I was cheering for the "New Iran" movement about 5 years ago, and I'll cheer for these protesters today.
The Iranian people deserve self-determination, freedom from an oppressive government, and the sovereignty to elect their own officials in a new form of government. The world will be a better place when they have it.
Let Iran become the cultural hub that it once was.
Most issues of race and gender are about wealth disparity, i.e. social class.
If someone from a "targeted minority group," say, a woman of color, is in a high-paying administrative position with a comprehensive benefits package and good healthcare, and has a 7+ figure net worth, and all the things that come with wealth and social position, then you can't reasonably say she's oppressed.
Dividing men versus women in this fake gender war is socially engineered by the oligarchy to reduce social cohesion and make it impossible for people to band together. Likewise, exacerbating racial tensions is used to divide the working class into easily manageable chunks or silos.
The only way anybody will ever overcome oppression, regardless of gender or race, is for people of all genders and races to work together towards the common goal of reducing wealth inequality. That doesn't seem possible at the moment because everyone is so upset about their personal oppression or their group's marginalization or whatever pet grievances they have, that they'll never consider to work together with someone who seems to be outside their in-group.
If people buy into the belief that it's about men versus women or about black versus white, then people won't be able to see past their differences and work together, because they'll believe the "other" has interests that compete with their own.
That's why the above commenter said the only true conflict is class conflict. Everything else is socially engineered by the people at the top to keep everyone else broken and divided and easy to control.
I'll remember that the next time women take men talking about men's issues as an attack on women.
Mamdani has expressed support for the Jewish population of NYC.
The only thing he did here that Israel is criticizing him for, is reaffirming the distinction between Jewish identity and the state of Israel. The definition he scrapped conflated the two; it was a bad-faith definition aimed at obfuscation.
It's entirely possible to validly criticize the actions of a nation's government without promoting hatred of its people; the fact of Israel being an ethnostate doesn't change that.
It's also harmful to conflate Jewish identity with Israeli politics, because there are many Jewish people who don't support the actions of the far-right, ultra-orthodox government of the state of Israel. Conflating them results in the dispersal of blame for Israel's actions across all Jewish people everywhere, and that is anti-semitic.
Also, Arabic is a semitic language, so doesn't that make islamophobia a form of anti-semitism? That would mean Benjamin Netanyahu is the biggest anti-semite alive today. Just food for thought...
I think that's a false dichotomy, because someone can be vegan and only eat organic. It's not mutually exclusive, and the vast majority of people are probably neither.
If you mean that organic produce isn't vegan, then I'd say you're taking the ideological purity test a little too far. If you really want to reduce your harm to 0, then the only way to do that is to be like the Jain Sallekhanas who vow to eat nothing for the rest of their lives.
My point was that even non-organic agricultural practices harm ecosystems and wildlife, so avoiding organic foods as a vegan is pointless.
Can you offer more context than that? I'm not sure what the reference is. Which one is that?
Between organic or non-organic produce, I'm not aware of either one involving infanticide.
That's kind of cliché, honestly. It's a common assumption that in reality doesn't necessarily always hold true. It may even be an appeal ad populum.
The easiest counterexample is to say that it's entirely possible to be surrounded by assholes, while being one of a few people who isn't a jerk (perhaps being loosely defined as someone who makes an effort to be respectful and considerate of others, an increasingly rare characteristic).
If we reject that claim, then it makes it virtually impossible to make a valid social critique, as it gives a free pass to anything that's a collective responsibility or widespread issue. If the norm is to be a jerk, then the culpability would rest on anyone who resists conformity, according to that logic.
It also normalizes abusive behavior. Often an abuser will push their victim past the breaking point, then use the result to smear the victim in the public eye, making the victim look like the bad one. Or on a larger scale, in an oppressive society, it would make the only ones willing to stand up look like the bad guys, making it a convenient tool of oppression.
Even worse than that, with just $100 million in a risk-free CD making 3% APY, one receives $3 million per year from interest alone.
Nevermind how to spend a billion dollars in one lifetime, how do you spend three million dollars in one year?
Any wealth above $100 million should be taxed at the end of each fiscal year. Nobody could reasonably need more than that. Of course, it would be complicated by carving out exceptions for real assets. Anyone with that much money would just buy a new yacht every September to avoid it, but that should still be taxed as capital gains.
it enables them to singlehandedly influence politics to their personal liking by buying politicians and media institutions.
Most conservative americans seem to believe "freedom" includes permitting the wealthy to rig the game in their own favor. They don't seem to consider the ways in which that infringes on everyone else's freedom.
That's why "anarcho-captialism" and even "libertarian-capitalism" are both farces. There's no room for liberty under plutocracy. Only the financial oligarchs have any degree of freedom in those systems, which is no better or different than an aristocracy, just without the overt nepotism (the nepotism becomes covert instead, by mislabelling generational wealth as a "meritocracy").
Meanwhile had that billion dollars been distributed to the worker class through fair wages or even to the consumers through fair prices it would have contributed to the economy and the well-being of everyone.
I agree, but too many people only measure the success of an economy by top-down metrics such as GDP, gross revenue, stock market growth, etc. They ignore factors such as cost of living, wage stagnation, median income, RIFs, and the job market in general, social mobility, cost of healthcare and education, etc., leading to such buffoonery as claiming "unemployment is good for the economy" and "deflation is bad for the economy."
And then they come back with stupid arguments like "econ 101, bro." Classical economic theories are a soft science at best, arguably even a pseudoscience, and yet finance bros treat it like it's a hard science. They cite them like scripture, or like laws of physics, but they're not nearly so immutable or infallible. Especially when they focus solely on supply-side and neoliberal economics, which were clearly developed with an agenda.
Even Adam Smith gets quoted out of context, while ignoring the fact that he was opposed to many of the ideas his work is often used to rationalize.
If only the POTUS would wait to hear from his intelligence officials before making public comments based on the word of an evil, lying, psychopathic dictator...
But if you avoid buying organic, then you're supporting agricultural practices that harm local ecosystems, pollinators, waterways and aquatic life, bird populations, etc...
So which is worse, honestly? You're right that perfectionism isn't possible, but it's entirely possible to become overwhelmed with the constant triage one must do to reduce one's impact as much as possible.
Maybe he means harmful to the world's rainforests?
I doubt it, but maybe...
He seems to think the entire democratic base is composed of ML tankies.
If only he knew what MLs thought of democrats...