Get News & Views Updates
Most Popular This Week
- Walmart Workers Walk Off Job in First Wave of 1000 Protests
- I’m Black and I Want More “Stuff” and “Things”: An Open Letter to Bill O’Reilly
- How Germany Is Getting to 100 Percent Renewable Energy
- Already? Obama Tells Supporters to Expect 'Bitter Pills'
- Bailout 'Of the People, By the People' Exposes Bankers' Greed
- How Germany Is Getting to 100 Percent Renewable Energy
- FBI's Abuse of the Surveillance State is the Real Scandal Needing Investigation
- I’m Black and I Want More “Stuff” and “Things”: An Open Letter to Bill O’Reilly
- Bailout 'Of the People, By the People' Exposes Bankers' Greed
- Human Intelligence Peaked Thousands of Years Ago: Study
Popular content
Today's Top News
Does Your Congressperson Represent You – or Israel?
In this time of economic austerity, when jobs are being slashed and Americans are fearful about their future, the Congressional recess is the time for our elected representatives to be home in their districts, reaching out to their constituents and servicing the people they are paid to represent. Instead, this August one out of every five representatives will be taking a junket to Israel, compliments of an affiliate of the Israel lobby AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) but still clocked in on the taxpayer’s dime.
Americans who have lost their jobs and seen their life savings evaporate because Congress can’t seem to get it together deserve an explanation of how this crisis will be solved. Following the recent debt debacle, the public is hungry for information about the mysterious 12-person “super committee” that will slash over one trillion dollars from the federal budget. But instead of opening their doors to their constituents, 81 members of Congress will be getting briefings from Israeli government officials, touring historic religious sites, and perhaps “seeking a salty dip in the Dead Sea.” Representative Steny Hoyer, who is leading the Democratic delegation, said he is pleased members of Congress have this opportunity “to gain a deeper understanding of the issues involved in increasing stability in the region.” One has to wonder whether our elected officials are more concerned about the stability of Israel or the well-being of American families.
Not surprisingly, trip expenses are being paid by an affiliate of the all-powerful AIPAC lobby, the American Israel Educational Foundation. AIPAC lobbies hard to ensure that Israel is kept on the U.S. dole, with $3 billion of US taxpayers’ dollars a year going to the Israeli military. Without AIPAC and the financial contributions to Congressional campaigns made by its affiliate organizations, our representatives would be freer to speak out against funneling precious tax dollars to this already wealthy nation. This junket goes to show that those who claim AIPAC has a stranglehold over our Congress are not far off the mark.
Going on an AIPAC-sponsored trip to Israel is the moral equivalent of using an Anglo-Boer travel company to visit apartheid-era South Africa. Although they claim to be visiting leaders “across the political spectrum”, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, you can bet your bottom dollar that AIPAC will not be giving these 81 Congresspeople a fair and balanced view of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. They won’t observe one of the weekly demonstrations in Bi’lin or Nabi Saleh, where Israeli soldiers routinely tear gas and arrest non-violent protesters. They won’t spend time with grieving Palestinians whose homes have been demolished to make way for more Jewish-only housing. They won’t spend a few hours at a checkpoint to witness how Palestinians are detained, abused and humiliated, or how this “thriving democracy” forbids Palestinians from driving on Jewish-only roads. They won’t go to Gaza, where 1.5 million people are suffering under an unbearable siege, unable to travel freely, conduct business transactions across borders or even rebuild their homes destroyed by the Israeli invasion. And they won’t likely be visiting the burgeoning tent cities in Tel Aviv where hundreds of thousands of Israelis are currently camped out, protesting the lack of affordable housing, gas and food.
With the disapproval rate for Congress at a record 82%, now is not the time for our representatives to pander to AIPAC. Now is not the time for “free” junkets to Israel—with an implicit promise of $3 billion of our taxdollars in return. Now is the time to stop the freefall of the American economy. If our representatives want to earn more respect from the American public, they better prove that their allegiance is not to a foreign government or a group that lobbies on behalf of a foreign government, but to their constituents back home.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
96 Comments so far
Show AllMedea, I'm not so sure they won't see what you say they won't.
The demonstrations in Tel Aviv would be hard to miss.
It may be hard for them to not hear how pissed Israelis are at their own government and the few rich families that control it.
Sounds kinda familiar, but we don't have the tent cities (yet).
ChrisIl,
That's coming right after the Social Security and Medicare destruction, CPI disconnect from pensions and the end of Unemployment iinsurance is enacted by the super-assholes (otherwise known as the super congress of 12 committee) this December.
The media has kept a lid on the tent city phenomenum which actually began in 2007. It just hasn't made the papers very often. There is no recovery. There never was. The elite are digging in.
The tent cities will grow like a cancer.
Unless you count sheriff Joe in Arizona.
I doubt that many of those Tel Aviv demonstrators give a damn about the rights of non-Jews.
You can bet your last dollar that they don't.
Been there?
Oh I really like that, when human beings stand up and shout: "Hey, look over there; that other group of human beings; they totally do not care about the group I care about. That one group I dislike; they are not individuals with individual stories, feelings, views; no they belong to that group; and therefore they are all the same."
Welcome to the club. It is not that you are alone; but the solution that club comes up with ... have been around for centuries. Because these are the easy solutions that are programmed in the "lower" parts of your brain ("we good; them bad"). It is pretty natural to listen to these solutions; but honestly: they will not work.
^^^^^^^^^^
THIS
Not sure what want to say here ... maybe your sentence somewhat incomplete?
And control the U.S. government as well.
http://examine.webs.com/wvr/open.htm
The all-expense-paid junket to Zion is a vulgar dispay of depraved indifference. It would be a fine time for Jesus to re-alight on the Mt. of Olives, but according to CUFI propheteers that won't happen until the Old Israel is first immolated. It's why they are doing everything possible to grease Israel's skids toward self-destruction.
To your rhetorical question, we know the US Knesset doesn't represent we the people, unless of course we pretend that corporations are people too. Clearly, anyone living above ground knows by now that it doesn't represent the American people, but there may yet be some competition still remaining among Israel, the MIC, and Wall Street oligarchs. Or, maybe not; maybe they are now effectively fused into one massive fascist conglomerate.
please reference NYT front page aug 9
"forprofit college group sued
as US portrays wide fraud"
CEO (exgov-ME)jock mckernan, husband of
Senator olympia snow, whose financial
disclosure lists assets 2-10 million in company
stock and options. snow did a walk through
Maine the other day; bet she'll be in ISRAEL
this or next week.
I don't leave in either of the countries mentioned, but one in five on a sanitized trip to Israel? The American voter, victim of a kleptocratic form of government (why so millionaires?) , would have my sympathy if he hadn't voted these people in office in the first place.
It's not just the Arabs, we all need to wake up and ascertain who's serving the people and who's sponging.
''Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.'' —Mark Twain
Har Davids,
The US Government (and much of the rest of the world) has become like a bar. You walk in and the bartender is all smiles if you've got the money to buy the drinks. If not, the bouncer will deal with you. You can drink the booze but you can't set prices or decide anything about how the bar is run. Only the invisible owners do that.
Fascist dictatorships are like that.
Keeping with the need for austerity, I suggest giving the 81 members of congress a one way ticket as their allegiance is with Israel, relocation might be an option.
Patriotism, like religion, is a comedy designed to entertain fools and supply tyrants with willing slaves.
Well said --- a quote worth stealing.
Most excellent line!
But if they are Christians they would not be granted citizenship there anytime soon. In fact they might not even be granted visas.
That is pure conjecture.
philiphoko,
I agree. Sadly, however, upon seeing all the demonstrations in Israel, our pseudo representatives will come to the conclusion that immediate legislation is required to send Israel DOUBLE the money we send now.
That's why getting rid of religion is ineffective. Ideology will take its place - or father worship, as in NKorea.
The American Democracy experiment has failed..
Fallen flat on its face. We need a tent city in DC
I know we have one where I live Up here in the Northwest
People are living in the woods as well as in cars and in the bushes in
the cities.
Both corrupt parties are dominated by zionists christian zionists and traitors who have more loyality to Israel than they do to the United States and the public is too stupid to even begin to understand this.
To a great extent, I agree with you Thalidomidde. However, some of those Congresspeople are swayed by the fact that if they don't genuflect, all the humongous money & power by Israel supporters will be used to defeat them, and they will be out on their ears. According to Tom Hayden's article on CD a couple of yrs ago, this is true for local elections as well.
All true, but so what?
Corvo: "All true, but so what?" So, the ultimate result for the people at this time is the same, and you might say our Congresspeople have no back bone. On the other hand, those who do, will be out on their ears anyway. So, one must accurately diagnose the problem if one is to come up with the right solutions.
Sometimes one is just called upon to be a profile in courage. You know, the concept expounded in Ted Sorensen's most famous book.
It's not just our Congress that represents Israel first and the US second. Our President and Secretary of State threatened the citizens on the Gaza Aid boats.
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/27/obama_admin_warns_of_fines_and
Is it money, fear, or religious prejudice?
or a combination
I am actually surprised that it is not four out of five congress members instead of one out of five who are wined and dined by the state of Israel in order to be willingly spoon fed the propaganda that they are given by AIPAC. Perhaps the other members of congress do not want it to look too obvious if it were known that they are marching in step to what AIPAC tells them to do. Even though they have no desire to be noticed in Israel undoubtedly there are many more members of congress who bow down before the demands of Israel.
the other three out of five have already sworn
and don't need to show their faces...
That is just this year. Most have already been. And some of those going this year are going for a return visit.
Yes, our President and Congressmen have first allegiance to Israel, then to Americans. There are endless examples:
- Netanyahu's recent address to Congress where he received more standing ovations than our own president.
- The endless Congressional resoutions vowing support of Israel in the face of Israel's committed atrocities, e.g., flotilla killings including the execution of an American and the war crimes committed in Gaza.
- The recent pledge (Jan or Feb) by freshmen Republicans that they vow not to cut US money to Israel during the budget cuts and our Congress's readiness to cut unemployment benefits to Americans before aid to Israel.
- Obama and the Democrats' silence after Israel's execution of an American in the flotilla raid (received numerous shots at point blank range).
- and the list of examples goes on...
"Netanyahu's recent address to Congress where he received more standing ovations than our own president."
That is not really hard to imagine as our president is a boob that deserves no ovations from anyone.
And Netanyahu is a murderous bastard.
They both should have been tarred and feathered and run out of the Capitol on a rail for besmirching the good name of the place.
(and yes, the "good name" bit is a joke.)
AIPAC and the creatures it feeds, are so much more destructive to America and to the world than will ever be countenanced in our media. Violent, corrupt, amoral and vile, they poison whatever and whomsoever they touch. Hebrews and Hillbillies will bring America down.
Hey now, on the part of many hillbillies I have to object to your grouping us with the scum which is stealing from the American taxpayer with both hands. None of us hillbillies have any choice over how or where we were born, and a lot of us reject the religious propaganda we are fed from the time we're infants.
Every argument against Israel is ultimately answered, not logically but emotionally, by a reference to the Holocaust.
There is a book by Northwestern Professor Arthur Butz, written in 1979 I think, still spot on, 'The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, the Case Against the Presumed Destruction of the European Jews'. Read the reviews on amazon.com, and then read the book. The full text is also online.
Let's see how quickly CD will ban me for mentioning this book.
I don't think you should be banned for mentioning that work of fiction, just ridiculed a wee bit. Butz (oh, what a name) isn't an historian, he's an engineer. He is not a credible writer on that issue, nor are any of the other holocaust deniers. They make shit up, and they get caught making that shit up.
Of course the point is that this sort of subverting other nations government's is going to provoke a reaction that will make more people believe that sort of historical fiction. The reflex of justifying everything because of what the Germans did 60 years ago was never a good idea, and these days it's a malicious weapon that is used to support committing the same kinds of atrocities that they damned the Germans for.
Aaronica writes: 'They make shit up' ......Well, let's see who's making stuff up. The total number of victims of the holocaust was eleven million, six million Jews and five million Gypsies, homosexuals, and others the Nazis considered undesirables. Do you know where the five million number for non-Jewish victims came from? Simon Wiesenthal made it up out of thin air, but don't take my word for it, take holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt's ....read her comments here .....
http://www.jewishreviewofbooks.com/publications/detail/simon-wiesenthal-and-the-ethics-of-history
and here's a quote ....
"When Israeli historians Yehuda Bauer and Yisrael Gutman challenged Wiesenthal on this point, he admitted that he had invented the figure of eleven million victims in order to stimulate interest in the Holocaust among non-Jews. He chose five million because it was almost, but not quite, as large as six million."
Do you know there the six million number for Jewish victims came from?
Yes, that estimate comes from historians who went over the archives of the Third Reich. Usually it also mentions the 5 million others who were murdered in the death camps established by that state. The reliable historians also note the estimate of 50 to 75 million other people who died in that war. Which was another war fought because corporations want to make money, and they didn't earn enough in the first act of carnage in the twentieth century.
It's not just that I don't believe the claims and quotes of some random nutter on the intertoobs...
In all fairness, the victorious powers didn't care much about the other five million, and even a rough estimate of one of the constituent groups (homosexuals) is especially difficult because few of them went to trial, and many apparently didn't survive long enough to arrive alive at a concentration camp.
In any case, I'm not sure what your point is. Questioning the accuracy of the "five million" number doesn't in itself reflect upon the accuracy of the six million number.
"In any case, I'm not sure what your point is. Questioning the accuracy of the "five million" number doesn't in itself reflect upon the accuracy of the six million number."
Sure it does, it shows that the numbers can just be made up and then printed in the media over and over, in the encyclopedias, text books, taught in schools, etc., as if they were facts.
Now, was the six million figure of Jewish victims made up too? Consider this - the Nazis wrote death certificates for every prisoner that died at Auschwitz, they summarized them in Death Books. The Soviets captured the books and 'lost' them. They put up a stone plaque at the gate to Auschwitz saying 'Four Million' perished here. Was that number made up? Yep. In 1989 Gorbachev 'found' the records and turned them over to the Red Cross, you can now see them in the NYC library ! For a summary see ....
http://guardian.150m.com/holocaust/auschwitz-data.htm
quoting... "For more information on the Auschwitz death certificates, see "Death Books From Auschwitz", a three volume set, two of which are lists of individuals who died at Auschwitz. The information includes: name, date of birth, date of death, place of birth, inmate number. The lists are contained in volumes two and three. Volume one contains many photographs of the prisoners as well as many reports and photographs of various lists. The catalog number is *PXV 95-3344 and the books are located at the New York Public Library, in the Jewish Division on the first floor.
The stone plaque a the entrance to Auschwitz came down and was replaced by a brass plaque saying that 1.5 million had perished there ! Note: the data doesn't support this number either. This was in 1989 !
The six million figure of Jewish victims was unaffected. A bit odd, don't you think.
The old plaque ...
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTEMd-uWIaSZkNkWQxD57E4XQTyviy_1jpq8sg2X9aTsUmNbH-a3w
The new plaque ...
http://www.biblestudysite.com/Auschwitz%20plaque%201.5mil.jpg
But what do the exact numbers matter?
The sure facts:
1. The Nazis were rabidly against those who did not fit their "master race" model -the "vermin" in their midst.
2. The Nazis often singled out Jews as the worst of these "vermin".
3. The Nazis killed -through a variety of horrible means- many, many, many people because they were such "vermin" -millions of people certainly.
4. Jews and Romany, homosexuals and communists, these are some of the types of "vermin".
5. Based on sheer weight of distributed populations, plus the "singling out", AND the fact that it is easier to hide homosexuality than Jewish cultural connections, the Jews make up the large portion of the dead.
6. None of this has anything to do with the crimes of the State of Israel against Humanity and the Peace over the last 60 years.
Maybe it hasn't occurred to you that the Nazis didn't limit their murder of Jews to the Auschwitz camp.
I recommend, for starters, Norman Finkelstein's work, e.g. "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering".
It beats the hell out of kissing Butz.
Ahmadinejad is not a denier. Just a loudmouthed attention seeking troll, who despite his pretenses, does not give a rat's flying ass about Palestinians.
You're better off reading "The Case Against Israel" by Michael Neumann. I think it was written in response to Dershowitz's hysterical lies in his books. This is a topic that demands extreme care on the prospective reader's part. Revisionism does not have a good name in most places and is generally considered a fatal flaw. Neumann is a solid scholar and analyst, not a revisionist; Dershowitz, a dangerous nutcase, a different kind of revisionist.
Well, if the Soviets captured the Auschwitz records and hid them until 1989, what happened to the Nazi records the US/Brits captured? That's an interesting tale.
Many captured Nazi records were destroyed immediately after the war, and this destruction was ongoing even in 1996 ! ....
http://www.qrd.org/qrd/world/europe/germany/alert.destruction.nazi.records-01.96
but, the records from the Nazi concentration camps was collected and stored at Bad Arolsen, more than 50,000,000 documents !
When Butz wrote his book he had access to the Bad Arolsen archives ...
http://www.codoh.com/newsite/sr/online/sr_140.pdf
but they were closed shortly after his book was published. Recently they have been 'reopened' to those with the proper credentials, and this has been widely reported, as in this USA Today article ....
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-11-19-holocaust-papers_x.htm
If you read this extraordinary article, you'll discover what is common knowledge among students of the era, that is that at the end of the war many prisoners were transferred from camps on the eastern front, i.e. Poland, to camps in Germany. The resulting overcrowding and lack of the basic requisites of life resulted in typhus/disease epidemics that killed tens of thousands, 35,000 in Belsen alone. The photos you have seen of holocaust victims were taken at Belsen after the war and show prisoners that died of disease. There were also many healthy prisoners in the camps, but you have not seen these photos .... for a comprehensive set of photos of Belsen at the end of the war see ....
http://www.bergenbelsen.co.uk/pages/Database/SurvivorsPhotos.asp?index=0
You is posting bullshit.