was better, cause I’d like to work there for some years and I’m not saying Europe is perfect, obviously the problems exist there as well but to a very lower degree. I could live almost wherever in Europe, but I can never live in the US.
Haven’t been there, I can imagine, but could it be any other way? I mean, what would the alternative be? Have no forests and green spaces in the entire country? That would not be sustainable.
Your urban planning. Your cities are unwalkable, the scenery makes me depressed af, everything is scaled up for cars, even restaurants are for cars, the highways are huge, all I can see is tar. I don’t know how you can live like that.
Disgusting asphalt desert dystopia
There’s AC in public transport.
Your privacy is of no concern to us, like you could claim you want more privacy, which you can achieve by commuting with a jet(people can stare at you through the car window) - that doesn’t mean the world has to cater to your unreasonable demands.
The fact that there is a park in your neighborhood doesn’t mean anything, since the public spaces are simply not enough. We don’t have more green instead of this sea of tar, because some people like you don’t care about either the environment or the alienation of the communities or the health implications of car centric cities.
The opposite of one trip every two weeks isn’t everyday, it’s once a week on a bike, I’m sure you can make this sacrifice since…yk I specifically explained how our world and lives are ruined from car centric cities. And if you are not willing to make this insurmountable sacrifice, you are just a lost cause and an enemy to green walkable vibrant cities and therefore to us.
You are not fucking crazy, you are fucking toxic to comment in this place to begin with.
That’s the whole deal of maximizing profit. If you can get your employees to work extra for free, you have a very successful business model.
If you think this is sad then maybe you’d agree that we need a change.
Yeah you’re right, who likes no pollution, no noise, strong communities and third places to bond with people, kids having public spaces to play in their neighborhoods, green, sustainability, healthy, active people that don’t sit in front of a wheel all day long… Who likes all that seriously?
I’ve actually encountered it a couple of times trying to access some Israeli sites. More specifically I’ve encountered it in Hareetz for sure and I think it was after I disabled the clearURLs extension that it was fixed. And another site that I still cannot access is the Israeli post. I’ve managed to access it after turning on VPN and trying a couple different locations, but it gives me this 403 error whenever I try to open it w/o VPN. And also on the same site, my antivirus has warned me about a JS/Agent.PIV threat a couple of times that I’ve tried to open it, not every time, but it has happened multiple times, as I’ve had to track an order for some days.
This was wonderful, thanks for sharing
A good start would be the books they are currently banning in Florida(and elsewhere) in your up until now “non fascist” country.