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Palestinians Plan 'Day of Rage' after US Vetoes Resolution on Israeli Settlements
US decision to use UN security council veto sparks furious reaction in West Bank and Gaza
Palestinians are planning a "day of rage" on Friday in response to the US wielding its veto against a UN security council resolution condemning Israeli settlements.
Palestinians are planning a "day of rage" on Friday in response to the US wielding its veto against a UN security council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. The US decision to use its veto has sparked a furious reaction in the West Bank and Gaza.
Anti-US rallies took place in the West Bank towns of Bethlehem, Tulkarem and Jenin this weekend after the 14-1 vote on the resolution, in which the US stood alone against the rest of the security council, including Britain, Germany and France. It voted in contradiction of its own policy.
In Gaza, Hamas described the US position as outrageous and said Washington was "completely biased" towards Israel.
Ibrahim Sarsour, an Israeli-Arab member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, said it was time to tell the US president, Barack Obama, to "go to hell".
"Obama cannot be trusted," he wrote in an open letter to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. "We knew his promises were lies. The time has come to spit in the face of the Americans."
The Egyptian foreign ministry said the US veto would "lead to more damage of the United States' credibility on the Arab side as a mediator in peace efforts".
The use of the veto for the first time under Obama will strengthen perceptions in the Arab world that for the US, protection of its ally Israel overrides its desire for a just outcome for Palestinians in the decades-old conflict.
The move is likely to impede US efforts to persuade the parties to return to peace negotiations, which stalled in September over the issue of settlement expansion.
With protests raging across the Middle East against repression, corruption, food prices and dismal economic prospects, Washington is acutely aware that distrust of the US is widespread in the region.
The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyhu, said his country "deeply appreciated" the US use of its veto.
However, some Israeli commentators warned that the vote served to reinforce Israel's international isolation and said Washington would expect a payback from its ally. They suggested the US would be unwilling to use its veto in similar circumstances again.
The opposition leader, Tzipi Livni, said Israel was "now in political collapse".
"We now find that Germany, Britain and France – all friends of Israel who want to help it defend itself – voted against the positions of Israel, and the US is being pushed into a corner and finds itself with Israel against the world," she said.
The vote, on Friday night, followed frantic diplomatic efforts to prevent the tabling of the resolution, which was carefully worded to reflect official US policy on settlements.
Obama spoke to Abbas on the phone for 50 minutes on Thursday, offering a package of inducements, including public statements, to withdraw the resolution.
According to the Palestinian press, Obama also suggested US aid to the Palestinian Authority could be halted if the resolution went ahead.
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, made a further telephone call to Abbas on Friday to put pressure on him to abandon the resolution.
However, the Palestinian president – aware of the volatile mood in the region and the backlash he would face if he acceded to Obama's demands – refused to withdraw. One Palestinian official told Reuters that "people would take to the streets and topple the president" if he backed down.
After the vote, the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, told the security council that Washington agreed with "our fellow council members, and indeed with the wider world, about the folly and illegitimacy of continued Israel settlement activity".
But she added: "We think it unwise for this council to attempt to resolve the core issues that divide Israelis and Palestinians."
Underlying the growing gap between the US and Europe on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement saying settlement construction was against international law.
The veto served to unite the political rivals Hamas and Fatah in condemnation. Palestinian leaders are considering whether to take a resolution on Israel's settlement policies to the UN general assembly.
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Show AllIt's high time this veto power of nations on the (in)security council was deep sixed. This Israeli tyranny by her poodle (the USA) must be stopped!
The UN majority might propose such a change, but it would be vetoed in the Security Council.
The idea of international law and an international council is an excellent one, but the UN is crippled by this particular failure to grant real autonomy to the colonial lands freed from England by the two world wars.
It seems likely that countries outside of the Council need some other body apart from the United Nations. Obviously the imperial powers, including China and Russia, will not abide by the decisions of such a body in the foreseeable future. But there is little point giving the patina of respectability to these mafiosi, and there can be a lot of utility to having cooperative action and an international law of sorts among nations that see an interest in civility.
hope the UN puts the veto power of those on the security council where the sun doesn't shine. The latest USA outrage where our mafia government vetoed the resolution to censor Israel has to stop. Once this veto crap is deep sixed, the UN can start dealing with dictators. The downfall of dictators would fatally wound the financial empire of pigs led by Blankfein and Geithner by denying them places to 'invest' their stolen money.
Defang Wall Street and the people of this world have a chance at freedom. Otherwise, forget it.
The Uniting for Peace provision of the UN Charter is a way around this veto and has been since back in 1950 or roughly that when it went through. At the time it was the USA and supporters pushed through this provision also referred to as the Acheson amendment or provision. It allows UN members states once they have gone to the security council and been turned down on a resolution which relaties to international peace to take it up with the UN general assembly, which if passed there becomes binding. It's not often used, but Dwight D Eisenhower threatened to use it during the Suez Crisis of 1956 as both Britatin and France were states holding veto power in the security council then as they are today. Ike resolved the crisis by doing so. The Anglo/French/israeli crowd withdrew their colonial presence from the Suez Canal. Ultimately I F Stone would side with Ike on this as it reflected his own anti colonial views as a progressive.
AD, thanks much for this revealing information about UN procedures that could well allow a "way around EMPIRE", for the rest of the world.
I have just been thinking about an obviously pre-planned deceit toward war that the global Empire has hatched and is right now beginning to execute in the Middle East --- a planned 'connivance to war' as complex and deceitful as the PNAC plans that led to the Iraq and Afpak wars.
[I'll write more of this later on CD after I refine my suspicions].
Thanks again, for the UN trump card potential solution to head-off such conflagration.
Best,
Alan
Okay, so now the Palestinians are supposed to go to the general assembly with their grievance in the face of a US threat from Obama to withdraw funds.
Will they do it?
I don't know but I don't think UN procedures can galvanize a UN effort to defend the Palestinians with force from the Israelis.
I think it's time for Egypt to do some 'joint maneuvers' with Palestine in the Gaza strip. I think it's time for Egypt to taunt Israel the same way the USA has taunted Iran and many other countries in our history. It's time to call their "Sampson Option" bluff. It's time for world democracy. If we all get killed in the process, then so be it. The world the Blankfeins, Geithners and Bernankes have in store for us is too horrible to allow.
Abbas and his thugs won't risk getting the money flow into their numbered Swiss bank accounts turned off. The Palestinians deserve better than the corrupt collaborationists who are running the West Bank at and for the pleasure of the Israeli settlers.
During the cold war the USSR veto stopped a lot of good. Now the US veto is the fly in the ointment.
True but the Veto system was formalized at the Yalta Conference, 4-11 February 1945, and was established in order to prohibit the UN from taking any future action directly against its principal founding members. It has only been abused.
As one commentator on USA baseball in the UK noted: "Only the USA could have a World Series and not invite the rest of the world". This is the political equivalent.
Irrespective of earlier use by the now non existent USSR since 1988 the vast majority of the veto votes are by the USA and most of those were on resolutions concerned the injustice handed out by Israel on Palestinians, a question on which the world has shown unanimous solidarity, and has little or nothing to do with USA's security.
The idea that the world is immoral and corrupt and that the West is the way of enlightenment do not at all pan out when reviewing the UN general assembly and Security Council voting statistics on the Veto.
http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa03.html
The time has come for the empire to ride into the sunset.
Susan Rice doesn't have a clue what wisdom is all about. This constant use of ridiculously inappropriate words like "unwise" by our government reps is really getting old. Susan, you are talking BS and everyone knows it. I saw your interview with Al Jazeera. The only thing you didn't do is froth at the mouth at the lady who was interviewing you with real questions, unlike the softball crap you get from our propaganda outlets. You showed your fangs quite well dear. Condi would be proud of your performance.
But most people could clearly see you are a lying POS.
As did Hillary with the beating of peaceful protester Ray McGovern at Hill's GW University lie fest!
Talk about "fangs"? Hill actually used the hob-nail boots at GW ( what irony) "George Washington" might turn over in his grave, but at least Hitler would have applauded Hill's mini Krystallnachting of McGovern!
Best,
Alan
Oh, the governments we prop up....pulls the props, I say, let the chips fall where they may.
The Israeli sector of the global corporate/financial/militarist EMPIRE, which is centered in "Vichy" America, will quite likely react to this truth much the same as Hillary reacted to Ray McGovern's truth at GW Univ.
The following is a brief comment, which I just posted on NYT Caucus blog "Breakfast Menu" look at Sunday morning TV shows, regarding the same fundamental issue between the overwhelming truth of 'people powered' insurrection against Empire throughout the world (including average people caught in the belly of the Empire beast in the US and Israel) and between the deceit of collapsing global Empire:
______________________________________
Since all the corporate media Sunday morning talking heads propaganda shows have now canceled citizen input to their own network web sites, the NYT offers the only blog on which actual American citizens can comment on these "shows".
Like many American citizens, I had a little hope that Christiane Amanpour might present a little more candor and honesty than George Steponhisdick --- but that hope has, like Obama, collapsed any hope for change --- which should not have come as any surprise, in that the political facade and the corporate facade are one and the same, not in the imaginary "Audacity of Hope" but the Empire reality of the 'deceit of hope'.
This week, the "This Week" corporate/financial/militarist Empire "show" was promoting Christiane's EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with Hillary, recorded Friday, well after Hillary's brutal goons had bloodied the entirely peaceful Ray McGovern, who tried to merely silently protest Hillary and the US national security states' deceit and propagandizing of various 'People Power' peaceful protests ('petitioning of their government' as the US Constitution phrases it) in the Middle East, and wherein Hillary was lying through her teeth by saying that our 'exceptionally' functional democracy here was helping to serve as a model and 'helpfully influence' lesser "faux-democracies" there.
Of course, the real truth is that the global corporate/financial/militarist Empire that only hides behind the US two-party “Vichy” facade of democratic government, actually IS the most advanced and successful “faux democracy” in the world.
Christiane, despite being entirely aware of the McGovern's video recorded and internet viral beating at Hillary's behest, while she was so deceitfully preaching about American democracy, said NOT A WORD to Hillary about this most obvious and ironic exposure of Hillary's bold faced lies.
As Vonnegut might well say, "And so it goes".
This episode clearly points out two historical truths; that those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable, and that real world revolution must start where the most advanced stage of political economic Empire (corporate capitalism) is now approaching full collapse.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
"Liberty over violent empire" party headquarters
Sir, you are a tribute to decent people everywhere.
Thanks for telling it like it is.
The empire is in trouble. Can you imagine our presidential con man being on the phone for 50 minutes for ANYTHING that could actually help the average American? This is telling of our poodle status.
Meanwhile the idiot mouthpieces in the media are blabbing the latest lie ("The party is over") as the excuse to rob some more from the poor to give to the rich.
They are right about one thing; the party IS over (for the rich pigs everywhere).
The good news is the McGovern/Clinton YouTube video (ref: Common Dream's 2/16 article in the Further section) has recorded 177,000 views as of this morning.
Great news, Progressive101, that 'the video' is going viral and getting more and more hits every day.
This video of reality in our Empire should be required viewing for all Americans who are still asleep.
I posted everywhere I could for days that 'the video' was the biggest slip-up yet in the Empire's otherwise masterful disguise of "Vichy" democracy --- a virtual "Kent State-like" truth to power of what the power of this GD Empire really has in store for all of us.
Video of the sub-Fuhrer's unleashing of the hounds on McGovern can not be stopped.
She might just as well have had a tow-truck backed into the GW auditorium with a wire-rope noose and 'taken out' Ray literally.
Any who ignore this wake-up slap of overt totalitarianism from our long slumber under the quiet control of 'inverted totalitarianism' (Sheldon Wolin), do so at their, and their children's, peril.
Palestinians and poor American blacks get this kind of reality slap all the time about the reality of Empire, but most average, working/middle-class Americans never see any such reality directly showing how the 'lance in the face' of Empire can be applying to average people in their own social circles --- those who merely dare to speak out, or in Ray's case merely stand-up.
Let's hope that the symbolic and moderate amount of blood that Ray shed for us to expose this violent and vicious empire can be enough blood to nourish the tree of liberty.
Best,
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
"Liberty over violent empire" party headquarters
Hi Alan. I must say i never would have any hopes for an msm pundit/reporter, etc. Someone like C.A. could never go where she does in the world without being part of empire. It simply doesn't happen, any more than obama could have become the dem candidate in 2008 without being part of said empire.
I know you know of what i speak. If you had any doubts, she was on Stephen Colbert last week praising some cyber warfare guy for the great job done in getting a virus into the Iranian computer system, which could have threatened the whole region, if not the planet, as it caused problems with their atomic energy project. (That is as intelligent as i can sound about it - sorry.) ;-)
peace, rita
rita, you suggest that, "obama could have become the dem candidate in 2008 without being part of said empire", and that is certainly what I have always thought.
[Admission, I worked as hard against Obama as I did for Nader leading up to 2008].
However, I am beginning to be very suspicious, not suspicious that Obama was not fully willing to serve Empire to get where he is, but suspicious of what the 'planned role' for him to play was --- and who is fooling whom. More later ...
Best,
Alan
Thanks, Alan....I am really interested in where you are going here!!!
Me too.
I would like to make an observation. The recent claim by our ministry of propaganda that we were on board with a potentially huge middle eastern flare up is classic catch up. That points away from a manufactured chain of revolutions to achieve some sinister goals (culling the herd, perhaps?).
I watched an NSA goon recently say in congress, "Obviously we are going to have to pay more attention to social media" when questioned about all the revolutions.
We DO NOT have the power in our military to control this situation. It's too wide spread. It's too difficult to spin. It's too difficult to hide by ignoring it. Therefore our alphabet goons did not set this in motion. This is not Guatemala in 1954 or Iran a little later.
Think about it. Our goons are not in the driver's seat here.
agelbert, as I noted below in a reply to Curtis, I strongly suspect and will elaborate on what is likely to be a pre-planned scheme more, .... well, more existential, than PNAC's ploy to war, PLUS more profitable for the Empire crooks' than their long pre-planned heist, which goes at least as far back as the gutting of Glass-Stegall Act during the reign of stain-boy. Unlike these previous military and financial 'dust-ups', what's coming could well leave the Empire with all the oil energy in the world and much fewer people to share it with.
I believe that what is playing out now goes back at least to Thomas Barnett's "The Pentagon's New Map" days (2004), and which has 'tapped' our latest hope-boy in the leading role of a patsy that will put Lee Harvey's performance to shame. More later...
Best,
Alan
Alan, are you saying that obama, being the corporate shill that he always intended to be, was outfoxed by those he thought he was on board with, however, there is a major turn and he isn't in that loop????? That he is being used in ways he hadn't counted on?
That sounds about right to me......And is israel a player in the loop? I am thinking/sensing a big set up. Most definitely. Obama isn't as smart as he believes himself to be.
Good summation.
readytotransform, bingo.
I smell a really well planned "big set-up", as you say!
Now there is no doubt that the global corporate/financial/militarist Empire (nominally centered in the US and involving cooperative Empire sectors in Israel, UK, etc.) went absolutely ape-shit with joy when Tom Barrett published "The Pentagon's New Map" in '04, thus offering a plan to remake the 'gap' in the Muslim world into a nice cooperative territory of the Empire (as was wildly applauded by another 'Tommy' in his NYT columns.
But if taking over the Muslim world for real down and dirty Empire bidness was going to involve shaking things up pretty badly, and whereas the US population was losing its joy in watching (and paying for) cable TV war theaters, then something was probably going to have to be "set-up" to really get good old American patriotic blood boiling in order to 'light the fuse'.
Now, from a "Secret Team" basis nothing is more important than a really good trigger mechanism, particularly if you need a nuclear trigger. So another little known, but likable "useful idiot" from the sticks, way outside Washington, like 'stain-boy' from Arkansas to be threatened into doing the bidding of Wall Street, NAFTA, Glass-Steagall, and some great lip-biting and "feeling our pain", or a patriotic clown from Texas with a Hitler ego on Dick's leash just wouldn't do the trick for Americans to righteously 'turn against' when the half that bought his "Okey-Doke" felt cheated, and the half who never trusted him, were both halves faced with another one of those patented "unpredictable" crises, that we've seen so much of for the last 20 years pop up in, of all places, a part of the world which is predominantly Muslim, full of oil, and already on the "Pentagon's New Map" (for incorporation from what he called the "Gap" to map of the global Empire, which Barrett called the "Old Core", or some might say 'old corp' ).
Wow. What a totally unpredictable, but believable, surprise it would be for all red-blooded Americans, of either stripe, if an unexpected 'blow-up' in that part of the world got out of hand and if the president didn't do the right thing, possibly because of some question of where loyalties lay.
It almost sounds like the kind of plot to a purely fictional novel like Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May that concerned JFK during Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis --- and hell, he wasn't even Cuban.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
"Liberty over violent empire" party headquarters
Well, Alan, i have to look up Barrett and the penatagon's new map to understand this more comprehensively.............Thank you!
The fact that Obama surrounded himself with the kind of people he did indicates that he's not the nice, decent guy that so many of his voters took him to be, either.
Excellent post, agelbert. I was wondering if anyone was going to notice this development in the context of the fires already roaring in the Mid-East and North Africa. The planning of the Palestinian demo for next Friday, the usual day for the existing outrage to take fire, will make for very interesting watching. So far only Palestine and a few Gulf states (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates) in the Mid-East have not had mass demonstrations. The whole of North Aftica has now been on fire, so to speak, except--if it even counts--Mauritania.
rita, very sorry.
I failed to accurately quote your negative belief, or high improbably that "obama could have become the dem candidate in 2008 without being part of said empire"
And that is certainly what I have always thought; that Obama could NOT have been the candidate in 2008 without being part of the empire.
Best,
Alan
Thanks for the correction, Alan!
Anyone who now claims to be surprised/dismayed that President Obama hews to an imperialist program obviously did not study candidate Obama's published interviews with the Chicago Tribune and his speeches at AIPAC in 2008, or else must have been either too young to vote, or not interested in the election, or blind as a bat.
IMO, Amanpour is one of those corporate media "journalists" who, while a cut above flacks like Katie Couric (and Lara Logan), is still a careerist corporate media infotainwhore at heart.
Many years ago, I unintentionally put off a co-worker during a chat about a segment Amanpour did-- for "60 Minutes", IIRC-- when she wasn't so well known. I think it was about barbaric treatment of women that still persists in modern India. I opined that on balance, it was a worthwhile piece-- but I was bothered by Amanpour's affected and carefully-understated shock and horror at the atrocities she was showcasing.
The incipient pearl-free pearl-clutching just seemed a touch too scripted and phony. I remarked that I got the impression that this was Amanpour's attempt at creating a "signature" brand as Intrepid Muckraker to the Third World.
I would just as soon have kept my big bazoo shut if I'd known it would upset my interlocutor, but on the whole I think I was right.
I think you were right on target there, O.S.!
Omar Barghouti was just denied entrance by state dept. to begin his book tour in the u.s.
readytotransform, thanks for this recent information and link about the involuntary closing of the US mind.
Don't understand who (US or Israel) is the blocker and who is the running back on this 'play', but it is not surprising that both segments of the global Empire would be in the same huddle and in full agreement.
If the US could have gotten away with blocking Carter from a speaking tour on his 'radical' book, I'm sure they would have. But it's a bit harder to block your own former president from entering the country.
This strange irony among two members of the global corporate/financial/militarist Empire reinforces and underscores my long held and published belief that AIPAC does not represent either the peaceful "democracy-thinking" people of Israel nor the vast majority of equally peaceful and "democracy-thinking" Jews in the US, but that AIPAC should really be understood to stand for the American-style Imperialist Political Action Committee --- which speaks only for the tiny minority of "Empire-thinkers" in both formerly semi-democratic countries.
Best,
Alan
The US is refusing to grant Barghouti a Visa.
Israel is the U.S. fascist, foothold in the Middle East propagandaized as a democracy by our whore media.
Paul, I too find it difficult sometimes to avoid the temptation of using the term 'whore' to describe our media (and politicians), but its really not fair to the majority of hardworking, good-hearted, and honest women of that profession, who are often forced though economic oppression inflicted on them by the two aforementioned deceitful groups and their paymasters in the corporate/financial/militarist Empire which only poses as our former country.
Best,
Alan
A lot do it because they find it easier and more profitable to sell their bodies than hold an average job that they are fully capable of working. Same with nude dancers. Have sorta taken my own informal sociological study here, at a pathologically safe distance, of course.
McGovern's arrest might be the hatching of yet another black swan.
Curtis, I'm guessing that rather than being a fan of ballet yourself, you may have been one of the millions hurt in our latest so-called "financial crisis" --- which at least Nobel economics laureate George Akerlof had the prescience to see coming and call by its real name, "looting".
Yes, I agree entirely with your suggesting that an even worse screwing, one might even say an "existential screwing", is in the works right now.
As I noted above in a reply to AD, I strongly suspect and will elaborate on what is likely to be a pre-planned scheme more, .... well, more existential, than PNAC's ploy to war, PLUS the Empire crooks' long pre-planned heist, which goes at least as far back as the gutting of Glass-Stegall Act during the reign of stain-boy.
I believe that what is playing out now goes back at least to Thomas Barnett's "The Pentagon's New Map" days (2004), and which has 'tapped' our latest hope-boy in the leading role of a patsy that will put Lee Harvey's performance to shame. More later...
Best,
Alan
alan, i've enjoyed reading your informative posts. you've got a good head on your shoulders and you've given me a lot to research--i'm playing catch-up, here. however, there's one little thing bothering me. you mentioned you worked hard for nader and truly i am bitterly disappointed in the "real obama." he's not the guy i worked hard for. i hear ralph talk about envolving the young people, but aside from a great hero, cynthia mckinny, he seems only to promote himself. yes, in a nation of idol worshipers of the rich and famous, it's a challenge to convince the political audience that there can be as egyption blogger 'sandmonkey' said "a leaderless revolution." our politicos and talking heads are confused. where's the "stability" without a figurehead to explain what the little people on main street think? i refer to mckinny as "hero" because her actions proved her dedication. all those showing up in madison are heroes too, because the issue "collective bargaining" not jesse jackson, not fiat dollars is the leader.
one person in the oval office cannot turn this ship of state around. also, i believe the best way to protect the consumer is ACCESS TO INFORMATION about what i buy. i'm not really into consumerism, though. nader's consumer protection has buckled this 5'3" 100lb gal into the driver's seat with a "one-size-fits-?" device designed for the average 6' 200lb man. the top strap chokes me. also, the airbag could break my scrawny neck. to me democracy allows you and me access to all available information so that we can decide how best to protect and preserve our own life.
if i make the wrong choice, i might die or i might learn something.
now, i go search out the pentagon's new map and await your promised posts. i've been studying the history of the DoD and pentagon all morn!
Eternal Rage is more like it.
Just another veto, among the LONG list of vetoes!
http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa03.html
Here is the list!
The Smashing of Justice for Palestinians, favoring Israeli crimes.
Time for a "day of Rage" in the USA against its corporate government and its domestic and foreign policies and a "National Day of Mourning" for the original crimes of genocide and slavery which gave rise to ALL subsequent crimes. That the USA has had no interest in justice for the Palestinians is due to the obvious fact that it never has demonstrated any interests in addressing the crimes against the indigenous and black people of this land. As long as Israel "serves" their political aims and vice-versa they will be joined at the hip.
Allegiance to Israel
I'm sure the Obama Administration was furious it couldn't control the agenda and keep itself from being publicly exposed as hypocritical and sold out to the Israeli lobby. Watching the UN vote, Susan Rice didn't look comfortable casting the lone No vote.
Meanwhile, a little over a week ago on Feb 11 sixty-seven freshmen House Republicans made their swearing in - not to the US, but Israel, as they signed pledges to fully fund Israel in the face of upcoming budget cuts. On that same day, House Republicans pledged to reduce domestic spending $100 billion for the remainder of this fiscal year and said "every region of the nation would be affected". That nation being the USA, not Israel.
http://www.aipac.org/Publications/SourceMaterialsCongressionalAction/Signed_Republican_Freshmen_Letter_to_Leadership_Supporting_Israel.pdf
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sc-dc-0212-gop-budget-20110211,0,1263491.story
Have you ever really looked at how our dollars are divided up in the national budget? The USA puts a great majority of its money into the Department of Defense (sic) and so-called Homeland Security. An extremely tiny portion of the budget goes to aiding the people in various nations around the globe. Yes, Americans do generously support charitable organizations, but our government supports militaries around the world. We give over $3 BILLION yearly to Israel, for their "defense", you know, to buy f-16s etc so that they can defend against the Palestinians whom they have imprisoned. The only way we are "supporting Europe" is by occupying their lands with dozens of military bases. Get real, it's all about war and control.
It is high time that Congress CUT the military budget by at least 25%. Instead in these fiscally dire times the DOD is going to again get an increase of 2% while every other agency will be taking big cuts.
likeitorleaveit, you're back!
Wow. I would have thought you got intellectually beat up bad enough last time that you would not drag your sorry carcass across CD's door for some time.
Somebody has to be paying you quite a bit to subject yourself to the abuse of the serious thinking CDers a second time.
loveitorleaveit, I'm sure I speak for many here in telling you how much I enjoy hearing you try your old favorite distractive palliatives and placebos like, "Is it not time to force both the republican's and democrats to stop playing politics and start governing?", and the sickeningly familiar "Is it not time we got down to solving our own problems and let many other country's solve their own?" across our threshold again.
Yea, likeitorleaveit, let's hear a little more of your old soothing tune again; "Why can't we just all get along together and ignore any hint of the coordinated global Empire?"
Boy, if you are the best defense this GD Empire has, this is going to go easier than the kids in Egypt got.
But unfortunately, loveitorleaveit, the Empire can only get away with distractions as obvious as yours among the rubes wondering "What's the Mater with Kansas" (Thomas Frank), or in "Idiot America" (Charles Pierce), and who are this Sunday listening to Rev (sic) Rex Jones, Jerry Falwell, and guys like Huckabee that Chris Hedges writes about in "American Fascists".
http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1298240871&sr=1-1-spell
http://www.amazon.com/Idiot-America-Stupidity-Became-Virtue/dp/0767926153/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1298240786&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284437
So, anyway, loveitorleaveit, what level of further embarrassment will it take for you to leave CD forever? That's the 64 thousand dollar question.
Best,
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
"Liberty over violent empire" party headquarters
BTW loveitorleaveit, do you love democracy and liberty or Empire?
Susan Rice is Israel's whore, and Obama is the pimp.
Good one.
This pisses me off beyond words. These asshole fools in Washington are endangering the lives of everyone, and it's about time we did something about it. They don't represent how Americans feel about the situation. They are traitors to American values, and I'm so mad I'd spit on any of these leaders who got close enough. We really need to clear out this nest of vipers and send them fleeing into the night without a cent to their names. Better yet, drop them unprotected on any downtown street in the Middle East.