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The United States withdraws from UNESCO

state.gov

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Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#451

Post by SadTrombone »

spiderice wrote: post #425
eapressoandcats wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was less true before Trump’s return. It’s frustrating that people said they wouldn’t support Biden/Harris over this and now instead we get essentially full-throated endorsement of genocide instead. Like there were always practical limits to how much the US could constrain Israel, especially due to its relative popularity until recently. A bunch of activists didn’t recognize that and tacitly endorsed letting Trum…

[flagged]

Can you share a source that indicates the population of Gaza has increased since October 7th, 2023?

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#452

Post by simlevesque »

orblivion wrote: post #418
wredcoll wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it with people and their blind faith in this kind of dogma? If you think something is "cruft", then name it.

I think cruft is the natural state of things in large organizations. There are plenty of views of the world (right or wrong) that take this shape (painting with broad strokes) that I wouldn't call blind faith or dogma.

You just proved you can't name any cruft.

It was a simple question.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#454

Post by glitchc »

mjamil wrote: post #337
glitchc wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The online space (Reddit, HN, others) is so deeply embedded with groupthink that people have lost the ability to see other points of view or debate topics of interest. To me it's very clear why the government is leaving UNESCO (and over time the UN at large). The UN is dysfunctional and does not work. It used to be a source of soft power for the States, but hasn't been so for the better part of this century. Meanwhil…

The UN was founded in the shadow of WWII to prevent further global conflicts. It also established a global standard for human rights and to provide a forum to uphold international law. It has also taken on roles to provide development and humanitarian assistance. Whether the UN works or not is largely dependent upon whether the five powers that granted themselves veto power (the P5: the US, the UK, France, China, and…

> Whether the UN works or not is largely dependent upon whether the five powers that granted themselves veto power (the P5: the US, the UK, France, China, and Russia) allow it to work. They are largely the source of its funding.

The US is responsible for more than 25% of the UN's funding and is ~5-6x more than other members of the Security Council [1]. This is disproportionate to its obligations or its population.

> You seem to believe the UN's job is to advance the US's agenda. (No, it isn't. It's there to allow a forum for diplomacy for all nations.) You also seem to believe that the UN is a bad investment. (That's a highly subjective perspective: what are your stated metrics for such a judgement on ROI?)

Countries are not friends. They are allies with shared interests. That means each country has to derive value from the alliances it participates in. These alliances are strategic. If the alliance does not bring value, the country could and should divest from them. These are foundational principles of statecraft.

> If you believe that the world is a better place with regional hegemons ruling their parts of the world with power as the only metric that matters, I'd suggest building yourself a time machine and going back to the end of the 19th century.

If you believe the world is anything other than that then either you have been fooled by the super comfortable existence insulating you from most shocks that the US has provided, or you wish the world was like this. Truth is it never changed. It is still very much regional hegemons governing their parts of the world. The only difference being that the hegemonic boundaries are not defined by homogeneous geographic regions. If you read the world news carefully, you will realize that all conflicts are tied to the boundaries between two or more hegemons.

[1] https://unsceb.org/fs-revenue-government-donor

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#455

Post by Veen »

DSingularity wrote: post #420
eddieroger wrote: post #313

> UNESCO works to advance divisive social and cultural causes I wish I could remember where I heard it, but someone once pointed out that the only difference between special interests and public interests was who said it. This feels like that.

I’m sure the British would have described the American revolution in similar ways.

We described it as tax avoidance and treasonous collaboration with the enemy we really cared about — the French.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#456

Post by runako »

kjksf wrote: post #371
runako wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when funds are scarce The US budget is ~$7T annually. There is $50B to spend deporting critical parts of our workforce. There is $1T in defense spending to ensure that we spend more than the next 9(!) militaries combined*. Et cetera. The US spends ~$18B supporting UN programs. This is ~0.003% of the federal budget. The point here is funds are not scarce, and in any case to the extent that one is concerned about spe…

The U.S. is $35 TRILLION in DEBT. It's on a fast path to very high inflation which will be bad for everyone. U.S. can't afford $18 billion of non-essential spending. It can't afford $1 billion of non-essential spending. In fact, it can't afford $1 of non-essential spending. The argument "we're $35 trillion in debt so it's not a big deal to add 0.01% to it" is just incomprehensible to me. And it's not just UN. It's $4…

As here, is often ignored are two levers available to resolve our debt.

> The argument "we're $35 trillion in debt so it's not a big deal to add 0.01% to it"

This is not the argument. The argument is more along the lines that our leadership just weeks ago rallied around a sharp increase in the rate of our debt accretion, so obviously erasing the debt is not a political priority at this time.

Given that erasing the debt is not a political priority, good stewardship demands that deficit spending should align with uses that will generate positive long-term financial returns to Americans (e.g. cancer research) instead of negative returns (deporting agricultural and construction workforces).

Making cuts that will have the effect of slowing the long-run growth rate of the US economy and its overall competitiveness will also make it harder to erase the debt should that ever become a political priority.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#457

Post by ngruhn »

DSingularity wrote: post #430
Veen wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can acknowledge Palestinians exist without giving the terrorist Palestinian state equal status with other members of the community of nations.

The Israeli state was literally founded by terrorists. The leaders of those terrorist organizations were the first leaders of Israeli prime ministers and secretaries of war and so on.

What are you talking about? There's plenty to criticize Israel for but this is just hyperbolic nonsense.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#458

Post by rjzzleep »

nsypteras wrote: post #295

1984: U.S. withdraws. 2003: U.S. rejoins. 2011: U.S. stops paying dues after Palestine joins. 2017: U.S. announces withdrawal (effective end of 2018). 2023: U.S. rejoins, pledges to repay dues. 2025: U.S announces withdrawal Seems to be a revolving door

They're getting ready to bomb Iran's UNESCO sites. They did bomb several UNESCO sites in Yugoslavia and other places while they left. Their boy Grossi also told the whole world that there is a big target on a UNESCO site a short while back.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#459

Post by BuyMyBitcoins »

Tadpole9181 wrote: post #276
rtkwe wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are clearly pockets that want to but I'm not sure there's enough support in important areas to actually have a coup like that succeed. Kind of have to wait and see how things develop.

They attempted to violently overthrow the US government by taking over Congress in 2021 and went so far as constructing a noose to hang their own vice president. They suffered absolutely zero consequences for this and the perpetrators have now been pardoned with no political backlash. Why exactly wouldn't they do this? Now that the SCOTUS says they're even immune from prosecution, you'd have to be an idiot not to try…

Said noose was some poorly tied nylon rope affixed to a rinky-dink prop gallows on the front lawn. It was some protestor’s prop, and a really shoddy one at that.

Most photos don’t convey the actual size of it, because they just focus on the top crossbar, but even so, you can see just how ineffective that “noose” would be. If you search for a photo that shows it in full, you will see that a person could easily stand underneath it. It’s too short, and it is visibly crooked. If you tried to hang someone, it wouldn’t work.

I seriously doubt the people who made it had any connection to the people who stormed the building.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#460

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

spiderice wrote: post #425
eapressoandcats wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was less true before Trump’s return. It’s frustrating that people said they wouldn’t support Biden/Harris over this and now instead we get essentially full-throated endorsement of genocide instead. Like there were always practical limits to how much the US could constrain Israel, especially due to its relative popularity until recently. A bunch of activists didn’t recognize that and tacitly endorsed letting Trum…

[flagged]

Please make your comments productive versus snide.

Here is a more productive way to phrase your comment:

> I personally believe there is not a genocide, and the reason why I believe that is because I heard from ___________ [fill in the blank] that the population has increased over the past 2 years, and I personally believe that makes it not a genocide because ____________ [fill in the blank]

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