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Paul Merrell

Support for Palestinians triples among US youth, survey finds | The Electronic Intifada - 0 views

  • But dig deeper into the findings and it is apparent that Israel’s support is eroding in key sectors of the US population. Virtually all of the increase in sympathy for Palestinians “has come among Democrats, especially liberal Democrats,” Pew states.
  • The number of liberal Democrats sympathizing more with the Palestinians has nearly doubled over the past two years, from 21 to 40 percent. And within the Democratic Party, it is clear that Hillary Clinton is the candidate of the more pro-Israel wing: 47 percent of her supporters say they sympathize with Israel more, while 27 percent lean toward the Palestinians. Among the supporters of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, however, a plurality – 39 percent – are more favorable to the Palestinians, while just a third stand with Israel.
  • Clinton’s backers are clearly more pro-Israel, but it is still remarkable to note that this group is under 50 percent – an indication of how much opinions about Palestine and the Israeli question are shifting within the support base of the Democratic Party. The Pew survey confirms the extent to which Israel has become a partisan issue. Overall, just 43 percent of Democrats are more sympathetic to Israel, while 29 percent back the Palestinians. In contrast to the Democrats, “overwhelming shares of [Republican] voters side with Israel, regardless of which candidate they support,” Pew states. Republican support for Israel – at around 75 percent – varied little among supporters of former presidential candidates Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich compared with those of presumptive nominee Donald Trump. Just seven percent of Republicans were more favorable to the Palestinians. “We’ve been tracking this question since the 1970s and this gap is relatively new, of Republicans being more sympathetic to Israel than Democrats,” Carroll Doherty, Pew’s director of research, told NPR’s Morning Edition on Thurdsay. “The gap is now as wide as we’ve ever seen it – it’s almost 35 percentage points.”
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  • The findings also confirm that support for the Palestinians is rising fastest among the young – the so-called Millennials born after 1980. “Currently, 43 percent of Millennials report sympathizing more with Israel, while 27 percent are more sympathetic to the Palestinians,” Pew states. “The share sympathizing with the Palestinians has risen significantly in recent years, from nine percent in 2006 to 20 percent in July 2014 to 27 percent today” – in other words it has tripled.
  • These findings bode well for supporters of Palestinian rights. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner for her party’s presidential nomination, has adopted some of the most extreme anti-Palestinian rhetoric heard in recent years. This may work well with her generally older supporters, with pro-Israel billionaires who bankroll her campaign, as well as with Republican voters she will be hoping to lure if she faces Trump in the general election, but the numbers show she’s more out of step than ever with her own party’s base. Her repeated denunciations of BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions – are likely to alienate even more of the younger generation who believe that fighting for social justice everywhere includes Palestine. Whatever happens in the 2016 presidential election, the United States has never been more fertile ground to build support for Palestinian rights.
Paul Merrell

Whether to Go to War Against Russia Is Top Issue in U.S. Presidential Race | Global Res... - 0 views

  • The United States government has already declared that in regards to what it alleges to be a Russian cyberattack against the U.S. Democratic Party, the U.S. reserves the right to go to war against Russia. NATO has accordingly changed its policy so as to assert that a cyberattack (in this case actually cyber-espionage, such as the U.S. government itself perpetrates against even its own allies such as Angela Merkel by tapping her phone) constitutes an act of war by the alleged cyberattacker, and so requires all NATO member nations to join any cyberattacked NATO nation in war against its alleged (cyber)attacker, if the cyberattacked member declares war against its alleged cyberattacker. Excuses are being sought for a war against Russia; and expanding the definition of “invasion,” to include mere espionage, is one such excuse. But it’s not the only one that the Obama Administration has cooked up. U.S. Senator Mike Lee has asserted that President Barack Obama must obtain a declaration of war against Syria — which is allied with and defended by Russia — before invading Syria. Syria has, for the past few years, already been invaded by tens of thousands of foreign jihadists (financed mainly by the royal Sauds and Qataris, and armed mainly with U.S. weaponry) who are trying to overthrow and replace the Syrian government so that pipelines can be built through Syria into Europe to transport Saudi oil and Qatari gas into the EU, the world’s biggest energy-market, which now is dominated by Russia’s oil and gas. Since Syria is already being defended by Russia (those royals’ major competitor in the oil and gas markets), America’s invasion of Syria would necessarily place U.S. and Russia into an air-war against each other (for the benefit of those royal Arabs — who finance jihadist groups, as even Hillary Clinton acknowledges): Syria would thus become a battleground in a broader war against Russia. So: declaring war against Syria would be a second excuse for World War III, and one which would especially serve the desires not only of U.S. ‘defense’ firms but of the U.S. aristocracy’s royal Arabic allies, who buy much of those ‘defense’ firms’ exports (weaponry), and also U.S. oilfield services firms such as pipelines by Halliburton. (It’s good business for them, no one else. Taxpayers and war-victims pay, but those corporations — and royal families — would profit.)
  • The U.S. government also declares that Russia ‘conquered’ Crimea in 2014 and that Russia must restore it to Ukraine. The U.S. government wants Ukraine to be accepted into NATO, so that all NATO nations will be at war against Russia if Russia doesn’t return Crimea to Ukraine, of which Crimea had only briefly (1954-2014) been a part, until Crimeans voted on 16 March 2014 to rejoin Russia. This Crimean issue is already the basis for America’s economic sanctions against Russia, and thus Russia’s continuing refusal to coerce Crimeans to accept again being part of Ukraine would be yet a third excuse for WW III.
  • Hillary Clinton says “As President, I will make it clear, that the United States will treat cyber attacks just like any other attack.” She alleges that when information was unauthorizedly made public from Democratic National Committee computers, the cyberattacker was Russia. She can be counted as a strong proponent of that excuse for WW3. She’s with Barack Obama and the other neocons on that. She has furthermore said that the U.S. should shoot down any Russian and Syrian bombers in Syria — the phrase for that proposed U.S. policy is to “establish a no-fly zone” there. She makes clear: “I am advocating the no-fly zone.” It would be war against not only Syria, but Russia. (After all: a no-fly zone in which the U.S. is shooting down the government’s planes and Russia’s planes, would be war by the U.S. against both Syria and Russia, but that’s what she wants to do.) She can thus be counted as a strong proponent of those two excuses for WW3.
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  • On the matter of Crimea, she has said that “Putin invaded and annexed Crimea,” and “In the wake of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in early 2014, some have argued that NATO expansion either caused or exacerbated Russia’s aggression. I disagree with that argument.” She believes that the expansion of NATO right up to Russia’s borders is good, not horrific and terrifying (as it is to Russians — just like USSR’s conquering of Mexico would have been terrifying to Americans if USSR did that during the Cold War). Furthermore, because Ukraine is the main transit-route for Russian gas-pipelines into Europe, the coup that in 2014 overthrew the neutralist democratically elected President of Ukraine and replaced him by leaders who seek NATO membership for Ukraine and who have the power to cut off those pipelines, was strongly supported by both Obama and Clinton. She can thus be counted as a strong proponent of all three excuses for WW3. U.S. President Obama has made unequivocally clear that he regards Russia as being by far the world’s most “aggressive” nation; and Clinton, too, commonly uses the term “aggression” as describing Russia (such as she did by her denial that “NATO expansion either caused or exacerbated Russia’s aggression”). To her, Russia’s opposing real aggression by the U.S. (in this case, America’s 2014 coup that overthrew the democratically elected Ukrainian President for whom 75% of Crimeans had voted), constitutes ‘Russia’s aggression’, somehow. Furthermore, as regards whether Crimea’s rejoining Russia was ‘illegal’ as she says: does she also deny the right of self-determination of peoples regarding the residents of Catalonia though the Spanish government accepts it there, and also by the residents of Scotland though the British government accepts it there? Or is she simply determined to have as many excuses to invade Russia as she can have? She has never condemned the independence movements in Scotland or Catalonia. The United States is clearly on a path toward war with Russia. Donald Trump opposes all aspects of that policy.
  • That’s the main difference between the two U.S. Presidential candidates. Trump makes ridiculous statements about the ‘need’ to increase ‘defense’ spending during this period of soaring federal debt, but he has consistently condemned the moves toward war against Russia and said that America’s real enemy is jihadists, and that Russia is on our side in this war — the real war — not an enemy of America such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama claim. Both candidates (Trump and Clinton) are war-hawks, but Hillary wants to go to war against both jihadists and Russia, whereas Trump wants to go to war only against jihadists. Trump’s charge that Hillary would be a catastrophic President is borne out not only by her past record in public office, but by her present positions on these issues.
  • Americans are being offered, by this nation’s aristocracy, a choice between a marginally competent and deeply evil psychopath Hillary Clinton, versus an incompetent but far less evil psychopath Donald Trump, and the nation’s press are reporting instead a choice between two candidates of whom one (the actually evil Clinton) is presented as being far preferable to the other (the actually incompetent Trump), and possibly as being someone who might improve this nation if not the world. Virtually none of America’s Establishment is willing to report the truth: that the nation’s rotting will get worse under either person as President, but that only under Trump might this nation (and the world) stand a reasonable likelihood of surviving at all (i.e., nuclear war with Russia being averted). Things won’t get better, but they definitely could get a hell of a lot worse — and this is the issue, the real one, in the present election: WW3, yes or no on that. Hillary Clinton argues that she, with her neoconservative backing (consisting of the same people who cheer-led the invasion of Russia-friendly Iraq, and who shared her joy in doing the same to Russia-friendly Libya — “We came, we saw, he died, ha ha!”), is the better person to have her finger on the nuclear button with Russia. This U.S. Presidential election will be decided upon the WW3-issue, unless the American electorate are incredibly stupid (or else terribly deceived): Is she correct to allege that she and not Trump should have control over the nuclear button against Russia? She’s even more of a neoconservative than Obama is, and this is why she has the endorsement of neoconservatives in this election. And that is the issue.
  • The real question isn’t whether America and the world will be improved by the next U.S. President; it’s whether America and the world will be destroyed by the next U.S. President. All else is mere distraction, by comparison. And the U.S. public now are extremely distracted — unfortunately, even by the candidates themselves. The pathetic Presidential candidates that the U.S. aristocracy has provided to Americans, for the public’s votes in the final round, don’t focus on this reality. Anyone who thinks that the majority of billionaires can’t possibly believe in a ‘winnable’ nuclear war and can’t possibly be wanting WW3 should read this. That was published by the Council on Foreign Relations, Wall Street’s international-affairs think tank. They mean business. And that’s the source of neoconservatism — the top U.S.-based international corporations, mainly in ‘defense’ and oil and Wall Street. (Clinton’s career is based upon precisely those three segments, whereas Trump’s is based instead upon real estate and entertainment, neither of which segments is neoconservative.) It doesn’t come from nowhere; it comes from the people who buy and sell politicians.
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