I would have not paid the 18% fee

Putting in a -18% tip when I swipe my credit card.

Depends who is doing the stealing and who is doing the fencing on their behalf.

So what’s the remedy?

What about the people paying them to do it?

Its practically tradition. People have been robbing antiquities from the Mediterranean for centuries.

It integrates or something, idfk. Part of the Microsoft suite so we all get it by default. No, don’t ask why licenses just got more expensive, I promise its free.

Jooooin uuuuuus

When the US builds an oil export terminal in Nigeria, the location is fully privatized and administered by western nationals. There’s no path from the dockyard to the manager’s office. There’s no state interest in the facilities, save some meager tax revenue that’s shaved to the bone by accounting tricks. There’s no Nigerian retirees who get to profit off the dockyard’s operations through pensions or 401ks. The ports are export-oriented, with the intention of taking Nigerian natural resources out.

When a Chinese state enterprise builds a dockyard in Kenya, there’s shared ownership out of the gate. Kenyans share managerial roles. Kenyans share equity. The Kenyan state government gets a huge boost in revenues. And the ports are bidirectional, with Kenyan locals getting to benefit from cheap Chinese imports - particularly high tech imports like electronics and motor vehicles - as Chinese firms export Kenyan minerals.

Bi-directional trade is how the old English colonies worked, too. And that trade made English colonial enclaves incredibly prosperous both for the old world mercantilists and the new world plantation bosses. Its a lucrative model for everyone on the inside track.

The worst thing you can say about China is that they’re simply doing imperialism better than the Americans.

There’s certain openings. Since the war started, even Biden’s designated state department armies dealer can no longer stomach the job.

I’m glad for the latest Mario movie entirely because of Jack Black as Bowser.

The Resident Evil films were pretty good, too. The Doom movie was at least as much fun as your standard B-movie shoot’em’up. Uncharted and the first Tomb Raider could have stood in for any Mummy and was head and shoulders above the last two Indiana films. The Street Fighter and Mortal Combat movies were middle-of-the-road genre films.

I don’t think Zelda has to fail on its face. But I think there’s a lot of places where the screenwriters can go wrong. Translating the dungeons in a Zelda game to the big screen will be difficult in a way a Tomb Raider or Far Cry aren’t. And working side-characters into a game that’s very explicitly a solo adventure will be hard.

I think they’d have had an easier time with Dragon Quest. I’m very confident they could make a good Metroid movie, since that’s just reskinning Aliens 2. But there are definitely examples of game-to-movie films working, so long as they fit with a traditional Hollywood script. Zelda just doesn’t do that well.

It’s like you guys are embodying the Godzilla “let them fight meme”, but forgetting that they are murdering thousands of people in the process.

The meme was something of a joke in the movie, in large part because all anyone could do was kick back and let them go at one another. At best, a distraction would involve one or the other flattening you and getting back to the business at hand.

The Ukraine War is very much a Clash of the Titans, in so far as there’s nothing a domestic Russian or American do to oppose these colossal military forces. To actively oppose the old Cold War powers is an exercise in futility. All you can really hope for is that they exhaust themselves - possibly even kill each other off - and leave you alone.

Neither was Reagan. What does it say that Biden’s worse on Israel foreign policy than Hollywood’s biggest ghoul?

The purpose of the UN is to have a diplomatic environment where all can be heard in front of all others.

A dialogue that fails to yield productive policy is mere busy work.

It’s to encourage diplomatic solutions to problems and to defuse conflicts.

Right now we’re having a debate over whether a ceasefire would be antisemitic. That’s not a conversation that behooves diplomatic solutions or defuses conflicts. It just serves to distract public attention while folks in Gaza are exterminated.

Hey now. Don’t discount all of our client states.

Its just a thing we’re expected to say.

Fuck Putin. Fuck Hamas. Fuck Trump.

Its the sound you make when you want to draw a sharp line between Our Glorious Patriots and Their Villainous Terrorists.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/05/24/ronald-reagan-wasnt-afraid-to-use-leverage-to-hold-israel-to-task/

In addition to not vetoing UN resolutions, Reagan took several actions that many in Israel and the United States perceived as anti-Israel. For example, on June 7, 1981, less than six months after Reagan took office, Israel launched a surprise bombing raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, and, in so doing, violated the airspace of Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Reagan not only supported UNSC Resolution 487, which condemned the attack, but he also criticized the raid publicly and suspended the delivery of advanced F-16 fighter jets to Israel. Moreover, over the strident objections of Israel and the pro-Israel U.S. lobby groups, Reagan approved the sale of advanced reconnaissance aircraft (AWACS ) to Saudi Arabia, which Israel then viewed as a hostile state.

A year later, in August 1982, when Israeli forces advanced beyond southern Lebanon and began shelling the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in Beirut, Reagan responded with an angry call to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, demanding a halt to the operation.

In addition, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Reagan intervened directly when Israel threatened to blow up the Commodore Hotel in downtown Beirut, which housed more than 100 western reporters. As David Ottaway, who was then the Washington Post Middle East correspondent and was in the building, pointed out, the Israeli defense minister did not like the media coverage the invasion was getting and wanted to close down the media center.

Biden, on the other hand, even though he had an hour’s notice, failed to intervene to stop Netanyahu from bombing and collapsing the 12-story building that housed the offices of Al Jazeera and the Associated Press in Gaza during the recent bombing campaign. He also failed to publicly condemn the attack, let alone challenge Israel’s contention that the building sheltered Hamas military intelligence assets, despite AP’s insistence that its staff had no evidence that such assets were or ever had been present.

In addition to allowing the UN resolutions to pass and suspending the F-16 delivery, Reagan also restricted aid and military assistance to Israel to help force its withdrawal of troops from Beirut and central Lebanon.

Therefore, if in the future some members of the Biden administration or Congress want to join the international community in condemning Israel’s behavior, or in conditioning U.S. assistance or arms transfers and face resistance from Republicans, they need only point to the precedents established by President Reagan in the first instance.

Or do you just not consider Arab people humans?

Its been standing US policy to dehumanize Arab people since at least 2001.

Its different because America and Israel are democracies. Therefore, they can kill as many people as they want and its okay actually.

Putin is an evil dictator leading a rogue state (That’s on the verge of collapse! Any day now!) And suggesting he is in any way like an Israeli or an American flags you as a Chinese Robot Antifa Fifth Columnist Hamas Affiliated Trump Supporter.

UN doing absolutely diddly in two major theaters of conflict rather than just the one.