this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024
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[–] apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 52 points 1 month ago

Aiding genocide is just another Tuesday in a long long line of Tuesdays.

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 40 points 1 month ago

Ofc. Blinken is a genocidal trash bag.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 26 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Blinken is only there because Biden needed someone willing to throw every last shred of integrity they have out the window.

It's maddening that the party keeps demanding random republicans endorse Harris because Trump is so bad, but Harris won't even admit that best case scenario Bidens brain is just as cooked.

Worst case scenario he's mind isn't gone and he's still supporting a genocide.

But either way, grandpa shouldnt get to drive home from country Kitchen Buffet "one more time" when we all know he can't drive. Either he should have stopped down, or gotten the 25th by now.

One of my hopes is that the reason Harris isn't supporting Palestine/Gaza more is because of resistance from Biden behind the scenes. So once she's President, that would cease to be a factor.

TBF i see why they aren't going for article 25 yet. With only a couple of months to go before the election, and having started her campaign late, it might just be too much to try to push through the inertia just now. Also, she still likely needs Biden's support for her campaign - if they go article 25 that would probably vanish.

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

we all know

No, actually, some of us have more exacting standards for medical diagnosis than armchair theorizing.

[–] abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Devil's advocate: These medical reports generally are not public, so only folks in his inner circle like the VP and Cabinet members would know about the results. These folks are beholden to Biden and thus the least likely to pull the trigger.

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sure. I'm not arguing its impossible. I'm arguing that anyone that thinks "we all know" is being very foolish. The only reasonable assertion is we don't really know. Judging based off of the limited information we have is not "we don't know" though, its armchair theorizing by people that generally don't even have medical training.

That's a good point. You're absolutely right.

Even so, it's hard to see what the alternative is. Should folks with actual medical training announce their speculation based on limited information? (Assuming that's not even possible, considering that most professional organizations frown on that sort of thing.)

To be fair though, I suspect the OC (original commenter) here is actually trying to make the case that Biden is too frail for office because he's not sufficiently pro Palestine, without explicitly spelling out that this is the reason..

[–] JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world -4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Biden is bad in this subject. Trump would be massively worse not only here but virtually everywhere else too

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

One supports Fascism at home, the other supports ethno-Fascist Genocide abroad.

The distance between one posture and the other is small and far more easy to transverse than people want to believe, whilst the distance between supporting Fascism at home and not supporting Fascism at all (much less the same type of Fascism as the Nazis, whilst actively commiting Genocide) is pretty much an impassable chasm.

Just because their Theater Of Morality is different doesn't mean Biden and the DNC are significantly less pro-Authoritarianism than Trump and his cronies.

[–] BadlyTimedLuck@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago

Then why the fuck do we not revolutionize and impose a 3rd party? I swear, I have to go down to DC myself to make people realize WE NEED TO GO OUT AND ACT!!! If NO ONE is happy with either party, we should be able to decline either candidate until we can all agree we found a compitent one. God, does anyone know of any revolutionary groups? I know the founding fathers didn't just declare independency and establish governmemt. They actually met up and planned how to knock these rich assholes off their thrones.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No one is disagreeing with that.

But using trump to defend supporting a genocide and cutting off aid to its victims will only depress turnout and help trump win.

What would help stop trump is the rest of the party (especially Harris) calling out Biden despite having the same letter by their name

With the added benefit of you know...

Not supporting a genocide and cutting off aid to its victims...

If you use trump to excuse this then how is that different than people excusing Trump's extremely dangerous faults because they think Dems would potentially be worse?

Standards only matter if you hold your own "team" to them, if you don't they're not standards.

It sounds like Biden is saying the right things, as per https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13905011/Biden-call-Israel-PM-Netanyahu-Lebanon-bibi-war-middle-east.html he's demanding that they stop.

And he's paused military aid to Israel in the past, while supporting more humanitarian aid to Gaza.

I'm not sure what more you want.

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

God damnit all. I mean we knew Blinken was lying, deliberately not seeing the truth. But they couldn't even get the actual state department to go along with it. They literally just fucking lied about their own investigation. And the most infuriating thing about it is these guys aren't dumb. They knew something like this would come and from a respected source.

If we want to keep Israel as an ally there has to be accountability. The American people didn't stand for South African apartheid and they won't stand for this. It's political suicide here at home and we're going to end up with our most sensitive military technology in the hands of a rogue state.

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world 16 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Really hoping Harris pivots on this once the elections are over.

[–] Krono 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How do you explain things like her refusal to let a Palestinian speak at the DNC? Or how she re-commits herself to Israel's "defense" whenever asked?

I want some of that hope, but it seems like facts are pointing in the other direction.

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Election campaigning. She's trying to win over voters, and while we like to think she could do that by just going full-on progressive, it's just not backed up by the numbers. Suburban moderates are necessary to achieve victory, so she's courting them, along with any conveniently available gop defectors. They lean more pro-Israel than we do, so, so does her election strategy.

Not everyone in the electorate cares much about the plight of Palestinians, a significant number of people remember the Intifadas not as some sort of just campaign for liberation, but as a widespread rash of suicide bombings on civilians just trying to live their day-to-day. They don't want to see the US cave to that by turning our backs on an established ally.

This is why it remains important to continue grassroots efforts to bring light to the difference between innocent Palestinians and Jihadists, incidentally. Mainstream America isn't going to jump on any sort of reclaim-Palestine-from-the-colonial-oppressors rhetoric any time soon. Peaceful co-existence by pressuring the Israeli government, supporting Israeli peace protestors and reminding people not all Palestinians are hostile militants is a different story though, that's potentially achievable. If the electorate continues to swing, more of the politicians will get room to follow. Especially since we don't actually need Israel's geostrategic position any more, as of the past decade or two. We have more leverage than we used to.

[–] Krono 17 points 1 month ago (2 children)

You're right, and none of that gives me hope that Harris will pivot.

The re-elect Harris campaign will start on January 20th, and the political reality you just described will still exist.

Changing stances on Israel's genocide will take leadership, which is something we haven't seen from the Harris campaign. It is not Harris leading a campaign on principle, it is the polls leading the Harris campaign, just as you described it.

Those suburban moderates' views can be changed, they just have never been exposed to an opposing message. The news says Israel is the good guys and Hamas is the bad guys; only those on the fringes say otherwise. If Harris would show leadership and take a principled stance on the side of humanity, she could bring most of these low information moderate voters with her.

[–] BMTea@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

This is a false hope every single time. Once she is in office, the structures she will face - Pentagon, Congress, "deep state" (long-standing war-on-terror era bureaucracy) will constrain her even harder. ASSUMING she isn't another ideological and moral Israeli loyalist, which is a little hard to believe about someone who celebrated Seder in the White House with her Israeli-American husband by serving wine from a West Bank settlement.

[–] filister@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

But she also didn't attend Netanyahu's speech and actually has been quite critical of the war in Gaza. But yes, don't expect miracles. I still think she will be more critical of the Israelian government and whether this leads to a ceasefire or not is to be seen.

But in any case she will be harder on them than Trump, who moved the US embassy to Jerusalem during his presidency and offered the "peace deal of the century". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_peace_plan#:~:text=The%20stated%20purpose%20of%20the,both%20parties%20to%20the%20conflict.

[–] BMTea@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

She met with Netanyahu regardless, and did a photo op with him. Every since her poll numbers drastically improved, she has become less and less pensive about her unconditional support for Netanyahu's Israel.

It's really silly to point to the provocations and one-sided policy of the Trump administration at this point. Biden not only kept to them, he doubled down on them, and none of them were as monstrously deterimental to the Palestinian people than what Blinken and Biden have done.

They have jettisoned the entire domestic and international humanitarian framework to allow Israel to punish, slaughter, herd and humiliate millions of civilians. And Harris sees no reason to contradict them or abandon this policy. She has made it unequivocally clear that she is with them on this. They've really gona above and beyond in doing so. And at the end of the day, a majority of Democratic senators gave Netanyahu a standing ovation in Congress. Her party, her president, her position.

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world -5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I swear this Trumpian deep state crap somehow seeps into everything.

[–] BMTea@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

It isn't "Trumpian", it predates Trump and is an actual phrase that comes from the social sciences and was then adopted and abused by conspiracy theorists. In the American context, it's a useful concept because it helps to explain the continuity in unpopular or discredited policies between administration that tout different outlooks, but end up railroaded into these policies. It's just a different name for what Obama called "the blob."

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world -4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Uh, no it's not a technical term.

Yeah, there is a large bureaucracy that implements policy, no question. That policy was initiated democratically though, and can be similarly reversed. Just not unilaterally by a President, who is not supposed to be a king, especially if Congress decided it.

And the blob term to describe the bureaucracy was used by an Obama aide, not Obama btw. Not that I expect honesty out of Trumpets.

edit for clarity

[–] BMTea@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Uh, no it's not a technical term.

I don't know what you mean by "technical" here. There are several contexts where it is used academically. For example, here in Turkey the term is pretty ubiquitous when discussing the 80s ultranationalist, anti-communist state bureaucracy. It's certainly in several of the English language political and international relations glossaries I've read.

I don't dispute that US politics is complicated and has many democratically elected players who shape policy. That's why I put "deep state" in quotations, because the concept fits much more loosely when discussing US foreign policy bureaucracy.

After all, when Trump got in, he fired a whole lot of State Department workers, raising fears that he was crippling it by removing indispensable experts. But what's interesting is that his move was considered unprecedented, which sort of goes to prove the point that these individuals are embedded into US foreign policy and kept on as a matter of necessity or simplicity even if their overall strategic and moral outlook is detrimental to US interests and the world.

Not that Trump made any improvements, he just replaced them with incompetents, extremists and yes-men.

And you're right, it was Ben Rhodes who coined "the blob". No need to be rude, my point still stands. I am not a Trump supporter at all. His administration was a collosal failure for the Mid East's future, but unfortunately the current crop of Democrats have taken after him on nearly all issues - from JCPOA to normalizing MBS to letting Israel run amok.

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ah, I didn't realize you were coming from a non-American perspective. I can't speak for the usage of the term in other places, but here in America it was not in academic usage outside of discussions on conspiracy theories, where people in those circles would use it to refer to the part of the US government they suspected of orchestrating the assassination of JFK.

Trump's firings were not exactly unprecedented, either. Gerald Ford presided over an event that became known as the Holloween Massacre, where he did significant reshuffling within the DoD. Nixon, Reagan and Clinton also did their fair share of firings when they felt it was necessary. What made Trump special was the sheer hostility he demonstrated to the government he was supposed to be running, preferring to make decisions directly instead of delegating by frequently leaving leadership positions unfilled, and installing sycophants when necessary.

The idea that there was some entrenched resistance to him is his propagandistic spin on the idea that our Separation of Powers restrain the President, preventing him from performing any actions that would be deemed illegal by Congressional law, of which there were many. Until the recent SC ruling that granted our President a king-like immunity anyway.

He's a professional salesman, though, it's best not to fall for his bullshit and thinly veiled desire to run the country like a family business or cartel, with concentrated power in a single figure.

[–] BMTea@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Trust me, we in this region know exactly what Trump means by "run the government like a business" - it means superficial transactionalism. I was living in the Gulf during his presidency, and everyone knew the Saudis were trying to buy him on the cheap LOL! In fact, that's why some people in the region want him back, hoping that his unpredictablility, stubbornness, contempt and seeming aversion to getting the US into a war may actually lead him to snub Israel or at the least make it reconsider whether the US would follow it into a regional war. As it stands, I can't blame them for thinking that. You cannot imagine the rage and anxiety that this latest massacre of Lebanese by Israel has created.

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago

Yeah, that's unlikely when such a high percentage of his fanbase is Christian Nationalist, doing their best to fight back against their perceived evils in favor of Judeo-Christian rulership, while very conveniently forgetting that Islam is part of that same religious tree.

They're probably right that he wouldn't follow Israel into a regional war, but I doubt Biden would either. Someone should remind them that despite Israel fighting many, many wars with US support, we have never deployed ground forces alongside them. We simply have no obligation to do so.

Shooting down some missiles is one thing, sending arms sure, some drone strikes whatever, a lot of Americans still strongly support Israel and don't mind all that. But putting our forces into ground combat would be broadly unpopular here.

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world -2 points 1 month ago

We'll see. I'm not so sure that 4 years from now the electorate will look just like how it looks today. I also suspect she can make a bolder move in the first year than she can in the latter half. Biden doesn't draw nearly the level of heat over the Afghanistan pullout as he did a couple years ago, after all. The electorate has a notoriously short memory.

So, she does have some space to demonstrate that exact sort of leadership, and it could very much benefit her in the long run. It'll have to outweigh all the AIPAC money on the other side, though, that's another consideration balanced against how successful she has been with small dollar donations. So, remains to be seen how the calculus all falls out.

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[–] Maalus@lemmy.world 21 points 1 month ago

Lol no she won't

[–] mlg@lemmy.world 16 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] TokenBoomer@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

The kids are using wishcasting now, but it’s still the same thing.

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Better than despairium. lol We'll see though. Election rhetoric is one thing, policy is another. Biden is from a whole different generation, so there's an opportunity there.

[–] girlfreddy@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 month ago

Opportunity, yes. Moral wherewithal, maybe.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago

ANTIZIONISTS IN CONTROL

HARRIS IS JUST PRETENDING TO SUPPORT ISRAEL TO TRICK THE DEEP STATE

TRUST THE PLAN

[–] nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

When it comes to war America is not a Democracy and it never has been. You are going to get war every time, and when we can't fight, we will sell weapons to criminals who can.

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well, nowadays its become far less common, but we actually used to require Congress to declare any wars.

[–] nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Funny how once theres a serious slate of the electorate that wants to stop war, things magically change like the Supreme Court handing Bush 2 an underserved victory, and congress somehow no long required to vote before wars. You we're never supposed to have a real choice on this.

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's cute and all, but history just doesn't agree. Vietnam is a good example of a war being stopped by public backlash. Regarding the takeover by the neocons and now attempted takeovers by fascists, yeah, that's sort of what authoritarians do. That does not reflect the system that continues to resist them though.

Depending on how things fall out in the coming decades, you may see what America under a real dictator is truly capable of, and how markedly different it will look from today.

[–] nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Vietnam was stopped because the US was getting it's ass kicked and found themselves unable to unravel the ho chi minh trail. The protests against Bushes war in the middle east were the largest protests in the world at the time they happened and we stayed for another two decades because we were still making money. So if public backlash worked, we would have been out of Afghanistan by 2004. But it doesn't. Profit works.

See how the largest antiwar protest in US history lines up with Wars being started without congressional approval now? Modern antiwar sentiment started during vietnam, they weren't a majority until much later.

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world -1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Getting its ass kicked after halting the Tet Offensive in its tracks, eh?

And comparing that to the tiny protests against the ME wars? You've got some funny ideas. Desert Storm was a UN coalition move at the invitation of Kuwait. Iraqi "Freedom" had around 90% support in the immediate post-9/11 era.

I don't know where you get your information, but I'd be curious to see your sources.

[–] nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War

36 million protested

In the United States, even though pro-war demonstrators have been quoted as referring to anti-war protests as a "vocal minority",[4] Gallup Polls updated September 14, 2007, state, "Since the summer of 2005, opponents of the war have tended to outnumber supporters.

Exactly what I told you, the Bush wars solidified ths anit war electorate as the actual majority. Can you look at the facts now? They stopped voting on war once the antiwar electorate was big enough to stop them.

Heres a source for the largest demonstration in history. It even won a world record for it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world -1 points 1 month ago

That 36 million is a global figure. And yes, by 2005, two years after it started, public opinion had turned against it.

Here's an except from that article with some specific events noted:

On September 12, 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush spoke to the United Nations General Assembly. Outside the United Nations building, over 1,000 people attended a protest organized by Voter March and No Blood for Oil.

On September 24, Tony Blair released a document describing Britain's case for war in Iraq. Three days later, an anti-war rally in London drew a crowd of at least 150,000.[11]

On September 29, roughly 5,000 anti-war protesters converged on Washington, D.C., on the day after an anti-International Monetary Fund protest.[12

Note how much larger the London crowd was than the Washington DC crowd.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Of course Neue-Nazi-loving Blinken would be hard at doing Modern Holocaust Denialism to support his favorite ethno-Fascist genociders.

[–] IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago

So they will cut off weapons to Israel now that this has leaked... Right?...

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 month ago

Whoever that is.

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