This is a pretty well-debunked canard. 1) The Taliban knew OBL was guilty since AQ had basically admitted it and whatever else you can say about them, they aren't stupid, and 2) their offer was to extradite him to a third neutral country --no candidate was ever named -- that would ostensibly put him on trial free of US influence.
The entire offer was absurd.
Not really. In chimps, if you want to have the highest status as a male, you have to form coalitions of friendship with other relatively high-status males. Chimp males who try to simply beat the shit out of everyone else without forming coalitions, tend to get "dealt with" prison style where the rest of the troop's males show up 4 or 5 deep and either beat the shit out of them, or fucking kill them.
Chimps are metal as fuck in this regard.
That said, while it's true that we get a lot of insight into human behavior by studying non-human primate behavior, it's not the case, nor does anyone who matters argue as such, that human behavior is or should be precisely analogous to what we see in our close relatives.
I actually met and interviewed Mech some years ago while working on a story regarding wolves in Oregon. He was a kind and very approachable person.
Fun fact; his name is pronounced "Meech," not "mech" as in "mechanic."
And just like marijuana leads to heroin.
It should be "So long YouTube and thanks for all the fish." Goddammit!
If you're going to borrow from Douglas Adams, at least get it right.
No one is saying that you can't do it, just that it's a lot more difficult and contentious and time consuming.
Has no one on Lemmy ever taken an intro political science course? This is really basic stuff.
No, it's authoritarianism vs democracy. It's a very well-known concept in political science that authoritarian regimes can make decisions and execute on them far faster than democracies. The problem is that autocratic decision making ultimately creates instability by implementing policies and decisions that don't have a broad base of stakeholder support. Why should any citizen support a decision that was made without their input or consent?
Wikipedia is kind of wrong in the sense that there's always been Palestinian Jews.
The issue is that due to Zionism, a ton of European Jews moved into the region starting at the turn of the last century and accelerating following the Holocaust.
Said Jews then set about building a thriving western-style industrialized democracy that was opposed at every turn by an Arab and Islamic population that opposed its very existence on what can only be thought of as religious grounds.
All of which can only be taken as an indication of how deeply corrupting and counter-progressive are virtually all forms of institutionalized organized religion.
Fuck all of them. Organized religion sucks ass and should rightly be seen as a vestige of the past.
The PNW has a very specific history with this, in the case of Oregon going back to how the state was founded, but it's nowhere near as entrenched as in the south and most rural people up here have zero interest in such things.
Also you are incorrect that it's strictly rural. At least in the case of Portland, in spite of our reputation in the rest of the country, there's always been a relatively visible fascist fringe.
I don't mind different views, I mind deeply stupid and uniformed opinions stated as fact.
That remains to be seen. In situations like this people tend to either double down on, or turn against their leaders. I think the dust needs to settle a little more before we know which way the wind is blowing for Netanyahu. My hunch is that you are probably right, at least in the short-term.
I got a star-shaped paperweight with my name on it together with 100 dollars worth of gift cards.
This for two years in a row, because everyone really needs two star-shaped paperweights with their name on them.
The truth of the above statement is borne out by its sheer pedestrian banality in the sense that it's not something anyone would ever bother to lie about.
The sad part about it is that I am a dues-paying union member. One can only imagine how much worse it is for the non-union blokes.
At least the union gives me a way to fight back and to have a little dignity and self-respect.