On Wednesday, the US Senate will hold a vote on whether to approve the Pentagon’s request to send another $20bn in armaments to Israel, after a year in which the Biden administration has supplied billions of dollars of arms used in Israel’s devastating war on Gaza.
Among the weapons to be approved are 120mm tank rounds, high explosive mortar rounds, F-15IA fighter aircraft, and joint direct attack munitions, known as JDAMs, which are precision systems for otherwise indiscriminate or “dumb” bombs.
Separate resolutions are being brought forward for each weapon type, including its cost to US taxpayers. However, together, the initiative is known as the Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs).
As a result of intensive lobbying from pro-Israel groups like Aipac and the Democratic Majority For Israel, no arms transfer to Israel has been blocked.
The resolutions likely to gain the highest levels of support are expected to involve the tank rounds, which have been responsible for killing hundreds of civilians in northern Gaza in particular, and the JDAMs, which caused the death of well-known figures such as Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah in southern Lebanon, and six-year-old Hind Rajab in Gaza City.
I agree - too many people mistakenly believe the Dems can be reformed into an actual leftist party. This just isn’t going to happen. They’re corrupt to the core - a center-right fundraising organization eager to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and they would rather the country burn than do anything against the wishes of their wealthy donors.
Okay. Then you gotta convince every Democrat and then some to agree to leave the party AND join the same new one in order to beat the GOP in a FPTP system. Or your goal is to dilute the power of the corrupt Democrats instead of eliminating them.
Weeding a single corrupt party is easier than creating an entirely new party while simultaneously competing with two existing corrupt parties in a FPTP system.
Nah, I don’t see it playing out that way at all. A genuine populist revolution will easily be able to pull working class voters from all walks of life. In fact, I strongly believe that a true leftist movement in America would force the merger of the neocons and neolibs for their very survival.
For democrats, the problem is that the establishment leverages the DNC delegates to ensure no true populist ever sees the light of day. Plus the usual media smear jobs, etc. Regarding those elitist dems who are in charge and keep forcing these corrupt centrists down our throats, giving us only 5-10% of what’s promised each election at best…they can do whatever they want, which will likely be turning conservative to try for lowering their taxes. We don’t need them, and personally, I don’t want them either.
I just don’t think this is possible with a 3rd party candidate in our system. You’ll never pull GOP voters this way, which means you have to pull a shitload of Democratic voters all in the same direction.
I wholly agree with you the issues with the DNC, but there’s a solution: we show up in the primaries. The DNC is corrupt, but they aren’t flipping primary votes. We can absolutely elect different people to run the party with enough numbers. And if you can’t get enough people to do that with a genuine populist message, how are you ever going to start an entirely new party and convince people to show up?