That's because most left wing Americans don't support the Iranian regime.
People that ask "where are all the students on campus that were protesting Gaza" do so because taking action on injustice, in a way that demands accountability from their leaders, is an uncomfortable idea. For them, the purpose of taking action is largely to signal moral outrage, and making an aggrieved post on social media is the beginning and end of praxis on an issue. And if that is your mindset, why wouldn't you make an equal amount of posts about Iran as you would for Gaza? Since they are both Things That Are Morally Bad.
What they don't understand is that for people that e.g. protest in person, protesting isn't a quaint, feckless action merely meant to signal one's care about an issue to the right people. Rather, it is an action with a goal to effect specific change of behavior on a particular issue from a specific group of people (usually leaders in power that are beholden to the protesters). If you are American and protesting US military support for Israel based on the conflict in Gaza, there are practical, material, direct cause-and-effect reasons to make that argument towards your elected representatives; the same is simply not true for the Iran situation (which the majority of the US government is already aligned with bombing yet again).
It's just such a strange point of view to interpret lack of action on a particular issue as tacit support.
We (the US) just bombed Iran last summer. We are moving the largest buildup in decades of armament and materiel to Iran's doorstep RIGHT NOW, and it seems extremely likely we are about to bomb them again.
What exactly do you want to happen here? In your view, am I taking the side of the Ayatollahs because bombing isn't enough and we should be nuking Tehran instead?
It's telling that perceived tacit support of an Iranian regime — which America is more hostile to perhaps more than any other nation on the planet — is more disturbing to you than the deaths of 20k+ children in Gaza.
It's not, really, if you are now ignoring all of the dictatorial theocracies that we support enthusiastically, and focusing on the ones that America is looking for an excuse to intervene in.
And this is not a "why focus on this thing when there are other things" fake argument. These protests were engineered by people with the intention of intervening, and a lot of that engineering the involved manipulation of western media narratives and the creation of fake organizations to become sources of information. It's not coincidence or luck that you're focused on Iran; people were sitting around planning an invasion of Iran and part of their planning was "How can we get the public to focus on Iran enough to give Congress cover to ignore another Executive war?"
The actual narrative, undisputed by even the people involved, is that
1) a currency crash was intentionally instigated in Iran by the West, which caused protests. We have bragged about this.
2) Many of the educated Iranian middle class joined these protests to argue against the regime in general, which they always do.
3) US and Israeli-supported terrorist organizations took advantage of those protests (like a black bloc) to start burning down buildings and burning cops alive, armed by the west and networked through smuggled Skylink terminals,
4) the US and Israel bragged that the protests were materially supported by covert western intelligence in order to push the crackdown to atrocity levels, and to eliminate even the general public's support for the protests (which would be some restraint to the government.) They literally said that many of the protesters were Mossad agents. You might as well be saying "please kill them." It's as if Al Qaeda announced that they were materially supporting and completely infiltrating BLM protests, and when many BLM activists were arrested, they were carrying Al Qaeda satellite terminals and arms smuggled from Pakistan.
(The Iranian middle class was even out, because they aren't traitors, they just don't want to live in a theocracy. The West are who turned Iran into a dictatorship by replacing Mossadegh with the Shah. The West helped Iraq use chemical weapons against Iran. We care nothing about Iranians, we just want to steal from them. We're thieves, and we're consciously moving to a economic strategy of piracy in order to take advantage of our navy.)
5) The US moved as much navy to bear on Iran as it did when it invaded Iraq, and said that unless some magic words were said that nobody knows, it would invade.
You might be comfortable being manipulated like this, but I am not.
The case for intervention in Iran is much stronger, from the perspective of the United States, if you zoom out and realize that a larger fight in the Pacific is brewing and it would be wise to remove a player from the board who would happily provide access to fuel and refining capacity to PRC. Not saying I agree with this, necessarily, but it helps to steel man the more sophisticated cases when you are trying to understand complex geopolitical events.
To the extent that the protests are being "engineered", certainly there are elements of that, but why wouldn't there be and why would that be bad a priori? The regime is uniquely terrible in the world, and if you listen to Iranian ex-pats who fled it seems clear a lot of the kids that supported the revolution in 1979 quickly realized that it was a mistake, and that they underestimated the extent to which the new regime would prioritize regressive islamism over actually addressing what were at the time legitimate economic inequality issues.
>it would be wise to remove a player from the board who would happily provide access to fuel and refining capacity to PRC.
Washington has an easier way to do that: namely, to use its navy and the Sentinel Islands (controlled by Washington ally India) to prevent the transit of tankers from Iran to China.
Yes, possibly, but running an indefinite blockade or interdiction operation is still costly. It is lower in complexity in terms of operational capabilities required than a decapitation strike against the potential co-belligerent, although this is rapidly changing, but in order to effectively run one you are dedicating a very sizable percentage of your overall combat power away from the front. Additionally, I am skeptical that the Indian Navy could handle such an operation independently. Their fleet size has grown over the last decade, but, as alluded to, interdiction operations are increasingly complex so they would likely need assistance at least at the beginning. It's also, I think, a stretch to call India an "ally" per se of Washington today (maybe "partner" would be more accurate), and I find it hard to believe that India would effectively enter into a world war on behalf of the United States.
There is an argument to be made that a maritime interdiction operation is a better approach, and the information I would need to decide definitively which approach I think is better is likely very classified.
> all my friends who posted non-stop about supporting Palestine
> I'm saying if you were a very vocal pro-Hamas activist
Palestine ≠ Hamas
Pro-Palestinian ≠ Pro-Hamas
If you genuinely don't believe a significant number of people support the former but not the latter, I... don't even know what to tell you. It certainly says a lot that you can neither distinguish these two nor believe anyone else sees a distinction.
> They don't consistently care about any particular type of human suffering. Just opposing Zionists
People are not numbers for your narrative.
Whether on a population chart or on a death chart.
Again: you're ignoring more than half a century of history and extremely relevant differences regarding how each got into their current situations, whom the involved parties were, what the current situations even are, and what their futures might look like... and more.
Just because the number of deaths appears to have reached a similar order of magnitude that does not mean anyone who fails to display the same reaction to the situations the two groups of people have been in is a hypocrite.
Maybe you should ask a few Palestinians before making such statements.
Polls made by respected Palestinian surveyors show immense support for Hamas by Palestinians [1]. If you dig inti the polls, you’ll find great support in continuing the armed conflict. I’ll add: to the last man standing.
While I agree with you that Hamas and the Palestinians are not one thing, Hamas would not be able to operate the way it did (and still does to an extent), without broad support from the population.
Even still, that data does not refute the parent's point that you are making a false equivalency.
Polling Israeli or US citizens on the extremist groups they support would be similarly dishonest; organizations like ICE, Blackwater and Irgun cannot be fairly conflated with their respective populations regardless of how the majority feels.
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
Right, the current Israeli administration is horrible, especially the far right that keeps it alive. I invite you to oppose that government and help the opposition take power. Instead, you’re making the opposition weaker by putting all the Israelis in one basket.
You should read about the Oslo accords and the failed talks at Camp David. This is to say that Israel has been trying for a long time to make peace with the Palestinians. Them not wanting has led most to give up and stop fighting the extremists.
Dont need your victim theatrics, we both know who made that comment. We both also know Ben gurions private correspondence and what the plan always was for Israel.
We both know the majority of Israel supports the settlements and the status quo in Gaza, but maybe not the last few years. We both know they went out to protest against the punishment of your rapists.
Oslo and David talks included poison pills so that Palestinians would never agree to it. While I believe that Hamas should not exist I do believe the powers in Israel wants them to.
Essentially everyone but Israel supports the 1967 borders today, but Hamas does not recognize Israel, just like Israel didn't recognize Palestine in the Oslo accords, that would also allow settlements in the west bank to continue.
The Oslo accords were supposed to lead to a Palestinian state. The exploding busses in Tel Aviv didn’t help.
I don’t know what Ben Gurion’s private correspondence was, but it sure binds me, a millennial!
Your aggressive rhetoric doesn’t impress anyone, instead it signals your emotional gut response, probably an ill informed one.
You already hate me, a stranger, and nothing I will say will make you reconsider your position. That is because you hold it because you want to, and not because of real investigation.
What Ben gurion wanted has not changed. I'm I'll informed yet you have no idea what your country really was from the start.
Not sure if it's feigned victimhood or if you feel guilty for what your country is doing. Either way you seem to take what your country does personally.
Yes, and if you poll Israelis about their views of Palestinians, you'll find that the majority want to exterminate them all. What does that say about Israel? Fucking nothing except that we shouldn't be funding either of them. And we aren't arming Hamas.
What matters is that pro-Palestinians aren't calling for the extermination of Israel, while Zionists are clearly calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Wanting the war to end does not automatically make you a Hamas terrorist, obviously.
I don’t know, these chants of “river to the sea” accompanied by signs with maps of israel fully covered with a Palestinian flag tell me the opposite.
> if you poll Israelis about their views of Palestinians, you'll find that the majority want to exterminate them all
Can you point me to that poll, or is that just your opinion?
> Zionists are clearly calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza
First of all, you clearly don’t know what Zionism is. Hell, it means different things for different people. Let me help you out: for most Israelis, Zionism is about independence and sovereignty for the jewish people.
While there are Israelies who want the Palestinians out, only the crazies are actually considering it as a plausible reality. These crazies gain more political power the more the general population loses its faith the Palestinians are wanting peace, as opposed to fighting to the last man standing. You should read about the Oslo accords and the later failed talks at Camp David.
Lastly, wanting to vote for Hamas is absolutely not about wanting the war to end, as Hamas is a perpetrator of it. How did you make this astonishing logical leap?
It sounds crazy to me, and indeed very disturbing if it was true. However if it was true, I would have known at least one person to fit the image they’re portraying. I know none.
I tried to find the original publication, but all I found was press coverage. Specifically I’m interested in the demographics - who was asked these questions, aside from the religious attributes that they name.
The correct course of actions is to reexamine your beliefs in light of the new evidence that was presented to it, not shut off your mind completely. If you still doubt its truth, you can easily get more with a quick google search. Also, it's not like Israel's government ever tried to hide their genocidal rhetoric (well, outside of the PR they serve the West, of course).
I did spend quite some time trying to find the original publication to no avail, thank you very much. If it’s so easy, maybe you’ll be kind enough to help me. Just let me know if you find an actual rigorous paper or just an outrage piece meant to horrify everyone.
I am aware of this rhetoric you mention, I hate it myself, but I believe that it’s populist bullshit, just like most things this government is saying, including stuff that doesn’t get worldwide coverage, and are intended to cause outrage and get media coverage. This pattern (sadly) repeats in most western nations nowadays.
If there was ever an actual intent to get rid of the Palestinians, you would get an order of magnitude more dead. The means exist, not the intent.
Israel was prepared for peace a long time ago. Nowadays Many Israelis are convinced that the Palestinians don’t want peace, but rather a fight to the death. This thwarts any hope of trying for peace again on the Israeli side.
> Maybe you should ask a few Palestinians before making such statements. Polls made by respected Palestinian surveyors show immense support for Hamas by Palestinians
I never made the statements you're suggesting I did to begin with.
> Hamas would not be able to operate the way it did (and still does to an extent), without broad support from the population.
Leaving aside whatever "still broad, to an extent" means: I never claimed otherwise, regardless. Certainly they have their share of supporters.
What I'm pointing out is that the parent's "friends who posted non-stop about supporting Palestine" are not (probably not? or hopefully not, at least in their view?) pro-Hamas or pro-genocide.
Heck, I imagine they're probably not local Palestinians or in the surveyed population here to begin with. And the rest of the people around the world supporting Palestinians clearly aren't, either.
> I agree with you that Hamas and the Palestinians are not one thing
One, is it actually? (EDIT: I don't think it is [1]. This seems to be another case where American pro-Palestinian activist culture may be getting confused with actual Palestinian culture.)
Two, I'm going to be almost everyone in America wearing one doesn't know that. (We're not the most internationally-literate population. I can't even begin to imagine what fraction of #StopKony posters in the early 2010s could have placed Uganda on a map.)
> all my friends who posted non-stop about supporting Palestine
> very vocal pro-Hamas activist
> Wearing the kaffiyeh is explicitly pro-Hamas and Genocidal towards Israel. It's pretty simple.
OK, simple enough. And you said you are friends with such pro-Hamas, pro-genocidal people?
> I know know why you insist on acting
You clearly neither know what I'm doing (certainly it's not acting), nor why, but feel free to believe as you wish.
> like that's not happening.
Nobody said that's that's not also happening. What I said is there are many, many pro-Palestinians who emphatically do not support Hamas, and you're lumping them together with people who support both (yes, they also exist).
If anyone is insisting on anything, it's you insisting on not making the distinction between these positions or groups, for some reason. And apparently on keeping said pro-Hamas/pro-genocide people as your friends (?!) but I'll avoid speculating why; I imagine you must have extremely compelling reasons.
>That crowd only seems to care if they can actively oppose Israel or the current administration
Can you think of any motivating reasons for the crowd to focus on Israel specifically? Last I checked, the American government isn't sending billions of dollars of weaponry and political cover to the Iranian government, so that is one massive reason why protesting Israel makes more sense.
>have not made a peep about the thousands of Iranians recently murdered by their regime
I don't protest to signal my moral outrage, I do it to effect change in my elected leaders. It's not my responsibility to devote an equal amount of attention to every injustice — ignoring the cause and effects in that injustice with direct connection to politicians beholden to me — because people like you will find it "disturbing".
That's projection. Because it is nearly impossible in practice split support as you claim you are. HAMAS is the government in Gaza. They intercept any and all aid that isn't administered directly to Palestinians. Also the questionable version of the history of the region that you have to believe (or be completely ignorant of the history) to support the Palestinians is entirely a HAMAS narrative. If you actually knew the history, you would know that while all Palestinians moved to the Levant voluntarily in the last 150 years, most of the Jews in Israel were moved by force by Muslims. If Palestinians were upset by lots of Jews in the Levant, they should be mad at other Muslims countries as they were the ones who moved most Jews there.
You just make these claims to avoid any accountability of your actions. That tracks because the HAMAS narratives completely do the same, so its easier for you to accept.
PS Most of the videos that swayed you were AI generated.
> PS Most of the videos that swayed you were AI generated.
This is an absolutely insane and downright insulting claim to make about anyone. You should feel ashamed of saying something as utterly indefensible as this.
So what you're saying is that Palestinians all deserve to die because they gave their support to HAMAS when their neighbor was slowly colonizing their land and expropriating them. Meanwhile, the US should provide Israel with as much weapons and funding as necessary to help them achieve their overt genocidal agenda. And the people that call for the killings to end are actually just terrorists that you don't have to listen to. Got it.
So you want you elected leaders to save Palestinians (perfectly reasonable), but don't want your elected leaders to consider doing something out when thousands are being massacred in the street?
You really think if the US wasn't supporting Israel, no one would have cared about Gaza?
> So you want you elected leaders to save Palestinians
I don't want that. I want them to stop paying Israelis with our money to kill Palestinians. If they want to do atrocities, they can do it on their own dime.
When talking about Israel, it's always couched in terms of universal human rights. When confronted with their lack of advocacy for the human rights of practically anyone else, their cognitive fallback is that they only care for what they feel the U.S. government is responsible for, and that it's not really about universal human rights, and never was. Then, when no one is paying attention anymore, they swing back to being avowed universal human rights activists who just happen to be condemning Israel.
People were angry at the world allowing a genocide to occur and at their own countries actively supporting that genocide.
It was also a genocide going on for several years allowing momentum to build and anger to grow. The most recent Iranian uprising lasted a few weeks.
I would be more upset that Trump told the poor Iranians to protest and that he would support them if violence was used against them - and he let them die by the thousand. He told them "help is on the way". It wasn't.
You've been breaking the site guidelines quite a lot in this thread by posting flamebait and crossing into personal attack. That's not ok, regardless of how wrong other people are or you feel they are.
>I'm saying if you were a very vocal pro-Hamas activist
"Pro hamas activist" has become the calling card of deeply committed western and israeli islamophobes.
Much like their close cousins, the holocaust denying anti semite, they almost universally refuse to recognize the UN recognized genocide in gaza.
>That crowd only seems to care if they can actively oppose Israel or the current administration
Im sure if the current administration backed a genocide in another country they would passionately oppose that too. Unlike dedicated islamophobes, anti racists are consistent.
How would releasing the prisoners stop the settlers and other issues?
What Israel has been doing for decades at this point is completely unacceptable. Hamas is a bunch of terrorists, but in context they are the inevitable outcome of Israel's continuous mistreatment and ongoing antagonism against all of their neighbors stretching on for fifty years.
You really have to wonder what the hell is wrong with the Israelis that they can't stop being aggressive towards literally everyone around them.
Agreed that Israel could have taken another path the last couple decades, but it's also unreasonable to omit that they are surrounded by neighbors that want to kill them. Iran and their proxies.
>We accept the risks with humans because those humans accept risk.
It seems very strange to defend a system that is drastically less safe because when an accident happens, at least a human will be "liable". Does a human suffering consequences (paying a fine? losing their license? going to jail?) make an injury/death more acceptable, if it wouldn't have happened with a Waymo driver in the first place?
I think a very good reason to want to know who's liable is because Google has not exactly shown itself to enthusiastically accept responsibility for harm it causes, and there is no guarantee Waymo will continue to be safe in the future.
In fact, I could see Google working on a highly complex algorithm to figure out cost savings from reducing safety and balancing that against the cost of spending more on marketing and lobbyists. We will have zero leverage to do anything if Waymo gradually becomes more and more dangerous.
> Wherever I'm going, I'll be there to apply the formula. I'll keep the secret intact.
It's simple arithmetic.
It's a story problem.
If a new car built by my company leaves Chicago traveling west at 60 miles per hour, and the rear differential locks up, and the car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside, does my company initiate a recall?
> You take the population of vehicles in the field (A) and multiple it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement (C).
A times B times C equals X. This is what it will cost if we don't initiate a recall.
If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall the cars and no one gets hurt.
If X is less than the cost of a recall, then we don't recall.
It's hard to imagine how any driver could have reacted better in this situation.
The argument that questions "would a human be driving 17mph in a school zone" feels absurd to the point of being potentially disingenuous. I've walked and driven through many school zones before, and human drivers routinely drive above 17mph (in some cases, over the typical 20mph or 25mph legal limit). It feels like in deconstructing some of these incidences, critics imagine a hypothetical scenario in which they are driving a car and its their only job to avoid a specific accident that they know will happen in advance, rather than facing the reality of what human drivers are actually like on the road.
Do you sincerely believe that financial sponsorship is the primary impetus causing Americans to voice dissatisfaction in US support for Israel? That is a fascinating perspective.
Well, why would it not be? For information to be put in front of americans requires advertisement. Very few people seek out information organically versus simply being served information for consumption through a usually visited channel. Stories aren't written for free. This is probably why no one is protesting about Sudan or Yemen, very little in comparison is written about these conflicts, streamers and internet personalities aren't picking them up as much and putting them in front of their audiences.
Another way to put it: the point of protesting generally isn't solely to express being upset with an injustice. It's to get some actor/stakeholder - usually one's government - to DO something about the injustice.
Because of this, it's entirely rational to NOT protest with equal opportunity for every injustice that occurs around the world. Those American campus students aren't just protesting to make noise, they are hoping that their government leaders - that DEPEND on their votes - will cease enabling atrocities.
The American government hates Iran with bipartisan support and has it sanctioned to hell and back, I have no idea what I'd protest American leaders to do here?
> The American government hates Iran with bipartisan support and has it sanctioned to hell and back, I have no idea what I'd protest American leaders to do here?
Well you could rally in support of more action, or protest outside an Iranian embassy for example to put pressure on them. I was reading that something on a small scale happened in the UK and they took down the Iranian flag from the embassy.
> Another way to put it: the point of protesting generally isn't solely to express being upset with an injustice. It's to get some actor/stakeholder - usually one's government - to DO something about the injustice.
Sure, I don't disagree. But let me ask, do you believe that if the US wasn't selling weapons to Israel that the public would react to this particular conflict in a way that's similar to how it reacts to other conflicts around the world? It's obviously hard to speculate about because it's just the world we live in and counterfactuals around these things are incredibly difficult and inaccurate, but something tells me there's something unique about this conflict and even in countries that don't sell weapons to Israel we do still see rather large scale protests and rallies and such.
>Well you could rally in support of more action, or protest outside an Iranian embassy for example
You're describing methods of protest, but not demands. What specific action do you believe Americans should demanding from their representatives re: Iran, that the US government isn't already doing? We bombed Iran just this past summer, are you saying we should go back for round 2?
>obviously hard to speculate about because it's just the world we live in
The world we live in is the world where the US gives huge financial, material and political support to Israel. Your statement feels akin to saying "Sure there is a gigantic elephant in this room right now, but something tells me there's some unique reason why everyone is complaining about the room being cramped. Especially compared to these other rooms that don’t have a giant elephant inside.”
> You're describing methods of protest, but not demands. What specific action do you believe Americans should demanding from their representatives re: Iran, that the US government isn't already doing? We bombed Iran just this past summer, are you saying we should go back for round 2?
Well this action puts pressure on Iran, and in the case of the UK maybe more pressure for the UK to do something. You're right that the US government is already opposed (rightfully) to the Iranian regime and so additional rallies or protests might not have much effect but it could reinforce the government's stance and to show support. You can rally in favor of something, and protest against something, can you not?
> The world we live in is the world where the US gives huge financial, material and political support to Israel.
Yea but then you have to balance that with Iran giving huge financial, material, and political support to Hamas, Hezbollah, and other groups who take up arms and fight and kill people and stuff too.
But the point wasn't to suggest that the US doesn't give these things to Israel, which if you want to introduce "the real world" you have to include Iran and friends (Russia too now that I think about it, they've been helping Iran), but to just speculate on whether we would still see the level of protest we do today even if the United States didn't give weapons to Israel. I'm unsure. But it's a hard counterfactual to run, and I'm just mentioning it because the primary argument I see for the reasoning that more people care about this issue is specifically because the US sells/gives weapons to Israel. That's all.
The US government doesn't hate Iran, the US government hates that Iran doesn't have a compliant government in an oil rich state, near Russia which is another resource rich state.
Every action of the US can only be understood if there is wealth to be stolen.
Yea. You know when I joined the military and went to Iraq I was pretty upset I didn’t get to bring home any gold or my own barrel or two of oil. Or even a washing machine! Disappointing.
Sheer coincidence, this came out a couple of days ago.
"Iran (1953), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), Russia (2022), Syria (2024), and now Venezuela (2026). The common denominator underlying the U.S. attacks and economic sanctions against all these countries is America’s weaponization of the world’s oil trade."
What is it that you say to each other: "thank you for your service." Service to whom is left unsaid.
“it's a fair criticism though because of the general vitriol about Hamas and Gaza.”
Ok, you’ve convinced me. I now firmly support reducing billions in American aid to Iran, curtailing Iranian use of American bombs, and diplomatic cover America gives to Iran in the UN. I am now also calling strongly to remove all these state laws we have that ban government business with companies that don’t support Iran!
Is your argument that if the US wasn't selling weapons to Israel which are used on Gaza, Americans and Europeans wouldn't care about what's going on in Palestine as much?
Are you calling for Iran to cease supplying Hamas and other regional organizations with weapons as well?
I don’t know if you are American, but I am. Sure, I don’t support Iran giving Hamas weapons. The issue is that Iran isn’t my government and they certainly don’t give a fuck about my opinion.
The human tragedy in Gaza is enabled directly by MY representatives and funded with MY tax money and given diplomatic cover for atrocities again and again by MY government. Nothing my country is doing enables what is happening in Iran right now.
The situation is less pronounced with Europeans, but not dissimilar. The EU has sanctions on Iran, unless I’m missing something? And frankly yes, if American support for Israel ceased I think Europeans would complain less because Israel would have to stop a lot of their behavior.
> The issue is that Iran isn’t my government and they certainly don’t give a fuck about my opinion.
This seems like a cop-out and I’ve noticed a similar “Iran isn’t my country” pattern amongst others. Let’s be very clear, Iran needs to stop funneling weapons and money to Hamas and other terrorist organizations. They’re complicit in this war and the blood of Palestinians is on their hands too, never mind the thousands killed peacefully protesting this week.
Iran doesn’t need to be your country to call for them to stop initiating and supporting violence and genocide in the Middle East, or to stop repressing their own people. Just like Ukraine doesn’t need to be your country for you to call for Russia to stop their war.
It’s one thing to say well I’ve only got time and energy to protest my country doing XYZ, but that argument doesn’t hold water when having a discussion on the Internet which requires little effort and no sacrifice of any kind.
If the US wasn't selling weapons, Israel wouldn't be able to do what it does. It wouldn't be happening like this. So that's right, the level of caring would be lower because the genocide would not be possible.
> If the US wasn't selling weapons, Israel wouldn't be able to do what it does.
It's hard to really draw up the counterfactual but I'm not really sure that's the case. But there are many other players here besides just Israel that are helping to ensure that this conflict continues to fester, chiefly Iran.
It's a fair point to say that the counterfactual is hard to draw up.
I will point out the main reason it's hard to come up with, is the fact that American aid, weapons sales, and diplomatic support for Israel has been so constant and unchallenged over the past several decades that we don't have many good examples of what Israel would do without impunity.
Sure, but Israel has also been continuously attacked so we're not sure how Israel would act if it weren't continually being attacked. The counterfactual is hard but it's not hard just because the United States has supported Israel, but also because other nations in the region have always attacked Israel and continue to do so.
I think there's an inclination on the Internet to lean toward one side or another, but just like with Democrats and Republicans, at least in my view, everyone sucks here.
Without western support, it is quite possible Israel will simply lose and the conflict will go away, leaving a possibility of building a democratic secular state in Palestine that treats people with equality.
Correct, Iran shouldn't fund Hamas. I don't pay taxes in Iran, I am not a member of their society.
I'm American. I pay taxes in the US. I could do some math and figure out how many deaths of innocent kids I've directly funded, how many Palestinian families I've helped displace. I get to live with that knowledge.
I'm not funding Hamas terrorist attacks, but I am funding a genocide.
People around the world don't pay taxes to the United States yet protest its actions even when their country isn’t involved. There's no reason you can't do the same.
You're taking the easy way out here instead of engaging with the world head on. You don't want to criticize Iran because you don't live there, yet their actions helped Hamas kill like around 2,000 other innocent people. But you're silent because you don't live there? Are you also silent on Russia invading Ukraine since you don't live in either country? Give me a break. What you and others who have made similar claims have presented are really bad, isolationist-style arguments.
Iran's government is rogue and I don't support them in any sense. They are committing crimes against their own people and funding terrorism elsewhere. The world would be better off if there was a different regime. Therefore, the US should stop selling them weapons, sharing intelligence, and sending them aid. Oh wait...
> Iran's government is rogue and I don't support them in any sense. They are committing crimes against their own people and funding terrorism elsewhere. The world would be better off if there was a different regime.
Yes you got that right.
It's interesting how you just can't leave it at that. Any criticism of a country besides Israel or the United States has to be couched in sarcasm or outright refusal to criticize other belligerents. It's tribalism. And so you can't get mad at other tribes for being tribal too.
Do you understand what happened in the opioid crisis, and why people are mad at the Sacklers? They weren’t hapless naive actors that didn’t fully understand “the implications” of the drugs they were selling. The effects of opioid addiction were WELL known when oxycontin was introduced, and Purdue Pharmaceuticals deliberately misrepresented critical information about the drugs they sold and had salespeople lie in a wholesale fashion on a massive scale.
It’s reasonable to have suspicion about companies and regulators in this area, but the opioid crisis is such a different situation in context.
> Dr. Janis Phelps, director of the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research at the California Institute of Integral Studies, said she and other researchers had been wary of the decriminalization movement. Many in the field had worked for years to remain strictly scientific, hoping to avoid government crackdowns, and to give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration time to fully review the effects of psilocybin before pressing ahead with efforts to make it legal.
> “I have changed my mind,” she said. While she remains concerned that bad actors could try to enter the industry strictly for profit, or try to take advantage of vulnerable people, she has come to believe that the open door in Oregon could advance the use of psychedelics in ways that methodical approaches cannot.
> Dr. Charles Nemeroff, the chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, said he continues to be wary. Psilocybin is powerful, with immediate effects lasting for hours, and uncertain outcomes for patients, he said, recalling one patient of his who has experienced protracted psychosis, losing partial connection to reality, after taking doses of mushrooms. The treatments ruined her life, said Dr. Nemeroff, who said he worried about the lack of required medical oversight in Oregon’s program.
Just like the Sacklers, people pursuing psilocybin are fully aware of all of these warnings and problems. And just like Purdue, anyone selling psilocybin right now are willfully misrepresenting the evidence and ignoring medical opinion. Again, Purdue did all of the things they did because they believed they were ultimately helping treat people's suffering.
I am fully aware that time may tell and the concerns may be unfounded. And I get that we are dealing with a completely different drug/mechanism. But one is right and one is wrong only through the benefit of hindsight.
The problem here is that there is no evidence. All the evidence of negative effects so far is anecdotal, which in reality calls for more research in the area [0]. In addition, only about 0.2% report having sought emergency treatment [1] when using psylocibin.
As someone who partakes in psychedelics to a moderate degree, I don’t think it makes any sense at all to dismiss the very many negative outcomes as “no evidence”. Perhaps it’s under-researched, but your comment strikes me as ideological and/or hyperbole.
Like with all treatments, it’s a careful balance of whether the risks are worth the positive health outcomes. But there’s no sense in denying that psychedelics, and thus psychedelic mental health treatment programs, have no evidence of potential issues.
While I agree with what you are saying in principle, I do want to point out that there is a massive difference between anecdotal evidence and _research_. In a purely academic sense, it is not an unreasonable statement to make that there is no evidence. In contrast, in the opioid case there existed scientific evidence of the highly addictive nature of the drugs that was more than just suppressed, they were outright _lied_ about by the pharmaceutical company behind the drug.
> Purdue Pharma created false advertising documents to provide doctors and patients illustrating that time-released OxyContin was less addictive than other immediate release alternatives. Furthermore, they sought out doctors who were more likely to prescribe opioids and encouraged them to prescribe OxyContin because it was safer. They did this because OxyContin quickly became a cash cow for the company. (https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-purdue-pharma-and-...)
A degree of malfeasance in the same realm as Big Tobacco's denials of the risks and addictiveness of smoking:
I think it is true that it is under-researched. Current clinical research on psychedelics exclude people who are previously diagnosed and/or have a family history of personality disorders, psychosis and bipolar depression. They also control for set and setting. Under those conditions, it seems that the use of psychedelics is very safe, but it doesn't give us a good idea of the risk of recreational use in the general public.
One interesting recent study I've found is this, but it's too small to conclude anything, and it also does not appear to be peer-reviewed yet: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/yzmcj
Yes, you are right, what I should have written was that there is no peer-reviewed clinical evidence of long term negative effects solely caused by the toxicity of psilocybin.
> very many negative outcomes as “no evidence”. Perhaps it’s under-researched, but your comment strikes me as ideological and/or hyperbole.
Very many people have encountered aliens, but there's still no evidence of aliens. Your comment is more ideological hyperbole than the one you're replying to.
I don’t care a nit about Sanbergs personal life either, but I certainly DO care that she can apparently silence news stories from phone calls.
I feel like the content of the story itself is pretty irrelevant here. Are you saying wealthy people abusing their influence and power to contain news stories is fine, as long as you personally view the stories as “immaterial” or “muckraking for clicks”?
How would you feel about a public figure you dislike silencing negative stories from a news organization? What if supporters of that public figure think the silencing is fine, because you don’t need to read that muckraking trash?
We’re saying the same thing really. You want to blame every self-interested elite for manipulating the narrative, which I think is a pointless, thankless exercise in outrage farming, despite it. Whereas I think the onus rests on the media outlet to publish the news they want to publish regardless of who might want otherwise. When this process breaks down it is the media outlet that has failed. Part of this of course involves publishing news you think it is worth suffering for.
You absolutely can separate the two, and it has nothing to do with colonialism. The reason you can is because in a society where freedom of expression is curtailed, there is (and always will be) a difference between what an authoritarian government declares and the opinions of its people, even if many people agree with the authoritarian government. Only the people that agree will reasonably feel comfortable expressing their opinions.
Where does the idea that "criticism of a government is criticism of its people because a government is made up of its people" logically follow? Is criticism of the American government (which I do regularly) criticism of my own American people? What about North Korea?
> Is criticism of the American government (which I do regularly) criticism of my own American people?
of course? how does this _not_ logically follow? if you're going to extol the virtues of being able to select your own leaders you damn well ought to feel responsible for inflicting bad leaders on the world. you literally mentioned this yourself. civilians of authoritarian countries have far more claim to a pass than Americans.
You're missing the point. 70% of Americans voted for the president in the last U.S. election. Regardless of whether or not my candidate won out, I don't view criticism of my government's policy as a personal assault on myself as an American.
Let's say you have a valid, blistering disagreement with an element of American foreign policy. Do I view this as criticism of my government? Yes. Might I disagree? Sure.
What I don't do is claim that criticism of my government's decisions and myself personally cannot be separated (as the original poster argues) or claim that others are "inciting inter-cultural contempt" as the article cites.
> The reason you can is because in a society where freedom of expression is curtailed, there is (and always will be) a difference between what an authoritarian government declares and the opinions of its people, even if many people agree with the authoritarian government.
This is very abstract. Can you give a real world example of what you mean? What country should China closer resemble in your ideal world?
This is the thing. I'm not claiming to have an "ideal" version of China, or claiming that I have an understanding of what all Chinese people "really want". It's a country with over a billion people, within which I'm sure there is a vast spectrum of opinions.
I would agree you if you argue it would be condescending to claim for any given issue that while the CCP argues X, people in China disagree and want Y. However, I think it's equally as condescending to claim that the opinions, behaviors, and ideologies of the CCP are fully condoned and endorsed by all of the Chinese people (and THEREFORE, criticism of one is criticism of the other). Conflating a government and its people in this way is specious for any country, but especially problematic for those where public criticism of government is unequivocally risky.
> However, I think it's equally as condescending to claim that the opinions, behaviors, and ideologies of the CCP are fully condoned and endorsed by all of the Chinese people
You can empirically test this. Harvard University did, and found that upwards of 90% of the Chinese people support their government. And why wouldn't they? QoL has skyrocketed for hundreds of millions of Chinese over the last 40 years.
So what? George W. Bush's approval rate was even higher after 9/11, is each American personally responsible for his legacy?
10% of the Chinese populace is still over a hundred million people, am I to judge each of them as people according to the actions of their government (since apparently the two cannot be separated)?
People that ask "where are all the students on campus that were protesting Gaza" do so because taking action on injustice, in a way that demands accountability from their leaders, is an uncomfortable idea. For them, the purpose of taking action is largely to signal moral outrage, and making an aggrieved post on social media is the beginning and end of praxis on an issue. And if that is your mindset, why wouldn't you make an equal amount of posts about Iran as you would for Gaza? Since they are both Things That Are Morally Bad.
What they don't understand is that for people that e.g. protest in person, protesting isn't a quaint, feckless action merely meant to signal one's care about an issue to the right people. Rather, it is an action with a goal to effect specific change of behavior on a particular issue from a specific group of people (usually leaders in power that are beholden to the protesters). If you are American and protesting US military support for Israel based on the conflict in Gaza, there are practical, material, direct cause-and-effect reasons to make that argument towards your elected representatives; the same is simply not true for the Iran situation (which the majority of the US government is already aligned with bombing yet again).
It's just such a strange point of view to interpret lack of action on a particular issue as tacit support.