In the UK - that was a Liberal Democrat policy going into the 2010 election that was then implemented during the Coalition government. They increased the tax-free personal allowance, which effectively took two million of the lowest paid out of paying income tax altogether. It was hugely popular, and so the Tories later tried to claim credit for it even though it was literally something the Lib Dems forced onto them at the expense of some of the tax cuts for the rich that the Tories had wanted...
a) misunderstand the EU's incentives here - if a genuine supermajority in the UK came back asking to be let in, EU leaders have an incentive to make that happen easily as a signal of the total failure of Brexit and hard-line euroscepticism - the optics of the UK returning would be so good for the EU; and
b) overestimate the 'punitive' measures the EU could take - worst we would get is the sort of arrangement other EU states have such as hypothetical future euro membership that neither the UK nor rest of EU would have any more desire to implement than is the case for (e.g.) Poland or Hungary; they wouldn't even need us to join Schengen because that actually would create the Irish hard border that the EU negotiations were all about avoiding (since Ireland isn't a Schengen state).
Oh that's very interesting. The script was actually written for it to be Kirk/Spock/McCoy rather than Kirk/Scotty/Chekov, but Nimoy and Kelley both said no because they were happy with where TUC left things for the TOS crew - which is why (for example) Chekov ends up running sickbay despite no evidence before of him having any medical training.
I'd never heard they had a version claiming Uhura would be there too.
What on Earth would lead you to think Hamas cares about Gaza residents? The whole point of Hamas's attacks was to provoke this sort of Israeli reaction. The innocent Palestinians who are going to die in this attack are no more than disposable pawns and human shields to Hamas.
I think for the Lego set it's more that the average casual fan is more likely to recognise the name 'Boba Fett' than the name 'Slave 1'. They're a commercial enterprise and they want to sell these things to a wide audience, and marketing it under a name that was never mentioned on-screen in the movies wouldn't exactly make that easier.
Would you hold Israel to the same standard? They invaded the Palestinian territories in 1967, have held them under military occupation for over half a century since and in that time have killed rather a lot more Palestinian civilians than vice versa.
But sensible people do not use that as a pretext to say a blanket 'fuck Israel', because it is unhelpful, unconstructive and racist to blame an entire people for war crimes committed by members of their military. But I'm curious if you apply your logic on Palestine to the other side too?
Hamas won a plurality (44%) - not a majority - of the votes in the last elections in 2006. They subsequently launched a coup, sought to purge their political opponents and have ruled the Gaza Strip as a de facto dictatorship ever since. The people of Gaza have spent the last 17 years suffering from the combination of a Hamas dictatorship and a full land, sea and air blockade by the Israeli military.
So to answer your question: Hamas gunmen put Hamas in power.
Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem remain occupied territories under international law since the 1967 Israeli conquests.
Europe is funding Ukraine by considerably more than the US currently. Short-term funding is essential equal between the two, but the US is providing basically no multi-year funding whereas the EU is providing significant multi-year funding.
That's just a proper noun that some countries use for their parliament.
There's a reason you wrote 'Congress' with a capital-C but the article wrote 'parliament' with a lowercase-P - the headline is using 'parliament' as a common noun (unlike, for example, the capital-P 'Parliament' of the United Kingdom where it's also used as the proper noun).
Don't just blame those killers who were present; blame the politicians who created an environment in which violent Hindu nationalist rhetoric is normalised, their supporters are encouraged to persecute religious minorities, and events like this happen with growing regularity.
There's a reason that the UK, EU and US all had travel bans on Narandra Modi for a decade, for his government's complicity in the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in 2002 when he was chief minister, in which hundreds of Muslims were killed by Hindu nationalist mobs. The world has known what sort of person Modi is for a very long time and it's shameful that he has reached 9 years as Indian prime minister before many people outside the country have started to take note of what he is is doing to the country of Gandhi and Nehru.
theinspectorst @ theinspectorst @kbin.social Posts 18Comments 262Joined 2 yr. ago 
I mean, Agent Truss is also on the list...