They’re relatively cheap and provide a lot of nutritional value for the weight - I buy them in big bags straight from the farmer’s market. Tree nuts (peanuts aren’t actually nuts at all - they’re legumes) are literally a luxury only the rich can afford in my country these days - kind of ironic since we’re the world’s top producer of macademia nuts.

Roasting them is actually important since that degrades aflatoxins - they also just taste better.

Why am I actually responding to a comment that is saying muslims don’t want to exterminate Jews.

Let me guess… you’re a product of the US education system?

You don’t have the foggiest idea of the history you are feigning expertise in here, do you?

Sure the liberal ones don’t, but wtf?

What “liberals,” Clyde? The only Palestinian “liberals” you will find are the corrupt lapdog racketeers “managing” the West Bank at the behest of Israel. If Hamas takes them out, very few Palestinians will lose any sleep over it… and rightly so.

and care for its citizens,

If the Israeli government cared about the people it (supposedly) represents it wouldn’t be turning them into violent colonialist goons to do the west’s bidding in the middle-east, would it?

You might just as well ask how to fix the Apartheid-regime without upsetting white people or fix the Nazi regime without discomforting Nazis.

The conflict is extremely complicated.

It really isn’t. It’s just pro-Israeli propaganda pretending it’s complicated.

This attack will energize the populations of a lot of middle-eastern regimes that have been playing footsie with Israel over the last few decades - so yeah… both in the long and short term things are looking shaky for Israel. Would it lead to WW3? Unlikely… even if Israel’s geopolitical reach and importance is curbed by this, the US already has another thug regime in the area that can do it’s dirty work for it - Saudi Arabia.

Israel doesn’t trust Hamas.

Then maybe Israel shouldn’t have funded them.

The blockade, which, mind you, is also enforced by Egypt

The US-backed dictatorship in Egypt is doing the US’s bidding? You don’t say…

Any civilian casualties are to be condemned.

Israel hasn’t made much distinction between combatants and non-combatants since 1949 - can’t blame Hamas for playing by Israel’s rules.

Yet, you must remember that Hamas likes to base itself under hospitals, schools, mosques.

Right, because there are vast tracts of unused real estate in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet, eh?

If that is not surgical, I don’t know what is.

There is no such thng as a “surgical” artillery shell, Clyde. And as for the claim itself… the IDF is no more trustworthy than the Apartheid security forces were.

Fuck Israel.

It was then the Romans and the Muslims that did the oppression and genocide.

When did the Muslim-world commit genocide against Jewish people? The medieval Muslim-world was a safe haven for Jewish communities - as opposed to Christendom… you know - the place where antisemitism originates from?

Your abolishment of boundaries and countries is also a very simplistic world view.

I’d say that fetishizing lines drawn on a map is a pretty simplistic thing in itself.

Without government, you can’t stop the strong from obliterating the weak.

So your solution is to allow the strong a government so that they can obliterate the weak even more easily?

You just tried to say that Israel’s supporters are antisemitic?

No. I never tried to say it.

I just plain said it - the countries that enable Israel is as antisemitic and white supremacist as they have always been. They’ve been hiding it since WW2 - but, as the resurgence of mask-off far-right ideology in the US and Europe proves, it’s still the same old west.

The west’s support for Israel has always been antisemitic - dumping European Jewish people in Palestine was literally one the Nazi’s potential solutions to the “Jewish Question”. It’s no secret - just mundane history that westerners doesn’t like talking about.

Christian Zionism predates Jewish Zionism - the whole reason these white supremacist and antisemitic societies fantasized about a modern-day “Israel” was simply because they did not believe Jewish people belonged in their precious “white” societies.

You don’t have to think about it for very long to see it for yourself - who were the people that made it so difficult for Jewish people to “belong” in western societies? If the US was so friendly and welcoming to Jewish people as the US wants to pretend it is (prominent Jewish people like Steven Spielberg and Noam Chomsky will happily tell you about US-style antisemitism), why would Jewish people need a “homeland” in the middle-east?

It’s never just been the US - Israel doesn’t just have a whole bunch of enablers… said enablers also back the very idea of a modern-day Israel.

France, the UK, Germany, Australia, Apartheid-era South Africa all played their part in helping with all this - I guess the fact that it’s all countries with histories that are deeply entwined with white supremacism, antisemitism and colonialism is purely coincidence, eh?

Also, i thought ghengis khan was all about meritocracy.

No… Genghis Khan wasn’t a joke. Meritocracy is.

I learnt meritocracy is a joke long before I discovered that it was literally invented to be a joke.

are you really saying that professional troops are less effective than untrained conscripts who really don’t want to be there?

Firstly… there is absolutely no rule that says conscripts have to be untrained, just like there’s no rule that says a conscript wouldn’t necessarily want to be there - but that’s irrelevant to the question at hand.

More importantly, yes - a citizen army can be more effective than a professionalized one. Napoleon Bonaparte’s armies proved that to the world to such a degree that military theorists of the time literally thought the professional military obsolete. Of course, the problem with a citizen army is that you have to animate the citizenry with a cause that can actually be justified - kind of a difficult thing to do if you’re waging colonialist wars that only benefit the wealthy half-way around the world. Which is what a professional military is good for - that’s why the US didn’t experience the same level of revolt in the ranks during the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan as they did during the war on Vietnam.

but a professional army would have been much more effective

Ukraine did have a professional army at the start of the war - almost all countries do. Not even NATO would be able to defeat Russia with a purely professionalized force - that’s pure fantasy.

“Progressive” is merely another word for reformist… ie, people who will (at best) achieve absolutely nothing except the continuation of “business as usual.”

What meagre labor protections (for instance) the working class in the west has wasn’t won because of reformists… it was won in spite of them by militant and thoroughly radical labor organising.

It’s not my country.

Yep… it’s always “our country” this and “our country” that when they need you to play cannon fodder - and when it’s all over, it just goes straight back to being their country. No different than rich people telling us how we’re “all in this together” during COVID.

Elon Musk - the whole reason he skipped South Africa right before his 18th birthday was to avoid being conscripted into the SADF. That’s the actual reason - him and his family had no problem profiting off Apartheid until it was his turn to actually doing the dirty work of maintaining it. It’s what a lot of rich white kids in SA did.

It’s about ensuring that the children of the wealthy and powerful would die alongside the children of the poor in any conflict.

Bullcrap. The children of the wealthy and powerful always get to have have convenient loopholes to get out of conscription - just look at Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

like building projects and disaster preparedness and relief.

Or, you know… have groups of trained civilians around to repress anything that threatens the precious status quo.

For the most part wars are better fought by paid professionals.

That only goes for dirty wars that you have no good reason to fight.

It has much to recommend it. It creates a shared experience in otherwise fragmented societies, breaking down barriers of class, race and gender.

The US would like to disagree.

It can be used to instil the values of a country in its population.

In other words… nationalist brainwashing.

And it subjects a pampered population

Only a boomer could think this.

“Welfare” is not socialist. It’s something states implemented to prevent socialist ideas from gaining ground - that’s how they ended up with the (so-called) “Scandinavian model.” Like every other country in the west, it was an anti-socialist measure used to prevent working class revolt - unlike actual socialism, it does not dismantle power and privilege but actively protects it.

Social justice isn’t even something that was implemented - power and privilege simply pretends to implement it.

The whole point of social democracy is to borrow concepts and values from socialism

The nazis borrowed the word “socialist,” too - and it doesn’t make the nazis any more socialist than social democracy. And just like the nazis, social democracy borrows nothing from socialism except the word “social.”

Socialism only has one value and one concept - the workers control the means of production. You can’t “borrow” this concept because it’s already free for anyone to take. If you don’t take it, it means you don’t have anything that can be called socialism with a straight face.

Part of it yes, it is a mixed economy.

So the answer is no.

Which means… drumroll… no socialism involved whatsoever.

State-owned corporations

Soooo… no socialism?

all in all within capitalism.

Soooo… still no socialism?

just plain socialism

There is no such thing as “plain socialism” - there is socialism and then there is not-socialism.