this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
234 points (100.0% liked)

politics

24342 readers
3035 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 134 points 1 year ago (5 children)

It’s genocide dickhead. Can’t believe I still have to vote for this mother fucker.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I appreciate you still voting though, mate. The alternative is far worse and that's terrifying that our alternative to supporting a literal genocide is even worse.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

It's also not just voting against Trump.

Biden on climate is an A student. The inflation reduction act, according to basically every climate wonk, gives us a real chance at achieving necessary goals both under its regime and thanks to further future legislation it certainly unlocks. Things are looking less bad right now than they have for a long time in spite of all the worsening indicators. And it's written with intense virtuous cycles built-in that will make it VERY sticky policy once it builds up a couple of years worth of inertia. The fact that he got it past an overtly hostile senate that had at least 51 anti-science, anti-climate, fossil fuel shills turning up to vote is nothing short of a policy miracle.

Trump, on the other hand, has vowed to reverse everything that could still be reversed about the IRA (a frustratingly large amount, unfortunately, could still be undone by executive fiat thanks to its still-developing political base). He's vowed to double down on every kind of fossil fuel subsidy. He's vowed to restore coal power even though it's horrible for everyone involved and the most expensive kind of energy production. He's vowed to fight windmills just because he doesn't like their aesthetics -- literal quixotic shit.

I won't defend Biden on Israel for even one millisecond. His position is heinous. It's evil. And if he loses in November, it will almost certainly be the reason why and he'll deserve it. But it will probably also spell actual global war and apocalypse fueled by climate within all of our lifetimes. It may sound dramatic, but a Trump win will bring us from feast to famine and may spell the actual end of our civilization.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Lol, Biden is not an A student for climate.

Regardless of who's in charge, we are still on track for environmental disaster unless we completely get rid of infinite growth capitalism. Joe Biden sure as heck isn't going to do that.

I'm sick and tired of moderates thinking that our planet being uninhabitable is some sort of worthy compromise for the ownership class.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why not vote for him, then protest for his removal after Trump is imprisoned?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

after Trump is imprisoned?

Like that's gonna happen.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

We should all gather together at congress. Like early Jan. The 6th maybe? /s

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

God they all just fucking suck so much. Do you want the turd sandwich or the talking douche?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (9 children)

It is a war and an urban warfare with civilian to combatant death ratio less than 2:1, while according to civiliansinconflict.org, typical ratio is more like 10:1.

You might want to argue it is an unjustified war, but genocide it is not.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wow, your intelligence is blinding. You should be careful with that.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Some scholars, like Verdeja, say that debates on whether the current conflict can be called a genocide are a “bad use of focus.” Part of that is because proving whether something is a genocide takes time, and does not actually stop people from being killed. Hinton agrees, noting that because genocide is seen as the crime of all crimes, people focus too rigidly on defining a particular moment as such. May be, legal jargon could be restrained until a thorough investigation is conducted. But thorough investigations are rarely conducted when it comes to Israeli crimes in Gaza or anywhere else in Palestine. Segal clearly points to how the U.S. government refused to call crimes committed against the Hutus in Rwanda a genocide. Without sticking to the truth, we’ll never have a truthful reckoning of how we arrived at the seventh of October, and how we go forward,” Segal says. “We need to name it for what it is.” source

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

genocide it is not.

It wasn’t really in question when this was published back in October. It was genocide then and it continues to be genocide.

“The UN Genocide Convention lists five acts that fall under its definition. Israel is currently perpetrating three of these in Gaza: “1. Killing members of the group. 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.””

https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)
  1. Killing members of the group. 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

Which are also what Hamas perpetrated on 10/7.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But what about….

Yes we know that Hamas is awful, evil, etc. That doesn’t give a moral pass to do just whatever to people who aren’t Hamas.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We're not selling weapons to Hamas.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That doesn't affect whether or not Hamas committed genocide.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (7 children)

And how does that absolve Israel?

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm confused, why are you acting like anyone here is defending Hamas? One foul deed does not make up for another. Israel is figuratively and literally shooting through civilians in order to kill Hamas. How is that acceptable?

Imagine if the police handled hostage situations like this. Some crazy guy pulls one of your loved ones away from you, puts a gun to their head, and threatens to fire... So the police just shoot them both.

Would you accept that? Would you thank the officer that shot them both?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't think anyone is defending Hamas. The question is, did Hamas commit genocide?

As evil as they are, I do not think they committed genocide. I think most would agree.

But they meet the same of OP's criteria as Israel. Hence, those criteria are not enough to establish that Israel committed genocide. (That does not mean Israel did nothing wrong!)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

What Hamas did, was terror act, not genocide. What Israel does is war with Hamas in Urban territory where civilian to militant ratio 2:1 is considered to be much better than average urban warfare.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

These are act of genocide. True, but the intent matters too (and I am sure it is described in the document you are linking to). And destruction of Hamas is not the intent compatible with genocide. If Israel wants to destroy citizens of Gaza as a group, then it is doing really shitty job, since somehow the civilian to military ratio is well below expectations for urban warfare.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You might want to make up definitions for genocide but in 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Then technically, ALL wars are genocide.

EDIT: so many downvotes, so little arguments against it. Predictable as it gets.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

The key feature is the first part about "intent to destroy." Russia isn't trying to destroy the concept of Ukraine, either as an ethnicity or a country (they just want it to be a puppet-state obedient to their dictates). The US wasn't trying to destroy the concept of Vietnam or Vietnamese people.

Other people could draw different conclusions I guess, but to me it's undeniable that Israel's goal is to steadily destroy the whole concept of Palestine, with maybe some isolated individuals of Palestinian ethnicity still surviving in some location inside or outside Israel, but with Palestine itself completely erased.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Actually, Putin does want to destroy the concept of Ukraine and he said it is not a real country.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They are forcefully removing children and telling them they are Russian. Which is exactly part of the quoted definition from the comment you are replying to.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, fair enough; maybe I picked a wrong example for one of my examples. I think most of the time, it's not that way though. Not that I'm saying that makes war good or anything.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Woah I think I just saw some neurons firing

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yes the intent matters. Israel intent is to destroy Hamas. That’s not genocide.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It is when they consider every Palestinian to be hamas (and anyone who they don't like on a particular day)

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

The precursors to genocide are actively unfolding before our eyes. On 10 October, the head of the Israeli army’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, addressed a message directly to Gaza residents: “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell”. The same day, Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari acknowledged the wanton and intentionally destructive nature of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza: “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” Raz Segal, the program director of genocide studies at Stockton University, concretely says it is a “textbook case of genocide.”

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Intent does not matter when the direct results of premeditated actions slaughter children and innocent civilians. These aren't mistakes, they are literally being explained by Israel as the war rages on as collateral damage.

If this is acceptable on the world stage, then the only people "winning" in the near future will be government officials and very high ranking military personnel. What's the point of peace when it comes at such a cost?

The amount of aid alone that Israel continues to block, and even destroy, is absolutely sickening.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Like if you squint at the numbers hard enough you cannot see starving children or murdered aid workers? Maybe that's why I keep hearing about how they're killing journalists.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

It may be frustrating that these talking points don’t work on Lemmy. Better luck next genocide.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not sure where you're getting those figures since the people keeping track of deaths were killed months ago.

Fucking ghoul

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are Hamas estimates of total death (~35,000). UN estimates are just Hamas estimates. There are Israel estimates ~30,000. Hamas estimates are for all deaths (including from natural causes and including due to Hamas rockets falling in Palestine). So the numbers are quite similar. I have seen different estimates how many Hamas militants were killed. The smallest is ~13K. If we take the largest number for total population killed (35K) then it is 22K civilians and 13K militants, with the ratio less than 2:1.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Two questions regarding your assertions

  1. What are your sources(assuming they exist) for the estimates on militants killed?

  2. How are your sources (again assuming they exist) defining militants vs civilians?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Displacement based on ethnicity and combat also counts

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Surprise, what would you expect from 50 year politician veteran?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Some fucking political tact

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Yeah, this is going to be the worst vote I've ever had to cast. It really fucking sucks.

Trump is worse in this issue, and hundreds of others... But fuck them both.