The United States on September 13 said the Russian news outlet RT is taking orders directly from the Kremlin and working with Russian military intelligence to spread disinformation around the world to undermine democracies.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States has gathered new evidence that exposes cooperation between RT and four other subsidiaries of the Rossia Segodnya media group, and it intends to warn other countries of the threat of the disinformation.
In addition to RT, Rossia Segodnya operates RIA Novosti, TV-Novosti, Ruptly, and Sputnik, but the announcement on September 13 focused largely on RT. The outlet, formerly known as Russia Today, has previously been sanctioned for its work to allegedly spread Kremlin propaganda and disinformation.
Force a cease fire? Nobody, we’d have to threaten Netanyahu with military force to accomplish that, which would be political suicide with the American public.
Best you could get is divestment utilizing our law against supplying arms to war criminals, that would be unpopular with a lot of Americans, but we probably have enough support to make it happen since it’s less extreme.
Problem is Netanyahu could just cut off the last remaining food aid into Gaza. They’re already on the brink, they’d starve very shortly, while he makes up some bullshit about “starving out hamas” to the cheers of his crazy right wingers. He doesn’t need rockets to do that. Hezbollah could retaliate, but so what? Netanyahu doesn’t give a rats ass about his own people, he doesn’t care if a few thousand die in rocket attacks if it gets him Gaza. Hezbollah can’t invade, even without advanced arms, the IDF numbers about 300k according to reports, that’s a lot of soldiers.
So we seemed to think we needed to work with the asshole, let him use us so we can exert pressure. Except pressure isn’t proving to be enough.
Personally I’m leaning towards withdrawing from the ME and leaving them all to whatever fate has in store for them. See if the UN can pass economic sanctions. That would also be very harmful for a politician though, since AIPAC would throw all their lobbying money at that politician’s opponent. They have a lot of lobbying power.
It’s a really shitty situation, overall.
That’s sort of besides my point. And yes, the situation is wildly complicated and there are no easy answers.
What I was pointing out is simply for many policies there are actually no options. Such as wanting a cease fire. But this could go on with others like not wanting tariffs or lowering the military budget etc… Particularly for foreign policies both Democrats and Republicans are pretty much exactly the same.
Yea for a lot of things that’s true.
That’s all I was pointing out. And just wanted to add I think your right we should just leave ME. We have done nothing but destroy those people. There’s even a great movie about it. Charlie Wilson’s war. What ever human rights reasoning or freedom excuse always ends in massacre’s there. We should realize we are just a destabilizing force and leave. We saw China build a bridge between Saudi and Iran. We said it wouldn’t last, it did. Thus, perhaps we simply need to learn our lesson.
Well, you were saying a good bit more than that. lol We got into this whole thing starting with Russian propaganda efforts as I recall.
There’s a thaw between SA and Iran? That’s news to me.
Well I am saying a lot more now. I find you are receptive to information and aren’t just insulting me like most people online do. So I figure I’d share information because I honestly like that. Anyway yes China negotiated a lasting peace. The reason you don’t hear about it is because you live under US propaganda.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/11/changing-global-order-china-restores-ties-with-iran-and-saudi
While I agree all propaganda is bad, IMO the US one is the absolute most evil. It’s so effective Americans are actually under the delusion that we have to maintain our violent order to “keep the peace”. And so any people buy into it. To the point as you said, it would be politically devastating for our politicians to admit we are supporting genocide in Gaza.
*Edit oh and of course when real peace happens, we’ll just brush it under the rug. After all it won’t last. And when it lasts, well media black out. You’ll note the link is from Al Jezzera not a US paper.
*Edit 2: Also I was actually never talking about Russian propaganda. I think everyone misunderstood that. My argument is even if it’s true that Russia is doing this, US is so evil we need to question their statement. And then I made a list of evil things that USA does. Finally I followed with obviously I don’t support Russia, I just really don’t support USA. Here’s a horrible fact. USA has killed more people in less time than the Russian Ukraine war for even smaller reasons. Yes this is whataboutism, but my point is, anything that comes out of this empires mouth, we need to question. If it was Germany or France saying it, I wouldn’t have made my comment.
Re-opening embassies is certainly a good step, though I will admittedly be impressed if it keeps for the long term. It’s happened before, and they’re still major regional powers with one being a theocratic Shiite state with regional aspirations and the other a secular Sunni state.
I don’t think Americans are quite as unified in our opinions as you might think, global disengagement is a fairly popular position in multiple different circles of the populace. From the isolationists under Trump to people like me that would prefer selective disengagement from particularly difficult regions, ceding them to other powers so it can be their headache instead of ours for a change. Most of the rest have either a progressive view based on peaceful foreign aid, which don’t forget that we do a lot of, and realists that see human lives as numbers on a sheet and the globe as a chessboard, and tend to favor a strong military presence. That last category is probably still the largest majority.
We may not agree with it, but it’s a view.
Note, I never said it’s difficult to admit a genocide is occuring. AOC, Omar and Bernie have all done that many times. Stopping it is what is difficult. The question is how to fix it, which recall, is complicated and difficult. If we pull out, the Gazans probably all die, let’s not fall for magical wishful thinking. Very little holds Netanyahu back from finishing them off, they’re barely hanging on. Everyone who says cutting weapon shipments now will accomplish it is just lying through their teeth, there’s no evidence or logic that it would work that way. You just don’t need fancy bombs for Gaza, machine guns and bulldozers would be sufficient.
Well, everything should always be taken with a grain of salt. I’m well familiar with people that single the US out as an exceptional evil, that’s extremely common, though I think it’s a very selective lens. Countries are countries, and realpolitik remains the general guiding philosophy of major powers on the global stage. Any given country is subject to the current philosophies of its current leaders, nothing more. Good can become evil and evil can become good at the flip of a coup or election, that’s just life. Singling any out for special hatred really accomplishes nothing productive.
On a whole I agree with you. You’re absolutely right I am singling out USA because they do the most damage. But arguably, they do the most damage because their so large and influential. Similarly as China grows, their decisions cause more and more damage as well. It’s the ripple effect of a Boulder vs a pebble.
But as you’ve highlighted, the people’s voices in USA don’t seem to matter and that bothers me. There are lots of voices, but the voices that go against the establishment, even if it’s a majority go unheard. That concerns me. A democracy that doesn’t listen to its voters isn’t a democracy to me.
Worse as this goes on, it appears to me that they’ve found the perfect way to ignore voices. By conflating all issues, they’ve created a system where all that matters is politicking and not actual policies. For example, the Republicans tied immigration to Ukraine funding. That’s fucking insane, but it worked.
In my opinion. USA needs to stop worrying about other nations and needs to fix our own democracy first. Unfortunately it’s clear to me now that isn’t going to happen. Instead they’re conflating issues to keep voices silent. Like the Democrats running around saying you have to vote for them on abortion and OK so they’re still allowing the massacre of Palestinians, but it’s toted not as bad as what Republicans would do. It’s messed up blackmail. And that’s all the US politics has become.
Don’t let online discourse influence you too much. Our people tend to be fairly content with portions of the leadership, with most people having their favorites and disliking all the others. I never did actually highlight that people’s voices don’t seem to matter, our votes very much choose these people.
You wouldn’t know it here with Lemmy’s natural lean, but the average American is roughly centered on neoliberalism, most Lemmings find that somewhat upsetting and prefer to ignore the fact. Even with Biden being the oldest pres in our history, and with such unpopular things as Gaza on his record, he’s maintained a 30-40% approval rate. That’s a percentage of total Americans that approved of his Presidency. Obama, with slightly more right-leaning policies, was around 50%.
Ultimately, it’s more moderate, suburban parents that pick our leaders. They’re not as excited about change as the more progressive folk you’ll find here, they like stability, decorum, they don’t rush to judgement, they are not overly focused on foreign policy, stuff like that. They do not generally believe the country is in any sort of dire straits, they tend to underestimate global warming, they don’t particularly like people like Greta Thunberg, Just Stop Oil or pro-Palestinian protestors. They do not spend that much time on social media.
On the whole, I’d recommend not listening too much to the rhetoric of politicians or political operatives. Words are cheap, its actions once in office that tell the story. Do they cut taxes for the wealthy? Do they add or remove environmental regulations on business? Do they try to enact policies that will benefit people? The track records do vary tremendously, anyone who says its some uniparty is just spewing propaganda. They’re very, very distinct, both interparty and especially between the parties. You wouldn’t necessarily notice if you just listened to their words though, you do have to watch for actions. They do end up trying to have their cake and eat it too, and are more than willing to rhetorically dance around to try to avoid displeasing as many people as possible. They still have to vote on things though.