mozz

This happened to a friend of mine. He was undocumented but doing fine, riding a bus from one place to another, and didn’t realize that when the bus wandered a little close to the southern border, CBP could essentially pull the bus over and asked to see everyone’s papers. And that’s exactly what they did. TL;DR long detention in jail and a big fight to be able to stay in the country.

In the current system, he’d probably already be gone, and under Trump 2, someone in that situation might have something really really bad happen to them.

He worked at the RAND Corporation, inside the Pentagon directly under the Secretary of Defense, on-site in Vietnam, and then based on what he saw, decided to commit an incredibly major federal crime by going public about what was going on in the United States's decision-making process so the American people could be aware. He was charged with espionage, with the government aiming to put him in prison for 115 years, and beat the case. Much later, he wrote a book with his experiences and insights.

That's an extremely broad overview. I would highly recommend looking into more of the details, or maybe reading his book.

backs away gingerly

(I feel like you may not know who Daniel Ellsberg is)

I'm not trying to have hubris but I feel like, yes, in some aspects, yes.

I'm sure they are more up to speed on the details and I'm sure if I were in the position and making decisions, I would start fucking up horribly on some things. But, definitely there can be people in positions of power who are making horrible decisions because of blindness to key factors that the activist community is aware of -- "Secrets" by Daniel Ellsberg probably has some of the best examples I'm aware of. It's not entirely just me talking out of my ass.

Yeah I feel like we could set them straight.

Honestly man, I wish I could say that the real high level professionals are aware of the reality in enough detail that they would also laugh at a story like this, but I have a deep fear that they may not be.

It would definitely explain a lot about US reactions to the endless series of “ooh just missed it” peace agreement failures this year if they thought this story accurately represented how Netanyahu thinks.

One of the most important things to understand in geopolitics is that every country is a schizophrenic mixture of all kinds of priorities and actions.

“The Americans” have no single specific goal or policy with Israel. Biden has his priorities: Some amount of wanting to get reelected, some amount of wanting to preserve America’s alliances and priorities on the world stage (of which human rights isn’t any kind of priority), and some amount of actual concern for human rights. He’s chiefly responsible for the US’s behavior here and so policy is most directly a balancing act between those different things. But even there, his Israel policy is also at the mercy of congress which has a variety of other priorities, fear of the voters who may have wildly “extreme” priorities on one end or the other of the scale, etc.

The defense lobby that wants as many wars in as many places as possible, supplied by the US, and for them to go on as long as possible is certainly not an unimportant factor in that equation but it’s not the only factor.

This article seems shockingly naive.

He knows that without American involvement he won’t be able to strike a deal to free the hostages Hamas is still holding in Gaza.

Netanyahu clearly doesn't give a shit about the hostages. It's better for him, politically, if they are still out there and justifying the atrocities he wants to commit, than if the hostages thing is resolved and he's just being a genocidal maniac.

He also understands that a military defeat of Hamas will matter little if the group can reconstitute itself

Same thing. Hamas being out there is clearly much better for Netanyahu's priorities. This is why the Israeli government likes to facilitate Hamas staying in power, route aid to them, support them against their less violent domestic opposition -- because Netanyahu has decided on taking land and killing Palestinians, and the more damage Hamas is doing, the better a flimsy excuse he will have in place for doing so.

Moreover, he understands that if he wants an alternative to Hamas rule in Gaza, he needs key Arab states—the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and maybe Morocco—to work with the United States and other actors to create an interim administration in Gaza that would assume responsibility for day-to-day governance and security.

Why on Earth would he want an alternative to Hamas rule in Gaza. Again, Netanyahu's government routes funding to Hamas. Some of their politicians have explicitly said that they like Hamas in charge because it delegitimizes Palestine on the world stage (meaning that the Israeli civilians who die to Hamas are, presumably, an acceptable cost for that diplomatic boost they're getting in exchange).

Etc etc

Stop taking lying governments at their word in their framing of their conflicts. That kind of "golly gee we're just trying to protect Israeli civilians and create peace, but these pesky Hamas people keep getting in the way, which we totally hate" stuff is meant for the rubes and the voters. It has no business being taken seriously by supposed professionals.

IDK if it works this way with dogs, but with cats, if one of your pets dies, you should show the body to the living relatives, let them sniff it and be aware of what's going on. They will deal with it better if they know what happened than if Other Buddy just disappeared one day and they don't know if buddy is coming back.

This quick little one-off:

Walz would fully mobilize the National Guard, speak with Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, and acknowledge that the situation had gotten worse because “outside agitators” had entered the region.

People on the ground at the time were saying that groups of boogaloo boys were driving around all that first night, lighting fires in random places and brandishing rifles at people who tried to stop them. IDK if that never got reported in the news because they couldn't verify it, or because it wasn't true, but that's what people were saying at the time.

Interesting

How about Navalny? Also what's your take on the Venezuelan election?

I'm not asking that implying that the answer will be any particular type of way, just curious what you think about those issues.

No, working-class people are 12% richer (inflation adjusted) than they used to be, and that's a pretty fuckin significant number given the obstacles of Covid and Republicans that were standing in the way. The numbers are, 32% gains, 20% inflation, equals 12% gain inflation adjusted.

"Keep complaining" in the sense of advocating for better, finding more people who will help you get those outcomes and trying to work out how to get them in charge, sounds great. "Keep complaining" in the sense of blaming the people who are fighting for you for not doing a better job, and implying that them trying to give you trillions of dollars and partially succeeding is basically the same as the people who want to end democracy (and also steal back that money and more), is stupid. In my opinion.

People being dissatisfied with politics is the very first step required to actually change anything.

I don't think there is a shortage of dissatisfaction with politics in this country. There might be some imaginary country where if everyone would just get disaffected and cynical enough, the problems would get dealt with, but I think most of America's problem at this point is in the action piece.

Yes, the current administration has done some good things, but none of it is nearly enough, and we should still be plenty mad about all of it.

Plenty mad at the ones who are responsible, and invested in solutions that will move it in the right direction, yes. The reason I disagreed with the original poster is not that I don't want to fix things, it is that their proposed solution is mostly disaffectation instead of anything that will be that solution.

Specific side note: you say reduce income inequality, but regular people are way worse off financially than their parents were and that's not going away without some real change and we haven't actually seen anything moving in that direction

Low-income wages went up 32% since 2019, as a result of a stronger NLRB backstopping a bunch of union gains and the results of spending a trillion dollars of increased corporate taxes on domestic manufacturing. Covid inflation ate up most but not all of that boost; if Biden hadn't been handed an unfolding apocalypse with a lot of people still dependent on Covid assistance to live, I think it would have been a much more dramatic change, but it's definitely not nothing. He also spent about 10 times what anyone else has spent on climate change, putting us on track for a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030.

Is any of that enough? Fuck no. But it's also definitely not "haven't actually seen anything." You may not have seen anything, because I think a lot of Lemmy posters are employed in tech, and that sector has still been a shit show where people aren't keeping up with inflation. But the working class is actually doing substantially better than they were even before Covid, even under historic inflation. That's pretty fuckin unusual. And shitting on it (saying those working-class people don't represent "regular people"), or saying that because we haven't undone multiple generations of fuckery in the space of a couple of years, it doesn't count, is not something I agree with.