The United States withdraws from UNESCO | Hacker News Reader

The United States withdraws from UNESCO

state.gov

625 pointslayer8877 comments

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

Cycle of politician appeasing their genocidal masters until the government start to realize what that means exactly at which point we pull back to humanity.

If you abandon it completely something else might rise up - but funding/participating only up to a point, it works to suppress it - see Ukraine aid policies aswell

Look at the years, and see how they match up with the administration in power...

Makes me wonder if officials at UNESCO even cares about the decision. "Oh that again?" Probably already used to this.

Similar to the Israeli ambassador being recalled from Dublin. They mean it as a big dramatic statement but they've done it that many times it's lost all significance.

She only gets reinstated again for the purpose of making another dramatic exit.

They always send their most incompetent ambassadors to Dublin, ones that put their foot in their own mouth.

I suppose looking at it from the Israeli government's perspective, Ireland is a very safe place for Israelis and Jewish people in general, but the public and government are vocal on Israel's actions and there's no defence/intelligence links between the two countries. Trade links are on the European level.

There'll never be a reason for them to send a skilled diplomat, so may as well send a shit stirrer who's only good for causing controversy.

when you put that way its pretty logical.

They’re never happy about the loss of money. For UN institutions, the US usually contributes a theoretical cap of about 22% but in real terms I think it’s more like a quarter of their annual budget or a little over in some cases. When we’re not paying, that’s a lot of money that UNESCO isn’t getting.

Predictably, if/when China becomes the premier funder of UN organizations, there will be a lot of grousing about it by US politicians. The amount of soft-power being trashed is astounding

We’re the ones seeking to cap our contributions. The formula currently doesn’t allow for any one country to pay more than 22% with America the only one actually paying that much, save for the institutions we’ve cut off. For UN peacekeeping we’re actually assessed at 27% but Congress capped that to 25% back in 1993.

https://betterworldcampaign.org/us-funding-for-the-un/un-bud...

If any other country wants to step in and fill the gap, I don’t think Congress will care.

> If any other country wants to step in and fill the gap, I don’t think Congress will care

"Countering the PRC Malign Influence Fund Authorization Act of 2023[1]" says otherwise.

1. https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/1157...

All of our foreign policy prior to January 20th 2025 is in a state of flux. Officially, Congress cares, but the first 7 or so months of this year have been enlightening in a strange way, and with our President taking the lead, there is a strong possibility that Congress will not care if the possibility of the PRC paying more comes up in any policy discussions.

Eh china finances a ton of members, who better vote in line as debtors should

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.

Which site in Yugoslavia did they bomb?

NATO bombings damaged a Kosovo (post Yugoslavia) church in 1999 that was later added to UNESCO in 2006

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gra%C4%8Danica_Monastery

So its a time traveling crime?

History mismatch/Mandela effect? Some of the bombed sites were already known as culturally significant but not recognized by unesco yet, like Novi Sad that became a unesco creative city in 2023.

UNESCO Creative cities are very different from UNESCO world heritage sites.

Tbf, if you remove the Biden 2023 pledge, the rest makes sense:

In the two decades between 1984 and 2003, UNESCO implemented a number of reforms in management+transparency+politicization, and the U.S. returned.

Then Palestine was admitted, and the U.S. left.

  1984 withdraw Reagan
  2003 rejoin   Bush
  2011 protest  Obama (forced by law)
  2017 withdraw Trump
  2023 rejoin   Biden
  2025 withdraw Trump

Kinda tracks, except for the Bush one.

Obama withdrew all US funds from UNESCO in 2011 as well, due to Palestine being admitted in. This isn't anything particularly noteworthy, just more capitulating to Israel, which is annoying.

Obama didn't do anything (other than follow the law at the time):

https://web.archive.org/web/20141224180231/https://foreignpo...

So would it be fair to say that this is just a reiteration of a 30+ year-long trend.

Edit: 40+ year-long trend?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44648359

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000012506323&seq=...

The is a good point: the decision was made by Congress, not by Obama. Although I disagree with that decision, that is the correct way to make it. Now, Trump is withdrawing unilaterally, without Congressional approval.

Remember when presidents followed the law?

I've been complaining about the increasing power being ceded to the Presidency, like, forever now. This isn't specifically a GOP or DEM thing, it's been happening consistently at least since FDR, and probably even beyond that.

That said, the one area where the Constitution really does give the President a fairly free hand is in foreign policy.

And congress increasingly wanting to do nothing.

I think it's a little more subtle. It's not that they want to do nothing. It's that they're terrified of being seen to have done something, if for some reason that thing turns out to be a mistake.

For all the talk about wanting to do things scientifically, there's a remarkable lack of willingness to actually experiment. If a failed experiment is fatal, then we'll never do anything, bad or good.

Was the law repealed?

You seem to be conflating two things. That Obama was bound by law to withhold funds, and that the president cannot leave UNESCO unilaterally. The president in fact can just withdraw as the commander in chief and head of foreign policy, and they have withdrawn already in 1984 (Reagan) and 2017 (Trump).

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.

Excuses and explanations can feel the same. I do not intend this to be an excuse, but a partial explanation. Before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, there was a feeling of a possibility of peace in some form; in this context, those laws could be viewed as the stick of a carrot and stick approach.

At this point in time, you can make your own determination about how that has worked out.

Because Israel alone bears all the responsibility for the lack of peace in the region… it’s not like these people are perpetually looking for war

> 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.

it's a reference to a famous George Carlin skit.

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.

> It turns out when you invade a country and commit a genocide, you become less popular.

Well, Israel's been committing a genocide for, conservatively, nearly 60 years, so, yeah, its probably a suprise to them that after that long of not having an adverse effect on US public support, that has changed.

Ah yes, the genocide where the people being genocided continue to outpace the population growth of the nation doing the genocide. The ethnic cleansing where the only time it happens is to remove Jews from an area. The apartheid where the “subjugated” sit on the Supreme Court, have 10+ seats in parliament (which matches voting demographics), were recently part of the majority, and share all the same rights as their supposed oppressors.

The same state which is right now defending another people from an actual genocide being carried out by self proclaimed jehadis in Syria, and the Druze are now begging to be annexed by Israel.

Literally anyone who makes any claims of genocide or ethnic cleansing or most hysterically, “apartheid” outs themselves as a complete ignoramus of the region, history and reality and is openly declaring their bigotry.

@grok what is the Nakba

In his book Ma'na al-Nakba (The Meaning of the Disaster), Constantin Zureiq described the Arab defeat not just as a military loss, but as a civilizational setback. He believed the Arab states had been unprepared, disorganized, and overconfident, and that their failure to prevent the establishment of Israel revealed deeper problems in Arab society—like a lack of modern institutions, unity, and strategic thinking.

i.e the failure to prevent Israel existing.

From the River to the sea Palestine will be Arab indeed

Answer: a war of genocide and extermination attempted by 6+ Arab/muslim majority states against the nascent nation of Israel, fortunately for all involved they completely failed and in fact ended up losing land. While they did succeed in ethnically cleansing the Jews from any land that did end up under Jordan and Egyptian occupation, and they did expel (ie ethnically cleanse) Jews from most Muslim majority countries, they failed in their overarching goal of finishing Hitler’s work of exterminating all Jews.

Certain morally degenerate groups see this failure (of killing all Jews) as an absolute catastrophe and thus name it the Nakhba.

It’s hard to believe anyone can manage the mental gymnastics required to genuinely believe what you’ve just written, yet there it is.

The irony is that the only ones taking notes from Hitler’s playbook are Netanyahu and the leaders who came before him. Justifying their actions has become the modern-day equivalent of “just following orders.”

You’re not the first person in history to blame the joos for all the world’s ills and unfortunately you probably won’t be the last. But hopefully here on HN such rhetoric will be unwelcome.

Nothing I wrote is untrue or even remotely eye opening. It’s all just plain facts, that the Palestinians themselves admit as supported by the sibling comment quoting from a book written by one of them.

“Modern-day Israel caused the deaths and displacement of hundreds of thousands who had lived there for centuries, all so a group exiled 400 years earlier could barge in, kill the occupants, and drive out the survivors.”

“Oh, you always just blame the joos!”

Sure, buddy lmao

So you’re for colonization then? Fascinating.

You're living in a colony.

You don't exist in a tabula rasa

The jews have now recovered their population numbers to where thy were prior to the holocaust. Therefore the holocaust was not a genocide. Thoughts?

The (arguably) relevant metric is population change during a purported genocide, not afterward.

If a definition of genocide is sensitive to where we mark the start and end of the genocide, then it isn't a very good definition of genocide. We can do the same thing with area: suppose some ethnic group was being genocided in a particular region, but overall population growth of that group was positive. Does that make it no longer a genocide? Clearly not.

The term genocide was coined specifically to refer to what happened to the Jews during WWII. Your nonsense logic doesn’t apply.

The definition of the term genocide doesn't mention net population decrease - or in fact any population decrease at all. I think I've demonstrated why it can't possibly include such a requirement. The way I did so involves, exactly as you imply, assuming that the holocaust was a genocide. Then I show how such a requirement would contradict that assumption.

I don't quite see where the miscommunication is. Serious claims about genocide normally come with (at least rough) temporal and geographic scopes. If we use too broad a scope, like "the Holocaust occurred from 1933-2025", then the claim becomes false. Right?

I think most people claiming a genocide is occurring are using a broad scope, like the conflict in Gaza since Oct 7 (if not something even broader), so it seems appropriate to look at the population change within that time period.

OTOH noone is claiming a genocide of Jews occurred from 1933-2025, so it wouldn't make sense to look at population change for that entire period.

This is both categorically false and completely irrelevant.

The first claim is that genocide has been happening since 1948, the second claim is that it has increased in intensity in the last two years, both claims can be completely dismissed as fabrications by simply looking at the population growth of the nation that is supposedly being killed.

I honestly don’t know why you would bring up the fact that the Jewish population is climbing after the eponymous genocide was attempted.

The point is that genocide has to do with deliberately killing people with the goal of destroying their people or culture. Hitler failed at destroying the jewish culture, does that mean he wasn't a genocidist? Whether an attempted genocide is successful does not alter that it is a genocide, population growth numbers are irrelevant.

The term Genocide was specifically coined to refer to what happened to the Jews in WWII, its meaning doesn’t change to fit your own hateful ideology.

Population numbers are very relevant as are the intentions, actions, and policies. The only people talking about and actually attempting to commit genocide are the Arab/Muslim colonists who have been attempting to colonize and genocide the native people for over 500 years. Most recently last week in southern Syria, before that was 2 months ago in western Syria, but before that obviously Oct 7th. Due in no small part to the IDF all these attempts have failed, but until the colonists either go back to the Arabian peninsula, where they came from or at the very least stop trying to kill their neighbors there will no peace.

> invade a country

Arab colonizers invaded Israel on Oct 7th (and many times before that too) and kidnapped 100s of civilians. Israel is now trying to retrieve them.

> commit a genocide

Arab/Muslim colonizers have been attempting genocide since before the 1600s, their most recent attempt was on Oct 7th. Again Israel is simply trying to reclaim their own people and prevent any future genocide attempts.

Not according to the latest polls that I can find.

Most American evangelicals support Israel. I'm not so sure if the rest of the remaining Americans also support Israel.

According to Gallup the majority of the US public supports Israel over Palestine, just as it has for decades. It's now "at it's lowest in 25 years" but it's still 46% vs 33% for Palestine, down from around 60% pro Israel in prior years.

https://thecradle.co/articles/us-popular-support-for-israel-...

About 10% of Americans identify as evangelical protestants

https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/how-many-evangelicals-...

That drops quite bad for Israel though if means more Americans wouldn't mind cutting off support for them.

A lot more Americans support helping Ukraine.

> According to Gallup the majority of the US public supports Israel over Palestine

Gotta love you turning this into a concept similar to "which sports team do you support more". Following your link, the actual question is "In the Middle East situation, are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?". which has a lot different nuance (nuance? Oh wait I forget where I am...)

46% is a plurality, not a majority.

Good point!

Friendly reminder that all polls are biased based on a willingness to engage in polls. Response rates are stunningly low (10% is normal [0]) so whatever your polls are saying, they're saying it specifically about a statistically insignificant portion of the population that is biased towards trusting institutions and polls.

0 - https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/83/S1/280/5520...

This is one dimension. Another is Dem/Rep. But another, that doesn't get enough attention, is the generational one:

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/02/younger-a...

> Most American evangelicals support Israel

Most American boomers support Israel.

Most American voters in almost every demo see the Israeli people favourably. Per your source, a majority of 18 to 49-year olds leaning Democrat see Palestinians favourably. But even in those demos, 42 to 56% see the Israeli people favourably, too.

Outside those demos, the advantage to Israelis is significant enough to drown that partisan youthful signal everywhere but in local primaries where there are large numbers of young Democrats. (Support for Israelis is dropping. But support for Palestinians is lower.)

The dimension that doesn’t get attention is that most Americans don’t care about foreign policy. They may have views. But they won’t vote on them.

Just like how Ted Cruz believes that Bible says that they have to defend Israel. Now if you ask him where exactly in Bible?

He will deflect because his Bible is the American Evangelicals. So much for separation of state and religion.

Numbers 24:9 is the verse that states that those who support and help Israel will be blessed and those that curse it cursed.

Numbers 24:9 (and Genesis 12:3) were about ancient Israel, but Paul reinterprets them in Galatians 3:16. The true “seed of Abraham” is Christ, and the promise applies to those in Him: Christians, not Jews.

There’s no biblical mandate to support modern Israel.

You’ve got to consider Romans as well, half of which is dedicated to the question of the Jews. (Summarising aggressively: Is there anything special about being a Jew? Yes and no, but more no. Has God replaced them? Yes and no, but ultimately more no than yes.) Romans 11 is especially relevant.

I think that means there's a biblical mandate to evangelize and convert Jews to Christianity, but it doesn’t change the fact that there is no scripture requiring Christians to support the modern nation or government of Israel.

To me, Romans 9:8 and Romans 11:13–32 (especially verses 30–32) summarize this well. In Romans 11:26-27, Paul is referencing the promise in Isaiah 59:20:

  “The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins,” declares the Lord.

But that promise is conditional, it’s directed at those who repent. And you can't repent of the sin of denying the Holy Spirit, the very testimony of Christ, if you refuse to even acknowledge that He exists!

On specific issues, perhaps. (such as against Hamas)

Overall, it seems that support is waning. (46% according to Gallup)

https://news.gallup.com/poll/657404/less-half-sympathetic-to...

But even fewer support Palestine, which is what the UNESCO policy is about.

>most Americans do support Israel

This is just not true. Most Americans are actually unaware how much influence Israel and its lobby has over our politicians and are also mostly unaware of what is actually happening over there.

There is a set of evangelical Christians who have misinterpreted a passage in the book of Genesis to mean that blessing the tribe of Israel means sending unlimited weapons to the modern nation state of Israel. But that is not even close to the majority of Americans.

Did you... look up the override votes that failed in 2011 to see what the partisan breakdown was?

I know it makes you feel good to imagine a world of enemies, and "every party bends the knee and kiss the wall" is some top notch imagery. But in the real world you have allies in this particular fight, and working against them is in fact doing the opposite of what you claim to want.

I never made inaccurate claims about those things!

Thanks for reminding us that Obama also sucked.

"In 2011, the United States stopped funding Unesco because of what was then a forgotten, 15-year-old amendment mandating a complete cutoff of American financing to any United Nations agency that accepts Palestine as a full member. Various efforts by President Barack Obama to overturn the legal restriction narrowly failed in Congress, and the United States lost its vote at the organization after two years of nonpayment, in 2013."

https://web.archive.org/web/20220503183152/https://www.nytim...

> 15-year-old amendment mandating a complete cutoff of American financing to any United Nations agency that accepts Palestine as a full member

As a non-American, doesn't this seem a little ridiculous to some people in the US? This screams of a kind of melodramatic, overdone theatrics that the US doesn't seem to do to anyone else. I get that the US has a lot of Israeli money/investments/customers and extremely religious people, but even then, why is it going this far to enshrine their relations to specific states in their laws? It ends up coming off as the US bowing on their knees to relatively minor nations on the other side of the world.

I think it has more to do with terrorism and anti-Western sentiment than with religion.

I expect the same treatment for Iran and North Korea.

Not really. It's just the way it works here. If it's enshrined in law, it makes it harder for one person or small group to make a unilateral decision, similar to how things are happening here now.

Not really? The US does its diplomacy substantially by shuffling money around. Writing a conditional into law is how a legislative body expresses a formal commitment. That's business as usual.

The continued existence of these particular laws in 2011 was, in any case, more a convenient excuse to do something they didn't not want to do anyway, than something that couldn't be changed if political will went the other way. It's just a bit stronger of a commitment than the sitting president's whim, which is also a thing that happens.

Perhaps the disconnect is that the US actively engages in foreign policy at all?

> melodramatic, overdone theatrics that the US doesn't seem to do to anyone else

Iran and North Korea. China with Taiwan. This is deeply precedented geopolitical drama.

> It ends up coming off as the US bowing on their knees to relatively minor nations

If Israel and Palestine are your issue, of course. (Everything will tend to be. This is just how pet causes and the availability heuristic work.) If not, it doesn’t.

Sorry, I don't think I articulated the main point of what makes the 'theatrics' seem like such to me. It's not just about putting things about international relations into law - most countries do that in regards to war, economics, immigration, etc. It's that this whole 'punishment' is contingent on something so seemingly minor as UN membership (a.k.a. state recognition?). People hate Iran and North Korea, but I don't think many are arguing for them to be expelled from the UN outright. No sensible person does business with the Taliban's Afghanistan, but it's not like people are saying that Afghanistan is no longer a country. I don't even think this stance ("we will not back an entity that recognizes Palestine in this way") extends to any other countries with limited recognition, but correct me if I'm wrong.

> If Israel and Palestine are your issue, of course. (Everything will tend to be. This is just how pet causes and the availability heuristic work.)

Despite the very-not-subtle-dig at me, this war isn't the most important war for me right now, and it's not one I'm too informed on, given just how much background and historical baggage there is to the Israel/Palestine relationship.

> that this whole 'punishment' is contingent on something so seemingly minor as UN membership (a.k.a. state recognition?)

If the battle lines are on recognition, that's where the fight will be. Once a country is broadly recognised, it's a moot point. (We don't recognise the governments in Tehran, Havana and Caracas, for example.)

> People hate Iran and North Korea, but I don't think many are arguing for them to be expelled from the UN outright

The best analogy is Beijing vis-à-vis Taiwan. Not only does Beijing not recognise Taipei, it also punishes countries and multi-lateral organisations who do.

In this was recognition is analogised to secondary sanctions, and it's something that's been done since the dawn of civilisation.

In the context of the US, is recognizing a government different from recognizing a country? Is a refusal to deal with Taliban functionally equivalent to not recognizing Afghanistan at all?

> The best analogy is Beijing vis-à-vis Taiwan. Not only does Beijing not recognise Taipei, it also punishes countries and multi-lateral organisations who do.

This is a close analogy, but the important distinction here is that the PRC is the claimant to the ROC, so they have a straightforward and very strong motivation to thwart their recognition at all costs, as to avoid delegitimizing their own claims on it. The US, on the other hand, is a complete third party to either Israel or Palestine. They have interests and goals in the area, but nothing nearly as extreme as China's situation. That's what makes this situation so unique to me, it seems so disproportional of a reaction for a country that's not a party in the war. It makes sense if Israel does it, but the US?

> In the context of the US, is recognizing a government different from recognizing a country?

In the context of anyone, it depends on what changed. The Iranian Revolution changed Iran's government but not borders or existence. Kosovo, on the other hand, created both a new government and a new state.

> the important distinction here is that the PRC is the claimant to the ROC, so they have a straightforward and very strong motivation to thwart their recognition at all costs, as to avoid delegitimizing their own claims on it. The US, on the other hand, is a complete third party to either Israel or Palestine

Direct versus indirect. Go back to the Cold War (or perhaps more accurately, decolonisation) and the USSR and U.S. were doing this by proxy, too. (And everyone was doing it, almost out of necessity, during the world wars.)

My point is this sort of posturing is deeply precedented when geopolitical maps change because the loser has nothing to lose and something to gain from holding off recognition of whatever just changed. (Even if that gain is just not having to deal with it right now.)

If you want a more-direct example, it would be Pakistan supporting Beijing over its claims over Arunachal Pradesh. Pakistan does this because India is its enemy and China its ally. In the Middle East, Iran is America's enemy and Israel its ally. What the people in Arunachal Pradesh or Palestine think about the matter sort of gets swept under the rug. (Or Beijing giving lip service or North Korea and Iran arms to support Russia's invasion of Ukraine, if you want to rule out the size influence factor.)

Clearly Palestine is as big a threat to the US as China.

> Clearly Palestine is as big a threat to the US as China

Kosovo isn't a threat to Brazil or Madagascar [1].

Countries grant, withhold and withdraw recognition for a variety of reasons.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_K...

What are you talking about, global politics is only melodramatic overdone theatrics

everyone does it. I'm pretty sure your home country, whatever it is, also does it.

it's the equivalent of banging fists on tables to try to get people to toe the line, and the US does it a ton. Russia does it. China does it.

even small countries does it too.

There is also a US law banning military aid to Israel since they have nukes outside of the NPT. Pakistan got an exception after a deal with their cooperation in the war on Terror.

I really wish we weren't a puppet state of Israel. What they're doing in Palestine currently turns my stomach. It's one thing to get your people back after the horrible attack from Hamas, it's another to mow down people who are just trying to get food with a submachine gun.

> mow down people who are just trying to get food with a submachine gun

not to mention that Hamas was supposed already destroyed 6 months ago

Well, as long as Israel is fighting Iran's terrorist proxies, the U.S. must stand by her.

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.

…says the Hamas-run health ministry.

Nothing to see here, no conflicts of interest.

Let’s trust the people who kidnapped babies and raped and pillaged their way across southern israel.

To the best of my knowledge the doctors running the health ministry did not kidnap anybody.

Some of the rescued hostages were held by a family that included a doctor (Ahmed Aljamal) and a journalist.

Genocide denial is a bad look.

He knows exactly what he is doing. That’s what makes this disgusting. He knows that 50.000 women and children dead is most likely a lower bound as there are likely hundred thousand plus buried under the rubble.

He also knows that his government is starving a million people to try to eliminate the 10.000 fighters that are surviving.

If I accuse you of committing a genocide, you have no way of defending yourself if you in fact are not doing it?

You're talking about the most documented genocide in human history. The whole world is watching; Israel's crimes against humanity will never be forgotten.

Sweden and the US are “kinda cozy” (I would say at least, from an inside perspective on how Sweden seems to lean in to US interests including copyright enforcements and so forth).

However Sweden was the first country to recognise Palestine.

Is it possible that the pulling out of UNESCO is further in-line with Trumps “we want to focus on America” fluff, similar to the threats of pulling out of NATO and the actual pulling out of the Paris Accords.

I’m aware that there has still been some US interference in the middle-east, I’m just not sure I’m drawing the same connections as you.

Also, and I mean this in the best way I can: I don’t really trust anything coming out of Gaza’s health ministry. That doesn’t mean I side with Israel as they are also distorting facts very often.

So far all independent verifications of the gaza health ministry’s numbers have found that they under-report the death toll.

And i’m not sure how your sweden example says anything about the US supporting israel’s genocide? Was there something you expected to happen when sweden recognized palestine?

Really? Every time I search for independent verification I am told it’s too hard to come up with anything conclusive.

What makes it too hard? Is there something stopping researchers and reporters from visiting and freely working in any areas of Palestine?

Yeah, we really need more verification that people are starving in Gaza. Why would people starve in Gaza? It's not like anybody has been bombing the city and blocking supply routes. Why would anybody starve there? We are going to need more proof than people saying that they don't have enough food.

Yeah they get fucking shot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_journalists_in_the_...

FUD designed to allow the genocide to continue.

In short: gazans are all issued ID numbers at birth. The ministry of health has published id numbers of the dead, which means you can do stats and tell if the data is fake. On top of that, so far (afaik since 2009 when hamas came to power) nobody has caught them in a lie. So they’ve a track record of telling the truth, and give us data that we can smell-test for fraud and it passes.

So yes, nobody else is on the ground to produce independent numbers, so the numbers can’t be fully verified. But using that doubt as an excuse for inaction in the face of ethnic cleansing and genocide is fucking disgusting.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-he...

> The ministry of health has published id numbers of the dead, which means you can do stats and tell if the data is fake. On top of that, so far (afaik since 2009 when hamas came to power) nobody has caught them in a lie. So they’ve a track record of telling the truth, and give us data that we can smell-test for fraud and it passes.

If you comment that they give us this data, surely you have a link to said data?

Surely you have the ability to google and find out for yourself. I don’t know if the data is available to the public, or just to journalists - but numerous reputable outlets have reported on this.

> The ministry of health has published id numbers of the dead, which means you can do stats and tell if the data is fake.

> I don’t know if the data is available to the public, or just to journalists

Do you know what "published" means?

Hint, public and publish come from the same root word...

No, they claim that a much higher percentage of those killed was civilians then was really was

And you know this because?

Read this https://publish.obsidian.md/lonerbox/Israel+%26+Palestine/Go... carefully. tl;dr many supposedly "civilian" police force were al-Qassam Brigades members, bringing the alleged 17% combatant rate to around 40%

The fact the IDF panic shot three escaping unarmed barely clothed hostages should make anyone question their statistics here.

Multiple things can be true at once.

It is hard/impossible to come up with an accurate death toll.

The Gaza Health Ministry systemically underreports the death toll by only counting bodies that they have directly observed.

Some third parties have tried to extrapolate from the reported numbers to get to the actual numbers; but that is a highly speculative endeavor under the best circumstances.

> by only counting bodies that they have directly observed

This was only true in an early phase of the conflict; they've long since been adding casualties reported by "reliable media sources" as well as a Google form.

It's amazing how there's all this skepticism when literal first-person repots come out every day showing that things are much worse on the ground.

I don’t think anyone here is denying the suffering that’s occurring, but it’s still important to make sure we have our facts right.

The facts on the ground are extremely clear if you read what the aid agencies on the ground say instead of what gets passed off as news by American media.

> Is it possible that the pulling out of UNESCO is further in-line with Trumps “we want to focus on America” fluff

That would be great (?), except the stated reason for pulling out was "anti-Israel bias". It's about kowtowing to a foreign terror regime, not standing up for America.

>Is it possible that the pulling out of UNESCO is further in-line with Trumps “we want to focus on America” fluff, similar to the threats of pulling out of NATO and the actual pulling out of the Paris Accords.

Why would you give them the benefit of the doubt when they directly state that they're withdrawing over the decision to admit Palestine?

If you don't believe Gaza's health ministry, how about Agence France-Presse?

The journalists' association of the French wire service Agence France-Presse (AFP) warned on Monday that staff working with the agency in Gaza are at risk of starvation and that "without intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die."

In the statement, the SDJ said that AFP's journalists in Gaza have warned that they no longer have strength to report, with one photographer, Bashar Taleb, saying in a post on Facebook: "My body is thin and I can no longer work."

"Since AFP was founded in August 1944, we have lost journalists in conflicts, we have had wounded and prisoners in our ranks, but none of us can recall seeing a colleague die of hunger," the SDJ said in a post on X.

https://www.euronews.com/2025/07/22/afp-journalists-at-risk-...

I wasn’t aware of that media outlet, just FYI (and to reinforce your point) it seems that while there is a significant left bias, generally AFP’s journalism is considered reliable and credible.

https://www.allsides.com/news-source/afp-fact-check-media-bi...

Are reporters taking food from Gaza’s or, how is that distributed?

AFP is like the third biggest news agency on this planet and you're linking to bothsides.bad?!

AFP is previously unknown to me, and yes I did because its actually reinforcing the parents point about being a reliable source.

Maybe read before commenting, or perhaps allow people to be ignorant and admit that openly; jumping down my throat because I don’t already know your favourite news outlet solves what exactly?

(also don’t think I don’t see the irony of your bio being: “I usually don't know what I'm talking about.”)

I wasn't trying to jump down your throat for not knowing AFP, I just thought it was a somewhat funny-absurdist situation to have a major news agency ranked for reliability by some website with a name that's basically a maga dogwhistle (not saying it is affiliated, as it predates maga). I can see that my phrasing was quite bad.

I fully believe that Gazans are starving, I just don't think it's Israel's fault. Hamas is stealing and withholding food, and other resources.

And that has nothing to do with israel blocking aid agencies from bringing in food?

Nothing to do with israel destroying farms and crops?

Hamas bad. We can all agree hamas bad. But to blame starvation on hamas when israel is in control of the food supply… how do you mental gymnastics your way to that??

Israel controls 80% of the territory in Gaza and all the aid posts. This is a complete fabrication by the media that has no correspondence to what people in the ground are saying.

> Hamas is stealing and withholding food, and other resources.

And this, blocking all food from the enclave will surely make the value of Hamas' stolen food worthless, right?

Wouldn't the smart decision for Israel be to flood Gaza with food aid, till any stolen supplies were worthless?

Oh, I don't doubt for a minute that the are starving people. The whole reason for Palestinian people to exist is to flip the script (hey it's tiny Israel against the whole giant Arab world) into it's evil Israel against Palestinian people who just want freedom. They are waging the CNN war after they lost, you know, the war war. If there are no starving people to produce for the France Presse cameras, they will create some.

That's the most deranged take I've seen so far. That's like saying native Americans existed to make the colonizers look bad.

Do you have a link to a recent picture of this Bashar Taleb? I've found the Gaza famine to be very different from any other famine I've ever looked into - people seem to go from healthy to "died from starvation" without ever getting thin.

If you google for "famine yemen", you see very thin children, with just skin on bone - all the fat and muscle is gone. If you google for "famine gaza", they just seem a lot healthier.

Must be your bubble because I see thin starving kids every time I open social media.

But not Bashar Taleb?

Have you ever watched the TV show Alone? It’s an outdoor survival competition reality show. In it people regularly end up medically evacuated due to starvation or malnutrition.

Sometimes you can tell by looking at someone’s face they’re starving - but usually you can’t. Usually it’s when they strip down for the periodic medical exam when you can actually tell how starved they are.

Do you want a recent photo of this man, or do you want him to strip naked for you to judge his weight loss?

Why is one man stripping naked for you something you need before you’ll believe the hundreds of different people saying that people are starving?

Like, seriously. What if he’s lying? He could be, of course - but would you then believe everyone is lying? Or what if he’s telling the truth about weight loss, and you see proof - will you then turn around and say well yeah but he’s probably just starving himself for attention?

You need proof one man is starving to believe hundreds?

Do you just believe everything you read on the internet? Or do you only believe it once $N others believe it on the exact same dubious evidence?

Funnily enough, everybody's a sceptic when buying a used car.

Some US interference? Like funding the genocide?

Pretty much all atrocities in the middle east can be traced back Europeans (mainly UK) carving up the area after ww1 and theirs and American imperialism since ww2. Israel is a project of this.

So you want Israel to cease to exist? Germany did the Holocaust, nobody said Germany can't exist. Russia attacks Ukraine in an emperialistic power move, no one suggest Russia shouldn't exist.

But Israel is a "project" that needs to end. More like a scape goat.

I'm israeli. This war is bad, my government is evil. But I deserve to have a nation to call home, so do the Palestinians.

If you disagree with me, think about it a bit and what it says about you.

Hey, American here.

> This war is bad, my government is evil.

We have a lot in common

> But I deserve to have a nation to call home, so do the Palestinians.

Absolutely!!!

Who has the right to exist in that area? The people that already lived there and their offspring, who are now refugees in Gaza. People do have the right to form their own states, but on land they already own legally and ethically, not when you colonize land already occupied by others.

I did not call for the end of Israel as a project, I do disagree with it's creation, considering how it turned out, especially since it was more or less the intention of Zionism as stated by it's founders.

I don't know how to solve it. But I do know that Israels actions since it was founded has worked against any kind of solution that is not a takeover of the area and the creation of their ethnostate.

You are severely lacking in history.

You domknownthat Palestinians are mostly Arabs and not native to the region.

The Israeli founders accepted the UN partition resolution. all Arab countries attacked Israel to destroy and create their pan Arabian fantasy.

In the 90s Israel initiated the peace process and gave self rule to the Palestinians with an end goal to create a Palestinian state. Hamas decided to send suicide bombers to bomb Israeli busses killing thousands.

This caused a massive shift right in israeli politics. And gave power to those saying we can't afford to give land. I don't agree with them.

Your revisionism is abhorrent.

Whos's native then? Only jews? What about the peoples that lived in that region before them? Or the people that moved through the area after leaving Africa? This is a nonsense argument, people lived there and others colonized the area and has operated like most European colonies. This is what happened in recent times, not 2000 years ago.

In private letters from the founders they write about their true intent of accepting the 48 deal just to get a foothold and then keep taking over the rest of the land, you can look it up yourself. And what a deal, Jews owned like 7% of the land and was handed 55%? Why would anyone be angry about that. By an organization that was basically three countries in a trenchcoat and without the support of most the people who lived there.

I know Hamas is bad, I can call them terrorist without a problem. Netanyahu however is also a fan of Hamas as he has stated its critical to prop them up as that allows them to divide and conquer the Palestinians and create more chaos that they can use. Exactly like how they are using Oct 7 in both Gaza and the West Bank now.

I understand that Israel is in the grips of far right zionist fanatics, but a large part of their population does support some kind of genocide.

Your genocide excuses are disgusting.

> Russia attacks Ukraine in an emperialistic power move, no one suggest Russia shouldn't exist.

But people do suggest russia should give back the territory they’ve taken by force. That’s most (if not all depending on your take) of israel.

Historically - in my opinion in the wake of ww2 a jewish state should have been carved out of germany, rather than england giving away land that wasn’t theirs to give away. So in a sense Germany as we know it should have ceased to exist.

Just as now, i believe for there to be peace in the region israel as we know it must cease to exist. Either by radically changing and becoming a place where palestinians and jews live together in peace and shared governance, or by giving up a huge chunk of land they stole in ‘48 to create two states.

Opinions, obviously.

I supportthe two state solution.

Alas hamas killed that one in The 90s when they decided to send suicide bombers to Israeli busses during the peace process that Israel initiated.

Also Israel accepted the two state solution in 1948, alas all Arab countries decided to attack the newly idndependent country.

Saying "we" stole the land is a bit odd. The arabs leaving in Israel didn't call themselves Palestinians until after 1948.

Israel is not in the Arab peninsula, arabs living here came from there, hence they are Arabs.

I still support their right to their national claim. But pretending it's some ancient construct that "we" stole from is not historical. Palestinian nationalism is a modern construct.

If the only way that Israel can continue to exist is as an apartheid state where a large proportion of the population has to be forcibly kept in a status with no political rights, or else expelled or killed altogether, then yes, Israel doesn't deserve to exist.

Now, I don't know whether that is true. It seems to be the argument that the Israeli government and the right-wing majority of its population are making now - that if they give Palestinians actual freedom, Israel will just cease to be, so they have to starve people to death, bomb them etc. The more they do that, the stronger the argument that Israel should cease to exist.

If there is another option that allows Israel to continue to exist, that's great. But it's really up to Israel to come up with a viable option for that, because Israel is an alien entity that forcefully imposed itself on this territory to begin with.

Regarding Russia, I'm a Russian citizen, and the invasion of Ukraine did, in fact, made me reach the conclusion that Russia should not exist as a state. It's not that this particular war is especially damning; it's that Russia has a very long track record of imperialist wars, and, more importantly, it doesn't change - it keeps doing it. Arguably Russia as it exists today is inevitably imperialistic simply because it's a polity that is cobbled together and still largely held by force or threat of it - it never really fully de-colonized, and if it ever does, it'd be an order of magnitude smaller. So from that perspective it really cannot change - and if so, then yes, it should cease to exist.

If Israel is alien to the region, so are Arabs which is what Palestinians are.

That's nonsense.

The Jewish people have a long (2000years) of calling Israel territory as home. Does it mean I deny the Palestinians national claim, no. But it sure as hell mean Jews have a claim atleast as much as Arab immigrants and conquerers

The vast majority of Jews who settled in modern Israel didn't have a 2000-year history of Israel as their home. They have a 2000-year history of religious beliefs that center around Israel and date back to their very distant ancestors living in that place, but that's not at all the same thing. I mean, can you imagine what the world map would look like if we were to apply this criteria to other nations today?

Palestinians, on the other hand, have actually been physically living in that place for well over a millennium. Not only that, but dismissing them as "Arab invaders" is also rather misleading - while the language and the culture is Arabic, the Palestinian population is mostly descendants of the same people who lived in this area 2000 years ago (Canaanites etc), with Arabic culture imposed on them during the early Islamic conquests. And again, if you're willing to look back that far to establish a link that translates to right of possession, then should we go back another 1000 years and talk about Torah's vivid descriptions of the invasion of Canaan by Jewish tribes and genocide of the local population?

I think it's foolish to try to derive some kind of meaningful claim today from what happened 2000-3000 years ago, though. And looking at the more recent history, what is today Israel was explicitly a settler colonialist project. Here's Ze'ev Jabotinsky writing in 1923, not mincing words about Palestinians being the native population that he wants to displace:

"There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority. ... Every native population, civilised or not, regards its lands as its national home, of which it is the sole master, and it wants to retain that mastery always; it will refuse to admit not only new masters but, even new partners or collaborators. ... Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach."

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.

From WSJ article:

"KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip—Thousands of hungry Palestinians amassed last Tuesday morning outside a barbed-wire fence surrounding the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid center here. The moment the gates cracked open, the crowd surged forward.

American security contractors tried to keep control, but scores of men pushed through barricades and snatched boxes of food awaiting distribution. Others sprinted in behind them. Men on speeding motorcycles raced past the pedestrians to grab whatever food they could. Gunshots rang out—it wasn’t clear from where. Within about 15 minutes, all the food was gone."

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/us-israel-gaza-aid-dea...

I know it's easy to judge being far away, but seriously, men on speeding motorcycles?

What are you implying? Genuinely I can’t tell who you think these “men on speeding motorcycles” are?

I don’t see anything obviously suspicious in that - if your family was starving would you sit back and let them die? Or maybe hop on a motorcycle and cut to the front of the queue?

I don’t think the people who are starving are the ones with motorcycles and gasoline.

Last I checked motorcycles aren’t edible and gasoline isn’t drinkable…

If only there was some way to exchange one type of an asset, such a motorcycle, to another, such as food... Too bad nothing like this was invented yet.

If everyone is starving, good luck finding someone who values a motorcycle more than food.

The obesity rate in Gaza is among the largest in the world. Let's stop pretending everyone is starving.

Obesity is pretty high in the US, that doesn't make camp Bayou-Belsen in Florida right.

You are manufacturing lies.

Let's ignore the blatant lie, are you implying obese people can't be starved? Wild take ngl.

I am not implying, I am literally saying that. Obese people can easily live for six months to one year without suffering health issues. Gaza has a clean water problem, not a food problem. And what's the blatant lie? Gaza inhabitants are not suffering from obesity at incredibly high rates? Is Wikipedia lying about this? If you have credible figures indicating that Wikipedia is wrong on this matter, I would be very interested to see them and I would change my opinion on the "starvation" question immediately. I find it weird that you are immediately accusing me of lying instead of assuming that I am wrong in good faith, let alone thinking that you may in fact be wrong.

> A meta-analysis study in Middle East countries found that the prevalence of obesity and overweight was 21.17 and 33.14%, respectively (9). A recent survey conducted in Palestine concluded that the prevalence of overweight and obesity is 23.6 and 19.5% in the Gaza Strip

Norm is 33.14% overweight and 21.17% obese, palestine was (before 2021) 23.6% overweight and 19.5% obese.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9998069/#B10

So, no, Gazans are not suffering from obesity at “incredibly high rates”.

Malnutrition and obesity can also co-exist in the same person at the same time. Most of the articles on obesity in gaza point this out.

> Obese people can easily live for six months to one year without suffering health issues

Jesus christ. Are you really saying forced starvation is ok because some people have the fat reserves to not die from it??

Even if all the obese people in gaza had the fat reserves to last 6 months - which they don’t - you’re still giving the thumbs up to starving the other 80.5% of the population.

Not to mention, aid has been blocked since march so the other 19.5% has two months left of their supposed six months of “no health consequences”.

And for the record, I am so fucking disgusted I had to write this.

There's no food smart guy, who's he going to buy food from?? [0] His motorcycle is also his only means of transportation and thus his livelihood likely depends on it. Even if he could pawn it for 2 days of food for his family, should he?

Jesus christ.

[0] Reminds me of someone saying to a rapt audience that people in coastal areas flooded by sea level rise would just "sell their houses and move" (sell their houses to whom, fucking aquaman?).

What's the actual reason you created an account to only make crassly ignorant and genocidal comments?

But they are storable, far more stable than food. So it should be no suprise that motorcycles continue to function long after the food has run out. And gaza is tiny. It doesnt take more than a cup of fuel to cover considerable distance on these bikes.

During the Bosnian war even gold jewelry was worth less than food and cigarettes in weight, after the initial period. (I read it directly from a survivor's accounts.) You've got no idea how the combo of urban + isolation + starvation looks.

> I know it's easy to judge being far away, but seriously, men on speeding motorcycles?

Why wouldn't they be on "speeding" motorcycles? They have a family to feed. They're probably coming from some distance away. People travel on motorcycles.

> I know it's easy to judge being far away, but seriously, men on speeding motorcycles?

Desperation and survival.

This must be the UN headquarters. Flags everywhere.

For whatever reason, the Palestine/Israel conflict causes people to just stop being rational. Like, the facts are there, both parties attack each other as part of the conflict throughout history, but for whatever reason, people really want to pick sides on this one, and Im not sure why.

Its not the genocide aspect - there are other genocides that are happening (Myanmar for example) that don't cause this reaction. Don't think its anti antisemitism either, as you don't see a lot of narratives that come with traditional rhetoric of that type.

Whoever is pushing media out on this is must have figured something out in the format to make people this polarized.

Nobody has been able to explain to me how the Israel/Palestine issue is fundamentally different from the Serbia/Bosnia/Kosovo issue of the 1990s. Its weird the mental gymnastics people will go through to qualify any position in either of these events.

The major difference is Israel is one of the only modern states that cannot and will not extend citizenship and property rights to the majority of people under their control who existed there when the nation was founded because it would upend the ethnic makeup of the country. They will also not allow the creation of a state for those people, forcing them to be stateless.

None of that applies in Serbia / Bosnia / Kosovo, as far as I can tell. That is more like a separatist movement situation like what you see in Kurdistan, Kashmir, etc.

27% of Israeli citizens are not Jews, but Arabs. They have full citizenship, vote, hold office, etc.

Gaza is a competely separate country/territory. They have no connection to the modern Israeli state. If anything they should be asking for Egyptian or Jordanian citizenship since the majority have kin relationships and history from there.

> 27% of Israeli citizens are not Jews, but Arabs. They have full citizenship, vote, hold office, etc.

How does that have anything to do with the conflict? Could there ever be 51% of Israeli citizens who are non-Jewish Arabs? That tells you why Israel will not extend rights to the majority of subjects under it's territorial control.

> Gaza is a competely separate country/territory

It is not. Israel does not recognize it as such, and Israel controls all the borders, all the electricity, all the water, all the Internet and essentially all the external commerce of the region, it even controls the waters off shore of the region.

Not all the borders. Gaza has a border with Egypt (who also tightly control the border).

Egypt had only one elected head of state, who was anti-Israel, and he has since died in prison overthrown by an autocrat who sides with the US and Israel and does their bidding. Also, at this moment, Israel controls that border completely, and they have vetoed hostage deals that would require relinquishing that control.

But you of course didn't answer anything else I said, despite being wrong about the one thing you picked out of my response

> But you of course didn't answer anything else I said, despite being wrong about the one thing you picked out of my response

Exactly. This only exposes the lack of accountability and the harmful stereotypes that led Nazi Germany and now lead Israel to committing a genocide.

If Gaza were a separate country then why would Israel restrict and regulate access to Gaza without an international embargo? For all practical considerations Gaza looks like a territory fully controlled by Israel. That begs the further question that if Gaza is controlled by Israel why is Israel so opposed to treating these people more equitably?

The reason this looks like some tribal/racial/dominance thing is because these questions and conditions apply almost equally to the West Bank. There is video evidence of multiple settler pogroms in the West Bank.

All of the rest of the world sees basically the same violent conclusions. The only people making excuses for it are some Israelis the rest of the world refers to as extremists.

Its very fundamentally different.

Palestine is used as a proxy by Iran to essentially wage war on Israel, because or a lack of better term, they are still salty about a different religious group being on "their" land (and to be accurate, was technically taken from them, but it was because they were on the losing side of WW1)

But Iran cannot engage in war directly, as they would be seen as aggressors.

Israel on the other hand is forced into basically a lose/lose/lose situation. Its either suck it up and wait for Oct 7 part deux to happen, be genocided themselves if one state is implemented, or be seen as the bad guys in pushing further and further, hoping to take over enough land to make the former 2 not an issue.

I call bullshit. If you use your imagination hard enough then just maybe you could explain the military action in Gaza as warfare… but how does that extend to the West Bank? There is no warfare in the West Bank, but there are Israeli settlers murdering Palestinians without consequences while stealing land in illegal settlements.

> Israel is forced

Again, that’s bullshit. Nobody is forcing Israel to be an asshole to their neighbors. Israel was the victim in 1967, nearly 60 years. It’s not 1967 anymore. A universal rule of life is if you don’t want people to think of you as an asshole then start by not being an asshole, not with a bunch of excuses and sad equivocations.

I suspect Israel would try much harder to be less of a belligerent asshole if they were placed on a weapons embargo. Israel is often seen as the bad guy, because their actions make them the bad guy.

If Israel really didn’t want Iran to use the Palestinian people as a puppet they could solve the problem by not giving the Palestinian people cause to be puppets. For example, Iran would lose all political influence around Israel if Israel annexed the Palestinian people with rights, protections, and citizenship.

I really don’t think Israel wants this issue solved. I really think it’s about tribalism and conquest. That’s why I cannot see any difference between Israel/Palestine and Serbia/Bosnia/Kosovo. It’s all sociopathic tribalism with lots of military aggression against civilians while claiming to be victims.

Exactly what I mean about seeing things from one side.

>but how does that extend to the West Bank?

When your country history includes all of your surrounding neighbors going to war to try to exterminate you, and that sentiment hasn't changed, you are going to be probably very expansionist. Not that the west bank settlements are morally right and they certainly don't help the cause, but the actions are somewhat understandable.

>Again, that’s bullshit. Nobody is forcing Israel to be an asshole to their neighbors.

Oct 7th kinda is. Nothing really significant happened much other than minor land grabs in the West Bank and standard counter terrorism stuff with occasional rockets being launched by Hamas. Oct 7th highlighted the clear and present danger that still exists, where Hamas doesn't care about fighting a war and care more about killing non-muslims, civilians and military personnel alike.

> Israel is often seen as the bad guy, because their actions make them the bad guy.

Because most people who consume online media tend to only hear about the bad things Israel does. Goes back to the discussion about other genocides and how those are never talked. Like I said, the media narrative on this is insanely effective to make people polarized.

>Israel annexed the Palestinian people with rights, protections, and citizenship.

Try to be rational about this. The last thing they want is giving potential Hamas members or radical extremists free access to the country + citizenship. Majority of Palestinians are still pro Hamas.

>I really think it’s about tribalism and conquest.

Again, try to be rational. Is it tribalism, or do they just want a future where citizens don't have to worry about terrorist attacks or getting rocketed anymore? Its not like Israel never tried peaceful solutions - most all of them get shot down because Palestinians want "their" land back, or at the least in control of the majority of that region ("from the river to the sea") that puts Israel at a huge disadvantage and greater risks for attacks.

> Again, try to be rational. Is it tribalism, or do they just want a future where citizens don't have to worry about terrorist attacks or getting rocketed anymore?

That’s exactly what Milosevic argued to justify attacking his neighbors. We have to get them before they get us

I am being rational and cannot imagine any justification for the complete eradication of Gaza or the illegal settlements in the West Bank.

If this is, after all, only about safety and security then why isn’t Israel annexing those people into citizenship? Rationally speaking it would eliminate most of the domestic threat simultaneously legally qualify the West Bank settlements. Again, it really appears Israel would rather have tribalism than security.

Illegal according to who? The concept of legal doesn’t apply to nation states. “Legal” presupposes an enforcement framework and process which simply doesn’t exist as it applies to sovereign countries.

But more to the point you can’t claim to be rational while using terms like “the complete eradication of Gaza”. The population in Gaza has grown since the war started.

Meanwhile in southern Syria the Druze are actually being exterminated by self-proclaimed jihadis (and Palestinian “refugees”) and the whole world is turning a blind eye while Israel desperately tries to prevent a larger catastrophe. Now the Syrian Druze are requesting to be annexed by Israel and to be under IDF protection. You don’t care about Palestinians, you just hate Jews.

> Illegal according to who?

Everyone else in the world.

I can use terms like complete eradication. What percentage of buildings in Gaza remain in safe enough conditions for people to live in? The entire strip looks like a flattened dust pile.

Yes, killing civilians is bad regardless of their identity. It seems like you are trying to shift ground to something unrelated because you have nothing of actual substance.

Now how is the conduct by Israel not tribal warfare on a nearly genocidal scale?

>The concept of legal doesn’t apply to nation states.

So when the US government repeatedly calls the Russian invasion of Ukraine illegal, you are saying they are wrong, right?

"Two years ago, Russian forces launched an illegal and indefensible all-out invasion of Ukraine"

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/368495...

Yes, lol a press release by the Biden DoD is propaganda not factual information.

Obviously Russia is wrong on a moral level for invading its neighbor but legality doesn’t enter into the conversation.

Don't be disingenuous. Its far from "just a press release"; its the official position of the government of the United States. There are many other instances where different parts of the government call it illegal.

It is just a press release and regardless, what any country’s official position is, is irrelevant. Legality generally doesn’t apply to international relations as each state makes their own determination on what does and doesn’t apply to them.

For example the current US ambassador to Israel just announced that France will be partitioned into two states, one for France and one for Palestine, France isn’t bound by that.

>We have to get them before they get us

In Israel case, its "we have to get them so they don't get us again". Not sure why this is so difficult to understand.

Not sure why you haven't bothered to read the rest of my comment as I addressed your two other points.

It’s not difficult. I apparently guessed your sentiment accurately even though I was actually describing the first head of state to be convicted of war crimes for promoting genocide and ethnic cleansing.

But, let’s make this even less difficult. Is the goal here security or dominance? Security suggests reducing hostilities but dominance suggests removing a group of people from an area of land. I really don’t see any reduction of hostilities.

> there are other genocides that are happening (Myanmar for example) that don't cause this reaction

Because the biggest world superpower that claims to be all about "freedom" is the sponsor of this one, not a rogue, sanctioned state somewhere

Why does that matter though? Is Genocide ONLY bad when capitalism involved?

I didn't mention capitalism? I mentioned it is one of the only genocides where attempts to sanction and hold the perpetrators to account are failing on a global level. Myanmar, on the other hand, is under heavy international sanctions.

> 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.

Tax avoidance is using a loophole. Tax evasion is refusing to pay what is determined to be owed.

The modern difference is one comes with prison time.

What are UNESCO's "divisive cultural and social causes"?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44647349

UNESCO is against the US-backed Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people, and is against the theft of Palestinian land. That's it - they simply don't support murdering children.

> UNESCO is against the US-backed Israeli genocide ... they simply don't support ...

That means, per IHRA, UNESCO is anti-semitic. Makes sense as anti-semitism is a problem worth tearing all post WW2 diplomacy and institutions up.

Compassion, intelligence, generosity

Nobody hates god's children quite like the religious right in the US.

"Love the fetus, hate the mother and child"

I can't find the exact saying now, but my favorite are the ones that are basically...

"Will fight for your rights until your born and then just completely abandon you" (not the exact phrasing I remember seeing)

Pro birth, not pro life.

Recently I saw a vehicle with a "you are loved" sticker on it, jesus fish, and then a whole series of stickers that describe when they would like to commit violent acts against the reader if they did or said things the owner doesn't like. It really seemed to fit the atmosphere around those folks these days.

It's called "cognitive dissonance" and they've been practicing it for a very long time.

You forgot standing up for justice. All those refugees and their children have a right to return.

Something something don't launch missiles across sovereign nation borders something avoid blocking food aid something.

The ramblings of the anti-war set...

You can check the UNESCO website and see for yourself. They have a section with recent news of stuff they’ve been doing and promoting.

Not bending the knee to Trump.

They say it very clearly: acknowledgeing Palestinians exist.

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.

How so? It's common knowledge that the nascent IDF absorbed terrorist organizations like the Irgun and Lehi into their ranks and gave them autonomy to operate as they had been. Leaders of these terrorist organizations went on to join the highest ranks of Israeli leadership. David Ben-Gurion being one of many (his Haganah cooperated closely with the Irgun and Lehi as they committed kidnappings, bombings and murders).

This isn't a conspiracy theory, it's widely documented by respectable historians.

That is true. Not sure why you are being downvoted. In fact, many of their victims were British citizens since it was under English mandate. It is impossible to reason with Israel apologists, for they are genocidal actors. It is what one would expect.

At the very least, I don’t see how anyone couldn’t call Begin a terrorist given the King David Hotel bombing, and he of course went on to become PM of Israel. The Irgun he led was also responsible for atrocities against Palestinian civilians like the Deir Yassin massacre, which Haganah definitely opposed.

Nonsense? Hyperbole?

I think you are either ignorant of the history of your country or you are ignoring the parts that don’t fit your narrative.

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 perspective of the British Crown, George Washington was a terrorist.

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.

That’s pretty naive. There are never unambiguously good and bad sides in a civil war. Case in point: the ANC terrorized and massacred Zulu nationalists.

Okay that’s fine — call it naive. Way would you call condemning the Gazans for fighting against occupiers while white washing the long history of crime and abuse by Zionists?

Israel hadn't 'occupied' Gaza since 2005.

The majority of Gazans are refugees displaced from other parts of Palestine which are indeed presently occupied.

If you care to find out how they were displaced you might be shocked at how the living space for Israelis was created.

I have family in Israel (some of which go back to Roman times) and am quite familiar with the current nations founding. 'Palestine' is a modern convention from 1967. Prior to that, it was a regional term to refer anyone living in the area (including native Jews).

No disagreements there. I have a friend who grew up in Lebanon who told me how his fathers best friend in high school was Jewish who later came back to invade Lebanon and supervise martial law in the same city they grew up in.

It’s the way of the colonialists. Outsource the occupation to a local minority and your occupation can last a lot longer because the colonial power will be shielded from the inevitable blowback that will follow from the dirty work of colonization. The minority will always be keen to retain your support so you can retain most of the benefits which attracted you to the colonial project for a lot longer.

The world should push for a one state solution. Enough bloodshed already.

You seem to be implying that "genuine liberation movements" cannot use terrorist methods, which is rather obviously false.

I get that morally it may feel different, but the Irish separatists used identical methods to the Israeli separatists to gain independence (bombs and violence).

In fact, the Jewish separatists explicitly used the same approaches against the British post WW1.

Almost all states can trace their founding to separatists if they so wish, but those are hard to usefully characterize as a subset of terrorists. The "norm" for secession before the 19th century was basically whatever passed for contemporary conventional warfare. Political terrorism only really becomes comparatively "effective" in response to modern era military disparities.

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

False. Americans taught for liberty from oppression. Same for Irish. Calling them terrorists is the slander of colonialists.

> False. Americans taught for liberty from oppression. Same for Irish. Calling them terrorists is the slander of colonialists.

The Americans were the colonialists. They fought to evade taxes and to be free to steal land from its indigenous inhabitants, in pursuit of which they committed a genocide. The latter, in particular, was strongly opposed by the British government. A 1763 Royal Proclamation prohibited settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, reserving lands for indigenous peoples. After alleviating themselves of those restrictions, the freedom-loving Americans then practiced a brutal form of chattel slavery for many decades after it had been outlawed by more civilized nations, including the Empire they had fought to be free of.

The recognition and admittance of the State of Palestine.

The announcement calls out two things, admission of Palestine as a member state and the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Goals are defined here: https://sdgs.un.org/goals

> Target 1.4: By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership and control over land and other forms of property, inheritance, natural resources, appropriate new technology, and financial services

> Indicator 1.4.2: Proportion of total adult population with secure tenure rights to land [...] [This goal seems to state that poor people should own just as much land as rich people. That's insane, but even ignoring that, the goal definitely states that renting is evil and everyone needs to own.]

> Target 1.b: Create sound policy frameworks at the national, regional and international levels, based on pro-poor and gender-sensitive development strategies, to support accelerated investment in poverty eradication actions

> Target 3.5: Strengthen the prevention and treatment of substance abuse, including narcotic drug abuse and harmful use of alcohol

> Indicator 3.5.1: Alcohol per capita consumption (aged 15 years and older) within a calendar year in litres of pure alcohol [In other words, the UN considers itself to be achieving this goal if people drink less alcohol than they used to. There is no indicator for problems caused by substance abuse.]

> Target 3.7: By 2030, ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, including for family planning, information, and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes

> Target 3.8: Achieve universal health coverage, including [...]

> Target 4.1: By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education [...]

> Target 4.2: By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education

> Target 4.5: By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations

> Indicator 4.5.1: Parity indices (female/male, rural/urban, bottom/top wealth quintile and others such as disability status, indigenous peoples and conflict-affected, as data become available) for all education indicators on this list

> Target 4.7: By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture's contribution to sustainable development

> Target 4.a: Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive [...]

> Target 10.3: Ensure equal opportunity and reduce inequalities of outcome [...]

> Target 10.4: Adopt policies, especially fiscal, wage, and social protection policies, and progressively achieve greater equality

> Target 10.a: [we're still on the goal "reduce inequality"] Implement the principle of special and differential treatment for developing countries [...]

> Target 9.2: Promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and, by 2030, significantly raise industry's share of employment and gross domestic product [If they really mean this, I'll admit that it swings the opposite way from what I would have expected. I have a suspicion that they don't want this to happen in developed countries. The indicators don't disambiguate. Either way it's a divisive cause.]

> Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change

> Target 12.2: By 2030, achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources

> Indicator 12.2.1: Material footprint, material footprint per capita, and material footprint per GDP ["We want people to have less stuff."]

> Indicator 12.2.2: Domestic material consumption, domestic material consumption per capita, and domestic material consumption per GDP ["We want people to have less stuff."]

> Target 14.5: By 2020, conserve at least 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas

> Target 16.b: Promote and enforce non-discriminatory laws and policies for sustainable development

> Indicator 16.b.1: Proportion of population reporting having personally felt discriminated against or harassed in the previous 12 months

I wouldn't call this an ideologically neutral set of goals, no.

Target 16.1 seems fine, though I'm a little surprised they didn't use the "By 2030, end all [...]" phrasing.

> I wouldn't call this an ideologically neutral set of goals

What would you call it? I mean, none of it sounds like something you can make a argument that it shouldn't be achieved at all. In fact, I would question the ideology of someone that wouldn't want to achieve those goals.

> I mean, none of it sounds like something you can make a argument that it shouldn't be achieved at all.

Really? I'm not sure you read the goals.

They state that renting is bad.

They state that alcohol consumption is bad, and the less it happens, the better the world will be.

They state that equality of opportunity is good, and - independently of that - that inequality of outcome is bad. This despite the fact that equality of opportunity necessarily causes inequality of outcome.

In particular, they state that all subgroups however defined must achieve exactly the same educational outcomes across all metrics.

The family policies are that children (a) should be avoided in general, but also (b) should spend as little time in the home as possible. What do you think are the prerequisites for primary education?

They state that the poor should enjoy all the same comforts, services, and economic security that the rich do.

They establish a fixed quota for nature reserves.

They state that everyone's standard of living should go down.

If I had to guess (putting on a hat I don't usually wear):

Recognition of Palestine as a member state; resolutions referring to certain contested sites (e.g., Jerusalem's Old City, Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif) primarily using their Arabic names; promotion of gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights, as well as support for comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) programs; emphasis on climate change action, including its designation of World Heritage Sites at risk due to global warming; alignment with the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (specifically SDGs related to gender, education, and environmental goals); and advocacy for internet governance initiatives

There is no role for the USA in multi-lateral organizations - the USA has made this clear for decades now - it should withdraw from all of them and let the rest of the world get on with creating a world that is based on the dignity of all people.

Sadly, these kinds of high-level decisions (which really do not matter in the grand scheme of things) only make it harder to combat real anti-Semitism: the real anti-Semitism is when people assume you need to move to Israel, and imply that you’re not a “real” American.

From 2023, the program and budget for 2024/2025 showing priorities etc.

https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000385118

And the US's contributions to the specific beneficiary countries/programs by Quarter: https://core.unesco.org/en/country/usa/contribution?biennium...

(Breakdown by beneficiary country & program is at the bottom of the page.)

Palestine was mentioned once in that document.

What I should be reading here? It's a very long document.

More coverage: https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-pulls-us-out-un-cultural...

"President Trump has decided to withdraw the United States from UNESCO – which supports woke, divisive cultural and social causes that are totally out-of-step with the commonsense policies that Americans voted for in November," White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said."

I have come to think of UNESCO with regard to their World Heritage sites (I saw in the news that Neuschwanstein was just recently added), but one of my favorite science books when I was growing up I found was compiled by UNESCO, "700 Science Experiments For Everyone" [1]. I loved the way it showed you how to set up a modest "lab" with inexpensive (or found) things. Perhaps they were considering poorer communities/nations.

[1] https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780385052757

"woke" deployed as a noun really rankles me. But then, I guess that's the point eh - own those snowflakes, nothing matters, lol.

"woke, divisive cultural and social causes" is using it as an adjective. Causes is the noun.

The Right commonly uses wokeness as a noun.

I don't disagree, but this isn't one of those cases.

What year is it, 2017?

https://2017-2021.state.gov/the-united-states-withdraws-from...

Boring, been here before. UNESCO and world moved on. With some notable declarations like Demoscene and Techno music being added in a number of countries. Too bad those couldn't be added to a US registry also.

Whoa, that is fascinating. We did this before.

Yeah, there's a long and tangled history with UNESCO that spans multiple administrations.

That said, the wording of the statement is... problematic.

Demoscene. A number of countries meaning Norway, Sweden and Finland?

Germany too.

Seems like there's nothing new coming from Trump v2. Just a repeat of v1 with varying degree of intensity.

Or maybe, 2011?

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2011/11/1/us-halts-unesco...

(Yes, Obama did it first)

Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44648410

Congress locked obama into doing it.

I guess in today’s context where the executive treats the other two branches of gov as having a purely advisory role, this seems strange.

"We’re sorry, this site is currently experiencing technical difficulties. Please try again in a few moments. Exception: forbidden"

Seems about right.

This administration has zero ability to build or bring people together, able only to destroy what others have made. On the bright side, it isn't effective until December 31, 2026 so there is plenty of time to chicken out.

Evil cannot create it can only corrupt.

> it isn't effective until December 31, 2026 so there is plenty of time to chicken out.

That's within the current administration. Unless a change in congress can prevent this, it's a done deal.

Even if Congress changes hands in the 2026 election, they won't take office until early 2027.

I think they were alluding to Trump's now notorious penchant to flip flop and waffle on every decision he makes. It's why the TACO Trump meme sprang up and continues to be used in reference to him – Trump Always Chickens Out.

> This administration has zero ability to build or bring people together […]

Someone observed a lot of stuff that Trump is doing is through Executive Orders because he really can't do deals. Of course when (some of) his desires overlap with (some of) others', we get:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Big_Beautiful_Bill_Act

which is mostly about implementing:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

> […] so there is plenty of time to chicken out.

TACO:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Always_Chickens_Out

* https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/02/dona...

(Being reliant on TACO may backfire at some point.)

Some history is called for here. The UNESCO issue extends far beyond Trump.

Under the Obama administration, the US stopped financing UNESCO in 2011(!) after it voted to include Palestine as a member state that year.

The Trump administration decided to withdraw fully from the agency in 2017.

The Biden administration rejoined UNESCO in 2023 and agreed to pay it $600 million(!) in back dues.

Now, the Trump administration is quitting it again.

The 2011 thing keeps getting cited in this thread, but it's wrong. The funding was cut because of what amounts to a booby-trap condition in pre-existing legislation. And they tried to get it overturned by it was blocked in congress.

In fact this is an almost perfectly partisan issue, and the 2011 canard is giving cover to some horrifying both-sidesism.

That pre-existing legislation (which banned US financing of any UN agency that grants membership to Palestine) was signed by George HW Bush in 1990 and expanded by Bill Clinton in 1994, in both cases passed by Democrat-controlled Houses and Senates. So it's still "both-sidesism," whatever that is.

And for what it's worth I never mentioned nor was thinking about "two sides," just multiple distinct administrations. Partisanship wearies me (and the parties have changed a lot over the last 20-30 years)

Ironically the claim about corruption also applies to this admin. (See crypto scams for access to the president, and the Epstein files promises for well-known examples)

I do agree with them that there is a 'rot' in these institutes. Though I don't know anything specific about the UNESCO that would warrant the withdrawal.

For institutes like the UN and UNRWA it does ring true however. It is wild to see claims of genocide where there isn't one and zero claims or calls for arrest when clear unambiguous genocidal massacres start taking place. UNRWA funded and run schools having theater classes where the children role-play murdering Jews is absurd and shouldn't be happening. (To name an example from before the 7th)

The UN should be setting a singular standard and holding everyone to account roughly equally. Not this clear and open corruption of its proclaimed principles. Whether it's in the main body or it's subsidiaries.

The current media and political landscape is a joke, there don't seem to be any standards. Frankly the future looks rather bleak. I really hope we can find to way back to 'common sense'. Good journalism, holding politicians to account and treating everyone equally, holding them to the same standards.

The United States did that before, then rejoined

Sometimes I imagine that I am a time traveling space alien so I can get a bit of emotional distance from what's going on. I imagine that I can leave this time and place [technically, I am leaving this time and place, but no faster than anyone else].

If I was a time travelling space alien I would find it very funny that the Conservative Republican party is not conservative or republican in any recognizable way.

A party that pushes for a unitary executive cannot be republican.

An executive that carelessly breaks existing government functions cannot be conservative.

If I could say one thing to MAGA and have them hear and understand it, it would be this "Donald Trump is a politician". Understand that he is not a Savior. He is not a hero. He does not care about you any more than any other politician.

There are many ways to understand this administration; here are a couple that I wish people would use more often:

1. MAGA is a cluster of ideologies and special interest groups draped in a flag, wearing a crown. The cluster of ideologies and interest groups are not particularly well aligned. There are at least two distinct genres of America First. You have MAHA vs Corporate Interests. Traditional Hawks vs Isolationists. etc etc.

2. Trump uses psychological manipulation without shame. If your reply is that all politicians do this, see my one message above.

~~~

I've just re-read Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents.

There's a lot there, and it's honestly a bit painful right now; one thing I keep thinking about is "God is Change". There's a lot of ways to interpret that, but the one that I keep thinking about is: In an information game, playing the game changes the game.

Political and economic moves change the game of politics and economics. When you plan your moves (IF you plan your moves), consider not only where you are going on the board, but also how the board will look when you get there.

This is in response to the flagged comment that, apparently, I cannot comment on.

I'm not thrilled about what current US administration is doing when it comes to international NGOs. UNESCO is one example.

However, there's also another problem: various UN bodies became tools for international politics instead of doing what they were originally designed to do. It's another example of good will easily subverted by malicious actors to serve shady political goals.

These international organizations need restructuring that would introduce some sort of a watchdog that would make sure these organizations don't overstep their aria of responsibility. Similarly to how constitutional democracies usually have separation of power and multiple branches of government that are supposed to counterbalance each other.

My layman understanding of the reason for UNESCO existence is the preservation of cultural heritage. This shouldn't be political. This should be based on historical or archeological knowledge as well as arts. However, UNESCO as well as eg. UNICEF and other similar orgs shamelessly engage in political activism that has nothing to do with conservation efforts. The officers of these organizations haven't been elected to represent political wishes of their constituents. They bare no responsibility for the effects of political propaganda they are spreading, but it's impossible to prevent them from doing something they shouldn't be doing by all accounts.

Bad political actors found a way to subvert and misuse organizations that were intended for a good cause. We need to figure out a way to fight this subversion. Defunding is both too late, and comes at a cost of not having an organization that cares about preservation of historical heritage or the rights of children etc.

> My layman understanding of the reason for UNESCO existence is the preservation of cultural heritage. This shouldn't be political.

It is political when cultures are being eradicated. Tibet is one of several examples.

UNICEF’s mission is “providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide”

Children in gaza are being intentionally starved by israel blocking food aid. At least 15 people including one infant have been starved to death in the past 24 hours.

UNESCO’s mission is preservation of cultural heritage. Gaza and the west bank are being ethnically cleansed, and their arts and culture have already been physically destroyed by US bombs dropped by israel. This will destroy cultural groups, thus leaving little to preserve.

The world is political. You give someone a goal of preserving culture, or protecting children, and all of a sudden they’ll start speaking out when you destroy culture and starve children.

Hamas, who run Gaza, want to "Globalize the Intifada" and bring violence to Jews worldwide. You speak about ethnic cleansing like if the roles were reversed we wouldn't be seeing the same thing.

This is basically just criticizing Israel for having the means. Clearly both have the will. The two parties are locked into a death pact with each other.

> This is basically just criticizing Israel for having the means.

No, it’s criticizing israel for the will, the means, and the action of murdering tens of thousands and starving millions.

> Hamas, who run Gaza, want to "Globalize the Intifada" and bring violence to Jews worldwide

This is one interpretation of that phrase. Intifada means roughly “shaking off”. A call for international support for shaking off the oppression of Palestinians is how it’s usually understood. I’m not here to defend hamas, but using the words of hamas to excuse the genocide of all palestinians (including in the west bank where hamas does not exist) is disgusting. Like using the words of trump to justify shooting up a walmart.

But you are right in that if hamas was doing the same thing that israel is doing UNESCO and UNICEF would be “getting political” about that too.

> This is one interpretation of that phrase.

And I could always say "the final solution" is referring to my math homework. In the context of the Palestinian occupation, intifada ALWAYS is meant as violent. There is no other interpretation.

Pretending that it doesn't is both bad faith and classic taqiyya.

> The First Intifada was characterized by protests, general strikes, economic boycotts, and riots[1]

Sounds like violence was a small component of the first intifada. So, tell me again how it always means violence? And also how did you get from violence against israeli occupation to violence against all jews?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalize_the_intifada

taqiyya is a new word to me. I can’t help but feel it’s being used as a bit of a slur here - not sure, but just in case i’ll point out that there are examples of basically every religious group hiding their faith when threatened. Jews during the holocaust and in inquisition spain, and catholics in elizabethan england, are historic examples i’m familiar with.

You sure post a lot about without knowing a lot about the culture of whom you're talking about. That word also doesn't mean what you think it does, and even has different meanings to different groups that use it.

I was only raised in it. I couldn't possibly know anything.

Taqiyya is a big part of right-wing conspiracy theories about how Muslims who integrate into Western societies are just faking it and cannot be trusted even if they are model citizens - supposedly they are just biding their time until they are the majority, and then they'll vote the extremists in.

Can you link authenticatic sources to back those claims up?

Do you even know what the intifada means? Or are you using foreign words to make it sound scary?

When the definite form is used , and certainly when used in English and in the context of global events, The Intifada (emphasis added on the to highlight that this is used in definite form) refers to the Second Palestinian Intifada - which was characterized random violent attacks against civilians such as suicide bombings and shootings. Calls to Globalize the Intifada are calls for violent attacks against civilian targets around the world and especially against Jews.

> The Intifada refers to the Second Palestinian Intifada

Source pls?

I understand this is what a lot of people who HEAR “the intifada” believe - but is it what a lot of people who SAY “the intifada” believe?

So, it's against the Jews worldwide, not against the Zionists (including Christian American Zionists) illegal settlers that kill the Palestinian people and steal their land?

They've been making that claim since the start of the conflict, including calling it a genocide. There have been an overwhelming amount of articles that later had to be retracted about Israel shooting at aid distribution centers. Not a single video of IDF soldiers shooting at them has been shown.

Unless I get to see actual evidence, I'm not inclined to believe this claim. I see articles report things like: "Since the GHF was launched, Israeli forces have killed more than 400 Palestinians trying to collect food aid, the UN and local doctors say. Israel says the new distribution system stops aid going to Hamas."

And yet there is 0 video evidence of the IDF shooting at them? I don't believe it. There is so much video and pictures floating around social media, yet we don't have any for this claim?

All I can find are articles like this: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/04/middleeast/israel-militar.... All you can see is people taking cover by lying prone on the ground.

Or this one by Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/7/15/video-sho...

Which again shows people prone, bullets shot near them this time.

There's been so much horse-shit and propaganda, I'm not going to believe any claim, unless it is accompanied by direct video evidence.

Upgrading from “i don’t believe hamas doctors” to “i don’t believe UN doctors” even when there IS video just not good enough video? Jesus.

I understand healthy skepticism, but the healthy skeptical response would be “lets get more oversight into place” not “it’s all lies until i see the right video”

There IS video, just not of what's being claimed. With the amount of constant propaganda about this conflict in particular, you cannot trust anything that you can't actually verify. Big media outlets, like the BBC have been caught with their pants down multiple times. Making claims they themselves did not and could not verify. Having to make constant retractions and clarifications because they want to hit 'publish' does not a reliable news source make.

The fact that you can see I'm actually looking for sources, should at least prove to you that I'm trying to verify. In this case I can find no direct video evidence of the claim. And the only news source using a video with no casualties, but at least there's gunfire, is from Al Jazeera. Hardly unbiased.

I do want to know why you think there wouldn't be an overwhelming amount of video evidence at this point. This claim has been made multiple times, there is a lot of video footage being filmed and shared constantly, yet nothing about this specific one?

Absolutely, children in Gaza, just like in many other war-torn places need help.

The problem is that UNICEF doesn't just provide help. It feels entitled to come up with resolutions that put the blame on one of the parties in the conflict. They aren't military experts. They don't honestly know how the situation came to be the way it is... they shouldn't be talking about it.

Because, what happens is that while they aren't the experts on the subject they choose to opine on, they have a large audience who will listen to them (for other reasons), and they can be mistaken for experts.

When you read an opinion piece from a newspaper, or listen to a politician talking about the issue, you would be right to assume that these people have a degree of familiarity and expertise in the subject they are talking about. Of course, the world isn't ideal, and often times these sources also lack expertise, but this is where the opinions and information should come from. Newspapers are held accountable through various policies for what they publish. So are politicians. But a UNICEF officer, when it comes to politics, is just a private person, like you and I... except they aren't treated like you and I.

---

Just to illustrate this further. You believe that:

> Children in gaza are being intentionally starved by israel blocking food aid.

But this is propaganda. There's no way to substantiate this claim. Israeli side claims that Hamas is hoarding aid (or was hoarding, until Israel created an alternative aid distributing organization). So, the aid was coming through, but Hamas used it to extract resources and favors from its constituents.

Maybe true. Maybe not. Neither you nor I know this for a fact. The investigation hasn't commenced yet. And neither you nor I are experts with enough information about the situation on the ground to have reasonable grounds to believe one way or another. Neither is UNICEF. And yet they go out and proclaim that they are, and that the situation is the way they want to see it... And here you are, trapped in this propaganda stream, repeating something you have no actual reason to believe.

> this is propaganda. There's no way to substantiate this claim.

1. Israel blocks aid agencies besides their own from accessing gaza. This is undisputed fact.

2. All evidence from doctors and reporters on the ground suggests that people are starving. Videos of people rioting over food, also pretty solid evidence people are starving.

3. While it is possible “hamas” is stealing food and not sharing - this is a problem easily solved by allowing in more fucking food.

4. If israel actually wanted to kneecap hamas inside gaza flooding it with food would be what they would do. Food has very little value when it’s abundant.

You seem happy to let people starve to death while we wait and see if it’s “true” or not. Disgusting if it’s true, and also disgusting if it turns out to not be true.

So where is the propaganda?

> It feels entitled to come up with resolutions that put the blame on one of the parties in the conflict

Sorry, UNICEF? Citation needed. All i see is them saying violence in gaza is putting children at risk, and there should be a ceasefire. Do you believe that’s blaming someone?

> Israel blocks aid agencies besides their own from accessing gaza. This is undisputed fact.

You are who thinks this is a fact. But it isn't. The aid is being delivered to Gaza. A bunch of international organizations are there, cooking meals, distributing supplies etc. Not only Israeli agencies participate in aid delivery. For example WCK is still there. Israel, legitimately, doesn't allow aid from organizations that feed it directly to Hamas. WCK isn't one of those, so they are allowed to operate there.

> While it is possible “hamas” is stealing food and not sharing - this is a problem easily solved by allowing in more fucking food.

It's not just possible, it's pretty much a given, since they used to be in charge of distribution. They shot people queuing for aid. They sold aid (which was reported by multiple news agencies). They stockpiled aid for their own fighters, which was acknowledged by the prisoners IDF took.

Allowing more food for Hamas will change nothing. They benefit from starvation crisis. It allows them to extort resources both domestically and internationally. So far, Gaza received a lot more aid than eg. South Sudan, and Gaza's population is about 1/5 of South Sudan.

> You seem happy to let people starve to death

Why are you getting so emotional over something I haven't said or implied? I'm not starving anyone to death. I live thousands of kilometers from the events at the moment. I have more information than you do about what's happening there because I used to live in the area and can read the news in the local languages / I know where to find such news, but that's about it.

> So where is the propaganda?

You just wrote it. Well, you didn't invent it, you simply mindlessly repeated it, but still.

> you simply mindlessly repeated it, but still.

Right, not like how you mindfully repeat “facts” sourced directly to the idf - a notoriously unbiased and honest source.

This should be the top comment. I greatly doubt it's going to be.

Most of my memorable tour destinations have been UNESCO World Heritage sites.

UNESCO also has the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission under its umbrella, and the Trumpists want to rake the seabed for polymetallic nodules, environmental catastrophe be damned.

> UNESCO’s decision to admit the “State of Palestine” as a Member State is highly problematic, contrary to U.S. policy, and contributed to the proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organization.

I asked this when the administration decided to attack funding for research at Harvard University over wild claims, and I ask again, why are we willing to shoot ourselves in the knees for Israel?

Because Israel is both a critical component of our global surveillance and information warfare programs, and a convenient shield against criticism and investigation.

How is it a critical component of our global surveillance and info warfare? If anything they steal so much from us and give very little in return. They have sold our military secrets to China, stolen nuclear material and secrets from us, and hacked American journalists and citizens and American big tech companies. I don't even think China has done that much damage to us

Very roughly...

The Bible foretells the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel and the subsequent rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem as a precursor to the end times. IE, without Israel, Christians don't get to go to heaven.

That’s just the excuse for a certain segment of the fundamentalists. Trump doesn’t give a shit about Israel. It’s about attacking all institutions that aren’t aligned with him.

You think if Harvard went “America first,” he’d be trying to shut them down?

Because it’s not actually about Israel.

As a Jewish American my experience has lately been that about 25% of the Jews in my circle have always been Republicans and are all-in on this administration, believing that Jewish people and the State of Israel have no better friend than Donald Trump, and that all previous (Democratic) administrations have been anti-Israel. The other 75% are moderate Democrats who roll their eyes at the idea that Trump, his admin, or the vast majority of his voters care one iota about Jews or Israel, that they've found a convenient pretext for clamping down on private institutions and free speech, and see only minor differences in their actual foreign policy vis-a-vis the Middle East and Israel.

I consider myself a moderate's moderate and I do see where everyone's coming from, but if you held a gun to my head I'd probably agree with you: it's not actually about Israel.

So we want to shoot ourselves in the knees, for fun? It's clearly about Israel, otherwise we wouldn't be giving a country billions that we can't trust with our military secrets (because they sell them to our adversaries), that has a track record of killing American citizens and never prosecuting anyone responsible, and who constantly defies us despite relying on us to even exist

Multiple things can be true at the same time. US military / political support for Israel is multifaceted. But I’d argue trumps use of Israel as a reason to punish academia or withdraw from unesco is not.

So the only use of Israel to us is as an untrustworthy ally and a cudgel to bludgeon our own citizens with. Great. Love that

That’s most obviously not true but whatever. Not even sure why you’re hating on Israel when the point at hand is it’s just one of many rhetorical tools that this admin uses disingenuously.

Because some rich supremacists happen to support Israel, and they happen to be a large number of financial contributors to Ivy league universities.

For politics at large, there is a very powerful lobby.

A great talk from Mearsheimer on the subject https://youtu.be/RTksWA1I2UI The man deserves upmost respect to have courageously spoken and written about it, all along. On a more recent video he mentions the level of threats and attacks he has been subject to for his exposing of that lobby.

I know a lot of people here are looking to leave the US for Europe.

If you’re a founder in that situation and want to bring your startup with you, send me an email, especially if you’re looking to have a startup in defence/cybersecurity/ai. I made it a mission to help people in this situation to move. Contact on my profile.

I feel like the US is becoming like China. Very economically important obviously, but will end up culturally irrelevant. It's hard to build up that much ill-will and still be considered glamorous. I can be wrong, and this isn't my personal judgement, but a genuine prediction.

China is bery culturally relevant and rising. But otherwise yeah I agree with you

China is filling the void the US is leaving. It’s kind of wild seeing the US just ceding dominance to China one step at a time.

> China is bery culturally relevant

Sure, every country is. But I think what the OP meant is that US cultural artifacts are (have been so far) much more in demand. I don't remember the last time I watched a Chinese movie or listened to a Chinese band... It could be because I'm in a western country, but I've also lived in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, and American movies, music and literature were much more popular there, too.

> I don't remember the last time I watched a Chinese movie or listened to a Chinese band…

I have seen quite a few films from Hong Kong and a few have achieved some level of popularity and recognition in the West but perhaps you do not consider a HK movie to be a Chinese movie.

> ...I've also lived in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, and American movies, music and literature were much more popular there, too.

I can believe that for movies and maybe music but certainly not literature.

Trump admires China and how the country is run.

In what respect is the US becoming like China?

Economic powerhouse that everyone deals with, but no one respects.

Power projected from one source (dear leader) rather than a triumvirate of 3 branches of a democratic-republic government as described in the Constitution.

1. it is highly relevant outside the western bubble, 2. their domestic market is large enough that china does not have to whore itself out to the west like korea or japan, 3. you gloss over the deliberate suppression by the US regime. japan was not "culturally relevant" in the US before the late 80s when they bent the knee

“The U.S. began defunding UNESCO under Obama after it admitted Palestine as a full member—and then withdrew entirely during Trump’s first term.” — [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/world/europe/us-withdraw-...)

This isn’t just a blip, but part of a long-term downward trajectory in U.S. and UNESCO relations.

It was stupid then and it's stupid now. We aren't Israel and we shouldn't have to be citizens of Israel

What is with you people forgetting that Trump was president in 2018 and not Obama.

Why are you attributing Trumps actions to Obama. Stop it. Your comment is wholly dishonest.

Obama did not want to leave UNESCO. Period. Full stop.

"The U.S. began defunding UNESCO under Obama..." what part about this is wrong?

It's misleading. Obama tried to maintain funding UNESCO:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220503183152/https://www.nytim...

The last ten days of January 2029 are going to be wild

1200 days, if we make it, well if there's a real election

real elections only exist if you're part of the donor class.

America First continues to be Israel First.

Makes you wonder what was in that dual-citizens (Israel and America) file that made the entire administration flip the script all of a sudden.

Talking about Ep stein.

The stuff that HN lets fly here about certain groups would surely get the posters banned if they were about any other groups.

The US is withdrawing from the soft-power international system because they are thinking of using hard power. The world must stop us.

This seems to be a political back and forth (beginning with the admittance of palestine in the past)... (from wikipedia) U.S. (and Israel) left UNESCO in 2018, but the United States rejoined in 2023. I presume U.S. has left again now in 2025.

[edit: kind of surprised this hasn't been flagged, but sadly indicative of HN's bias.]

Interesting context

Trump was president in 2018, if you’ve forgotten.

> The United States cut funding for UNESCO under the Obama administration after it voted to include Palestine as a full member, and then pulled out completely during President Trump’s first term. >But in 2023, the Biden administration reversed that decision and decided to rejoin. - NYT - U.S. Says It Will Withdraw From U.N. Cultural Organization, Again

To be fair it looks like funding was cut during the Obama admin over the admittance of Palestine

Yes, in 2011

Congress cut funding by passing laws[1][2].

In 2011, Obama was just following the law enacted by Congress not his wild ass opinions, which I know is crazy given the current administration.

[1] Public Law 101-246 (1990)

[2] Public Law 103-236 (1994)

Israel left Unesco ? How cynical is Netanyahu...

https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/decade-action-against-ant...

This goes back further, the US had already withdrawn from 1984 (under Reagan) to 2003: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO#New_World_Information_a...

Does this reduce the access and influence of the USA copyright industry at UNESCO and the UN?

According to the UN, genocide:

>...means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group....

Besides Iceland, all UN member nations have a history of land acquisition through force, colonization, or dispossession. By their own definition, they're all guilty of genocide "in part" at some point in their histories, with several in the last 50 or 100 years.

Ethnic cleansing isn't genocide and vise-versa. Genocide is very specifically about murdering a group of individuals for their shared characteristic, not displacing them.

In this case, the Palestinians and other groups want to genocide the Jews. The Jews seem to mostly (or smaller groups within Israel at least) want to ethnically cleanse the non-Jewish Palestinians from modern day Israel.

Not that this is a topic that I think anyone is still rubed on (in the sense that even those who voted for him thinking he'd be better on Israel / Palestine relations have been disabused of the notion), but did anyone else have "Trump withdraws the US from UNESCO because they support Palestine" on their bingo card?

And, of course, the follow-up question: did anyone have it on a Harris bingo card?

Yes, because he did it before.

"effective at the end of 2026" as per the UNESCO wiki

For sure this guy is going to, already is, ruining the peace and prosperity the world has enjoyed since WW2.

I suspect he will make a major war, and invoke military rule or whatever, before the next election, in order to continue in power.

There is no doubt, given the status quo. ie Trump has no medical issues.

There will be a national emergency declared unsurprisingly to push back the election. Some states will perform some form of election to the best of their ability. Then SCOTUS declares that the unitary executive has the power to do this and we're in for a rough ride.

That being said, this UNESCO departure is a nothingburger that has more to do with Israel solidarity than anything else.

Peace and prosperity since WWII?

I suppose that Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Myanmar, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan/India/China, Georgia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, and so on just never happened?

Not doubting that war is on the horizon, but the USA is addicted to war, and many other nations had their own issues independently of the USA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Peace

> The "Long Peace" is a term for the unprecedented historical period of relative global stability following the end of World War II in 1945 to the present day

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post%E2%80%93World_War_II_econ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_globalization

I hope you learn something today.

Exactly

This is an outrageously euro/america-centric world view. A war isn't "minor" if you're murdered in it. The Second Congo War alone killed nearly 5 million, the Soviet Afghan War killed nearly 3 million, Bangladesh nearly 3 million, Ethiopia/Eritrea 2 million, who knows how many in Ukraine and Gaza. While no one war approaches the loss of life in WW2, these are far from minor skirmishes.

I struggle to consider Syria, Myanmar, Somalia, or Sudan minor conflicts. Likewise, what is the measure of stability here considering the rate of civil wars and country creation?

As the other reply said, and backed it up with references, while there have been plenty of smaller regional conflicts as you point out, the world in general has enjoyed an extraordinary degree of peacefulness.

I really hope the next president will be able to undo this fucking mess... otherwise the US is probably never going to catch back up to what it used to be. Voters made a terrible mistake.

There is exactly zero chance that the US can go back to what it was as a result of a single election.

Structural change is needed, which is unlikely to happen, and the depth of the destruction of the machine of government cannot be rebuilt in less than a decade, and that's just the foundation upon which reputation is then built.

Just to let you know, an argument can be made that this was exactly the intent.

All stable democracies derive a goodwill by honoring certain values even if a previous political party made them.

This is intentionally being thrown out of the window for what the other side perceives to be something done to them (arresting Trump, assassination attempts). Which the first side can justify on the grounds of what was done to them (Jan 6th), which is the other side can justify on the grounds of what was done to them (2020 election issues) and so on.

Any attempts to look for the "source" of the problem (i.e figuring out who started it) is choosing a side and not trying to solve the problem.

If I may suggest the following edit:

> I really hope a future Congress will undo this fucking mess... otherwise the US is probably never going to catch back up to what it used to be. Voters made a terrible mistake.

Putting too much power into the president is part of the problem.

He or she won't be able to this. It's much quicker to destroy then to (re)create. Especially since any decent president won't use EOs exclusively. And even if EOs would be used, congress and courts suddenly will wake up from their slumber.

It will never happen. It is easier to cut budget than to raise it. It is easier to cut taxes than it is to raise them on the rich.

Frankly, the damage done by Trump and MAGA is generational damage that will take generations to fix. BUT... not everything wrong with this country is down to them. And while I don't agree with the MAGA version of what it means to "make America Great Again", I do agree that a lot of things in this country have been on a downward slope for decades.

We have deep structural and cultural issues that date back a VERY long time and it's unclear how to fix them, or even if they are fixable. Just look up some of what Tocqueville had to say about populism and anti-intellectualism in America as far back as 1831.

Trump is a symptom of deeper issues.

> Frankly, the damage done by Trump and MAGA is generational damage that will take generations to fix.

The damage to intelligence agencies in particular is something I fear may never be undone. I feel like the US is potentially out of the game forever.

If you dedicate four years to burning down structures, it takes far more than another four years to rebuild them.

When did America stop being a globalist in the globalization that they themselves created. And how do you justify iran, hoothis, israel, taiwan with an antiglobalist agenda.

As you (probably) imply, the rhetoric is fake and the game continues as it always has. The UNESCO thing is probably a gift to MAGA to distract them from certain other problems/scandals that this administration currently has.

In answer to the first question... there's been an isolationist streak among the right for decades. But in answer to the second, expecting consistency from the American right is a bad idea. They do not care about being consistent, any so-called principles are only applied to others -- not themselves. (And I acknowledge that all humans and all groups have the ability to be hypocritical in some circumstances, but it's far more pronounced in the American right.)

Is it not obvious? Democracies are schizophrenic, where the people and the ruling class are constantly fighting to implement and repeal half-baked bastardizations of their agendas. The best sign that the people have any influence in their government is that there is zero consistent application of anything. Consistency only happens when the democratic element is removed.

Another tantrum thrown because the world refuses to align with their twisted view. Shocking to thing we're only ~1/8th through this term.

Why fantasize that the GOP isn't going to do a Putin/Erdogan/Suharto? Those countries have "democratic" elections and keep electing the same president, they must be hella great guys!

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.

It's not a coup if you stay in power illegally, it's a self-coup. 2020 was a coup attempt because Trump gave up power and then tried to give it back. He's not going to make that same mistake again. He'll just attempt to stay in power via self-coup.

Unlike coup's which are distinct events, self-coup's are usually shades of grey. They happen through democratic backsliding, which usually consists of a large number of small events. I'm sure we'll see some more before the next election. Will it be enough so that the US is as bad as Russia or Turkey? No. Will it be enough to keep Trump in power illegally? Perhaps.

You'd have to overthrow parts of the US government to keep power for a 3rd term I'd still call that a coup even if it's coming from inside the house. Coups rarely come from entirely external forces, the military basically always has a major role in deciding if a coup is successful even if it's just staying neutral and seeing where the chips fall.

Trump has already "overthrown" the executive on every major part of the US government using executive, judicial and legislative processes. Sometimes this has been illegal (ex FCC). Nobody calls it a coup.

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.

> It was a bad noose prop, they were just threatening to murder elected officials if they didn't install the unelected dictator who directed them to do this.

> Sure, they were at the event where people violently broke through police, into the capital, into offices and the chamber, looking for public officials with zip ties while chanting for death to specific members of Congress and the vice president... But the people with this specific noose prop probably only had good intentions.

It feels like every political discussion has just become an absolute clown show.

>” But the people with this specific noose prop probably only had good intentions.”

I never said they had good intentions. What I am saying is that that noose and gallows were obviously never intended to be used. The construction and dimensions of it are comical.

The president, as head of arguably the most powerful military in the world, has enough military strength to enforce pretty much anything on anyone in the country if he wishes to.

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.

> 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

The fuck were you in 2020?

All they needed was Vance as VP to accept the alternate slate of electors and Trump would've won. Just run back that playbook in 2028.

Or, they could attempt that convoluted plan to have a legal third mandate by electing a president and vice that then resign to appoint Trump.

I feel like we'll understand more what they plan by seeing how they iterate towards it with the '26 midterms. The feds have already started requesting access to 2020's election data and access to the actual equipment. Is that because they want to protect democracy? [1] [2] [3]

So they are definitely getting more organized, and I personally feel that they're testing the waters to see how much they can get their hands on after the '26 midterms. If they are able to sow enough uncertainty about the '26 elections then they can build on that for 2028. If they go this direction, how many elections can they invalidate, especially if > 1/3 of the country believes 2020 was stolen?

[1] https://www.cpr.org/2025/06/13/federal-request-colorado-vote...

[2] https://stateline.org/2025/07/16/trumps-doj-wants-states-to-...

[3] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-doj-contacted-states-...

Because their support will fall off a cliff when their charismatic (to them) cult leader is gone in 2028, they will have to realign or lose voters.

Unironically , the MAGA Mountain of Stupidity deserves recognition in UNESCOs world heritage list

Another buzz bone to distract from Epstein?

My thought exactly...

It fills me with joy seeing the Empire hurting itself in confusion.

> UNESCO works to advance divisive social and cultural causes and maintains an outsized focus on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, a globalist, ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy.

Ummm...what?

This is the kind of nonsense that makes me want to leave this country.

> This is the kind of nonsense that makes me want to leave this country.

So go, if you're not going to fight it.

Every bit of resistance counts. If you feel the lat-lon-alt suit your tastes, stick around, speak your mind, and don't let the nationalists tell you to get out. :)

Exactly; I rather enjoy telling those who would have me leave my home that they should set the example first. After all, they're the ones pushing for changes they want to see, they can go do that over somewhere else.

It's too bad to see otherwise intelligent people refusing to engage with any statement or action of the US federal government in good faith. However I suspect the point you cited is far more relevant to this move than the distraction that is Israel v. Palestine. There is plenty to criticize and oppose in the UN's agenda. Much of it suggests developed countries severely inhibit their growth and further centralize power to better control the pesky proles who might not want to go along with the plan. See James Lindsay's reading of their Sustainable Development Goals which cites them directly.

Always fascinating how many people are more alarmed by their country withdrawing from international treaties, than by it rounding up its own citizens and sending them to concentration camps. One of those should be far more alarming than the other.

Imagine losing control of a puppet state so badly that you end up losing a large amount of global relevance and credibility.

I know that's written kind of lazily and off the cuff but it really hits home how deep the various agencies must be in needing them as a conduit for their actions.

the wording of that page is so blatantly propaganda that it's embarrassing to read. It's pathetic.

I find myself wondering if the people writing like this actually speak like that and how aware they are of how it sounds to a non-cultist. The spokesperson is a political scientist, the fact that they must know better just makes it worse.

> The spokesperson is a political scientist, the fact that they must know better just makes it worse.

Are you implying that just because your profession is A you must know B?

There are tons of people that do things for a living and know nothing about it, and purposefully avoid all initiatives to seek the truth.

Well, you're in luck because this guy confessed https://youtube.com/shorts/Uxfoe88Q-hg

At least it's transparent, like all the other things coming from the executive branch lately. And maybe that makes the damage more lasting, because people can see that US is so mired in populism that it cannot grasp how the SDGs of reducing poverty, accessing sanitation, equality, and -- dare I say -- dealing with climate change are things that ultimately help global security and thus benefit the US.

This is a false dilemma- believe it or not, it is possible for the US to provide support outside of UNESCO

Sure. But you know it won't.

withdraws from UNESCO, annexes to Israel as a new district...

Understandable. UNESCO is big on protecting children from people like Trump.

Ever since the firestorm erupted over Trump's U-turn on the Epstein files (gee, I wonder why), he's been desperate to change the conversation, and I'd not be surprised if the timing of this, if not the decision itself, is motivated by that.

Trump's regime is soon reaching Afghanistan's level...

The worrying part is that this is world's first military power, and (still) the first economic power...

Pretty sure it is just part of the barrage of noise meant to distract from the newest Epstein-Trump story, no? The birthday card stuff? Apparently US withdrew and rejoined before so what's the big deal

Honestly im ok with this one, despite disagreeing with most of the other ludicrous bs from the current asinine administration.

the mental gymnastics to make israel the good guys is mind blowing

  > America First
  > anti-Israel

American Government became the parody of itself, so sad

Pointing out this satirical sketch might be a cliche, but: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY (Mitchell and Webb: Are we the Baddies?)

A toxic, psychopathic, narcissistic con job is parody?

I don’t think people are at all understanding that they are in an abusive relationship and have been all their lives and so have all the people around them all their lives for many generations now. We have all been born into a cult and that cult is all we know, so we are afraid to even just contemplate for a moment that it could all just be lies and abuses by liars and abusers.

If they can get you to voluntarily believe crazy things and do abusive things, they can get you to believe and do anything. That applies to the full political spectrum and for most people.

It’s not a farce. It’s something way worse.

You have to sign a document saying you won't boycott Israel, academic journals cancel editions which talk about Palestine, you can't be part of UNESCO for Israel. You can't write a college article critical of Israel or we'll kidnap you off the streets into an unmarked van. You can't be a business and not give a contract to Israel or your employee will tip off the Anti Boycott Office against you. Your Congressmen wear Israeli military fatigues into the Congress. Your mayoral candidates have to pledge fealty to Israel.

We aren't Israeli citizens. Why are we treated like we are?

You aren't russian gubernia neither, why does your country behave like one?

The right (same people behind project 2025) planned (and are now executing) an effort to use opposition to Israeli policy (calling it anti-Semitic) as a way to crack down and disrupt liberal and progressive groups across the Us. It’s all out in the open, they don’t hide it.

To clarify: my point is they don’t really care about antisemitism, it’s just useful as a wedge

And the left does the same kind of thing when it suits them.

You mean the Heritage Foundation's Project Esther.

Left/right is not a useful distinction for the present moment. The recent mayoral elections in New York and Minneapolis suggest that the relevant divide is pro/anti Zionist. You have Democrats, Republicans, Donald Trump, Silicon Valley and the media establishment on one side; with campus leftists, Tucker Carlson, Saagar Enjeti and global public opinion on the other.

The thing about this that bothers me the most (ok maybe not the most... but its troubling), we have gotten to a point that we are more free to criticize our own government than a foreign government (unless it is about this topic).

Like, how that ever became OK is insane to me.

Well this is obviously not true so i wouldn't worry about it too much....

Care to tell me how what I said is not true?

I can say and criticize a lot of crap about my government without worrying about being kicked out of school or anything like that. The most I may be called is "unpatriotic" but I think most people here (maybe at least until recently) recognized that that was one of our core freedoms.

The same is not true if I tried to criticize one foreign government in particular.

That's true, nobody's ever invented an entirely new word for when you criticize the U.S. government, but you start criticizing the Israeli government and all of a sudden you're "aNtIsEmItiC"...

Nah, I just think that in the 21st century, people shouldn't invade a country, kill all their children, and steal all their land.

Right, that is the problem. That word (rightly so) carries a lot of weight.

But instead it has turned into a word that is used to try to shut down any criticism. Things get labeled as such, schools and others have a zero acceptance policy and here we are.

I have never seen a school having an "un-patriotic" policy. I would say even the opposite, they encourage getting involved in the government and making your voice heard.

> We aren't Israeli citizens. Why are we treated like we are?

shower thought, maybe you aren't, if we look at history, the closest analogy is:

you are the equivalent of 'natives' in the colonial era where the vassal states population have all the obligations (and more) and none of the rights and need to jump through hoops to show allegiance and maybe gain it at the individual level as a reward in the end.

What happened on April third 2021?

Something of significance? I can’t find anything germane here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events/2021_A...

What happened?

It's a date important to me personally

And it’s wild to think that more than 1/3 of the devs I’ve met in my life support this admin. These are seemingly smart people. The past 10 years or so made me realize I don’t know anything about human nature or intellect.

Edit: I am in no way saying conservatism is bad and liberalism is good. I have my values in both.

I have found the biggest commonality in otherwise intelligent Trump supporters in my life is deep-seated insecurity issues.

The second biggest is a life that hasn't gone how they had envisioned and, rather than take accountability, they blame anything but their choices. Though, I think lack of accountability is a symptom of insecurity, so it is wrapped up in the first issue.

[flagged]

Thus failing the Game of life at the very core, with corresponding last moments full of regrets if available. Yes we all have met those folks, only fools (or similar but less successful folks) wish they would be those people.

> corresponding last moments full of regrets

That’s why they’re burning money on life extension moonshots.

Which will in foreseeable future end up as we all expect... there is still some form of justice in this world, and no money can really hack around it. trump will eventually die, so will putin and similar folks. The only hope for common people.

And what will happen in 22nd century and onwards is no great concerns for us here.

It's different perspectives, I've come to learn.

The people I know who support this regime do so because they feel completely left out (they're low income so I'm not sure that applies to software developers).

When there's nothing for you why wouldn't you want to just burn it all down? Then you can build a more "fair" system.

Please note that I do not agree with literally anything current admin does, this is just the perspective I hear often.

What the "burn it down" crowd fail to realize is Trump and those like him will always put guardrails in place to ensure they come out in top in the new world. Unless they're willing to be part of an actual revolution, they're still just voting for "new king, same as the old king"

I got to think there's more to it than how it is voiced.

They probably also feel left out by their current regime, and "just burn it all down" would be done more efficiently by other ways, or with other choices.

There's still a part that resonates enough that they're willing to support a specific message.

Left out by what? Left out by whom? Are these people actually satisfied that what the administration is doing will improve their lives, or did the administration just tap into their anger and prejudice for votes?

You'll have to forgive me for being suspicious, but I hear these arguments, too, and the people I see who feel "left out" are largely left out because they hold fringe beliefs or because they are told they are left out despite actually being part of highly influential groups.

Left out by society in general, and the modern world specifically.

Rural Middle- to low-income folks are who I interact with mostly.

No fringe beliefs, just the unfortunate circumstance of being born in places that peaked 60 years ago, but with family roots deep enough to keep them planted. Not who I would call influential. Mostly just working class Joe's trying to make it and struggling, even though their parents were FAR more successful with FAR less education, training, and pressure.

> When there's nothing for you why wouldn't you want to just burn it all down? Then you can build a more "fair" system.

Notably, the people who lived under legal oppression for centuries in this country did not take this approach. Instead, they worked inside the system and were able to affect change. The "burn it down" side ended up having its cities literally burned down.

I think most oppression got ended by burning down. I am not aware of too many movements that successfully changed things from the inside.

My comment, like OP, was specifically about the US. Burn it down has a worse track record here than working in the system.

People think things can be better, but don't realize things can be easily worst. They'll be the last to feel the impact

Intelligence also shouldn't be assumed to cross between disciplines either.

Being able to code isn't the end-all-be-all skillset the industry likes to pretend it is.

I pursue material wealth because it provides for my family, my lifestyle, and allows me to support causes I like. But even if I was poor I would be content because family and friends are truly what matter.

Surprisingly many people who claim to care about "family" don’t seem to have any qualms about leaving their children and grandchildren a considerably worse world.

From my perspective the world is getting better every single day. I wouldn’t want to live in the past

Sad and short-sighted view. Which is of course what got us into this mess, and is actively working to make things worse in any timescale longer than quarterly. But you do you.

It’s sad to me you are miserable

Even then it's still dumb since they're unlikely to be rich enough to benefit. Nor did they figure out that the main economic policy Trump campaigned on was idiotic and would make things worse for everyone.

Intelligent people also have come to realize that our government is essentially one performative instance after another and see a "uniparty" of legislatures (Congress) who have optimized for local maxima (getting reelected) and not global maxima (constituents well being). Some of them see this administration as a way (and perhaps the only way) of disrupting that inertia, just like they agree with how startup's disrupt existing markets (see Paul Graham's "you should be a little mischievous"). So, to me, it's not a huge surprise many of them voted for this admin.

For the record - I think those same intelligent people overlook the externalities (a personal military for the executive branch) of such a disruptive administration, or irrationality disbelieved it would ever happen.

They have a worldview that is so different it is effectively an alternate reality. This mostly comes from seeing different information streams or being in different social circles.

The same could be said of any worldview. So tell me—what part of UNESCO’s decision to admit the “State of Palestine” as a Member State strikes you as objectively righteous?

I didn't say I thought it was objectively righteous. I didn't say anything about my worldview.

It seems objective that many civilians have been killed and a lot of land stolen.

But my point is that things that seem objective to one group of people might be objectively false to another group.

Which isn't to say that there is no real truth. Just that the premises people hold are so different that the worlds are not compatible.

"...a lot of land stolen" let me just say that your limited understanding is painful.

Can you explain? I'm going to ignore your arrogant decision because I am genuinely curious. What is it about Israeli "settlements" that makes it different from stealing land?

Only in a morally inverted world is a nation blamed for keeping land it took while fending off an attack.

Intelligence sometimes manifests as doing the wrong thing in the most convoluted way.

Intelligence also gives people the power to reconcile morality or economic theory with almost any desire.

The worst ideas come from the smart people who can persuade themselves and others of inevitable success.

> These are seemingly smart people.

Engs all think they and their peers are very logical and super smart. They must be because of all the world changing apps/services/monies they make...? I've fallen in to this trap.

Clarity of words will help:

  * Intelligence is the computational power one is born with
  * Stupid/smart is the effective utilization of that intelligence

Lots of intelligent people do lots of stupid things (mea culpa)

Being good at math or engineering doesn't make you good at empathy, sociology, politics or any number of other functions.

And of course this applies to comments in the discussion as well…

Agreed, however, people with a good education _usually_ learn think intelligently about a variety of problems. By which I mean, they understand how to fact check sources, how to think critically about information presented to them, and how to validate their own assumptions.

Edit: removing a sentence that came across as offensive.

First part yes, second hell no, why the heck the need to do such baseless attacks. We have plenty of sociopathic a-holes in Europe as well, I'd say more than plenty on all levels of society in all countries.

I didn’t think it was an “attack”, but merely an observation and a question.

But I can see how it can read as an “attack”, I’ll update the comment. Thanks for calling it out!

> Agreed, however, people with a good education _usually_ learn think intelligently about a variety of problems.

Depends on the problem you're trying to solve.

Perhaps it's "how can I get more for myself?" versus "how I improve the lives of humanity?".

And you'll find that almost all of those people are deeply religious, and that's not a coincidence. There's a surrender of thought to authoritative power in both cases.

I share the same horrible experience of having these last 10 years open my eyes wide to the reality of humanity.

This is reactionary, elitist, and false.

I know many of “those people” and not a single one of them religious.

American leftist insults always go like this - X is bad, but only if it originated from us. The self loathing is amazing.

* Religion is bad, but only if it’s Christianity. * Men are bad, unless they’re trans * Gender is a social construct, but race is real * culture is important, unless it’s associated with whites, because they don’t have culture

Right wing is a semi balancing act * religion is good, unless Muslim * men aren’t necessarily good or bad. They can be heros or villains * boys naturally fight with sticks, it’s not taught * American culture is just as valid as any other

Not exactly a mirror image, but enough team loyalty and justification goes on so people can pat themselves on the back as smart while the other team is delusional

"False" I can entertain, but reactionary? Elitist? Huh?

Your list of grievances is like a Fox News handout for viewers to remember what they hate about DemonRats.

Your "assumptions":

  * Religion is bad, but only if it’s Christianity. 
  * Men are bad, unless they’re trans 
  * Gender is a social construct, but race is real
  * culture is important, unless it’s associated with whites, because they don’t have culture

Can be "fixed":

  * Your Religion is yours, don't make it mine (regardless of which flavored cult)
  * Men no longer get to be the boss just because they're men 
  * Gender is a personal "choice"
  * Culture is important (and "white culture" is tempting to make light of in that it's "punching up", and it's kind of Wonder Bread bland).

LOL IRL on the right wing balancing act, but I'll agree with the statements except for the blanket "religion is good" (it's conditional), and the Islamophobia (which I love as much as I love christianity).

I'm happy for you that you have people to pat you on the back and tell you you're smart -- we all could use a little emotional support.

Edit: I only have two Trump supporters in my friend list -- they are both intelligent, kind, and devoutly religious. Obviously I have n=2 personally, but it's a thing to very Christian and very Trumpy. It's an observation, not a judgement.

They're probably smart, but also assholes. Being kind to others and being smart aren't mutually exclusive.

Being an asshole is one thing. But thinking you can be an asshole by proxy by becoming an asshole's victim, is something else entirely.

They're not assholes by proxy, they're also assholes. They were before, and they will continue to be after.

They're seeking maximum asshole alignment and some recognize that while supporting the primary asshole may be causing them pain, it's lesser than the pain of the people they've always wanted to hurt.

Well, we disagree on our asshole classification. To me a true experienced asshole notices when another asshole is about to swindle them. There is some inexplicable tendency for swindlers to get swindled, but that's probably more at the periphery. Not sure if those qualify as assholes. I'll have to think about it.

I'm just talking about people who are angry and mean to the point that it's harmful to themselves

I see the general phenomenon of those people as an outlet for a set of social defects we have. Keep in mind that "immigrants bad" and so on cultural wars repertoire is always the go-to of populists when they want to point to an easy enemy to rile up the population.

It works because it's like short-circuiting. You have the easy to identify superficial traits, and so the current goes straight through, and shorts the system. Except it's social electricity in this case. My point is while we can blame the individual assholes in this, their generation itself is an inevitability in the right toxic environment. These populist explanations seek to address real concerns of people like bad work conditions, inflation and so on, but it invents an easy to digest (and entirely wrong) premise about why their lives are bad.

I wish I could say hating the assholes works, but that's just another short-circuiting of social electricity. Polarization, hate, enemies. It all just serves to divide and conquer us. Unity is strength, division is weaknesss.

And it’s wild to think that less than 2/3 of the devs I’ve met in my life don't support this admin. These are seemingly smart people.

Intelligence is not general. It can be. But rarely is. Most people contextualize their knowledge and skills, they divide to conquer, as generalizing is hard. Especially hard in a fragmented, divided world.

Those seemingly smart people are likely all smart. But they have no idea how to take their skills from one area and apply them to another. So they fall for really stupid BS outside their area of specialization.

I think it’s a symptom of how bad the democrats are. They can’t create a compelling message that people really care about. “I am a little better” just doesn’t cut it anymore

Nothing is ever fault of conservatives and libertarians. No matter what, someone else has to be blamed.

Complaining about them isn’t going to win elections for the democrats.

Conservatives won the election by complaining about Democrats, often lying about them. By being as insulting and offensive as possible. Elections in republican land are not won by being constructive and letting republicans lie and insult. That is how they were lost.

There should be a lot more and a lot louder complaining about conservatives.

This is a deep topic but let me try and summarize.

The key concept here is "transhumanism" [1]. This is a very popular belief among Silicon Valley CEOs. Followers have deluded themselves into thinking their genes are special and they think about what they can do to ensure this transhuman future. It usually means having as many children as possible a la Elon Musk.

Thing is, transhumanism is simply eugenics [2]. It's tech-flavored white supremacy [3].

[1]: https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/silicon-valley-art...

[2]: https://www.seenandunseen.com/transhumanism-eugenics-digital...

[3]: https://biopoliticalphilosophy.com/2023/01/19/transhumanism-...

A couple of things I've realized as I've gotten older:

1. Intelligence does not transfer across domains. E.g. being good at making money doesn't necessarily make you qualified in other areas. And vice versa, as Isaac Newton is famously quoted as saying "I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of men" after losing a ton of money in the South Sea Bubble.

2. Many (most) people view their identity as a membership in some group, however that is defined. Most people like to pretend to argue about policy, but they're really arguing about their group membership.

3. Admitting you were wrong and changing your opinion is incredibly difficult for most people, perhaps even moreso for people who are nominally smart in other domains. Doubly so if it goes against your group membership as pointed out in #2.

Regarding "And it’s wild to think that more than 1/3 of the devs I’ve met in my life support this admin" specifically, at least in my experience, many of the devs don't support Trump as much as they chaffed against some of the cultural changes Democrats led (woefully unsuccessfully in my opinion) and so they hooked their wagon to Trump. E.g. this is my personal opinion, but I think "the left" really did go overboard with language policing, recognizing racial group membership above all else when it comes to diversity, labeling any valid discussion of the pros and cons of biological men in women's sports as "transphobic", the utter dishonesty in pretending Biden would be capable for another term and thus denying a real primary, etc. etc. And, to be blunt about it, for a very long time the Democratic party had almost nothing to offer for white men - indeed, in many aspects "old white men" became an acceptable derogatory term amongst the left. How they expected that would win them elections in the US is beyond me.

So don't get me wrong, I think Trump is worse in nearly every way, but I think a lot of the dev supporters I've seen of Trump are less full-on MAGA folks than libertarian types who thought Trump would challenge the excesses of the left (and are now having a hard time admitting his full-on fascist behavior).

Intelligence is just computing power.

If you have false beliefs as the basis for your computation you just get wrong results faster.

What people mean by intelligent person is often someone who: - has more computing power - spends their time using that computing power - checks their assumptions and biases regularly - over time accumulates more correct beliefs than others

If you get lots of computing power but don't do the other things - you get a dumber person than average. Because they accumulate more wrong results than everybody else.

This is how you get tech bros - great at math and programming, dumb as a shoe about everything else.

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. Meanwhile, the US continues to fund it even though it is currently running a massive deficit. It doesn't make sense to continue throwing good money after bad, especially when funds are scarce. Let other nations pick up the funding slack. Likely they will not and the UN will collapse, as it should. Something new can be built from its ashes. Many people agree with this rather pragmatic view.

If you want to have a discussion, debate the points I made above instead of hurling insults and ad hominem attacks.

Why is the US the only country in the world denying Israeli crimes in Gaza?

That's how I know the UN no longer matters.

Because the rest of the world denies Palestinian crimes in Israel.

Resistance of occupation, including violent resistance, is not a crime under international law.

War crimes conducted for the "violent resistance" does come under international law. There are rules of engagement all parties need to adhere to.

The State of Israel spent so long fighting monsters that it became one.

The State of Israel literally created the main “monster” it claims to be fighting (Hamas), abd did so for the specific purpose of splitting Palestinian opposition and having a less sympathetic enemy to weaken international criticism of its campaign to cleanse Palestine of Palestinians, which has been fairly overt policy since the occupation began.

That's a rather bold claim.

For instance: Both Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have been sanctioned by the UK, Norway, Canada, New Zealand and Australia for “repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian civilians."

And yet all of these countries also condemn Hamas and their atrocities....

They... don’t. The ICC sought warrants for both Israeli and Palestinian leaders (at least one of the Palestinian leaders was subsequently killed by Israel, rendering any charges moot, but the ICC wasn't ignoring the alleged crimes.)

Similarly, many countries have sanctioned both Hamas (and/or other groups like PIJ, etc.) and/or individual Palestinians for acts against Israeli civilians as well as Israel and/or Israeli politicians for acts against Palestinian civilians.

And the Syrian Druze? Christian Syrians. Anyone in the UN speaking up for them. Why just Gaza and not the other civilian casualty events.

These arguments of the form “the US should not do X because of the deficit “ are either ill informed or disingenuous.

Go look at where the money goes. This is not it.

You took out the comment about people howling about change. Why? That seemed the central thesis of your statement.

I would argue that it's not practical to burn the current system down without a plan at all for the next system (like the ACA a few years ago. . .)

My concern isn't change. My concern is the complete lack of concern for consequences. Like it or not, the US is and has been on the decline in terms of world authority. Leaving a power vacuum, like dismantling the UN, will just open the door for places like China to step in. You think that country has any amount of give a crap about humanity as a whole? Not even a little, I would argue.

So, again, for many people, it's not that the UN is perfect (or even functional in my opinion). It's that there is, has been, and seems like there will never be an actual plan. Am I wrong?

> Leaving a power vacuum, like dismantling the UN, will just open the door for places like China to step in. You think that country has any amount of give a crap about humanity as a whole? Not even a little, I would argue.

If China wants to foot the bill, let them. As I pointed out, the US hasn't been getting anything in return for the last 25 years of footing the bill, basically since 9/11. China cares about its people. They are currently fighting back against privilege and conspicuous consumption by the elites [1]. The CCP knows that an open revolt would destabilize their grip. After all, they themselves rode a populist wave into power.

I think of it like the Tour de France. Sometimes to win the race you need to move into second place, conserve your resources, and let someone else face the headwinds.

The comment about change felt like an ad hominem attack.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg7827pwlro

> As I pointed out, the US hasn't been getting anything in return for the last 25 years of footing the bill, basically since 9/11

You pointed this out but provided no evidence.

"I'm paying for these traffic lights with these taxes but all they do is slow me down"

Would you really liken the recent US approach to international relations to a peloton? Seems rather more like the race leader stopping his bike, chucking it off a cliff whilst hurling insults at all the contestants a lap or two behind, including the teammates offering him an alternative bike

Thoughtful, conservative isolationists don't mix up their questions about how important soft power is really with threats to annexe Canada or attempts to get the Brazilian Supreme Court to drop a case through tariff policy. Or indeed rant incessantly about how much of a threat China is whilst doing everything possible to drive the rest of the world into their arms.

Throughout much of its history, the US has been conservative and isolationist. The post-WW2 era was an aberration, not the status quo. I see these actions as the US returning to its roots. Whether the US annexes Canada is up to the US and Canada. Other parties only get an opinion when either of those two decides to involve them.

And the Tour de France is not a Peleton. You are being disingenuous.

> Throughout much of its history, the US has been conservative and isolationist

Even if this were true - and Commodore Perry, Manifest Destiny, and our zealous pursuit of trade among other skeletons of history fly in the face of this - why would we want to return to a status quo when we are so far removed from it now? The global landscape has changed, and we were the primary motivator of that change. After decades of assassinations of political leaders abroad and shock doctrine economic policies, we are to pack up our bloody toys and go home? The moral objections aside, this is a foolish and shortsighted policy that leaves only chaos. We will not preserve anything about our way of life, because it's been spliced with the genes of a globalized, post ww2 administrative world we created.

> And the Tour de France is not a Peleton. You are being disingenuous

A peloton is a line of cyclists with riders taking it turns to voluntarily relinquishing the lead to conserve energy. Happens a lot in Tour De France. Pretty much exactly the situation your analogy attempted to describe. (If you're only aware of the branded exercise equipment, maybe don't use cycling race analogies and definitely don't confuse people possessing knowledge you lack with disingenuousness)

Got to enjoy the irony of someone accusing me of being disingenuous for knowing slightly more than zero about cycle races, whilst simultaneous arguing that a mad child shouting about annexing Canada is either isolationism or the "US returning to its roots" though.

I mean, I guess the US did have a mad king once and, separately, an attempt to annex Canada. Neither of those had anything even slightly to do with the principle of isolationism either, and I don't think either of them were successful enough for any sane Americans to want to return to them :D

China especially cares about its Uyghur people, providing them with paternal supervision, excellent vocational camps, and even providing guests to live with families.

That's called whataboutism. China's internal problems are for China to solve. If you have an opinion, why not go over and advise them on what to do?

Sure, and it’s usually more conducive to do so under the aegis of an international body that can claim some measure of neutrality, rather than as a private individual from a rival nation-state.

> Leaving a power vacuum, like dismantling the UN, will just open the door for places like China to step in.

The UN has no power, so dismantling it cannot leave a power vacuum. The US abandoning its overseas policies, that'd leave a power vacuum, because the US has power and projects it. But the UN has no power - it's some UN member states that have power.

Case in point: the general assembly demanded Russia withdraw all military forces from Ukraine. But what are they going to do about Russia ignoring that demand? Nothing, they're powerless.

While UN is not optimal and needs a revamp, it is an organization that has almost all countries of the world as members. There is no guarantee that a new organization is going to be any better. Once US leaves UN, why would any other country believe in US to build a better organization, especially seeing that the existing administration in US itself is chaotic.

^ This is the primary meta argument against Trump foreign policy.

If you screw your counterparty over in every negotiation, you erode trust and end up without allies.

That’s fine in a business setting, if you’re self-capitalized (although Trump famously ran into issues after burning bridges with most banks), because you can do without them.

It works less effectively in a forum of sovereign nations, where you’re going to need to deal with CountryX tomorrow and ten years from now.

The US is ceding the soft power and web of alliances that are the basis of its economic and hard power.

The US, without allies, loses to China strictly on the basis of population.

“America first” is “America alone” with an orange spray tan.

They should put that UN money where it belongs, the MIC and more bombs for Israel, and why not add more the deficit. This isn't even a joke, its just what they're doing.

You say “the UN doesn’t work” apparently because “working” means it being a source of soft power for the US.

It had several remits, but its most important is probably the one to prevent a world war. It’s designed specifically as a talking shop to help countries find other ways of resolving disputes than kill people - and promote international understanding . It’s far from perfect, but in general it does a pretty good job.

> It’s far from perfect, but in general it does a pretty good job.

The current state of the world would definitely beg to differ

Prior to the creation of the UN we had 2 world wars in 25 years.

And post the creation of the UN we have still had hundreds of wars (conveniently termed "armed conflicts") resulting in uncountable deaths.

It really wouldn’t

The UN didn't prevent another world war. If you'd want to include an organization, it'd be the UN security council, but not anything else of the UN. And realistically, it's nukes that prevented WW3. It's not a coincidence that the permanent members of the security council, the veto powers, all have nuclear weapons.

American dollars shouldn’t go to things that aren’t sources of soft or hard power for us, and they should be clawed back from things that are sources of soft power for china.

> American dollars shouldn’t go to things that aren’t sources of soft or hard power for us, and they should be clawed back from things that are sources of soft power for china.

Fair enough. It's worth noting though, that China benefits when the US withdraws from stuff like this.

China has already thoroughly captured most of the whole UN. They would benefit if this weren’t already the case, which means stuff like closing VoA is still dumb. But UNESCO is among those they’ve captured. All removing funding does is reduce the power of a chinese agent.

If they managed to capture it, how did they manage to capture it? And what will be the impact of the US surrendering?

And that’s fine, if that’s what you believe. But that has nothing to do with whether the UN has worked or not.

“ This pick-up truck is dreadful as a tool for peeling bananas “

The UN is dysfunctional because the US blocks every good thing it tries to do like the abomination of the security council vetoing resolutions to stop the US backed genocide in Gaza.

It’s a bit incomplete to bring up Security Council vetoing without mentioning Russia (currently at war with a sovereign nation) and China (intent on war with a sovereign nation).

The UNSC isn’t an arbitrator of good, but an alignment of hard UN outcomes with the first countries to have nukes (and therefore the ability to force the issue militarily if they disagreed with the UN).

> China (intent on war with a sovereign nation).

This is not proven. Why would China want to wreck Taiwan? Official US, Taiwanese, and Mainland China policy is that there is one China. Taiwan is like Texas being a breakaway republic run by confederates in the USA, though the culture has evolved in a more progressive direction (more progressive than USA) since the original breakup.

> It’s a bit incomplete to bring up Security Council vetoing without mentioning Russia (currently at war with a sovereign nation)

I'll give you that's bad, but at least it's a fight between nations and not a genocide. I believe the U.S. instigated this fight by advancing NATO territory eastward and my position is there should be peace negotiations immediately.

> Why would China want to wreck Taiwan?

For the same reasons most wars have been fought: belief (primacy of CCP), resources (uncontested access to the Pacific), and the economy (don’t worry about that, ra ra flag).

> [Russia and Ukraine] not a genocide

One of the definitions of genocide is forced relocation of children and eradication of culture, both of which Russia is doing in the Ukrainian territories it occupies.

Here's a list of vetoes at the UN Security Council: https://research.un.org/en/docs/sc/quick

All parties seem to be exercising their right, the US does not have a monopoly on it.

I clicked on one of the ones where Russia and China vetoed.

Among other things, it called for Yemen to stop attacking Israeli shipping, which is one of the few acts by a country that is fulfilling its international obligation to intervene to stop genocide. Yemen has repeatedly stated that it will stop when Israel stops its genocide in Gaza and proved it when it stopped during the ceasefire.

> 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 spending, the UN spend is not the driver. The rest of your point is consistent, there's no need to use the red herring about lack of money.

* I'm old enough to remember the end of the Cold War. Americans were told that as the Soviet threat withdrew, we could expect a "peace dividend" now that we didn't need to spend so much on defense. Inflation-adjusted, we spend more now than at the peak of the Cold War.

Given the threat matrix today that includes fantasies such as "US land war against its third-largest trading partner" and the absurd "protracted war against a developing nation currently being fought to stalemate by a country smaller than California," I am not sure this increased spend makes sense. Seems like the only scenario that justifies our military spend is when a President decides to blow a wad of lives & cash in some utterly wasteful conflict.

The US ran a $1.8T deficit in 2024. That's objectively scarce funds. Even if the UN doesn't drive a significant portion of the spending, they do not serve the people that are going into debt to fund it.

The US just signed a new law that will expand the deficit further. (I'll leave as an exercise to determine whether the increase from the law is > or < than the UN spend.) Your argument would have more purchase had not the administration committed to many years of larger deficits only a few weeks ago.

A government that does not collect sufficient taxes to fund its priorities can somehow always claim that funds are scarce. But that's a) a choice and b) can be rectified any time by shifting priorities (see: military budget, for ex.) or collecting more revenue.

It's fine to say "I don't care that there is a body where nations can defuse conflict without war," but it's disingenuous to pretend there simply is not money for it.

I still intellectually can't parse the argument: yeah, we're in debt therefore it's fine to spend on stuff we don't need.

If you're ok with increasing debt to fund UN (and thousand other things) then come out and say so.

BTW: I would love to hear which wars did UN stop?

It seems to me that recently US, not UN, stopped Houthis from bombing ships, stopped India-Pakistan conflict, derailed Iran's nuclear plans and is making progress on Israel-Palestine conflict.

All I hear from UN is pro-palestine, anti-israel virtue signaling and zero action or even a realistic plan to help end those conflicts.

> If you're ok with increasing debt to fund UN (and thousand other things) then come out and say so.

Yes. I am okay with increasing debt (currently costing 2% after inflation) to increase long-term US stability and competitiveness. I am not okay with increasing debt to decrease long-term US stability and competitiveness, as we are doing now.

- 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, but we don't have to take leave of our faculties and engage with the silly notion that this administration cares about the debt or deficit.

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.

I think the parent post was saying the money is not well spent, not that the US can't afford it. We could clearly throw a lot more at the UN, but that would just be doubling down on a bad investment. At least thats how I read it - better to just pull the plug.

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 $47 billion to USAID, $9 billion to NPR, $10 billion to California's "never gonna happen" rail, $1.3 billion to Harvard and that's just a small part of spending.

US government still needs to go on a serious spending diet. But every cut gets people to catastrophize how the world will end if US doesn't fund UN or Harvard.

This is true and correct, but none of it will matter if we keep letting the olds bleed the last drops from our country and continue pissing away the majority of our budget on social security and medicare. Until those are gone and the majority of the federal budget thereby removed, this remains an intractable problem.

What’s the counter to the standard “nation-states do not run like family budgets, especially when the nation-state is the global hegemon”? Or “Owe your banker £1,000 and you are at his mercy; owe him £1 million and the position is reversed.”?

That at every point in the past and almost certainly in the future, global hegemons don't stay that way once their currency is sufficiently devalued and no longer held as the reserves of other nations.

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.

I used to say that HN was a place where very controversial opinions were respectfully discussed. Granted with some bias, but still a lot of tolerance for unpopular views. Even climate change skepticism or 2020 election skepticism. What got voted down was unwanted tone, essentially.

Now it seems that the current administration is too much for people here to handle. I wonder if the mods have noticed the same thing, or maybe they support it at this point.

Can you define “dysfunctional and does not work”

What has the UN achieved in the last 25 years?

The surface arguments for abandoning these kinds of programs (also USAID, recalling diplomats, bunch of research funding) seem straightforward: "there is a deficit, why pay all this money for ostensibly wasteful work, etc."

Where I get frustrated is when the admin turns around and massively expands the deficit by throwing cargo ships full of money at other wasteful, in my opinon, programs. That tells me the fiscal responsibility talk was just a pretense to do another kind of money grab and "own the libs" at the same time. And at the end of the day the argument reduces to opinions on what is wasteful and what is not.

Example: you claim UN hasn't been a source of soft power "for the better part of this century." Well, says you - I think it has done a great job. Now what?

Yes, they are spending funds on things that matter to those that voted for them, and removing funds from things that don't. Sounds like a standard thing that happens in a democracy. When someone you vote for is in power, they will spend on things you prefer to fund instead.

> Example: you claim UN hasn't been a source of soft power "for the better part of this century." Well, says you - I think it has done a great job. Now what?

Okay, what has it done that has aligned with US interests?

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 Russia) allow it to work. They are largely the source of its funding.

With that context in mind, it's difficult to understand your perspective. You've only thrown out your opinion instead of facts, and then - in a preemptive defensive posture - claim any criticism will be insults or ad hominem attacks.

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?)

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.

> 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

> 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.

Fact. Another fact: this is a rounding error for the US government's budget. The total spend is under $15b. Government spending has been $5t to $7.5t in the last decade. Why is this particular spending line item of such interest to you? Do you truly see zero value derived from investment in the UN? Is that perhaps because you require some benefit to Americans from the investment? About 2/3rds of UN spending is on development and humanitarian assistance. Is helping the rest of the world raise the standard of living a laudable goal for the richest country in the world to contribute to or not, in your eyes?

> 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.

Perhaps one root difference in belief is that I don't believe the UN is an alliance, and you do. It is a forum for countries that belong to different alliances to have a forum to talk to each other. It also is a forum to build temporary alliances for military intervention (e.g., Iraq War I) across such boundaries. The US failed miserably at building such a consenus for Iraq War II and has been

> 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.

Thank you. I understand your zero-sum argument and realpolitik in general, both from an academic and personal perspective. I grew up in a third-world country, so - perhaps, unlike you - I'm intimately familiar with the impact of Great Power games in the post-Cold War era. You are unfortunately correct; I wish that the US (my home for several decades now) tried harder to move away from such thinking and utilized the UN for more win-win scenarios, but we're moving away from such liberal thinking, and so my wish will probably remain unfulfilled.

You don’t think China, the Gulf states, hell, oil-rich Azerbaijan won’t pick up the slack for international legitimacy or national glory? And you think U.S. isolation from the League of Nations was the right move, too?

Let's see. We'll know soon won't we?

Probably not, as even this administration is unlikely to leave the U.N. altogether. Withdrawing from UNESCO feels like “slashing the NPR/PBS budget” virtue-signaling.

> The UN is dysfunctional and does not work.

Says the person using an international communication network orchestrated by the UN...

I am not sure it was ever very functional. I am not an expert on it at all but it seems like it had two purposes for the US. 1) prevent Nazis (i.e. another world war which metaphysically it seems people believe Right wing views are responsible for war which leads to very specific outcomes we see today) and 2) prevent countries from becoming communist by opening discussions with them.

This article makes the case that the 1965 Immigration Act happened not because anyone in the US wanted it but because the State Dept. pressured Congress to pass it in order to make more allies with Third World countries https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/geopolitical-origins.... Basically the UN was used as a forum by countries to trash the US which it still is. The USSR propagandized against the US in the Third World.

So honestly the whole UN experiment seems like it was kind of a foreign policy wonk experiment that didn't really serve the interests of US citizens especially now that the USSR fell. But I think the philosophical ideas behind it run very strong in elitist thought in the US. These are that 1) Nationalism is an ever present threat to global peace 2) social engineering should be used to prevent Nationalism/Nazis/etc. 3) Immigration is a tool for statecraft and limiting Nationalism in certain countries. 4) an enlightened class of smarter, educated people should be used to counter Nationalism.

If any of these goals or assumptions are false the whole thing becomes useless.

I've seen the same thing. What I've seen is most of those folks that supported them during the campaign are now pretty quiet. During the campaign it was "cool" to support Trump and the republicans but now that the dude's in office, most are seeing that campaigns are very different from the administrations.

Looking back I blame the Democrats for running horrible candidates and the gaslighting that their candidates were actually great and were as "cool" as the Trump team. It just felt so disingenuous when you heard Democrats saying that Biden was still very with it and even more disingenuous when they said that Harris/Walz were a great pick. And now the folks that said it was disingenuous were not wrong, cause after the campaign ended and Trump was in office seemingly everyone that praised Biden and then Harris then flipped the script and started saying what everyone was thinking all along (that Biden was not fit to serve and Harris wasn't a great candidate).

I talked to alot of guys that flipped from D to R this past election and just about every one of them said a version of: "do they think we are stupid??".

The Democrats have a hubris problem, they think that just because they run someone and tell folks that the person is great, everyone will just automatically buy into that. That's just not how it works and you have to make a genuinely convincing argument and that argument can't be "the other guys is worse"

The Democrats have a structural problem.

The party is defined as being composed of the people who are already elected. So the priority of the Democratic Party ends up reflecting the priorities of those who are already in office, which is to make sure the incumbents get reelected.

This means there's very little incentive to expand the electorate (which would mean younger voters, who are likely to vote younger candidates, so that threatens the aging incumbents), or spend resources in expanding the map (because by definition there are no incumbents there whose interests are represented in the party).

For as advanced as the US political system is, it's incredibly backwards when it comes to professionalization of the political parties. A good comparison is the BJP in India. Setting aside policy, ideological issues for a moment, what they're really good at is being professional. The head of the party is not elected, and constantly rotates the party representative in each election, keeping their bench deep. They also have a soft age limit.

In a way, Donald Trump's greatest contribution to the Republican Party was destroying the incumbency advantage for Republicans. As a result the Republican slate was completely refreshed with younger (although generally worse) candidates, but while it may have made the party significantly worse from a policy/ideology perspective, it has made it politically stronger.

There are so many wide ranging forms of intelligence. Being an exceptional engineer or a high functioning executive/CEO you may have a very narrow slice of intelligence or capability. It does not in any way mean you have an understanding of how the world works or general knowledge.

I agree -- it is surprising how many high achieving people have such poor understanding of how the world/society/countries work. It's almost like our education system's specificity hasn't done a good job on civics broadly.

It’s prioritizing material wealth above other pursuits.

Not only in their own lives, but as the primary measure of success.

One side effect of this is that they stop investing effort in things that don’t generate material wealth.

Personally, I think that tends to turn people into dicks (non-transaction friendships are valuable to me), but they do them.

Steelman their position. Try finding reasons good people would vote for Trump, or at least sincere mistakes of reasoning that a good person could make.

They were steelmanned for years and that is how theu got powerful. Maybe we should stop to do it and start to interpret their words accurately.

Sometime, cruelty is the point and there is only delusion in trying to project "good reasons". It is loosing strategy.

To get Trump supporters to vote for you it's important to beat Trump at addressing their concerns. Even a small swing of 5-10% of them could win an election.

Addressing their concerns will do nothing, just as it did nothing in the past. They will hate you for addressing their concerns and blame you for things Trump caused. Each time they were given something, they just got more aggressive and harmful

Yes small swings could change election results, but none of them will come from Trump voters. This argument just serves to more politics further to the right.

Those people wanted harm, wanted to cause pain and addressing their concerns does not provide any of that.

I'll give them a steelman: They thought Trump would reduce their taxes (he hasn't, by and large). They thought Trump would cut government waste (he did the opposite). They thought Trump's tough-guy persona would convince foreign countries to fall in line (it hasn't, they have shunned the USA).

> These are seemingly smart people.

They _are_ smart people. There's more to the differences in perspective than "lib smart, maga stupid".

There is more to life but I do have to question the intelligence of anyone who believed that Trump was going to somehow lower grocery prices by implementing tariffs.

It almost doesn’t even make grammatical sense to say “raising prices will lower prices”, let alone any kind of rational sense.

At this point there really isn't. The only political philosophy that meshes with Trumpism is anarcho-capitalism. If Trumpists were generally espousing anarcho-capitalism, I could respect that they were coming from a different fleshed-out perspective and we could debate the merits of it. But they are not! Rather Trumpists appeal to widely varying political ideals, but then when you try to apply a specific one to different actions of the regime it's either just crickets or a Gish gallop. So the straightforward conclusion is there is a glaring lack of any sort of coherent analysis.

If your intelligent in your work, but completely retarded when it comes to society , information gathering and independent thinking rather than regurgiate whatever your oranged tanned cheeto says, then no, your not smart. You just have been able to condition your brain to do something over and over again. Intelligence and smartness isnt about doing one thing well.

To be fair, a lot of people were fooled by the first term.

In the first term Trump hired a lot of retired or retiring generals. They may not have been subject matter experts, but that's fine, since they had subject matter experts within their departments, and they had the ability to organize, lead and execute.

But most importantly, most of them had a pretty strong sense of ethics and loyalty to the country and constitution.

The generals, and the people they hired, and even the Trump lackeys who were nonetheless being watched by the generals, helped keep Trump's worst impulses in check.

In Term 2, on the other hand, Trump has explicitly picked people who are completely unqualified (this is a mafia tactic to ensure the individual's loyalty is entirely to you since they know they would never have got the job they did on merit) and their primary skills lie in right wing TV and Podcasts. So these people prioritize effect and show for their followers, and are loyal to no one but Trump. And they've been selected primarily because they're incapable of doing the jobs they've been hired for well, so it's a stark 180 from the first term.

My father passed in 2019, in cleaning up the house I came across a walnut display case with 10 or so real $2 bills with Trumps picture on them, sealed in plastic.

I had no idea my Dad had gone down that path, or why...

I've been on this earth a long time, and I too realize I don’t know anything about human nature or intellect.

> These are seemingly smart people.

If someone who seems smart disagrees with me then there's only 1 explanation

It took me a long time to realize that most people don’t make any effort to understand politics beyond surface level headlines.

A lot of people treat politics like they behave in the HN comment section: They see the headline, arrive at a conclusion based on previous assumptions, and head straight to the comment section to argue their side without ever even making an effort to read the article. With politics, politicians are experts at crafting headlines and sound bites that feed these people their confirmation bias and tickle the part of the brain that says this person is on your side.

I’ve had some success discussing issues with these people calmly and openly, adding facts one at a time until they realize the situation isn’t what they thought. There are a lot of “That can’t be right” lightbulbs going off as the facts start to conflict with their idea of how the world works. This goes for both extremes of the political spectrum, BTW.

The problem is that politics, particularly in the US, tends to push people into binary thinking.

I certainly do not love the Trump admin and think Kamala would easily do better. However, that does not mean the Trump admin has done nothing I agree with. There are nice parts to the OBBB that directly benefit me. Further, I think the approach to H1Bs, removing the lottery and instead basing it on salary, is the right move.

I say this because regardless of admin, there's going to be things you like and dislike. What seems to happen is people get completely sucked in a media bubble which only reports the good or bad of their political opponents.

Even the worst and most evil world leaders in history did good or had some good policies. There's never been a pure evil or good leader. Unfortunately, people want to flatten the world and remove the nuance "if so and so did it, it must be good/bad".

a more appropriate way of looking at this would be incentives. Who, in the government, stands to benefit from revising the H1B system? Even if you agree with the action, you may not not agree with the motivation.

Your line of thinking is like saying that the British Raj was terrible for India, but the British built railways, which was a good thing. Good and bad do not exist in isolation. The British built railways in india so they could more effectively extract wealth, not out of the benevolence of their hearts. It is much the same with the US government.

I disagree, outcome matters more than incentives IMO. Every policy and regulation will create winners and losers. The incentives for doing so matter in they drive which policies get written, but you can't use those incentives to determine if a policy is ultimately good or not.

Back to the british railway example. You are correct that it was there to more efficiently extract wealth (bad). But that does not mean that rails aren't hugely beneficial to the population in general. Roads in the US exist primarily to aid in rapid shipping, that doesn't mean roads are a bad thing because a company like Amazon gets the majority of the benefit.

It's a basically non-existent politician that does something purely out of the goodness of their own hearts. In a democracy, it's the role of the electorate to try and remove politicians from power who refuse to provide benefits to the citizens as a whole.

A generous interpretation of this is that most of the time, people pay little attention to politics as they are busy with their daily lives : earning money, shopping for food, looking after their families, etc. Most people have neither the time or the inclination to even follow politics beyond the headlines, or think through the problems and their position.

This can be a problem when the political 'class' (politicians of course, but also media commentators, journalists, podcasters, whatever) do not realise this issue. Brexit is a classic example, where the UK prime minister called for a referendum possibly confident that 'no one' would actually vote yes.

Why should we expect otherwise, what land on hn is already crafted title as well after all, and once human are accustomized to some habits, they will have generally a hard time going out of routine.

Maybe take a few minutes to talk to the other side to better understand their thoughts and why they have such thoughts. Sadly I’ve noticed understanding and tolerance of diverse perspectives went out the window lately.

I do and did. In my youth one of my best friends slowly became a neo nazi, with lines like: "foreigners should be herded together and exterminated".

After one particular discussion he conceeded: "I know you're factually correct, but I don't care, because this is what I want". And this is the point were further discussion was useless.

To be clear, sadly, “lately” covers a longer time than the current administration.

I've been toying with the following attempt to explain all this:

- Information bubbles (this is the top issue, and it's really incredibly persuasive)

- Geographic location and social environment

- Lack of time to deeply evaluate truth vs noise and consider multiple sides of an issue

- Conviction of values - how much does a person believe their values are tied to the political view (leads to subtly drawing emotional conclusions and implicitly trusting a political party)

- Belief that due to one's own intelligence, one is not subject to propaganda (a clearly false belief that many smart people fall into)

Deep emotional awareness is not as strongly related to intelligence as people think.

Smart people in a bubble will confidently apply their intellect to things they have no first-hand experience with

Do they support some policies or everything that this administration proposes?

In my experience I have seldom seen people who believe 100% in whatever party/government does. Most of the time it's a few topics that matter - be it immigration, or less taxes, or whatever. However, they are not gonna protest for leaving UNESCO. They might find it stupid, but probably they find topic XYZ more important. So they suck it up and move on.

Then there are the believers - everything the administration does is great. But I like to believe and think they are a minority.

> But I like to believe and think they are a minority.

There's a lot of MAGA hats out there man. Historically, has it ever been a good thing when so many people believe everything one man says is pure truth? I mean, even if I agreed with every policy, the extent and dedication of this cultish behaviour would give me pause.

The nice thing about democracy and politics in general is that everyone can have an opinion and a way to see something.

Many MAGA hats don't all mean the same. I doubt all of his supporters like the tariffs, or how he is dealing with Russia, or Israel, or, or or...

However, I believe that some of the core policies (hard on immigration, etc) somehow find a common agreement. And even in those core policies, some might like different approaches. And yet in total they do feel they support this administration.

The issue is when people let all happen because one of the core problems must be solved at all costs. Meaning the administration solves that one core problem you really wanted fixed, but the price to pay is equally bad, and yet you just look down and let it all happen, because it's convenient and doesn't affect you in the short term.

In my opinion, this has become more and more common with whichever party we elect, except some are more vocal about it than others.

My only point, without discussing policy at all, is that it's a cult of personality, with all that entails (not good). I think a failure to recognize this as either naive or intentional.

> These are seemingly smart people. The past 10 years or so made me realize I don’t know anything about human nature or intellect.

just remember, there is nothing more easy to manipulate than an insecure male.

There is just a shocking lack of empathy in the world today. Selfishness is off the scale.

I personally blame social media and the financialization of everything for this. A person's entire self-worth can be reduced to the size of their 401K and their instagram reels (brunch, dog, destination wedding, hike, repeat).

Depressing.

I think(lol) that assuming the other side stupid is one of the big failures of current political environment. Honestly, I'm baffled that is "ok" to say something like "the other side is stupid" without being called out harshly for it. Using weasel words expressions like "seemingly smart people" doesn't make it better, it makes it worse.

Do you mean it's a political failure as in it leads to electoral losses or it's a moral failure as in it shouldn't be "ok"?

In theory I'd love to agree with you. In practice we are way past that.

I'm totally fine debating whether the sky is blue with someone claiming it's gray because it is usually overcast. I'm happy to entertain the motion that the sky could be bronze - with a reference to ancient Greece and pretty sunsets. At the end of the day we can just agree to disagree and move on.

But I'm not going to debate whether the sky is blue with someone yelling that the sky MUST be green because obviously clouds are green. They have moved so far from the truth that they are either arguing in bad faith or just plain delusional. Neither case is worth even the slightest snippet of my time: I'd have a better chance of success trying to explain my viewpoint to a tree. It isn't politics anymore, it has turned into religion or sports.

Sure, but you forget something. It's impossible to have a discussion with someone you consider inferior to you and they know it(eg. "Trump supporters are morons"). This makes them vote with the person who is willing to have that discussion. That lost the democrats the previous election and has all the chances to happen again in 3 years. I'm not American, and while I do follow US politics, I see the signs closer to home in Europe, where all the "idiots" are voting with worrying candidates for the same reason - the "nice" parties are ignoring them and calling them idiots, subhumans, TikTok drones, etc.

There are several reasons. First, developers are threatened by foreign competition and that third feels that Trump would protect them. Second, this presidency represents a change from previous DEI policies and that third may benefit from it. Third, they feel previous administrations were too soft on crime around their neighborhoods, and their tolerance for permissiveness ran out. They want action done to benefit them at any cost.

I'm a black developer and have never had another developer tell me about their support for Trump. The past 10 years have made it plainly obvious why.

It has also made me realize how difficult life was for my parents and grandparents, who were all born before the civil rights act.

The civil rights act passed when Trump was in college so he and the other elderly members of the other branches also saw the lead up to it. Every action I see is to prevent anything like that again. Or to personally enrich themselves.

If you are searching for some insight into human nature and intellect, you may find the history of the Roman Republic (and it's transition to an empire) to have shocking parallels to modern-day events. Trump is remarkably similar to Sulla, who showed the next generation of leaders how to break the rules to gain power. Caesar is coming...

What is wild to me is that all the replies I read are written as if everyone on this forum obviously agreed and those who don't are "others" not worth thinking about.

I'm not a US citizen and did not have to make a choice, but I could see plenty of reasons not to vote for the Democratic candidate: the establishment had tried to run a candidate that was obviously unfit for office and parachuted a replacement at the last minute; the Democratic response to covid was atrocious (yes, the irony of Trump capturing that slice of the vote does not escape me); the issue of males (transwomen) in female sports and prisons...

Whether those reasons outweighed the obvious (to me) negatives is everyone's choice to make when casting their vote... but the inability to understand the other side (and brag about it) seems odd for all the smart people here.

The CCP has been lobbying the World Heritage Evaluation Committee for a long time now to increase its number of sites. This directly promote’s china’s false narrative of “5,000 years continuous civilization” with attached mythos (despite much of the early evidence coming from the mythical Shiji, china simply blackmails academics into silence with source access and mainland collaboration to maintain a monopoly on her historical narrative) and this idea of a “glorious past”, which is also critical for maintaining her “reunification” narrative and justifying current or future control of Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan, Macau, Hong Kong… this extends to baseless and historical claims like state propaganda claiming the Yuan founded beijing to support this totalizing metanarrative “grand arc” type story the chicoms attempt to construct.

Meanwhile 28 of the 196 state parties to the world heritage convention have no sites listed at all. Of course, Taiwan has no sites at all.

It’s well known that many of the UN bodies and similar international orgs have been wholly captured by china or her new axis of evil. Ghebreyesus, for example, has been china’s man from the get-go. American dollars should not go to support a grand red chinese narrative.

UNESCO has, in recent years:

- published an “anti-racism toolkit”

- campaigned to “#ChangeMENtalities”, to “reshape masculinities for gender equality”

- published “comprehensive sexuality education” that is strongly at odds with many Americans views on how such things ought to be taught

- published ai ethics recommendations that focus on issues like “gender” and “climate”

- run partnerships to “get every learner climate-ready”

In other words, it’s operating out of its original scope, doing things that are clearly and massively one-sided. I recognize the NGO-industrial complex, along with much of mass media and culture, has been so wholly captured by the left for long enough that y’all can see a change back to the status quo as disruptive or odd. But the other half of the Overton window does still exist. A lot of what the current administration has done is stupid or wrong, but my tax dollars being sent to this organization would also be stupid and wrong.

These are literally within its remit. It's the "Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation". All of these issues are educational, scientific or cultural. And even so comparing research around gender with the indisputable fact of climate change is a rather twisted way of reasoning.

I didn't say out of its remit, I said outside its original scope. The plain fact is these programs are newer and I don't believe in funding them.

UNESCO was previously a body that did some social justice stuff and a bunch of heritage work. Now it's a body that does a lot of social justice stuff and heritage work hijacked by chinese agitprop. The case for withdrawing previously was decent but these days it's pretty clear.

It is a common categorical error to assume that people good at math or complex electromechanical systems must also be good at ethics, morality, or philosophy.

We see a bodybuilder good at lifting things, or a bricklayer good at building houses, and we don't assume they also have an opinion on nicomachean ethics that should be entertained. Similar, usually, with entertainers. But we sometimes assume that someone really good at structuring database queries for optimal retrieval efficiency must respect the separation of labor from capital value or the challenges of providing for the needs of eight billion people because they are people.

I have to assume it's because we think that if you're good at one "labor of the mind" you must be good at the others (and, probably, because too few of us also have nearly enough respect for how much thought goes into making a wall that won't fall down).

Apparently UNESCO refused to say thank you to Trump.

"UNESCO works to advance divisive social and cultural causes and maintains an outsized focus on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, a globalist, ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy. "

Throwing away our American First globalist capitalist ideological project for... clout?

Woke is the commingling of awareness of social injustices with a rigid ideological framework that suppresses individual thought and redefines moral foundations.

Instead of recognizing injustice, it became an imposition of ideological points that have to be adopted wholesale instead of being evaluated independently.

There are valid positions on issues related to race, gender, sexuality, and other identity categories but the method of promoting these ideas by enforcing group consensus is not valid and is anti-liberal.

Genuine intellectual curiosity is punished with what is basically name-calling. In result, there is a fear that leads people to publicly profess something unthinkingly or that they question only privately. This creates a culture of just parroting consensus views to avoid social penalties.

In a nutshell, it is pressure to conform.

The United States voluntarily gives up yet another piece of soft power.

Coming up next: The United States wonders why it doesn't have allies anymore and why the rest of the world starts working around them.

isn't this more of an example of employing soft power?

Successful soft power requires you have a seat at the table. When you leave and stop participating, you reduce your soft power.

Sure, but if you are the only one holding up (funding) the table then the whole thing falls apart when you leave.

>Sure, but if you are the only one holding up (funding) the table then the whole thing falls apart when you leave.

Since the US accounts for ~13%[0] of UNESCO funding, you're making GP's point for them. the US is giving up its seat at the table and UNESCO retains 87% of its funding.

[0] https://core.unesco.org/en/sources-of-funding

It’s not giving up soft power, it’s gambling with soft power. The outcome Trump hopes for is that UNESCO fires whoever is setting its “woke” policies and comes back cap-in-hand, offering an agenda that is more to his liking. The risk is that UNESCO ignores the US and finds another patron state that wants to buy some influence - and that’s when the US loses.

Hilariously enough, the state that will step in is probably China.

Like, if you wanted to make China look good on the international stage you'd be doing a lot of the stuff the current administration is doing.

It's very sad, tbh. Like the US gov have always been less good than they claimed, but they've just gone full dark side now (and in such an ineffective way, at least economically).

> Coming up next: The United States wonders why it doesn't have allies anymore and why the rest of the world starts working around them.

I doubt this happens. The US keeps bullying other countries and those same countries keep looking up to the US as if it were a big friendly ally.

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This is may be true of many Muslims, though they should probably factor the possibility the current administration despises them as a demographic much more than it despises LGBT people into their decision making. In any case, views on Christian bakers don't seem to be a particularly good reason to endorse the behaviour of Trump or believe that international trade is a pissing contest, or mass incarceration without due process or many other things the current administration is far more interested in than SCOTUS lawsuits, and I don't think many of Trump's voters backed him out of adherence to Islam...

> Islamic people also don't want to bake cakes for the LGBTQ crowd. They're with the Christian baker there.

Please don't make generalizations based on religion or culture. Please also make an effort to follow the guidelines, in particular these ones:

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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Not all supporters of a given political party agree on everything. They may simply align with the party on the topics that are most important to them, even if they disagree with other topics that are lower on their priority list.

It is disingenuous to suggest that any group of people unilaterally agree on a diverse collection of topics.

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We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44647688 and marked it off topic.

Please don't introduce religion-based flamebait like this.

It always amazed me how quickly the UN became a mechanism for corruption. Growing up in the US it's easy to forget political corruption is the norm in most of the world, and the UN is just one of the vehicles.

Corruption in the USA is pretty bad. People here just excuse it away easily.

There are millions of gamers that await to play GTA VI, then you read the news and it looks like the whole word has turned in some silly real life GTA VI already (although, an happy ending is not guaranteed). It's shocking.

The hard truth is that for any deal—or broader cooperation—to succeed, both parties must benefit and perceive the deal as fair. Without mutual benefit, the cooperation underpinning the deal will not be stable.

> The United States Withdraws from UNESCO (state.gov)

Probably, the majority of people in the U.S. feel they are losing from these deals, which is why they are willing to withdraw. It is both the government’s prerogative and duty to manifest that will. As a non-American, I deeply respect that freedom and choice.

In fact, I believe that any administration has a duty to prioritize its own nation first—whether it's called "America First," "Palestinian First," "EU First," "China First," or any other national equivalent. This is a principle that every country should embrace. It's natural for governments to prioritize the interests of their own citizens, as they are funded by taxpayers and must be accountable to them.

And, To be "First", they need beneficial cooperation and compete wisely. Competition, driven by 'ego love,' along with cooperation, fueled by 'world love,' is the righteous way to "Make All Great Again."

These ideas are rooted in ecological and evolutionary principles. While "survival of the fittest" drives competition, it also paradoxically fosters the evolution of cooperation, as even the fittest depend on reciprocal relationships to truly thrive. <The Evolution of Cooperation> is a Book by Robert Axelrod

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