BlueOak

Decriminalizing drugs is the only sensible way to either remove drugs from your country, or regulate their usage. It brings everything into the open, to either remove the people actually responsible for bringing them in, or regulate their usage and offer treatment or help at the very sites where people are using them. Making drugs illegal to use is moronic: It forces everything underground and makes it harder to track Creates kingpins and an underground authority in the gap where the government should be. Fuels the resulting organized crime, and institutionalizes users. Creates criminals out of users who hate the police Stops people from seeking out support or offering up information. Pushes a further social stigma on damaged people Removes drugged up informants who could tell you everything you ever wanted to know. Removes any chance of tax income. Its what humans always do, chop off part of themselves from the whole, and then wonder why they are unbalanced, and eternally fighting themselves, all very dumb. I actually think that keeping drugs illegal is such a bad a strategy, organized crime are partly responsible in some countries for them NOT being decriminalized. By all means string the Opiate dealers up by their necks, but you might as well not further ruin lives to do so, just bring the people in, say give us your dealers, and you walk, no record at all - that's the bare minimum a society can sensibly do. No jailtime, no record, they walk, and then you can go back to them 50 times for information, because opiate junkies rarely change.

Hamas is a gang, it is a collection of children and teenagers led by older members who have survived. Set in a region that experiences great hardship and a constant level of violence. It rules through violence and legitimizes itself by constantly having the enemy of Israel fight. Authorities over stable regions rule by law, force is often a necessity when the laws are not followed. In this forum, for example, the moderators are the authority, their force would be to ban, close threads, or take other such actions when the rules or etiquette are not followed. This sort of example extends to any authority, and healthy ones don't require an enemy to function. Violence only happens when the process I just described breaks down and people are willing to commit violence. Let's say against a police officer, or against a landlord etc. In gangs, violence is the primary method of control, it is often the rule rather than the exception. Every day where I live people commit infractions against the law and no violence happens at all, its all handled bureaucratically. That's what needs to be established in Palestine, healthy civil institutions, and a legitimate functioning bureaucracy, so its no longer under gang or violent rule, if you prefer that term.

@royce You might not like the fact, but it's a fact that most people did not elect Hamas, because most people are teenagers, and the election was 20 years ago. Apparently,14-year-olds make up 40% of the population in Gaza, and half are actually under 18 now as of 2020. We are talking about children and teenagers led by a few people who live long enough to perpetuate it. If we were capable of understanding that, we'd be able to actually address the situation appropriately. Every authority is maintained by force of some kind, but they don't all have the same systems, regulations and oversight, nor levels of violence, repression, and social breakdown. If you are comparing my peaceful village here to a country in anarchy ruled by a gang, for example, I don't know where to start with that disparity. No, a police force and a gang are not the same thing. Whatever you believe about who initiated the instigating act. The Hamas leadership is in Qatar or Iran depending on your point of view. This means Israel can bomb the people in Gaza for the next hundred years and it's not going to stop Hamas from reappearing, even if they just change the name. There needs to be a better alternative to replace what Israel is trying to remove, else it's pointless. There will always be an authority in place of some kind. We can roll the dice and hope for the best again, or actually make one. Israel is not addressing anything, they are not changing anything, they are just killing people. They have no plan and no clue. That becomes more obvious the more people I speak to about this. *Added this link to the top post as the one I used is behind a paywall after enough visits. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2023-11-14/population-religion-and-poverty-the-demographics-of-israel-and-gaza#:~:text=About 40% of Gaza's population,from the CIA's World Factbook.

Reality check. - The average age of people in Palestine was 19.6 years old. Less for males (and probably less overall now). None of them elected Hamas. Hamas's leadership is in Qatar, or Iran depending on your point of view, unaffected by events there. The election itself was only 50/50 even 20 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_election https://www.statista.com/statistics/1423040/gaza-age-structure-of-population/ *added link as the one above has gone behind a paywall https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2023-11-14/population-religion-and-poverty-the-demographics-of-israel-and-gaza#:~:text=About 40% of Gaza's population,from the CIA's World Factbook. In a refugee camp, the guys with the guns holding the food make the rules. You and I wouldn't be resisting them, we'd be shot, so we'd keep our mouths shut like they do. These are young, impressionable teenagers in a region that would either be in anarchy or ruled by a gun. It's the same as any gang, and should be treated as a gang, not a government. At most, you can argue it's a proxy Iranian force. Palestine needs legitimate, functioning civil authorities supported by its neighbors, including Israel for their own security. It can be demilitarized too, but it needs a police force, emergency services, schools, and an export so it can trade for what it lacks. Rather than bombing it to nothing, it needs to be built up. I am in favor of a three-state solution, with each region treated as a manageable, independent nation. No more endless weapons being thrown at the problem, that includes stopping them from going into Gaza, and supporting a police force long term to keep order in the region.

1, What plans are in place to replace Hamas with a better central governing authority that will bring some stability and legitimacy to the region? Israel equates Hamas with the Palestinians, so how can the Palestinians themselves disappear? It's completely backward logic and a flawed approach, they should have been doing the exact opposite, and trying to separate Hamas from the people, then replaced the authority with a better one. Instead every action the IDF has taken has strengthened Hamas and Iran in the long term. There will be an authority that rules over a region, and unless a better one is put in place, it'll be another one that is actively hostile to Israel. So what are you asking, that they rename that authority as something else, the IDF go home to celebrate, and the cycle starts back up? 2, The 2,000-pound bombs on buildings make releasing hostages impossible. They are no longer alive, like most of the northern area. 3, The leadership of every major country involved requires war to sustain itself with hatred of others (or just an enemy). America - Iran - Israel - Hamas 4, Everyone combined has generated enough hate for another 50 years of violence.

I see a lot of talk about borders all the time. Humans create their migrations by things like wealth disparity, environmental damage, hunger, the narcissism of their cultural superiority through their media, water shortages, cheap labor requirements by paying the actual workers peanuts, and war. They create their problems with drugs by criminalizing all of them, creating an additional problem they then need to solve. Ban the immigrant workers + We need to manufacture things again! + But we don't have enough young people! + Breed more! + But it costs too much to raise a family and buy a house! = Temporary Work Visas, and/or high-speed rail connections, housing on the border they can travel from. *Unless the person is racist, which many people who speak along these lines are, in which case there is no hope of reaching a common ground on this issue with them. Any refugees of all kinds should be given ten years to establish themselves. If they are earning a wage, speak the language, and have integrated, then it's done. If they are in a gang, committing crimes, or still on benefits, then they have to go. Family or not. That's a good chunk of time to get yourself into a stable place, and yes, the last nine years need to be taken into account for last-minute changes. It's also a good chunk of time to arrange another place to go to if your country is unstable.

***If extreme libertarians had their way. The left can be just as strict with the border as the right. @Leo Gura

True, but I wouldn't equate structured and disciplined armed forces with a gang. This is the entire problem and why the situation came about. @Leo Gura Gangs tend to come about where there is chaos, a lack, or a power vacuum to be filled, and they're the only authority in it. In many countries, this is because the government or country doesn't control drugs, smuggling, prostitution, or lack control over an area. While people are still buying these things or living in a region, a gang forms as the authority controlling it. In more war-torn regions, the gang forms because there is no authority at all, that's Hamas. The biggest problem is that civil authorities were not properly installed and supported in Palestine, as they'd be responsible for everything occurring in the territories, not some nebulous association with all Palestinians, because Israel then focuses on all Palestinians rather than a responsible civil authority or government. When the armed forces lack discipline and restraint, yes, it can devolve into a gang mentality. The IDF has shown a lot during this conflict that it lacks these. In the armed forces, it's a struggle between people's worst instincts and restraint or training, which officers are trained to keep in check.

@royce Thanks for sharing your view. I agree Russia, Iran, and the Syrian government won in Syria for the most part, though the devastation was horrific. I'll agree that these countries with valuable exports and a lot of money exert pressure on bigger countries, but the reason people don't understand how they can move a huge country like America to do what they want, is that America wants to do this as well. If they didn't want to help or keep Iran pinned and their hands out of their fuel suppliers, Israel and Saudi Arabia wouldn't be able to budge America to do anything, the size difference and geographic distance would make it impossible.

In England we have tended toward socialism in hard times. We've been conservative for 14 years, so its possible. However, for me personally, its been nearly twenty years of recession already, since 2008 and the bank crash at the very least, we also had covid and Brexit, but there were a few years before that as well leading to the banking crash. Where we are at now is past conservatism and closer to fascism, the reform party is trying to supplant the conservatives here with a further right government as an example. Apologies I should checkout people's profiles more, I think it was your name that threw me off and the choice of avatar.

You're not expanding, why you disagree? Israel and Saudi Arabia are both allies of the west, though Saudi Arabia has wavered in recent years because they didn't get unrestricted weapon shipments to keep bombing Yemen into nothing (that and Russian OPEC pressure). Both don't like Iran very much, and both get weapons from the west. This is no accident. Iran tries to exert influence over countries like Yemen through religion, cultural influence, proxy forces, and weapons. America tries to exert influence through money, military bases, and weapons. It should be no surprise why this is the case:

Islam is a religion Hamas is a gang of young men raised in violence, given a gun and told to shoot people.

Why is this not accurate, its an obvious strategic pattern repeated three times. What is your counter argument? Are you arguing that countries don't constantly try to push their influence outward, and other countries don't constantly push back? Or are you saying NATO isn't holding Russia in Ukraine, China in Taiwan and Iran in Israel? If China takes Taiwan, they own trillions of dollars of global trade routes through those waters, that's going to increase the price of everything you own from insurance costs, if you can get things like semi conductors for any technology at all through instability and/or tolls. They would have launching paths to the disputed Japanese Senkaku islands, and the many other countries disputed islands to their south east they are already trying to take over. It fuels their expansionist policies generally; if needed, I can retrace these expansions for you and the regions China have invaded. Taiwan gives them clear access to numerous Southeast Asian countries waters, which they've decided to try to steal. America would have to arm 15 countries to maintain their presence and allies there, rather than one, Taiwan. If I need to run a history recap of why America won't allow another huge naval buildup in eastern Asia by a hostile power to threaten global trade and its western influence, then I can. Just read the history of WW2 or the lead up to it, then add in a globalized world. We've already discussed Israel's military presence, how America maintains a balance on Iran and its many proxies above, and also touched on Russia slightly. If Russia needs further highlighting, talking about the black sea expansion Russia was trying, the 8 attacks on former USSR countries, or the takeover of its gas connections, I can certain retread old ground on these things and others.

Your and my entire country got us into this, mine is currently conservative. These parties are two sides of the same coin, one governmental whole. You can't break that apart and achieve any effective change to the whole by not owning all of it as you say. The problem is structural, and its in people, the people themselves. https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020 Both your parties were rightwing in 2020, I can only imagine what they will all look like after this is calculated in this year, mine won't be much better with our so called 'left' under starmer. There is not a practical leftwing in America bar a few voices, and barely any in England . You can, as demonstrated by all this, be liberal and right-wing. The liberals biggest fault is that its all about how things look, or sound. Which is useful for keeping people from fighting each other, or disruptions from occurring, but as you can see when they are so far right, they are the ones fueling the wars, the ideology becomes horrific in its suppression of criticism (calls for peace), and shows another aspect of liberalism's dark side. And by the way if you didn't see everyone in America, average joe people included, ravenous to supply Israel with mountains of weapons, I can certainly pull hundreds of videos for you.

The level of equipment being sent is in preparation for a regional war. Not guaranteed but i'd be happily astounded if that wasn't the case now.

For sending unlimited weapons and not caring how they are used. For shielding Israel from the results of their actions. Both done with almost no political opposition to speak of, because there is no political opposition to rightwing actions. The options are: weapons, or more weapons, and do you need our troops? Good thing everyone 'owned the libs', demonized socialists, and mocked every libertarian idea . When a politician actually spoke up, Ilhan Omar, what did America do to her, kicked her off the foreign affairs committee. That's why. We create our own futures. The Hamas gang helped create theirs, and we, Israel, the USA and the UK have chosen to create ours however that comes at us. Yes. The level of how much America jumps when Israel says so surprised even me. Britain approved airstrikes on Yemen without even consulting parliament; they told them after the fact. That's collectively, Trump, my leaders, your leaders, every politician with any clout. Then there is Biden who is a Zionist, so he's not exactly held captive, he's doing what he believes in. While everyone else does what they think will earn them money, and keep them in power or get them elected.

I can't even get people onto the political compass as a way of reasoning, getting them out of a simple right/left dynamic is all but impossible. I've come to realise the duality is too well represented by it, until recent times where the left dropped off completely, the system on a meta level is still maintained even without half or more of it functioning within the system, which should demonstrate its durability. The momentum is also useful for governance, and while individuals are still more important than groups, a single individual, personality, and face is enough for people. This fits the dual system very well: Good and bad, right and wrong etc The way our minds work, an individual in mind is easier to remember and relate to than a group, or even symbol. That's the crux. How do you get people to relate to a group or (many groups/people at once) more than they do a single individual? *How do you get people to see everything as a functioning whole, not a separated right left dynamic?

This is exaggerated, but this its what's happening in Europe with the global isolationist me me me trend. Ditto Britain and the world, i'm not pointing the finger at America, the whole world is almost in the same trend. Belarus has said similar things repeatedly so its not even a western or eastern thing.

I am speaking in past tense, of course, because Israel has gone so far right; they have moved into ethnic cleansing and genocide territory. It'll take a few more decades of right wing think tanks to fully brainwash the American public into accepting those as realities, though, to be fair we are most of the way there now if we look at the parties and population. The west has agreements with oil producing nations, we maintain the status quo and get deals on oil. We get to put our companies there, taking the oil out and the vast, complicated supply chains it takes to process and export it that need to be constantly in operation, so it doesn't back up and close the sites down. More importantly, because of how countries stupidly do their foreign policy, we stop other countries like Iran gaining power over the region, and its exports. - Zero Sum thinking. This stability through not having destructive wars or piracy, for example, is a snippet of how international trade works, you can look at all the routes and the Trillions up Trillions of dollars in the global economy maintained by those largely accessible routes. We work as a globalized system, this allows countries or regions to specialize and support each other, which lowers prices and increases our quality of life. Not just in terms of product prices or fuel prices, food, or energy bills but also with things like recycling waste and giving it to people who can better use it. The development of increasingly sophisticated technologies is only possible by drawing on international expertise, through global cooperation, and the general maintenance of our planet to prevent it from becoming a dustbowl. By asking me what do we get out of it, you are showing the isolationist trend in American Righting politics. Which utterly fails to understand how the world actually works, and has the Brexit attitude that we are better off doing it ourselves. Its shortsightedness, as England found out the hard way, it didn't help at all. If trade and your economic well being, quality of life etc is not enough to sway you, I'll answer: How about not having WW3? If Russia, China, and Iran are not held in place by these three countries/regions, Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel, backed by NATO and the west, then we have other countries fighting them instead. Like Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics vs Russia. Like Japan and South Korea vs China and North Korea. Like Saudi Arabia and Iran etc. People are always looking to push their spheres of influence outward, because people are not robotic creations that respect lines on maps, be it cultural, economic, religious or military influence.

1) Diplomacy or war. Pick one. Things don't happen 'just because', people either talk, negotiate, and reach an agreement or they fight. 2) There is no point in being angry at politicians for ensuring their job security and job rewards. They always will, it's like yelling at the wind. If you don't want money to motivate politicians, advocate for taking it out of politics. If we don't want Putin using fear/war as a way to stay in power, that needs to get out of Russian politics. Oh yes poor Putin, his 8th war against the evil west? Oh wait, no, they were against former USSR border states. Perhaps the decades, no centuries,, where Eastern Europe has threatened, meddled in Russian elections, and continuously invaded it? Oh wait, no that was Russia too. Hmm, let me think. I know, perhaps because there are no individual countries at all, and you are right this NATO country keeps expanding. No wait, these countries join NATO, a defensive alliance, so that isn't it. I wonder why that could be, let's think. Could it be that Russia creates the cycle it doesn't want with its own aggressive expansionist attitude? That it is constantly demonizing that which it isn't? So much so it needs to completely absorb its neighbors into an amorphous, oversized blob to desperately control everything around it out of fear? It says it's multicultural while doing everything it can to promote two cities at the expense of the cultures it absorbs. No surely not, Russia couldn't have any part in what happens to Russia right? I was like that at 20. I sat there and blamed the world for my actions. I didn't have any responsibility, what could I have possibly done to get myself into my own situation? I was the victim, right, yeah. It was this outside evil that I was fighting. I also drank a lot, like Russians do, to forget my own problems and further absolve myself of any responsibility to change who or what I was. A fearful man who needed to control every aspect of his existence. - Russia. If you are expecting me to now defend the two right-wing parties in America and their crazy fascist alignments toward perpetual war, for example, you are talking to the wrong person. They helped build the worldwide collective fear we now all stew in and suffer from? Sure. I'd go further than what you are talking about, America, like Putin, wanted to make the world America. Its motivation was greed, not so much fear. Politicians in America don't have long terms, so they don't create situations to keep themselves in power, they create situations to make themselves money instead. Something the fascists in America want to start having instead is longer terms. Then an American president might act more as Putin does, creating situations (fear of the other) to keep themselves individually in control of that fear. 3) Holding Russia in Ukraine, keeps Putin, an uncertain leader acting out of fear with a need to control everything, in a certain place. It's really simple.

Israel holds Iran in check and allows America to project power, to secure oil and trade routes through the area. It's a similar strategy with Taiwan in China and Russia in Ukraine. This takes uncertain situations caused by expansionist authoritarian powers and creates certain outcomes. Russia and China in particular, have been land grabbing for decades, going for trade routes, financial centers, ports.. Iran to a lesser extent, because it is a smaller power works through proxies, to create dominion over the Middle East (oil) and to position their influence in nearby regions such as eastern Africa where possible. Everyone does what they can to push their influence outward, because we are playing zero-sum games. So your question is, why does humanity play zero-sum games? Because we the people, are in a survival, fight/flight/freeze state most of the time. You can ask why, generational trauma spreads into education, action, thought, design/execution, etc. Each war adds another layer of it. It's a level of consciousness, some people know what I am telling you but have vast fortunes because humanity is perpetually reasoning and procreating itself from a survival mentality and relying on what they provide. Media - Weapons - Fuel - Construction - Medicines - Shipping - Politicians - etc Like a drug dealer, he keeps his clients coming back for more. They don't see or don't know they are what they are causing, and they are experiencing what they are causing. It's a horrific state of unconsciousness that humanity has entered into.

Diplomacy is a more effective tool than a weapon, but with diplomacy the result is not 'your or my way', its whatever can be agreed. Putin has normalized nukes use as an open threat now, which has weakened some of the fear associated with them. The unspoken fear of a nuke was more effective than a threat repeated 20 times but never acted upon.

The right: Cause the wars. Cook the planet, dry it up, and weaken its food supply. Cause mass migration by the above actions, and a vast economic disparity by me me me attitudes. Overfill us with guns globally. Cause all the tension between cultures and races. Fight wars against drugs, rather than decriminalize their intake (at a bare minimum) to get at the people with the real power/money. They elevate criminal kingpins by making those buying their product HATE the police, and they actively work against the police because they are the target of their policies. Criminalizing everything is a childish way of dealing with a complicated, difficult problem, and my own country is completely backward on every drug policy it has, leading to gangs and other authorities ruling over drugs and communities. Things like people getting records for often nothing but harming themselves, and getting institutionalized. I come from a family whose brother has been hooked on drugs since he was 13/14 and now he's 40. The right hates immigration and the problems it's caused. They use it as a political tool all the time, while still causing it, and requiring it for their economic numbers. They hate the social problems they pour fuel over to burn them twice as bright, rather than address them with meaningful leftwing policies The right has been in power in America and the UK for example, for longer than I can remember, what's it been 14 years here in the UK now? We still blame the left, for what, being ineffectual? Non existent? America's parties have been right-wing most of my lifetime. They grade everything by economic output, there is much more to life, and I am speaking as someone below the poverty line who struggles financially. None of this talks about countries aging populations, or the requirement of younger labor. Nor the corruption corporations have on larger contracts, which means we never get integrated with large high-speed transport systems, which would facilitate movement for work without resettlement. Brexit and the anti-immigration push, were among the second biggest disasters in my life, after the banking corruption causing a crisis in 2008, which we never totally recovered from because people are more than a number on a sheet. That betrayal in 2008 and lack of trust/justice stayed with people. Brexit has only made everything in our day-to-day life worse, as with protecting banks from their own bad practices. Note: For Americans, both parties are the right. This is not an I hate X political party post. In context, I want to emigrate from Britain and have done so for a lot of years now, as things get worse here and people get more and more inward-focused its not going to get better. Killing globalism is going to undo the economic benefits everyone is talking about in this video, it is doing with the BRICS vs NATO crises going on worldwide. Countries, certainly the UK cannot do everything themselves and remain competitive, nor can Sweden. Killing immigration means your younger generations are going to be carrying more older people on their backs, and they can't do all the jobs.

For anyone who likes logically working through things. I found this little known gem very useful.

Be a student always. This attracts a teacher. Be open to every experience in life being spiritual, and everything in life can be a spiritual teacher. The spiritual teacher you are looking for could be the guy at the grocery store working the 9-5, because its all you, lining up with the experiences you need to have or are attracted to. Also practically look up spiritual groups in your area and attend a few. I really miss the spiritual group I used to be a part of locally, and the store it was in.