Serious The Politics Thread

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Cancel cult said:
There really needs to be a law making sure political ads don't just straight up lie.
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In the UK, we having a similar uphill battle with almost exclusively the far right of Nigel Farage and Richard Tice lying at every turn at the minute. We have standards for news broadcasters (OFCOM) and they have acted on GB News recently, for example.

There have been multiple petitions lobbying to make it law that politicians are not allowed to lie or mislead. Wales is looking like the first part of the United Kingdom to actually implement a law to that effect.
 
Cancel cult said:
Anyways, every day the Republican political ads get worse. There was one that said you shouldn't vote for a candidate because they support peaceful protests, and there are so many ones that are explicitly transphobic, like not just thinly veiled, but like directly calling trans women not just biological men, but men period. But then, there is this one, that takes the cake.
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The transphobia's not surprising in the slightest. It's been apparent for a while that a major part of their campaign strategy for 2024 was going to be using trans people to try to drive a wedge between Democrat voters. It's not like they were evasive about their transphobia in recent years.
 
ant4456 said:
Jill Stein is an irrelevant person who absolutely is not going to get anything more than a few thousand votes at most nationwide. The fact that Kamala's campaign could even consider her worth enough time to commit an ad for shows complete misunderstanding that when Leftists get annoyed with her, it isn't leading them to vote for other people, it's creating voter apathy and making people not want to vote at all.

This is why I always say that the way Kamala wins is by being hype and making people want to vote in general. Gen Z is now mostly at voting age and Gen Z is more progressive (as usual with most new generations), and it's been proven like several elections in a row that Gen Z is a voting block you can absolutely get to the booth. If you make them want to. Increase the number of voters in the election, not try to court voters from Trump.

I personally know people who got hyped to vote in 2020 because Biden promised college debt relief, and did in fact vote.
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Jill Stein pulled enough votes in 2016 to flip swing states. 3rd party votes are apathy. They show discontent with the incumbent. Notice how RFK’s support fell off a cliff once Biden dropped out.

People in 2020 voted Biden because the felon was such a terrible president. Optimistic voting sounds good but doesn’t unify or move voters as much as negative partisanship does.
 
Al Jazeera, which has basically been under constant attack from Israel for its reporting of the genocide in Gaza, has today released the full list of names of Palestinians killed in Gaza between October 7th 2023 and August 31st 2024.

They are listed in age order.

It starts at year 0 (under one years old).

They are organised by pages.

You have to get to page 36 of the database and the 711th dead child aged 0 to get to to the next group, which is children aged 1. Here’s the full breakdown by age range.

  • 710 babies below the age of one
  • 1,793 toddlers (1-3 years old)
  • 1,205 preschoolers (4-5 years old)
  • 4,205 primary school children (6-12 years old)
  • 3,442 high school children (13-17 years old)
  • 5,374 young adults (18-25 years old)
  • 13,837 adults (26-55 years old)
  • 3,077 Naksa survivors (56-74 years old)
  • 701 Nakba survivors (75+ years old)
The oldest recorded victim so far was 101-year-old Ahmed Mohamed Ibrahim al-Tahrawi.
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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/long...an-families-killed-in-israeli-attacks-on-gaza

If this doesn’t convince some of you that what is ongoing is a genocide, nothing will. I have had to put the iPad down and weep for ten minutes after looking at the list.

Where has our collective humanity gone?
 
We appear, finally, to have some movement from the United States on this genocide:

US tells Israel to improve Gaza’s humanitarian situation or risk legal action: Report​


US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have told Israel it must take steps in the next month to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza to avoid legal action involving US military aid, according to news reports and sources.

“We are writing now to underscore the US government’s deep concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, and seek urgent and sustained actions by your government this month to reverse this trajectory,” they wrote in an October 13 letter to their Israeli counterparts, posted by an Axios reporter on X on Tuesday.

A reporter for Israeli News 12 first reported the contents of the letter on X.

Two sources familiar with the matter confirmed the letter’s veracity to Reuters news agency.

The US Department of State and Pentagon did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment on the letter. Representatives for Israel’s government also could not be immediately reached for comment.
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https://aje.io/3m5h0w?update=3249652

Look, it’s to be answered in 30 days, which is too long, and it doesn’t go far enough - but I think we are now approaching the point where Israel is damaging so many of of the USA’s relationships around the world, that with no aid having got into North Gaza for two weeks, people are literally at breaking point here, there, and everywhere but Israel.

This genocide must be stopped.
 
S.A.C. Martin said:
We appear, finally, to have some movement from the United States on this genocide:



https://aje.io/3m5h0w?update=3249652

Look, it’s to be answered in 30 days, which is too long, and it doesn’t go far enough - but I think we are now approaching the point where Israel is damaging so many of of the USA’s relationships around the world, that with no aid having got into North Gaza for two weeks, people are literally at breaking point here, there, and everywhere but Israel.

This genocide must be stopped.
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I have my doubts that they'll follow through on this if Israel doesn't comply, but I suppose it's better than endorsement through silence.
 
This is why it is important to keep talking about this. Raise awareness, get people talking, get people reading, educate, share and educate again.

This is why it is important to talk to your representatives, to boycott (when and if you are allowed to - unlike the UK, which didn’t pass its boycott bill, I am aware some states have an anti-BDS law) and to take a stand publicly on marches, demonstrations, and more, if you can.

Every little bit of additional pressure the western world can muster to change the stance of its governments IS going to help.
 
Isa said:
i dont think its a coincidence that 30 days is after the election. this reads to me like it is designed to silence critics in the leadup to the election without actually doing anything.
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And you’re likely right, but it is also an indication that they are worried they will lose if they don’t do at least something. That position doesn’t come out of nowhere, it’s because enough people are angry and making their views (and voting choices) clear.
 
S.A.C. Martin said:
We appear, finally, to have some movement from the United States on this genocide:



https://aje.io/3m5h0w?update=3249652

Look, it’s to be answered in 30 days, which is too long, and it doesn’t go far enough - but I think we are now approaching the point where Israel is damaging so many of of the USA’s relationships around the world, that with no aid having got into North Gaza for two weeks, people are literally at breaking point here, there, and everywhere but Israel.

This genocide must be stopped.
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i wonder how many palestinians will stop being elligible to receive aid within the next 30 days... you know, because they died in a genocide.
 
CaffeineBoost said:
i wonder how many palestinians will stop being elligible to receive aid within the next 30 days... you know, because they died in a genocide.
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Yep. It is a dismal and heartbreaking state of affairs.

EDIT:

Germany, my god. Read the room.

Italy, France, now calling for an arms embargo. UK, France and Algeria organising an urgent meeting of the UNSC to discuss humanitarian aid in Palestine.

Olaf Scholz:

‘There will always be deliveries’: Germany assures Israel of arms supplies​


German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has promised Israel further arms deliveries for its ongoing military offensives in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

“There are deliveries and there will always be further deliveries. Israel can rely on that,” Scholz said in remarks to parliament. The chancellor said Germany must keep Israel “in a position to defend its country”.

“Israel can rely on our solidarity – now and in the future,” he added.
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https://aje.io/kyqjgw?update=3251344

I don't know why I still get surprised that an old white man can be so unutterably wrong in so many different ways, but with all of the footage, all of the evidence, Germany still picks the side of genocide rather than doing what some Western colleagues are realising - Israel is going for the throat of the Palestinians and starving them to death.

Stop supporting genocide, Germany. For all our sakes.
 
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BigFatMantis said:
Why did Harris agree to do an interview with Fox News 3 weeks before the election? Does anyone think this was a good idea?
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I can only imagine that some yo-yo among her campaign advisors thought it would be a good idea as part of her abrupt pivot to the same "reach across the isle" nonsense we got from Biden. Of course, anybody not currently doing their best impression of an ostrich with its head in the sand could have told her that it was a terrible idea, that Fox News was just going to use it do regular Fox News things.
 
Why shouldn't she? I've only seen positive feedback on how the interview went, not that I watched it. Either way, Fox is still the most watched source of news on TV (ugh, but yes really it still is) and the network is saying 7.1M people watched it.

Let's assume the interview is self contained to only the 7.1M who watched it all, not others who catch it later or get clips of it etc. If she persuaded 0.5% of the people who watched it to vote for her rather than Trump that's a swing of 70,000 votes. If she convinced 0.5% of people to vote for her rather than writing in DeSantis or whatever, that's a swing of 35,000 votes. Pennsylvania is something like 4% of the national population, Georgia, Michigan, and North Carolina are all something like 3%. Multiply that all out and you see that even a small amount of persuasion could pick up a few thousand votes in each of those key states. The closest states are typically decided by ~10k votes, not 2-3k votes, but I mean, 2000 Florida exists and there have been plenty of other close statewide elections before decided by less than a few thousand voters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974–75_United_States_Senate_elections_in_New_Hampshire - famously, if a long time ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_Senate_election_in_Minnesota
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Arizona_Attorney_General_election

I'm sure there's been others in recent history I'm not aware of but those were the two big ones I recall.

At a congressional district level or smaller there are plenty of other much closer elections and Harris can have down ballot effects. This recent one was astonishingly close:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa's_2nd_congressional_district#2020_election

Doing stuff on the margins still matters. Being everywhere is a good thing. She went on Fox, but she also went on Call Her Daddy, Howard Stern, 60 Minutes, etc.

On the flip side, is doing an interview with Fox likely to lose her any voters? I definitely don't think so. I get not doing a debate, absolutely. But an interview? Surely that's fine from a political perspective.
 

Being British isn't much better than being American, and I have reservations about David Lammy - always - but my god, I’d be so embarassed to have Matthew Miller representing me. Appalling actions, doublespeak and lies.
 
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