caze

yeah, made it over in my folks place, their oven isn't the best, but with a pizza steel I managed to cook it in 9 minutes and it turned out pretty good. that one is tomato, chorizo, mozzarella and some fresh pesto which by brother made.

...that Chesed thing is with Gyan Riley too.

cool, will check out. just finished listening to another Zorn/Lage one, him and another guitarist (Gyan Riley, son of Terry) performing Zorn pieces (Midsummer Moons). just some nice and pleasant acoustic noodling. those two also team up with Bill Frisell for a similar thing, not listened yet, called Nove Cantici Per Francisco D'Assisi.

no, this is stupidly simplistic. the most important factor is trying to balance the various sectarian and tribal factors. US interests are a consideration, but they only have so much influence. and this is basically racist. it's saying the people of the middle east have no agency, that they're like little children and everything that happens is because of the only grownups, the westerners. the current shit show is a result of countless factors, involving everyone. Iran in particular plays a big role in the regional instability of the last 30+ years.

He didn't, Iran decided to not actually retaliate, instead they did a fake face saving retaliation, which allowed both sides to draw a line under the whole thing. If they had actually targeted and taken out US soldiers then there's no doubt Trump would have hit back. Iraqi oil exports being cut off from the US would not have any significant impact on the US economy. not currently, the current guy was Iranian backed. even in the past when they have favoured one guy over another, it's not like they're picking from the cream of the crop, or that the entire system of tribal affiliations would allow them to pick anyone who's likely to be uncorrupt, plus they still had to be voted in.

to a degree, it would hit their exports somewhat, but it wouldn't be as big a shock to the economy because they are self sufficient in terms of petroleum products. plus, as you say they have big reserves, and are capable of increasing production too, I think there's little chance of the US suffering anywhere near what they suffered in the 70s. I would say that providing stability is pretty noble, for a country which has spent over a decade lurching from one shit-storm to another. Exactly, which is why it's important they do diversify, they can do that by using the profits from the oil (well, if they weren't being ruled by factional corrupt assholes, but in theory they could).

Been binging on Julian Lage recently, hadn't checked him out since World's Fair (one of my favourite solo guitar albums) and Arclight (his first trio outing). His most recent album Love Hurts is great, with David King from the Bad Plus on drums... His previous album, Modern Lore, was also great. As were two albums he did with John Zorn (Insurrection and Salem, 1692), also featuring Trevor Dunn of Mr Bungle on bass, great stuff, weird jazz/metal fusion thing. There's a good duo bluegrass thing he did called Mount Royal too if you're into that kind of thing. He crams so many styles, influences and techniques into his playing it's hard to know where to start, so good. lol, also found this footage of him playing with Santana when he was 9 years old, he was a blues player back then...

You're just cherry picking, if you'd picked the previous week there was a net export amount. The trend is pretty clear, stop splitting hairs. The point is that the US military presence in Iraq has nothing to do with making some elites rich. The only way it relates to oil is in the sense that oil in general is important to the global economy, this has little to do with elites though and more to do with growth, jobs, etc. It's very important to Iraq itself, being a normal functioning member of the international community, using oil to develop and diversify it's economy.

Nope, not any more: https://www.ft.com/content/9cbba7b0-12dd-11ea-a7e6-62bf4f9e548a

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/08/irans-assault-on-us-bases-in-iraq-might-satisfy-both-sides

but there hasn't been any loss of US life in these attacks? even though the Iranians are claiming otherwise...

...apparently the earlier reports of Iraqi casualties was incorrect, which is nice.

Iran's retaliation seems to have been a bit of a damp squib. They damaged some planes and killed some Iraqi soldiers. Doubt Trump will strike back again if that's all they've got.

I doubt his killing made much difference in terms of increasing or decreasing attacks, the people involved would have found other justifications for their attacks regardless. Not that I'm condoning it, eventually you have to draw a line in the sand and reach a settlement with these people, the only problem is this guy was against the idea of peace from the beginning.

"has it's faults" lol, that's putting it mildly. Not being as culturally repressive as the Saudis isn't saying much. Soleimani was recently responsible for the murder of many hundreds of Iranian civilian protesters, many whom were killed by snipers, many more were arrested, tortured and murdered. His militias have been responsible for the same in Iraq and Lebanon in recent months too. Even the Saudis aren't that brutal when it comes to repressing civilian discontent (though this is probably more down to the fact that there's far less of it to repress, because Iran has a much more developed internal opposition). The Iranian regime are not anti-imperialist, they are imperialists. They are fundamentally and virulently anti-semitic, it's part of their core Islamist principles. This is complete nonsense. Iran is a major terrorist supporter, just because the victims of it's terrorism are predominantly other Muslims and Israelis and not westerners doesn't make it ok, the people who live in the middle east are people too. This page lists many of the overseas terrorist attacks and foiled plots (several of which were in European countries) orchestrated by Iran: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_terrorism this is a childishly naive view of the world. The US isn't still involved in the region to maintain conflict, it's there to prevent it's spread. Do you remember what happened the last time the US pulled out of Iraq? ISIS took over half the country. Whatever about the rights and wrongs of taking out Saddam in the first place (which of course the Shia and Iranians were also in favour of), once they did they had a responsibility to the region to stick around and help fix the mess they made. It's not the US's fault the region is filled with numerous violent fascist groups of various stripes, which prevented the stabilisation of the country. The main reason they are still there was to fight ISIS and to train and equip the Iraqi army, this will now come to an end, probably with negative results for most Iraqis. Oil is not the reason behind any of this, the US does not rely of the region's oil as it's one of the world's biggest oil exporters itself (and they only have about 15% of Iraq's output tied to US companies in the most recent contracts, Russian companies have about the same, the UK a bit more; Iraq keeps 25% of everything produced, plus the taxes on all profits). There is a sense in which it's important to the US and the global economy to keep Iraqi oil production going, this isn't to line the pockets of elites though, it's important to everyone and especially important to the Iraqis as it funds their economic development. Even after the US military leaves Iraq a whole host of countries, including from the US, will continue to be awarded contracts for developing oil fields and building out processing infrastructure, this is essential for Iraq because they're at capacity and require significant infrastructure development (especially when it comes to gas), something they don't have the know how or the funds to do themselves.

Yassin was a founder and leader of Hamas, which is a terrorist paramilitary organisation, he's not just some civilian politician. He was a guy who advocated for, and was involved in, the murder of innocent civilians. That knife bomb is pretty cool, better than killing loads of innocent bystanders.

You think this video by some random neckbeard makes more sense than the one written by a journalist who's actually spent time in the region, has spent years developing sources and hearing stories from the people who actually live in the region? It's hilarious you mention a guy/bad guy narrative, and think the video makes a lot of sense, when the video itself is guilty of doing exactly that, just turning the tables and painting the US as the pantomime villain. Iran isn't some valiant underdog trying to defend the rights of Iraqi's to establish a sovereign state, they're an imperialist theocratic fascist state intent on establishing their own hegemonic control of the region, while killing as many Sunnis as possible. They want to do with Iraq what they've already done in Lebanon, install their own puppet government (who they'll bump off, like they did with Hariri, if they refuse to play ball). The video is naive and ignorant bullshit. There are no good guys and bad guys in this situation, just bad guys, worse guys, even worse guys and innocent bystanders.

well, that and burning down most of the forests on the planet.

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/middle-east/2020/01/qasem-soleimani-brutalised-middle-east-bloodshed-far-over

you don't seem to know what "trickle down" actually is. I'm guessing you don't either. It is the idea that reducing the taxes on the wealthy will increase their spending which will trickle down into the general economy. It's related to a similar, but different idea, called supply side economics (something which was actually implemented by Reagan), which is that lowering taxes across the board will increase economic activity. These are two different things, and there is evidence to back up the latter, though it was the lower taxes on low and medium income earners which had the greatest impact, lowering taxes on the wealthy had minimal effect. "Trickle down" is similar to "neoliberalism" when employed by critics of capitalism, not an actual thing that really exists, but more of a dishonest/ignorant rhetorical maneuver. I haven't been talking about lowering taxes on the wealthy at all, just not taxing their economically productive wealth (have at it with the non productive assets, like land, though), and in fact I'm fine with increasing their taxes, just do it in ways which don't cause more problems than they attempt to fix. it's not nuts, I've explained why it's a bad idea and you've not bothered to engage with those arguments. this has noting to do with a wealth tax obviously, it's a different discussion. increased financial regulations aren't a good idea either though, the problem isn't avoiding economic cycles, it's about being robust in the face of failure - this involves not bailing out companies when they fail. over-regulation just leads to corruption and stagnation, and the US actually has more financial regulations than most capitalist countries, it's pretty low down on many metrics for judging economic liberty (compared to most European countries). the US could do with significant reform of it's regulations, this would mean adding newer simpler ones, but also getting rid of most of the existing ones too.

FTFY

it's highly speculative that automation will make jobs disappear, technological progress has always led to more jobs being created, not less. if there is an impact it would likely be a short term one, and solving such a problem doesn't require a wealth tax (e.g. Yang's UBI funded largely by VAT and redirecting other social services money). even a modest wealth tax (e.g. 2-3%) would have a damaging effect on the functioning of the economy. it's bad for very practical reasons, there are much more sensible ways of increasing tax revenue. corporation tax cuts largely benefit small to medium businesses, which employ the vast majority of Americans (and it's the same in all free market countries), they did not use savings to buy back stock (as they're not on the stock market), they use it to pay wages and to grow their business. to prevent larger companies like AT&T from taking advantage of these things you could just make corporation tax progressive (and remove loopholes that allow large corporations to get around paying most of it). none of this has anything to do with what I was talking about re a wealth tax though. and none of this has anything to do with 'trickle down economics' either (which isn't really a thing), we're just talking about the basic functioning of the economy. I mean there are people in this very thread talking about taxing all wealth out of existence. you are correct, it is an absurd idea. but even Warren/Bernie's more modest proposals are dumb.

workers do the work, but workers are paid with money, which they use to live. if that money isn't invested then they don't have jobs. wealth generates more wealth via growth, which creates jobs. surplus wealth is invested back into the economy, if we tax that wealth out of existence then there will be less economic growth and more poverty and a lower standard of living for everyone.

globalresearch.ca is not a credible source, it's like a lefty version of infowars. there is evidence of increased birth defects, but there is not evidence they have been caused by DU. nobody knows where it was used exactly, aside from the military and they're not saying; and attempts to find evidence in soil samples hasn't been successful. heavy metal poisoning in general, from regular munitions, are a more likely explanation.