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Space Cadet Omoly posted:Honest question: What does the USA get out of giving money to Israel? To be honest nothing, Israel offers us nothing in the way of return on that investment. Some weapons manufacturing, and that is about it. Would be far more profitable to make friends with Iran for their oil, but our politicians hate arabs so they go with Israel.
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Nov 11, 2023 20:58
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:Honest question: What does the USA get out of giving money to Israel?
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Nov 11, 2023 21:02
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386-SX 25Mhz VGA posted:There is a literal biblical apocalyptic death cult endemic to Western ruling classes that demands support of Israel in order to fulfill a prophecy. Also, there has to be an imperial proxy power in the region to secure oil production and bomb any rival regional power. Evangelicals really aren't much of a thing in Europe though.
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Nov 11, 2023 21:09
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Spuckuk posted:Evangelicals really aren't much of a thing in Europe though.
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Nov 11, 2023 21:12
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:Honest question: What does the USA get out of giving money to Israel? Campaign donations and PACs. The politician would like to spend your tax dollars on themselves, but they cannot. To get access to your money they first have to give it to Israel, or Saudi Arabia is good at this too, who then reinvests a portion of that money into lobbyists, your local arms dealers, or citizen groups or whatever, who then give you the donation/PAC money you wanted. It's the same reason Americans don't get to have proper healthcare or real banking regulations or sane environmental policy. You would be better off giving every politician a $5,000,000 per year salary than how the system funds itself now.
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Nov 11, 2023 21:14
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386-SX 25Mhz VGA posted:There is a literal biblical apocalyptic death cult endemic to Western ruling classes that demands support of Israel in order to fulfill a prophecy. This aspect tends to be overstated, IMO. (It certainly isn't what's motivating the Biden administration.) It's more a combination of fossilized "realpolitik" thinking from decades ago (in the center), a general love of bombing brown foreigners (on the right), and a general American tendency (sometimes cynically exploited in this context) to see foreign policy through a domestic lens.
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Nov 11, 2023 21:14
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:Honest question: What does the USA get out of giving money to Israel? The same stuff the US got out of spending two decades doing very similar things in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military allies in the Middle East to create buffers against terrorist militants and Arab nationalists (and, once upon a time, Soviet influence), markets in the Middle East for Western economic imperialism, appeasement to domestic hawks and racists, and plenty of sales for American arms industries. It really does surprise me every time someone acts shocked that the US is supporting an advanced first-world military using airstrikes against a civilian population in hopes of crushing a local terrorist insurgency. US foreign policy has been all about doing just that for decades.
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Nov 11, 2023 21:23
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Silver2195 posted:This aspect tends to be overstated, IMO. (It certainly isn't what's motivating the Biden administration.)
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Nov 11, 2023 21:30
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Biden said himself [admittedly, 20 years ago] "If Israel did not exist, the United States would have to invent it", as I found out just now from this Big Joel video that seems to be part 1 of an ongoing series on the historical background, using Rashid Khalidi's "The Hundred-Years' War on Palestine" as a basis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj6b_oHTuIs So while American interests in the region have varied a lot over time, I think the claim that the Biden administration is primarily motivated by the geopolitical purposes Israel serves is a fair one. ungulateman fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Nov 11, 2023 |
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Nov 11, 2023 21:34
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386-SX 25Mhz VGA posted:Genuinely curious how you can estimate this? I suppose I don’t have a way to estimate it, either, except that batshit religious psychopaths seem to operate the core of white supremacist Anglo imperialism, so what’s important for those folks should logically express itself in alliances. The "batshit religious psychopaths" angle doesn't explain support for Israel among centrist/mainstream Democrats, though.
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Nov 11, 2023 21:44
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I said come in! posted:To be honest nothing, Israel offers us nothing in the way of return on that investment. Some weapons manufacturing, and that is about it. Would be far more profitable to make friends with Iran for their oil, but our politicians hate arabs so they go with Israel. Plausible deniability, a wedge to which pressure middle east countries, a tool to project belligerence, a testing bed for weapons and surveillance technology, an excuse to maintain exorbitant military spending in the area and MIC welfare, and a wedge issue for foreign policy on which to test and filter any anti-establishment politician. Israel is an outpost of American hegemony, much like what they wanted to make Liberia into. Rigged Death Trap fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Nov 11, 2023 |
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Nov 11, 2023 21:44
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Silver2195 posted:The "batshit religious psychopaths" angle doesn't explain support for Israel among centrist/mainstream Democrats, though.
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Nov 11, 2023 21:54
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386-SX 25Mhz VGA posted:Yeah if we’re talking about the US population then it’s a crapshoot why anybody supports anything, I was talking about one of the big anchors for the kinds of people running the empire. Which people are you talking about, exactly?
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Nov 11, 2023 21:55
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386-SX 25Mhz VGA posted:Genuinely curious how you can estimate this? I suppose I don’t have a way to estimate it, either, except that batshit religious psychopaths seem to operate the core of white supremacist Anglo imperialism, so what’s important for those folks should logically express itself in alliances. It's simpler to attribute to the rational capitalist explanations vs "there a secret death cult of Christians running the foreign policy of the US." This is some QAnon level discourse. Israel/Zionist PACs are also extremely active in running smear campaigns too. Just look what they're doing by doxxing literal students at universities with mobile billboards with their picture displayed. They'd do the politician equivalent of that if you don't tow their line.
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Nov 11, 2023 21:56
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ummel posted:It's simpler to attribute to the rational capitalist explanations vs "there a secret death cult of Christians running the foreign policy of the US." This is some QAnon level discourse. Also, Christian Zionism is huge and is hardly a secret.
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Nov 11, 2023 22:04
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ummel posted:It's simpler to attribute to the rational capitalist explanations vs "there a secret death cult of Christians running the foreign policy of the US." This is some QAnon level discourse. It's not a bluff when it comes to actual politicians either. Here in Michigan we had a race between Haley Stevens and Andy Levin in 2020, the latter being a jewish Zionist who is much more progressive than Steven's. Stevens ended up winning in large part because AIPAC dumped millions of dollars into an anti-Levin campaign because he had the audacity to suggest that Palestinians should have statehood. Again, they dumped millions into a campaign to unseat an actual zionist Jewish man.
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Nov 11, 2023 22:05
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386-SX 25Mhz VGA posted:Frankly I think it’s simpler to attribute it to both, with different people motivated by different things, and even multiple motivations operating on individuals. It’d be bizarre if everybody had the same reason or always a single motivation. The secret-Christian-death-cult stuff is talking about a particular strain of Christian Zionism which is preoccupied with apocalyptic prophecy: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/american-evangelicals-israel-gaza/ quote:American evangelicals have long prided themselves on their undeviating support for Israel—but the basis of this alliance is not a standard convergence of diplomatic interests, and it’s certainly not a flourish of faith-based solidarity with the Jews. Instead, it’s a matter of the opportunistic choreographing of the foreordained final act of history. Believers in the literal interpretation of “endtimes” prophecy see the fortunes of Israel as a key harbinger of the Final Judgment and the elevation of fallen human history into the realm of the divine. In secular leftist politics, advocates of rapid escalation of class and geopolitical conflict are known as accelerationists; in endtimes prophecy belief, acceleration is left to God, but his Christian emissaries still retain the awesome power of recognizing and celebrating the signs of the pending judgment—and urging earthly powers and principalities to get in line with the divine plan before it’s too late. Of course it's not a secret that these pastors believe this, the "secret" part is the idea that various Republicans (like GWB) secretly feel this way. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Nov 11, 2023 |
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Nov 11, 2023 22:09
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At a certain point, one has to assume that the Israelis hid a really big bomb somewhere in DC because it's absolutely beyond any sort of reason that politicians can't even mildly disapprove.
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Nov 11, 2023 22:13
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:Honest question: What does the USA get out of giving money to Israel? It's hard to find a first-party source on the matter, but at least at one point the funding came with a clause that at least 75% of the billions of dollars must be spent on purchases from US manufacturers. Essentially it's a way to funnel tax dollars to Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and friends, who then spend a sizable chunk of it on lobbying and political donations. There's also the George Bush death cult and the neoliberal world order and all that other ideological poo poo, but I suspect the money is the big ticket item that keeps everyone in line.
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Nov 11, 2023 22:21
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Its not for nothing that zealous support for Israel doesn't actually cost that much. For 14 billion a year in military surplus the US gets a self sustaining military base in the middle east that threatens everyone who might decide to cut off our oil supply. It gives politicians something to lock arms about, and it gives them a diplomatic club to wield when they want to smuggle something weird through the UN. Of course the real cost is the devastation to the region but most people in the US are still hostile towards the middle east on reflex and will instantly believe anything that they're told about it, so high level politicians (who are generally narcissists at best, and often psychopaths as well) can use that well.
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Nov 11, 2023 22:26
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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/11/11/israel-hamas-war-live-pleas-for-help-as-israel-bombards-gaza-hospitalsquote:No Palestinian Authority in post-war Gaza: Netanyahu Isn't this one of those redlines that Blinken laid out? But with regards to educating children to not hate Israel, lmao. Israel has guaranteed itself violent resistance against its people for decades to come with this war. from the same link: quote:‘Don’t make the mistake’: Netanyahu warns Hezbollah Israel looking to collectively punish Lebanon next. This isn't the first time they have done this. Israel laid siege to Beirut in 1982 and murdered 18,000 civilians. Hezbollah has apparently been making progress into Israel itself and capturing territory even, resulting the IDF to retreat. I said come in! fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Nov 11, 2023 |
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Nov 11, 2023 22:28
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Groovelord Neato posted:The gas chambers ceased operation towards the end of 1944 and were destroyed in January 1945 (the camp was liberated on the 27th) though your general point stands as the summer of 1944 was when the gassings were at their highest rate. This is Starship Troopers-level parody of evil government propaganda.
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Nov 11, 2023 22:47
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386-SX 25Mhz VGA posted:Genuinely curious how you can estimate this? I suppose I don’t have a way to estimate it, either, except that batshit religious psychopaths seem to operate the core of white supremacist Anglo imperialism, so what’s important for those folks should logically express itself in alliances. There's been polling done on it every so often. The Israel-as-prophecy thing is mostly confined to American evangelical Protestants, and while a substantial portion of those do indeed believe that Israel is a fulfillment of prophecy, evangelical Protestants are still a minority in the US. A rather large minority, to be sure, and more privileged than other minorities, but not to the point where they dictate policy. Personally, I think the biggest flaw in the whole "America supports Israeli aggression because of the evangelical cultists" theory is that it fails Occam's Razor. The US has consistently supported aggressive action and brutality by Western-influenced democracies against Islamic terrorist militant insurgencies in the Middle East for decades, repeatedly going so far as to set up its own puppet states in the Middle East just so it has a local military power to support against Islamic militants, and deliberately closing their eyes to civilian casualties or collateral damage in the process. There's no real need to hunt for some special reason why the US supports Israel in particular, because it is entirely in character for the US and perfectly lines up with a consistent pattern of US foreign policy moves in the region. Speleothing posted:At a certain point, one has to assume that the Israelis hid a really big bomb somewhere in DC because it's absolutely beyond any sort of reason that politicians can't even mildly disapprove. Why would you expect American politicians to disapprove? This is a serious question. After two straight decades of the US repeatedly bombing Afghan weddings and then claiming the dead women and children were all Taliban militants, why would anyone expect American politicians to have a deeply-held moral revulsion to Israel doing essentially the same thing? Between Iraq and Afghanistan, the US and its proxies are responsible for at least a quarter-million dead civilians (I picked the low end here, some estimates are much higher). Israel is certainly killing at a faster pace (it'd generally take the US a few months to rack up this many dead civilians), but the differences are mostly quantitative rather than qualitative. Or, to put another way, Israel is doing pretty much the same poo poo the US did, they're just doing a lot more of it a lot faster. Yes, that includes bombing hospitals more than once and then lying about it or justifying it. That includes sealing off a city, telling the civilians to flee, and then indiscriminately bombarding the city. That includes blocking the supply of crucial supplies to the region, causing widespread malnutrition and deprivation. Americans were hardly up in arms about any of that poo poo; even people who opposed the War on Terror at the time barely seem to remember it these days. It was lovely when the US did it too, but it was already thoroughly demonstrated from 2001-2021 that American politicians are willing to tolerate substantial civilian casualties in the course of using overwhelming military power in "anti-terrorist operations" against civilian areas, so I don't think we need to invent some special reasons for the US to be tolerant of Israel doing essentially the same poo poo. If anything, Israel has long been working from a Western military playbook here, adopting tactics that American and European militaries have been using against insurgents for decades. They're just speeding it up now for political reasons. It's not too dissimilar from how American troops in Vietnam notoriously didn't give a poo poo about civilian casualties, knowing that any dead Vietnamese would be counted as Viet Cong and that high body counts would please their political masters anyway. I said come in! posted:https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/11/11/israel-hamas-war-live-pleas-for-help-as-israel-bombards-gaza-hospitals Not really, no. The US has certainly been insistent that the PA should eventually end up in control of Gaza. However, the US has also already acknowledged that there will need to be a "transitional" Israeli occupation first, and haven't put any limits on how long that "transition" period will be. In practice, the US will probably just pretend the occupation is temporary, pretend not to hear Netanyahu when he says otherwise, and concentrate on looking for opportunities to negotiate away the Israeli occupation in the future.
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Nov 11, 2023 22:57
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Arturo Ui posted:This is Starship Troopers-level parody of evil government propaganda. https://x.com/m7mdkurd/status/1723459369256255786?s=20
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Nov 11, 2023 23:15
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There are videos of Hezbollah killing groups of Israeli soldiers with rockets now so I imagine the war will go that way as well?
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Nov 11, 2023 23:17
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Collapsing Farts posted:There are videos of Hezbollah killing groups of Israeli soldiers with rockets now so I imagine the war will go that way as well? I bet you just saw one of the 'Wall of Death' videos from Syria.
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Nov 11, 2023 23:22
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I said come in! posted:Israel looking to collectively punish Lebanon next. This isn't the first time they have done this. Israel laid siege to Beirut in 1982 and murdered 18,000 civilians. Hezbollah has apparently been making progress into Israel itself and capturing territory even, resulting the IDF to retreat. Where did you hear they're capturing Israeli territory? All I've heard about are the cross border attacks
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Nov 11, 2023 23:26
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The capturing territory bit is likely a misread of the fact that a significant amount of border territory has been evacuated; Israel can't actually stop Hezbollah from firing on positions a significant ways into the border regions, and Hezbollah has been deliberately targeting surveillance and radio towers to effectively blind Israel outside of drones (one of which has also been shot down).
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Nov 11, 2023 23:31
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The early day official police count (usually an undercount) for the pro-Palestine demonstration in London today was at least 300,000. By the end of the day the organisers were claiming 800,000. Anywhere between those two numbers is remarkable. If the latter is more accurate it might have been the second largest demo in UK history.
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Nov 11, 2023 23:48
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To the extent that we're looking at US political positions on the conflict I'm very curious about domestic polling on the issue subsequent to October 7th.
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Nov 11, 2023 23:51
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Israeli Minister of Agriculture states they are doing another Nakba https://twitter.com/hahauenstein/status/1723441134221869453?t=dPuM6ZZymVmwqFZKLQUtug&s=19
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Nov 11, 2023 23:57
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The embassy deleted the phony translation.
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Nov 12, 2023 01:12
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Ravenfood posted:"An ally in the middle east", nominally. the real answer is a two parter: egypt and israel make nice, so the suez canal isn't threatened. Yknow that thing where 10+ % of global trade passes through? Everything, even oil, is window dressing in comparison
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Nov 12, 2023 01:47
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Isnt Israel wanting to build their own canal? Which conveniently enough would cut through Gaza? Or at least be built close by?
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Nov 12, 2023 02:09
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https://x.com/AJEnglish/status/1723501511605624847?s=20
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Nov 12, 2023 02:22
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I said come in! posted:Isnt Israel wanting to build their own canal? Which conveniently enough would cut through Gaza? Or at least be built close by? There seems to be more chatter about it lately but it certainly seems to be more of a conspiracy theory. It would be a really, really difficult project even by the standards of big canals. It should tell you something that when it was proposed in the 60s the most serious proposal for how to get it done was "what if we blast it out with nuclear weapons". The construction is obviously more doable than in the 60s but I'm seeing absolutely nothing about recent actual serious discussion of it, just several articles from sketchy outlets going "oho, we've found the real reason Israel's doing this to Gaza". Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Nov 12, 2023 |
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Nov 12, 2023 03:43
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Google Jeb Bush posted:There seems to be more chatter about it lately but it certainly seems to be more of a conspiracy theory. It would be a really, really difficult project even by the standards of big canals. It should tell you something that when it was proposed in the 60s the most serious proposal for how to get it done was "what if we blast it out with nuclear weapons". Gotcha! Yeah I was unsure how far into conspiracy that stuff reached. Israel in reality is blowing up Gaza because they just hate Palestinians, doesn't need much more of an explanation than that. I've also seen something about oil/gas reserves found off the coast of Gaza in Palestinian waters, but if that were the case then Israel would just simply take it, they wouldn't need a war to do it.
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Nov 12, 2023 03:53
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I said come in! posted:https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/11/11/israel-hamas-war-live-pleas-for-help-as-israel-bombards-gaza-hospitals What Hezbollah is doing in Israel would be an act of war for any other country. I dont know where you are getting this Hezbollah is capturing ground stuff from but you smoke good poo poo sir.
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Nov 12, 2023 04:11
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https://www.timesofisrael.com/inside-a-gaza-bedroom-soldiers-searching-for-tunnels-find-how-low-hamas-can-go/ Whole article about tunnels that doesnt' actually show any tunnel. Neat!
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Nov 12, 2023 04:14
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Jaxyon posted:https://www.timesofisrael.com/inside-a-gaza-bedroom-soldiers-searching-for-tunnels-find-how-low-hamas-can-go/ lmao I have a hole like that beneath my own house. These are normal, or should I be on the look out for hamas in and around Seattle?
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Nov 12, 2023 04:58
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