oh really now

[solarbird]

I got more links as I'm getting read for Norwescon omg:

Courtesy caladri: AIPAC, the primary right-wing Israel lobby in the US, has "persuaded more than three-quarters of the members of the US House of Representatives to sign a letter calling for an end to public criticism of Israel".

A New York court has struck down genetic patents:

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York joined with individual patients and medical organizations to challenge the patents last May: they argued that genes, products of nature, fall outside of the realm of things that can be patented. The patents, they argued, stifle research and innovation and limit testing options.

John Robb at Global Guerrillas expects it to be overturned due to endemic corruption, but is pleasantly surprised at the ruling.

The type of corruption involved, of course, is this kind of corporatism, with the Washington Post playing boosterism for a merger of private corporations and government domestic internal security functions. Mike McConnell, who splits his time between government appointments (as W. Bush's Director of National Intelligence) and private-industry lobbyist (working for NSA/CIA contractor Booz Allen) is carrying the message. Mr. McConnell wants private-company spying and intelligence spying to be "seamless" and comprehensive - and, of course, beyond accountability - in such a way that conveniently boosts the profit margins of the companies for which he works. Dwight Eisenhower saw it coming, even as he helped set it up to fight the Cold War, but, that never seems to help, much.

Comments

[avram]

America's been embarrassing Israel whenever it's politically expedient to do so [...] for years.

Oh, I know, shameful. For example, it must have been tremendously embarrassing to Israel to have engaged in secret terrorist attacks on American and British targets in Egypt in 1953. And when Israel suborned a US Naval intelligence analyst who sold the Israeli government classified American intelligence documents, well, it must have terribly embarrassed Israel when that became public. And the Israeli attack on the US ship during the Six Day War must have been awfully embarrassing as well. And the harassment and life-threatening abuse of US Marines on peace-keeping duty by Israeli soldiers in Lebanon in 1983 must have embarrassed Israel too.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Actually, except for Pollard, I doubt it did, and that only because the handler who took that on his own initiative did it clumsily. Chutzpah has been the favorite virtue of secret services around the world for millennia, and Jewish ones even more so.

Which means I'll drop this discussion here, because you've successfully persuaded me that however the U.S. behaves, Israel's not likely to care very much. So I don't have to care either.