Comment by Gud
2 days ago
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.
2 days ago
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.
If the I in AIPAC stood for Italian they would call it a Mafia organisation.
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)
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.
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.)
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This is a reference to Americans. Americans choosing to freely donate to groups/causes they support and Americans being involved in American politics.
These numbers are wrong. There is no possible way Liberia has spent 10% of its GDP on lobbying the US for the past 10 years. They just signed (May 2026) a lobbying contract for $1.2 million with a lobbying company in the US, which seems vastly more in proportion https://liberianinvestigator.com/liberia-ballard-partners-lo...
OpenSecrets laid off 30% of its staff due to financial problems [0] and I'm absolutely sure that site is AI generated. No idea what numbers are displayed there but no country can afford 10% of GDP for 10 years for influence in Washington.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSecrets
Those numbers in no way indicate that Liberia spent 10% of its gdp lobbying the US. It looks like approximately 0.8%, which is still fantastically high
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Liberia does not have that much money. Same goes for Marshall Islands. The Marshall Islands has a GDP of $342 million. What the heck is going on here?
It works out to about 0.8% of Liberia's GDP. The Marshall Islands number works out to about 15% of the estimated value of the amount of financial assistance the US gives them.
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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.
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.
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Maybe not to that level, but the Sámi people have faced their share of hardships.
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None of those groups funnel millions of dollars into American congress men and congress women’s pockets.
You are being disingenuous.
Nearly half a billion dollars in annual lobbying is attributable to oil money. It's okay for OPEC's foreign interests in your book, but you're focused on the tiny impact that Israel has.
Saudi money good, Israeli money bad? What's up with that?