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Netanyahu reportedly met this month with three foreign policy envoys working with former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump — who could yet win the election despite being convicted Thursday on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in his New York state hush money case.

Netanyahu, who benefited immensely from Trump’s first term, is arguably hoping for a similar dividend in the event of a second. In the interim, he has openly rejected the Biden administration’s hopes for the Palestinian Authority to take the lead in the postwar administration of Gaza, and he and his allies have shown no interest in even engaging in the White House on reviving pathways for a Palestinian state. And contrary to the Biden administration’s wishes, Netanyahu may soon act on a Republican invitation to address a joint session of Congress.


It’s not just Netanyahu who is waiting for Trump. The evidence is more clear that Russian President Vladimir Putin is holding out for a Trump victory, which would probably help the Kremlin consolidate its illegal conquests of Ukrainian territory. My colleagues reported last month that Trump and his inner circle have outlined the terms of a potential settlement between Moscow and Kyiv that they would attempt to usher in if in power. “Trump’s proposal consists of pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia, according to people who discussed it with Trump or his advisers and spoke on the condition of anonymity because those conversations were confidential,” they reported.

Such a move would fracture the transatlantic coalition built up in support of Ukraine’s resistance to Russian invasion. It would cement the Republican turn away from Europe’s security at a time when Western resolve around Ukraine is flagging. And it would be yet another sign of Trump’s conspicuous affection the strongman in the Kremlin.

[-] Blackbeard@lemmy.world 28 points 1 day ago

“Separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence counsel against such appearances,” Roberts continued.

Ah, but your sidekicks are free to cozy up with and accept ~~bribes~~ gifts from the very people trying to dismantle our democracy and who have business currently before the court. Very sane, very cool.

[-] Blackbeard@lemmy.world 23 points 1 day ago

It was enabled with funding from the 2022 IRA, then developed in 2023, and then rolled out as a pilot program in 2024. Now that they know the pilot went well through the deadline for tax filing, they're green lighting it for 2025. I'm not sure it could have happened any quicker, unfortunately.

[-] Blackbeard@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

But it does matter. It matters very much that they're voting and behaving based on things that are not actually real. It matters that Biden's telling the truth, and evidence supports him. Does it mean his message is going to resonate with voters? Probably not. But it goes to the heart of our current predicament to observe that the world that exists in people's heads doesn't resemble the one they actually live in. We are in a self-fulfilling doom loop.

If we grant that crime is down but that Biden should act like it isn't down because people think it's up, then we're venturing off into a very dark wilderness where nothing is true and facts no longer matter. That's a world where people like Trump thrive.

[-] Blackbeard@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago

Same exact thing is happening with the economy:

The vast majority of those surveyed — 68% — said it was becoming harder for the average person to get ahead, while nearly half of respondents said their own finances were moving in the right direction.

We are cripplingly addicted to myopic sensationalism, and the death of local news means that as information consumers we're increasingly hypnotized by national news corporations who have no roots or stake in local communities and who thrive on rage bait. Put simply, there's no localized and tempered source of information that can balance out the neverending national panic.

[-] Blackbeard@lemmy.world 39 points 2 days ago

The Trump administration imposed sanctions on the ICC’s former prosecutor, including revoking visas and blocking property access, for investigating alleged war crimes by American troops in Afghanistan and Israelis in Palestinian territories. The U.S. lifted those penalties in 2021, with Blinken calling them “inappropriate and ineffective” at the time.

Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas) earlier this month introduced a bill to sanction the ICC — which targets individuals accused of war crimes, genocide and other international law violations — for investigating and prosecuting U.S. citizens and American allies, including Israel. Calls to pass that measure, or something like it, grew following the court’s announcement, even though the U.S. is not a member of court.

They're telegraphing that they will declare war on the ICC (again) and dismantle whatever's left of international guardrails if Trump wins, much to Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir's delight. One can only imagine the shitshow to follow.

[-] Blackbeard@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

That's more or less what the article said.

[-] Blackbeard@lemmy.world 32 points 3 days ago

Straight from the article:

It’s plausible that Biden’s support for Israel’s obliteration of Gaza would be especially outrageous to young and/or nonwhite Americans, who are exceptionally likely to sympathize with Palestine. And the president’s foreign policy has surely alienated some Black, Hispanic, and Arab-American voters under 30. Yet the young and nonwhite voters who’ve been turning on Biden overwhelmingly identify as moderate or conservative, and are presently supporting Trump or RFK Jr., both of whom are even more ardently pro-Israel than the president. Further, a recent poll of 2,000 voters under 30 from the Harvard Institute of Politics found that only 2 percent considered the war in Gaza their top priority. It therefore seems doubtful that Biden’s complicity in Gaza's devastation fully explains his problem with these traditionally Democratic constituencies.

[-] Blackbeard@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

It was buried in half a dozen downvotes before a single comment was posted.

[-] Blackbeard@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

Self fulfilling prophecy… i do want to downvote this childish crap. It adds nothing and makes you seem unserious.

I don't care. I gave it enough hours to figure out whether anyone would really give it the time of day. It was buried in half a dozen downvotes before a single comment was posted. Whether or not you like my tone is flatly irrelevant, so keep piling on.

[-] Blackbeard@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Never thought I'd see the day when this would become a satire about the left...

[-] Blackbeard@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Copying this relevant text because it's clear lemmings are going to bury this in knee-jerk downvotes because "muh fee-fees", despite the fact that if they bothered to read past the headline they'd find it actually supports a lot of what they're saying:

Democrats might consider the possibility that keeping younger voters on their side has less to do with the pet issues of activist groups that purport to speak in these voters’ name and more to do with the issues that loom large in these voters’ everyday lives: inflation, health care and housing. These issues, shared with the broader electorate, are the material substrate of the world these generations will inhabit for better or worse. Would a Biden second term address these issues? If so, how? Right now, younger voters are not convinced that another four years would deliver what they want.

And Democrats would also be wise to consider the experience of European countries where right-leaning populist parties have lately been doing especially well among younger voters. Far from repelling these voters, many find the antiestablishment and elite-bashing politics of these new parties attractive, channeling their dissatisfaction with the recent past, the status quo and “politics as usual.”

Edit - For anybody still reading this, if you want to see something really wild, check this:

Go to /r/politics, sort by controversial.

Take a gander at all the leftists complaining that they're burying anti-Biden stories in downvotes.

Then come back here and take a look at how those same leftists respond to posts like this.

Then really try to process the implications of that dichotomy.

Everyone wants an echo chamber.

Literally everyone.

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None of this is to claim that younger voters in general are not more to the left on most issues than their older counterparts. They are. But there is a difference between being more progressive than other voters — and progressive as a blanket characterization. As this data clearly shows, that characterization is not accurate and might explain how these voters could become politically untethered from their relative liberalism as they are pressed by economic trends and the swirl of current events.

Will young voters’ liberal but nuanced views on issues lead them to stick with the Democrats, as they have during the past few cycles? Or will they start to break from the party this year and embrace alternatives?

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submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by Blackbeard@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

Essentially, today’s 213-member Democratic caucus breaks down into a few categories, the largest of which are traditionally liberal lawmakers who come from cities or inner suburbs and are comfortable with incremental victories in helping the working class. There are dozens of moderates who are more friendly toward business but believe in socially liberal values.

And there are dozens of far-left liberals, hailing from the progressive caucus or the small-knit “Squad,” who have clashed with leaders for not pushing for a more purely liberal agenda. This group has been on the rise over the past half decade, both at the ballot box and inside the caucus.

But now, at this stage of the primary calendar, this wing is facing tough political headwinds.

[-] Blackbeard@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

The world you guys live in must be a really wild place.

192

If you are keeping score at home, you have surely noticed that the two most important defense officials in Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet — Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the former military chief of staff Benny Gantz — warned last week that Netanyahu is leading Israel into a disastrous abyss by refusing to present any plan for non-Hamas Palestinians to govern Gaza and appears to be contemplating a long-term Israeli military occupation of Gaza instead. Gantz said he would leave the government if there was no plan by June 8.

===

“Netanyahu’s acquiescence to the extreme right, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, has generally been seen as motivated out of his need to keep his coalition together and himself out of jail,” Friedman told me. “Now it seems that he has willingly sold his soul to the extreme right. One explanation is that the extreme religious right projects a Messianic image onto him that corresponds with his own sense of having been called to save Israel and the Jewish people. He has a plan for the day after and it’s very clear to anyone who listens: ‘Total victory’ — and eventually the return of Jewish settlement there. Israel is on the way to reoccupying Gaza.”

If that happens, Israel will become an international pariah and Jewish institutions everywhere will be torn between Jews who will feel the need to defend Israel — right or wrong — and those who, with their kids, will find it indefensible.

109

We care about freedom from hunger, unemployment and poverty — and, as FDR emphasized, freedom from fear. People with just enough to get by don’t have freedom — they do what they must to survive. And we need to focus on giving more people the freedom to live up to their potential, to flourish and to be creative. An agenda that would increase the number of children growing up in poverty or parents worrying about how they are going to pay for health care — necessary for the most basic freedom, the freedom to live — is not a freedom agenda.

Champions of the neoliberal order, moreover, too often fail to recognize that one person’s freedom is another’s unfreedom — or, as Isaiah Berlin put it, freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep. Freedom to carry a gun may mean death to those who are gunned down in the mass killings that have become an almost daily occurrence in the United States. Freedom not to be vaccinated or wear masks may mean others lose the freedom to live.

There are trade-offs, and trade-offs are the bread and butter of economics. The climate crisis shows that we have not gone far enough in regulating pollution; giving more freedom to corporations to pollute reduces the freedom of the rest of us to live a healthy life — and in the case of those with asthma, even the freedom to live. Freeing bankers from what they claimed to be excessively burdensome regulations put the rest of us at risk of a downturn potentially as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s when the banking system imploded in 2008.

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submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by Blackbeard@lemmy.world to c/support@lemmy.world

Mod has been inactive for months, and I'd like to take it over and help it generate more traffic. They have dozens of other communities they gobbled up during the API protests which have also been abandoned, just fyi.

Also forgot to add, I messaged them a few weeks ago about joining the team to revive the community, and haven't received a response.

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submitted 10 months ago by Blackbeard@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
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I can see that there are posts that have been made to my community, but when I go straight to the community they are not visible to me. I have "Show Read Posts" toggled on, my language selection is "Undetermined", the community's language selection is "Undetermined". What am I doing wrong? Is this a bug, or is there a selection I'm missing?

Also, can someone explain what "Warning: If you deselect Undetermined, you will not see most content." means and why it's necessary?

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Noob mod here. Zero experience with the fediverse, so go easy on me.

This post: https://lemmy.world/post/421577

Doesn't show up on https://lemmy.world/c/collegebasketball when I visit the community.

Why can't I see it? Am I just missing something incredibly obvious, do I have a setting wrong, or is there something I need to do to approve the post so it's visible within the community? Or is it visible to you and I'm just an idiot?

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submitted 11 months ago by Blackbeard@lemmy.world to c/fishing@lemmy.world
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Blackbeard

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