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| ▲ | Gud 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Any other small country? You rarely read about Finland spying on other nations, or trying to influence their politics. There is the AIPAC, I challenge you to find anything similar from any other country. | | |
| ▲ | myth_drannon 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | From https://www.opensecrets.org/ Totals since 2016
Country Total Spending
China $562,676,323
Japan $504,111,211
Liberia $432,968,270
Saudi Arabia $421,890,448
Marshall Islands $382,012,024
South Korea $363,237,700
Bahamas $293,205,139
United Arab Emirates $269,529,107
Qatar $269,260,794
Israel $215,168,616 So for small countries UAE and Qatar(no surprise here, they just gifted 1 billion airplane to Trump) | | |
| ▲ | Matl 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | This excludes US based groups lobbying for Israeli interests, which does not count under official spending by Israel, so it is not an accurate representation of the lobbying effort in the interests of Israel. | | |
| ▲ | woodruffw 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That seems like the categorically correct thing to do, for the same reason that (for example) a domestic Korean-American nonprofit that lobbies for Korean interests doesn’t get counted as foreign money or influence. (Perhaps it should be! But it should be consistent, whatever it is.) | | |
| ▲ | Matl 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Perhaps it should be! But it should be consistent, whatever it is. Agreed. Any lobbying that centers on the interests of a foreign country should IMO count as foreign lobbying, I have no problem in including Korean-Americans, Kenyan-Americans etc. in that too. | | |
| ▲ | woodruffw 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Well, so here's the question: what counts as the interests of a foreign country? AIPAC's entire lobbying stance is that its positions are mutually beneficial to both the US and Israel, and this is the stance that every other national/ethnic affinity group in the US uses as well. Put another way: it seems very risky to allow the federal government to determine the propriety of political speech just because it happens to concern two (or more countries) at once. | | |
| ▲ | Spooky23 an hour ago | parent [-] | | The difference is the nature of the lobbying and the volume. Follow the rules. An egregious, non-controversial example of things going poorly is NYC Mayor Adams and Turkey. He basically accepted bribes and favors from the Turkish government and their proxies for specific actions. A “doing it right” example that wouldn’t have been controversial until recently is Denmark. They mostly focus on direct diplomatic policy lobbying, and leverage consultants to promote mostly tourism. Their affiliations are known and registered. Now they hire K-Street lobbyists to influence policy objectives re: Greenland, etc. The difference is that when the papers found out about Adams being a crook… that didn’t turn into accusations of racism and fomenting sectarian hatred. In the AIPAC example, there will be a both a legitimate visceral response from Americans and astroturf from lots of prominent people. | | |
| ▲ | woodruffw an hour ago | parent [-] | | > The difference is that when the papers found out about Adams being a crook… that didn’t turn into accusations of racism and fomenting sectarian hatred. In the AIPAC example, there will be a both a legitimate visceral response from Americans and astroturf from lots of prominent people. I think there's a much more parsimonious explanation for this: the average American doesn't know that much about Turkey, know very many Turkish people, etc. In contrast, the average American has been steeped in I/P and related proxy conflict news for their entire adult life. That, combined with the fact that the US has a large Jewish population means that there's a degree of salience to accusations around AIPAC that wouldn't exist if the equivalent Turkish-American political lobby entity[1] was caught bribing politicians. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Coalition_of_America |
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| ▲ | Spooky23 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | It’s very different. I was adjacent to state level politics for a long time. The German, Korean and French economic development organizations would come around every now and again with promotional events coordinated with their embassy to promote partnerships and business opportunities. Sometimes they had lobbyists focused on general relationship building, more often for specific issues. The Israeli ground game is different. American PACs affiliated with or specifically “not affiliated with, but always talking about” Israeli interests show up at every level of government - a good friend is a town board member of a big suburban town and they call on him, and he refuses the contributions so will likely get primaried. The real difference is information awareness. There is a CRM somewhere the ground guys have access to, and relationships are cultivated and used. My buddy is being targeted becuase there’s a good chance he’ll be in the state legislature someday. There’s a pipeline to get targeted American politicians to tour Israel for whatever reason. When critical attention is focused on this stuff, the reaction is fast and painful for the media outlet or political actor. The only thing close to this is China, who does similar stuff with a different playbook. They’ve been caught embedding agents of one sort or another in California and New York governments at a high level, as well as places like Florida or within government contractors with lower level people. Note that we’ve purged the FBI counterintelligence division, so the brazenness of the “bad” stuff will get worse - nobody is watching. | | |
| ▲ | woodruffw 40 minutes ago | parent [-] | | That doesn't sound very different to me. It sounds like a competent ground operation; nothing you've described even approaches impropriety of the kind FARA is intended to our political system against. (I also think this backfires spectacularly: there are now plenty of politicians running for office in the US on an explicitly "no AIPAC money received" line. That line clearly has pull with voters!) |
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| ▲ | _DeadFred_ an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is a reference to Americans. Americans choosing to freely donate to groups/causes they support and Americans being involved in American politics. |
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| ▲ | trimethylpurine 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | Lucasoato 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don’t know man, never heard about Finnish people decimating a population, starving kids, subverting countries, toppling governments... I’ve been in Finland last year and they’re so nice. | | |
| ▲ | yurish 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You mean in recent history? Because Finns were nazi allies during WWII and participated in Siege of Leningrad starving hundreds of thousands to death. They also organized network of concentration camps during the war. | |
| ▲ | hirvi74 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Maybe not to that level, but the Sámi people have faced their share of hardships. | |
| ▲ | trimethylpurine 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | Matl 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Must be nice to live in a country where your neighbors don't blame you for killing Jesus and want to exterminate you. Says a country that's been credibly accused of trying to exterminate its neighbors you mean? The absolute lack of self-reflection that is on display here is something else. | |
| ▲ | asibahi 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Not to get into an argument, but most of the population in the Middle East are Muslim who don't give two shits who killed Jesus because they don't believe he was killed to begin with. | | |
| ▲ | MSFT_Edging 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | You can point to the recent invasion of Lebanon and the image of an IDF soldier taking a sledge hammer to a statue of Jesus. Those might be the upset neighbors. Rightfully so as they were told to evacuate their homes so the homes could be leveled for a "buffer zone". If Israel wants to be taken seriously as a nation of "normal people", they need to do something about the extreme nationalism and hate in their ranks, and the racket of protecting settlers who attack Palestinians in their homes. |
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| ▲ | aaomidi 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Israel is committing a genocide. This is undisputed at good point. The way I’m reading your comment is justifying that the genocide is necessary for Israel’s survival. If that is where the pendulum is today, there’s no discussion to be had. | | |
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| ▲ | Gud 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | None of those groups funnel millions of dollars into American congress men and congress women’s pockets. You are being disingenuous. |
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