eapressoandcats (u/eapressoandcats)

eapressoandcats commented on The United States withdraws from UNESCO state.gov/releases/office... · Posted by u/layer8

Japan surrendered before the US had the chance to play Israel in Japan. But Japan had the same strategy that Hamas uses - train civilians to attack to put the US in a position of having to decide if that mother is just a mother, or if that mother is gonna pull out a rifle.

eapressoandcats · a month ago

I don’t think Israel believes that there is anyone that could “surrender” on behalf of the Palestinians. Also, given the nature of the conflict, surrender would inevitably lead back to the same problems that started it, which is that Israel cannot annex Palestine without either apartheid or genocide, and regime change is unlikely to lead to a stable two state solution since legitimate regimes haven’t been able to reach agreement in the past.

eapressoandcats commented on The United States withdraws from UNESCO state.gov/releases/office... · Posted by u/layer8

CWuestefeld · a month ago

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.)

eapressoandcats · a month ago

I fully agree that America was very willing to commit atrocities, especially using atomic bombs (obviously) and firebombing civilian centers.

The key difference is that the US recognized that Japan could surrender, accepted that surrender, and instituted regime change with a goal of democratic prosperity.

I’m not convinced Israel would do the same. They certainly haven’t said anything about actual regime change and setting up a legitimate government.

eapressoandcats commented on The United States withdraws from UNESCO state.gov/releases/office... · Posted by u/layer8

eapressoandcats · a month ago

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 third option is “cleaning up a mess” then that’s uh… pretty bad.

eapressoandcats commented on The United States withdraws from UNESCO state.gov/releases/office... · Posted by u/layer8

eapressoandcats · a month ago

I’m not sure there is a government that can surrender at this point. Israel may very well have taken out any “leadership” that they view as being able to legitimately speak for a Palestinian state, if they ever thought there was one.

There has always been a question of what Israel’s strategic goal is here because it doesn’t make any sense. An at least rational answer would be “regime change”, but no evidence has come up to indicate this is the plan.

Since Israel isn’t attempting to stand up a legitimate Palestinian government, all that’s left is permanent occupation and/or genocide.

eapressoandcats commented on The United States withdraws from UNESCO state.gov/releases/office... · Posted by u/layer8

Workaccount2 · a month ago

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.

eapressoandcats · a month ago

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 has a right to defend itself” during the second intafada. Israel has genuinely changed for the worse in a way that’s hard for a lot of people to see.

eapressoandcats commented on The United States withdraws from UNESCO state.gov/releases/office... · Posted by u/layer8

kennywinker · a month ago

The US is complicit in the intentional starvation of gaza’s people by israel. At least 15 people have starved to death in the last 24 hours, including an infant.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-gaza-war-hunger-childre...

Ragequitting UNESCO over their recognition of palestine is a small part of the project of supporting the ethnic cleansing of gaza and the west bank.

eapressoandcats · a month ago

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 Trump win and now here we are.

eapressoandcats commented on The United States withdraws from UNESCO state.gov/releases/office... · Posted by u/layer8

eapressoandcats · a month ago

What they are actually doing is deliberately entrenching an authoritarian ethno-nationalist regime.

I don’t think one can say that any of their decisions are rationally made for the benefit of anyone but themselves and their supporters.

The idea that these are smart people just optimizing cruft is delusional. The current administration meets most of the elements of fascism.

eapressoandcats commented on · Posted by u/mgh2

kcplate · 5 months ago

> Except they literally just sent Venezuelans to an El Salvador prison without a judge being involved

Judge being involved…yet. There is a lot of flexibility within the INA and its subsequent legal modifications to detain a noncitizen while their case is being heard. My guess is the weakest argument for the government in all of this is that they were actually physically removed from the US prior to their hearing being completed. Their detention is lawful. Where they are detained might have to be remedied by SCOTUS.

eapressoandcats · 5 months ago

We don’t know if their detention is lawful. Whether their detention is lawful hasn’t been litigated yet, but the fact they there’s a preliminary injunction against them doing it more that was upheld by the DC circuit court indicates that it is not lawful.

eapressoandcats commented on · Posted by u/mgh2

kcplate · 5 months ago

I suspect that in the case of people being convicted of “terrorist acts” and going to jail for 20 years a judge will be involved.

eapressoandcats · 5 months ago

Except they literally just sent Venezuelans to an El Salvador prison without a judge being involved. The reason people are freaking out about this is because it actually happened already.

eapressoandcats commented on · Posted by u/mgh2

kcplate · 5 months ago

Detention without bail for the duration of their due process is legal for certain crimes (actually I believe it’s even mandatory) that a non-citizen is accused of in the INA. There also does not appear to be any language in the INA that specifies detention has to be within the US borders either.

eapressoandcats · 5 months ago

For the most part none of the people deported or held have even been accused of one of those crimes.

Most of the Venezuelans have been deported under the Alien Enemies Act, under an extremely tenuous reading of what an “invasion” is, by claiming they are members of a gang which is “invading” the country. If they can read the law this way then it’s not clear we have rule of law anymore. Anyway, the only court case testing this law didn’t turn on determining whether the members were factually members of the class. In this case there are serious questions about whether the people deported were actually members of the gang. Even in WWII relevant nationality individuals went before a civilian board to determine if they were of the nationality to deport.

The people being disappeared from colleges are being held and deported under the theory that they “pose a threat” to the United States, based on the Secretary of State making that determination, which again, not really due process. They are also being whisked to a more favorable circuit for their habeus petitions, which is pretty suspect.

Arguably maybe citizens will be afforded an actual appearance before a judge, but remember that they can just claim you’re a member of a Venezuelan gang and whisk you away. And once you’re gone how do you prove otherwise?

As far as being within US borders, that’s a strange argument given that no statute requires imprisonment within the US borders… I guess it’s legally untested but it seems insane to me that detention could be allowed to be under non-US custody. Among other things, that would move those detained literally outside of US jurisdiction. I don’t think it’s been done outside of espionage situations of dubious legality with people not resident in the US. Even the Guantanamo bay prisoners were under US jurisdiction.