TIL the existence of antisemitism as reported by the New York Times is “alt right propaganda”

Odd kind of ethnic cleansing, given that Israeli Arabs aren’t getting deported

Oh, I don’t think Israel smells like roses. But when compared to Hamas, they do.

I don’t see how. Ukraine isn’t comparable to Palestine. In fact, the local authority whose attitude is most similar to the Russian government is Hamas.

I don’t really care what the government of Qatar, and by that, I mean Al-Jazeera, thinks is hypocrisy.

And yet, it isn’t sovereign

Okay, I suppose, but it’s also a sovereign nation, whole the UN is not

The UN is a political organization and says whatever countries vote it to say. It’s also not a legislative organization, it’s basically a big political club of people who like to write strongly worded letters about things. Only the UNSC has teeth, and that hasn’t declared it illegal for obvious reasons.

That’s all legal actions the US can take.

You and I agree that they’re unwise and unjustified. But they’re legal.

Yeah. No. Like, I’m not a fan of the embargo, I don’t see any purpose to it.

That being said, it is patently idiotic to say that it’s illegal for the US to not want to trade with Cuba. Brazil can trade with whoever they want and embargo whoever they want. Same with the US. It’s called national sovereignty. If the US was interdicting shipping going to Cuba, or blocking air traffic, or whatever, then he might have a point, but that’s not happening.

US trade policy with Cuba might be unproductive and ill advised, but it is dishonest to say that it is an illegal policy. It’s never illegal to not trade with a certain country. Cuba doesn’t have a right under international law to sell their exports to American consumers.

From what I understand there was a lot of election fixing and fraud to secure his victories, so Gabon wasn’t really a democracy anyways. If that’s right, I guess we should all hope that their military transitions to a responsible civilian government soon.

That’s what I thought.

There’s not a single fucking Muslim country where I wouldn’t face dramatic persecution as an apostate or my gay friends for loving who they do.

Lebanon isn’t a Muslim nation. It has a significant Muslim plurality. And homosexuality is de facto illegal there AND extremely socially unacceptable, with 85% of Lebanese people saying it should be “rejected by society.”

Give me a Muslim nation where homosexuality and apostasy are both legal and socially acceptable.

I’m not saying we should ignore anything. I’m saying we shouldn’t ignore the extremely high rate of extremism within Islam.

But if you want to prove me wrong, point to a single Muslim country where apostasy and homosexuality are socially accepted

It’s not just Muslims that are fundamentalist extremists. But of every major religion, Islam has the highest rate of that kind of extremism. There are plenty of Christian countries which are socially progressive and endorse modern sensibilities. No Muslim countries are.

I have a dear friend of mine who is a religious minority in Egypt (she’s a Copt). The paranoia that she and her parents have when interacting with Muslims is saddening, because of how it’s been justified. Her church has lost several members to religious violence, and she’s lived through a suicide bombing which happened at that church and targeted Christians.

I’m not saying there aren’t Christian extremists. There are. But the Muslim extremist problem is an order of magnitude larger within that faith.

Judge individual Muslims for their own beliefs. But there is no Christian version of the Taliban state or ISIS. And Islam is to blame for the actions of its extremist adherents writ large. It desperately needs a religious reformation, but instead, the Saudis are still chopping the heads off of people who offend their religious police.