I watched Jon Stewarts piece about Israel Palestine and he joked about how the UN can’t get anything done with absolutely no mention that it is everyone voting for a ceasefire and the USA voting to veto everything.
It isn’t the UN that is doing nothing, it is the veto rules that allows the USA and other countries to throw out the collective good in order to protect empire.
That’s what I’ve been trying to tell people for almost two decades: the UN isn’t inherently ineffective, but the Big 5 makes it so by vetoing almost every important resolution.
If we take away that veto and grant the UN real enforcement power, it could make the world a much better place for the vast majority of humanity.
The 5 and the billionaires whose interests align with them would never permit such justice, though 😮💨
If we take away that veto and grant the UN real enforcement power, it could make the world a much better place for the vast majority of humanity.
I like to dream too, but if you remove the veto and give the UN enforcement powers, the UN would dissolve damned near overnight. The big players play because they can control the narrative and know that the UN is effectively toothless. You give them teeth and you’re going to see every right wing party in the world lose their shit about sovereignty or rev even harder at the derp state.
Now, that’s not to say it’s a bad idea at all. In fact I agree with you that it should be done. I just have no faith that the necessary changes wouldn’t also destroy it.
I remember him mentioning it in both his recent episodes.
Pretty sure he even mentioned how when the US vetos something like this, we always send a Black person to do the veto. But that bit might have been from somewhere else.
As if there wasn’t enough hatred towards USA from the Middle East, these actions are showing seeds of hatred towards USA for generations to come.
Which can be easily radicalized in the future.
“Rule 5: Keep it civil. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (perjorative, perjorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (perjorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!”
Your comment was an adorable attempt at sowing division. If you’re really prepared to not vote and let Trump win because you don’t like Biden’s messaging, that’s a you problem (and by extension, becomes everyone else’s problem too).
With all due respect, which is none, fuck off with that false dichotomy.
They didn’t say that they weren’t going to vote, they said that they were worried that Biden will lose because he’s doing things that people hate and refusing to do things that people need.
It’s the job of a politician to earn votes. It’s not the job of voters to meekly fall in line as long as the other candidate is worse.
Yours is the kind of condescending ideological cowardice that got us to this awful point in the first place.
We just saw grassroots Muslims & allies in Michigan organize a 13% protest vote of ‘Undecided’ in the state’s Democratic primary. They aren’t alt-right trolls shitposting hot takes, that is a lot of real people who are absolutely FURIOUS that an administration they supported in 2020 has taken so little actual action on this matter
I also completely disagree that a personal voting choice should be seen as the ‘bad guy’ when the DNC did all it could to stifle challengers to Biden. Get angry at them and their political duopoly, not voters with conviction
If Biden came out and said “As a devout Catholic I cannot morally support abortion, I will not work to restore Roe v Wade protections” he would be rightly criticized heavily, and people would likely choose to note vote based on that
but that message is he’s not willing to call a permanent unconditional ceasefire and is willing to let more children die. am i supposed to like that message?
Honestly, like 99% of Americans don’t care about Gaza enough to not vote for Biden over Trump. The internet echo chamber has warped your sense of what normal people actually care about.
I think you underestimate the Arab/Muslim population in the US who stopped believing in “blue no matter who” because of what is happening.
Also on a side note, what do normal people care about? I’d argue if you don’t care about the fact that a Holocaust level genocide is taking place then you aren’t really that normal.
I’d argue if you don’t care about the fact that a Holocaust level genocide
17 million people died in the holocaust. IRC the population of Gaza is roughly 2.4 million of which just over 1% have died. That figure includes Hamas militants. The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatant and civilian casualties in its reports.
It is possible to criticize and condemn Israeli war crimes and ethnic cleansing, which are without doubt horrific, without distorting the facts.
In fact, it actually makes your criticism more convincing and harder to discount by supporters of the current hard right Israeli government. The fediverse is a bubble on this conflict, but we should be aware that hyperbole does not serve the interests of the Palestinian cause or win the argument outside of this bubble.
Maybe you’ll be the exception, but I say this knowing full well that some will call me pro-Israel for this comment. But if anything these extremists are useful idiots for Israel’s far right government and its supporters, as they allow them to paint any criticism as anti-semitism or disingenious.
e: this comment already had downvotes within seconds of me posting it. This is not long enough to finishing reading it…
While I appreciate your thoughtful response, I disagree with the fact that we need to wait for 17million Palestinians murdered before we can liken the current genocide to the Holocaust.
The way I see it, the Holocaust was/is attributed to the systematic cleansing and expulsion of an ethnic group at a mass scale and not measured by the number of murdered people (not death, murder because that’s what it is).
You can call it whatever you want, but at the end of the day what is happening in Palestine is an ethnic cleansing at a mass scale similar to the Holocaust.
30,000 people have died. 17 million people died in the holocaust. That is not on the same level and it is not on the same scale. 30,000 is a significantly smaller number than 17 million.
If you support the Palestinian cause, pretending otherwise is a home goal.
I get that it feels right, because people are understandably angry about all this, but it’s not a winning argument. Quite the opposite. If you’re provably exaggerating the scale of what’s happening, it allows supporters of Israel’s far right government to sow doubt and claim you might also be exaggerating about the very very real war crimes and ethnic cleansing they are engaged in.
I feel like you and I are NOT on the same page, as a matter of fact, I feel like we are arguing to different points.
You seem like you are gatekeeping the definition of the Holocaust based on number of murdered casualties, I argue that the act of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people is comparable to the Holocaust.
Please don’t create another straw man to argue over, the number of casualties was never the point, rather the act itself.
I argue that the act of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people is comparable to the Holocaust.
Your comment above:
if you don’t care about the fact that a Holocaust level genocide
Maybe you misunderstood my criticism, but I wasn’t disputing that what was happening was genocide or ethnic cleansing. I was disputing the level or scale of what was happening. Clearly what is happening in Gaza (and the West Bank) is on a smaller scale. 17 million vs. 30,000 in Gaza.
This doesn’t make what is happening ok. It just means that it is on a smaller scale than the holocaust.
Please don’t create another straw man to argue over, the number of casualties was never the point
This is not another argument. The number of casualties was my argument from the beginning. The number of casualties may not have been your point, but it was mine when you said that what was happening was on the same level or scale as the holocaust.
This is also not a strawman argument. I am literally adressing something you said in your comment.
On a more general note, this is why comparisons to the Nazis or the Holocaust are rarely helpful, and partly why Godwin’s law is a thing.
For example, just because someone isn’t Adolf Hitler or a Nazi, doesn’t mean they’re not a fascist. Calling someone like Ben Gvir or Smotrich a Nazi might feel good, but it allows them to say “Aha! But I don’t believe x, y, z. Also, the Nazis hated Jews. I’m a Jew. So you’re wrong.” It undermines your argument, even if they are quite similar to Nazis. Call them a fascist or racial supremacist, based on things that they actually said and did, and it’s far harder to deny.
I have much respect that you are willing to engage in a civilized argument.
Now that you have pointed out what I have posted, I understand that I wasn’t being explicit enough in my definition and argument so I’ll do that here:
When I said Holocaust level, I didn’t mean it in the sense of the total amount of victims, but rather the act itself (systematic cleansing and expulsion of an ethnic race).
I agree that the victims of the holocaust are 17 million by many estimates, but did you notice how the wikipedia page of it only mentions 6 million Jewish deaths under the Holocaust definition as an event?
Curious to know what you think about that because it irks me. I don’t see how all those dead Polish people aren’t part of the tally.
Uh… No? Polls have consistently shown that Biden is losing younger voters over this issue. And let’s not forget that there are multiple swing states (Michigan is just the most famous one) where losing Muslim votes is enough to cost Biden the state. Enough Americans care about Gaza to cost Biden the election.
The vast majority of people will choose half food for the chance to live until more food is available. There is not another candidate from the Dems that has the national recognition as Biden, or the successes that Biden should be doing a better job of selling, that could take his place at this point in time.
Yes, I would rather they ran someone else. But with half the voting population all in on wish.com Hitler it is necessary to eat half the food now and hope for a better candidate next time.
We should absolutely give Biden grief up until November when we need to grit our teeth and accept aomething less than perfection to vote against the Republicans who are worse on every single topic.
It isn’t like Biden is the only Democrat who is supporting Israel. How many Dems are passing the funding legislation that Biden signs? Who are they going to put up instead of him that opposes Israel?
Nobody.
Biden is the best that the party can put forth right now, and we should give him grief to get him to change. The action agsinst Biden in the primaries is great!
But come November it will be critical to vote against Trump, and a vote for anything other than a Democrat is a vote for Trump because of our stupid voting system.
The DNC blacklists companies for working on primary campaigns against House incumbents…
They straight up removed delegates from the first state primary because in the last two elections they picked progressives over party favorites…
“Just vote in the primaries” is about a decade outdated at the point.
I’ll probably still vote D in the general, just like I’ve held my nose to do in all but a single general election. 08 Obama I was actually hype to vote D, and we flipped a bunch of red states the DNC gave up on
But not everyone will this year, and Biden doesn’t have a lot of breathing room.
The best thing you can do to prevent trump from winning is do anything you can think of to drag Biden to the left.
Just shutting up and voting Biden isn’t enough, he’s too weak of a candidate to expect that to work again.
Stop letting perfect being they enemy of good enough. This line of thinking you’re engaging in will only accelerate Trump’s victory. Unless the finality of the United States is your goal, you may want to come up with a more apt analogy.
Biden is really going to let Trump become president again because he won’t take serious action.
The US is literally the reason the UN can’t do anything.
All you had to do was not be pro genocide Biden. It’s such a low fucking bar and that geriatric fuck just can’t meet it.
And whether Biden wins or loses, millions will suffer because he was the only other option than trump we were allowed to have.
I watched Jon Stewarts piece about Israel Palestine and he joked about how the UN can’t get anything done with absolutely no mention that it is everyone voting for a ceasefire and the USA voting to veto everything.
It isn’t the UN that is doing nothing, it is the veto rules that allows the USA and other countries to throw out the collective good in order to protect empire.
That’s what I’ve been trying to tell people for almost two decades: the UN isn’t inherently ineffective, but the Big 5 makes it so by vetoing almost every important resolution.
If we take away that veto and grant the UN real enforcement power, it could make the world a much better place for the vast majority of humanity.
The 5 and the billionaires whose interests align with them would never permit such justice, though 😮💨
I like to dream too, but if you remove the veto and give the UN enforcement powers, the UN would dissolve damned near overnight. The big players play because they can control the narrative and know that the UN is effectively toothless. You give them teeth and you’re going to see every right wing party in the world lose their shit about sovereignty or rev even harder at the derp state.
Now, that’s not to say it’s a bad idea at all. In fact I agree with you that it should be done. I just have no faith that the necessary changes wouldn’t also destroy it.
Weird…
I remember him mentioning it in both his recent episodes.
Pretty sure he even mentioned how when the US vetos something like this, we always send a Black person to do the veto. But that bit might have been from somewhere else.
It’s called the Security Council, and if it didn’t exist, we would have nuked ourselves into dust at this point.
This is just false info. It exists to keep public record of communication.
All the nuclear powers talk to each other all the time without any need for the UN. US and Russia even have a direct land line to each other.
Shoulda, coulda, woulda.
As if there wasn’t enough hatred towards USA from the Middle East, these actions are showing seeds of hatred towards USA for generations to come. Which can be easily radicalized in the future.
That’s why it’s always bullshit that we “need” a close ally there.
We dont. Especially when that “ally” just constantly instigates conflict then drags us into it to back them up.
If we weren’t propping up Israel and going after oil, most people in the Middle East wouldn’t give two shits about the West.
And without the instability it all causes, there’d be less far right religious extremists running shit. And everyone’s lives would be better off
Removed by mod
Removed, rule 5:
“Rule 5: Keep it civil. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (perjorative, perjorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (perjorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!”
It’ll never stop being surprising when Biden supporters sound indistinguishable than trump voters.
As Michelle Obama said:
Be better
Quick edit:
Also weird how I always get replies from these brand new accounts after blocking trolls and they keep replying and I stop replying…
Your comment was an adorable attempt at sowing division. If you’re really prepared to not vote and let Trump win because you don’t like Biden’s messaging, that’s a you problem (and by extension, becomes everyone else’s problem too).
With all due respect, which is none, fuck off with that false dichotomy.
They didn’t say that they weren’t going to vote, they said that they were worried that Biden will lose because he’s doing things that people hate and refusing to do things that people need.
It’s the job of a politician to earn votes. It’s not the job of voters to meekly fall in line as long as the other candidate is worse.
Yours is the kind of condescending ideological cowardice that got us to this awful point in the first place.
And that’s the core of it right there. Why would I vote for someone who has done nothing to earn my vote?
We just saw grassroots Muslims & allies in Michigan organize a 13% protest vote of ‘Undecided’ in the state’s Democratic primary. They aren’t alt-right trolls shitposting hot takes, that is a lot of real people who are absolutely FURIOUS that an administration they supported in 2020 has taken so little actual action on this matter
I also completely disagree that a personal voting choice should be seen as the ‘bad guy’ when the DNC did all it could to stifle challengers to Biden. Get angry at them and their political duopoly, not voters with conviction
If Biden came out and said “As a devout Catholic I cannot morally support abortion, I will not work to restore Roe v Wade protections” he would be rightly criticized heavily, and people would likely choose to note vote based on that
but that message is he’s not willing to call a permanent unconditional ceasefire and is willing to let more children die. am i supposed to like that message?
Honestly, like 99% of Americans don’t care about Gaza enough to not vote for Biden over Trump. The internet echo chamber has warped your sense of what normal people actually care about.
I think you underestimate the Arab/Muslim population in the US who stopped believing in “blue no matter who” because of what is happening.
Also on a side note, what do normal people care about? I’d argue if you don’t care about the fact that a Holocaust level genocide is taking place then you aren’t really that normal.
17 million people died in the holocaust. IRC the population of Gaza is roughly 2.4 million of which just over 1% have died. That figure includes Hamas militants. The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatant and civilian casualties in its reports.
It is possible to criticize and condemn Israeli war crimes and ethnic cleansing, which are without doubt horrific, without distorting the facts.
In fact, it actually makes your criticism more convincing and harder to discount by supporters of the current hard right Israeli government. The fediverse is a bubble on this conflict, but we should be aware that hyperbole does not serve the interests of the Palestinian cause or win the argument outside of this bubble.
Maybe you’ll be the exception, but I say this knowing full well that some will call me pro-Israel for this comment. But if anything these extremists are useful idiots for Israel’s far right government and its supporters, as they allow them to paint any criticism as anti-semitism or disingenious.
e: this comment already had downvotes within seconds of me posting it. This is not long enough to finishing reading it…
While I appreciate your thoughtful response, I disagree with the fact that we need to wait for 17million Palestinians murdered before we can liken the current genocide to the Holocaust.
The way I see it, the Holocaust was/is attributed to the systematic cleansing and expulsion of an ethnic group at a mass scale and not measured by the number of murdered people (not death, murder because that’s what it is).
You can call it whatever you want, but at the end of the day what is happening in Palestine is an ethnic cleansing at a mass scale similar to the Holocaust.
The comment I replied to said:
30,000 people have died. 17 million people died in the holocaust. That is not on the same level and it is not on the same scale. 30,000 is a significantly smaller number than 17 million.
If you support the Palestinian cause, pretending otherwise is a home goal.
I get that it feels right, because people are understandably angry about all this, but it’s not a winning argument. Quite the opposite. If you’re provably exaggerating the scale of what’s happening, it allows supporters of Israel’s far right government to sow doubt and claim you might also be exaggerating about the very very real war crimes and ethnic cleansing they are engaged in.
I feel like you and I are NOT on the same page, as a matter of fact, I feel like we are arguing to different points.
You seem like you are gatekeeping the definition of the Holocaust based on number of murdered casualties, I argue that the act of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people is comparable to the Holocaust.
Please don’t create another straw man to argue over, the number of casualties was never the point, rather the act itself.
Your comment above:
Maybe you misunderstood my criticism, but I wasn’t disputing that what was happening was genocide or ethnic cleansing. I was disputing the level or scale of what was happening. Clearly what is happening in Gaza (and the West Bank) is on a smaller scale. 17 million vs. 30,000 in Gaza.
This doesn’t make what is happening ok. It just means that it is on a smaller scale than the holocaust.
This is not another argument. The number of casualties was my argument from the beginning. The number of casualties may not have been your point, but it was mine when you said that what was happening was on the same level or scale as the holocaust.
This is also not a strawman argument. I am literally adressing something you said in your comment.
On a more general note, this is why comparisons to the Nazis or the Holocaust are rarely helpful, and partly why Godwin’s law is a thing.
For example, just because someone isn’t Adolf Hitler or a Nazi, doesn’t mean they’re not a fascist. Calling someone like Ben Gvir or Smotrich a Nazi might feel good, but it allows them to say “Aha! But I don’t believe x, y, z. Also, the Nazis hated Jews. I’m a Jew. So you’re wrong.” It undermines your argument, even if they are quite similar to Nazis. Call them a fascist or racial supremacist, based on things that they actually said and did, and it’s far harder to deny.
I have much respect that you are willing to engage in a civilized argument.
Now that you have pointed out what I have posted, I understand that I wasn’t being explicit enough in my definition and argument so I’ll do that here:
When I said Holocaust level, I didn’t mean it in the sense of the total amount of victims, but rather the act itself (systematic cleansing and expulsion of an ethnic race).
I hope you and I are now on the same page.
I agree that the victims of the holocaust are 17 million by many estimates, but did you notice how the wikipedia page of it only mentions 6 million Jewish deaths under the Holocaust definition as an event?
Curious to know what you think about that because it irks me. I don’t see how all those dead Polish people aren’t part of the tally.
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You’re cute. Stop consuming Fox news and then we’ll talk.
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Weak
Very transparent attempts at invalidating the feelings of the people literally having their families murdered you piece of shit.
Uh… No? Polls have consistently shown that Biden is losing younger voters over this issue. And let’s not forget that there are multiple swing states (Michigan is just the most famous one) where losing Muslim votes is enough to cost Biden the state. Enough Americans care about Gaza to cost Biden the election.
Yeah bro…
The only reason to be upset with Biden is his support of Israel’s genocide…
/s
There’s also:
What he wants to do with our border
Pretending “the economy” is more about billionaires wealth and average Americans aren’t important
Record breaking fossil fuels production
Just ignoring the healthcare crisis
And a shit ton of other things.
Supporting Israel could very well be all you care about, but lots of people aren’t that simple.
Trump is worse on all of those issues, plus more.
If you get to pick between no food, or half enough food to survive…
How much effort would you put in to starve to death slower?
Running a bad candidate depresses turnout. And depressed turnout is the only way Republicans win.
Running Joe Biden is the biggest factor that helps Trump’s chances of winning, and there’s zero fucking reason we’re handing it to him.
The vast majority of people will choose half food for the chance to live until more food is available. There is not another candidate from the Dems that has the national recognition as Biden, or the successes that Biden should be doing a better job of selling, that could take his place at this point in time.
Yes, I would rather they ran someone else. But with half the voting population all in on wish.com Hitler it is necessary to eat half the food now and hope for a better candidate next time.
Except we only get a presidential election every four years, and not everyone will still be alive then
That’s not even part of the starvation example.
Literally people you’re asking to pick the lesser evil right now will die because of that lesser evil before the 2028 election.
Maybe you’re upper middle class and it’s not a big deal.
Congrats, you’re a very small percentage of Americans and the total votes Biden needs to win.
If you want to help Biden, try having some empathy for the less fortunate and start screaming your head off at the Dem party while there’s time.
We should absolutely give Biden grief up until November when we need to grit our teeth and accept aomething less than perfection to vote against the Republicans who are worse on every single topic.
It isn’t like Biden is the only Democrat who is supporting Israel. How many Dems are passing the funding legislation that Biden signs? Who are they going to put up instead of him that opposes Israel?
Nobody.
Biden is the best that the party can put forth right now, and we should give him grief to get him to change. The action agsinst Biden in the primaries is great!
But come November it will be critical to vote against Trump, and a vote for anything other than a Democrat is a vote for Trump because of our stupid voting system.
C’mon man…
The DNC blacklists companies for working on primary campaigns against House incumbents…
They straight up removed delegates from the first state primary because in the last two elections they picked progressives over party favorites…
“Just vote in the primaries” is about a decade outdated at the point.
I’ll probably still vote D in the general, just like I’ve held my nose to do in all but a single general election. 08 Obama I was actually hype to vote D, and we flipped a bunch of red states the DNC gave up on
But not everyone will this year, and Biden doesn’t have a lot of breathing room.
The best thing you can do to prevent trump from winning is do anything you can think of to drag Biden to the left.
Just shutting up and voting Biden isn’t enough, he’s too weak of a candidate to expect that to work again.
Stop letting perfect being they enemy of good enough. This line of thinking you’re engaging in will only accelerate Trump’s victory. Unless the finality of the United States is your goal, you may want to come up with a more apt analogy.
Quick, tell this to the 102,000 people in Michigan that voted uncommitted.
Yeah… Genocide is not good enough.