"Kennedy was the last president who threatened to cut off all funding to Israel." I guess you are excluding, by the word "all", the following?: "in 1992, George H.W. Bush threatened to withhold a $10 billion loan guarantee if Israel continued building settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, according to The Washington Post." (cited by J. Lauria in https://consortiumnews.com/2024/07/24/netanyahu-commands-us-obeys/. I note how his list of 4 presidents who resisted Israel omits JFK. Typical.)
Lauria is not the only one I've read to ignore JFK's exchanges with Israel. I mean, there's good reason to believe Ben Gurion resigned as a consequence of it, right? That's pretty significant, I would think.
On the other hand, I heard Jim Kavanagh (Ed Curtin's friend and one of my preferred commentators on the left) directly recall (in connection with the abuse of FARA to persecute government dissidents) that JFK wanted to classify the Israeli lobby (as it should be!) under that provision (or at least RFK's Dept. of Justice was looking into it in fall of 63)––another thing that didn't happen because of 11/22/63. So there are people out there who are aware of this slice of history, so to speak.
There is a cause and effect to Ben Gurion resigning, thought no one knows for sure if that was the reason. And yes, RFK was moving to classify the precursor to AIPAC as a lobby.
good worl. glad you mention israel as well as ukraine and us going back and expanding nato and it's role in ukraine war which because of us won't end.Putin has wanted to have talks to end it us won't allow it. if anyone is threating other it's us with expanding nato to warsaw pact former countries and former soviet republics.
I have siad today's dems are to far right right of fdr and JFK.
as you said they have more in common withr eagan and cheney than fdr and JFK. as awful as JBL wa son fregin policy case can be made dems today are to his right. today's dems wouldn't even do as he did after tet ooffensive try to make peace in vietnam before election they would just keep war going.
LOL, blaming anyone but Putin for the aggressive genocidal war of choice against Ukraine, replete with Russian atrocities and war crimes, mass civilian graves? An extremely strange non-starter - no Western diplomat or schemer could possibly have hornswoggled Putin into this series of disasters, which has led to Russia becoming an international pariah state and even now, facing a Ukrainian counter-invasion. It verges on magical thinking, and requires us to believe the Ukrainians don't have the right to self-defense and basic territorial integrity!
The rest of this makes total sense, so it's mystifying how it can slip into removing all agency from Russia for its own godawful decisions and blaming anyone else but them.
Dragging the sovereign rights of previously Russian held countries like Poland and the Baltic States to join a defensive alliance into this doesn't help make the case that "Nato caused the Russians to illegally invade Ukraine," either.
Richard, there were three solutions offered to end the Ukraine War. Any one of them could have ended it. And for the life of me I do not comprehend why NATO has to expand to the border or Russia, when there is no Warsaw Pact and Russia is not a communist country. I repeat, Albright was a very bad Secretary of State. She ended up being rewarded with a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.
Unless the "three solutions" included an unconditional return of all the illegally seized Ukrainian territory, they were only despicable validations of Putin's war crime #1, starting an illegal war of aggression. Nato is like any self-defense treaty alliance and can be joined by any agreeable nation - seeing Putin's Russian imperialist revanchism in action spurred Sweden and Finland to join Nato, argue with them Jim, not me! They had resisted joining for years!
Albright was terrible, Putin's wars in Ukraine and elsewhere are even worse, and Russia will end up returning all the illegally seized territory - Russians will maybe start returning to their own homelands there instead of fleeing. True enough, they aren't communist any longer, but Putin longs for Empire. And you know as well as I do that if we were Russians in Russia arguing vociferously but peaceably about this online, the knocks on our doors and being seized and imprisoned would only be a matter of time. For the life of me I don't see how anyone as serious, scholarly and ethically sound as you isn't condemning the Russians in this - no excuse neighboring nations make their own self-defense pact decisions.
It's not the 1st time I heard that the encroachment by NATO made Putin nervous, but yes, he Invaded land that was once given to Ukraine in the 1800s or early 1900s, IIRC.
Ukraine and Russia and other imperial or ducal states have been fighting over those territories since forever - since the various state entities arose. So we are stuck with the post-WW2 boundaries, which Putin tried to change illegally via aggressive wars of choice, in Ukraine's case, beginning in 2014. And that has simply encouraged still more nations to join Nato after Putin ordered the February 2022 "Special Military Operation" , which hasn't "encroached" on Russia, only formed an expanded, proactive defensive alliance in case Russia did exactly what it did!
(I was surprised to hear astute people that I was sitting with at a table for CAPA'S conference in Dallas Nov. 2022, that they thought NATO's overtures to Ukraine prompted Putin to invade).
Yes, I think it's just a bad mistake and by no means a "moral failing," but it seems as if there's a view - a contrarian, minority view - that underestimates Putin's capacity for self-destructive imperialistic revanchism. In other words, Putin was in no way being threatened with a Nato invasion of Russia, he was simply being threatened with having his imperialistic dreams up against strengthened collective resistance from Nato member states.
It's strange in that I doubt if those same folks deny Putin's oppression of Russian dissenters, for example. Or his culpability in international murder plots against his enemies! But somehow they seem to cast him as an unwilling victim of Nato scheming. I don't get it.
LOL, you cannot plausibly remove all of Putin's agency in this illegal genocidal invasion, or the illegal genocidal invasions of Ukraine. Putin's imperialism has cost Russia some 600,000 killed already, triggered international sanctions, and rendered Russia an international pariah state.
At every step along the way, Putin could have ordered a halt, but he seems as delusional as Trump, thinking Ukraine will negotiate away the illegally stolen land. Any negotiations for a lasting peace will have to encompass a return to the pre-2014 borders.
Not only that, no other sovereign nation can vicariously negotiate peace terms on behalf of Ukraine, that's absurd and won't be accepted.
I have been reading material by the likes of Jeffrey Sachs for decades, they lost the plot a long time ago.
Ukraine’s invasion has exposed Putin’s messianic vision of Russia as a mirage
Now Ukrainians are rebelling by burning recruiters' cars (aka kidnappers) because they don't want to be forced to fight for their comedian president.
Russia is fighting the USA and NATO...and winning. Remember the three reasons he invaded in the first place: 1. to protect the ethnic Russians in the east (Donbas) (who were shelled for 8 straight years ) 2. get rid of the Nazi's in Ukraine whether that be Banderites/Azov soldiers or whomever 3. stop Nato expansion up to Russia's borders.
Please list what you find factually wrong in Sach's article.
Jeez I just checked out several of your other comments, it fits perfectly that you are into the anti-vaxx gibberish as well. And that you accept Hamas ruling Gaza with an iron fist, murdering their own internal opposition for some eighteen years, but howl about an "eighteen year siege" of Gaza as if it makes any sense at all - it's all of a piece.
So you (1) don't even know what characterizes a "genocidal invasion," since Russia's attempts to completely conquer Ukraine via mass terror bombings of Ukrainian civilians is a paradigm case of one, (2) believe the partying behavior of would-be victims of Russia's genocide hundreds of miles away and (so far) unharmed by Russia's mass murder terror bombings is a relevant fact about the overall illegal, genocidal invasion by Russia, (3) apparently actually believe some sporadic opposition to recruiters in Ukraine is remotely comparable to hundreds of thousands of RUSSIAN MEN who fled in the last few years, (4) are willing to compare the talented comedian and dancer President Zelensky of Ukraine to the murderous thug and former KGB officer and current dictator with no sense of irony, (5) claim that Putin's Russia cares at all about the "ethnic Russians" in the Donbas except as useful pawns, when they have gotten over 600,000 other Russians killed, (6) ignore the fact Putin's Russia represents an imperialistic white Christian neo-fascist nationalism easily as fiendish as any "Nazis" in Ukraine, (7) IGNORE Finland joining Nato but feel free to invent a mythical victory against Nato's entirely legal expansion anywhere where sovereign nations want to join - and I am supposed to take you seriously?
People like you are far too intellectually and morally bankrupt to take seriously.
The Nato expansion is definitely a factor, but Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in order to have its own country. Putin broke that bargain. One issue, does not negate the other.
Chris, it was the war in Donbass that killed something like 13,000 Russians that was the other part of the reason for the invasion. I am all for a truce in Ukraine. And I don't care who negotiates it.
I am all for a truce, as well, but I don't delude myself that Ukraine or Nato will simply accept new borders in Europe, to the detriment of United Nations member states, formed via illegal aggression and invasion:
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
Possibly the US should have gone straight to the UN Security Council and the General Assembly, even though Russia would ignore the results?
I like this analysis because it takes us from the formal end of Kissinger influence to the new guard, now known as neocons. What a mess all of these Republicans have left for us.
When you piece it all together, it's eye-opening if not scary. We go on our merry way in our busy lives, but it doesn't impact the mind until one explains the big picture. Thank you Jim.
A friend and I were the only two protestors at the Century City Hotel the night Reagan got elected. I quipped that Gucci would be designing cruise missiles. Some conservatives believe that Nixon and Kissenger had to go for his overtures to China and Russia - that does not forgive his excursions into Cambodia, etc. I disagree with you about the Dems and Russia -- Putin is a threat to W. Europe. The Gaza situation is a horror story - if only we could get rid of Netanyahu and Hamas.
Yep, the only two - we were classmates at UCLA :( Casper Weinberger pointed the Secret Service at me, but they failed to get rid of me. I also remembered screaming at Evelle Younger, who was the atty general of California: "Gucci will design cruise missiles."
"Kennedy was the last president who threatened to cut off all funding to Israel." I guess you are excluding, by the word "all", the following?: "in 1992, George H.W. Bush threatened to withhold a $10 billion loan guarantee if Israel continued building settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, according to The Washington Post." (cited by J. Lauria in https://consortiumnews.com/2024/07/24/netanyahu-commands-us-obeys/. I note how his list of 4 presidents who resisted Israel omits JFK. Typical.)
Yes, a loan guarantee would not be all funding, right? Man he did not list JFK? That is really bizarre.
I would imagine so.
Lauria is not the only one I've read to ignore JFK's exchanges with Israel. I mean, there's good reason to believe Ben Gurion resigned as a consequence of it, right? That's pretty significant, I would think.
On the other hand, I heard Jim Kavanagh (Ed Curtin's friend and one of my preferred commentators on the left) directly recall (in connection with the abuse of FARA to persecute government dissidents) that JFK wanted to classify the Israeli lobby (as it should be!) under that provision (or at least RFK's Dept. of Justice was looking into it in fall of 63)––another thing that didn't happen because of 11/22/63. So there are people out there who are aware of this slice of history, so to speak.
There is a cause and effect to Ben Gurion resigning, thought no one knows for sure if that was the reason. And yes, RFK was moving to classify the precursor to AIPAC as a lobby.
good worl. glad you mention israel as well as ukraine and us going back and expanding nato and it's role in ukraine war which because of us won't end.Putin has wanted to have talks to end it us won't allow it. if anyone is threating other it's us with expanding nato to warsaw pact former countries and former soviet republics.
I have siad today's dems are to far right right of fdr and JFK.
Yes they are, in fact they are more like the GOP in that regard.
I would not be surprised if Biden pulls off a 2 state solution before he leaves office. We shall see.
as you said they have more in common withr eagan and cheney than fdr and JFK. as awful as JBL wa son fregin policy case can be made dems today are to his right. today's dems wouldn't even do as he did after tet ooffensive try to make peace in vietnam before election they would just keep war going.
Great overview- Understanding Zionism and its impact on the middle east, and the world today is critical to finding a way off the edge of the abyss.
Thanks David.
Thanks so much David.
LOL, blaming anyone but Putin for the aggressive genocidal war of choice against Ukraine, replete with Russian atrocities and war crimes, mass civilian graves? An extremely strange non-starter - no Western diplomat or schemer could possibly have hornswoggled Putin into this series of disasters, which has led to Russia becoming an international pariah state and even now, facing a Ukrainian counter-invasion. It verges on magical thinking, and requires us to believe the Ukrainians don't have the right to self-defense and basic territorial integrity!
The rest of this makes total sense, so it's mystifying how it can slip into removing all agency from Russia for its own godawful decisions and blaming anyone else but them.
Dragging the sovereign rights of previously Russian held countries like Poland and the Baltic States to join a defensive alliance into this doesn't help make the case that "Nato caused the Russians to illegally invade Ukraine," either.
Richard, there were three solutions offered to end the Ukraine War. Any one of them could have ended it. And for the life of me I do not comprehend why NATO has to expand to the border or Russia, when there is no Warsaw Pact and Russia is not a communist country. I repeat, Albright was a very bad Secretary of State. She ended up being rewarded with a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.
Unless the "three solutions" included an unconditional return of all the illegally seized Ukrainian territory, they were only despicable validations of Putin's war crime #1, starting an illegal war of aggression. Nato is like any self-defense treaty alliance and can be joined by any agreeable nation - seeing Putin's Russian imperialist revanchism in action spurred Sweden and Finland to join Nato, argue with them Jim, not me! They had resisted joining for years!
Albright was terrible, Putin's wars in Ukraine and elsewhere are even worse, and Russia will end up returning all the illegally seized territory - Russians will maybe start returning to their own homelands there instead of fleeing. True enough, they aren't communist any longer, but Putin longs for Empire. And you know as well as I do that if we were Russians in Russia arguing vociferously but peaceably about this online, the knocks on our doors and being seized and imprisoned would only be a matter of time. For the life of me I don't see how anyone as serious, scholarly and ethically sound as you isn't condemning the Russians in this - no excuse neighboring nations make their own self-defense pact decisions.
It's not the 1st time I heard that the encroachment by NATO made Putin nervous, but yes, he Invaded land that was once given to Ukraine in the 1800s or early 1900s, IIRC.
Ukraine and Russia and other imperial or ducal states have been fighting over those territories since forever - since the various state entities arose. So we are stuck with the post-WW2 boundaries, which Putin tried to change illegally via aggressive wars of choice, in Ukraine's case, beginning in 2014. And that has simply encouraged still more nations to join Nato after Putin ordered the February 2022 "Special Military Operation" , which hasn't "encroached" on Russia, only formed an expanded, proactive defensive alliance in case Russia did exactly what it did!
So it's an excuse used by Putin.
(I was surprised to hear astute people that I was sitting with at a table for CAPA'S conference in Dallas Nov. 2022, that they thought NATO's overtures to Ukraine prompted Putin to invade).
Yes, I think it's just a bad mistake and by no means a "moral failing," but it seems as if there's a view - a contrarian, minority view - that underestimates Putin's capacity for self-destructive imperialistic revanchism. In other words, Putin was in no way being threatened with a Nato invasion of Russia, he was simply being threatened with having his imperialistic dreams up against strengthened collective resistance from Nato member states.
It's strange in that I doubt if those same folks deny Putin's oppression of Russian dissenters, for example. Or his culpability in international murder plots against his enemies! But somehow they seem to cast him as an unwilling victim of Nato scheming. I don't get it.
read this piece by Jeffrey Sachs for a better understanding: https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/s6ap8hxhp34hg252wtwwwtdw4afw7x
LOL, you cannot plausibly remove all of Putin's agency in this illegal genocidal invasion, or the illegal genocidal invasions of Ukraine. Putin's imperialism has cost Russia some 600,000 killed already, triggered international sanctions, and rendered Russia an international pariah state.
At every step along the way, Putin could have ordered a halt, but he seems as delusional as Trump, thinking Ukraine will negotiate away the illegally stolen land. Any negotiations for a lasting peace will have to encompass a return to the pre-2014 borders.
Not only that, no other sovereign nation can vicariously negotiate peace terms on behalf of Ukraine, that's absurd and won't be accepted.
I have been reading material by the likes of Jeffrey Sachs for decades, they lost the plot a long time ago.
Ukraine’s invasion has exposed Putin’s messianic vision of Russia as a mirage
Luke Harding
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/17/putin-russia-ukraine-incursion-kursk
^^^^^^ Read THIS for that "better understanding."
How do you have a 'genocidal invasion' when Ukrainians still have/had the ability to party at night:
https://www.wineenthusiast.com/culture/podcasts/ukraine-nightlife-during-russian-war/?srsltid=AfmBOorFJTYLTVG-_2ZKfBg7uxRZYdRD5OOZtZw9v0b9JZyGAAJOfQPH
and last summer:
https://youtu.be/HzSrHizE3Ls?si=z0AJFstPMXfXT2tz
Now Ukrainians are rebelling by burning recruiters' cars (aka kidnappers) because they don't want to be forced to fight for their comedian president.
Russia is fighting the USA and NATO...and winning. Remember the three reasons he invaded in the first place: 1. to protect the ethnic Russians in the east (Donbas) (who were shelled for 8 straight years ) 2. get rid of the Nazi's in Ukraine whether that be Banderites/Azov soldiers or whomever 3. stop Nato expansion up to Russia's borders.
Please list what you find factually wrong in Sach's article.
Jeez I just checked out several of your other comments, it fits perfectly that you are into the anti-vaxx gibberish as well. And that you accept Hamas ruling Gaza with an iron fist, murdering their own internal opposition for some eighteen years, but howl about an "eighteen year siege" of Gaza as if it makes any sense at all - it's all of a piece.
So you (1) don't even know what characterizes a "genocidal invasion," since Russia's attempts to completely conquer Ukraine via mass terror bombings of Ukrainian civilians is a paradigm case of one, (2) believe the partying behavior of would-be victims of Russia's genocide hundreds of miles away and (so far) unharmed by Russia's mass murder terror bombings is a relevant fact about the overall illegal, genocidal invasion by Russia, (3) apparently actually believe some sporadic opposition to recruiters in Ukraine is remotely comparable to hundreds of thousands of RUSSIAN MEN who fled in the last few years, (4) are willing to compare the talented comedian and dancer President Zelensky of Ukraine to the murderous thug and former KGB officer and current dictator with no sense of irony, (5) claim that Putin's Russia cares at all about the "ethnic Russians" in the Donbas except as useful pawns, when they have gotten over 600,000 other Russians killed, (6) ignore the fact Putin's Russia represents an imperialistic white Christian neo-fascist nationalism easily as fiendish as any "Nazis" in Ukraine, (7) IGNORE Finland joining Nato but feel free to invent a mythical victory against Nato's entirely legal expansion anywhere where sovereign nations want to join - and I am supposed to take you seriously?
People like you are far too intellectually and morally bankrupt to take seriously.
The Nato expansion is definitely a factor, but Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in order to have its own country. Putin broke that bargain. One issue, does not negate the other.
Chris, it was the war in Donbass that killed something like 13,000 Russians that was the other part of the reason for the invasion. I am all for a truce in Ukraine. And I don't care who negotiates it.
I am all for a truce, as well, but I don't delude myself that Ukraine or Nato will simply accept new borders in Europe, to the detriment of United Nations member states, formed via illegal aggression and invasion:
https://legal.un.org/repertory/art51.shtml
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
Possibly the US should have gone straight to the UN Security Council and the General Assembly, even though Russia would ignore the results?
"Reasons for aggressive genocidal invasion," OK.
I like this analysis because it takes us from the formal end of Kissinger influence to the new guard, now known as neocons. What a mess all of these Republicans have left for us.
You can say that again Dan. But then it seeped over to the Democrats. Albright.
When you piece it all together, it's eye-opening if not scary. We go on our merry way in our busy lives, but it doesn't impact the mind until one explains the big picture. Thank you Jim.
Thanks Gerry.
A friend and I were the only two protestors at the Century City Hotel the night Reagan got elected. I quipped that Gucci would be designing cruise missiles. Some conservatives believe that Nixon and Kissenger had to go for his overtures to China and Russia - that does not forgive his excursions into Cambodia, etc. I disagree with you about the Dems and Russia -- Putin is a threat to W. Europe. The Gaza situation is a horror story - if only we could get rid of Netanyahu and Hamas.
You were the only to protestors? There should have been thousands.
Yep, the only two - we were classmates at UCLA :( Casper Weinberger pointed the Secret Service at me, but they failed to get rid of me. I also remembered screaming at Evelle Younger, who was the atty general of California: "Gucci will design cruise missiles."