Ceasefire coming any day now
The US position is quite strange really. On the one hand it seems untethered from domestic political pressure, so we can assume that to the extent the US is not involved, it must mean that for purely strategic reasons they don’t actually want an escalation. On the other hand, they are applying less than zero pressure on Israel’s continuing escalation in the direction of war. It’s almost like no-one is in charge and this is just what happens when you elect someone who doesn’t know what day it is.
Yeah you have on the one hand a major loss of social opportunities, and on the other a ready made relief and also narrative/justification for that in right wing online communities. And in a way the fantasies of fascism are based in desire for community.
Although people definitely used to idolise musicians more, I’m not sure they had much explicit political influence beyond either vague counter-culture ideas or alternatively reinforcing social norms. But definitely the fact that this kind of youth influence is now being replaced by expressly political and right wing influencers and narratives must be having some effect. And it’s part of a kind of anti-social shift that things like Covid and internet culture and social isolation etc are driving
They are tracked by US spy planes
Sorry to be cynical but the US didn’t exactly get its ass handed to it. They lacked the political will to subjugate Afghanistan and Iraq, which would not be the case if they considered it necessary to their survival. And they annihilated the conventional forces of both countries in an incredibly short time. Israel is crossing all kinds of red lines while everyone seems to assume the momentum will somehow change. I don’t think we should imagine that the amount of violence they would need to impose to achieve their ends makes those ends impossible.
Israel has claimed there were 300 people there. That might be untrue but we know it was a high level meeting so other leaders would undoubtedly have been killed
Whatever bullshit you hear in the next few days from the US about trying to negotiate a ceasefire, remember that they just gifted the IDF another 8 billion dollars to subsidise their wars and genocide
But the whole point of their missiles was specifically to stop this situation from occurring, ie Israel bombing with impunity.
Israel has been bombing all over the border not just Beirut
Perhaps. It seems that Israel might not have taken this move if they weren’t certain that such a retaliation wasn’t possible. Certainly restraint based on the logic of mutually assured destruction doesn’t make sense for Hezbollah going forward. So I guess we’ll see in the next few days.
But i mean - in all seriousness - why aren’t there a hundred missiles on their way to Tel Aviv right now then?
The pager attack and now getting their leadership taken out - Hezbollah must be heavily compromised. And that means those Israeli air strikes probably have been hitting weapons stockpiles. Meanwhile Iran has shown it’s not willing to escalate under any circumstances. A very bad situation.
I think he’s probably alive. By announcing his death Israel will try to track Hezbollah’s internal communications back to him. If he is dead then Hezbollah must be so compromised by Israeli intelligence that they are basically fucked anyway, which is also possible.
Hezbollah’s aim is to fight a defensive war against Israel. Israel’s aim is to create a wider conflict that draws in the US. Technically Hezbollah has much stronger offensive capabilities than it’s shown, but if it starts dropping missiles on Tel Aviv the US will come in and turn Lebanon into another Libya
All the people you mention as being against drug use make their money/employment from prohibition.
The public generally opposes legalisation because they rightly see that drug addiction causes enormous harms, and they want to keep that away from their children and communities. But there is a kind of vicious circle here in that the harms of addiction, and indeed addiction itself, is largely driven by prohibition. Example: compare legal methadone with illegal heroin (the former is not culturally desirable, and those who adhere to a methadone program are often healthy enough and successfully quit using, etc. Likewise the methadone program is not a driver of organised and petty crime).
‘Lighter’ drugs like LSD are victims of cultural puritanism and decades of drug war propaganda. A hangover of Victorian era morality.
To some extent the drug war was designed to criminalise minorities and the counter culture. In any case, drug prohibition was allowed to expand whereas other prohibitions (gambling, alcohol, sex etc) were wound back because it primarily affected those outside mainstream white culture. Of course that’s no longer the case, which is probably why it’s slowly starting to be wound back now.
There is also less political will behind drug legalisation because there is no power behind it - drug addicts can’t organise, and any kind of drug legalisation that aimed to minimise harm would have to forego a profit motive. So it just lingers on as a problem whereas other social issues that don’t directly antagonise capitalist economics make progress.
Most Soc-Dems are people who were born into the top 10% of wealth in their society rather than the top 1%, and it’s their bitterness about that which drives them. This squabbling among the upper classes has been the great conflict of Western politics since before the French Revolution (the original lines being the aristocracy vs the emerging power of the bourgeoisie). These people don’t even know what imperialism is, at least not as we understand it - and the welfare state is only a sort of part charity part bribe to placate the working class, rather than the product of a belief in equality. To us it looks it like European soc-Dems are resigned to being US pawns, but a lot of them are genuinely in love with the idea of America, as all liberals are.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/no-doubt-netanyahu-preventing-hostage-deal-charges-ex-spokesman-of-families-forum/amp/
It seems the offer was to return civilian rather than all hostages
A deal with the resistance would necessitate movement towards an acceptable long term resolution for both sides re Gaza. I don’t think the assumption that Hamas and Hezbollah lured Israel into war, or would desire a future war, is correct. I suspect Hamas did not expect the incursions on Oct 7th to be as successful as they were, nor the Israeli response - which began with them shelling their own citizens - to be so extreme. They offered to return all hostages immediately in return for Israeli agreeing not to launch a ground invasion, for example. Oct 7 also only occurred within the context of Israel having taken years of attempts at peaceful resistance and resolution on the part of Hamas as a sign of weakness to be exploited. Ultimately the US has calculated that keeping Israel happy is worth any cost, whether that’s because of their importance to US imperialism or for domestic political reasons is not totally clear I think.
The primary driver of support for the Right, all throughout the West, seems to be opposition to immigration. Within that, there are basically two groups: white supremacists, and people who have been conned into seeing migration, rather than economics, as the fundamental cause of their declining living standards.
It seems like this is a wedge issue that any successful populist left movement would need to confront. I guess what I’m wondering is whether it’s possible to resolve in a way that doesn’t abandon leftist values entirely.
Whilst we on the left regard multiculturalism as an inherent good, the reality is, in a democratic sense, it was something imposed from above - and largely as a means of growing the bullshit neoliberal service economy whilst simultaneously undermining working class power. That it was utilised in this way is partly why so many working class people have been able to be led by the media into blaming immigration, rather than economic policy, for declining living standards.
I’m not sure about the US, but in most Western countries the vast majority of immigrants are not refugees. For example, in the UK only 10% are refugees. It is actually nearly impossible for the poor of the developing world to immigrate to most Western countries.
Would it be possible for leftist parties to advocate for reductions in immigration, if that came within the context of increasing refugee intake? Of course there is no necessity for such a policy, nor is it desirable, nor ethical - I’m talking purely in terms of strategic necessity. Or is any kind of kowtowing to anti-immigrant sentiment too great and too dangerous a betrayal of our values? Would any retreat here only be aiding the resurgence of fascism? I guess I’m thinking about this lately because of whats happening in France - I feel like most Western countries either are or soon will be following that direction. It seems we’re already running out of time, and still nowhere near ready. And I feel like all this anti-immigrant sentiment is the backbone of it, and yet it’s something that people who aren’t far-right are loathe to address. And maybe they’re right not too, maybe their is no possible compromise here. I really don’t know, so just wondering what other people think