The US will begin air dropping food aid to the people of Gaza, President Joe Biden announced on Friday, as the humanitarian crisis deepens and Israel continues to resist opening additional land crossings to allow more assistance into the war-torn strip.
Speaking in the Oval Office, Biden said the US would be “pulling out every stop” to get additional aid into Gaza, which has been under heavy bombardment by Israel since the October 7 Hamas terror attacks.
“Aid flowing to Gaza is nowhere nearly enough,” the US President said, noting “hundreds of trucks” should be entering the enclave.
Biden said the US is “going to insist that Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to get more and more people the help they need, no excuses”.
He also noted the efforts to broker a deal to free the hostages and secure an “immediate ceasefire” that would allow additional aid in.
Everyone’s in here giving Biden shit like not voting for him and letting Trump win will make things better for anyone.
You know that you can vote for someone AND be critical of their future, past and/or present decisions right?
You’re right, but there are a lot of people (that I’ve seen, at least) who are willing to abstain from voting over Biden’s handling of this.
Then that is their democratic choice. And it’s Bidens loss for not listening to his voters.
Don’t blame the voters for using their votes
We’re not. We’re blaming them for being fucking idiots who will vote in a literal dictator because they’re mad at Biden. Someone who will do far more damage to and destroy hundreds of millions of lives in the US and the rest of the world.
30,000 deaths in another country is nothing compared to US deaths little orange is responsible for when you only consider his one choice to fuck over pandemic response at the beginning of the pandemic. Dude has the deaths of millions on his hands already.
Anyone, any human being alive, that would vote for him is a fucking idiot that needs to give their head a bashing
I love that you used the phrase democratic choice to describe it too. A+
America’s path to fascism doesn’t begin and end with Trump. Forcing people to vote for someone they do not morally support is fascist. The last time he was president the world didn’t end. Millions of peoples lives in the United States are already horrible and the US regardless of who is president , democrat or republican, murder people all over the world. This narrow minded take of how the world works is part of the problem not the people abstaining from voting for Biden.
Okay, sure, but voting on a single issue is what fucking morons do.
And children without a lot of life experiences to understand. Imagine coming of age in the last decade. This is their “normal”. Its awful and terrifying… exactly what all the people working to divide and and destroy democracy around the world have been working for.
As much as I’m angry at their ignorance, it’s also really fucking sad.
No. It is not, this is a scary and extremist perspective and I’m sorry you feel like that. The media in America and the propagandist dismantling democracy have done so much damage.
So many bots, so many promoters of disjunction. It’s overwhelming.
You’re being asked to make a choice between eating a gross vegetable and a the barrel of a shotgun and you’re arguing for the shotgun.
First you say “were not” and then in the next sentence you say “we do”. Good one.
Best part about a democracy is that everyone gets to vote.
Worst part is that everyone gets to vote.
This is how it works. Just because you’re afraid of being on the losing side doesn’t mean anything has changed.
And before you start yapping on. I’m not American. We don’t work on a 2 party system. I’m just saying what everyone else can see looking in.
You can’t support democracy ONLY when your side gets what they want.
People who are able to vote and specifically choose not to should absolutely be blamed. Voting third party is perfectly reasonable, but you have no right to complain about the state of politics and deserve to be ridiculed if you make the conscious decision not to vote even though you are fully able to.
It’s the unalienable right of every US citizen to say whatever dumbass shit they want. I’m still gonna call them a dumbass for saying dumbass shit though.
It’s the trolley problem. It is much more difficult for people to be an active part of genocide by voting for Biden than simply not voting and allowing a worse outcome to happen if Trump becomes president…
Seems like they missed the lesson of the trolley problem, then.
Perhaps we should work to make sure no one is on the tracks instead of pulling the lever?
We should do whatever we can to keep people off of the tracks in the future. But that’s not mutually exclusive with pulling the lever right now, since the trolley is already heading towards people.
It’s an easy decision to make if you aren’t the one tied to the tracks. Palestinian Americans are losing their families and flipping that lever will neither bring them back nor make the situation better. Not only that, but flipping the lever without any real change of action from the DNC just means they can just trust their base to overlook genocide again and again in perpetuity as long as republicans remain the worse choice (which will be always).
Maybe read up on what the trolley problem (together with its variations) is about then.
I’m not abstaining. I’m voting for Jill Stein.
Jill’s currently polling at 5%. If the Green Party could get 5%, we’d qualify for millions of dollars in federal grant money, which would go a long way towards helping us fight the corrupt two-party system.
Exactly, I demand better of him and I will probably vote for him. I really wonder though how someone that’s a Muslim or Palestinian can stomach voting for him. His policies around Israel are pretty much identical to what Trump would do which is a big deal for a lot of people. He’s basically saying “Forget that I let Israel murder and starve to death your loved ones, I’ve been pretty good when it comes to monopolies right?!?”.
I’ll vote for him because he’s the better of two options, however, he has blood on his hands and that may just lose him a second term.
yes i do
Tell that to the terminally online edgelord jimmy Dore “left” crowd
There’s a time and place to be critical of dumbass politicians taking half-measures on important issues, but doing it now is potentially undermining the election in favor of fascist criminals.
Seems like Biden should listen to his constituents if he wants to win re-election.
honestly doesn’t it seem like this change of direction is him listening? Even weeks ago I would have never thought I would have heard the words ceasefire out of his mouth.
to me this seems like a direct response of the message people sent to him with the Michigan primary and I am happy to see it.
doesn’t mean I’m happy with what he’s done so far or even that he has not immediately taken direct action but this is a pivot and failing to acknowledge it weakens protest actions like this in the future.
If you read the article, he still wants the hostages released as a pre condition to any ceasefire. His position there hasn’t actually changed.
maybe I am missing something that I don’t see why that is an objectionable position? like obviously the ceasefire needs to happen immediately but what is wrong with hostage release as part of it?
not that long ago politicians were doing anything they could to avoid the word ceasefire and now they’re actively calling for it I’m really not thinking that this is an unchanged position but I am willing to listen if I have some drastic misunderstanding.
Because the hostages aren’t why we need the ceasefire. We need it to deliver aid. Also it’s an Israeli pre-condition. So what the white house is doing is putting the one big thing Israel wants and telling Hamas they’ll get a temporary peace out of it. Hamas has no reason to take that deal. Israel would similarly tell the white house to pound sand if they showed up in Tel Aviv to say Hamas has a deal that just requires the removal of all IDF troops from Palestinian territory.
thank you for the explanation that is a lot more understandable now.
hostages being released in order to stop the violence is what I was thinking.
but you’re saying it’s more like losing leverage in order to temporarily pause the violence.
they would have nothing left to bargain with and would just have to hope the world actually cares enough to step in.
I can definitely see why they wouldn’t want to do that
I mean, wouldn’t it be a good thing if hostages were released? Also, surely getting a ceasefire like this is one of the reasons Hamas took hostages, right?
In a vacuum, yes. But we aren’t in a vacuum and Hamas needs something more than a shaky ceasefire to release all of the hostages. Israel isn’t agreeing to a ceasefire unless every hostage is released. At that point Hamas loses all leverage.
It’s also an incredibly partisan move by a mediator who says their main concern is getting aid into the area. You need cooperation for that and you don’t get cooperation by backing the demands of just one side.
Yeah, this keeping voters accountable to politicians nonsense needs to end. Make it the other way around or GTFO.
Trump is a really dark post-political blank slate for maniacs to project their frustrated base instincts and worst fantasies on. That’s not a unique thing, seemingly all European democracies have some populist equivalent. Those laying claim to leadership over opposing these forces need to do fucking better.
At this point it’s a hard chicken and the egg proposition to say what came first:
– the frustrations of large swaths of populations through centrist politics sucking up to a nimbyist “middle class” that always favor tax breaks and benefits for car driving homeowners over public investments in anything/anyone else or
– the calls for those frustrated to either vote centrist or have fascism imposed on them.
I’m not American and do in fact think it is important that Biden wins (if even just to avoid destabilizing the world’s largest military power in a time of global tensions). And as such I have no other choice but to encourage Americans to vote for him, regardless of conviction. But it’s galling to hear or read – whether in the context of the Biden, Macron or any similar choice between a turd sandwich or fascism – that people should shut up and be happy and enthused about it.
I’m not happy about it, but it’s the reality of the situation. We’re sliding towards fascism as our rights are being eroded away. The government ignores our protests and no one will take up arms against the ruling class. This is how it is.
For sure! Where I live the last election was between a neo-liberal coalition or a neo-liberal coalition fueled by fascism. Both options were a vote for an erosion of civil liberties, under the banner of combating a mix of real gang violence and made up evils of evil, but one of the factions also offered the catharsis of blaming everything wrong on immigrants. Not that the not non-fascist faction has been slow to underwrite the fascist narrative, whenever that’s appeared beneficial to public support. The “lesser evil” lost the election, and at no point have they stopped to consider that the “evil” part of their strategy was a part of it, they think it was a failure in selling themselves as superior administrators of the same policies the current government is championing.
When the options are that or try to capitulate to fascists to gain favor, this should be a super easy choice.
Oh, but wait…he’s a Catholic, and Democrats are Zionists.
We are super screwed
It sounds like he’s starting to. He’s gone from full-throated support to silent complicity to actually calling Israel out. I hope he can do more.
And they are never satisfied.
“Biden must demand an immediate ceasefire!”
Biden: I demand an immediate ceasefire!
“Biden isn’t doing enough!”
Ok, read what actually was said then come back.
The headline is misleading. Biden simply said “I hope a ceasefire happens one day”. Which is a FAR cry from “demanding a ceasefire now”. He isn’t doing enough because he hasn’t been saying things like “We are planning on withdrawing aid from Israel if they keep up this offensive”. Instead it’s “Well golly gee I hope Hamas returns all the hostages for a 2 week ceasefire and no troop withdrawals by Israel.”
But hey, at least he’s decided that he can say the word “ceasefire” Up until maybe a couple of weeks ago that was a forbidden word by the administration.
When Biden ran in 2020, this was the argument I heard from Biden supporters: sure, Biden may not be perfect, but we should support him anyway, and then, once he gets elected, we’ll hold his feet to the fire.
Yet now, when people try to hold his feet to the fire, they’re accused of supporting Trump. Funny how that works.
My argument is: Biden may not be perfect, but he’s a whole hell of a lot better than the guy that tried to start an insurrection and appointed a Supreme Court justice that got rid of Roe v. Wade. Holding his feet to the fire is a waste of time because the house always wins; the People will be the ones to bear the burden of any sort of loss for the Democrats. All I can do is hope that people will finally be pushed too far and revolt against the government, but that will be a whole hell of a lot harder if the 1st and 2nd Amendments are infringed on any more than they already are.
So essentially, shock doctrine. “This is bad, but it could be worse”.
More like “This is bad, but the only other remotely probable outcome is worse.”
Revolting against the government is far less feasible (and far more ethical) than simply voting for an alternative party.
1996 had the lowest recorded percentage of voter turnout in the past century, at 51.7%. Assuming there’s currently about 250 million eligible voters in the US, that is equivalent to about 129 million voters.
Imagine you were a wizard and could force everyone on Lemmy to vote for a single third-party candidate. Also assume every account on every instance of Lemmy is a US citizen capable of voting. Lemmy has about 421 thousand users. Even if each account on Lemmy could magically convince 50 other eligible voters to vote for the same independent candidate, that would only amount to about 21 million votes, or about 16.3% of all votes in the election going towards that candidate.
Voting in an independent party is nothing short of impossible in the US.
What does Lemmy have to do with it? I never brought up Lemmy!
My point is that the numbers are so unbelievably stacked against a third party winning that you’re not achieving anything by voting for a third party.
F… Him, he needs to be in a care home yesterday.
You’re allowed to swear on the Internet