went over your head..as usual.
US Politics
- Thread starter Nick 0208 Ldn
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Aww, I didn't mean to upset you. It's those pesky forces within.
Good grief man.
Still way over your head eh?
Your post above comes off similar to RWNJs deep state beliefs. Like why do you fear someone will kill AOC?
Then with a link to a conspiracy author's take on JFK's death. So perhaps I'm off here, as you stated, but this certainly appears to be conspiratorial drivel about JFK and the present day with CIA, foreign states, and other shadowy merchants mentioned.
Please do enlighten me.
The link was related specifically about what Truman said about the CIA and how it operates.
What it was meant to do and what it does. Feel free to disagree with him.
Simply its about accountability and oversight.
If you believe that our government is on the up and up and that all the candidates either party nominate are all accountable to ordinary Americans feel free to vote for Biden or Trump.
the main point I was making is that Congress, the president and the courts are rigged to help people in power . Certainly not ordinary Americans.
Otherwise we would not have have the poverty we have now in the richest country in history.
These people are just not going to give up their power.
Our vote is diluted by gerrymandering and kicking people off voter roles.
The overall point? JFK, RFK and MLK were not just one offs.
it can happen again.
Coward is her middle name.
the world would be a better place if she dropped dead
I’m doubtful of anything like that happening to AOC but I wouldn’t put anything past the CIA to he fair to your point.
I could have made my point differently and perhaps that was not the best example as it gets muddled up with the JFK Conspiracy issue as it was. The CIA have been wrongly used many times.
I always say with corruption...follow the money.
Washington is more corrupt than Rome at the height of its empire.
Why we have so much poverty.
Wealth flowing up at the cost of so many lives.
These people are not going to give up their power just because someone gets voted in/elected.
They will do anything to keep their power.
To think otherwise is naive.
The most important thing we can do is to keep the integrity of the electoral process so that every vote is counted...and not diluted.
Several States taking gerrymandering issues to the State SC.
At the same time to ensure the integrity of the voter rolls.
Bernie has mentioned Federal voting laws.
AOC, Elijah Cummings, & Friends TAG TEAM Big Pharma CEO on America's Broken Healthcare
Exactly...
this is so true in so many states. there's no reason why blue states can't pass progressive policies. there's no reason massachusetts and maryland should have republican governors. why can't new york properly fund public transportation? after obama was elected in 08, democrats controlled the governorship and the state legislature in north carolina. why didnt they expand voting rights? why didnt arkansas, which also was fully democratic after 08, expand welfare or protect abortion? why didnt wisconsin pass card check?
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/26/opinions/china-is-not-the-enemy-sachs/index.htmlJeffrey Sachs said:
As someone who remembers these assassinations I don’t dismiss your point lightly or as drivel. The good politicians/activists who genuinely have the interest of the American people at their very core and fight hard for the rights of the minorities and the poor do not last long. The ones who want to take down major corruption do not last long either. Assassination does not happen to the friends of big business and corruption and if we ever doubt that we only have to look at how long this President has lasted. The worse one in living memory but yet one with no threats on his life. But he’s a money man isn’t he, someone who encourages and helps to increase wealth for the rich and big business and stomps down hard on the underprivileged.
AOC May be at risk in the future but at the moment she is safe. A new member to Congress and one without much political clout but as her influence rises no doubt so will the risk to her health.
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A kill is the final resort.
The bigger point is that our entire political system is corrupt.
The DNC would prefer a Trump to Sanders.
That is the reality we live in.
Correct, your entire political system is corrupt. And if you have a President who fights against it for the benefit of the people and that leader is also strong and powerful and carries the people with him then the “final resort” becomes the only option. He must be stopped at all costs.
Hopefully Trump will break this system. He is the embodiment of all that is wrong with the political system. An extreme version, but an extreme version was needed to bring home the horrors of the level of corruption that has become so deeply embedded in the American psyche and as such accepted as normal.
If we need proof the entire political system is corrupt, just look at how the Mueller report has been handled. Trumps open subservience to Putin.
In spite of numerous warnings by the various intelligence agencies about the probability that Trump is a Russian asset, The Republicans in Congress have not moved away from him.
He has completely dismissed the oversight obligations of the House.
As for the Dems. They are pushing a candidate who wants to 'move on'. Do you think Trump or any of the Republicans will be held accountable?
Regardless of how they act this presidency has shattered the Dems, just as it has shattered so many millions of other people. The massive boil is going to get bigger, more painful and more inflamed before it bursts, but when it bursts it will make one helluva a mess. (Sorry for that description). It will cover many in government and infect them. We will see who they are and they will be marked forever. No-one will want to go near them.
No-one will ever want to see a boil of that magnitude again and so they will take measures to ensure their country is protected. Right now they are searching for a poultice for this boil. They know that they will find one soon.
mirch mcconell is done for now
Pelocy literally spells it out loud. Schumer many times has said how he supports an ethnostate for Israel...Rs literally give a standing ovation to a foreign president at US Congress in 2015.
yet there are people who genuinely believe it's Russia who owns Washington and not a couple of other countries a bit further south...
No other country "owns Washington". That idea is where a basic misunderstanding of politics turns into conspiratory thinking: the fiction of a helpless superpower, controlled and steered by agents of a small country, which, as so often, happens to be the Jewish state here. (A new minor candidate for that role seems to be Saudi Arabia, as has already been suggested by someone else before, and which you seem to imply as well.)
The US is closely allied with Israel out of concrete material interests, as well as certain political, cultural, and ideological traditions. So largely out of its own impetus, not because Israel or pro-Israel lobby groups force it to. That's what Pelosi spells out there with lots of pathos, her own commitment to that political tradition. Not an "ownership" of Israel over US state institutions.
(Btw, Pelosi seems to speak at an IAC event there, not an AIPAC one, as RT puts it.)
The US is closely allied with Israel out of concrete material interests, as well as certain political, cultural, and ideological traditions. So largely out of its own impetus, not because Israel or pro-Israel lobby groups force it to. That's what Pelosi spells out there with lots of pathos, her own commitment to that political tradition. Not an "ownership" of Israel over US state institutions.
(Btw, Pelosi seems to speak at an IAC event there, not an AIPAC one, as RT puts it.)
There is absolutely nothing wrong with an alliance and even a super close alliance. It's when you see the US-Israel relationship in terms of give and takes, the US is like the hopeless obsessive boyfriend that tries way too hard to appease to his girlfriend (Israel) , while Israel perhaps can't believe it's getting so much value and resources out of someone she doesn't like back even 20% of how much he's in love with her. I've had Israeli classmates repeatedly joke how they are technically the 51st state!
You have the billions of dollars annually given by the US to Israel as aid, in addition to the US basically acting as Israel's bodyguard all the time in defence, fulfilling a large majority of the Israeli elite geopolitical wishes in the region, and so that Biden openly admits even if Israel didn't exist, US would invent it...there is no similar relationship in the entire world. This is beyond just an alliance. It's not anti-semitic to point out AIPAC has a significant influence on US politicians and their stance on Israel. It's just a harmless fact.
And by the way, what does Israel give back to the US and its citizens in return? Nowhere near as much...false intel that Iraq has WMD that cost (just talking about American expense, not the rest of the world) close to 5,000 American lives, wasted trillions of money that could have been used to rebuild the country's crumbling infrastructure, and yet US itself is not a damn inch safer as a result.
A relationship is a give and take. In US-Israel, US is the one that gives and gives and gives and gives and gives ... I actually applaud Israel for managing to get the world's biggest bully and biggest dick waver to protect her like a personal bodyguard. Can't hate on such fantastic bottom line result for Israel...don't hate the player, hate the game. You're right, not ownership...but also not just any "alliance" when you have politicians of both parties (who mostly hate each other's guts and can't agree on anything) always finding a common consensus when it comes to relations with Israel and talking at AIPAC which quoting Wikipedia just so that I'm not making it up is The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is a lobbying group that advocates pro-Israel policies to the Congress and Executive Branch of the United States.
I don't even have a side in the Israel-Palestine conflict and would love the Israeli-Iran relations to be normally restored as we had 100k Persian Jews living in Iran and even direct flights from Isfahan to Jerusalem. But to deny that Israel lobby has significant control over American politicians and therefore politics is just having your head in the sand IMO.
Here is a clip of the late Shah of Iran (RIP) who actually had a good diplomatic relationship with Israel, briefly pointing out the influence of Jewish lobby on American public and politicians to Mike Wallace in 1976, just a few years before the wretched revolution.
Apart from the major historical and cultural reasons that America tends to favour Israel, have you considered that Israel has helped fulfill a large majority of the US elite geopolitical wishes in the region?
First of all, look around the world - the US has committed huge numbers of troops since WW2 deployed in places like the Gulf, the Korean Peninsula, Japan, Germany, and elsewhere. They have actually used and lost thousands of those troops in warfare in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. Yet in Israel's part of the Middle East, the only times the US has deployed troops have been in Lebanon twice briefly (in 1958 and 1982) and more recently in Syria against ISIS. Very short, limited, and small deployments. In contrast to America's allies in South Korea and the Gulf, not a single US soldier has been killed while fighting on Israel's behalf. Israel fought all its early wars without a great deal of US material assistance, and since American aid to Israel really grew following the 1973 war, Israel has not fought a single conventional war against a neighboring state (although numerous conflicts with local non-state actors).
At the same time, Israel won the Cold War for America in the Levant. Israeli victories over Egypt flipped the most powerful, influential Arab state from the Soviet camp to the Western camp, in doing so ending Arab nationalism as a major anti-American ideological force to be reckoned with in the region. Since Egypt has flipped, the Suez Canal has remained open to shipping, in contrast to the period from 1948-1973 when the Israel-Egypt conflicts would frequently cause its closure and interrupt global shipping traffic.
He'll pivot to the center any moment now.
While in literary terms, this statement is true...it's also undeniable that removing Saddam in Iraq and attempting to remove Assad in Syria were both huge geopolitical gifts to Israel as Israel benefits from weaker Arab states and balkanization of the Arab world. Netanyahu himself was in US Congress in 2002 if I'm not mistaken testifying about Saddam's arsenal of WMD. The Iraq war benefitted Israel and (ironically and coincidentally the mullah's regime in Iran) a lot more than America and Americans.
You made a fantastic point in the second paragraph. That's something I hadn't considered. While on that subject, I wasn't alive back then, but I am curious how the USS Liberty incident that had 34 members of American navy killed by an Israeli jetfighter was portrayed in American media and among its politicians. Was it swiftly thrown under the carpet or did it actually cause a strain in the relationships? Though from your point, since it happened just as Israel was winning the cold war for America at the same time, then maybe it quickly went off the headlines.
@Hanks
If you had written that second post instead instead of the first one, my reaction would certainly have been different. So while my previous post still stands as a reply to that one, I'm okay with leaving it alone and continuing on the basis of this:
To me, these two basic factors explain the peculiarities of that relationship quite well; pro-Israel groups and politicians being a well-established part of the US political scene is a logical consequence. And although that basis is strong, the everyday aspects and dealings of that partnership weren't always consistent, but subject to the ebb and flow of political and also ideological currents. Recent example might be the beef Netanyahu had with Obama/Kerry, followed by his ongoing love-in with Trump. A historical example might be the US wavering course on support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War. (And, as a slightly different but related issue, the general European stance of prioritising the Arab states' interests during that crisis.)
If you had written that second post instead instead of the first one, my reaction would certainly have been different. So while my previous post still stands as a reply to that one, I'm okay with leaving it alone and continuing on the basis of this:
US and Israel are certainly allies unlike others; it's much more than that. That's what I tried to express with "...certain political, cultural, and ideological traditions". I'd also say having an unshakeable ally in the Middle East (which I don't think Egypt or Saudi Arabia can ever be) is a pretty much priceless asset for a global superpower. No one else can have that in this crucial region. As usual, @2cents has put it better than I could have done.
To me, these two basic factors explain the peculiarities of that relationship quite well; pro-Israel groups and politicians being a well-established part of the US political scene is a logical consequence. And although that basis is strong, the everyday aspects and dealings of that partnership weren't always consistent, but subject to the ebb and flow of political and also ideological currents. Recent example might be the beef Netanyahu had with Obama/Kerry, followed by his ongoing love-in with Trump. A historical example might be the US wavering course on support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War. (And, as a slightly different but related issue, the general European stance of prioritising the Arab states' interests during that crisis.)
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There was no consensus in Israel on these issues at the time. In terms of Saddam, the prevailing sentiment in the late 90s up to 2003 was that Iran was a greater danger than Iraq (remember Netanyahu was out of politics in 2002). Not that they didn't generally welcome seeing their enemy Saddam taken out, but the idea that people like Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush needed AIPAC to convince them to take out Saddam (something they'd been keen on since 1991) is absurd. And there is no greater example of the limits of Israeli influence on US foreign policy than that a quarter of a century of lobbying has failed to bring about US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and/or regime change in Tehran, which remain the primary Israeli priorities in the region.
On Assad, again there was no consensus, but my impression at the time was that most Israeli officials leaned in favor of 'Devil you know' - happy to see Assad chastened, but wary of what would come next. And I think that attitude is reflected in Israel's part in that war, which has been very limited when considered alongside the contributions Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran have made to their respective favoured players. Today I think the Israelis would much rather go back to the pre-2011 status quo with Syria, when, unlike today, the Golan was their quietest frontier. In any case the Americans only sent their troops into that conflict in 2014 after ISIS began threatening Baghdad and wiping out minorities, so I'm not sure how that can be considered an intervention on behalf of Israel.
Anyway, I'm not arguing that the alliance is all about strategic, material considerations, Clearly, there are deep historical and cultural factors which draw most Americans towards a sympathetic view of the Israeli narrative in the conflict, and it's those sentiments which give the Israel Lobby the solid base from where it can influence high politics. Even then, the historical-cultural side of things is crucial. When AIPAC fly US officials over to Israel for a tour of the country, the Americans are presented with a country with a similar founding narrative (persecuted religious minority bringing biblically-based civilization to a barbarous land), a seemingly similar political system (democracy innit), and an immediately recognizable culture and society (fairly open and liberal, and Jewish). Not only that, when they're taken to tour the frontiers they see American arms pointed at Arabs, in their minds a reliable source of anti-American sentiment in today's world. There could be an Arab Lobby with all the money in the world (there kind of is actually), but they could never hope to match those selling points.
I wasn't alive either so couldn't tell you. I do know that one of the top US diplomats in the region, Richard Parker, was in Cairo at the time and remained convinced afterwards that it was a tragic misunderstanding. (His book The Politics of Miscalculation in the Middle East which covers the incident is a good read by the way).
The same exists today: the implicit idea that it would take Israeli and Saudi Arabian scheming to point figures like Bolton towards Iran, and Trump towards ripping up Obama's nuclear deal.
Ocasio-Cortez calls for ban on revolving door as study shows two-thirds of recently departed lawmakers are now lobbyists
Continuing to drain that swamp
Continuing to drain that swamp
Yeah, one of the main reasons I hate this mystification of “The Lobby” is that it functions as a way of letting Innocent America off the hook for its bad decisions and destructive policies by projecting blame on to the nefarious scheming of a relatively much less powerful regional actor and its supporters. America has behaved similarly or worse all over the world, but the closest equivalence I can think of in, say, SE Asia would be the blame Kissinger gets as an individual seen as corrupting the state department rather than as the natural product of a state department prone to behaving in ways which would facilitate his rise to the top. Probably no coincidence Israel and Kissinger both Jewish (although perhaps Robert McNamara tends to receive equivalent vitriol in the context of Vietnam).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Untold_History_of_the_United_States
It is worth buying the set . Its only $12.00 on Amazon.
It really should be called the True History of the United States.
Part 4 of the 4 part set is really the Prologue and was not shown on TV.
Forget the history books.
It is worth buying the set . Its only $12.00 on Amazon.
It really should be called the True History of the United States.
Part 4 of the 4 part set is really the Prologue and was not shown on TV.
Forget the history books.
It's good and interesting, but you'd be wise not to completely trust Oliver Stone when it comes to history. Certainly don't forget the history books.
Doesn’t he supposedly get along with Putin a little too well?
I guess you could perhaps put him in the same category as someone like Glenn Greenwald. Not exactly wrong, usually, but not someone to trust completely either.
I understand about the questions on Stone.
But the facts can be verified. It leads perfectly to what is happening now.
What were some of the highlights of that documentary for you?