Rupert and much of his media support Israel and there is no way he is going to be seen as being favorable to Nazis. If had just been the KKK at that rally or he had donated to NAACP I would have a more favorable opinion of the action - as it is I'm a strong meh.

From what I understand the reason he hates firing people is because it means he made a mistake. So he would rather make someones life miserable until they quit and he doesn't have to look like he made a mistake.

We have both. Medicare is universal health care. But as our conservatives would like nothing more than to destroy Medicare the Howard government started heavily subsidising Private health care (and provided other incentives to get people to sign up to it). It is a long term plan so that people shift increasingly to…

A lot (but by no means all) of the old Anti-US imperialism left are Putin apologists or at the very least look the other way on the worst of his behaviour http://www.thedailybeast.co…

He has already legally registered his 2020 campaign so I'm assuming it's to 'finance' that. I'm assuming that operation that will be renting office space from Trump corporation at above market rates. See, nice and legal.

I love action and fantasy movies but I saw the trailer for this and it couldn't seem much less interesting. I looks like they took the worst parts of LOTR (epic but boring fight scenes) and put it into an action film blender. Also, while having big stars isn't necessary for me (I avoided (to my detriment) Edge of…

Funnily enough most of the vegans and vegetarians I know (and I know quite a few) wouldn't touch a juicer that made you buy pre-packaged fruit in a bag. I'm still baffled by who thought this was a good idea. I would think almost anyone who would want to make juice at home would not want the choice on what and how much…

Japan is 99% ethnically homogenous and it is not uncommon to see black vans driving around with signs and announcements telling foreigners (especially Chinese and Koreans) to get out. France has large slums of mostly Algerian immigrants and their decedents and likes to prevent religious dress that mostly targets…

The tendency is to see Kim as an irrational actor. However, he is very much a rational actor if you look at him with the understanding that almost everything they he does is designed to ensure the ongoing rule of the Kim dynasty from threats internal and external to N Korea. During the 90s the Kims used the threat of…

N Korea would loose another war and fairly quickly this time. But unlike Iraq they have the resources to go down swinging hard and South Korea would pay the biggest price. Nixon's madman doctrine didn't work and he was a thousand times more competent than trump (even if roughly as crazy).

I actually think that China wouldn't help N Korea and the US And S Korea would win the war very quickly and the occupation would be closer to Germany and Japan after WW2 rather than Iraq/Afghanistan. However, for the few days that N Korea would be able to shell Seoul millions would die so their conclusion that the war…

N Korea has the largest artillery force in the world and Seoul with its 25 million people is in its range. Even if all of N Koreas nukes are taken out (a huge if given the lack of intelligence that comes out of the country) a counter strike on Seoul would kill millions.

I'm a PhD student doing my thesis on US / South Korea relations during the Carter Presidency so I know a thing or two about the peninsula and I was going to write something similar to what JMP wrote. The only major thing missing from what he said (but related) is that the invasion of Iraq put the fear of God into Kim…

As an Australian the conversation between our PM and your President gained a lot more coverage here than it did there and I will say that Turnbull was very careful in parsing his comments on the call and it was not a flat denial. Also sources in our Department of Foriegn Affairs and Government have confirmed it went…

I didn't think the sadness of the Hodor's death was that he sacrificed himself. I thought the sadness of it was that he had his whole life pre-determined for him and in doing so largely ruined. I was thinking that this episode had the emotional beats of Lost with the flash backs feeding into the sadness of the present…