The Reconquista in Spain, yes. In the Levant/Outremer? That’s just not what happened.

PS. I know that in the US, (CW: Hegseth) the christian nationalists are using crusading iconography to promote their deranged fascist apocalypticism. They are instrumentalizing the past the way fascists always do. Knowing and insisting on the actual history is a kind of negation of that instrumentalization. Don’t be tempted to just mirror a reverted image of their anti-intellectualism back to them.

Yes, obviously there is no total order. There is a partial order though.

That’s why I prefaced my whole comment with «Side thing,…». I’m doing an «um ackchyually» about the history of the Crusades, nothing more.

Side thing, but I don’t see the Crusades as at the same level of the Holocaust or the Holodomor. They were religious wars of conquest not campaigns of extermination. They were brutal, sure, but if you add them, then you have to start piling a bunch of other wars in there too, like the Mongol conquests, the Timurid conquests, the Arab conquests, the Ottoman conquests, the Aztec conquests etc. Which kind of dilutes the point of “grave crimes”.

There is nothing particularly unique about the Crusades, and at the time, the Roman Empire that invited them and tried to sanction them actually had a legitimate claim of them being reconquests of Roman territory (even though they ended up killing it off anyway in 1204).

since none of the involved actors seem to like that idea, sucks to suck.

I read this as «Iranians don’t really want democracy so sucks for them».

Iran is about as right wing as it gets, the only way you could associate abstaining from intervention in Iran as left wing is if your idea of left wing is an eastern dictatorship.

After the historical experience of Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan, what a PROFOUNDLY STUPID thing to write. This kind of argument was made by Hitchens before the Iraq war and he was proven wrong by history itself. That someone in 2026 would repeat the same idiotic bullshit is frankly just beyond me.

Ideally, we should be promoting revolution in Iran for a strong democracy to form, free of influence of USA or China, but since none of the involved actors seem to like that idea, sucks to suck.

Again, the stupidity is just overwhelming. The regime was the most fragile right before the American and the Israeli maniacs started bombing. They had just had to put down a huge internal revolt with incredible violence and were facing complete lack of internal legitimacy. These excesses had focused the Iranian people on bread and butter issues and the regime was the shakiest it had ever been. And then… the Blitz rallied the people to the flag and effectively killed off the opposition. There is no way today to be against the regime inside Iran without immediately being stigmatized as a traitor. The American and Israeli maniacs gave the regime the biggest gift the IRGC could have possibly wished for.

The Left has been right about Western military adventurism every fucking step of the way for the last 20+ years. And yet these kind of brain dead takes still come up. WTF.

It’s restricting access to nationality by emergency decree. Ask any European with a memory of the 20th century why that’s as classic fascist as it gets.

Whether Italy has or doesn’t have “too loose” laws, should not be something an emergency decree should decide. It’s something that should be debated democratically, with public consultation and input from all those concerned, including of course the Diaspora because, guess what, they’re citizens. Then there should be an actual vote in parliament and the senate and if it touches on constitutional rights, it should pass the threshold of constitutional reform.

That’s what democracies do. Fascists pass emergency decrees.

However, a law introduced on March 28 last year by emergency decree states that …

That’s where the discussion should have ended. Fascists love passing consequential laws by decree don’t they?

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In the meantime China invests in the electric future. Turns out stupidity is not an American monopoly.

They don’t have a pro-russia stance.

Also, one must distinguish between soft and hard euroscepticism. Being against the fiscal-conservative monstrosity that the EU has become is not the same as being against the idea of Europe per se.

I would use the word “indignant” rather than “angry” to signal constructive anger, that is not about venting steam but about changing structures.

We need more tech unions and tech coops.

They will rehire for less. The AI hype is just a wage suppression scheme.

Excellent article. Good to see parts of the European centre-left stirring.

https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/

https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/map/

Cypriot Greek

The moment the US used the NATO deterrent as trade leverage, that ship sailed.

Among the blind the one-eyed man is king.

It’s a private solution to a social problem, so by that definition antisocial. We need better and more humane schools for every child, not people retreating to private cocoons.

We need the ambition to completely rethink schooling, as part of deep social reform: https://jacobin.com/2020/06/red-vienna-children-childcare-public-health

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