A family member of mine is mayor of a provincial town. She has to deal with protesters reenacting the Neurenberg rallies, angry drug dealers and the run of the mill psychiatric melt down citizen. There is a panic button in her penthouse.

Nobody is crying about Jihad and ten years from now she will be living in the green zone.

In my country it was eventually accepted that some people are too far gone. The junkies got their daily ration of drugs until they died of natural causes.

I don't think America is culturally capable of doing that though.

It's really a disgrace that the only country who stops Israel is a brutal dictatorship. It should have been the EU- self proclaimed protector general of human rights lmao.

Stop Israel attacking Hezbollah? Just wait. soon they will join US to help open the strait.

One of the advantages of the veto power of every member of EU is that the bloc is unable to turn into a new global (or even regional) policeman, however strongly a simple majority feels about Israel, Iran or anything else.

It would be unlikely anyway - European voters prefer butter to guns, sometimes a bit too much - but this makes the probability zero and I am happy for that. This continent is dotted with mass graves from a thousand previous wars, stretching to at least the Late Stone Age. Constant wars were one of our curses, and our ancestors launched way too many crusades for various holy causes.

Why would EU be expected to take military actions in Israel, Iran or Lebanon? Or Saudi Arabia, UAE, Venezuela, Cuba or USA?

And why wouldn't EU be expected to take military actions to open the strait?

Piracy is and always has been the only way for more obscure stuff.

Personally I do not feel guilty pirating a decades old TV show or movie. And I really doubt the industry cares much either.

As an atheist I dislike all religions including Judaism which would make me an antisemite?

In the words of Benjamin Sisko "I can live with it".

Sadly true. Just because the people who stole your phone are caught on camera doesn't mean anyone gives a shit. It still takes policing and a DA bringing the case.

Wait a minute! Dutch people were forbidden from buying more than 2 bottles of sunflower oil for a few months!

It was my generation's 1945 winter of starvation.

Or Trump. In his own words he doesn't care about American citizens financial troubles at all.

One wonders if the people who hated Biden for egg prices feel any shame at all?

Not really. It’s a cult.

Well there’s a handful. For them you can suggest

https://leavingmaga.org

Glass is easily recyclable if you want to- my country has been doing so since the 1970s. Metals also. Paper no problemo.

Plastics? You're fucked. There's no money in it. Takes too much efffort. Contamination with food.

It's remarkably ironic that we are slowly returning to aristocracy.

Only it's worse this time. Say what you want about those French poofs and British lords: they were expected to do their duty on the battlefield.

To be fair, this is the second time the US has done a "trial run" on this sort of oligarchy. The Robber Barons of the First Gilded Age left their names on a lot of buildings in the country and left a lot of scars in several major industries.