politics

TLDR imperialism. Israel helps the US control the middle east and also does stuff elsewhere.

Israel is basically the US's attack dog in the middle east. Any job that the US is unable to do, or would look too imperialistic to do, Israel carries out on its behalf.

Israel has played a crucial role in attacking and destabilizing independent Arab governments determined to defy US dictates. In 1967 Israel attacked two such governments in Syria and Egypt in a surprise invasion. Israel's narrative has always been that they launched a preemptive strike to prevent an impending Arab genocide of Jews, but in reality Israel just wanted to take Arab land. Mattiyahu Peled, one of Israel's commanders in the six day war, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz,

'The thesis that that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only a bluff, which was born and developed after the war.'

This invasion was crucial at a time when 550,000 American troops were bogged down in Vietnam fighting the spread of socialism there. The library of Congress study of the Israeli War recounted, quote,

The traumatic defeat of the Syrians and Egyptians in the June 1967 war with Israel discredited the radical socialist regimes of Nasser's Egypt and Baathist Syria. The defeat strengthened the hands of the moderates and the rightists.

In 1981, Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear power plant with US approval at a time when the US was publicly supporting Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. Secretly the US wanted both governments to destroy each other but couldn't be seen as playing such an intentionally destabilizing role.

in 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon with the full support and funding from the United States in an attempt to crush the Palestinian resistance there and appoint an ultra-rightwing Lebanese Phalangist as president. The US would end up sending marines in to aid this effort, only to be defeated by the Lebanese resistance forces.

Israel also has a long history of doing the empire's bidding outside the Middle East. Israel continued to arm and support apartheid South Africa even after it became too unpopular for the US to do so. Israel even built an electrified fence around Namibia, then a South African colony, to protect it from neighboring Angolan liberation forces.

Israeli police helped train torturers in the US-backed Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. They trained the right-wing Guatemalan army that was committing genocide against indigenous people. Israel has also been a loyal partner in the US war on terror. The islamophobic hysteria following 9/11 gave the US an excuse to attack any country that stood against its interests in the region, especially Iran. While the US has been careful not to directly strike Iran, Israel has served a very useful purpose by continuing to bully and harass Iran, assassinating its nuclear scientists, seizing Iranian ships, and providing intelligence on Iran through massive spy networks.

Israel also routinely bombed Syria, a country the US attempted to topple in 2011. Just by being there, Israel gives the US a constant excuse to intervene in the region under the guise of protecting Israel. As Joe Biden once put it:

Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel, to protect her interest in the region.

So I heard someone mention not too long ago that whole thingy about apparently needing government approval to go to another city as a North Korean, and how this is supposed to be this really terrible thing meant to Control the Population or whatever... and like, I didn't argue against what that person said because truth be told I don't know much about it and learning more about it is Kinda Difficult, but I just thought... aren't things in practice already pretty similar where I live?

Like, if I am employed, then I need to clock in every day, and notify and get the approval of my employer in order to be absent from my workplace. So if I randomly decide to spend the night in the next town over and miss or am late to work or perform worse at work because of it, then I could be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including getting fired and all that entails. And if I move to a new city, then the government expects me to notify them of my new address, because that could have implications for welfare and taxation and voting and census statistics and so forth. If I don't notify the government when I move to a new city, then that is Illegal and Bad and I'll get fined for it.

To me it then makes sense that if the state is my employer, that there would be a similar system in place, and that a centrally-planned economy would have a greater need for statistics as well (companies do well keep track of who's in which department, too, don't they!). And so to me it follows that inter-city travel would be expected to be documented and approved. Because "needing approval" does not equal "99% of applications are denied", right? That much should be obvious.

But all of this is really just me making assumptions about a country I've never actually been to and honestly know way too little about, based on what I feel makes more sense than "it's a literal 1984 hellscape where they eat babies".

If anybody actually knows anything about this topic or similar domestic travel restrictions in other AES states, then I'd love to hear about it.

Holocaust Museum in Israel criticizes the UN delegation wearing Yellow Stars...but not for the reason you'd think.

One term for Genocide Joe

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-administration-actions-combat-antisemitism-college-campuses-rcna122712

The White House will also highlight how the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights has expedited an update of its complaint form. For the first time, it will make it clear that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits certain forms of antisemitism and Islamophobia.

more like TURD red scare

Being pro-palestine is gonna be a jailable offense so soon*

$5 says these people aren't in favor of jailing nazis

*in the US i mean, in the cursed UK people are already being charged with terrorism for wearing shirts with paragliders on them

All current and historical AES states have had electoral systems that differs significantly from the systems known from bourgeois parliamentary systems. Candidates are selected either by the vanguard party or by a unity front dominated by the vanguard party. Voters can then view either for our against the one list of candidates.

To my my knowledge there are virtually no historical examples of voters rejecting the list and there are reports (in Western sources, so they should be taken with a grain of salt) of significant social pressure being levied on voters to vote yes for the list.

You don't get the election night dramas known from bourgeois systems where there can be genuine uncertainty as to whether ghoul A or ghoul B gets elected. In bourgeois states the function of elections seems to be to legitimise the system by giving voters a relatively free choice between a selection of candidates within the accepted spectrum of (liberal-conservative) opinion. In AES states, at the time of the election voters doesn't seem to have much influence and their participation seems to be ceremonial in nature.

This begs the question what the function of these elections are. The lazy liberal explanation is that the evil commies are hiding sham elections that they think people are too stupid to see through. However, AES states has been around for more than a century and almost all of them uses some version of this system so they clearly must have some function in legitimising the state and mobilising popular support.

I would love if someone with knowledge in the subject could elaborate on this.