The youngest age of consent in the US is currently 16, unrestricted, but 14 if you’re within a few years of the 14-year-old.

I didn’t know the majority of the US age of consent was 16, I thought that was a European thing.

but only 12 states have the age of consent at 18.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent_in_the_United_States

from 15, apparently

oh right. goodbye, biden’s billionaire tax.

as with their scientific paper mills, China produces quantity, not quality.

https://www.ft.com/content/32440f74-7804-4637-a662-6cdc8f3fba86

"The exclusion of anyone who doesn’t unilaterally condemn Israel is an inversion of morality and an obfuscation of reality.”

their solution is for everybody to unilaterally accept Israel as the picture of morality despite concluding the genocide and colonization of Palestine.

you are in company.

“and the list goes on…”

yeah, The US backs down.

they backed down in Vietnam, they backed down in iran, somalia, they backed down investigating the Saudi Arabian terrorists in 9/11(which is almost all of them), and the list goes on.

the US is not often gracious about backing down or wise enough to back down prudently, but they do back down.

“The court imposed a fine of 100 thousand rubles ($1,025) per day, with the total fine doubling every week. Owing to compound interest…”

it’ll add up to a hell of a lot of justified reparations when the US backs down.

are you serious? and I don’t mean that as an insult, I’m actually unsure if you are serious.

a total collapse of Cuba is the whole reason the US has been blockading them for half a century.

infrastructure collapse is happening specifically because the US won’t allow Cuba to make infrastructure deals and technology deals with other countries without facing explicit and implicit sanctions and severe material limits.

desperate poverty is exactly what the US government has been working towards inflicting on Cuba for decades.

quebec?

https://www.showmeonething.com/p/quebec-bans-name-change

“I don’t think you can defend inaction regarding genocide”

have you stopped paying taxes that are funding Israel?

what is your defense regarding your inaction by rejecting your complicit funding of genocide?

“…within months by historians and other civilians, without a doubt that what was happening was genocide”

close, what happened was people started paying attention because the executions and bombings were happening more frequently than usual.

anyone who was aware of and understood the history of Israel’s colonization of Palestine for the past 50 years and they’re complete Power disparity agrees it was and is “without a doubt” a genocide years before 2023.

it’s just that most people only recently started paying attention.

“they knew very well.”

Yes, this is what I said. it invalidates your next few assumptions:

“I think the conclusion should be that the relevant parts of US gov are either weak and careless, either exceptionally naive and old, or! there is something malicious that has been happening”

these are the simplest and most comfortable conclusions for someone unversed in politics to imagine.

blame it on simple, fundamental tragic and all-encompassing character flaws that you importantly don’t imagine apply to yourself, storybook infirmities that simply need to be remedied and then all of history and politics can be swept aside for a beautiful future, in which every world leader clasps the hands of every other.

something that you can point out and say “well that isn’t me, that isn’t a problem that we’ve all contributed to, this is the out of touch portions of my government”

but this isn’t a unique situation, this isn’t the only genocide currently happening, genocides don’t occur are allowed to continue because of carelessness.

this is another terrible situation among countless others, all of which are important and complex, that is not happening because the US government has some fundamental climactic “weak”, “careless”, “old” or “naive” flaw.

not least importantly because the US government does not have the power. you imagine it to have over other sovereign Nations.

as for your hopeful reasonings:

If they were careless, they would have believed the initial assessment and fabrications of Israel, sent US soldiers in and destroyed the rest of Palestine.

If they were weak or naive, they would have buckled under the first campus protest and stopped providing all aid to Israel.

if they were old… well, the government official you are likely most familiar with is old, but experience is not something to be discarded or sneered at.

these are fanciful single remedies that are irrelevant to the the complicated historical reality currently unfolding.

“there is something malicious that has been happening”

yes…Israel is concluding a genocide.

nefarious? not anymore so than it has been for the past 50 years.

Israel’s military superiority and support of US interests is valuable. despite their most recent actions, it is still valuable.

that assessment is not made carelessly or naively, and support for and departures from normal US policy regarding Israel and Palestine are not being made by weak people.

“throwing away all ideas of discussion”

you sure scribble down a lot of ideas for someone throwing away all ideas of discussion.

“you sure like to ad-hominem the other commenter”

their comments and ideas, not the “commenter”.

I don’t fault people for their ability or level of reasoning, but I do fault their presentation of unconsidered whimsical invective, baseless personal attacks and lack of respect for context, sources, facts and discussion.

particularly if they forget or ignore what the point they are supposedly responding to is, or respond to facts with demonstrably false assumptions or attacks they don’t bother to even briefly support with evidence or logic.

I agree that I could be more gracious in the likely event that their inconsiderate attacks or ignorance or disregard of the facts can be tied directly to their fundamental personal abilities.

I have been thinking about this recently.

"Name one single action they’re taken…’

“never actually sanctioned anyone.”

action:

https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-administration-sued-over-sanctions-israeli-settlers-2024-08-07/

The Biden administration is getting sued over all of their sanctions,

Just Google the things I write, you will find sources for them.

action:

publicly declared that the US won’t support an indefinite war.

action: met with netanyahu’s political ally after Netanyahu refused to de-escalate

action: cut down the weapons shipments they already agreed to send.

action: Biden is actively calling for a two-state solution

action: Biden has called for a halt to Israeli colonization of Palestinian land(that’s why those sanctions you didn’t r know about happened).

you may not value diplomatic actions, but diplomacy is important, and is what the US is going to try first with one of their oldest active mutual defense allies in the world.

The naive belief that US presidents have a switch in their office that lets them turn the actions of other countries on and off is inaccurate in the extreme.

there are dozens of countries financially and materally supporting Israel.

If the US stops supporting Israel, they

1. lose one of their most valuable allies in a part of the world very hostile toward the US.

2. have zero impact on the capability of Israel to continue waging the genocide. Israel has enough weapons and support to continue this as long as they want to.

3. push Netanyahu even further away; Netanyahu is under no obligation, as the leader of a sovereign nation, to follow the dictates of other countries.

should the US do more?

yes.

are they doing anything?

Yes, they are repeatedly trying various diplomatic and material actions and censures with which to deescalate the concluding chapter of an invasion that nearly the entire world has supported for 50 years that finally you are aware of and justifiably angry about while maintaining an ally that is crucial to US interests and national security.

The measures taken by the US against Israel are ramping up, and have consistently been ramping up for a year.

too slowly for many people’s taste, especially if they don’t understand how international diplomacy functions, but the spectators’ political blind spot doesn’t mean nothing is happening on the world stage.

Removed by mod

“an armchair know-it-all here”

…is that it?

thanks!

I don’t know it all, but I agree that my analysis of the situation was succinct and accurate.

tldr: the US is still supporting Israel is because Israel has historically been extremely beneficial to US interests.

full:

The reason is that Israel has been a steadfast ally in advancing and defending us interests for half a century, and there is no one else in the Middle East who could play that role half as effectively or reliably.

there was zero chance of the US immediately cutting off aid after 50 years of aid, especially while dozens of other countries have also been providing aid and are still providing aid to Israel.

that was never an option and should not have been an expectation from the public, who only has that expectation because most people have only recently learned about the Palestinian invasion by Israel that’s been happening for over half a century.

One year is not much time internationally or diplomatically. it’s not much time for intelligence agencies to determine what is happening, especially in the fog of war, and it isn’t much time for effects of actions to be seen, no matter what actions are taken.

in israel, The US has an attack dog to deal with US enemies in the Middle East, and now the attack dog has broken its leash and isn’t responding to commands. Netanyahu is aging, centralized power, and is acting literally insane.

while I have been loyal, this completely separate nation has saliently chosen to have been loyal, although they were and are under no obligation to be loyal to the demands of the United States, as is now being seen.

it’s only been one year, and regardless of what you hear, diplomatically the US is continually trying different tactics to stem the violent efforts of a nation with plenty of resources that has no obligation to listen to the US other than continued financial support, that it has plenty of already and has many other sources of aid.

this is one of the most ignorant comments I’ve ever read.

you think that the US is under Israel’s thumb?

you fundamentally misunderstand international power dynamics.

“All that the Biden Administration had to do was cease giving weapon!”

this would do nothing. Israel is supported by dozens of countries and has a huge stockpile from having been supported financially and materially for half a century.

The US can influence Netanyahu and Israel, but this is a crime that has been perpetuated for 50 years that is still going on, recently ramped up to a concluding chapter, and the US does not control the idf or Netanyahu.

that is a separate nation with ample resources that is making this decision to continue the genocide.

and no, the Biden administration hasn’t moved “backward” with regard to israeli support, from full support they moved to warnings, after warnings they moved to sanctions, then Biden publicly stated that the US won’t continue to support Netanyahu in an indefinite war and met with his political adversary, now they’re threatening to cut weapon shipments if Israel continues bombing civilians and they’re calling for ceasefires.

they’re moving way too slowly, but they aren’t moving backwards.

"On Saturday an “anomaly” caused it to unexpectedly break apart, a statement from Intelsat said, bringing a halt to communications.

The Intelsat IS-33e satellite’s approximately 20 pieces of debris from the craft now in orbit is being tracked by the U.S. Space Force."

they don’t know and they’re trying to find out what happened

I bet a few of them are.

despite the fuckery, many policy decisions are changed by people calling in and emailing in and telling the elected officials that people are watching them and disagree with what they are doing.

public opinion does make a difference, so on a personal level that’s what we can do.