Dr. Gonzo

Iran beats Syria after a 1-1 draw on penalties. Taremi scored but also got a red card. I don't think Iran's got a chance against Japan without Taremi. Would be pretty happy with Japan getting knocked out though, for selfish reasons, because then we get Endo back at Liverpool. But also would be pretty happy with Japan knocking out the team and there being one less propaganda source for the IR.

He's an old school no nonsense style defender. He's been good when us when called to play in emergencies, pretty sure he was good with Bournemouth. He was shit with Rodgers' Celtic, but I assume that it's got something to do with Rodgers' tactics. I feel like as long as you're not playing a sky-high backline, he'll probably be a good addition for you.

Israel really doesn't help itself - does it? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/30/israel-forces-disguised-women-medics-storm-hospital-jenin-west-bank Disguising as doctors to kill wounded combatants being treated in a hospital is a combo war crime. I think the worst part of it is dressing as doctors, because that's just going to risk the lives of Palestinian doctors in the future now that terrorists aren't going to be sure who's actually a doctor and who's an Israeli soldier. The next worst thing about it is... they very easily could have arrested these people. Instead they executed them in hospital beds. On the one hand, this is better than things like the indiscriminate bombing of places. Or targeting a hospital to kill 3 known terrorists while risking the lives of hundreds of innocents. On the other hand, this will make life very tough for Palestinian doctors in the West Bank - and I have a feeling that life is tough already for anybody on the West Bank.

None of that is really accurate though other than ISIS K growing and them being the same sort of scum as the Taliban. Most of Iran's military tech is domestically produced, other than their planes and some of their AA, where they are using modern day Russian tech & very old pre-revolution US tech. The IRGC has essential free reign over Iran's economy. So while normal people are suffering under the economic conditions, the military isn't either. The IRGC just launched 4 satellites into space recently. That's not indicative of a military that thinks it doesn't have the resources to fight a defensive war - and if Iran's actual military is fighting western forces, it would be a defensive war. The only way sepah gets involved in foreign wars is if it's fighting ISIS (and similar groups) in bordering countries - which is self-defense when you consider what ISIS (and similar groups) think about Persians and Shias. Iran put more of its troops on the line fighting ISIS than any other country, ISIS-K is just another ISIS subgroup in another bordering country for them to deal with. Iran isn't Iraq for a number of reasons, but the biggest reason why ISIS is unlikely to spread the same way it did in Iraq is because there isn't the same power vacuum in Iraq as there was after the US went into Iraq with no plan whatsoever. ISIS and its subgroups are a security threat to Iran, the same was Hamas and Hezbollah are a security threat to Israel. But they're not an existential threat. Much like the Houthis aren't a threat to the Saudis, despite having made the Saudi puppet government of Yemen history.

That's a shame, because he's probably one of the best in the business. But now that he's got his own consultancy firm, I'm not surprised at all tbh. Why work for one club when you can work for many and at the same time be your own boss? I'm pretty sure he'd already turned down Real Madrid last year because of his new business.

Hmm... I don't know about that. Ask Israel, Syria, Yemen, or Lebanon if they have no bite. Their foreign policy is based on challenging US hegemony and causing as much instability as possible to further their influence - for them the Cold War never ended. Hell, even ask Ukraine if Iran has no bite. Turns out Iran's cheaply made drones are easy to mass produce and difficult to defend against. They've also got a massive missile arsenal. It's a government that's spent far more on it's military than it's spent on trying to actually make the country a good place to actually live in. It's a military that's more combat tested than most in the region because of decades of combat experience fighting ISIS and other salafist terror groups in Syria and Iraq, with a massive network of proxy forces that have been brainwashed into thinking it's a good idea to serve as cannon fodder. They're not struggling against ISIS-K either, despite the recent attack on those mourners for Soleimani the kotlet. I find it bizarre too, given your support of Israel, to sort of dismiss the threat Iran has very clearly posed to Israel. Hamas are an Iran and Qatar proxy - have you already forgotten October 7th? Hezbollah are Iran's largest proxy and are probably the greatest threat to Israel's security if activated considering how many advanced missiles have been supplied to them by Iran since their last war with Israel (which did end in a stalemate, despite Hezbollah suffering worse losses. Meanwhile Iran's proxy in Yemen, the Houthis, are interfering with global shipping and raising the cost of goods for all of us around the world by interfering with the route from Asia to Europe, in the name of resistance against the US, UK, and Israel. The war in Ukraine meant that the EU and UK really turned a blind eye to the anti-government movement in Iran. Keeping the oil flowing and not doing anything to fuck with the global price of oil was deemed too valuable to consider taking any sort of stand with regard to human rights. And that's even despite Iran supplying these drones that have turned out to be very effective in modern combat despite being cheap and technologically basic drones, to Russia, for Russia to deploy with great success in Ukraine. And now Russia's asked their closest partner in the Middle East to create as much instability as possible, knowing that 1.) proxy groups give Iran that level of plausible deniability, 2.) Iran's a tough country to invade because of it's terrain, 3.) US appetite for a war in the Middle East is incredibly low and no US president wants to start a war in an election year. So this is really just the international community reaping what it sows when it's picking and choosing what human rights issues they actually care about while really focusing on economic issues instead. If you let brutal autocrats take an inch, they'll think they're entitled to a mile and they'll keep escalating to get what they want.

Bit of a weird political term then

If I were running Man Utd, likely properly running it and not just being a Liverpool fan and running them into the ground just for the lolz, I'd be much more keen on getting rid of ETH and the players he's brought in, then I would be getting rid of Rashford or the players that were there before ETH and now seem to take serious issue with him. Solskjaer was a better manager for United than Ten Hag - I stand by that statement. And if Solskjaer wasn't good enough for United (which he's not), then I don't think ETH's tenure is indicative of someone who should be staying at a football club or being given free reign to spend tons of money on players that don't actually help United at all. How many players have fallen out with ETH now? How much money has he spent on players that simply do not improve United in the slightest? Idk if United have a director of football or not, but they do need to address a lot of things above the manager as well. Do they have a Director of Football? I genuinely don't know - but if they do, sack him and replace him with someone that's got a track record at a club that's got high expectations in the league they're from but also has a track record of making signings that indicate a good eye for signing good talent at a great price. Then, I think they need to sack off all the scouts. Man Utd's scouting in recent seasons has been a bit bizarre tbh. A lot of "obvious" signings - "we need a CB and Madrid want to sell Varane," "we need a DM and Madrid want to sell Casemiro"; these aren't bad signings, in fact Casemiro was a big hit last year. But the issue is value - Varane cost a lot for a defender with his injury record. Casemiro cost a lot for a DM that moved to a more physical league at his age - and now he looks like he's already losing his legs. Signing Sancho without really having a plan to integrate him now looks like a waste of time for pretty much everybody except Dortmund. Signing Ronaldo because they didn't want their former legend joining Man City, even though it fucked up Solskjaer's plans for that season was just stupid... and undermined the manager and his plans for the season. Sometimes the obvious signings are just what is needed - they're high quality and high profile players for a reason. But they're expensive. And to me it seems like United have done a lot of signing for the sake of making signings. I just feel like there's not enough voices behind the scenes at Man Utd that are thinking about things like getting good value for incoming signings. And there's so little cohesion between making a signing and being sure the manager can integrate them. So I think once they address the DOF/recruitment issue... then that's a good time to axe ETH and bring in a manager with a long term vision for the club worth investing in. And after a new manager's had a few months with the squad, I'd then revisit whether players like Rashford need to be sent away because their attitudes are too toxic. But I don't think ETH is worse United's time or money any more and if they rid themselves of him... I think they'll likely find themselves with a much better manager. Having said that, I'm fine with United keeping him for a very long time. I could be very wrong, and stranger things have happened than me being very wrong about something in football, but I just think he's a very overrated manager.

Has anyone told Talha Ahmad that Israel, and the Middle East generally, is actually in the northern hemisphere?

He’s still a massive shareholder so he’ll still be manipulating stock value to suit him when he can - I think despite no longer being a director he’s going to remain very influential over the company. Not gonna lie though this is the most interested I’ve been in WWE since I was a kid. The shocking allegations, the ridiculous - and I mean RIDICULOUS - text messages, the moment where I said “did you just say he shat on her head?!” Wild drama.

@Michael re: Qatar - https://www.iranintl.com/en/202211254809

Why does she have to apologise for accurately describing various Tories?

The shitting on a woman's head during a threesome

He doesn't stress me out. I just want to understand why he's got so many beliefs that are either contradictory, why he pushes false narratives (which are easily disproven) that are tied to fucked up ideologies that when he's asked to defend... he says things that are pretty far removed from the ideology he was pushing. Someone can only say so many things to me that don't make sense before I have the thirst to know what the hell is making them say so much insane shit that doesn't even make sense. Using terms regarding ideology and then not even seeming to have a grasp of the basics of the ideology is... bizarre. Saying things like the US has a strong economy, while it's economic backbone is somehow not a strong economy... that's just a statement that can't be made sense of. And I know it's because of repeating certain narratives that he's heard before elsewhere from people pushing bullshit. But we live in a world where you can go online and read about the things you're talking about and verify pretty easily that the people pushing these weird narratives are lying. And the die hard believers of these weird narratives and ideologies fall in too far into hole and start unwittingly supporting things that they probably wouldn't have supported before they've fallen into the holes. I basically want to know where these strong convictions that can be easily refuted by simply reading the definition of things like "libertarianism" "capitalism" and "social democracy", etc. Because when the things being said just don't make sense and someone seems to be pushing a narrative/ideology that can lead to a dangerous slippery slope, it's likely you've got a person confused by people on the internet trying to confuse people into supporting horrible things. People shouldn't have strong convictions of things that are actually against what they actually believe politically just because some joker on reddit, youtube, twitter, etc are trying to feed people to have strong convictions about politics and policies they don't really understand.

California is also the home of some of the US's biggest and wealthiest corporation with a solid tech industry, biotech industry, chemical engineering industry, financial industry, agricultural industry, name a sector - California's got it and is doing it better than most of the US. It's the state with some of the highest paid highest skilled workers in the country and attracts international workers as a result of that. As discussed previously, that "insane taxation" is a lower effective tax rate than in the only red state that can come close to competing with it, Texas. As far as American economic success goes, California is the most economically successful in pretty much every metric. That's simply not debatable. The socioeconomic disparity and corruption are not unique to California. They might be more apparently because there's a lot more people in California. That's a national problem. Okay let's dissect this, using American politics as the reference point since this is the American politics thread. 1.) In the US, unemployment benefits aren't provided federally. They are provided by each state. I don't know how it works in other states, but in California you only qualify for unemployment if: a.) you have been sacked - resignations do not qualify for unemployment. If you've never had a job, you don't qualify for unemployment; b.) when you demonstrate proof of actively searching for jobs - seeking unemployment while not actively looking for work leads to people being popped for unemployment fraud. This means paying back the money they received from the state, as well as at least a few months in prison, c.) you can only collect unemployment for 26 weeks. So by US standards, or at least Californian standards, you only get unemployment under certain conditions including actively looking for work... and for much less time than you'd get benefits than you'd get in South Africa. So in practice, what happens in California (which is part of the US) is actually nothing that "encourages people to do nothing about their situation" - and in fact mandates that they do in fact do something about their situation in order to receive these benefits. If you've been sacked and receive a severance, you likely will be rejected on your application to receive benefits - or will later have been found to have lied in your application and get popped for unemployment fraud. 2.) Sounds like South Africa has more employment regulation than the US. California is an "at will employment" state - this means employees can be fired for basically any reason. There are certain limitations to this, that have been carved out through employment law cases - but that's the general rule of "at will employment" or "right to work" states. Keep in mind, as well, this is California. The so-called "communist republic of California," that the right wing portrays as a communist hellscape. Yet in terms of employee rights, this state falls short of left-wing protections for workers by some way and is in fact more right wing and capitalistic than many countries including South Africa. So it seems to me, your actual view on US fair labour practices would be that the US should actually moving less to the right and more to the left in that regard. And if I have you right, then I think that means you are rejecting some core beliefs of purely libertarian/capitalist doctrine. 3.) Only in rare circumstances in the US are increases and bonuses guaranteed.

America's got an ineffective government because of the shitty way it was all structured and designed for gridlock. It's not a failed or failing government. There's issues with the elite being able to get away with crimes, but that seems to be a problem everywhere in the world. It's funny you site that the economy is far from a failure, yet you've criticised California for being an abject failure of a state... yet California is the economic powerhouse of the US & I know from experience it is a great place to live. But whether you view the economy as far from failure really depends on perspective. While wages in the US are relatively great compared to doing the same work in other countries, since the 80s there's been an increasing gap in how wealth has been distributed in the US. Wage growth has stagnated for the many, while for the elite few there's been record profits and income. When the many are left behind for a handful of ultra-wealthy elite, it's easy for many to think "this is a broken system." When people look back to the US golden era post WW2, where Americans felt economic opportunity was limitless, there was a massive tax on the American ultra-wealthy and corporations. Did they stop making money? No they made shitloads of money. And Americans, on average, seemed more than content with their economic system. In the 70s, many economists started talking about the "death of the American dream" - but the disparity between the rich and the regular in the US has just gone insane since the 80s.

In the US the current system certainly isn't no regulation though? There's federal agencies that have oversight on big business because of the things big business has done. You don't get labour safety regulations without companies first operating without those regulations and injuring, maiming, and killing a few employees. You don't get banking regulations without banks creating crises. The current system of the US is a capitalist representative democracy that has too few restrictions on lobbying. Previous restrictions were wiped out by a conservative Supreme Court ruling in the case Citizens United, which was written by US conservative hero Antonin Scalia. And just because America is capitalistic, that doesn't mean it doesn't have some semblance of socialism. There are social programs. Democratic socialism is pretty far from a capitalist democracy. Which isn't to say that capitalism can't exist in democratic socialist societies - the closest countries the west has to democratic socialist countries have a blend of both capitalism and socialism in a way that goes far beyond the social programs provided by the United States. The difference between say Sweden and the US is how much socialism and capitalism is blended into their economic systems. You see, the extreme scenarios are not the only choices people have in their governance. And extreme political solutions are often bad solutions.

A failing government is the system though, so you're on the same page as @Spike it sounds like?

Libertarian policies are all the less likely to solve that corruption. Libertarian policies push for as little regulation of the free market as possible, with the goal of increasing business through profitability. History has shown time and time again, following libertarian policies leads to wealth hoarded by those at the top while the little guy ends up more exploited than ever and has. But it looks like you're abandoning your claim to being a libertarian and are now calling yourself a democratic socialist/capitalist. Democratic socialism and capitalism are not the same thing, though. It depends on who you ask with regards to democratic socialism and how capitalistic a society should be, but a core concept of democratic socialism is the belief that capitalism, at least with minimal regulation, is incompatible with the notion of freedom, liberty, and equality. The "socialist" part of democratic socialism is believing there should be a somewhat socially owned economy - which is direct state involvement in the economy. The democratic part is believing that the way government should be structured should be a democracy. I just don't think you've really got an idea of what you're advocating for anymore. But a lot of what you've pushed is pretty far from the ideals of democratic socialism. And a lot of what you've said since advocating for libertarian policies... simply just aren't libertarian policies. It's all very confusing and I don't know what to make of it.

Well yeah, but should they care about that? I wouldn't

He didn't though. Under Trump only one meaningful piece of legislation could be passed - despite him having the senate and house for a portion of his presidency. And it was his lower taxes for the wealthy, while raising taxes on the working and middle class - particularly those in states that voted against him (the economic powerhouses of the US, I might ad) with the SALT (state and local tax) deduction cap lowered significantly. Even though those states have MORE REPUBLICAN VOTERS than many of the red states that went for him. So aside from being nearly totally unable to work with a friendly legislature for a part of his presidency, other than on something all conservatives agree on: rich people should pay less in taxes than the working and middle class, who should shoulder most of the burden. He didn't really do much. And those kinds of policies, by the way, fly in the face of the notion that he did anything positive for the "every day working man" or their interests as you claimed earlier in this thread. It was just another handout to the elite. Everything else he did in government was through Executive Order, something he (and his party) bashed Obama for continually while running for election and appointing judges that lied during their confirmation hearings to further a far right agenda. And he didn't even pick those judges, he got them off a list given to him by the Federalist Society - so it was a far right lobbying group doing his presidenting for him when it came to judicial appointments. Another handout to the elite. And many of his executive orders were totally meaningless, others were wiped away after legal challenges because he and his advisors struggled with basic legal concepts.

The alternative to libertarianism is not limited to solely socialistic dystopia like Venezuela.

I don't think they're helping Everton's case - but I also don't think the appeals will be giving what fans think any consideration, so I also don't think they're hurting Everton's case. From an Evertonian fan perspective, directing the toxicity that had built up over recent seasons in the fanbase towards the league seems to have really helped Dyche build a siege mentality in his side. With that in mind, I don't think the fans are doing anything wrong by directing the justifiable anger they should have towards both their owners and the league into something that is directed less at the club and more at the league. I think mentally it has done something for the players and at the top level any sort of mental advantage you can get, imo, makes a pretty huge difference to how a season can go. And I think the points deduction was very harsh tbh - it's harsher than Portsmouth's deduction for going into administration. And for as bad as things are financially at Everton, they're not quite as bad as what happened at Portsmouth. And despite all clubs agreeing to rule changes, I think it was entirely reasonable for Everton to think the ongoing investigation would continue using the same rules it was using when the investigation started - especially as they were working with the league to try to get into full compliance. In that sense, I can agree with the "made up rules" statement.

Also:

Lol he said this while advocating after advocating for Trump. Does he know how Trump got his money? Corruption? I'm sure he's thinking some Hunter Biden shit, but what on earth was forcing the Secret Service to stay at Trump hotels and resorts if anything but corruption? If diplomats were encouraged to stay at the Trump hotel in DC - is that not corruption?