On Wednesday, Sanders introduced six resolutions blocking six sales of different weapons contained within the $20 billion weapons deal announced by the Biden administration in August. The sales include many of the types of weapons that Israel has used in its relentless campaign of extermination in Gaza over the past year.
“Sending more weapons is not only immoral, it is also illegal. The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Arms Export Control Act lay out clear requirements for the use of American weaponry – Israel has egregiously violated those rules,” said Sanders. “There is a mountain of documentary evidence demonstrating that these weapons are being used in violation of U.S. and international law.”
This will be the first time in history that Congress has ever voted on legislation to block a weapons sale to Israel, as the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project pointed out. This is despite the U.S. having sent Israel over $250 billion in military assistance in recent decades, according to analyst Stephen Semler, as Israel has carried out ethnic cleansings and massacres across Palestine and in Lebanon.
The resolutions are not likely to pass; even if they did pass the heavily pro-Israel Congress, they would likely be vetoed by President Joe Biden, who has been insistent on sending weapons to Israel with no strings attached.
However, Sanders’s move is in line with public opinion. Polls have consistently found that the majority of the public supports an end to Israel’s genocide; a poll by the Institute for Global Affairs released this week found, for instance, that a majority of Americans think the U.S. should stop supporting Israel or make support contingent on Israeli officials’ agreement to a ceasefire deal. This includes nearly 80 percent of Democrats.
Worked out really great in 2016, didn’t it? Absolutely brainless take with no basis in reality.
It kind of did!
In 2017, people got mad and started taking action and taking to the streets before complacency set in. This unrest kept ramping up and took another big jump in 2020. What took the wind out of the sails of people taking action and demanding change was Biden getting elected, allowing most people to fall into complacency while Biden did nothing to fix our problems and instead got us involved in multiple overseas conflicts.
With Trump in office, the people resist. That’s what happened last time, and the people rising up and finding unity through resistance seems to me the only way to overturn America’s broken and indefensible systems. The question is who will be resisting/overthrowing, and what will they institute in their place?
If Harris wins and the Trumpers are overthrowing, the options for outcomes of the ensuing war are the mildly fascist status quo, or the super-fascist usurpers. I don’t have high hopes that many people will stand up to fight in this case.
If Trump wins then those who love democracy and liberty and equality will be the ones who rise up and resist, fighting for the best of these options.
As I said in my first post, this is the only reason that I consider Trump. I have a whole handful of reasons to consider Harris.
I kinda remember this pandemic response team we used to have… Good thing we didn’t and currently still don’t have an ongoing pandemic killing people worldwide!
People resisted and got a corrupt Supreme Court, dismantled consumer, environmental, worker, and abortion protections, an attempted coup, and somehow we all treat Covid like it wasn’t fucking Trump’s fault.
Shut the actual fuck up, you accelerationist piece of shit. Congratulations on your willingness to sacrifice people who didn’t agree to be sacrificed, I’d rather keep more people alive, Anerica and the world got pretty fucked by Trump.
I’m not an accelerationist. I’m a realist.
America is already dead.
A civil war is coming.
2025 will be another 2020 no matter what happens in November.
I don’t want the dead weight of a dead government on the side of democracy. I want the side of democracy to be free to invent something new. I don’t want a broken down old democracy fighting against a modern authoritarian. I want the authoritarians to be saddled with the complacency and inertia of the state. I don’t want the authoritarians to be free to invent something newer and more powerful that can bring our doddering democracy to its knees. Our government is old and has been stripped by Reagan/Bush/Trump. It is a liability to be running it.
People are about to die. A lot of them. I want democracy to have its best chance of coming out on top. That means that the people have to want it.
