It’s interesting in the case of Ukraine (also with cluster munitions): the problem is that they leave UXO which is then a danger to life and limb for decades after the war. But, so is being under the thumb of a murderous, genocidal dictator. So surely the standard should be not an outright ban, but a ban on using mines outside your own territory, or the territory of another country with their consent?

It gets difficult with territorial disputes but it also needs to be practical.

The term “social murder” is co-opting violent language to describe things that are not violent. I’m sure you can understand the difference even if you do like to use the term. What you mean is that the consequences of politics can be extremely severe, but once you see that is not the same as violence the way we both understand the term literally, you see that “politics is violent” is not a useful reply.

What you seem to be trying to say is that, because political decisions can cause mass deaths, violent language is by default justified in political discourse. That’s dangerous and wrong, and leads to politicians getting killed. And it’s not going to be right-wing politicians who get killed the most, because right-wingers are more l ikely to carry out political violence, once it becomes normalised through violent political discourse.

But this was about Israel more than the USA.

There are significant relevant differences between Britain and Israel today compared to German Jews and Germany in the late 1930s. But the same calculations need to apply when you allow violence into your speech: is it going to increase the risk of violence against innocent people? Anti-semitic assaults in the UK rose by approximately 50% in the wake of October 7th. (I was not able to find comparable figures for Islamophobic assaults, unfortunately), so this is against a backdrop in which Jews are at an increased risk of violence. So although “death to the IDF” does not call for violence against Jews in general, as the Chief Rabbi wrongly claimed, it does increase that risk.

Coming from the other direction, shouting “death to the IDF” does not materially call for justified action in a way that “fuck the IDF” does not; they are both merely expressing directionless disapproval. They will be seen too as calls for the governments to stop funding Israel, providing it with weapons, and associating with a government actively and brazenly carrying out ethnic cleansing.

We can also see that things are different for the people directly affected by violence. If a Palestinian shouts “death to the IDF” I don’t see that as unacceptable violent speech; I see that as an inevitable response to the violence enacted upon them. But Bob Vylan is not a Palestinian being attacked by the IDF so we shouldn’t give him the same latitude.

Mass music festivals are perfectly acceptable places to make political statements.

I didn’t say anything about political statements, I mentioned violent statements. There is a big difference between wishing death on people and expressing your disapproval with them, and anyone who can’t express the latter without the former should, generally, expect to be censured (and censored). The angry person you quote doesn’t even express violence.

It wasn’t though, was it. The IDF are not Jews in general; they are multi-ethnic and are the armed forces of a country at war. Would a chant of “death to the Russian Armed Forces” be Russophobic? “Death to the Wehrmacht” for anti-German during World War 2? “Death to Hamas” for Islamophobia?

Identification of the armed forces of a state with a state is a sign of fascism, and the identification of the state with an ethnic group is a sign of extreme nationalism - though admittedly that is less the case with Israel and Jewish people.

Chanting “death, death to the IDF” is violent and inappropriate at a music festival. “Fuck the IDF” would’ve been fine though.

I wonder if this is the best they can come up with in response to the airbase attacks?

I’m sure Netanyahu will be calling the IDF anti-semitic in a few hours.

You say “maybe” like it’s some unknowable quantity, but we can see what is going on in Hungary and that it’s getting increasingly authoritarian, and we can see Russian attempts to influence western democracies through bot farms and the like. It’s not unknowable; the evidence is there.

I can’t quite put my finger on why he might want a corruption investigation into a politician dropped…

Never mind the American planes… these planes if nuclear-armed will be armed with American-owned bombs that will require American authorisation to arm.

The high dependency ratio is going to continue to be a problem for quite a while. The time to solve the aging population problem was decades ago when their could have been policy to create budget surpluses, so that the boomer generation paid for its own care. But that didn’t happen and we can’t go back in time to fix it. All solutions now suck because that opportunity has been lost: you can screw the boomers by leaving them to die covered in bedsores and filth, or you can screw the younger generations by making them pay for care, or some combination.

What if they’re paying their share/most of their share of taxes now, but a change pushes them into not doing so? These things ar enot all-or-nothing.

I don’t think this will affect people’s desire to have children at all (Denmark’s strong social security system has a much stronger, and positive, effect on that).

I am of child-having age and my decision is based around what my life would be like for the next 18 or so years, not would it would be like at retirement. If I were to think about that, possibly having someone around to help me out and let me retire earlier would probably be a very tiny nudge in favour of having children.

And you’re saying this about that bastion of right-wing economic policy… Denmark? Tax-to-GDP ratio in the mid 40s, second highest amongst OECD countries?

No-one here has said that increasing the pension age is the only solution. Indeed, on its own, it probably doesn’t solve the problem. But it’s one part of a plan. Other parts include addressing the other side of the equation - young people, so encouraging immigration and increasing birth rates (but Danish net immigration is already about 1% of its population per year which isn’t low, high levels of immigration are unpopular, and increasing birth rates is difficult and makes the problem worse for at least 18 years). Tax policy is another aspect of it, but you have to realise that having an older population doesn’t mean that working population is willing or able to bear higher tax rates (even if you try to target them at the rich) That is to say, if you have a high average tax rate already, as you do in Denmark, increasing it further to pay for an aging population is likely to start having adverse effects, and it doesn’t matter why you’re increasing taxation.

It’s of benefit to society to reduce the dependency ratio (the ratio of non-working to working people)

If the number of people the government needs to support with state pensions rises, but the working age population doesn’t rise nearly as much, government finances become more and more pinched

That didn’t last long. How long before we hear Trump whingeing that he didn’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for escalatingsolving this war between Israel and Iran?