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wpb

@ wpb @lemmy.world

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Comments
428
Joined
1 yr. ago

  • Ah yes the "enlightened" democracies

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  • The resolution very likely was phrased in a loaded way or had some bit that was dubious

    These resolutions are publicly available on the UN website, are typically quite short, and actually quite easy to read in general. This one in particular is only 11 pages long, which includes skippable boilerplate. So this assertion is relatively easy to back up and doesn't need to rely on assumptions, and it can actually be quite fun to read one of these resolutions; you get to feel like a proper journalist or scholar or something. So I would suggest you give it a read and seek out the bit that you find most objectionable.

    Personally, based on not much more than gut feelings and historical precedent on similar distributions in votes, am a bit more uncertain than you about the reason behind this distribution. If we take the Palestine cease fire vote in the UN of December 2023, for example, you have a very similar distribution. And I know for a fact that that was an earnest, unobjectionable resolution, that was only voted down by the US because it was in their material interest to do so, and voted down by US client states (or abstention) because they're client states. But on the other hand, we also have the obvious context of Russia using this exact language as an excuse for their illegal invasion of Ukraine, so it's entirely conceivable that there's a section in there that says sth like "and thus, Russia shall invade Ukraine, and we're all cool with that". As such, I'm on the fence, and I'll read the resolution later. But do give it a go yourself! It's a very satisfying exercise

  • Israeli doctor compared killing Palestinians in Gaza to 'eliminating cockroaches'

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  • "Nie wieder! Aber..."

  • Russia classifies population data as birth rates plunge to 200-year low

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  • How about you consider that the majority of Israel approves of the treatment of Palestinians, or that in 1919 the pogroms enjoyed popular support, or that the majority of Americans supported the gulf wars. How about you don't throw bricks when you live in a glass house, you genocidal moron.

  • Revealed: UnitedHealth secretly paid nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers

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  • Bootlicking mods

  • Israeli doctor compared killing Palestinians in Gaza to 'eliminating cockroaches'

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  • I don't know if you're a history buff, but in the past Germany was really into this sort of stuff, so I'm not too surprised that Germany would support this.

  • Russia classifies population data as birth rates plunge to 200-year low

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  • I think the mods are doing an okay job here, but I also think it's fair to judge the community by what they upvote. And before it was deleted, there were definitely more upvotes than downvotes on something very blatantly genocidal. And there's still a comment up in this thread on some bizarre hick race science shit, again with a bunch of upvotes. Cartoonishly racist, still up, and with a bunch of upvotes. I think this does say sth about the community.

  • Russia classifies population data as birth rates plunge to 200-year low

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  • So you're saying October 7th was a good thing? And you're saying that Ukraine deserved to be invaded on account of the 1919 pogroms? I strongly disagree, and I think you're a ghoul for advocating such things.

  • Russia classifies population data as birth rates plunge to 200-year low

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  • So are you saying Americans deserved 9/11? Because I disagree with that.

  • Russia classifies population data as birth rates plunge to 200-year low

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  • You're literally rooting for the extinction of an ethnicity. Don't conflate a people with their government. The folks in the Twin Towers did not deserve to die, regardless of all the horrible things their goverment has done. The folks at the October 7th festival did not deserve to die, regardless of the horrible things their government has done. Russians do not deserve to go extinct, regardless of the horrible things their government has done. Please try to keep your genocidal tendencies in check.

  • Tankies delusional-posting are quite funny

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  • You're welcome to include Iraq, Iran, South America, Africa, Gaza, Turkish Kurds, and so on. You're welcome to restrict to some arbitrary timeframe, you're welcome to exclude indirect fatalities. Ultimately it's a fairly futile exercise. But I do know that if we restrict to the period including the invasion of Vietnam by China and onward, the US "wins" very, very comfortably.

    And I object to your use of the word artificial. These are human lives that were snuffed out for the sake of greed. These were people, like your father, your mother, your friends. There's nothing artificial about these numbers.

  • Tankies delusional-posting are quite funny

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  • If we take "kill" to mean like manslaughter through poor policy and famine, probably Mao, by an order of magnitude. But I'm guessing that's not what you're thinking about, because that's kind of a silly comparison. It's like asking "who killed more Americans, Mao or the US", to which the answer is both obvious and completely uninteresting.

    So I'm gonna take it to mean "murder", like the killing of landlords during the cultural revolution. And then it's actually kind of close, and I'm not sure who's killed more Asians. So the most liberal estimates for Mao there are 7 million, but the range is pretty big. The most conservative estimates put him at 2 million.

    Let's look at the US' kill count. I know of bombing campaigns in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Respectively, the ranges here are 300k-2M, 1.5M-3.1M, 80k-350k, 50k-150k. So that's a range of 1.9M-5.6M. Then there's the suppression of the movement for independence in colonized phillipines, which adds 200k, and Afghanistan, 250k. So that puts us at 2.5M-6M for the US to 2-7 for Mao.

    It should be noted that I'm not counting indirect deaths via training and arming dictatorships (if someone hands an assassin a gun, and the assassin kills your mother, the first person is not a murderer, but they are culpable in some way. If we add these, you get Timor, and the murder of leftists in Indonesia in the 60s, among others, which adds another 1-1.5M to the US count.

    So I guess it's kind of close. I gotta say, I'm a little surprised, I always thought Mao was much worse, but the US is a strong contender.

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    Former President Joe Biden diagnosed with 'aggressive' prostate cancer

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  • Every single president since Eisenhower (every single one, no exceptions) is a war criminal, and none of them stood trial. Don't hold your breath.

  • Tankies delusional-posting are quite funny

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  • Wait I'm lost, are we talking foreign invasions done by the US vs foreign invasions done by China? Or the number of victims of Hamas vs the victims of the IDF? What are we counting here? Military bases abroad?

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    Former President Joe Biden diagnosed with 'aggressive' prostate cancer

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  • Yeah, and you're basing this on info from the IDF, which I and others point out is hardly an impartial observer. There are impartial third party observers (Amnesty, WHO, Red Cross, ICC, ICJ, Unicef, etc.) and they all disagree with you. Try applying a even a smidge of critical thinking.

  • Presidential Goals

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  • I hope you're aware that Sanders was never president. But also that he's not a democra, which folks sometimes forget.

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    Former President Joe Biden diagnosed with 'aggressive' prostate cancer

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  • That's a fair point, he was not compos mentis during the second half of his presidency. But then, suppose someone in the more advanced stages of Alzheimer's gets behind the wheel and runs over and kills a child. Are they morally culpable? I think the answer is non-obvious, and at any rate subjective.

    For me personally, a necessary (but not sufficient) precondition is that the driver currently remembers what they did. This also implies that as time progresses, they lose culpability, as in time they will forget about it. It's hard to judge whether Biden satisfies this. I mean, in his worst moments (like the debate, and his recent appearance on the View) it's so obvious that he doesn't understand what's going on that I have a hard time believing he fully understands what's happening in the middle east. This, to me, would imply that he's not culpable for the genocide by virtue of simply not knowing it's happening in the first place.

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    Former President Joe Biden diagnosed with 'aggressive' prostate cancer

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  • there’s a fair chance he’ll survive.

    Don't say stuff like that

  • NYU withholds diploma of student who condemned Israel in graduation speech

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  • Oh my God that's embarrassing. Read a book, my guy.

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    Former President Joe Biden diagnosed with 'aggressive' prostate cancer

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  • As another user pointed out, there's no basis for those claims other than IDF press releases, which is literally the party that's doing the bombing. Not crazy reliable. But let's say they're not lying, or wrong. Let's say that enemy combatants are holed up underneath all schools, all hospitals, all churches and mosques, and 90% of residential buildings in Gaza (writing it out like this makes it sound really fucking stupid and unbelievable, but let's entertain the thought anyway).

    In the case that medical facilities are used in acts harmful to you, they become legitimate military targets under international humanitarian law. However, when you do bomb such facilities you have a number of responsibilities, including preparing a contingency plan and getting full medical service (such as cancer wards, maternity wards, and so on) up and running as soon as possible. If you don't, you're right back in war crime territory. And Israel hasn't.

    But aside from legal stuff, just ask yourself on a moral level if you're okay with this. If your mother is taken hostage in a bank robbery, would you be okay with the police dealing with this situation by blowing up the entire building? I personally wouldn't, but I guess it's conceivable that you would respond by saying "the robber did the hostage taking, the cops had no other choice, and the only one to blame for my mother's death is the robber".

    All of this is all hypothetical of course because there's actually no reason to believe that all hospitals, schools, places of worship, residential buildings, and refugee camps are all valid military targets. Because what moron would believe such a thing based entirely on what the party doing the bombing is saying?