Hey, at least we live in America, and we’re not invited over for tea! And we don’t have all our biometrics scanned for use for government tracking. It’s just to guarantee our liberty.
Land of the free, home of the brave, digital cage proudly made in the USA!
A pseudonymous writer NS Lyons has been writing about how China and the US are converging in how they treat their citizens. A few years ago it would have raised eyebrows, but now it’s a suggested read.
100% agree. It’s great if you have a clear sense of what you’re looking for but maybe have muddled the actual terminology. You can find words, concepts, books, movies, etc, that you haven’t remembered the name of for years.
I think when westerners like myself notice the disparity in response amongst western progressives between the Palestinian and Iranian situations, they're talking more from a social lens than the geopolitical one.
A lot of my peers have been incredibly active on social media the last couple years supporting Palestinians. They've been mostly completely silent on Iran, the imbalance is notable.
I guess there is still remaining trade volume that could be further reduced by sanctions. While it is a tenth of what is typically traded with other countries in the region, I would say it is still 1000 times higher than the trade with North Korea. Having said that, the example shows that cruel dictators can still survive in isolation (particularly if the rest of the world still continues to be split on basic human rights)
"More than 36,500 Iranians were killed by security forces during the January 8-9 crackdown on nationwide protests, making it the deadliest two-day protest massacre in history,"
> hand us the list of the evil countries that we should invade.
All the ones not currently complying with the will of the greatest nation on earth. Obviously
It's for their own good!
In all seriousness. Perhaps you missed the tone of my previous comment? There is nothing you can do past a certain point other than either embrace the colonial attitude or let the country do its thing. There are no more levers to pull.
Getting past the point that this is a discussion of something meaningless in the first place (posting as social activism), why might left leaning people talk more about an issue they might tangibly have impact on over one they can have no impact on?
I think western leftists complain about Palestine a lot because the west is attacking Palestine and they want their government to stop that. While the situation in Iran is very sad, it also has nothing to do with my government and there would be nothing to be achieved by protesting, unless I think they need even stricter sanctions.
Further, the american government across several administrations imposed sanctions which led to premature death of Iranians, worsening conditions. It instigated the Iran/Iraq war carnage. It also bombed Iran contributing to civilian casualties. Even if it were to stage “regime change” in Iran, give the american government’s track record in Afghanistan and Iraq, the resulting government would likely inflict even more hardship upon the people of Iran. This is why some on “the left” view the united states as the primary contradiction.
It’s not just the US based liberals. Al Jazeera doesn’t have a single mention on the number or people in Iran that were killed but they do have an article about all the Palestinians killed since over a year.
Al Jazeera is probably a little skeptical of numbers sourced from anonymous tip offs that are clearly being used as a pretext for military action.
WMD evidence published in western newspapers arrived in our newspapers in exactly the same way.
By contrast, the numbers provided by the "Hamas run Gaza health ministry" turned out to be accurate despite the extreme skepticism professed by the western media.
I think the biggest difference is simple the fact that Israel has much closer ties with the US. The foreign policy of the USA has been the carrot and stick model for a long time and it seems Israel always gets the carrot on the back of national security. Iran, we have little to no relations with so there isn't anything the USA can to do excise power without serious military action
Sakharov actually owned it. He straight up was like "I don't care about them"
He never claimed to be the champion of the Americans.
On the other hand, the Left seems to claim to be the main representative of women and gay rights for example, everywhere. You can't build your entire brand on "solidarity with the oppressed" and then ghost the moment you don't have the same specific advantage you want for your agenda.
Sakharov wasn't a hypocrite. That's the difference.
The Soviet Union was famous for engaging in whataboutism; they covered-up the true toll of Stalin’s purges (along with the human cost of their policies), and constantly oppressed Eastern Europe for almost 50 years. They are/were not a good example of anything.
I think the difference here would be that it doesn't appear to be an attempt to downplay Palestine. Whataboutism involves both a claim of inconsistency and associated criticism but not all claims of inconsistency and associated criticism constitute whataboutism.
> A lot of my peers have been incredibly active on social media the last couple years supporting Palestinians.
So it took from 1947 (if not longer) to 2023 to have this population become aware of the problem. Still up until a few months ago, at least here in France, it was very unwelcome (and even politically persecuted, via house searches and terrorism charges) to even mention the idea of a genocide in Palestine.
I remember over a decade ago quoting israeli settlers, newspapers and politicians arguing a genocide was ongoing. But at the time, calling it a genocide here in France placed you in the loony bin in the eyes of most people. Given some time, the iranian revolution of 2025-2026 will be well-known.
Beyond the differences outlined by other commenters (that western governments don't support Iran, but do support Israel), there's this difference that few feel compelled to get over-active on this issue because every one already feels concerned: all the TVs are talking about it, and even the right-wingers are on board. Overall, everyone (apart from some islamists) are convinced that the Iranian government is criminal. Now what can we do?
Continue spreading awareness ; your peers may get on board! But better, get informed and involved. There may be, for example, a kurdish-iranian diaspora near you organizing solidarity protests and proposing courses to understand the politics of Iran, get versed in jineology, or understand the basic tenants of democratic confederalism. There's also other diaspora. I would just encourage you to be careful with the "Reza Pahlavi" crowd, who support a fascist regime change in Iran and would encourage just as much horrible crimes as those we witness today, if they weren't done in the name of islam.
it's about preaching to the choir. I think it's an atrocity what happened to those Iranian supporters. But what's the point in posting about it? Everyone else thinks it's an atrocity. We have no power to change things in Iran.
One other point -- I think the left has effectively shifted the conversation on Israel very quickly. I think immediately following Oct 7 atrocities, public support was overwhelmingly with Israel. By raising awareness of the situation, it has now become more slanted towards "peace in Palestine." I see no reason a similar type of shift couldn't occur on any issue if a coordinated effort to discuss it and raise awareness existed.
And by doing so, it would likely cause change and or discussion by those in power.
> it would likely cause change and or discussion by those in power.
The reason this is an absurd comparison is because on the Palestine issues, it’s a desire to stop using / selling weapons into a conflict and on the Iran issue “causing change” would be starting another war in the Middle East.
> By raising awareness of the situation, it has now become more slanted towards "peace in Palestine."
"the situation" changed from "more than a thousand Israelis murdered by Hamas" to the total destruction of Gaza, the death of tens of thousands and worse.
It's not exactly surprising that there was a shift in where public support is directed.
Sorry I think the GP's point is correct. I feel the same about how we hear very little about modern-day slavery, but lots about much more minor workplace issues in the west. I'm not saying don't discuss modern workplace issues, and don't battle for even better working conditions -- but the silence is deafening. If American children were working 12-16 hour days in sweatshops, it would be nonstop in the news.
By not speaking out, it lessens the moral standing of those making a huge ruckus over certain issues, but remaining silent on arguably far more serious ones.
The power to cause change in democracy rests mostly in influence over decision makers who hold the power and money. The ability to get the news and media and celebrities talking about an issue is what gives protestors and those shouting on the left power to change things. Ultimately politicians and the elites want to be "in the right" to hold onto their power and money.
As an example, suppose 80% of the population was suddenly in an uprising about atrocities in Iran, and the next major election hinged on this subject. If some political party takes the right actions, they win the presidency house and senate. Do you think nothing would happen? Trump has literally said he wants to annex Greenland -- anything is possible if leaders feel they have political mandate.
Sitting in comfortable silence or talking about relatively easier issues just allows the more complex issues to go unsolved.
Again, nothing against pushing for peace for people in Palestine, but claiming that we should just ignore things in Iran reduces the legitimacy of the cause.
The pro-peace activist in WWII, who knew of concentration camps, but never mentioned it, and even told others not to discuss it. They claimed there was no point, nothing could be done. But the legacy wasn't the pro-peace activism, it was denial of the glaring situation they ignored.
This has never been about (western) morals which is why the masked violent crowds don't care about Russia, or China, or Saudia Arabia or Iran. This is about taking down the west because the west is evil. They also don't care about crimes against humanity perpetrated by Palestinians:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/0282/2025/en/
This crowd is also not calling for "peace in Palestine". That would be something everyone would obviously get behind and could lead to a constructive discussion about how we get there. They are supporting violence against Israeli civilians and calling for the destruction of Israel and the murder of its populace.
It also has nothing to do with "US aid to Israel" since we see the exact same behavior in other western countries that do not aid Israel at all. For Americans to question how their aid money is used (e.g. why is it going to Egypt) or who the US does business with (e.g. why with Saudi Arabia or Qatar) is perfectly legit but it's obviously not what's going on here.
This is a wild take. You think the arab spring, Syrian revolution, Libyan revolution, Iraq war, interventions in Somalia and Sudan etc.. we're all CIA operations at the behest of Israel? Seriously?
I mentioned many conflicts and many countries so this is very broad to cover in one comment but i will try, briefly. I have heard many theories given over the years to justify these interventions - democracy, capitalism, liberalism, oil, minerals, gas-pipelines, gas-fields, neoconservatism, neoliberalism, neo-colonialism, fighting terror, WMDs, fighting rogue states, checking expansionism, checking communism, countering soviet union, countering russia, countering china, oil contractors, defense contractors, petrodollar, maintaining global reserve system, global security, stability, American national security, European security, national security of Gulf allies, shipping lanes and trade routes and finally Israeli national security. How many of those goals were achieved? What did America get out of the Iraq War? Was Libyan intervention a net win for France ? Or Europe? My question is after 20 years, how much of those theories still hold up. Don't get me wrong, many of those things mentioned were indeed motivations and played a part in many of the cases. But ultimately most of these theories crumble in the face of 20 years of evidence. Except the Israel Theory. Reading Israel's national security strategy (outlined in documents like the "Clean break" report and the "Yinon Plan") Suddenly all the seeming 'naive' and 'futile' actions of the west , all the failed intervations, human catastrophes, blowbacks and disasters; they all make sense.
I am not saying all the people, protestors/fighters, parties, involved were mossad/cia agents or all of them arose out of covert action. I am saying that is what shaped them, and ultimately determined their outcome.
I think you're completely right, and the fact that most people don't realize this makes me think that even most 'smart' people are pretty stupid when they have to think outside of what the media tells them.
I don't think they're stupid and i don't fault them. I made extraordinary claims and it took me 20 years of seeing extraordinary evidence to face reality.
Completely crazy. Not only had the war in Iraq hurt Israeli security, rather than improving it, Israel opposed the war knowing that it would be damaging rather than beneficial. What you have is not "the Israel Theory", what you have is a conspiracy theory.
Ariel Sharon was the prime minister of Israel in 2002. Netanyahu was a civilian. You seem to be unable to tell these two very different people apart. I suggest going easy on the green stuff.
Current prime minister, former and future prime minister, that's an irrelevant distinction here. Clearly the Israelis thought the Iraq war was in their interest, which is the original claim here, and is clearly evidenced by Israeli attempts to lobby in favor of the invasion.
>Not only had the war in Iraq hurt Israeli security, rather than improving it
I am aware there was internal debate in Israel on relative benefits of taking out Iraq's conventional military capability, its economic potential, remnants of its WMD program and breaking apart Iraq's territorial integrity versus the risk of Iraq falling under Iran's influence. Evidently Netanyahu's faction prevailed in the debate. Though both sides would have preferred taking out Iran first before going after Iraq.
>what you have is a conspiracy theory.
You can call it whatever you want. The true test of a theory is if it fits the evidence and its ability to predict events. Do you have a better theory of why Americans and Europeans repeat the same failed policies over and over in the middle-east?
Here's my prediction on Iran : I don't know what Trump will do ,if he will ultimately accede to Israel's wishes, but if a 'civil war' breaks out or If Trump or any future American regime decides to invade Iraq. It will conservatively lead to a decade of war, one million deaths, millions of refugees (from Iran, Iraq). If the Islamic Republic collapses I am doubtful on whether Iran will survive as an integral nation. But Israel will get what it wants. which will be - taking out Iran's nuclear program, breaking Iran apart and Israel becoming the regional uncontested power (until Turkey or Egypt emerges but thats the next round). Israel will likely formally annex more of Syria, and Southern Lebanon as well or create a buffer zone rump state. Palestinians will never see sovereignty. They will be ethnically cleansed or live in a glorified bantustan. Iraq may not survive in its current form. It will be a bloody, expensive mess for everybody else. Likely American lives will be lost. I struggle to see how a regime change would be achieved without US boots on the ground. The Iranian people will be all but certainly worse of. Just like the people of Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, etc.
Like I said to the other person here, Netanyahu was acting in a private capacity as a civilian, not a representative or office holder of the government of Israel. It amazes me how you conspiracy nutters can't tell the difference.
You don't have a "theory". You worked backwards from your conclusion that "Israel = bad" and created an entirely false narrative that only sounds plausible in your own deluded head. Furthermore, you have absolutely no proof, obviously, for your conspiratorial ravings, so the most charitable description of your thoughts on the matter would be a "conjecture" not a "theory".
And I'm sorry but I don't care about your predictions.
> You worked backwards from your conclusion that "Israel = bad"
I did work backwards. from the evidence. I didn't start with "Israel is responsible for everything". In fact i used to dismiss that theory as "low iq" and believe "that it's complicated". It is complicated, but not as complicated as i used to think.
Saying Netanyahu was "just a civillian" and had no political influence in the Bush admin, in Israel or the Israel Lobby is particularly comical he is the current primeminister and longest running leader of Israel. That period was just a brief interlude when he was not serving in a formal capacity. His vision of the middle-east is exactly what the middle-east is today.
edit : I partially take back 'Libya' - i think the Libya affair is less influenced by the Israeli interests. But still, even though Gadaffi had given up his WMD program and become a friend of US and Europe, he was still a foe of Israel. So he still never could become a friend of the west. Funny how that works isn't it. Almost Like Europe and the US can't have a relationship independent of Israel's interests.
>To think one tiny country is controlling and directing all world events is just laughable.
No. i think one tiny country directs American foreign policy in the MENA region, and Europe by-and-large follows its lead. You haven't countered the substance of my claims. You frankly seem low-information on the matter.
> What did America get out of the Iraq War? Was Libyan intervention a net win for France ? Or Europe? My question is after 20 years, how much of those theories still hold up. Don't get me wrong, many of those things mentioned were indeed motivations and played a part in many of the cases. But ultimately most of these theories crumble in the face of 20 years of evidence. Except the Israel Theory
This is pretty poor reasoning, just FYI.
We don't need a centralized "theory" for why western powers have interfered in the Middle East for so long. There's no conspiracy or orchestration, what you're referring to are a handful of related but ultimately separate sagas involving a litany of countries, ethnic groups, and geopolitical motivations. To suggest there's a singular theory or plan is just silly.
I agree with @epsters perspective - while it may not have been done at the behest of Israel, it is increasingly becoming clear that most of these so-called "revolutions" exploited the naivety of the youth and incited them through planned (CIA? MI6? Mossad?) social media campaigns on platform all controlled by the west. Throw in a violent, committed group into the mix of these naive young idiots when they are protesting, to deliberately target and provoke the police or the army, and you have the recipe to start a civil war in any country and potentially destabilise it. The aim (from what is apparent in Ukraine, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal etc.) seems to be to replace experienced politicians with inexperienced politicians who can then be easily influenced and manipulated (over a period of time) to completely flip government policies to match the interest of the foreign powers behind the incitement.
What "imbalance"? It is disingenuous to equate the two political situations as the same:
1. Palestine is a settler-colony of Israel, where the Israeli-right currently in power is conducting a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza ( https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide ) while continuing to steal their land and deny them basic rights. ( https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/6/who-are-israeli-set... ). The oppressors and the victims are clear in the Israel - Palestine conflict, and thus it is easy to take a firm moral stand supporting one over the other.
2. What is happening in Iran is either (at best) a power struggle and violent conflict between two groups - the supporters of the Ayatollah and the supporters of the Shah (backed by the west), or (at worst) the start of a civil war. In this case, apart from sympathy for the victims of violence on both sides, it is hard to take a firm political stand for one side because both have a tainted record. (How The CIA Overthrew Iran's Democracy In 4 Days - https://www.npr.org/2019/01/31/690363402/how-the-cia-overthr... ). Note that these so-called "revolutionaries" in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal too went on a rampage when law and order collapsed there, looting killing and doing senseless destruction ultimately destabilising their whole country. (Now Bangladesh is conducting a farce "democratic" election that deliberately excludes a major political party, the Awami League, because the so called "revolutionaries" fear that they will not be able to defeat them electorally. Something similar happened in Ukraine too). When both sides choose violence to capture power, and are hell bent on excluding the "other" from any future "democratic" setup, who really is the one with the "democratic" values and the real victim?
There is no doubt in my mind that the stand of the west (US / UK) here is totally hypocritical (and morally repugnant) if you praise the opponents of Ayatollah as "freedom fighters", while with the same breath you denounce the Palestinians as "terrorists" for daring to fight their Israeli colonial masters for freedom!
Yes, it would and I have already shared some sources for the claim. So your assertions, without any supporting arguments for it, doesn't really sway me. Anyhow, I think we may have reached the limit of this kind of discussion on HN. If you want to explore this topic more, with others, https://politics.stackexchange.com/ would be a better place for this topic.
> The oppressors and the victim are clear in the Israel - Palestine conflict
Only if you zoom in and focus on one tiny sliver. If you look at the bigger picture, Israel is surrounded by dozens of countries 100s of times its size, that have all been ethnically cleansed of Jews, many of them in different stages of open or proxy war with Israel, militarily or politically.
Those countries literally attacked Israel on the day it became a state, and many times thereafter. Israel is definitely not perfect, but their neighbors have been trying to wipe them out for no good reason for a long time.
Did they have states in 1209 BC? I'm pretty sure the modern Israel state is a modern invention, that just happens to take its name from former states. The modern state of Greece isn't the one from Jesus's time either.
Well, if you're only going to count modern states, the only previous one to occupy that area was the Ottoman Empire. After that, there was a British Mandate, but that wasn't a state. Modern states only started after the Treaty of Westphalia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia
Unlike the west, the Arabs or Persians have never nurtured any hatred of Jews till the British (and later the Americans) forcefully backed the creation of a Jewish state in the middle-east. Even today, muslims around the world don't give a damn about Jews or antisemitism unless it is in the context of Palestinians. This is in stark contrast to the christian west, which still harbours a lot of antisemitism and is the factory that still generates most of the modern Jewish conspiracy political tropes (some of which do find their way to religious fundamentalists in the east too). The Israeli-right, ofcourse, has a vested interest in painting Arabs and muslims as antisemites, because otherwise "Israel" can't showcase itself as a "victim". I do believe the Israelis are victims too though not in the way the Israeli-right depicts it - early Zionists never realised that the bigger plan of the western superpowers in forcing them to the middle-east (instead of giving them their own country in Europe) was part of their "divide and rule" policy for the middle-east. Frankly, Israel and Palestine will never be at peace because it is not in the interest of western superpowers. (The Israeli-right have latched on to this too, and are trying to exploit it to increase their own power and influence in the region. Unfortunately for them, that is undesirable for the west and worse, they did it in a way that brings unwanted attention to the west - the Trump and Blair lead Board of Peace is the western response to cut Israel down to size, in the coming future).
There was plenty of oppression against Jewish people in the Middle East before Israel became a country. Blame whomever you want, but the Jewish populations there were targeted for discriminatory taxation and various other forms of oppression.
The Jizya tax on non-muslims in many Islamic empires was never a "discriminatory" tax. This is a common anti-muslim trope and an example of distorting history by considering it through modern political lens. In most muslim empires, this tax was only imposed on non-muslims who wanted to be exempt from serving in the military but still be a citizen of the Islamic empire they were part of. Those who chose to join military service were exempted from payment. Only free adult, non-muslim males were required to pay it and women, children, elders, the disabled, the insane, religious workers, hermits, slaves etc. were exempt. Some muslim rulers also exempted the poor amongst the non-muslims from paying it.
Muslims weren't required to pay a similar tax to the government because they were already obligated by their religion to pay a certain percentage of their wealth every year towards charity (Zakat).
This trope was popularised as part of the "divide and rule" policy of the British to generate animosity between muslims and non-muslims in many a British colony and today is commonly spouted in the anti-muslim tirades of many a right-wing religious fundamentalists.
There were a variety of other discriminatory measures in most of the Middle-East; many applied to religions other than Judaism as well. Another notable one was the limited access to the legal systems, along with the inferior legal status non-Muslims were relegated to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Arab_world
I also think it’s absurd to pretend that taxing people who do not tithe to one’s favored faith or cause is non-discriminatory. Imagine Utah taxing non-Mormons because they don’t tithe to The Church or The United Way.
I have no idea what country's legal system you referring to. My broad understanding is that most Islamic empires allowed the minorities to retain their own personal laws on some legal matters (marriage, divorce, inheritance etc) as Sharia laws were largely Islamic, for muslims. From today's modern perspective many things that was done by many former empires of the past would be problematic. Like I said, you will only get a warped view of history if you try to analyse it by applying modern principles. By and large, for their time, Islamic empires were largely egalitarian towards their citizens. (The Ottoman empire's secular history undermines sharia claims - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/oct/07... ). If you want to judge them by their worst examples, you can ofcourse "prove" the worst that you imagine of them.
> Imagine Utah taxing non-Mormons because they don’t tithe
Mormons don't pay their tithe to the government. In the Islamic empire, it was the government that collected the 'tithe' from the muslims after calculating their wealth. So you can imagine how disgruntled muslim citizens would have been, every year, when the tax collector only came to collect money from them and not from the non-muslims. It was this kind of social unrest that lead to the imposition of the Jizya on non-muslims.
From the linked Wiki: “Restrictions included residency in segregated quarters, obligation to wear distinctive clothing, public subservience to Muslims, prohibitions against proselytizing and against marrying Muslim women, and limited access to the legal system (the testimony of a Jew did not count if contradicted by that of a Muslim). Dhimmi had to pay a special poll tax (the jizya), which exempted them from military service, and also from payment of the zakat alms tax required of Muslims.”
On a slight tangent, I can see how many of these things - segregated quarters, obligation to wear distinctive dress, prohibitions against proselytizing and against inter-religious marriage etc. - could all have been demanded by the minority community themselves in those times, to protect themselves from "majoritarianism". Just look at some of the conservative Jewish communities in Israel today - https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/1/who-are-the-haredim-... - who still practice some of these customs.
Note though that none of it can be termed antisemitic as everything in it was also applicable to other non-muslims (in whatever specific Islamic kingdom it happened). Right? That has been my whole point - muslims (other than religious fundamentalists ones) have never harboured any kind of ill-will or hatred for Jews (or other religions), till the west encouraged (sometimes forced) migrations of non-native, foreign-born Jews to the middle-east and tried to change the demographic of the whole region with nefarious political intentions.
This is not true, Jews, like many other groups, have been oppressed and humiliated by the Islamic Arab world for well over a thousand years. I truly can not believe you can say this with a straight face if you have spent any amout of time in Arabic speaking circles. The disgust towards Jewish people is open and constant, and I am not talking about attitudes towards zionism.
I have indeed spent some time in Arab countries, and also know a few Arabs. They didn't spout any kind of antisemitism. (Some of them did warn me to be careful of Egyptians though :). They do have disgust towards Israel as a country because of the actions of the Israeli-right in power. But that's not antisemitism however much Netanyahu and his cohorts would like it to be. I however do know some religious fundamentalist Muslims in my own country, who are definitely antisemitic and hate Jews for, well, being Jews. I also know some religious fundamentalists Hindus who hate Muslims, again, just because they are Muslims. But that's just how religious fundamentalists are - they aren't rational human beings and you can't use them as an example to tarnish a whole community. Netanyahu and his ilks are right-wing religious fundamentalists too, and that is why it is easy for them to slaughter Palestinian Muslims and Christians. Does that mean all Israeli jews are horrible human beings too, like them? Ofcourse not.
Today, Jews are denied entry to many Muslim countries - not just Israelis, anyone who looks Jewish.
The excuse that “some other people of this religion did something bad” does not justify hating and ethnically cleansing everyone who shares that religion.
As for the ban on Jews by some Arab / muslim countries - remember that the west was actively encouraging Jews, with Zionist movements all over the world, to migrate to the middle-east and occupy muslim-Arab territory. Sure, it began with a narrow focus with only Palestine. But who knew where it would stop if it was successful? Most of these countries are former western colonies who immediately understood what the west was trying to do by sending foreign Jews to occupy their land - the "divide and rule" policy was how they were subjugated too in the first place, to become colonies, and the newly independent Arab states understood that by driving Jews to the middle-east, their former masters wanted to use the Jews to foment a conflict between Jews and Muslims which they could then use to break the newfound unity amongst the Arab states and use as an excuse for interventionist politics. It had (and still has) nothing to do with antisemitism and everything to do with making sure that former imperialists doesn't exploit any political vulnerability in their country and endanger their (then) newfound independence. (It also doesn't help matters that Israel acts like a western puppet, further reinforcing the view that Israel is just a pawn of the west in the middle-east).
It is not as those Arab nations are some phenomenon of nature. The process of Arabization was, and perhaps is, itself one of settler colonialism and oppression. The fact that the colors of the caliphates are explicitly flown in areas outside of Arabia is proof enough of that.
Sure. I am from one such country (India) that was exposed to the Islamic culture through trade, muslim raiders and even many muslim conquerors who made our country their home (the Mughal empire being the most famous one). We are also quite familiar with imperialism and colonisation as, like the Palestinians, we were once a British colony too. However, in my country no one rational advocates that as we are a relatively powerful nation today, we too should raid some foreign country or occupy and colonise it. Israelis unfortunately often use that as an excuse for their occupation of Palestine or when they seize the territory of their states to fulfil the dream of the Israeli-rights vision of a "Greater Israel" - "every superpower or former power has done it, so why can't we?". And that's really problematic.
I'm a Canadian with an Irish/Ukrainian background who's never been to the Middle East. I've been using this username for 20y now, nobody's pretending to be anyone here.
Do you really think I'm some kind of Mossad-bot? This topic sends otherwise normal communities into an absolute epistemic frenzy, I swear.
This is pretty much entirely false. Maybe you don't actually know or talk to any progressives? Or the ones you're around are very bizarre. Or maybe you're extrapolating from impressions you've gotten on Twitter?
I do talk to progressive people. They are not informed about anything. They just look at everything as the struggle of the "wronged" against those that have historically committed wrongs (in their eyes) and this mystical alignment of all "wronged" to bring about change.
I'm sure there are many "progressives" who do think for themselves and have some rational agenda but those are not the (very smart but) people I interact with.
Russias' narrative about its special operation in Ukraine is also about a defensive war. I'm curious to know about your stance on this Russian-Ukraine conflict.
The cognitive dissonance is supporting Ukraine but not supporting Israel. Both were attacked. The anti-Israel argument is like saying Ukraine can't fight back because it's not Russia that attacked Ukraine, it's Putin, and therefore Ukraine has no justification to defend itself against Russia. That's the odd logic that the anti-Israelis bring to bear when Israel defends its population. Granted the power balance is different but the moral position is not. Israel is much stronger than the attacking Palestinian entity but if Ukraine was much stronger and it could inflict a lot more damage on Russia and Russians that would be justified given Russia invaded Ukraine and does not yield.
So what the germans did in ww2 was a defensive war also? Funny how the people whining endlessly about genocide are so eager to defend it.
> Because they've decided the Jews in their historical lands
First of all, it was never the "historical lands" of the jews. It belonged to the canaanites whom the jews decided to steal it from. Read your torah. Secondly, europeans larping as jews are not part of the torah and hence have no claim to that land.
> the other is slaughtering of people by an oppressive regime.
Is that the "oppressive regime" defending itself from constant israeli attacks? Hmmm...
Another israeli trying to get the US involved in more wars for their selfish interests.
Last I checked the Germans weren't invaded before WW-II and had their civilians massacred and abducted.
The European Jews are absolutely the Jewish people from the Torah. This is proven by DNA tests and is also a result of the Jewish people in Europe staying in their own separate communities. Very few people convert to Judaism. A Cohen in Europe is a descendant of biblical Aaron, there is no other way to become a Cohen (a priest), similar for Levy's. Because of all these complicated laws Jewish people have always kept track of their lineage which impact various religious laws. But yeah, that's the antisemitic lie the Palestinians are propagating amongst their many other lies.
The Israelites are likely descendants of the Canaanites. This was before anyone was Jewish. More antisemitism. Modern Jewish people and others (including some Palestinians and other people of the Levant) carry Canaanite DNA.
Israel can handle Iran. But I guess you couldn't care less about their oppressive regime and innocents being murdered.
That's because leftism needs an antagonism against the cultural self. I.e. it needs to somehow have an element of fighting against others in your own society.
That exists with say Palestine - it's allows picking a side that's against a western right-wing state, Israel.
It also exists with say Russia, here's a right wing white male traditionalist attacking a state that was aligning towards the leftist EU.
In the case of Iran, there's not really an angle there.
So if you understand leftism not as standing for its claimed virtues and instead being politically akin to a group of teenagers rebelling for the sake of it against their own authority figures, it makes perfect sense that deaths of the downtrodden in general are not of concern - the victimhood cause must resonate with a particular format that gives them a clear and familiar path to self-congratulation - which is the primary goal.
Arguably what's happening in Iran is so much worse.
The majority of people killed in Gaza were terrorists while in Iran they are mostly peaceful protestors.
I think the main reason is that propaganda really works! Qatar has spent $20B on US education alone, and Qatar Russia and China have launched a massive propaganda campaign to divide the US. The left was silent on Sudan, Syria, and Nigeria as well.
Most western a world governments don't fund Israel and yet people there seem to "care" a lot. I don't think your argument holds water. Many western governments trade with Iran and support the oppressive regime there in direct. The US also funds Egypt which is another oppressive regime where there's no human rights. It supports Saudi Arabia that chops up journalists.
Your logic doesn't hold because it never held. The reason people "care" about Palestine is that they've been manipulated to care.
The logical thing would be for the American population to stand with Israel when it's being attacked. That would be the normal default. Like the rest of the world supported the US when it was attacked on 9/11. What we're seeing is the collapse of logic and truth and the win of propaganda campaigns and lies.
UK doesn't fund Israel, yet they've had most demonstrations there - still do. Clearly it isn't about the violence (whether in Iran or Israel). It's about Israel.
The RAF does a lot of flights over Gaza so the UK is actually involved, and the big focus in the UK is on Elbit systems who makes parts for the planes that bomb Gaza. The UK government isn't materially supporting the Iranian regime as far as I can tell
There have been protests in countries that do not “fund” Israel too, so it’s not about funding only.
The protests have also been against the Israeli government so you’d anticipate at least protests against the Iranian government if not against one’s own government which they protest because of funding.
But we don’t see those protests against the Iranian regime. It reminds me of US protestors protesting the removal of Maduro contrasted with near total approval from expat Venezuelans in various countries.
And iran doesn't control the US like israel does. And iran doesn't force censorship on americans like israel does. And iran isn't commiting genocide like israel does. When's the last time iran order the US government to attack peaceful college protestors on american college campuses? Israel has. And the US government obeyed.
I'm sorry but I just don't believe anyone who says this. Israel has a military expenditure above Turkey's with almost a tenth of the population. They could do everything they did and then some with no Western backing.
The number of progressives shutting the fuck up in a scenario where Israel does the same thing they're doing but without Western funding is I imagine approximately 0.
Not only do we fund israel, our leaders have been wasting trillions fighting wars on behalf of israel. The newest target israel want the US to take out is strangely enough - Iran...
US does not fund Israel. US has a strategic interest in Israel, just as much as it has in Germany, South Korea, Japan and many other places which host a huge US military presence. Unlike those outposts, the support to Israel is given in American military equipment.
The Israeli military and security forces budget is more than $55bn a year, and you are saying the US pays all of it. It’s the first time I’ve ever encountered such an outlandish claim.
US finances costliest weapons (fighter jets, precision munitions, air and missile defense systems such as Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow, and Iron Beam) which provides the qualitative edge of Israel’s military, while Israel’s own budget covers personnel, operations, and much of the day‑to‑day war cost.
Without US tax dollars, Israeli part of military budget would have to shrink by 50 - 60% to pay for R&D, manufacturing, testing, deploying and maintaining of US provided advanced weapon systems.
To anyone downvoting my sibling comment, go look at the post history [1] this guy indulges in loads of crazy conspiracies and ties them all back to Mossad. It’s pretty clear what the underlying motivation is.
And Donald Trump and republicans in general already want to murderfuck Iran and always have, and don't need or want my support to justify such an act, and already bombed Iran once this admin.
I don't support all that 100% but it's not like I have any advice on the matter. I certainly don't have better ideas of where to bomb Iran or how to help a populace 8000 miles away rise against their oppressors.
To add context: the funds were not “given” as one might give humanitarian funding. The funds were Iranian financial assets that were frozen after the Iranian Revolution, accrued interest over the subsequent decades, and were returned as part of a legal settlement. I stake no position on whether this should have happened, just providing more specific color to the situation.
Literally would not matter if he were violent prior to being shot. By the time that they shot him, he was face down on the floor and disarmed. That’s illegal in basically any context. It’s an execution.
I thought you were going to point out distinct etymology, but these terms do seem linked, no? Not surprising that the shared lineage confers shared problems.
I expect that r.i.c.e. was overfit. Asian imports are called riceburners, ostensibly because asian cultures consume a lot of rice. I guess it could be contrived as racist, but it's relatively harmless in the scope of things...
I'm speculating further: but the imports were cheap and had a thriving aftermarket of bolt-on parts e.g. body and turbo kits. The low barrier of entry afforded opportunities for anybody to play. Ricing was probably a perjorative issued by domestic enthusiasts that was adopted ironically by Asian import enthusiasts. If you can imagine there was a lot of diversity, people who would bolt up body kits to clapped out Civics to people that would push 700hp with extensively tuned cars with no adornments. I think in particular ricing was the more aesthetically motivated of the crowd.
This was later adopted by computer enthusiasts that like to add embelishments to their desktops, things like rainmeter/rocketdock and Windows/Linux skins and etc...
The two are unconnected, one is used as a pejorative which is racist, the other isn't. This is not a hard distinction to make if you aren't a bot.
<Victim> "I'm ricing my Linux Shell, check it out." <Bot> That's Racist!
<Bot Brigade> Moderator this person is violating your rules and being racist!
<Moderator> I'm just using AI to determine this.
<Bot Brigade> Great! Now they can't contribute. Lets find another.
TL;DR Words have specific meanings, and a growing number of words have been corrupted purposefully to prevent communication, and by extension limit communication to the detriment of all. You get the same ultimate outcomes when people do this as any other false claim. Abuses pile up until eventually in the absence of functioning non-violent conflict resolution; violence forces the system to reform.
Have you noticed that your implication is circular based on the indefinite assumption (foregone conclusion) that the two are linked (tightly coupled)?
You use a lot of ambiguous manipulative language and structure. Doing that makes any reasonable person think you are either a bot, or a malicious actor.
I don’t think that’s a reasonable takeaway considering the follow through to the end of the article where he states that the environment is the culprit. If anything, I think his supposition is that any one of innumerable actors are just as a guilty as the parents but that our system must reduce scope to find a specific culprit and charge them with something. I don’t think the author would agree with charging the parents with manslaughter, but I think the implication is that they were in some sense negligent considering the environment in which they live.
> West Hudson Boulevard is a high-speed arterial road with narrow sidewalks, a tiny median, and no truly safe crossings. Even a healthy, alert adult is taking their life in their hands by walking to that store. For a child, it’s playing the worst kind of roulette.
The fact that it did have a sidewalk, even a narrow one means that it's meant for walking. If it's unsafe then the existence of the sidewalk is only asking for trouble. It either has a sidewalk and is safe, or it isn't safe and shouldn't have a sidewalk. Having a sidewalk and being unsafe is the fault of the city/construction not the user.
Claiming a child was playing with roulette amounts to it also implying that lethal roulette games for kids is something that should be legal.
Agreed. The sidewalk is not fit for purpose - too narrow, adjacent to high-ish speed traffic, frequent turns into shopping plazas, few/no pedestrian crossings, and no sidewalk on the opposite side of the road, nor on many intersecting roads.
The street is, in fact, too dangerous for a 10-year-old, or even an adult.
There's a skinny sidewalk on one side. No sidewalk on the other. No signaled crossings for blocks. High-ish speed traffic.
Given an option, nobody would walk that particular stretch of highway.
Should the parents have been charged? Probably not (unless there are details missing from the artcile). Should we reconsider how we build our suburbs? Absolutely.
Don’t you find it somewhat ironic that you created a throwaway to preserve your privacy in stating this opinion against privacy in browsing?
I agree with you that people should avoid using it, but I agree that the state should but out here. If you want to enforce this sort of thing, make it at the parental level.
I think the failure in extrapolation is that the numbers will absolutely go back up, eventually. Subcultures that incentivize high birth rates culturally will have more kids, and eventually come to dominate society.
If you want to see what culture will look like in a few hundred years, try and figure out what’s common between Mormons, Amish, and Muslims.
Many people (will only speak to America), view being fat as a literal moral failing. Gluttony or overeating are not the sin, but being fat.
(From that perspective:)a miracle cure that allows someone to stop being fat is like an indulgence (in the Roman Catholic sense). It’s a cheat, a shortcut that allows the unworthy to reach a state they do not deserve.
My opinion is to wait long enough to validate there are no long term harms, but beyond that, yeah, adjust the priors, it could be a modern aspirin.
> Many people (will only speak to America), view being fat as a literal moral failing. Gluttony or overeating are not the sin, but being fat.
I feel like I've seen and heard more of the opposite: The trend is to avoiding anything that might make someone feel blame for arriving in their situation.
With obesity the trend is to blame some combination of "our food supply", trending science topics like microplastics or the microbiome, and genetics.
I've heard countless people explain to me that dieting doesn't work for them. It's not hard to find people claiming they ate <1000 calories per day and still gained weight. Even Eliezer Yudkowsky, a figurehead of the "rationalist" movement, has written about "metabolic disprivilege" and claimed that his genetics do not allow him to lose weight through dieting. This thinking runs deep.
What's interesting about GLP-1 inhibitors is that they modulate the intake portion of the diet, which shatters these previous notions that some people had "metabolic disprivilege" and simply could not lose weight by reducing caloric intake. They just make it easier to reduce food intake.
> I feel like I've seen and heard more of the opposite: The trend is to avoiding anything that might make someone feel blame for arriving in their situation.
> I've heard countless people explain to me that dieting doesn't work for them.
I think you're being a tad reductive – "dieting right now doesn't work for me for reasons I can't control" and "reducing calorie intake will help me reduce weight" aren't necessary contradictory, and don't imply "I'm going to attribute it all to biology/blame it on something general".
Anyway, let me assert the opposite: as a partner of a nutritionist who's talked (with anonymity) about her clients, the majority of the people she's worked with, who struggle with sustainably reducing calorie intake over the course of years, come to dieting with that logic, and _then_ struggle against specific barriers, and _then_ blame themselves. (A recent example: "because of my work schedule I don't get enough sleep, which leads to weight gain and time only for frozen food – on top of my predispositions".)
In that case, GLP-1 inhibitors as an intervention _complements_ the way her clients think about dieting.
I was responding to a comment about Americans blaming others, not dieters blaming themselves.
The concept of "blame" isn't really helpful anyway. The problem I frequently see is that blame becomes something to be avoided, which turns into a game of externalizing the source of the problem, which makes people think the problem is out of their hands.
A similar pattern happens in addiction and addiction counseling, where well-meaning friends and family try to soften the blow by telling the person that the addiction was not their fault, it was the result of their circumstances or bad influences. Addiction counselors have to undo this thinking and find a way to gently get the person to take some ownership of their role in arriving at the problem, which is the first step to having some control over correcting it.
For nutrition, when people convince themselves that they have a hidden metabolic disadvantage that makes caloric restriction not work for them, they're more likely to give up than anything.
If anything it vindicates those people's beliefs. If you've seen the way someone can take Ozempic and survive on a few mouthfuls of food each day, while exercising 30 minutes each day, and become much less fat, but still be fat, then you'd understand. When your endocrine system is that dysfunctional, you need to exercise about 4 hours a day to look normal, and for most people that simply isn't a realistic lifestyle change, especially when every cell in your body is telling you that you must hibernate to survive. This is something that rightfully should be treated as medical issue.
Why is it that the people who hate fat people, are the ones most opposed to the treatment that will give them the choice to not be fat? If you hate the obese so much, then do you really want to live in a world where the majority of people are obese? It's like burning down a city to be king of the ashes. Some people can only feel superior if others are suffering for it.
> Even Eliezer Yudkowsky, a figurehead of the "rationalist" movement, has written about "metabolic disprivilege" and claimed that his genetics do not allow him to lose weight through dieting. This thinking runs deep.
I thought EY's point was different. Am I misremembering? I thought it was about not being able to do mental work productively when dieting enough to loose weight(maybe maintain a low weight too, though I do not remember that being mentioned explicitly).
It's a long story. His description of "dieting" was extreme calorie restriction. He was eating something like 800 calories per day (don't quote me on the exact number) and then was complaining that he didn't feel well when doing that (to the surprise of absolutely nobody).
Then it turned into a false dichotomy between the 800 calorie severe calorie restriction or no dieting at all. Then he just started declaring he'd delete any comments that suggested dieting.
I agree with you, but it's important to remember that "dieting down" is way harder for a lot of people. I am and always was skinny through my life. Whenever I need to eat less, I can do it without much effort. However, I have friends who would faint if they tried to diet down the way that I do. I don't know why that happens, but I've seen happening and it changed my perspective about this subject. If Ozempic can help with that, I will never criticize someone who uses it.
Genetics do factor. It's not just a question of genetics affecting metabolism. People literally don't feel hunger with the same intensity as one another. It's like sex drive. There are both very horny people and asexuals out there. There are also people who routinely forget to eat. For many people though, the notion of "forgetting to eat" seems completely alien, because those signals are much stronger for them.
It's clearly both. Someone with stronger motivation to stay healthy can survive in adverse conditions, but a society that pushes unhealthy lifestyle harder is going to catch more people out. It's obvious that Americans aren't just all individually lazier than the rest of the world. Their cities and food are unhealthy.
And also the idea that it is "easy" to lose weight is completely out of touch. If it was there wouldn't be millions of people trying hard, spending money on trying and failing for decades, and entire businesses addressing that.
RFK Jr's "let them eat less" is paradoxically the modern version of "let them eat cake"!
> And also the idea that it is "easy" to lose weight is completely out of touch. If it was there wouldn't be millions of people trying hard, spending money on trying and failing for decades, and entire businesses addressing that.
This is a touchy topic, but I would like to point out that you're missing the obvious confirmation bias that comes with this observation.
There are many people who modulate their weight by changing what they eat, how much they eat, reducing snacking, meal planning, and changing their shopping habits.
You don't see them among the millions of people failing to lose weight or paying for expensive solutions because they quietly solve their problem.
I'm also not suggesting it's easy, but we should acknowledge that many people do successfully control and modulate their weight through dietary and habit changes. There's a survivorship bias problem that occurs when you only look at the remaining sub-group who has the most difficulty with this.
> It's not confirmation bias when it's more then 1 in every 3 people
If you construct your argument to exclude the 2 out of 3 people who are not overweight and then point out that the remaining 1/3 is overweight, that's the definition of confirmation bias.
It's also a disingenuous argument because not all of those 40% are actively trying and failing to modulate their weight in any way. Most people just don't care.
> I'm also not suggesting it's easy, but we should acknowledge that many people do successfully control and modulate their weight through dietary and habit changes.
For example: weightlifters. It’s standard operating procedure to “bulk up” - periods where lifters overeat to promote muscle growth - and then diet to “cut” weight to drop the fat gained during the bulking period while keeping the muscle. They tend to be extremely motivated individuals though.
and there are people who don't get fat no matter what they eat. Not sure what difference it makes to the millions of people I am refering to. Not even sure what is your point.
> and there are people who don't get fat no matter what they eat.
This is a myth.
When you actually track what these people eat, their daily caloric intake averages out to numbers you'd expect. At best, the difference between "fast metabolism" and "slow metabolism" people in studies comes out to a couple hundred calories per day.
You may witness someone consume 2 pizzas and a soda in one sitting without getting fat, but that person is consuming fewer calories for the rest of the day or the week to offset it.
I feel like the word metabolism is often misunderstood. My metabolism is just the number of calories I need to maintain my weight. If I start being more active my metabolism increases, if I become less active it decreases.
So, metabolism is really just an expression of how active we are. Some athletes eat 5-10,000 calories a day just to maintain their weight. Hard working laborers also need a lot more calories than office workers.
Meanwhile, people blame their metabolism as if it's just a trait they can't control like their height. You absolutely can increase your metabolism, just move more. This is also likely a big reason why many people gain weight in adulthood - in school we have weekly gym classes and we spend lots of time running around ad playing with friends etc. Then we grow up and our activity level plummets, but we don't adjust our diet to accommodate our much lower metabolism.
I think what they mean is "they eat whatever they want and however much they want" and still don't get fat.
Some people just only want to eat an amount that doesn't get them fat. They aren't using any willpower or anything, they just don't want to eat more than a healthy amount for them.
I am not one of those people (I am overweight when I eat as much as I want), but I am for other things. For example, I don't drink very often (only maybe 10 times a year) and don't get very drunk when I do. I just don't feel a desire to drink very often. It takes zero self discipline to not drink for an extended period of time because I don't have the desire for it.
On the other hand, many alcoholics struggle mightily to avoid drinking. It takes all their willpower to not drink.
Everyone is different in their ability to avoid different addictions.
What you're referring to, is the basic concept of thermodynamic calorie in/calorie out.
Yes, you can "just" reduce food and lose weight if you hit deficit numbers.
But if you don't do it correctly, you'll feel like trash, you'll suffer bad cravings, and put yourself in a stressful mental situation for days, possibly putting your job at risk.
You have to:
- Eat less than what you're already eating
- But enough to nourish yourself so you keep being in good shape for your work and hobbies
- Manage hunger
- Make the change sustainable so you can keep doing it for the rest of your life.
It's specially hard when your work is entirely sedentary, you live alone and, ironically, when you have a salary that let's you order food every day.
A lot of people don't have it hard. Maybe because they have someone cooking for them at home, because they meal prep the entire week, or because their work is so physically intensive they can just wing it and burn everything with what they need to do for a living anyway.
Inaccurate in my opinion. Let's say you eat 2500 calories a day usually. But you want to lose weight so you reduce it to 1800.
Except your calories are from pop tarts.
If you ate 100 calories of pop tarts every hour you're awake for total of 1800 calories... At the end of the month you'd be fatter.
If you ate 1800 calories of pop tarts once a day in 1 hour, you might maintain weight or loose a little. Maybe.
If you had 3600 calories of pop tarts in a few hour window, and then didn't eat again for 48 hours, you'd lose weight in a month.
Insulin control is 99% of losing weight. Yes thermodynamic blah blah, but unless you pay attention to hormone control that controls metabolism in general, it's not going to work without insane willpower to keep your 'calories out' higher than your body wants.
If you repeated the 3600 calories every 48 hours with beef instead, you'd lose weight like never before.
It is only thermodynamically impossible if you assume 100% efficiency in energy extraction from food, but in practice we only extract a very small amount of energy from matter. Thermodynamically you could extract ~10^12 kcal from a Pop Tart if you converted its mass into energy.
Not that I agree that for a human metabolism meal timing makes much of a difference in energy extraction, but it wouldn't be thermodynamically impossible.
It's insane to me that people keep talking about the energy in part. Forget that.
Realize that WHAT you put in can change what energy out is.
If I gave you 1800 calories of vodka at 8am, would your use the same amount of energy during the day, and even make it to your 7pm gym? No.
Ok, well sugar isnt exactly the same obviously, but it can also affect what you do that day, how your body acts, your brain even.
Your energy out gets totally messed with after you have tons of alcohol for obvious reasons.
Something similar happens on sugar/spiked insulin levels. Can you willpower through it and increase your energy out by running til you drop dead and lose weight? Sure. But it's not easy.
What's way easier is not having the insulin spike in the first place.
Yes it can affect what you do. That's the calories out part of the equation.
Nobody claims that the quality of what you eat has no effect on you, but every study shows that if you maintain the same calorie intake and expenditure it doesn't really matter how you consume the calories or how you expend it.
Well then luckily that shows you hopefully how bad studies are.
Because I assume that you agree that eating 100 calories of Pop-Tarts per hour for 18 hours for 30 days, would give you a different result than eating 3 days worth of Pop-Tarts in a few hours once every 3 days for a month.
To not understand that would mean that while believing some studies, you completely ignore all the studies that have been done on insulin and weight gain.
> Because I assume that you agree that eating 100 calories of Pop-Tarts per hour for 18 hours for 30 days, would give you a different result than eating 3 days worth of Pop-Tarts in a few hours once every 3 days for a month.
I agree that you would feel very differently in those situations and it's likely you wouldn't spend the same amount of energy unless you really make an effort to do it.
I don't agree that if you do make an effort to spend the same amount of energy you would have different results with regards to weight loss.
Two weird assumptions here...1, that massive amounts of constant blood sugar/insulin don't affect metabolism.
2, that in the face of crazy long term insulin/hormone disruption, people will continue to be just as active as if they had a sane diet of mostly meat and vegetables.
Are you saying raising your insulin levels hourly, 18 times a day, will not do anything to your metabolism? Did you even read my post, or did you just instantly reply with the same pedantic reply which my post was specifically meant to address?
Insulin control is about managing hunger more than a direct cause for weight.
You don't even need to do keto or wacky "just meat" diets to handle insulin. Protein consumption prevents insulin spikes for around 1-2 hours after eating.
Also, proteins and fats slow down digestion.
Turns out, the good old Mediterranean diet is spot-on for a healthy lifestyle.
I know a guy that has had meat only for 3 years now. Most fit guy I know.
My father and I have avoided carbs for a few years now. Can do home renovations, gardening, dirt bike riding, and hikes better than we ever did eating carbs. Unless you're doing long distance hikes/running/hard core sports, I really don't think that's true.
The first law of thermodynamics applies to closed systems, which your body is not. Yes it is true that, very broadly speaking, eating more results in weight gain past a certain point. But first principles are not the most proximate reason for that by a long shot.
That's exactly why I liked being on keto. Never felt hungry, had way more energy, mental health improved a lot. No other diet had those effects. I've been off it for a while and I feel gross again.
You can fill yourself up with lower calorie food too. Most people don’t eat enough vegetables. They basically take up space in the gut, make you feel full, while you get your 5 calories from an entire bowl of lettuce or whatever.
Right, so exactly like I said, it's very simple. If you want to lose weight, reduce calories.
If you add extra modifiers like "I want to feel great while doing it" and "I want to lose weight while sedentary" and "I want to continue eating whatever stupid thing I want" and "I need to be able to scroll tiktok for at least 3 hours, leaving no time for cooking", it gets much more complicated.
Side note: LOL at "but if you're craving food you might get fired!!1!" - this is professional victimhood at its finest.
Even then, limiting calorie intake isn't all that difficult; there's a reason why intermittent fasting took off and so many people were getting results from it.
Not necessarily. Some people respond well too intermittent fasting but not everyone. Some people respond to keto but not everyone. And just because you respond doesn't mean it's gonna take you to where you need to be.
I've always been skinny but for some reason I've gained weight recently. Even with keto, intermittent fasting, tirzeptide, and workouts twice a week I have only lost 5 lbs in months. When I was skinny and forgot to eat, I would feel a little crappy but still could function. Now I begin to feel incredibly depressed, I can't sleep nor focus. This solidified it to me that there's a circuit in your brain that controls feeding and if it's out of whack it'll punish you until you eat. Dieting takes months and no one can go that long without sleep. So it's still a practical problem, its just hard to see if your system is well calibrated.
> Even with keto, intermittent fasting, tirzeptide, and workouts twice a week I have only lost 5 lbs in months.
If you're combining a ketogenic diet AND intermittent fasting AND a GLP-1 inhibitor AND exercise and you're still losing less weight than observed in the Ozempic studies, it's likely that there's more to this story.
Ketogenic dieting does not automatically translate to weight loss. Keto simply makes it easier to reduce caloric intake. It's actually very easy to gain weight on a keto diet due to the high caloric density of consuming that much fat.
> Now I begin to feel incredibly depressed, I can't sleep nor focus.
Honestly if you're having these dramatic negative effects from minor caloric restriction with GLP-1 inhibitors, something else is going on.
Not that I think it's necessarily appropriate to discuss here, but I've also been of the opinion that fiber is pretty dang necessary for health. It limits calorie uptake, it massively helps shield against sugar uptake, it helps us poop better, etc.
Started having sweetened oatmeal for a midnight snack and already I feel better all over.
"if you eat according to this plan and make sure to get 8 hours of sleep a day, you won't even feel the cravings"
Is stuff that fat people say. They totally buy into it and buy all of the products to help them convince themselves this is true. Then they get disillusioned when it doesn't work, have a crisis of faith, then go to the next fad to get over the self-hatred caused by their failure at sticking to something so easy.
Intermittent fasting is great. It got me from 225 to 165, kept it off for the past few years with no effort (my entire metabolism recalibrated to 165-175, I guess.) I also know people who cry actual tears when they're very late for a meal, or panic. Those people need therapy and/or maybe an injection to artificially lower their appetites to the level where I also artificially lowered my own appetite.
Intermittent fasting is no more natural than injections. Dieting is modernity.
I’m certain IF more closely resembles how humans ate for millions of years, not knowing when our next meal would come before becoming an agrarian society, and we haven’t had much time to evolve since then.
So, yeah, dieting is modern, but so is an abundance of food. Both are equally unnatural.
This is literally the argument keto, carnivore, and caveman diet people make. "I feel like this is how we ate 10,000 years ago, so it must be natural and therefore good!"
We also didn't get vaccines for most of history. That doesn't mean remaining unvaccinated is good.
For the record, keto works for me (including bloodwork to prove it) but is unsustainable. My mind is never sufficient compared to when I'm eating normally. It's observable in my work and parenting. Although, last time I was on keto, my cholesterol was through the roof. I went off keto and three months later numbers were back to normal. And I wasn't consuming a shitton of meat and butter or anything. I was pretty close to exactly the right numbers for optimal health. Just...something made the numbers terrible and I've no idea why. Did a re-test to confirm. Same awful cholesterol.
On IF I actually got fatter. Numbers worse. Less healthy. Couldn't exercise as vigorously.
For me, calorie counting works. It's also not sustainable, because with kids you get in a rush and if you have a normal social life you eat at places you can't calorie count.
To stay healthy I just try as hard as I can and exercise (distance running, weightlifting, tennis when I can, which is pretty rare with three young children).
We didn't have vaccines millions of years ago, so we didn't evolve with them. We've always been eating, so our bodies literally evolved completely around resource acquisition.
Why is this such a complex concept for so many? I literally cannot think of anything simpler.
> Many people (will only speak to America), view being fat as a literal moral failing. Gluttony or overeating are not the sin, but being fat.
As an American with a sister with thyroid issues, I can say that is absolutely not true for the majority of Americans. People are mostly sympathetic to those who are not obvious slobs.
People are mostly sympathetic when it's physical issues. Psychological issues are treated as diseases of the soul that you only need God or willpower or whatever to fix. And most fat people are fat because of the incentives in our society, but admitting that also goes against certain political ideologies...
It's not that there are incentives for you to be fat, but there are incentives for things which happen to cause you to be fat.
The car industry is a huge one. Making people drive everywhere means more car sales, more fuel sales, more infrastructure built for more cars. And it also makes you fat as a side effect.
At a low level, yes, corn, but at a high level: more consumption = more money.
Everyone benefits from you being fat. Your doctors, your car manufacturer, food manufacturers, everyone. Except maybe health insurance. But they're not hurt too too much.
There is no doctor on Earth who goes to work and thinks "thank god for fat people or I wouldn't have a business".
There's plenty of doctors and surgeons who wish there were less fat people, because they enormously complicate doing surgery on and managing in hospitals.
> There is no doctor on Earth who goes to work and thinks "thank god for fat people or I wouldn't have a business".
I agree, but this isn't how incentives work.
Ultimately, there are billions of dollars at play here that rely directly on obesity. The mechanisms of the market and human behavior transcend moral judgement.
You mean the job that makes an irreversible removal of fat from your body? Repeat liposuction is considered unsafe, so you will find very, very few people who want to predate on someone via lipo.
How would you even know the cause of obesity of a stranger?
This is why viewing being fat as a moral failing is mistake regardless of the cause.
I'm pretty sure a lot of people view your sister the same way just because they have no idea she has thyroid issues
With respect, neither of you are qualified to speak for majority of Americans, but given the amount of effort, money, ink, and television dedicated to looking better and losing weight combined with the fact that there's even a thing called fat phobic that even requires definition just to push back on all that...
I think there's sufficient reason to believe that "Overweight = bad" is a common standard that at least people hold themselves to.
We must live on different timelines. Pre ozempic America was the proudest nation of fat people I have ever encountered (excluding the costal elites of course).
Third American here, and the push for fat acceptance was so little of my media consumption that it surprised me so many people spent so much time and energy on the topic.
You can be gluttonous and still thin. I eat 2 lbs of ground beef a day, with tons of cheese on it. For breakfast I have 6-8 eggs, with cheese. I have my morning coffee with heavy whipping cream. For desert, I whip up some of the heaving whipping cream and have it with frozen berries thawed out.
It drives gfs nuts but they're too anti fat to try it.
That’s a horrifying amount of saturated fat per day, though. This is an extreme risk for heart disease.
I keep hearing this, yet after 13 years of keto my cholesterol is still 100. Being fat is much higher-risk than eating fat.
I'm all for obese people taking Ozempic if they really need it, as well as thoroughly studying its long-term benefits and risks, but the fact that we're at the point of considering medical intervention as the population-wide solution to obesity is an abject failure of policy. Looking at our nutritional guidelines, you'd think everyone in America was an extreme athlete. All we have to do is:
1. Take something like the food pyramid, and put vegetables on the bottom, put fat/dairy/coconut and protein/meat/eggs/soy/mycelium in the next level up, put fruit in the next level up, and put starches and sugars on top. In other words: eat real food, mostly plants, without extreme high-carb macros, and treat fruits as dessert. Reverse the failed policy of demonizing saturated fat, and make this the official dietary recommendations for at least a generation.
2. Provide an incentive structure to use lower-GI ingredients in food products. For example, largely replace sugar with inulin fiber sweetened with stevia and/or monk fruit, and largely replace flour with alternatives made from blends of flax, wheat gluten, and resistant starch; no one will notice the difference. Stop letting Cheerios of all things market itself as "heart healthy", at least with its current formulation.
In this world, people would eat way more veggies because they'd grow up with parents and restaurants preparing them properly (with saturated fat and salt). Even for those who didn't, high fiber fortification of UPFs would provide a reasonable backstop. The low-fat/low-salt era's reframing of healthy food as "bland" is a crime against humanity.
For any fat people we still have after that, sure, put them all on Ozempic. It just shouldn't be the expected default that unmedicated people are fat while the medical establishment shrugs its shoulders and doubles down on half a century of empirically bad advice.
> Take something like the food pyramid, and put vegetables on the bottom, put fat/dairy/coconut and protein/meat/eggs/soy/mycelium in the next level up, put fruit in the next level up, and put starches and sugars on top
You might be happy to know we replaced the food pyramid years over a decade ago. With MyPlate, a visual representation of what your plate ought to look like when it's healthy. Half fruits and vegetables (mostly veggies), a little over 25% grains, a little under 25% protein (protein and fruits are depicted as the same). Dairy is the smallest of all, as a small cup off to the side.
Totally disagree with your idea that starches (grains + potatoes, I assume was your thinking) as the smallest thing. You say "eat real food, mostly plants" and then exclude fruits and grains. You keep complicating your own rule without explaining the complication.
> demonizing saturated fat
are you a cattle rancher? There is oodles of research that saturated fat is bad for you. Full stop.
Here are some literature reviews:
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34649831/ (they actually have received funding from the beef industry and yet still agree that it looks like a diet high in SFA is linked to atherosclerotic heart disease)
On the other hand, you have bad faith actors like the ones who wrote this:
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36477384/ where they argue the anti-SFA crowd is a conspiracy-theory laden, unscientific group. If you read their (laughable) conflict of interest statement, they never once actually say anything about themselves, instead just bragging about how they're producing "revelations [that have] never before seen the light"
I actually am too lazy to pull up more. But keto people love to talk about how it's all a conspiracy. I'm glad it works for you. It obviously doesn't work for humans at large.
You might be happy to know we replaced the food pyramid years over a decade ago. With MyPlate
No, not particularly. It's fine if you disagree with me, but MyPlate isn't similar to what I'm proposing.
are you a cattle rancher? There is oodles of research that saturated fat is bad for you. Full stop.
You're very confident about this. Are you a potato rancher? I've never personally seen a study which convincingly backed this claim up. What I have seen are plenty of bad studies which conflated "high-fat" with "high-calorie", or otherwise failed to isolate the effects of saturated fats.
Where's the long-term study showing that a diet with ~40%+ calories from non-UPF saturated fats, ~15% or fewer calories from carbohydrates, and an ample supply of green vegetables promotes atherosclerosis relative to a control diet with lower SFAs, higher carbs, and equal calories? Has this even been demonstrated in mice? Has reproducibility been demonstrated? Because I haven't seen it, and not for lack of trying.
But keto people love to talk about how it's all a conspiracy.
I never used the word "conspiracy". I don't doubt the government's policies in this area have been perfectly well-intentioned, but it's nevertheless a fact that we didn't have an obesity epidemic before the government began pushing guidelines that resemble the modern ones upon the 1977 conclusion of the McGovern committee.
If these guidelines and the studies used to justify them are so "obviously" great, it's funny how directly they correlate with the exact opposite of their intended effect.
I'm 6'4", 205. It's probably closer to 3000 calories.
But then I also skip meals other than dinner when I'm super busy, which probably averages me out lower. It's a lot easier to skip meals when your body is used to burning fat for energy instead of carbs.
The weight loss mechanism largely just comes from suppressing appetite though, so it still lines up with the penance for sin narrative. It’s not that different from wearing a hair-shirt and whipping yourself if you find yourself having lustful thoughts. Only instead of a whip you just feel kind of uncomfortable and nauseous if you eat too much.
I'd describe the effects as basically the opposite of self-torture. Self-torture is dieting/fasting without the drugs. With them, it's great. No afternoon light-headedness and difficulty concentrating, no hunger pangs, no "hangry" effect, no cravings you have to keep suppressing. Just smooth sailing. (though experiences do seem to vary—as do dosage levels)
That's true of semaglutide, but newer peptides like tirzepatide (a dual-agonist) and retatrutide (a triple agonist) have additional effects like improving insulin sensitivity, and simultaneously slowing the release of glucagon and activating glucagon receptors, which directly increases fat oxidation and thermogenesis.
I agree with this take but want to add that once everyone is doing it, these opinions will change drastically and everyone will pretend like they were never against it.
Another interesting question is where do people go from there? What is the next signal of virtue, I wonder.
I'm not a Catholic, but wasn't the idea of an indulgence that God intentionally allowed an alternative path to redemption, such that if you buy an indulgence, you are (at least by their definition) worthy and deserving?
I always thought of this as essentially the same idea as with Civ allowing you different paths to victory.
I thought Martin Luther's issue was more with the organization selling indulgences than the undeserving buying them. He preached justification by faith alone. Not some org selling justification.
Yes indulgences mean something different in Catholicism, they remit the "temporal effects" of Sin ie its spiritual consequences but don't "forgive" it like "Sacrament of Reconciliation" would..
I think that parent is perhaps confusing it with the sin of Gluttony.
The idea was for the bishop to pocket money and wave a wand and say “saved” after someone with means did something morally embarrassing. It was a racket and also a useful PR tool.
There's also a horseshoe effect here. At the other end are people who advocate for fat acceptance and see the GLP-1 drugs as another source of pressure to be thin. (Not everyone can take semaglutide etc without unpleasant side effects).
> Gluttony or overeating are not the sin, but being fat.
This is a strange thing to say. If you do something normal, and you end up in a normal state, why would that be a moral failing? There's no such thing as "overeating". Different people eat different amounts. The same person eats different amounts at different times.
> (From that perspective:)a miracle cure that allows someone to stop being fat is like an indulgence (in the Roman Catholic sense). It’s a cheat, a shortcut that allows the unworthy to reach a state they do not deserve.
This is incoherent. If you believe that being fat is a sin, but that the things you do that make you fat are not sins, then a miracle cure that makes you thin removes the only sin you were committing. You can't be unworthy if you're not fat. In order for a miracle cure to be "cheating", it is necessary that the sin is in the behavior and not the result.
my estimate would bigger than others and I would put it at 30-50years.
I take smoking as a cautionary tale, in the beginning it was pushed as not just a recreational thing but a healthy activity that bring benefits with papers published to sing praises about it. my parents were even nudged by their teachers/doctors/etc when they were young to try smoking.
now we all know that smoking is beyond bad and all that early "research" was just people paid off by big companies to promote it.
> I take smoking as a cautionary tale, in the beginning it was pushed as not just a recreational thing but a healthy activity
While i agree the gist of what you are saying, also important to mention that humans started cultivating tobaco when mamoths still roamed the Earth. There was indeed a concentrated pro-smoking publicity campaign by tobaco manufacturers in the 1930s, but it was hardly “in the beginning” of our tobaco use.
I think a lot of people share similar concerns, but the benefits of a successfully therapy are so extreme it would take quite a lot to derail ozempic. People easily gain 5 or more years of lifespan by not being obese, avoid myriad related health conditions, and are truly much better off. It would take a lot to reduce someone's life expectancy by a comparable amount and we haven't seen that much besides gastrointestinal issues.
We performed the surgical options like stomach reduction before this which come with serious danger for comparison
Under-discussed benefit: being able to have all your clothes actually fit at the same time (no wardrobe scattered between your "skinny" weight and your "fat" weight and rarely being in the right place for more than a handful of pieces to fit entirely correctly) so you can spend up a little on nicer clothes without worrying you'll only be able to wear them part of the time. Worst case, you start to pack on a little too much and they start getting tight, you increase the dose or go back on the drugs for a week or three (or just do it the old fashioned way—hey, it works some of the time, temporarily) and ta-da, right back where you want to be—you're not going to pack on weight and find yourself unable to lose, so buying "skinny clothes" isn't mortgaged against your future success at forcing yourself to eat less.
There is no modern-style research touting the benefits of smoking qua smoking. I will grant you there might've been some crank self-publishing something, like some of Aristotle's writings.
But you won't find what we'd consider today an acceptable, reputable form of research saying this.
Links to these papers? I’ve always been curious because I’ve seen this claim many times, especially on HN but no one has ever managed to actually provide a source on one.
Ozempic itself has been in use for almost a decade now (originally approved for type 2 diabetes in 2017). Many millions of people have taken it, without much in the way of serious complication.
Exenatide had been in use since about 2005, and by 2019 had more than a million people on it. Some of those patients have literally been on it for 20 years. It does have a worse side-effect profile than Ozempic (or the more modern GLP-1's like zepbound), but even then the benefits outweigh the risk for those diabetics.
Today it is hard to argue the benefits of modern GLP-1s don't outweigh their risks. They've been extensively tested, the class of drug has been around for decades, and they are used by many millions of people.
I personally lost 120 pounds on Zepbound in a little less than a year. It's been life changing, and anyone who thinks I might be less healthy now is very clearly wrong. Literally every aspect of my life has been greatly improved.
There’s two sides to that coin. Obesity has known long term harms. So what we are looking for in a deal breaker can’t be a small but statistically significant increase in some cancer or other. We’d need something as bad as smoking to outweigh the benefits.
Land of the free, home of the brave, digital cage proudly made in the USA!
A pseudonymous writer NS Lyons has been writing about how China and the US are converging in how they treat their citizens. A few years ago it would have raised eyebrows, but now it’s a suggested read.
https://open.substack.com/pub/theupheaval/p/the-china-conver...
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