coal

No. 

Correct

Steve King, to my knowledge, has done nothing seditious or treasonous. lol

You bet....

The more you talk with me, the more likely I am to figure out who you were.  But of course, we both know I already know, because of what you just said. 

Well, there shouldn't have been any doubt.  This is YYW.  I am betrayed by my nature, and that nature is to be preachy. 

Steve King should resign.

Andrew Yang is a complicated candidate, but he has a reasonable shot at the nomination and I think he is going to surprise a lot of people.

/r/AskHistorians is the worst subreddit on Reddit because it holds itself out as comporting to academic standards, but in reality does no such thing.  Here are several illustrations:

1.  /r/AskHistorian's academic standards are meaningless.

Academic standards are not arbitrarily or selectively enforced.  More or less, the only people whose comments are not removed are those who receive flair.  Flair is awarded on an arbitrary basis, and not on the basis of merit or any particular contribution.  Yet, there is no qualitative distinction between the submissions of non-flared users and flared users.  Often, flared users submit lower quality content than non-flared users. 

However, this cannot be evaluated because nearly every question on /r/AskHistorians is a comment graveyard.  The only way to evaluate what is or what is not being removed is to be engaged in following a particular thread and watching mods remove content.  When it disappears, and one of about nine boiler-plate justification that is not specifically referential to the content purportedly violative of their "standards" is pasted below will follow.  However, non-moderators cannot see the content that has been removed.  Only mods and the person who initially posted the comment can see this.

More questions encouraged. 

Maybe ask me about why /r/askhistorians is by far the worst subreddit on Reddit.

I meant to use the word "rite", but there is no doubt that there are ritualistic (as well as quasi-religious, liturgical, and theological) elements to the practice of applying critical theory's precepts to the world.  I could say some things about that, but I think most of that stuff is fairly self-evident once you understand how critical theory works. 

Re: cakes

I do what I can

The food comment wasn't meant to come across as racist, btw., which I suppose it might, given the text, and in the context of my prior comments about colonialism (though I specifically excluded India and Pakistan from that comment).   That said, I do love Indian (and Sri Lankan, Punjabi, Nepali, Himalayan, Afghani, and Pakistani) food. 

Disastrous might be further than I would be inclined to go, but a politician whose proclivity is to stir the pot of Hindu nationalism in the context of an ongoing conflict with Pakistan that the world seems concerned will escalate is a bad idea.  That said, I don't think Modi would launch a nuclear strike on Pakistan (for blatantly obvious reasons), nor do I think that Pakistan would ever nuke India (for equally blatantly obvious reasons).  But, what I do see Modi's election doing is stoking the fire of a conflict that needs to be put to rest.  

That said, Pakistan was and is consistently in the wrong as it relates to sheltering terrorists.  The ISI is one step away from aiding material aid and comfort to terrorists, themselves.  But, that doesn't mean India needs to act irrationally, or fan the flames of Hindu nationalism.  I hate to stereotype, but I'd much rather India remain a place that is open for business and development, which continues to raise the standard of living for its people, and which continues to provide an unending series of culinary delights to the West in the form of Indian restaurants owned by expats. 

>I’ve heard you express the opinion that white privilege doesn’t exist before. Three questions here:

1. What do you mean by “white privilege”? 
   
2. If you were to be convinced of its existence, what evidence would people who believed that it existed have to present? (Asking for examples of evidence—for instance, “if this statistic x came out, it would make a strong case, even if it didn’t convince me entirely, for white privilege’s existence, insofar as that statistic was backed by a plurality of the evidence.”) 
   
3. Why do you think it doesn’t exist?
   

White privilege (or white skin privilege) is the societal privilege that benefits people whom society identifies as white in some countries, beyond what is commonly experienced by non-white people under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. Academic perspectives such as critical race theoryand whiteness studies use the concept to analyze how racism and racialized societies affect the lives of white or white-skinned people.
According to Peggy McIntosh, whites in Western societies enjoy advantages that non-whites do not experience, as "an invisible package of unearned assets".[1] White privilege denotes both obvious and less obvious passive advantages that white people may not recognize they have, which distinguishes it from overt bias or prejudice. These include cultural affirmations of one's own worth; presumed greater social status; and freedom to move, buy, work, play, and speak freely. The effects can be seen in professional, educational, and personal contexts. The concept of white privilege also implies the right to assume the universality of one's own experiences, marking others as different or exceptional while perceiving oneself as normal.[2][3]

Source: Wikipedia

>Should, for example, a baker be required to fulfill a client’s request to bake a cake with a pro-marriage equality message on it? (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/10/uk-supreme-court-backs-bakery-that-refused-to-make-gay-wedding-cake) For clarity, this is different than a baker refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. 

There is, indeed, a difference between refusing to bake a cake for use at a gay wedding that is materially indistinguishable from a cake that would be used at a heterosexual wedding (beyond, say, trivialities like plastic figures on top); and refusing to bake a cake for use at a gay wedding that IS materially distinguishable from a cake that would be used at a heterosexual wedding.  The former implicates immutable quality based discrimination, whereas the latter implicates what you might call "a right of professional discretion" implicated in one's profession. 

Recently, I was watching a documentary on YouTube about tattoo artists, and the subject of this part of the documentary was about he tattoos that tattoo artists declined to perform.  Different people had different lines as it relates to what they would or would not do.  For example, one person said that he would not apply a face tattoo to someone who had not had their face tattooed before, because the long term implications of that would be unreasonably harmful.  That's an excellent thing to do.  Another person said that they would not apply a particular tree tattoo on someone's forehead, because the tattoo was associated with violence against women.  That is another excellent reason to decline to apply a tattoo.  A third person refused to do Nazi tattoos, or anything associated with Hitler or the Third Reich (no iron crosses, nazi-eagles, etc.).  That seemed perfectly reasonable to me as well.  None of them ever said that they refused to apply a tattoo on someone because a prospective customer was gay, a woman, a minority race, etc. 

When we are talking about 'the content applied to a cake', rather than a cake itself, is similar to the difference in "refusing to apply a tattoo to a person because of who or what the person was" in contrast with "refusing to apply a particular tattoo because of objections to the tattoo's contents".  I would have a problem with the former, because doing otherwise would be to legitimize discrimination under the pretext of professional discretion.  However, the latter implicates issues that go beyond discrimination, and implicate higher and more individualized questions of professional ethical decisions that, if regulated, would fall into the territory of "compelled speech".  

A brief discussion on compelled speech is appropriate, here.  Jordan Peterson is the person who made the phrase "compelled speech" prominent, or at least caused it to enter contemporary lexical usage.  Peterson did this in the context of interpreting the effects of an Ontario regulation which would have required under threat of civil (and, by extension, criminal) penalties for failing to use so called "preferred pronouns" of people on the basis of gender.  There was no "good faith" defense available or enumerated under the Ontario regulation, which would have excused liability for honest mistakes (it is not always obvious what a person's preferred pronouns would be, and that is especially true given the plethora of newly created so called pronouns by the activists in the humanities).  The "speech" that would be compelled would be the pronoun usage, and the compulsion would be the threat of law or legal sanction. 

There are some charter schools that have done outstanding things, and some private schools that already do outstanding things. That said, there are more horror stories as it relates to charter schools than there are success stories.

The basic problem with that question is that is assumes a qualitative (and probably quantitative) distinction in student outcomes based merely on the species of organization (public, private, charter, etc.).  The things that matter, however, in terms of improving student outcomes more proximately depend on the quality and caliber of teachers who are actually in the classrooms, and there is zero credible evidence to indicate that charter schools attract better teachers than public schools. 

The thing to do to improve student education is to increase the requirements to be a teacher, and raise teacher pay to reflect the value they create for society.  No teacher anywhere in the United States should be making less than $60,000/yr, and most should be making more. 

>I feel like I’ve asked you this before, but don’t remember your answer, so: do you think the US should “audit the Fed”?

The Fed can't be audited, which is exactly Rand Paul's purpose in the proposal.  What would an audit entail?  What would the objective be?  There is no obvious answer.  Rand Paul is an incompetent bloviating narcissist whose pseudointellectual ax to grind with the fed is an insufficient reason to spend money on anything, and especially tax money. 

I have serious reservations about Modi, and Hundu nationalism in general.   

>What do you think of Cory Booker’s “baby bonds” proposal?

I have never heard of this, but it looks like an outstanding idea. 

>I’ve heard you say that the federal minimum wage should be raised to $20 an hour or more. Are you not worried about potential unemployment effects of high minimum wage requirements?

I have evolved my thinking on that.  I think a $20,000 UBI is preferable to a $20.00/hr minimum wage.  However, the reason I am in favor of this is not because of the (entirely exaggerated) effects of potential unemployment. 

Nearly every single thing Republicans say about labor markets is provably false, exaggerated, or not even within the realm of plausibility and nearly every whitepaper you will read on, for example, what impact a $20/hr minimum wage would have on, say, Walmart defies credulity. 

This is reality: Walmart's business model is rancid to American taxpayers because Walmart passes off the economic costs of substandard employment onto states and the federal government by and through how they run their business.  Take a look at the economic value of the poverty benefits that Walmart employees collect from the states and the federal government, and you get a very clear idea of how that disgusting company has been so profitable for so many years (since the Clinton administration's "reform" in the 90s).

Note: whenever you hear a center-right democrat like Bill Clinton, or a corporate whore like Ted Cruz talk about "reform" what you should be hearing is "how can we deregulate markets to pass off externalities onto the taxpayers?"  Because that's all it ever means...

Two things need to happen, though: the economic costs of hiring a non-full time employee need to be made identical to the costs of paying a full-time employee, and there needs to be a UBI paid for by taxing corporations like Walmart. This absolute madness of "killing jobs" or whatever is exactly that... madness, that has no basis in reality.  What needs to change is Walmart's business model, the tax code, and the regime of employment law that has permitted Walmart to exist as it currently has.  Antitrust regulations and their enforcement is also necessary for similar reasons. 

>Thoughts on the Green New Deal?

First, great set of questions. 

All in all, I think the way most of the "environmental" people approach addressing climate change is hostile to business, and that for so long as that continues, we are unlikely to see anything approximating a meaningful shift in the way business is done as it relates to contributing to global climate change.  The so called Green New Deal seems little more than an extension of that trend.

That is not to say that I want to roll back environmental regulations; I absolutely do not, and, rather, want stricter regulations imposed on nearly every aspect of commerce that creates pollution of any one of scores of kinds.  For example, tighter water and emissions regulations are critical to preserving the natural resources the country has for generations to come.  This includes creating the conditions for industry-killing penalties on companies that pollute in violation of this country's laws, and ramped up enforcement efforts.  This also includes placing more focus on the Federal EPA and taking control of environmental issues out of the states' hands.  If you want to take a look at the damage that commercial and industrial activity has had on this country, go on the EPA's website and see how far you live from a Superfund Site. 

But, taxing carbon emissions, plastics, and any other activity involved in commercial production is a catastrophic mistake because that is going to create nothing more than a legislatively imposed externality which will be passed off onto consumers, raising the cost of living for everyday Americans without clear benefit to them for doing so.  This is obvious to any thinking -- and not wholly naive or stupid -- person.  

So, what can be done?  The way that the commercial and industrial activity is going to stop hurting the environment is for something to displace fossil fuels.  Transportation and electricity are the two primary offenders, behind agriculture.  Agriculture is something that can be reformed but not at a socially acceptable cost (eating more grains and less meat is not a solution; though lab grown meat might be).  As for transportation and electricity, the locus of governmental efforts towards combatting climate change should be oriented towards alternative energy.  The electricity problem is one we already know and have the technology to solve.  Nuclear power is beyond obviously the way forward in the developed world.  To that end, more research is needed on thorium reactors.  They are safer and more stable.  As for transportation, biofuel is the future, predominantly from kelp and algae. There will still be a place for fossil fuel (diesel freezes at temperatures that are increasingly common in, for example, the midwest in the winter), but only once biofuel becomes cheaper than gas will the market shift from petrochemicals to renewables.  Getting biofuel cheaper than gas and commercially available on the level that gas is should be almost entirely what any governmental effort to combat climate change should focus on. 

>Internships, continued. 

I know there are a lot of jobs that want a year of unpaid "experience" before they offer you a job working as an assistant, and I think that's preposterous for reasons you can infer from my previous post about unpaid internships. 

That said, if unpaid work is the only way to get your foot in the door, then that's sometimes what you've got to do.

Here are my thoughts, though, for both of you as it relates to your careers:

Keep your minds open and look at many different opportunities.  Don't lock yourself in to teaching English, because in the long run it is not a stable career path.  

lol

The arrogance of your response offends me, and disinclines me to post anything approximating what I would consider to be a sufficient response.  

As a rule, if you want others to treat you with respect, or at the very least not wholly dismiss you outright for reasons that any objective reading of your post would clearly indicate, you will be well advised to refrain from ever speaking to me in that way in the future. 

Let me be explicitly clear: by that I mean, if you ever speak that way to me again, you will have dug yourself a hole so deep that I will never acknowledge your presence in this or any other forum again. 

Now that we have set the rules for our future interactions, do you wish to try that question again?

Blocked.

>Thoughts on the prison system?

By "the prison system" I am going to assume that you are referring to the American prison system, rather than any other prison system, because of the context in which your question is asked.  My answer will be limited to that.

Nearly every aspect of the American prison system is a failure.  People are sent there for misguided reasons, remain there for too long, and all of this is done on a perverse and provably baseless theory of "justice" that has caused more consequential harm to the American people in general and the lives of individuals in particular.  Obviously, detailing the scope of these problems cannot be done in one place, but we'll begin with the basics: retribution, and rehabilitation.

The "retribution" theory of criminal justice begins from the premise that 'society' must be defended.  Here, the focus is on the state acting against an individual.  The theory proposes that when a crime a committed, two relevant entities are harmed: (1) the victim; and (2) society.  The state acts on behalf of society and in place of the victim to punish the offender.  Punishment is the focus, for the harm done both to the victim and to society, in retribution for the offense committed.  In the past, and largely before the enlightenment, retribution would have involved torture, physical punishment, or public humiliation.  Foucault describes, for example, a "spectacle of the scaffold" which details how that might unfold, in the first chapter of Discipline and Punish.  Now, district attorneys or their equivalent prosecute those believed to be offenders for the same purpose, and with the objective of doling out an appropriate amount of prison or other punitive measure.  Prison, for the most part, is the only means that the state has at its disposal to retaliate against criminals.  The underlying assumption is that without this scheme, crime would overtake human civilization. 

The "rehabilitation" theory of criminal justice begins with the premise that 'society' must correct a 'criminal nature' which characterizes all offenders.  Here, the focus is on the state acting both against the offender and for the benefit of 'society', or so it may seem.  The theory proposes that when a crime is committed, an individual is expressing an underlying proclivity based on who he is as a person, and that the commission of a crime is a sufficient indicator of one's greater criminal predisposition.  Therefore, the state's role is to 'correct' that criminal nature by removing the individual from society in general, for some appropriate length of time such that he can be "rehabilitated".  Of course, prison is the means by which this so called "rehabilitation" takes place.  The underlying assumption is that there is such a thing as a criminal nature, and that such a criminal nature can be reformed by means of prison.  

Both of these theories do not even rise to the level of idiocy. 

Retribution presumes that an appropriate amount of prison time can be imposed on an individual, and the variances in sentencing for identical crimes under identical circumstances alone obviate how arbitrary sentencing is, and to that same extent, how absurd the proposition is that prison sentences are anything other than arbitrary acts of violence by the state against subjects of the state's power; the nature of which is functionally indistinguishable from acts of retaliation by a sovereign pre-enlightenment.  The only thing that has changed is the means by which that violence occurs.  If we begin from the proposition that justice should not be arbitrary--which is, without exception, the bedrock assumption of justice in any liberal democracy--then it is indisputable that the justice system has failed to that end.  Now, are there any better alternatives?  Yes.  Reforming the presumption that decades in prison is a justifiable response to crimes of nearly any kind would be a good place to start, especially given that there is absolutely no indication that longer prison sentences deter crime in any form. 

Rehabilitation is even more preposterous.  First, there is nothing in anything even vaguely resembling academic literature (which most research on "criminal justice" does not even approach) to indicate that such a thing as a "criminal nature" or a "criminal predisposition" exists, or that if it does, that its existence is anything more than metaphysical speculation, and normative prognosticating.  That's a pretty weak basis to be doling out violence in the name of the state.  Second, even if there was such a thing as a criminal nature or criminal predisposition, there is not only no evidence to indicate that prison actually corrects such a deficit in human nature, but there is ample evidence (in the form of recidivism rates) to indicate the exact opposite (that there is no relationship between a person's proclivity to commit crimes and the time they have served in prison), or worse (that there is strong evidence to believe that the longer a person spends in prison, the more likely they are to re-offend).  Of course, there is also plenty of evidence out there that the conditions in prisons around the country -- in contrast with the conditions in less stupid countries like Germany or Norway -- solves nearly every one of these problems, and others; yet, in this country, nothing changes for the better.  One has to wonder why that might be.  (Hint: there's big money involved in locking people up.)

So now that we've covered the theoretical basis for penal institutions in the United States, the next step will be to discuss the mechanics of how they work. 

That is a great question.  It's going to require a long, long answer, though.  

That's a fairly good question, and very different than the sets of questions I've received before.  This would be easier to explain with a chalk board, but since I don't have one of those, this medium will have to do.

So we've got to be clear from the start that a photon is more or less the most basic unit of light; similar to the relationship between atoms and matter.  The term appropriate to describe the smallest unit of light is called a "quantum".  A photon is a quantum of light in the same way that an atom is a quantum of matter.

The reason light appears the same to all observers is because the speed of light is the fastest anything in the universe can move.  

>Should I take your response above as to say that things like this do not happen as a general rule?

Most people, generally, do not cheat on their taxes.  Those who do are rare, but the wealthier you are the more likely you are to engage in some mischief.  What you are describing comes perilously close to about 10 different kinds of fraud I can think of off the top of my head.  You'd have to be incredibly stupid to engage in something like that. 

I don't think you have a lucid understanding of what I do or do not support.  The issues you raised in relation to drone strikes are collateral to what I said in the foregoing posts discussing Bush.  Moreover, Bush really didn't use drone strikes as the technology was just coming on the scene at the time he was leaving office.  Obama's foreign policy, on the other hand, was characterized by the use of drone strikes.

Now, there is some discussion on whether drone strikes are a good thing, or at least less worse than the available alternatives and that's fair enough, but that's mostly collateral to any assessment of Bush's presidency.  Even still, insofar as the label of "war criminal" implicates far more than drone strikes, there's a lot more that has to be talked about before a term like that can meaningfully be tossed around.

That said, my criticisms of Bill Clinton's foreign policy is so lengthy it could not be reasonably described here.  I could give some highlights... maybe, but that will take some time.  Same with Hillary Clinton, although for different reasons... the mistakes she made were more relatively more grievous (with one exception) but less frequent than her husbands. 

>What role do charitable foundations play in tax evasion schemes?

Charitable organizations should play no role in schemes for tax evasion. 

I obviously, and strongly, disagree. 

By the way, more questions are encouraged.  If you ask economics questions, you'll see just how far to the left I go. 

Recommended topics:

Foreign policy

Identity politics 

Domestic affairs

Contemporary moral/social issues

FSB/GRU Disinformation Campaigns on Social Media 

>Thoughts on unpaid internships?

I'm going to say some more about this.  I think unpaid internships are a means by which structural inequality is reinforced among the classes.  Only those people who can afford to work for free are the people who can take unpaid internships, and the only people who can afford to do so are people who have independent means of supporting themselves... that means they have parent money.  The practical effect of this is to deny the opportunity to build a resume to someone who may be at once more driven and more competent simply because they can't afford to not earn money. 

This is beyond forgiveness. It is worse among the government than anywhere else. Example: DOJ internship is unpaid; who gets it?  Is it the kid who got a full ride to law school because he worked hard despite financial hardship?  Or, is it the kid whose parents can give him 8k per month or more to go live in Washington while he works for free?  The latter, obviously.  This offends me on a deep, visceral level.  Structurally reinforced inequality of opportunity is the opposite of meritocracy, or competence-based hierarchy.  

The UN is worse.  So you ask yourself... who gets a job at the UN?  Is it the kid whose parents saved all their lives only to be able to afford a fraction of their son or daughter's tuition with almost nothing left over; who didn't take vacations, and who saved every extra penny they had so that the university couldn't pick the future pocket of their kid by and through student loans, or is it the kid whose father is the CEO of a multinational company.  Well, take a look at the UN interns... they're the children of the landed elite from around the world; the people who can afford to pay for the cost of their kid doing something like that, and not everyone else. 

The result is that kids from families of means come out ahead of those who never got their foot in the door because their parents couldn't afford to bear the economic costs of such an internship.  Is this fair?  Is this just?  No.  It is deeply, deeply, unconscionably offensive. 

>Whats the chance Venezuela ends up in a war?

That depends on what you mean by "war".  If you mean a civil war, then we've got to figure out what that means; but if you mean war with other country, then most likely no.  

As to a civil war, anything is possible. There are too many moving parts to be able to definitively say one way or the other and as I see it there are about five plausible outcomes; three of which are equally probable, the latter two of which are unlikely.

Scenario 1: Maduro remains in leadership and initiates an Assad-style persecution of Venezuelans, where any viable opposition leader mysteriously dies or is imprisoned.  The conflict escalates on a sporadic, periodic basis; but it never fully develops into an outright civil war.  This is probable. 

Scenario 2: Maduro remains in leadership and faces viable opposition which is not murdered; mass civil unrest results without any clear timeline for resolution, leadership post-Maduro remains similarly contested.  Political leadership does not change, and the conflict does not get hotter.  This is probable.

Scenario 3: Maduro is forced out of leadership, either by some unexplained natural cause (i.e., a heart attack was arranged) or some unnatural unexplained cause (someone kills him; the world remains unsure as to who), or an unnatural explainable cause (e.g., military coup, or something like that) and he is replaced by either (a) someone amenable to the West, or (b) someone not amenable to the West, both of whom would face considerable internal resistance from the internal political forces.  Venezuela approaches failed-state status as a result.  This is probable. 

Scenario 4: Maduro leaves office voluntarily and a democratically elected leader takes his place without resistance.  This is improbable.

Scenario 5: Maduro leaves office voluntarily and is replaced by someone of similar temperament without significant further disruption, and Venezuela improves.  This is improbable.      

>When a democrat talks good about Bush Jr., you know they're full of shit. Bush is a member of one of the most clandestine cult-families of pure bullshit illuminati untouchable-status corrupt to the core bastard types in history. Never ever talk good about that scumbag and his family and call yourself a left-winger. You comparing him to Netanyahu is accurate, and I'd agree on who is worse between the two. Bush Jr. is pure scum, Netanyahu is medium scum.

To the extent that your post claims that when a democrat (which I barely am; I have serious issues with the DNC, which my posts should fairly obviate) speaks well of W, that you know "they're full of shit", I obviously disagree with that claim for reasons that are important to discuss.  Bush had his faults and those faults with respect to domestic and foreign policy were not insignificant, but like most things a unidimensional rejection of him inadequately represents the true complexity that Bush's presidency involved.  

Bush deserves a lot of credit for Medicare Part D, and other expansions of the medicare program under his watch.  He also deserves credit for a majority of the work that led to Obama being able to deploy special forces into Pakistan to capture and kill Bin Laden.  That said, Bush made a plethora of mistakes, which most prominently include the Iraq War's initiation and management, and his repeated failures to meaningfully respond to Russian aggression in Georgia in the last years of his presidency. 

Of course, Bush also gets a lot of untoward blame for policies which he had nothing to do with, which principally were Clinton-era policies that facilitated the securitization of future streams of income based on adjustable rate mortgages, and the second, third, and fourth-order implication of the 90s-era Wall Street deregulation more generally.  Two prime offenders come to mind: repealing Glass-Stegall, in 1992; and the Community Reinvestment Act's expansion in 1995.  Given the date, W obviously had nothing to do with any of that stupidity.  Republicans in Congress did, because it was their idea which Clinton appropriated; Clinton did, because he stole the idea from congressional republicans; but W was the Governor of Texas.  He didn't even sponsor the bills, or vote on them. 

Being a fair-minded person requires considering a person in all of their complexity, whether they're the president or whether they're an average person just like anyone else.  That means that a fair-minded person can't just unidimensionally write someone off, as you have suggested we do with Bush.  Now, an argument may be made that the harms which resulted from W's time in office profoundly outweigh the benefits, and that would be a plausible case to make... but the point remains the same.  I don't even do that with Trump or Jimmy Carter, who are indisputably the worst presidents this country has ever had. 

I may add to this later.  Israel is a lovely country.  Tel Aviv is a great vacation spot, very socially progressive, in many respects it is an oasis in what is otherwise an abyss of radicalism.  Other than Oman, Israel is the only place I could ever see myself being comfortable in the Middle East.  It also happens that I like the food, and have a few friends there.  

Politically, I see Israel as an American military subcontractor that, on occasion, gets wild ideas of its own.  The way the relationship works is basically this: America gives Israel defense subsidies (or handouts) for the purpose of arming the Israeli military in its ongoing efforts to identify, contain, and dispose of Palestinian terrorists.  This creates jobs for Americans in the defense industry, and gets something approximating relative peace in the Middle East in general at a lower aggregate human cost (across civilians, soldiers, and other people who matter) among lives worth preserving, and a greater kill-rate among lives that ought to be ended (terrorists, would-be terrorists).  

The basic question is this: how many American lives and how much American tax money would it take to prevent Palestinian terrorists in the US and Europe, equivalent to the same results Israel has now?  North of 100 billion over every five years.  Doing so would over-extend the military, and bankrupt the economy.  This is an unacceptably high cost.  Nevertheless, the predictable harm can be avoided by enabling Israel to act on behalf of the United States and Western world in general.  They do this for fractions of pennies on the dollar of what it would cost for America to do the same.  That's a deal I'll make 10/10 times.  Damn good deal. 

As to the social issues, the settlements do not offend me, and I see no reason to stop their continued development.  Most of the "human rights" complaints are false, and those that are not false are pretextual and therefore disingenuous.  There is some legitimate debate over water rights and electricity, but that's about the extent of it.  At the end of the day, Palestine is solely to blame for the conditions it presently endures... which is a great tragedy, but wholly predictable when the country's government harbors terrorists in its midst.  Every Palestinian life is, likewise, worth preserving to the extent that they are not terrorists; but sadly, because Palestinian terrorists place themselves in the crossfire between themselves and Israel, those deaths cannot always be prevented.  This is horrible, but fairly beyond Israel's control given that Israel does not chose the PLO or other terrorist group's field of operation.

As to the domestic political issues, I largely don't care.  Netanyahu is basically a more sophisticated and more socially liberal Bush, which is something I am very comfortable with in another country.  He keeps his word, although the extent of his fondness for certain politicians in Eastern Europe I dislike.  Even still, Netanyahu is someone I could easily work with.  To the degree that domestic political issues overlap into international diplomatic issues, such as is the case with the US Embassy in Jerusalem, I fully supported moving the embassy to its present location.  I am wholly indifferent to Palestinian, or greater Muslim objections.

The majority of conflict in the region I lay at the feet of a bastardized and politicized iteration of radical Islam that represents a radical departure from what was otherwise recognizable as an Abrahamic faith, rather than a cult of death and absolutism, such as exists presently among the Wahabists in Saudi Arabia and the ISIS those Wahabists created.  I blame Saudi Arabia for fomenting most of the chaos in the region now, and think that the US should have hung the Saudis out to dry in the 1970s; as should have the French.  

My main issue with Israel, now, is Iran.  The greatest tragedy in recent memory was the 1979 Islamic "Revolution" -- which was little more than an instance when terrorists besieged an otherwise just and lawful government and converted it into a barbaric theocracy.  Iran was once a reliable ally, lost because of Jimmy Carter's incompetence.  Even still, post 1979 the Ayatollah should have been disposed of by the CIA.  But, that failure of imagination lies with Reagan's administration.  Despite the fact that before that terrorist onslaught in 1979, Iran was a valuable ally to the west; not unlike Jordan, or other countries.  

Now, Israel continually stokes the fire with Iran, which irritates me.  It is in Netanyahu's interest to do so, but not in ours.  There is a future for Iran without the Ayatollah, and without the "revolutionary guard" or any other manifestation of theocratic totalitarian oppression in that terrorist-sponsoring state.  When Iran is a democracy once more (or at least a reliable secular dictatorship, which I would settle for) the stupidity of Israel's issue with Iran (and most of Israel's problems with the PLO) will end.  At that time, if the fucking Saudis don't stop bankrolling the Palestinian terrorists, the time will come for Mossad to do what Mossad does best against them too.  Green energy can't come fast enough.  The world will be a better place when Saudi Arabia is populated by nothing more than a random spattering of bedouin camel herders. 

Are you asking about my opinion on Israel, generally, or are you asking what comes to mind when I think about Israel?

No.

The state has no business murdering people. 

Tbh I don't know.  I've never had my heart broken.

There have been several events in my life which perhaps should have, but none have come close. 

I am a brick wall behind a concrete fence behind a shred-wire perimeter in the middle of a desert with armed guards in each and every watchtower. 

>How do you get people to ask you questions?

I think people know I'll give them a genuine, interesting answer... which is why they keep coming back.  Also, I like them coming back.  Maybe that plays a role too.

>When will Russia be ready for democracy?

Before we talk about the timeframe, we've got to establish whether or not it's even possible that Russia would be a democracy.  That's not an easy question to answer.  

For most Russians, all they know of 'democracy' is what they remember of the 1990s.  The 1990s were essentially a period of time where the collectivized wealth of the Soviet Union was transferred from government control to private control.  Yet, the capital flow's structure remained largely the same: those in power retained the right to all wealth that could have been produced from ownership of capital.  What changed, however, was that the material conditions for those at the top not only improved, but created an entirely new modality of existence (conspicuous consumption) that had not existed in Russia since before the Russian revolution in 1917.  Though now, the scale was greater than ever before.

Nevertheless, Boris Yeltsin was "elected" in something approximating a vaguely democratic fashion.  So was Putin, the first time.  Putin's popularity was primarily due to the fact that he managed to bring an end to a previously ongoing conflict in Chechnya in a fashion that was pleasing to most Russians.  He "wasted [the Chechen terrorists] in the shithouse", to quote Putin, which is not inaccurate.  (Sadly, the terrorists were merely replaced with Islamic terrorist war lords, who you may know as the Kadyrov's, but that's another conversation for another day.)  This cultivated genuine appeal to Putin, and where and to the extent -- however limited -- that Putin found in Bush a person with whom business could be done in the way of destroying Islamic terrorism, Putin gained international standing that had not been enjoyed in Russia since the early 1980s.  

While Putin was making Russia great again, or so it seemed, oil prices tended to rise.  There were some serious economic problems early on which created numerous setbacks, but overall, even as late as 2004 Putin was not obviously presenting a threat to world peace.  Of course, America had bigger problems on its hands as well.  This enabled Putin to cultivate relationships with Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea while America was preoccupied trying to nation build in Iraq.  But, in years to come things would sour.

Eventually, Putin came to lock up journalists, or worse.  He harassed, intimidated, or killed journalists, critics, dissidents, and enemies while at the same time walking side by side with members of the G8 -- pretending to be a legitimate president.  The list of people Putin has murdered includes, but surely is not limited to, Aleksander Litvenenko, Ana Politkovskya, Stanislav Markelov,  Anastasia Baburova, Boris Berezovsky, Sergei Yushenkov, Paul Klebnikov, and the list goes on.  The most recent, notable cases include Sergei Magnitski, and Boris Nemstov.  Every one of these people had a story, but that story is for another time.  Navalny will probably be next.  That is to say nothing of the people he has jailed, exiled, etc.  Mikhail Khordkovsky is the most famous case of that. 

The day will come when the oligarchs' economic interests necessitate Putin's days come to an end.  When that day comes, Putin will be gone, and democracy may be possible.  It may not be.  It will depend on who takes control.  The stooge Dimity Medvedev showed some early capability for thought independent of Putin, in relation to his (albeit woefully misguided) support for Obama's injudicious plan to remove Gaddaffi, over the predictably obvious objections of Putin (who I imagine had Medvedev bend over his desk for a school-boy type paddling for that).  So, if Medvedev were to take over, it is not obvious what direction Russia would take.  It is just as likely that Medvedev would liberalize Russia as it is that he would do the same things that Putin has been doing because changing the now extant institutional norms would be too complicated.  It's difficult to say.

The only obvious condition precedent to Russian democracy is Putin's death.  Once that happens, the situation would have to be re-evaluated.  But, that's not a timeline.  There's too much uncertainty as to what would happen post-Putin's death to predict with anything more than broad-side shooting's accuracy.  In some respects, this may be why no attempt on Putin's life has been successful yet. 

Relevant: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/boris-nemtsov-march-moscow-putin-russia-death-anniversary-a8794826.html

>Thoughts on unpaid internships?

Absolutely unethical to offer.  Usually not valuable experiences for students.