Yeah, but friendly countries don’t mess in each others domestic politics. America is really far to the right by the standards of Canada or Western Europe... can you imagine how horrified we’d be to have you guys butting into our elections with your values, even in a minimal way? The agreement we all have is to respect…

In a serious way, other countries have their own local politics to focus on, and “the US” comes up probably only with the frequency at which “world politics” comes up in your political discussions. I mean, Trump’s not going to affect Germany in any really significant way, now on the other hand, if the racist German…

Probably... but it’s your jobs as Americans to change your political system, not the world’s. Scotland has it’s own stuff to protest, like Brexit, exploring another independence vote, trying to change the classist state of UK politics....

While internationally Trump is viewed as a security threat, we all have to keep…

It was originally presented as an art installation at basically the Berlin version of the Whitney Museum. As a piece you can walk around, it was fun (you can walk past the lame bits)... but as a movie it sounds painful.

The show was extended multiple times in Berlin... but I don’t know how it will work if they’re cutting it all into one film? The split version where you can walk around was nice.

The basic concept, is that through a variety of skits (many quite hilarious), different significant artistic manifestos are presented. On…

As I pointed out before, I explicitly don’t assert “equal citizenship in an unlimited unquestioning.” The arguement I’ve made here is that she’s being denied citizenship on grounds that are contrary to Swiss law, despite meeting other qualifications of citizenship in both a technical (years lived/taxes/legal status)…

I’m not asserting that at all - what I am asserting is that is that the woman is being punished for her free speech, which is in direct contradiction to the principles of Switzerland. Lets be clear: she engages in no illegal activity, and by all accounts is fully integrated into the culture, language, and economy of…

Moving to other places is immensely difficult, and doing your life in a different language is killer... honestly if more people spent time abroad, or heck, even if they did a little semester abroad, people would have a much different picture of immigrants.

Free-speech doesn’t protect you from private judgement, but it’s supposed to protect you from judgement by the government... i.e. being denied rights because of your speech. The government isn’t supposed to be able to punish you for voicing your opinion.

While this situation may not meet the legal criteria in a…

It’s not the simple though... because the real-world result is mob rule by a Swiss HOA. There’s a reason we have things like Human Rights Charters, because realistically this system in Switzerland is reactionary, petty, and also exclusionary of minorities as the people “just don’t feel you fit in for some reason”…

In a Counter-Insurgency, “how you win” is the “win.” The SEALS alone weren’t responsible for it, I think it’s pretty clear that conventional strategy failed. After nearly 2 decades of high-tempo SF operations hunting militants and “taking the head off the snake is there is little to show it for it.…

To be fair, there is history of the SAS in Ireland that is sketchy, and though it was in the past, it isn’t as if it was a hundreds of years ago.

Drone usage is a problem because of the massive amounts of collateral damage that the programs caused, as a cheap “solution” in lieu of an actual counter-terrorism strategy involving regional development, commitment of troops, and work with regional partners. Was the drone program in part responsible for assassinating…

John McCain’s daughter... like the same John McCain that Trump made fun of because he got captured in Vietnam. Yup.

I think that happens quite alot... I seem to remember John Oliver or another talkshow playing clips of an ambassador to a Nordic country admitting he had never been there.

I dunno... career diplomats (even the ones who aren’t at the very top positions) do tend to have massive rolodexes of powerful people, and people as well who are in operational positions and not just top political positions.

Ultimately the job is quite complicated... it’s not that I doubt the management experience of…

Some of them... in theory important countries are supposed to go to professional diplomats who have long careers training for them for those roles.

Honestly no personal stake or particular interest in party, but it’s a professional interest... the policy posturing that countries take relative to their technical abilities is pretty fascinating, especially in the Asia Pacific region where NZ is located, and there are numerous contested sea borders.

While it’s…

But it literally doesn’t. Israel couldn’t project force all the way to New Zealand; Israel has no ability to project force because its navy is tiny and defensive, and its airforce would require bases to attack from (of which there are none regionally, except NZ-ally Australia). Even if they landed exclusively…

Yes, but the question is irrelevant, as it’s an insane to threaten violence on New Zealand, and also NZ is a tiny well-respected island nation in the Pacific with the closest “staging area” being it’s closest ally and buddy in a mutual defence treaty: Australia.