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The United States withdraws from UNESCO

state.gov

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Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#481

Post by CWuestefeld »

eapressoandcats wrote: post #431
Workaccount2 wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's what happened to Japan, but at least the emperor had the wherewithal to not kill japans civilian population, which had been trained and armed for a mainland invasion.

I think it’s reasonable to conclude that Israel is more willing to continue to commit atrocities against the Palestinians than the US was against the Japanese. Like, I genuinely think Netanyahu is perusing a “ Lebensraum” strategy with Palestine. This is evidenced by their support of right wing Israeli settlers in Palestinian territory. I’ve come to this realization as a Jewish person who was brought up on “Israel ha…

That's an odd point of view. With Operation Downfall, the Americans were planning literal genocide against the Japanese. If they hadn't surrendered after the atomic bombs, the projections were as high as 5-10 MILLION Japanese casualties (with several hundred thousand on the Allied side), precisely because Japanese policy had been to arm the citizenry with rakes and hoes if it came to that - i.e., the Japanese refusal to surrender despite there being no possible path to victory was going to cost the lives of many millions of their citizens. And America had little choice but to pursue that.

That America was willing to do this, if the bombs didn't work, seems to contradict your claim. (And I think the Americans had little choice to do so.)

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#482

Post by jpadkins »

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.

US, Ireland and many others were founded by terrorists. History is written by the victors.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#483

Post by landl0rd »

runako wrote: post #466
landl0rd wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- nobody was endorsing the OBBBA or saying that it’s good. - some spending is objectively more necessary than other spending. Funding UNESCO is not that important. I detailed why we shouldn’t do so even were we running a $1T budget in another comment. - UNESCO is not responsible for “defus[ing] conflict without war.” The vast majority of the UN is not.

OBBA is important context because it was just enacted this month and it demonstrates clearly that the deficit and debt are not political priorities. Any argument put forth by the administration that enacted the OBBBA concerning debt is transparently facile given its demonstrated actions of increasing the rate of increase of the debt. It's fine to say we should not participate in the UN/UNESCO for ideological reasons,…

No, they obviously aren’t. I don’t think we’ve had an administration or congress that cares one bit in my living memory.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to quit supporting removal of pointless spending any more than it means I’ll support the OBBBA. I’m not going to adopt a sunk-cost fallacy that “well, they just pissed away even more money, so throwing the UN a few billion to further chicom propaganda and political narratives I oppose is fine.” That’s not a facile position.

I agree it’s not going to make a huge difference in the debt but we don’t have the money to burn. The fact that congress and the president ignored that doesn’t make it less true or compel me to do so for this case. There isn’t this bargaining thing happening where trump’s OBBBA pisses away trillions more therefore now it’s acceptable to piss away billions on anti-american global organizations.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#484

Post by jjcob »

eapressoandcats wrote: post #464
techright75 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Israel doesn’t have a plan to clean up the mess. What is the end goal here? Seriously. They’ve invaded and now what? Options are: 1. Regime change, which I have seen no effort to attempt to effectuate 2. Withdrawal, which seems unlikely at this point. 3. Permanent occupation, which seems like the default. It may end up falling short of full genocide but it’s definitely violently upheld apartheid at a minimum. If the…

What they mean by "cleaning up the mess" is killing, starving or displacing all Palestinians in the Gaza strip and developing Israeli settlements while simultaneously expanding into the west bank as well.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#485

Post by DSingularity »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #465
DSingularity wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lots and lots of states were founded by terrorists. Like, my state (Ireland) was founded by a bunch of them. Our longest standing leader (DeValera) was involved in the 1916 rising and was only not executed because he was a US citizen and the Brits wanted the US to join WW1. Which is to say, that many many states have been founded by terrorists/freedom fighters. That's the norm, not the exception. Like, from the persp…

I’m using the word “terrorism” in exactly the way it should be used. Ireland was founded by people fighting for liberty. South Africa the same. The Israeli founders were terrorists. They used terror to ethnically cleanse the lands of its indigenous population.

Anybody that supports this or tries to draw false parallels with genuine liberation movements is disgusting for obvious reasons.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#486

Post by aleckiefan »

SadTrombone wrote: post #446
techright75 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

A "mess" of its own creation, considering Netanyahu propped up Hamas to sabotage the Fatah government.

I mean this sincerely and with all due respect: can you please point me to sources where I can learn more about this?

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#487

Post by cooper_ganglia »

rafram wrote: post #441
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it was a Democrat president enforcing laws passed by a Democrat-controlled House and Senate in 1990 and 1994, under at least one Democrat president. There are no real "sides" when it comes to the U.S. and Israel. Every party bends the knee and kisses the wall. It’s one big club, and we’re not in it.

> It’s one big club, and we’re not in it. I’m not sure what you’re trying to imply here, but like it or not, most Americans do support Israel.

That's no longer true, nor should it be:

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/04/08/how-ameri...

From the article:

  >The public’s views of Israel have turned more negative over the past three years. More than half of U.S. adults (53%) now express an unfavorable opinion of Israel, up from 42% in March 2022
It turns out when you invade a country and commit a genocide, you become less popular. Putin figured that out. Hitler figured that out. Netanyahu’s still mulling it over.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#489

Post by AnimalMuppet »

saubeidl wrote: post #87
nemomarx wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The optimistic case is that while they made noise about election fraud in 2020 no one was organized enough to try for a coup then, and it's not clear if they'll be able to get organized in time for 28

They definitely tried for a coup then. Forgot Jan 6 already?

The coup wasn't January 6. The coup was the "alternate electors" business, and pressuring Pence to accept them as legitimate.

January 6 was part of it (some of the crowd were shouting "hang Mike Pence" for a reason"), but January 6 was just the last gasp of it.

People don't give Mike Pence nearly enough credit for, first, refusing to go along with the "alternate electors" nonsense, and second, for not leaving the Capitol when the Secret Service tried to get him out of there.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#490

Post by imbusy111 »

rafram wrote: post #441
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it was a Democrat president enforcing laws passed by a Democrat-controlled House and Senate in 1990 and 1994, under at least one Democrat president. There are no real "sides" when it comes to the U.S. and Israel. Every party bends the knee and kisses the wall. It’s one big club, and we’re not in it.

> It’s one big club, and we’re not in it. I’m not sure what you’re trying to imply here, but like it or not, most Americans do support Israel.

Not according to the latest polls that I can find.
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