A dude who works with me has brought his baby to several things. I'm totally fine with it. I'm your strawman.

Okay.

As an employee who works in an office, it would bother me if people were consistently bringing their kids to work and I would be very frustrated if my employer implemented a policy that allowed this to happen. I need to be able to concentrate to do my work and on the rare occasions that people have brought kids into the office I have found them annoying.

If I recall correctly, you run a company that does outside labor type work. I don't think it would bother me in that kind of environment.

Also, as the owner/manager of your business you should be able to institute whatever policy you want when it comes to that. If you are fine with it, that's all good. But if you had the opposite view I think that would be fine as well. I certainly would oppose any laws or regulations stating that you were required to let this guy bring his baby.

I'm not sure you're my strawman.

Legally I agree with you though my love of freedom and compassion for the not-realistically-entirely-free cogs in the wheels of capitalist enterprise are in conflict. I wouldn't impose laws on all business as I think small businesses are really just people and should be free, but beyond a certain size and publically traded (or some other measure) companies become more like public social institutions and are more fair game. Still, compromise between baby haters and people who have nowhere to leave their babies.

The dude has brought his baby both to job sites and to indoor meetings with clients. The baby on the jobsite was certainly more of an obstruction than at the meetings, but I like babies so it was fine.

A baby on a work site, dear lord, health and safety would have a field day with that here in Ireland.

Probably warming bottles requies a certified microwave.

Publicly funded day care sounds like a fine compromise.

Ideologically I can see both sides here, but in practice I think publicly funded day care would be the most efficient thing and make for the most productive and happy society. It would not only be for the greater good, but it's the kind of thing that promotes the stability of society that is needed most of all by the wealthy. The only ideologues who should object to such policies are anarchist absolutists who want to completely upend capitalism, the state and private property or absolutely selfish rich old people who are balancing keeping more of their money and the amount of social upheaval and degradation that could happen in the short time they have left to live.

Publicly funded daycare is a reality in most modern, developed, first-world countries. I had my kids in publicly funded daycare since they were a few months old.

Sisi narrowly misses 100 percent of vote in Egypt

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/...112319879.html

DO NOT CONGRATULATE.

Gaza toll rises to 18, Israel rejects excessive force claims

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...8df_story.html

And here is some of the video described above:



https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l0-MnJLhYVg

As for "preventing a mass breach," I've not seen any video with even one Palestinian within 50 yards of the border (naturally, as they would be executed before getting anywhere near that close).

Saudi Arabia is still a terrible hellhole for a number of reasons even if we exclude what they are doing in Yemen. Having said that, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (who certainly is no angel) is taking steps to move the country into the 19th century. Women are now allowed to drive, not required to cover their whole bodies and admitted to sports stadiums. Concerts and movies theaters are no longer illegal.
Baby steps, sure, but an indicator in which direction he wants to take the country.

Were any of those things legal in 19th century Europe?

In any case, these are all steps meant to improve his image with idiots in the west who want to feel good about propping up a medieval regime while living high on the hog.

In the 19th century Euros also went with getting rid of their monarchs, even if they were liberal, or at least make them largely ceremonial figureheads. There is actual tyranny in SA, there are no civil rights for anyone, and there's no rule of law. It's an absolute monarchy, not an enlightened one, and not popular among the people.

The international community should not recognize that as a legitimate government.

So here's Bibi in a 24 hours span.

Part 1:

Yesterday morning he went on national TV to showcase his newly signed agreement to handle with the 'infiltrators' problem, aka 32,000 Eritrean refugees who entered Israel through Egypt.

The deal supposedly meant that Germany, Italy and Canada would accept 16,000 refugees and Israel will give the other half some sort of legal status. Bibi also vowed to move them out of Southern Tel Aviv (a poor area where most of them reside now) and move them to the 'Kibbutzim' (an empty sentence, but Kibutz are mostly known as left-wing places).

He continued to claim that this deal was forced on him after his first deal, to transfer all of the refugees without their consent to Rwanda, failed because left-wing organizations and the U.N. pressured Rwanda to back out of it. Still, he claimed, the new deal is far superior and he's a master negotiatior for getting it.

Part 2:

His right wing coalition members are outraged. He promised to expel them all. Naftaly Bennet, minister of education and possibly future PM of Israel, went on every platform to scream that Bibi caved to the left wing and UN. 'He made Israel a heaven for outlawers and 'infiltrators'. Other more "moderate" coalition members, including those within Likkud, Bibi's party, said similar statement.

Less than 5 hours after his TV apperance, Bibi decided to 'delay' the deal he presented that morning. Later that day he canceled it.

Part 3:

He released the following statement on his Facebook account (google translated) -

"The main factor that put European pressure on the Rwandan government to withdraw from the agreement to remove the infiltrators from Israel is the New Israel Fund.

The new fund is a foreign organization that receives funding from foreign governments and elements hostile to Israel, such as the George Soros funds. The New Israel Fund's ultimate goal is to erase Israel's Jewish character and turn it into a state of all its citizens, alongside a Palestinian nation-state free of Jews on the 1967 lines with Jerusalem as its capital"

He went on to say that no country in the world, including the US, would tolerate such activities and he asked the coalition chairman to open a formal investigation against the fund.

It's worth noting that he already used that spin once before when in crisis mode. It was denied because turns out it's utterly illegal for the parliament to open an investigation against a civilian organization for ideological reasons.

Not gonna get into what the New Israeli Fund is, but it mostly deals with hostile things like equal rights to women, legal representation for Ethiopian Jews, shelters for battered women etc.

was/is this deal even real? maybe canada makes sense but i have a hard time believing germany and especially italy would accept eritrean refugees from israel. because why should they? they accept un quota refugees, but theyre from un refugee camps in poor, unstable places, not rich countries.

I don't know anything about this deal. Germany already accepted more than a million refugees from Syria in the last few years though. Compared to that 5-10k Eritreans are a drop in a bucket. I could see this happening. There might be some other political considerations in play.

Who knows.
It was supposedly brokered through the UN. It's dead anyhow and there's no legal solution in sight, in cause you're wondering. The Israel supreme court isn't allowing Bibi to just deport them. In fact it has turned over a few law attempts of the parliament in the past couple of years because they contradict one of the 'basic laws' (a primitive version of a constitution).
It has also closed down an "open detention facility" in the desert, where we used to hold refugees without trial. In fact it was closed down by the SC 3 times before.

The latest 'solution' is to change the basic law in question ('Human Dignity and Liberty') so it won't include black people from africa who aren't even jewish yo.
And of course, to re-open the holding facility.

This.

They're token showings of westernization. You can still be executed for being gay, committing adultery or being an apostate. Hell, people have been executed in SA for witchcraft and sorcery ffs.

And as we all have experience with, there's a distinction between legally and socially acceptable. Black people didn't all of a sudden become equal with whites when The Civil Rights Act was passed.

Meanwhile in Yemen the Saudi's continue on with their Western supplied warplanes and rockets and it hardly rates a mention in western media. 20 civilians killed in vehicle and at least 20 people killed at wedding.

Macron actually gave a press conference partly about Syria - how necessary a strong response to the attack was, how we needed to stand up for international law and so on (it was before the response) - stood next to the Crown Prince, bin Salman, as he was visiting Paris. Afterwards he talked about how he understood SA had to do something about Yemen. Utterly sickening stuff.

A topic i dont see much talk about that possibly have devastating impact on societies, sexual inequality, in particular it seems to follow the muslim world on the map quite spot on. Their religion says they shall be able to take up to 4 wifes or whatever. I think economic inequality increases competition in society and with increased competition comes erosion of cooperative norms. How about increased sexual competition? One elite guy takes 4 wifes and 3 others take zero. Thats possibly like economic inequality but on steorids, a system that produces social losers that are ready to fight. The muslim world are leaders in both polygamy and economic inequality.

Some interresting reads

http://humanevents.com/2014/02/18/wh...-are-the-best/

https://www.economist.com/news/chris...lygamy-and-war

Thought you were going somewhere different regarding the cost of sexual inequality, like restricting the ways in which women can contribute to society is costly.

http://chicagopolicyreview.org/2016/...-inequality-2/

as opposed to the MRA angle.

And, the most feminist society in the world is Muslim. There are more opportunities for women and LDO no polygamy.

Also, geez with the Islamophobia there too. The economist article starts out talking about South Sudan, which is 6% Muslim (not mentioning that - 60% Christian) and goes on to blaming Islam. In their whole chart on % polygamous marriages there's plenty of Christianity in there.

Also, Iraq, Afhanistan, Syria and Yemen have very little polygamy, so what Islamic violence are you talking about?

Also, check out the homicide rates in the Islamic world. For the most part if they aren't one of the few countries involved in a major war, the rates are much lower than the rate in the US.

Oh am i being unfriendly to muslims? I guess i could have expected a comment like that that on this forum, i quote wiki:

The legality of polygamy varies widely around the world. Polygamy is legal in 58 out of nearly 200 sovereign states, the vast majority of them being Muslim-majority countries situated in Africa and Asia. [.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_polygamy