Solar desalination is very viable. It’s just that water is so cheap at the moment that it’s not worth the investment.

Not sure tbh

We survived the Gilded Age. We can survive this, if we fight. Labor revival, revitalized progressive movement, voting reform…

Nothing in life is guaranteed, but I still hold out hope that we’ll join the developed world in the coming years.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-israel-gaza-finish-problem-rcna141905

It would be awfully hard for a vassal landholder to get the kind of materials that they can’t produce on their own. Iron, tin, copper, lead; depending on the area, lumber, as well.

Yet most fiefs during the height of feudalism were autarkic, and engaged in minimal trade, much less redistribution from their overlord.

There was also the military presence keeping the brigandry in check (including from other feudal lords.)

Considering how rampant brigandry was, dunno how valid that is. As for other feudal lords, those are, of course, the peers they despise.

Vassals also exchanged military service for land. (And the serfs that came with it!)

Land could not simply be revoked in most feudal systems, though, and was more often inherited than granted by the overlord.

None of your points are wrong, necessarily, but I don’t think they’re major compared to the core pillar of “I trust my overlord to oppress me only a moderate amount, while I don’t trust my neighbors not to oppress me a much greater amount, so I would like it very much if my overlord would just oppress everyone. I’ll lick his boots for it.” It becomes especially apparent in Bastard Feudalism of England and in the later feudal system of Japan in which land revenue, rather than land itself, was what was granted to many warrior-vassals.

Oh, is he thinking of start a third war to prolong his own genocidal regime?

The Annoying Orange

Don’t think such a project would be very successful even without Netanyahu. I suspect the support we’ve given since the 80s are closer to making a North Korea in the Middle East, simply by removing consequences for provoking their neighbors for ‘security concerns’.

God, remember just before the Arab Spring when we were supposed to ‘pivot’ to South Asia and leave the sandbox behind?

Fuck.

If you’re really legit into it, uranium glass is mostly harmless (just barely above background radiation) and still legal to make and purchase. Even glows under UV light!

Wouldn’t recommend the arsenic book covers, though

Well, without Israelis causing trouble, the Saudis and Iranians would still be jousting in proxy wars across the region, Turkiye would still be trying to kill the Kurds, and Syria would still be locked in civil war.

But it would be at least a bit quieter, that’s for sure. I’m sure Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine would be immensely relieved.

I dunno, I feel like the hierarchical nature of feudalism is more core than tribute extraction. The lord needs the support of his loyal vassals, while the loyal vassals only need their lord insofar as they crave a ruler over themselves - or over their despised peers, for which they are willing to sacrifice money and dignity, and sometimes even their lives.

Well, we can only find out by consuming them.

Bring back dangerously tall and elaborate libraries that wouldn’t look out of place in a Resident Evil game

Iran has signaled to the U.S. that it still does not want a wider war, the officials said.

Iran being the reasonable party shows just how far fucking gone Israel is at this point. Israel’s political institutions have no sense of proportionality or restraint left.

is just some unexplainable enigma that boils down to personal grievances between leaders

That’s about the reading comprehension I expected of you as well.

I hope this is just posturing. As if we weren’t involved enough in supporting Israel’s ongoing genocide.

Fuck. Israel has never been great, but since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, I wonder if there’s any hope for them being anything other than a rogue fucking state.

Good on Jordan et other signatories for making the offer, but I doubt it has any chance of being accepted.

Get real. If Egypt clamped down on the suez canal they’d be thrown out of the UN and sanctioned so fast their economy would collapse before the first flood gate closed.

What is 1967-1975?

I find it amusing, as well, that you find Israel’s military capacity to disrupt trade as important here. But I suppose that reflects your generally low level of education on the history and geopolitics of the region.

Not many others with the same ideological alignment and geological position to exert control over access to trade routes through and around the Mediterranean, we don’t.

Ah, yes, the important thoroughfare of Israel, the crossroads of the Middle East. Israeli shipping and port systems definitely aren’t notoriously corrupt and inefficient, and we all know the importance of Israel’s territorial waters, which don’t even extend into the Red Sea, much less the Gulf of Suez. And who doesn’t pass by Israel’s Mediterranean territorial waters when shipping to many other countries, such as [checks notes] Turkiye, Syria, or Israel? Good thing we don’t need other aligned states in the area which Israel agitates, like Egypt, or Saudi Arabia. I mean, imagine if Egypt had some sort of vital canal to world trade running through it, or if the Saudis’ coastline extended along one of the most traveled shipping lanes in the world? Ha ha, wow, we would have to be really stupid to back Israel if that was the case!

To say nothing of the significance of Israel as an intelligence apparatus - Israel is probably the most important ally in that region by a mile.

Israeli intelligence is useful, but very far from indispensable, especially considering Israel’s political objectives in presenting and sharing evidence.