alanjjohnstone
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To oppose the illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories is now to be considered as anti-Semitic.
Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, warned: “that penalising the settlements was “an expression of modern antisemitism”.
The United Nations postponed last week for the third time the publication of a blacklist of Israeli and international firms that profit directly from Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied territories. The international body had come under enormous pressure to keep the database under wraps after lobbying behind the scenes from Israel, the United States and many of the 200-plus companies that were about to be named.
Chris Hedges on the Israeli lobby in the USA
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/03/11/israels-stranglehold-american-politics
“…AIPAC, while it presents itself as an impartial supporter of Israel, has long been an arm of the Israeli right. It vehemently opposed the Oslo Accord and the peace process with the Palestinians engineered by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. It poured money and resources into the 1992 Israeli election campaign to back Rabin’s political opponents in the Likud party. Rabin did not invite the leaders of the Israel lobby to his inauguration and, according to an aide in his office, referred to the leaders of the Israel lobby as “scumbags.” He repeatedly denounced the lobby as an impediment to Israel’s security and democracy.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz characterized Rabin’s remarks to American Jewish leaders during a visit to the United States as “brutal.” “You have hurt Israel,” the newspaper quoted Rabin as saying. “I will not allow you to conduct my dealings with the [U.S.] administration.”
Washington Jewish Week reported that Rabin told the AIPAC leadership, “You failed at everything. You waged lost battles. … You caused damage to Israel. … You’re too negative. … You create too much antagonism.”
The Israel lobby, after Rabin’s assassination in 1995 by a right-wing Jewish fanatic and the 1996 electoral victory by Likud under the leadership of Netanyahu, returned to the good graces of the Israeli government….”The headlines read Maduro thugs burn aid trucks.
But did they? Or was it a false flag operation?
The New York Times, no friend of Venezuela’s president, suggests that we were all duped.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/world/americas/venezuela-aid-fire-video.html
Sadly there is a pay wall for the full article so we have to trust a third party report
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/03/10/us-blamed-venezuelan-president-burning-aid-trucks-wrong
“…a Molotov cocktail thrown by an antigovernment protester was the most likely trigger for the blaze…”
The Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro will not rule out direct payments to African Americans in reparation for the legacy of slavery – a stand that separates him from his 2020 rivals.
“If under the constitution we compensate people because we take their property, why wouldn’t you compensate people who actually were property.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/10/julian-castro-reparations-descendants-slaves
Where is all the condemnation?
“Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the basic nationality law we passed, Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it.” – Netanyahu
He repeated it
He called Israel a “the nation state not of all its citizens but only of the Jewish people”.
As for Arab-Israelis, almost a fifth of Israel’s population, they are granted the privilege of “equal rights” to Jews
“…there is no problem with the Arab citizens of Israel. They have equal rights like all of us and the Likud government has invested more in the Arab sector than any other government.”
But there are many laws endowing Israel’s Jewish citizens with special privileges that its Arab’s citizens do not possess.
Whether an anachronism or not, the Square Mile ruled by the Corporation, is an example of real elite power. The City of London regardless of its historical origins remains a unique power-centre with special benefits, exemptions and prerogatives that has successfully defied attempts to reform its legal sanctioned status. The economics of it is the exact same as a den of thievery where the robbers divide up their spoils stolen from the actual producers of wealth – the workers of the world.
Our blog has highlighted its privileged position several times.
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2012/07/corporation.html
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2012/12/tax-heaven-is-tax-havens.html
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-square-mile-again.html
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-tax-haven-of-all-tax-havens.html
The thread began when Warren was the very first to announce her presidential bid hence the title. When more candidates entered the Democrat race, somewhere in the posts was my acknowledgement that the title should be changed to reflect the discussion now being upon all the new presidential candidates.
Obama was an obscurity when he entered. Sanders was an obscurity when he entered. Trump also was an outsider.
It is more than a list and has endeavoured to raise policy positions…the Warren statement the very opening you took an opportunity of taking.
And Dave is right…too many members can’t be arsed to contribute to this forum and if the trend continues, there will be a very good case to shut it down entirely before it becomes an embarrassment of posters talking to themselves….as it sometimes already appears. …echo of an empty room….
“Because the Democrats have become an anti-Israel party, they’ve become an anti-Jewish party.” – Trump
Confirming that to be anti-Israel means being anti-Semitic. Opposing the establishment of an independent nation of Scotland means you are anti-Scots. Full Stop.
Warren has pledged that, if elected president next year, she will aim to break up the big tech companies Amazon, Facebook and Google because they have too much control over Americans’ lives.
“Today’s big tech companies have too much power – too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy,” the Massachusetts senator said in a blogpost. “They’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else.”
Weekly Worker discusses anti-capitalism = anti-semitism
Another Jonathan Cook article
The 1944 Labour Party position
“Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out, as the Jews move in.”
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945Berlinv02/d1345
“Israel’s reaction is natural and proper in refusing to accept the Palestinians as a nation.” – Harold Wilson, 1972.
I linked to a Guardian article in an earlier post, 184023
Here is a dissection of that article
It too discusses the link between the anti-Semite campaign and its purpose to disparage Labour’s supposed “anti-capitalism” and also refers to that McDonough interview.
Jonathan Cook is a commentator who I have read for a long while now, mostly on the Israeli/Palestinian issue. He increasingly demonstrates the quality of a Pilger/Fisk/Cockburn even if he fails to get published in the mainstream media
“..One might argue that all of this is a good thing and that, as it did from the 1950s, enable us to feed an ever increasing human population. One can say that technology, in itself, is not a bad thing and that we should not be scared by the increasing visibility of robotics in society; after all we’ve been using tools since we lived in caves. However, one must look at who is really going to benefit from this creeping industrialization and automation of food, our most basic necessity… One must ask if this vision of the future is about better practices, productivity and good food or is it about eliminating the troublesome costs of human labour and human error in order to maximize profits? Will the consumer truly benefit from these predicted changes or will this mean even less transparency in an industry that already makes great efforts to hide unethical practices? Technology has the ability to be an incredible and transformative boon to how we live and can play a vital role in solving our environmental problems in the decades ahead. Unfortunately, if the past is anything to go by, it will lead to consolidation of already too powerful industrial interests, unemployment, environmental depletion and increased profits into fewer and fewer pockets. “
The Euro-vision of Yanis Varoufakis – New Deal for Europe and a new “Marshall Plan”- a wish list of reforms
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/03/06/lets-change-europe-ground
It is a shame that when he cites Hillquit of the SPA he doesn’t respond with Debs of the SPA but rather resorts to a Lenin quote (perhaps a clue to his sympathies)
But for the record, Debs more appropriate reply to left-wing anti-immigration
https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1910/immigration.htm
