It doesn't matter whether you're President Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, or Mickey Mouse.
You can slash spending on the EPA, USAID, agriculture, labor, health and education, and increase it on 'defence', security and vets, as Trump has just done, or you can do the reverse.
You can call your budget 'America First', as Trump has done, or some other equally meaningless combination of words.
The only thing that matters is that you don't-ever-cut-funding-to-Israel:
"The budget proposal 'provides $3.1 billion to meet the security assistance commitment to Israel, currently at an all-time high, ensuring that Israel has the ability to defend itself from threats and maintain its Qualitative Military Edge'." (Outlining budget, Trump puts aid to Israel first while slashing elsewhere, Eric Cortellessa, The Times of Israel, 16/3/17)
By contrast: "Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Nevertheless, Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO and the United States must be paid more for the powerful and very expensive defense it provides to Germany." (Trump tweet)
Showing posts with label US aid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US aid. Show all posts
Saturday, March 18, 2017
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Follow the Thread...
.... from this...
"Even though the Great Recession technically ended in 2009, incomes fell, poverty rose and the number of Americans without health insurance jumped again in 2010, the federal government announced Tuesday. The nation's poverty rate increased to 15.1% in 2010, up from 14.3% in 2009 and the highest level since 1993, according to the US Census Bureau's annual Income, Poverty & Health Insurance Coverage report for 2010. An additional 2.6 million landed in poverty lat year, bringing the total to 46.2 million - the highest number since the government started tracking poverty in the 1950s." (US poverty rate climbed to 15.1% last year, total number hit all-time record, Janell Ross, huffingtonpost.com, 13/9/11)
... to this...
"Israel's defence ministry said on Sunday that the United States has agreed to provide it with an additional $235 million to finance its rocket defence system... The additional funds come on top of the $3 billion dollars of annual military aid given by the US to Israel." (US 'to give Israel extra aid for rocket system', AFP, news.yahoo.com, 25/12/11)
... and, finally, this:
"Within the US, Obama has laid the groundwork for a new and bigger war in the Middle East by relocating troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and concentrating them facing Iran. To undermine Iran, Washington is expanding clandestine military and civilian operations against Iranian allies in Syria, Pakistan, Venezuela and China. The key to the US and Israeli bellicose strategy toward Iran is a series of wars in neighboring states, world-wide economic sanctions, cyber-attacks aimed at disabling vital industries and clandestine terrorist assassinations of scientists and military officials. The entire push, planning and execution of the US policies leading up to a war with Iran can be empirically attributed to the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) occupying strategic positions in government, mass media and 'civil society'. A systematic analysis of policymakers designing and implementing economic sanctions policy in Congress finds prominent roles for mega-Zionists like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Howard Berman; in the White House, Dennis Ross, and Jeffrey Feltman in State; Stuart Levy and his replacement David Cohen in Treasury. The White House is totally beholden to Zionist fund raisers and takes its cue from the '52' Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations. The Israeli-Zionist strategy is to encircle Iran, weaken it economically and attack its military. The Iraq invasion was the US's first war for Israel; the Libyan war the second; the current proxy war against Syria is the third. These wars have destroyed Israel's adversaries or are in the process of doing so. During 2011, economic sanctions, which were designed to create domestic discontent in Iran were the principle weapon of choice. The global sanctions campaign engaged the entire energies of the major Jewish-Zionist lobbies. They also faced no opposition in the mass media, Congress or the White House. The ZPC faced virtually no criticism from any of the progressive, leftist and socialist journals, movements or grouplets - with a few notable exceptions. The past year's relocation of troops from Iraq to the borders of Iran, the sanctions and the rising Big Push from Israel's fifth column in the US means War in the Middle East. This likely means a 'surprise' aerial and maritime missile attack by US forces. This will be based on a concocted pretext of an 'imminent nuclear attack' cooked up by Mossad and transmitted by the ZPC to the Congress and White House for consumption and transmission to the world. It will be a destructive, bloody, prolonged war for Israel. The US will bear the direct military cost by itself but the rest of the world will pay a dear economic price. The Zionist-promoted US war will convert the recession of early 2012 into a major depression by the end of the year and probably provoke mass upheavals." (A doomsday view of 2012, James Petras, petras.lehaine.org, 24/12/11)
"Even though the Great Recession technically ended in 2009, incomes fell, poverty rose and the number of Americans without health insurance jumped again in 2010, the federal government announced Tuesday. The nation's poverty rate increased to 15.1% in 2010, up from 14.3% in 2009 and the highest level since 1993, according to the US Census Bureau's annual Income, Poverty & Health Insurance Coverage report for 2010. An additional 2.6 million landed in poverty lat year, bringing the total to 46.2 million - the highest number since the government started tracking poverty in the 1950s." (US poverty rate climbed to 15.1% last year, total number hit all-time record, Janell Ross, huffingtonpost.com, 13/9/11)
... to this...
"Israel's defence ministry said on Sunday that the United States has agreed to provide it with an additional $235 million to finance its rocket defence system... The additional funds come on top of the $3 billion dollars of annual military aid given by the US to Israel." (US 'to give Israel extra aid for rocket system', AFP, news.yahoo.com, 25/12/11)
... and, finally, this:
"Within the US, Obama has laid the groundwork for a new and bigger war in the Middle East by relocating troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and concentrating them facing Iran. To undermine Iran, Washington is expanding clandestine military and civilian operations against Iranian allies in Syria, Pakistan, Venezuela and China. The key to the US and Israeli bellicose strategy toward Iran is a series of wars in neighboring states, world-wide economic sanctions, cyber-attacks aimed at disabling vital industries and clandestine terrorist assassinations of scientists and military officials. The entire push, planning and execution of the US policies leading up to a war with Iran can be empirically attributed to the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) occupying strategic positions in government, mass media and 'civil society'. A systematic analysis of policymakers designing and implementing economic sanctions policy in Congress finds prominent roles for mega-Zionists like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Howard Berman; in the White House, Dennis Ross, and Jeffrey Feltman in State; Stuart Levy and his replacement David Cohen in Treasury. The White House is totally beholden to Zionist fund raisers and takes its cue from the '52' Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations. The Israeli-Zionist strategy is to encircle Iran, weaken it economically and attack its military. The Iraq invasion was the US's first war for Israel; the Libyan war the second; the current proxy war against Syria is the third. These wars have destroyed Israel's adversaries or are in the process of doing so. During 2011, economic sanctions, which were designed to create domestic discontent in Iran were the principle weapon of choice. The global sanctions campaign engaged the entire energies of the major Jewish-Zionist lobbies. They also faced no opposition in the mass media, Congress or the White House. The ZPC faced virtually no criticism from any of the progressive, leftist and socialist journals, movements or grouplets - with a few notable exceptions. The past year's relocation of troops from Iraq to the borders of Iran, the sanctions and the rising Big Push from Israel's fifth column in the US means War in the Middle East. This likely means a 'surprise' aerial and maritime missile attack by US forces. This will be based on a concocted pretext of an 'imminent nuclear attack' cooked up by Mossad and transmitted by the ZPC to the Congress and White House for consumption and transmission to the world. It will be a destructive, bloody, prolonged war for Israel. The US will bear the direct military cost by itself but the rest of the world will pay a dear economic price. The Zionist-promoted US war will convert the recession of early 2012 into a major depression by the end of the year and probably provoke mass upheavals." (A doomsday view of 2012, James Petras, petras.lehaine.org, 24/12/11)
Monday, August 1, 2011
Israeli Chutzpah, Over & Over Again
Nobody does it better:
"Israel is suing a group of poor Bedouin Palestinians in the Negev desert for over $500,000, the claimed costs of demolishing their village each time they rebuild it. Israeli authorities have destroyed, and the Bedouin have rebuilt, the homes in al-Araqib more than 20 times. In a statement issued by the Israeli government, the civil lawsuit was launched to 'reclaim' the 'heavy costs to the state' which includes heavy equipment and police security for each demolition. But the Bedouin remain defiant, promising to continue to rebuild their makeshift homes and refusing to pay the Israeli state for their own oppression.
"The Bedouins aren't the only ones being asked to pay for this kind of subjugation, as American taxpayers are slated to send Israel $3.075 billion in fiscal year 2012, an amount that has not been reduced despite budgetary cutbacks. President Obama and Congress are adhering to a deal made by former President George W. Bush and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to send $30 billion to Israel over the course of 10 years, starting in 2007. Despite a severe financial crisis and concerns about federal debt, aid to Israel passes with little dissent." (Israel subsidies untouched by US budget crisis, John Glaser, news.antiwar.com, 27/7/11)
IOW: Despite the United States shoveling shitloads of money to Israel - over and over again - so it can demolish Palestinian homes - over and over again - the Palestinians are still expected to pay for that signal honour.
"Israel is suing a group of poor Bedouin Palestinians in the Negev desert for over $500,000, the claimed costs of demolishing their village each time they rebuild it. Israeli authorities have destroyed, and the Bedouin have rebuilt, the homes in al-Araqib more than 20 times. In a statement issued by the Israeli government, the civil lawsuit was launched to 'reclaim' the 'heavy costs to the state' which includes heavy equipment and police security for each demolition. But the Bedouin remain defiant, promising to continue to rebuild their makeshift homes and refusing to pay the Israeli state for their own oppression.
"The Bedouins aren't the only ones being asked to pay for this kind of subjugation, as American taxpayers are slated to send Israel $3.075 billion in fiscal year 2012, an amount that has not been reduced despite budgetary cutbacks. President Obama and Congress are adhering to a deal made by former President George W. Bush and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to send $30 billion to Israel over the course of 10 years, starting in 2007. Despite a severe financial crisis and concerns about federal debt, aid to Israel passes with little dissent." (Israel subsidies untouched by US budget crisis, John Glaser, news.antiwar.com, 27/7/11)
IOW: Despite the United States shoveling shitloads of money to Israel - over and over again - so it can demolish Palestinian homes - over and over again - the Palestinians are still expected to pay for that signal honour.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Tunisia's Place in the US Empire
The hypocrisy! Notice how, when one of the US gang gets his backside well and truly whipped by those whose faces he's been grinding in the dust, the US acts as if it had no idea what had gotten into him. If only he'd behaved himself, he wouldn't be in that Saudi guesthouse today:
"The United States has warned its Middle Eastern allies to reform or be overthrown, as youths protesting against Tunisia's 50-year dictatorship clashed with police in the country's capital. The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, ended a tour of the Gulf with a warning that leaders who failed to carry out political and economic reform risked being cast aside." (Change or fall, Clinton warns Mid-East leaders, Richard Spencer, Telegraph/Sydney Morning Herald, 15/1/11)
The word ally, with its suggestion of independent, rational choice, masks a grubby reality of winks, nods, bribes, arm-twisting and other unsavoury backroom dealings. Allies, such as Ben Ali's Tunisia, are more correctly described as client states in a US imperial system, subordinate but vital cogs in the machinery of US global domination.
In his book Rulers & Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants (2007), James Petras refers to them specifically as Client Collaborator Regimes (CCR), and sums them up thus:
"At the bottom of the imperial hierarchy are the CCRs. These include Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf States, Cental American and Caribbean Island states, the Axis of Sub-Saharan States (ASSS), namely Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Ghana, Columbia, Peru, Paraguay, Mexico, Eastern European states (in and out of the EU), former states of the USSR (Georgia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Latvia etc), the Philippines, Indonesia, North African states and Pakistan. These countries are governed by authoritarian political elites dependent on the imperial or Newly Emerging Imperial Powers (NEIP) states for arms, financing and political support. They provide vast opportunities for exploitation and export of raw materials. Unlike the Semi Autonomous Client Regimes (SACR), exports from client regimes have little value added, as industrial processing of raw materials takes place in the imperial countries, particularly in the NEIP. Predator, rentier, comprador and kleptocratic elites, who lack any entrepreneurial vocation, rule in the CCR. They frequently provide mercenary soldiers to service imperial countries intervening, conquering, occupying and imposing client regimes in imperial-targeted countries. The client regimes are thus subordinate collaborators of the imperial powers in the plunder of wealth, the displacement of peasants, the exploitations of billions of workers and the destruction of the environment." (p 62)*
Specifically:
a) "The Tunisian Government is an important ally for the US in its resource-driven colonial wars with Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. A United Nations report on secret detention practices lists Tunisia as having secret detention facilities where prisoners are held without International Red Cross access. Intelligence services in Tunisia are coordinated with US efforts in the War on Terror and have participated in interrogating prisoners at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan and in Tunisia. Recent WikiLeaks diplomatic cables reveal that the US not long ago was concerned about the growing anger on the streets and the corruption of Ben Ali and the Trabelsi family (his wife's family) who treat everything in the country as theirs. A list of WikiLeaks cables from the US Embassy in Tunisia posted on The Guardian newspaper website indicate that the US considers Tunisia as a police state 'with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems', and the Ben Ali family as 'quasi mafia'. Nevertheless, the State Department boasts about the active support the Tunisian security forces receive from the US in spite of Ben Ali's government record of serious human rights violations. According to the State Department website: 'The US and Tunisia have an active schedule of joint military exercises. US security assistance historically has played an important role in cementing relations. The US-Tunisian Joint Military Commission meets annually to discuss military cooperation, Tunisia's defense modernization program, and other security matters'." (Tunisia: IMF 'Economic Medicine' has resulted in mass poverty & unemployment, Basel Saleh, globalresearch.ca, 31/12/10)
b) "[T]he Obama administration tried last year to give [Ben Ali] what would amount to a parting gift: $282 million worth of upgrades to Ben Ali's helicopter fleet. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency - which handles military hardware sales to US allies - informed Congress on June 30 [last] that it wanted to send 'equipment, parts, training and logistical support' to Tunisia for 12 SH-60F Sikorsky-made multimission helicopters. It's a twin-engine 'copter used - as the name suggests - for attacking targets as well as airlift. The navy uses them as the Seahawk. Tunisia's military supposedly was to use the SH-60s for 'over-water search and rescue capabilities'. It's unclear if the deal ever went through. The DSCA didn't return a request for clarification. But our pals at War Is Business report that since Ben Ali came to power in 1987, US military assistance to him has totaled $349 million - meaning the SH-60 sale represented a massive escalation in aid." (US had helo deal with ousted Tunisian dictator, Spencer Ackerman, wired.com, 14/1/11)
"The United States has warned its Middle Eastern allies to reform or be overthrown, as youths protesting against Tunisia's 50-year dictatorship clashed with police in the country's capital. The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, ended a tour of the Gulf with a warning that leaders who failed to carry out political and economic reform risked being cast aside." (Change or fall, Clinton warns Mid-East leaders, Richard Spencer, Telegraph/Sydney Morning Herald, 15/1/11)
The word ally, with its suggestion of independent, rational choice, masks a grubby reality of winks, nods, bribes, arm-twisting and other unsavoury backroom dealings. Allies, such as Ben Ali's Tunisia, are more correctly described as client states in a US imperial system, subordinate but vital cogs in the machinery of US global domination.
In his book Rulers & Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants (2007), James Petras refers to them specifically as Client Collaborator Regimes (CCR), and sums them up thus:
"At the bottom of the imperial hierarchy are the CCRs. These include Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf States, Cental American and Caribbean Island states, the Axis of Sub-Saharan States (ASSS), namely Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Ghana, Columbia, Peru, Paraguay, Mexico, Eastern European states (in and out of the EU), former states of the USSR (Georgia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Latvia etc), the Philippines, Indonesia, North African states and Pakistan. These countries are governed by authoritarian political elites dependent on the imperial or Newly Emerging Imperial Powers (NEIP) states for arms, financing and political support. They provide vast opportunities for exploitation and export of raw materials. Unlike the Semi Autonomous Client Regimes (SACR), exports from client regimes have little value added, as industrial processing of raw materials takes place in the imperial countries, particularly in the NEIP. Predator, rentier, comprador and kleptocratic elites, who lack any entrepreneurial vocation, rule in the CCR. They frequently provide mercenary soldiers to service imperial countries intervening, conquering, occupying and imposing client regimes in imperial-targeted countries. The client regimes are thus subordinate collaborators of the imperial powers in the plunder of wealth, the displacement of peasants, the exploitations of billions of workers and the destruction of the environment." (p 62)*
Specifically:
a) "The Tunisian Government is an important ally for the US in its resource-driven colonial wars with Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. A United Nations report on secret detention practices lists Tunisia as having secret detention facilities where prisoners are held without International Red Cross access. Intelligence services in Tunisia are coordinated with US efforts in the War on Terror and have participated in interrogating prisoners at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan and in Tunisia. Recent WikiLeaks diplomatic cables reveal that the US not long ago was concerned about the growing anger on the streets and the corruption of Ben Ali and the Trabelsi family (his wife's family) who treat everything in the country as theirs. A list of WikiLeaks cables from the US Embassy in Tunisia posted on The Guardian newspaper website indicate that the US considers Tunisia as a police state 'with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems', and the Ben Ali family as 'quasi mafia'. Nevertheless, the State Department boasts about the active support the Tunisian security forces receive from the US in spite of Ben Ali's government record of serious human rights violations. According to the State Department website: 'The US and Tunisia have an active schedule of joint military exercises. US security assistance historically has played an important role in cementing relations. The US-Tunisian Joint Military Commission meets annually to discuss military cooperation, Tunisia's defense modernization program, and other security matters'." (Tunisia: IMF 'Economic Medicine' has resulted in mass poverty & unemployment, Basel Saleh, globalresearch.ca, 31/12/10)
b) "[T]he Obama administration tried last year to give [Ben Ali] what would amount to a parting gift: $282 million worth of upgrades to Ben Ali's helicopter fleet. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency - which handles military hardware sales to US allies - informed Congress on June 30 [last] that it wanted to send 'equipment, parts, training and logistical support' to Tunisia for 12 SH-60F Sikorsky-made multimission helicopters. It's a twin-engine 'copter used - as the name suggests - for attacking targets as well as airlift. The navy uses them as the Seahawk. Tunisia's military supposedly was to use the SH-60s for 'over-water search and rescue capabilities'. It's unclear if the deal ever went through. The DSCA didn't return a request for clarification. But our pals at War Is Business report that since Ben Ali came to power in 1987, US military assistance to him has totaled $349 million - meaning the SH-60 sale represented a massive escalation in aid." (US had helo deal with ousted Tunisian dictator, Spencer Ackerman, wired.com, 14/1/11)
Friday, December 3, 2010
WikiLeaks 1
What Israel wants, Israel gets:
"In an August 17 meeting, Israeli Mossad Chief Meir Dagan thanked Under Secretary [of State Nick] Burns for America's support of Israel as evidence by the previous day's signing of an MOU that provides Israel with USD 30 billion in security assistance from 2008-2018..." (Cable from Tel Aviv, 31/8/07, in US embassy cables: Israel grateful for US support, guardian.co.uk, 28/11/10)
"The Under Secretary stressed that the USG is committed to Israel's QME [Qualitative Military Edge]..." (ibid)
"[Tom] Goldberger [Director for Israel& Palestinian Affairs, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs] noted that most requests to third countries to deny arms transfer overflights are based on Israeli military intelligence; additional information/intelligence from the GOI would ensure greater cooperation. [Alon] Bar [MFA Deputy Director General for Strategic Affairs] raised prosecuting shipping companies complicit in arms transfers to Gaza; Assistant Secretary [Bureau of Political Military Affairs Andrew] Shapiro said he would take that back to Washington for further consideration." (Cable, US Embassy, Tel Aviv, 18/11/09)
As for the rest...
"When American diplomats pressed other countries to resettle [Guantanamo Bay] detainees, they became reluctant players in a State Department version of 'Let's Make a Deal'. Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. The Americans, meanwhile, suggested that accepting more prisoners would be 'a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe'." (Leaked cables offer raw look at US diplomacy, Shane & Lehren, New York Times, 28/11/10)
"American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for CIA officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official 'that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the US'.' (ibid)
"In an August 17 meeting, Israeli Mossad Chief Meir Dagan thanked Under Secretary [of State Nick] Burns for America's support of Israel as evidence by the previous day's signing of an MOU that provides Israel with USD 30 billion in security assistance from 2008-2018..." (Cable from Tel Aviv, 31/8/07, in US embassy cables: Israel grateful for US support, guardian.co.uk, 28/11/10)
"The Under Secretary stressed that the USG is committed to Israel's QME [Qualitative Military Edge]..." (ibid)
"[Tom] Goldberger [Director for Israel& Palestinian Affairs, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs] noted that most requests to third countries to deny arms transfer overflights are based on Israeli military intelligence; additional information/intelligence from the GOI would ensure greater cooperation. [Alon] Bar [MFA Deputy Director General for Strategic Affairs] raised prosecuting shipping companies complicit in arms transfers to Gaza; Assistant Secretary [Bureau of Political Military Affairs Andrew] Shapiro said he would take that back to Washington for further consideration." (Cable, US Embassy, Tel Aviv, 18/11/09)
As for the rest...
"When American diplomats pressed other countries to resettle [Guantanamo Bay] detainees, they became reluctant players in a State Department version of 'Let's Make a Deal'. Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. The Americans, meanwhile, suggested that accepting more prisoners would be 'a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe'." (Leaked cables offer raw look at US diplomacy, Shane & Lehren, New York Times, 28/11/10)
"American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for CIA officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official 'that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the US'.' (ibid)
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Death, Taxes & US Aid to Israel
"The chairman of Westfield Group, Frank Lowy, has warned that all sport will have to contract in order to survive the upheaval caused by the credit squeeze. While attending sporting events was often seen as a distraction in times of economic stress, Mr Lowy, who is also the chairman of Football Federation Australia, said sport was not immune from the tightness of the current financial markets. 'I think the world has been living beyond its means, I think the world will have to contract, so will sport have to contract, it is as simple as that', he told ABCTV's Offsiders yesterday." (Sport will be forced to shrink, Sydney Morning Herald, 13/10/08)
The thing dearest to Frank's heart, though, the Zionist settler-colonial project (aka wiping Palestine off the map) will be immune to financial contraction: "US presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama has promised not to cut foreign aid to Israel if he is elected in November, a spokesman for Obama has said. In a statement to the Israeli business daily Globes, the spokesman said he would honour existing agreements pertaining to foreign aid and as such was committed to 'increasing aid to Israel to $30bn over 10 years'." (Obama won't cut aid to Israel, news24.com, 5/10/08)
As Mearsheimer & Walt remind us: "Israel now receives on average about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year... about 75% [of it] military aid... In per capita terms, this level of direct foreign assistance amounts to a direct subsidy of more than $500 per year for each Israeli. By comparison, the number two recipient of American aid, Egypt, receives only $20 per person, and impoverished countries such as Pakistan and Haiti receive roughly $5 per person and $27 per person, respectively... All this largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is not a poor or devastated country like Afghanistan, Niger, Burma, or Sierra Leone. On the contrary, Israel is now a modern industrial power." (The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy, pp 26 & 30)
And here's the big picture: "Conflicts in the Middle East [since WW II] have been very costly to the US, as well as to the rest of the world. An estimate of the total cost to the US alone of instability and conflict in the region - which emanates from the core, Israeli-Palestinian conflict a amounts to close to $3 trillion, measured in 2002 dollars. This is an amount 4 times greater than the cost of the Vietnam war... Even this figure underestimates the costs because certain classes of expenditure remain unquantified. In particular, no reliable figure is available for the cost of 'Project Independence', Washington's lavishly promoted effort to reduce US dependence on oil from the Middle East. That effort... was designed primarily to insulate Israel from any new 'Arab oil weapon' after 1973/74, and may easily have cost $1 trillion... Similarly, aid to Israel - and thus the regional total - is also understated, since much is outside of the foreign aid appropriation process or implicit in other programs. Support for Israel comes to $1.8 trillion, including special trade advantages, preferential contracts, or aid buried in other accounts. In addition to the financial outlay, US aid to Israel costs some 275,000 American jobs each year." (The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: $3 Trillion, Thomas R Stauffer, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 2003)
The thing dearest to Frank's heart, though, the Zionist settler-colonial project (aka wiping Palestine off the map) will be immune to financial contraction: "US presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama has promised not to cut foreign aid to Israel if he is elected in November, a spokesman for Obama has said. In a statement to the Israeli business daily Globes, the spokesman said he would honour existing agreements pertaining to foreign aid and as such was committed to 'increasing aid to Israel to $30bn over 10 years'." (Obama won't cut aid to Israel, news24.com, 5/10/08)
As Mearsheimer & Walt remind us: "Israel now receives on average about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year... about 75% [of it] military aid... In per capita terms, this level of direct foreign assistance amounts to a direct subsidy of more than $500 per year for each Israeli. By comparison, the number two recipient of American aid, Egypt, receives only $20 per person, and impoverished countries such as Pakistan and Haiti receive roughly $5 per person and $27 per person, respectively... All this largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is not a poor or devastated country like Afghanistan, Niger, Burma, or Sierra Leone. On the contrary, Israel is now a modern industrial power." (The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy, pp 26 & 30)
And here's the big picture: "Conflicts in the Middle East [since WW II] have been very costly to the US, as well as to the rest of the world. An estimate of the total cost to the US alone of instability and conflict in the region - which emanates from the core, Israeli-Palestinian conflict a amounts to close to $3 trillion, measured in 2002 dollars. This is an amount 4 times greater than the cost of the Vietnam war... Even this figure underestimates the costs because certain classes of expenditure remain unquantified. In particular, no reliable figure is available for the cost of 'Project Independence', Washington's lavishly promoted effort to reduce US dependence on oil from the Middle East. That effort... was designed primarily to insulate Israel from any new 'Arab oil weapon' after 1973/74, and may easily have cost $1 trillion... Similarly, aid to Israel - and thus the regional total - is also understated, since much is outside of the foreign aid appropriation process or implicit in other programs. Support for Israel comes to $1.8 trillion, including special trade advantages, preferential contracts, or aid buried in other accounts. In addition to the financial outlay, US aid to Israel costs some 275,000 American jobs each year." (The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: $3 Trillion, Thomas R Stauffer, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 2003)
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