Why Does the US Always Side With Israel?

Money. Lobbyists. Conservative/Zionist Ideology. Ignorance.

Imagine a UN decree that gave a portion of New Jersey to the, oh lets say persecuted Sunnis in Iraq after the ISIS incursion this year. Call it "56%".
Note: Under the 1947 UN agreement Israel was given 56% of Palestine to establish an independent state. Israel has eroded the Palestinian homeland even more over the decades. (See Map).
How would that feel to a New Jersey resident? Especially one who had to leave their home under threats of violence and death with no compensation? How about the neighboring states? Think they'd be on board with a little resistance? Now think about this new state holding the original residents of NJ in a constant state of dominance, upheaval, and financial insecurity refusing to even acknowledge that New Jersey even exists. What would happen? Bet yur ass. Armed insurrection. So what's different there? And why do we as a country still support the aggressors?

AIPAC Is the Only Explanation for America's Morally Bankrupt Israel Policy
Stephen M. Walt via - HuffPo

Excerpts: 

The official name for Israel's latest assault on Gaza is "Operation Protective Edge." A better name would be "Operation Déjà Vu." As it has on several prior occasions, Israel is using weapons provided by U.S. taxpayers to bombard the captive and impoverished Palestinians in Gaza, where the death toll now exceeds 500. As usual, the U.S. government is siding with Israel, even though most American leaders understand Israel instigated the latest round of violence, is not acting with restraint, and that its actions make Washington look callous and hypocritical in the eyes of most of the world.

And...

This Orwellian situation is eloquent testimony to the continued political clout of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and the other hardline elements of the Israel lobby. There is no other plausible explanation for the supine behavior of the U.S. Congress--including some of its most "progressive" members--or the shallow hypocrisy of the Obama administration, especially those officials known for their purported commitment to human rights.

[snip]

And why did Netanyahu decide to go on another rampage in Gaza? As Nathan Thrall of the International Crisis Group points out, the real motive is neither vengeance nor a desire to protect Israel from Hamas' rocket fire, which has been virtually non-existent over the past two years and is largely ineffectual anyway. Netanyahu's real purpose was to undermine the recent agreement between Hamas and Fatah for a unity government. Given Netanyahu's personal commitment to keeping the West Bank and creating a "greater Israel," the last thing he wants is a unified Palestinian leadership that might press him to get serious about a two-state solution. Ergo, he sought to isolate and severely damage Hamas and drive a new wedge between the two Palestinian factions.

Yup - No Two-State solution. I thought the Israeli state was established side-by-side with the Palestinian state in 1948  The UN General Assembly approved the partition of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states and accords international status to Jerusalem. So what happened? 

[After the UN agreement was signed], The Arab League and its member states (especially Egypt, Syria, and Iraq) adopt a hard-line stance on the Palestinian issue as a means of demonstrating their anti-imperialism and asserting their newfound independence in foreign policy. They reject all attempts at compromise, including the UN partition plan. Britain refuses to assist in the implementation of the UN partition plan.

Thanks Britain.

So Palestine is left hanging in the wind, without a government and without political institutions. Chaos Doctrine anyone?

So they elect to fight for their homeland. Egypt and surrounding Arab nation/states take on an Israel backed by the US AND the USSR. And lose. War/Chaos doctrine dictate that the winners write the history books and so Israel had an excuse to take more of Palestine. Sorry, you shouldn't have questioned authority. This entrenched an endless cycle of persecution and rock throwing in response that we are still seeing to this day.

I supported Israel's persecution of Palestinians and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

Historians will one day look back and ask how U.S. Middle East policy could be so ineffectual and so at odds with its professed values -- not to mention its strategic interests. The answer lies in the basic nature of the American political system, which permits well-organized and well-funded special interest groups to wield significant power on Capitol Hill and in the White House. In this case, the result is a policy that is bad for all concerned: for the Palestinians most of all, but also for the U.S. and Israel as well. Until the lobby's clout is weakened or politicians grow stiffer spines, Americans looking for better outcomes in the Middle East had better get used to disappointment and prepared for more trouble.

Ayuh. Read the whole thing here.

Enough is Enough!

Rockland lobster processor loses big buyer over PETA video

From the Bangor Daily News

A food service company that oversees concessions at Boston’s TD Garden and Minneapolis’ Target Field, among other places, will no longer purchase lobster from Linda Bean’s Maine Lobster.

The decision by Delaware North Companies Sportservice of Buffalo, New York, was made after the animal rights group PETA released secret video footage last September of lobsters and other crustaceans being processed at the Rockland facility.

Personally, I've had enough of this PETA shit. The processing plants outlined in this article employ over 250 local people working at above average wages. The loss of these buyers impacts the local economy and of course the people who work there. Times are hard enough around here and we don't need this petty bullshit. 

Lobsters are killed just like chickens, pork, beef and any other living thing we eat including fucking kale.

This guy will tell you all about the horrors of killing vegetables.

  

Lobsters, like insects, belong to the invertebrate phylum Arthropoda. Besides lobsters and insects, spiders and snails belong to this group as well. Let loose a spider on a PETA volunteer and watch them squash it. Not to spoil your appetite, but lobsters are bugs, pure and simple, with rudimentary nervous systems and a chain ganglia network that is so simple it doesn't even require a brain. If you remove the head region of a lobster, the body of the lobster would still react the same way, because of the local reflexes ... involving those chain ganglia. No Brain, No Pain. Simple. Look it up.

HYPOCRISY ALERT! 

NORFOLK, Va. — Even some supporters do not know what to make of it. PETA, considered by many to be the highest-profile animal rights group in the country, kills an average of about 2,000 dogs and cats each year at its animal shelter here.       
And the shelter does few adoptions — 19 cats and dogs in 2012 and 24 in 2011, according to state records.

So, even if they send them on their way with a fentanyl-laced heroin cocktail or whatever they got from the last botched Oklahoma lethal injection execution. They are just as dead.

By the way, where were they on that one? Not one naked chick in a cage strapped to a gurney wearing a string of syringes around her neck. What was it, 43 minutes for that guy to die while writhing in pain? Doesn't that qualify as inhumane? More than squishing bugs, maybe?

So stick to actual cruelty like cosmetic testing on animals. That shit is cruel and harsh. Then, read a biology book for chrissakes and stay away from overreach.  

"Well Boys, Break's Over."

Time to get back to slinging greendayman bombs.



People are starting to catch on to what the liberal blogosphere, Robert Reich, Paul Krugman et. al. have been talking about for years. The American working public has been getting so screwed since Reagan broke the Air Traffic Controllers union (PATCO). It's obvious to me and you but why did it take so long for income inequality and stagnant wages to become somewhat mainstream? It's been since 1981. WTF? Opinions abound and just like earlobes, everybody has at least one.

Here's mine. A tipping point has been reached where corporate vampires can no longer suck enough blood from the middle class to sustain their stratospheric salaries. We've all seen the charts. Real people are suffering, not just the low-information Republican base.

From The Atlantic:

"This is something that has been happening and building for years and is now really rooted in the economy, and it's vicious," said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank in Washington. "There's a remarkable disconnect. The problem isn't a lack of the economy producing sufficient income to make everybody's living standards improve--it's that the economy is structured so that the majority don't benefit." Or, to state the point more cautiously, the majority doesn't benefit from productivity gains very much--certainly, less than our parents and grandparents did.

OKAY.. We know this too... so what next? 

Step One: Three Paths to Full Employment

Step Two: Bring Back Unions

Step Three: Bring CEO Pay Back to Reality

Step Four: Bring Back Manufacturing, Stop Offshoring Jobs.

This is the biggie, AND easy to fix. Bring back tariffs and stop giving taxbreaks to companies that offshore jobs. Repeal Nafta, Cafta, and Fuck-no to TPP

Call me a protectionist... I don't care.