Future (and current) presidents seem unlikely to be encumbered by laws. They can spend or not spend the budget. They can fire and effectively disable lawful commissions. They are immune from criminal proceedings. They can have any personal financial interests. They can accept large gifts. They can tear down national monuments. Really makes following Congress and laws a lot less informative. ;-)
False equivalence is what enabled the Trump presidency. "All politicians are corrupt liars, therefore we'll elect the one who tells us the lies we like".
Corruption and evil are not binary, they're shades of grey. Trump might be bad, but he's not poisoning his opponents or throwing them out windows.
If all politicians are evil, the goal should be to elect the least-evil one.
There's a reason this article doesn't actually quote the text of this provision. The text itself is pretty boilerplate and has nothing to do with a "merger" of the US and Israeli militaries. It basically just tells the Secretary of Defense to appoint someone to coordinate research and development efforts in certain areas.
The idea that this bill would make the US and Israeli militaries more integrated than the US is with any other allies is just bullshit. We literally have a joint legal and command structure in place for the US to fight alongside NATO allies.
1. Israel is not an ally, Israel is not in NATO. Most US citizens do not support Israel and want to completely disentangle the US from Israel. Israel has attacked the US on many occasions going so far as to steal nuclear secrets (Jonathan Pollard).
2. The text makes it very clear that this is a merger. A sibling comment posted the exact copy, read it for yourself.
Where in the text do you see anything about a "merger"? Bilateral agreements to develop technology are common between countries. That is nothing resembling a merger. There is no discussion of joint command structure, joint budgeting, etc.
I speak as a US citizen, not as an Epstein blackmailed politician. Israel is our enemy. To requote the text:
> "... responsible for synchronizing cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel, to expand and accelerate bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation, by-- (1) identifying jointly developed or Israeli-origin technologies with operational utility for potential integration into United States systems and programs of record; (2) ensuring collaborative research initiatives involving government, private sector, and academic institutions in the United States and Israel, is done in a manner that protects sensitive technology and information and the national security interests of the United States and Israel;"
After reading through the link you provided, I think it's fair to call it a merger. This is from the opening of Section 219.
"... responsible for synchronizing cooperative efforts between the
United States and Israel, to expand and accelerate bilateral defense
technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and
industrial cooperation, by--
(1) identifying jointly developed or Israeli-origin
technologies with operational utility for potential integration
into United States systems and programs of record;
(2) ensuring collaborative research initiatives involving
government, private sector, and academic institutions in the
United States and Israel, is done in a manner that protects
sensitive technology and information and the national security
interests of the United States and Israel;"
I don't think your counterarguments to the claims from the article are sincere.
The IDF/Hasbara has been active on HN for over a decade. Trying to write things off as conspiracy theories doesn't work when the site is under persistent social influence attack by a state actor.
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
No, and if you ban me I'll make a new account on a fresh IP. I've seen IDF and Hasbara types posting literal copy-pasted verbatim-identical shill replies from multiple sockpuppet HN accounts, going all the way back to at least 2013. I'm not letting this go.
We banned that account a long time ago, but having taken a quick look I see no reason why you would call that a state propaganda account, other than (1) it expressed strong views that you strongly disagree with, and (2) that always makes a post more likely to seem fake, disingenuous, etc.
From my point of view, there's no evidence for this. Doesn't mean it wasn't true, of course, but in the absence of evidence I would go with the simpler explanation, which we know for a fact happens all the time: there are a lot of people who feel strongly about the topic and share the opinions this account was stating (just as there are on the opposing side).
I also don't think your theory is consistent with all the other posts that account made about everything from Photoshop to Javascript floats to package managers to whether rms is autistic, OpenBSD, and so on. Of course one can argue that this just proves how clever the state propagandists are, and how good at covering their tracks, but this line of reasoning ends up getting pretty absurd.
The fact is that HN has, and has had for years, very many commenters articulating these same opinions, sometimes within the site guidleines and sometimes not, and just the same is true of commenters articulating opposing positions. I don't see any difference between the comments people single out as examples of putative astroturfing and the others. Moreover there's nothing in the private data we have that would change this picture significantly. On the contrary, all the evidence points in the other direction: real users with strong feelings and therefore strong opinions.
This kind of thing is exactly why we have that guideline that asks users not to post accusations of astroturfing, foreign agenting and so on, but rather to contact us privately. We're not saying these things don't exist—but the odds that you (I don't mean you personally, of course, but everyone in this situation) are reading-in something that isn't there are orders of magnitude higher.
Dang, I would appreciate a reply, since you kind of skirted around my main point, which is that pro-Israel accounts have been posting copy-pasted verbatim-identical talking points going back all the way to at least 2014. Multiple accounts are literally posting the same word-for-word replies, but we're supposed to pretend that it's impossible for state actors to run influence operations on HN. How?
You've given me one link so far, and I gave you an in-depth reply. That's not "skirting around" and it's not telling you to "pretend" (as if such a thing would work). If you want me to engage with you seriously, you should omit such swipes. Writing in-depth responses to these questions is extremely time-consuming, and that means taking time away from the other 50,000 things we're overwhelmed with. I'm not going to keep doing this if you signal that you're unwilling to accept an answer you don't already agree with.
It is common on open internet forums (like HN) for people to become convinced that they're surrounded by enemies, and eventually that the mods are in cahoots with their enemies - because the alternative is to believe the simpler-but-more-painful theory that other legit users sincerely and strongly disagree with them. I've written about this many times (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098).
arrived at the same "Please, no simplified propaganda on HN" phrasing when they're coming from separate accounts within a short period of time. You've written a lot of text, but so far you still haven't answered how these two pro-Israel accounts ended up posting the exact same phrasing if they're not sockpuppets. I'm not sure how I can make it any more clear.
This is so absurd that I can hardly spell out how absurd it is.
(1) You didn't link to those two posts, only one of them (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48900528). Now you're complaining that I "still haven't answered" a question you didn't ask in the first place.
(2) Are you seriously asking me to tell you why 2 comments from 12 years ago happened to use the same turn of phrase? How should I know? Perhaps one saw the other say it and repeated it.
(3) The fact that you have to go back to 2014 to even pose your question is self-refuting. If this were any semblance of a serious issue, you'd have no difficulty supplying plenty of recent examples.
I linked to a discussion thread linking to the other post. My point is that Hasbara has been active on HN for a long time and you're turning a blind eye to it. On other sites you will frequently see their sockpuppets posting the same verbatim-identical talking points, and they were sloppier about parroting the same lines on HN back then. They have a major presence here, and you need to stop pretending that they don't exist. Hasbara is a civilian-state fusion that enlists regular Israelis to shill for the government while making smalltalk on the side to appear organic.
> I linked to a discussion thread linking to the other post.
Where?
> and you're turning a blind eye to it
I spent over an hour taking seriously, looking into, and responding to the concern you raised, only to be accused of "turning a blind eye". That is what one gets for being an internet idiot, which was obviously my mistake here.
> On other sites you will frequently see
That is what people resort to when they have no evidence to point to on HN itself, which is already clear from your having to go back as far as 2014 to dig anything up. HN gets millions of posts a year—from randomness alone you shouldn't have to go far back to come up with something that looks plausible, however superficially.
I gave you that thread because it sticks out in my memory as the oldest, most egregious example of Hasbara on HN, and those posts are a testament to how deeply embedded they are on this site and how much they have expanded their operations here since then. Apparently, your former self agrees too, otherwise you wouldn't have banned one of those Hasbara accounts. I can provide you with lots of newer, softer examples, but my point is that Hasbara has been here parroting the same identical state-approved talking points for over a decade.
@dang I don't understand why we're talking about some random posts from 12 years ago.
I made a very simple point in the comments here - the headline and article make extraordinary, shocking claims that are not supported by the text of the legislation. For this I get accused of being a sock puppet or a paid foreign agent, despite the fact that I rarely comment on this topic, have a long comment history on a variety of topics, and didn't even say anything in support of Israel, I simply pointed out that the premise of the article is not just incorrect, but laughably so.
I would also like to point out that other comments in this thread include references to 1950s propaganda about Jews controlling the US government, references to how people who support this legislation are "Epstein-bought politicians" and other anti-semitic (not anti-Israel) trash. The far-right 1950s US politician quoted elsewhere in these comments was not anti-Israel - Israel barely existed at that time - he was just an old-fashioned Jew-baiter of a kind that was common in that era (he's mostly remembered for his McCarthyist campaigns against celebrities, but that's another story).
This article is just a new version of those ancient "a secret cabal of Jews control the world" conspiracy theories. The legislation is the equivalent of, say, an HN-funded company signing an MOU with a university to collaborate on R&D. Nobody would describe that as a "merger" between the company and the university. To go from "the DOD will appoint someone in it's vast bureaucracy to supervise research collaborations with Israel" to "the entire vast US and Israeli militaries will merge into one" is absurd and you only get there if you're primed to see the world through this conspiracy-tinted lens.
Do people unfairly conflate legitimate criticism of Israeli actions with anti-semitism? Sure, but then you look at a post like this and commenters are immediately jumping to how the US has been a "puppet state" of the Jews for "generations" (to quote another commenter), and then any pushback is immediately attacked as illegitimate, paid shilling.
Why would multiple accounts make the same very specific "Please no simplified propaganda on HN" quip if they weren't collaborating somehow? How could multiple accounts arrive at that same exact phrasing if they weren't controlled by the same person or group of people? I honestly can't think of another rational explanation.
The particularly egregious instance I'm thinking of from back in 2013 would link back to my doxxable info, so unfortunately you'll have to take my word for it. Disappointing, I know, but it's not worth leaking anything when dealing with these vicious amoral scumbags. I do suggest at least familiarizing yourself with the scope of Hasbara's efforts on social media sites like and HN and reddit, however, as that is public information.
Not really sure how you have a productive conversation when one party says that not only will they consider that anyone who disagrees with them is acting on bad faith, but they intend to disregard all rules and circumvent any bans.
Anyway it's pretty obvious that talking about this topic is completely pointless so I'm going to quit for now because I'm not actually a sock puppet or a paid shill or whatever, I'm just a human being who has a differing opinion.
The only reason Israeli government influence operations persist on social media is because they manipulate and exploit site moderation to their advantage.
we have been a puppet state for generations, its been warned about since the 1950's but only recently has it gotten so bad that average people have started to notice. senator jack tenney wrote a book called "zions trojan horse" way back in the 50s.
Future (and current) presidents seem unlikely to be encumbered by laws. They can spend or not spend the budget. They can fire and effectively disable lawful commissions. They are immune from criminal proceedings. They can have any personal financial interests. They can accept large gifts. They can tear down national monuments. Really makes following Congress and laws a lot less informative. ;-)
And now everybody screams that Putin is bad.
False equivalence is what enabled the Trump presidency. "All politicians are corrupt liars, therefore we'll elect the one who tells us the lies we like".
Corruption and evil are not binary, they're shades of grey. Trump might be bad, but he's not poisoning his opponents or throwing them out windows.
If all politicians are evil, the goal should be to elect the least-evil one.
Any president that wants to pause it can cite "national security".
That sounds pretty reasonable since Israel spies on the USA a lot
There's a reason this article doesn't actually quote the text of this provision. The text itself is pretty boilerplate and has nothing to do with a "merger" of the US and Israeli militaries. It basically just tells the Secretary of Defense to appoint someone to coordinate research and development efforts in certain areas.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8800...
The idea that this bill would make the US and Israeli militaries more integrated than the US is with any other allies is just bullshit. We literally have a joint legal and command structure in place for the US to fight alongside NATO allies.
1. Israel is not an ally, Israel is not in NATO. Most US citizens do not support Israel and want to completely disentangle the US from Israel. Israel has attacked the US on many occasions going so far as to steal nuclear secrets (Jonathan Pollard).
2. The text makes it very clear that this is a merger. A sibling comment posted the exact copy, read it for yourself.
This is factually wrong. Israel is a "major non-NATO ally" https://www.state.gov/major-non-nato-ally-status
Where in the text do you see anything about a "merger"? Bilateral agreements to develop technology are common between countries. That is nothing resembling a merger. There is no discussion of joint command structure, joint budgeting, etc.
I speak as a US citizen, not as an Epstein blackmailed politician. Israel is our enemy. To requote the text:
> "... responsible for synchronizing cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel, to expand and accelerate bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation, by-- (1) identifying jointly developed or Israeli-origin technologies with operational utility for potential integration into United States systems and programs of record; (2) ensuring collaborative research initiatives involving government, private sector, and academic institutions in the United States and Israel, is done in a manner that protects sensitive technology and information and the national security interests of the United States and Israel;"
After reading through the link you provided, I think it's fair to call it a merger. This is from the opening of Section 219.
"... responsible for synchronizing cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel, to expand and accelerate bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation, by-- (1) identifying jointly developed or Israeli-origin technologies with operational utility for potential integration into United States systems and programs of record; (2) ensuring collaborative research initiatives involving government, private sector, and academic institutions in the United States and Israel, is done in a manner that protects sensitive technology and information and the national security interests of the United States and Israel;"
I don't think your counterarguments to the claims from the article are sincere.
[flagged]
The IDF/Hasbara has been active on HN for over a decade. Trying to write things off as conspiracy theories doesn't work when the site is under persistent social influence attack by a state actor.
To quote the HN guidelines:
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
No, and if you ban me I'll make a new account on a fresh IP. I've seen IDF and Hasbara types posting literal copy-pasted verbatim-identical shill replies from multiple sockpuppet HN accounts, going all the way back to at least 2013. I'm not letting this go.
Links? I'd like to see examples of the posts and accounts you have in mind.
Making a fresh child reply in case that helps visibility. Please see this linked example from 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8406178
We banned that account a long time ago, but having taken a quick look I see no reason why you would call that a state propaganda account, other than (1) it expressed strong views that you strongly disagree with, and (2) that always makes a post more likely to seem fake, disingenuous, etc.
From my point of view, there's no evidence for this. Doesn't mean it wasn't true, of course, but in the absence of evidence I would go with the simpler explanation, which we know for a fact happens all the time: there are a lot of people who feel strongly about the topic and share the opinions this account was stating (just as there are on the opposing side).
I also don't think your theory is consistent with all the other posts that account made about everything from Photoshop to Javascript floats to package managers to whether rms is autistic, OpenBSD, and so on. Of course one can argue that this just proves how clever the state propagandists are, and how good at covering their tracks, but this line of reasoning ends up getting pretty absurd.
The fact is that HN has, and has had for years, very many commenters articulating these same opinions, sometimes within the site guidleines and sometimes not, and just the same is true of commenters articulating opposing positions. I don't see any difference between the comments people single out as examples of putative astroturfing and the others. Moreover there's nothing in the private data we have that would change this picture significantly. On the contrary, all the evidence points in the other direction: real users with strong feelings and therefore strong opinions.
This kind of thing is exactly why we have that guideline that asks users not to post accusations of astroturfing, foreign agenting and so on, but rather to contact us privately. We're not saying these things don't exist—but the odds that you (I don't mean you personally, of course, but everyone in this situation) are reading-in something that isn't there are orders of magnitude higher.
Dang, I would appreciate a reply, since you kind of skirted around my main point, which is that pro-Israel accounts have been posting copy-pasted verbatim-identical talking points going back all the way to at least 2014. Multiple accounts are literally posting the same word-for-word replies, but we're supposed to pretend that it's impossible for state actors to run influence operations on HN. How?
You haven't supplied any links of that kind. Where are these accounts that are "literally posting the same word-for-word replies"?
We need something objective to go on (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...) or all this just reduces to the mist of imagination.
You've given me one link so far, and I gave you an in-depth reply. That's not "skirting around" and it's not telling you to "pretend" (as if such a thing would work). If you want me to engage with you seriously, you should omit such swipes. Writing in-depth responses to these questions is extremely time-consuming, and that means taking time away from the other 50,000 things we're overwhelmed with. I'm not going to keep doing this if you signal that you're unwilling to accept an answer you don't already agree with.
It is common on open internet forums (like HN) for people to become convinced that they're surrounded by enemies, and eventually that the mods are in cahoots with their enemies - because the alternative is to believe the simpler-but-more-painful theory that other legit users sincerely and strongly disagree with them. I've written about this many times (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098).
I'm not asking for a multi-paragraph in-depth reply: I want you answer how these two posts that I linked to from 2014
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8406178
and
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8406257
arrived at the same "Please, no simplified propaganda on HN" phrasing when they're coming from separate accounts within a short period of time. You've written a lot of text, but so far you still haven't answered how these two pro-Israel accounts ended up posting the exact same phrasing if they're not sockpuppets. I'm not sure how I can make it any more clear.
This is so absurd that I can hardly spell out how absurd it is.
(1) You didn't link to those two posts, only one of them (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48900528). Now you're complaining that I "still haven't answered" a question you didn't ask in the first place.
(2) Are you seriously asking me to tell you why 2 comments from 12 years ago happened to use the same turn of phrase? How should I know? Perhaps one saw the other say it and repeated it.
(3) The fact that you have to go back to 2014 to even pose your question is self-refuting. If this were any semblance of a serious issue, you'd have no difficulty supplying plenty of recent examples.
I linked to a discussion thread linking to the other post. My point is that Hasbara has been active on HN for a long time and you're turning a blind eye to it. On other sites you will frequently see their sockpuppets posting the same verbatim-identical talking points, and they were sloppier about parroting the same lines on HN back then. They have a major presence here, and you need to stop pretending that they don't exist. Hasbara is a civilian-state fusion that enlists regular Israelis to shill for the government while making smalltalk on the side to appear organic.
> I linked to a discussion thread linking to the other post.
Where?
> and you're turning a blind eye to it
I spent over an hour taking seriously, looking into, and responding to the concern you raised, only to be accused of "turning a blind eye". That is what one gets for being an internet idiot, which was obviously my mistake here.
> On other sites you will frequently see
That is what people resort to when they have no evidence to point to on HN itself, which is already clear from your having to go back as far as 2014 to dig anything up. HN gets millions of posts a year—from randomness alone you shouldn't have to go far back to come up with something that looks plausible, however superficially.
I originally linked to the thread with my first post referencing the 2014 discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48900528.
I gave you that thread because it sticks out in my memory as the oldest, most egregious example of Hasbara on HN, and those posts are a testament to how deeply embedded they are on this site and how much they have expanded their operations here since then. Apparently, your former self agrees too, otherwise you wouldn't have banned one of those Hasbara accounts. I can provide you with lots of newer, softer examples, but my point is that Hasbara has been here parroting the same identical state-approved talking points for over a decade.
@dang I don't understand why we're talking about some random posts from 12 years ago.
I made a very simple point in the comments here - the headline and article make extraordinary, shocking claims that are not supported by the text of the legislation. For this I get accused of being a sock puppet or a paid foreign agent, despite the fact that I rarely comment on this topic, have a long comment history on a variety of topics, and didn't even say anything in support of Israel, I simply pointed out that the premise of the article is not just incorrect, but laughably so.
I would also like to point out that other comments in this thread include references to 1950s propaganda about Jews controlling the US government, references to how people who support this legislation are "Epstein-bought politicians" and other anti-semitic (not anti-Israel) trash. The far-right 1950s US politician quoted elsewhere in these comments was not anti-Israel - Israel barely existed at that time - he was just an old-fashioned Jew-baiter of a kind that was common in that era (he's mostly remembered for his McCarthyist campaigns against celebrities, but that's another story).
This article is just a new version of those ancient "a secret cabal of Jews control the world" conspiracy theories. The legislation is the equivalent of, say, an HN-funded company signing an MOU with a university to collaborate on R&D. Nobody would describe that as a "merger" between the company and the university. To go from "the DOD will appoint someone in it's vast bureaucracy to supervise research collaborations with Israel" to "the entire vast US and Israeli militaries will merge into one" is absurd and you only get there if you're primed to see the world through this conspiracy-tinted lens.
Do people unfairly conflate legitimate criticism of Israeli actions with anti-semitism? Sure, but then you look at a post like this and commenters are immediately jumping to how the US has been a "puppet state" of the Jews for "generations" (to quote another commenter), and then any pushback is immediately attacked as illegitimate, paid shilling.
Why would multiple accounts make the same very specific "Please no simplified propaganda on HN" quip if they weren't collaborating somehow? How could multiple accounts arrive at that same exact phrasing if they weren't controlled by the same person or group of people? I honestly can't think of another rational explanation.
The particularly egregious instance I'm thinking of from back in 2013 would link back to my doxxable info, so unfortunately you'll have to take my word for it. Disappointing, I know, but it's not worth leaking anything when dealing with these vicious amoral scumbags. I do suggest at least familiarizing yourself with the scope of Hasbara's efforts on social media sites like and HN and reddit, however, as that is public information.
Edit: looks like I actually had the foresight to use a throwaway in 2014, so there's no doxxable info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8406178
@dang please see this
They are just quoting the guidelines. Not bots :dismayed-face:
That phrase never appears in the site guidelines. Try again.
The site guidelines could.... change
Provide evidence that they ever contained that phrase. You can't, because you made it up, because it didn't happen.
@dang dang
Please see the above edit about Hasbara raids on HN.
@dang you want to weigh in here?
Not really sure how you have a productive conversation when one party says that not only will they consider that anyone who disagrees with them is acting on bad faith, but they intend to disregard all rules and circumvent any bans.
Anyway it's pretty obvious that talking about this topic is completely pointless so I'm going to quit for now because I'm not actually a sock puppet or a paid shill or whatever, I'm just a human being who has a differing opinion.
The only reason Israeli government influence operations persist on social media is because they manipulate and exploit site moderation to their advantage.
we have been a puppet state for generations, its been warned about since the 1950's but only recently has it gotten so bad that average people have started to notice. senator jack tenney wrote a book called "zions trojan horse" way back in the 50s.
Section 219 is treason.
Not if you're Israel-First.
No elected politician to the American government should be "Israel-first". Anyone stating such should be tried for treason.