One in 100 people in Gaza has been killed since October 7
cecinestpasunbot @ cecinestpasunbot @lemmy.ml Posts 0Comments 444Joined 2 yr. ago
cecinestpasunbot @ cecinestpasunbot @lemmy.ml
Posts
0
Comments
444
Joined
2 yr. ago
I go back and forth on this. When I was younger the Palme Dutt essay you cited would have sounded like nonsense to me. Now I see his work as a brilliant analysis of the conditions that give rise to fascism. Going back and tracing the circumstances that led to my change in perspective is not easy. What was the relative impact of comments like yours or my life circumstances that led to a change in my perspective? I can’t say I know for sure.
More willful ignorance of what are very well documented human rights abuses.
https://theintercept.com/2021/07/15/israel-army-settlers-palestinians-killed/
Willful ignorance, as I said.
For others reading this, UN reports on the issue are easily accessible.
Even Haaretz reports on settler violence.
You have to go out of your way to ignore the mass amount of evidence that show the Israeli government endorses and supports the forced eviction of Palestinians in the West Bank.
if they really wanted to, they could literally turn Palestine into a beach. But they won’t
How can you say this unironically given the obscene level of destruction Israel has inflicted on Gaza? It’s just completely detached from objective reality.
Hamas has no power in the West Bank. Yet Israeli settlers are free to harass Palestinians and force them from their homes without consequence. If you think that’s a successful resolution to the conflict then you’re just willfully ignorant.
I’m not sure that matters when Biden’s support for genocide is making a second Trump term more and more likely. He needs to be differentiating himself from Trump in order to drive turnout. Blindly supporting Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaigns does the exact opposite.
Unfortunately, that’s not how it played out. California residents actually voted for proposition 8 which banned same sex marriage. It wasn’t until a court case invalidated said proposition that same sex marriage became legal.
I think you might have your history mixed up. The courts legalized same sex marriage in California in 2008 but it was banned again after proposition 8 was passed by voters. It’s possible deep canvassing was used in the campaign against proposition 8. However, it certainly didn’t tip the scales. Same sex marriage only became legal again in 2013 thanks to a different court case that invalidated the proposition.
That said, I do think there are contexts where deep canvassing may be effective. For example, similar methods are an essential part of labor organizing. Progressive causes are just too resource poor in the US to use such methods at scale.
Unfortunately in the US deep canvassing is not a viable strategy for most political campaigns since it’s too resource intensive. It’s far more effective to canvass as way of identifying likely voters. Then you can make sure they vote when the time comes.
Some of the governments of various regional powers may not care. However the Palestinian cause has massive popular support.
In Yemen I think it’s both. The Yemeni people were starved and bombed by the Saudis with lots of US support. It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that they feel a deep sympathy for what Palestinians are going through.
That’s just what kids are taught in high school in the US and most people don’t question it. You have to go out of your way to learn otherwise.
They aren’t wrong though. The media has long lost the truth about what actually happened that day. Here you can read a piece by a journalist who was the Beijing correspondent for the Washington Post at the time.
https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php
Your source Radio Free Asia is owned and operated by the US government. It’s not a news source but rather a propaganda outlet that lacks credibility.
I don’t think we have any reliable polling data to say what the approval rating of the government was during the Great Leap Forward. However, Mao did lose a lot of influence within the CCP as a consequence. As such I think it’s safe to say there was lots of dissatisfaction at least within the party itself.
As for why the CCP doesn’t drop their communists principles it’s simple. They’re still communists who believe in Marxism-Leninism. They just don’t have a principled aversion to markets as long as they’re useful for raising living standards and economic development.
They do however have an aversion to political liberalization. This was in part informed by what they saw as a failure of the joint market and political reforms happening in Eastern European socialist countries. The CCP’s fear was that political liberalization would empower a nascent capitalist class which could lead to economic disaster. I don’t think they were necessarily wrong in this regard as that’s exactly what happened to Russia only a few years later.
If you want the CCP to stop what you see as a silly socialist experiment you’ll have to give them better reasons to. The CCP isn’t irrational. They’re just working from a different set of assumptions than you are.
The Taiwanese government would have to negotiate those terms with the mainland before any such referendum could happen. However, that’s unlikely to occur in the near term if the DPP, which is the “pro independence” party, wins the upcoming presidential elections. When combined, parties interested in negotiating with the mainland are polling higher than them. However, the DPP maintains a a slight lead with a plurality of support. Needless to say it’s a complicated situation. I doubt the issue of Taiwan’s future will be resolved anytime soon.
It’s true that you will hear limited critique for Republicans and Democrats from private media outlets. However, there is usually very little criticism directed at things that both parties can agree on, like their hawkish stance towards China.
That said, I think we have vastly different perspectives on how the economy functions. What you view as a petty competition for more money I think is an existential threat to the privileges American business elite currently enjoy. If the industries they are invested in are no longer competitive in a global market, they will not be able to extract the wealth that currently funds their extravagant lifestyles. They will happily try to influence US policy if they think it can prevent that from happening.
Lastly, I agree China’s favorable in western aligned countries have been negative since around 2008. However up until around 2018 they were still hovering close to where they were in the 2000s. It was around 2018 when Trump started implementing tariffs against China that negative opinions on China spiked. It’s not like Trump cares about human rights so why did his administration take such a protectionist measure when Republicans have been pro free trade for decades? Well that also happens to be around the same time China’s economy likely surpassed the US in purchasing power parity. That gap has only widened so it’s not surprising to me that Biden has chosen to keep those tariffs in place while also implementing new trade restrictions with China.
The problem with pursuing full independence is that not all Taiwanese people currently want the island to be a separate country given the deep cultural, familial, and economic ties they have to the mainland. That of course doesn’t mean those who are against independence trust the CCP. Unfortunately I think that nuance gets lost in western media.
The thing is those examples you gave really are not comparable to the massive and sustained economic growth China has experienced since their economic reforms in the late 80s. Putin has only overseen a modest economic recovery following the disaster that was economic shock therapy in the 90s. As for Hitler, he provided the German economy with whatever you would call the exact opposite of stability.
It definitely can be called propaganda but for different reasons usually related to market pressures.
Private news organizations don’t like going against the status quo. That invites controversy which their advertisers or investors may not be comfortable with. Even non profits outlets like NPR don’t want to upset their large donors.
Additionally, finding reliable sources is a difficult and expensive process. As such, private news outlets are more likely to use government officials as primary sources especially when it comes to foreign affairs. They may also rely on privately funded think tanks and NGOs which may have often been created to push a particular narrative.
Taken together, that means private news outlets are heavily biased in favor of the interests of their local business elite and existing foreign policy.
With regards to China, their economy has technically outgrown the US economy if you look at purchasing power parity. That’s deeply concerning for US business elite who have enjoyed an almost hegemonic control over the global economy since WWII. In my view, that’s why you see far more negative stories about China today than there were a few decades ago, despite the fact that China’s political system has not meaningfully changed.
They’re well on there way to do just that having leveled about a third of all the buildings in Gaza with no signs of stopping the bombing.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/08/the-numbers-that-reveal-the-extent-of-the-destruction-in-gaza
Israel has killed over twenty two thousand Gazans. That’s roughly 1% of the population. The vast majority of the survivors have been displaced from their homes.
Face the reality, this is exactly what indiscriminate murder and genocide looks like. If you choose to believe otherwise you’re just willfully lying to yourself.