761–770 of 844 posts
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You’ve given a list of countries selling weapons to Israel. If I sell you my car, I am not “funding” you. What an exercise in utter futility.
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It’s very strange to go “why isn’t the left doing anything about this conflict when they cared so much about Palestine?” My government doesn’t fund Iran.
I think when westerners like myself notice the disparity in response amongst western progressives between the Palestinian and Iranian situations, they're talking more from a social lens than the geopolitical one. A lot of my peers have been incredibly active on social media the last couple years supporting Palestinians. They've been mostly completely silent on Iran, the imbalance is notable.
That exists with say Palestine - it's allows picking a side that's against a western right-wing state, Israel.
It also exists with say Russia, here's a right wing white male traditionalist attacking a state that was aligning towards the leftist EU.
In the case of Iran, there's not really an angle there.
So if you understand leftism not as standing for its claimed virtues and instead being politically akin to a group of teenagers rebelling for the sake of it against their own authority figures, it makes perfect sense that deaths of the downtrodden in general are not of concern - the victimhood cause must resonate with a particular format that gives them a clear and familiar path to self-congratulation - which is the primary goal.
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> Also, as a Russian who left Russia I've noticed there's two distinct 20th century Russian diaspora groups in the US. Those who came here prior to the fall of the USSR, and those who came after. In talking with the ones who came after the fall, life wasn't glamorous but got truly unlivable in the wake of the collapse. In talking with the ones who came before the fall, they wanted to make money.
There's a group here, largely those expats kids in my experience, that swears they had things better back in Russia and ravenously consume Russian media. I used to encounter them a lot in Sheepshead Bay.
However there was a smallish wave of political immigration after the 2011 protests and 2014 conflict with Ukraine, and a much larger one since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And those people tend to be very anti-Russian-government for obvious reasons.
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Ariel Sharon was the prime minister of Israel in 2002. Netanyahu was a civilian. You seem to be unable to tell these two very different people apart. I suggest going easy on the green stuff.
Current prime minister, former and future prime minister, that's an irrelevant distinction here. Clearly the Israelis thought the Iraq war was in their interest, which is the original claim here, and is clearly evidenced by Israeli attempts to lobby in favor of the invasion.
Netanyahu’s role is extremely relevant. There’s a big difference between a civilian’s personal opinion and official state policy.
Your original claim is false. End of story.
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The Israeli military and security forces budget is more than $55bn a year, and you are saying the US pays all of it. It’s the first time I’ve ever encountered such an outlandish claim.
An iranian expat here. I have been following the news closely, mostly getting my data from my friends in Iran before the internet shutdown and after it was (sort of) lifted. The death toll is way above this number, you have to consider the fact that Iran is a big country with many small cities, and in my city alone (which is very small and rarely has any protest going on) many people have died (i don’t have the exact…
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> It’s a shame that all those activist that would shred themselves for Palestine are absolutely quite about Iran That's not a fair position, those people don't have the duty to make every wrong right. As an Iranian expat how much of your time and money did you invest in fixing Iran? Apparently there are 2 million Iranians in US and just over a million in Europe and a million more in the rest of the world. What did th…
Unsure of your background here. Though the way you refer to the Iranian diaspora hints at gaps I would fill before contributing further to a discussion pointing back the finger at those who are victims in this case, most of the time still with people back in Iran, and who risk even just going to a protest as they could easily be profiled and effectively ban themselves from ever returning back home, if not altogether…
That said, I find it very distrustful to smear people who were active in another cause for not being active on the Iranian cause(or demanding that Israel should be allowed to kill more people considering the low international reaction to the Iran killings - i’m still not sure what this person is advocating for alongside with some Israeli influencers).
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There's a group here, largely those expats kids in my experience, that swears they had things better back in Russia and ravenously consume Russian media. I used to encounter them a lot in Sheepshead Bay.
Most immigration in 00-10s was economical, and yes, for that group of people it's often the case that they are very much still enmeshed in Russian imperial agitprop. It's common enough that there are memes about this: https://lurkmore.media/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%91%... However there was a smallish wave of political immigration after the 2011 protests and 2014 conflict with Ukraine, and a much larger one s…
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The Soviet Union was famous for engaging in whataboutism; they covered-up the true toll of Stalin’s purges (along with the human cost of their policies), and constantly oppressed Eastern Europe for almost 50 years. They are/were not a good example of anything.
Yes, whether it's the soviets using it to attack soviet dissidents or zionists using it to attack left wing critics, whataboutism is bad.
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I think you're confusing "agent" and "officer". An agent is specifically some third party acting on your behalf. It's the same when we speak of real estate agents.
Wiktionary says, regarding 'agent': > Someone who works for an intelligence agency: whether an officer or employee thereof or anyone else who agrees to help their efforts (for ideology, for money, as blackmailee, or otherwise). That said, I also asked ChatGPT and it says you're right.
"Agent" is a term of art with a rather strict meaning, but that's obviously only true when used in conversations within that specific field.
