Chris wrote:
Interesting exposure of the emasculation of a Jewish academic for reporting the "wrong" history. Is there any real difference between this shameful episode and the comtemporaneous efforts to mock/deny Jimmy Carter and the imprisonment of Ernst Zundel. all telling the truth as they believe it but falling foul of Zionist "reality".
The interesting comparison for those who deny virtue to Ernst Zundel is that Dr Toaff has renounced his work, Jimmy Carter makes absurd denials of apartheid in Israel but Zundel sticks to his beliefs.
Chris
The Bloody Passovers of Dr Toaff
By Israel Shamir
Blood, betrayal, torture, and surrender are intervowen in the story of an Italian Jew, Dr Ariel Toaff, as if penned by his compatriot Umberto Eco. Dr Toaff stumbled onto a frightful discovery, was horrified but bravely went on, until he was subjected to the full pressure of his community; he repented, a broken man.
Dr Toaff is the son of the Rabbi of Rome and a professor in the Jewish University of Bar Ilan, not far from Tel Aviv. He made a name for himself by his deep study of medieval Jewry. His three-volumed Love, Work, and Death (subtitled Jewish Life in Medieval Umbria) is an encyclopaedia of this admittedly narrow area. While studying his subject he discovered that the medieval Ashkenazi Jewish communities of North Italy practiced a particularly horrible form of human sacrifice. Their wizards and adepts stole and crucified Christian babies, obtained their blood and used it for magical rituals evoking the Spirit of Vengeance against the hated Goyim.
In particular, he dwelt on the case of St Simon of Trent. This two-year old child from the Italian town of Trent was kidnapped by a few Ashkenazi Jews from his home on the eve of Passover 1475 AD. At night, the kidnappers murdered the child; drew his blood, pierced his flesh with needles, crucified him head down calling “So may all Christians by land and sea perish”, and thus they celebrated their Passover, an archaic ritual of outpouring blood and killed babies, in the most literal form, without usual metaphoric “blood-wine” shift.
The killers were apprehended, confessed and were found guilty by the Bishop of Trent. Immediately, the Jews took their protest to the Pope and he had sent the bishop of Ventimiglia to investigate. He allegedly accepted a hefty bribe from the Jews and concluded that the child was murdered by a Hamas mine in order to besmirch Israel, as there was no Tsahal ordnance found on the beach of Trent. “Simon had been killed by Christians with the intention of ruining the Jews”, said the pre-war Jewish Encyclopedia, in a clear case of premonition: the same argument was used by Jews in 2006 while explaining away the mass murder of children in Kafr Qana.
However, in 15th century the Jews were influential, yes, but all-powerful, no. They could not deal with the world like they did in 2002 after their massacre of Jenin by ordering everybody to buzz off. They had no American veto in the Security Council. They could not bomb Rome, and the word “antisemitism” was invented 400 years later. They were given a fair deal which is much worse than preferred treatment: Pope Sixtus IV assembled a commission of six cardinals chaired by the best legal mind of that time, for retrial; and this Supreme Court found the murderers guilty. See more for a Catholic version and a Jewish version of the events. The records of the trial have survived centuries and are still available in Vatican.
In 1965, the Roman Catholic Church entered a perestroika[i]. These were the halcyon days of the Vatican II when the modernizers uprooted the foundations of tradition hoping to update the faith and to fit it into the new Jewish-friendly narrative of modernity; in plain prose, the bishops wanted to be loved by the liberal press.
The ever-watchful Jews used the opportunity and pushed the bishops to decommission St Simon of Trent. They were happy to oblige: already in bizarre ritual, the Church leaders had found the Jews free from guilt for Crucifixion of Christ while admitting the Church’s guilt for persecution of Jews; the crucifixion of an Italian baby was a small matter compared with this reversal. In a hasty decision, the bishops ruled that the confessions of the killers were unacceptable because obtained under torture, and thus the accused were innocent, while the young martyr was anything but. His cult was discontinued and forbidden, and the remains of the martyred child were removed and dumped in a secret place to avoid resumption of pilgrimage.
And now we come back to Dr Ariel Toaff. While going through the papers of the trial, he made a staggering discovery: instead of being dictated by the zealous investigators under torture, the confessions of the killers contained material totally unknown to the Italian churchmen or police. The killers belonged to the small and withdrawn Ashkenazi community, they practiced their own rites, quite different from those used by the native Italian Jews; these rites were faithfully reproduced in their confessions, though they were not known to the Crime Squad of the day. “These liturgical formulas in Hebrew with a strong anti-Christian tone cannot be projections of the judges who could not know these prayers, which didn't even belong to Italian rites but to the Ashkenazi tradition," Toaff wrote. A confession is of value only if it contains some true and verifiable details of the crime the police did not know of. This iron rule of criminal investigation was observed in Trent trials.
This discovery has the potential to shake, shock and reshape the Church. The noble learned rabbi Dr Toaff brought back St Simon, the double victim of 15th century vengeance and of 20th century perestroika. This called for repentance of the Vatican doctors who forgot the murdered child while looking for friendship with important American Jews, but they still do not admit their grave error. Monsignor Iginio Rogger, a church historian who in the 1960s [mis]led the investigation into St Simon's case, said that the confessions were completely unreliable for “the judges used horrible tortures”. This was an antizionist and hence antisemitic remark, for rejection of confessions obtained under torture would let all the Palestinian prisoners out of Jewish jails; this was an anti-American remark, for the US recognizes the value of torture and practices it in Guantanamo and elsewhere. This was a holocaust-denier remark for thus they invalidate the Nürnberg trials. The renown Jewish American lawyer and adept of torture Alan Dershowitz could have argued against Rogger; but somehow he did not.
"I wouldn't want to be in Toaff's shoes, answering for this to historians who have seriously documented this case," said Rogger to USA Today. Toaff’s shoes are vastly preferable to those of Rogger who will have to answer for slighting the saint in Heaven.
Moreover, this Trento crime was not an exception: Toaff discovered many cases of such bloody sacrifices connected with the mutilation of children, outpouring of blood and its baking in Matzo (unleavened bread) spanning five hundred years of European history. Blood, this magic drink, was a popular medicine of the time, and of any time: Herod tried to keep young bathing in blood of babies, alchemists used blood to turn lead into gold. Jewish wizards meddled in magic and used it as much as anybody. There was a thriving market in such delicacies as blood, powder made of blood and bloody matzo. Jewish vendors sold it accompanied with rabbinic letters of authorization; the highest value was blood of a goy katan, a gentile child, much more usual was blood of circumcision. Such blood sacrifices were "instinctive, visceral, virulent actions and reactions, in which innocent and unknowing children became victims of the love of God and of vengeance," Toaff wrote in the book's preface. "Their blood bathed the altars of a God who, it was believed, needed to be guided, sometimes impatiently pushed to protect and to punish."
This somewhat cryptic remark can be understood by reading Israeli professor Israel Yuval’s book Two Nations in Thy Womb. Yuval explained that blood libations were necessary (in the eyes of Jewish magicians) to bring forth Divine Vengeance upon the Goyim. He also quotes an irrefutable (i.e. not denied by Jews) instance of blood sacrifice by a Jew. ( Read about it in my article Bloodcurdling Libel.) Toaff improved upon Yuval by stressing the ordinary magic use of blood by Jews in the Middle Ages, and by allowing for the anti-Christian element: crucifixion of victims and the cursing of Christ and Virgin. Here his book is supported by (admittedly, more timid) Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence by Elliott Horowitz. Horowitz tells his reader of strange rituals: flagellation of the Virgin, destruction of crucifixes and the beating up and killing Christians.
Now it is behind us. We can look at the past and say: yes, some Jewish wizards and mystics practiced human sacrifices. They murdered children, mutilated their bodies and used their blood in order to outpour Divine Wrath on their non-Jewish neighbours. They mocked Christian rites by using Christian blood instead of blood of Christ. The Church and the people all over Europe were right. The Europeans (and the Arabs, and the Russians) weren’t crazy bigots, they understood what they saw. They punished the culprits but they left the innocent in peace. We, humans, can look at this dreadful page of history with pride, and shed a tear or two for the poor children destroyed by these wrath-seeking monsters. Jews may be more modest and cease carrying their historical wounds on the sleeve: their forefathers thrived despite these terrible doings by some of their coreligionists, while in the Jewish state, sins of some Palestinians are visited upon all of them. We can also dismiss with shudder the whining of Israel’s friends when they want us not to see the Jenin Massacre or Qana Massacre for – yes, exactly, this is like the “blood libel”, i.e. not a libel at all.
Let us hope that the great daring act of Professor Toaff will become a turning point in the life of the Church. The swing caused by perestroika of Vatican II went too far. Remember that the Russian perestroika ended with the collapse of the whole structure. While anti-papists feared an anti-Christ on the See of St Peter, there is the real danger of a Gorbachev.
In an Italian town of Orvieto on the Adriatic shore, the Jews demanded the removal of an exhibition of great artistic value and the cessation of the procession commemorating the miracle of Trani. There, a millennium ago, a consecrated host was stolen from the church by a Jewess, the thief decided to fry the body of Christ in oil, but miraculously the host turned into flesh and started bleeding profusely so that the holy blood poured all over the house. Indeed such cases of host desecration are well attended all over Europe; they were well described by Yuval, Horowitz and Toaff; they indeed occurred, and only infamous Jewish chutzpah pushed The Roman Association of Friends of Israel into writing a letter to the Pope demanding an end to a one-thousand-year-old observance. And they got it. The Church bent over, the panels were dismantled, the procession cancelled and profound apologies to Jews were issued, to the vast satisfaction of Israeli ambassadors Gideon Meir (to Rome) and Oded Ben Hur (to the Vatican) who dictated the capitulation.
“Strange world indeed ours. – wrote Domenico Savino in the excellent web-magazine Effedieffe. - The offense is brought to the Christian Faith and forgiveness is asked of those who had perpetrated it.” Savino muses whether it was impossible just to politely ignore the demand of Friends of Israel, and he quotes at length the words of Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican representative at this capitulation. Kasper is doing full Monty: he denies that the Church is the True and Only Chosen Israel, asserts the equal position of the Jews as “elder brothers”, denies the necessity of Christ, asks forgiveness of the Jews while promising “a new spring for the Church and the world”.
“Spring for the Church?! - exclaims Savino. - Ah, but we have heard it already! The Pope said after Vatican II “We waited for the spring and the storm has come ». That spring has been enough for us and after this reconciliation in Orvieto I do not want more to hear the word ‘spring’ and see the wide smirk of satisfaction of “elder brothers” Gideon Meir and Oded Ben Hur!”
The perestroika came not only in Italy, and not only within the Catholic Church. In Germany a new sacrilege is being prepared: a “politically correct Bible” with the story of Passion being changed so as not to cause discomfort to Jews. The title is misleading: they may not call their bastard product “new German translation of the Bible free of gender bias and anti-Semitism”, like one can’t call one’s waste water, “wine free of intoxicants”. Changing one letter in the Bible is equivalent to ruining the world, says the Talmud, and adduces an example of a Torah scroll where one word is changed, from “meod” (very) to “mavet” (death). Such a death-celebrating Torah would surely cause our world to perish. “Antisemitism-free” scripture probably will center on Jewish suffering while the Church will play the role of the villain of the piece. It will extol Judas and reject Christ. Likewise, removing “gender bias” will also remove the Annunciation, this great divide between sterile monocausality of the Jews and the Christian meeting of Heaven and Earth. Indeed the Christian model was so much more successful that even Jews adopted it in their Cabbala, and apparently decided to dump the redundant old monocausality to the Germans.
In England, an old liberal weekly, the Observer, changed its feathers and became the neocon nest supporting the war and Bush-Blair alliance. In perfect logical sequitur the paper also renounced Christ and preferred Jews, as in this review of a new English book. Adam Mars-Jones prefers Oscar Schindler to General Adam von Trott who was executed for his part in Generals’ Plot in 1944: “That's what made Schindler's List such a startling film: it followed Jewish ethics by showing the hero's outer journey, for once, rather than an inner one. The guy was tainted - so what? That's his business, as long as he saved Jews. His mitzvahs earned him his place among the Righteous Gentiles, and in the absence of an afterlife (not really a feature of Jewish belief) that's all that can be said. Let's have more of that tone, and less of a cult of martyrdom. Veneration for sacrifice, for purely symbolic victory, can distort the most well-meaning enterprise, and risks insulting the dead, who had no options.”
The Observer reviewer made clear his choice for Judas or Caiaphas (“though tainted, he wanted to save Jews”) and against Jesus Christ who was the Sacrifice. His call for “less of a cult of martyrdom, less veneration for sacrifice, for purely symbolic victory” would make Golgotha the final last word, with no Resurrection in sight. Who needs Christian virtues? Man’s faults and vices are “his business, as long as he saved Jews”, and the best a goy may hope for is a “place among the Righteous Gentiles”. From this point of view, St Simon and other children did not die in vain; they helped the Jews call for God’s Vengeance, and that is the best they could possibly wish. Likewise, British soldiers could not hope for a better fate than to die for Israel on the streets of Basra, or Teheran, or elsewhere.
Thus, in Rome, Berlin or London, the Jews won a round or two in their competition with the Church. By stubbornly hanging on and never regretting, never apologizing, always working against Christianity, they succeeded in replacing in many simple minds the image of the Via Dolorosa, Golgotha and the Resurrection with their gross misrepresentation of human history as of a long line of innocent Jewish suffering, blood libels, holocausts and the Zionist redemption in the Holy Land. Though people reasonably rejected the idea of Jewish guilt in death of Christ, they installed instead an even more absurd idea of Church’s guilt in death of Jews.
The consequences are not purely theological. Britain, Italy and Germany acquiesce in Jewish strangulation of Christian Palestine, in the blockade of Gaza, in the robbery of Church lands in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. They support American Drang Nach Osten. Worse: they lose their connection to God, their empathy to fellow human beings dries up, as if the blind spirit of vengeance conjured up by innocent blood caught up with them.
The publication of Dr Toaff’s book could become a not-a-minute-too-early turning point in the Western history, from apology of Judas to adoration of Christ. Yes, his narrative of murdered children makes just a small crack in the huge edifice of Jewish exceptionalism built in Europeans’ mind. But great edifices can fall in a moment, as we learned on 9/11.
Apparently, the Jews felt it and they attacked Toaff like maddened swarm. A renown Jewish historian, rabbi and a son of a rabbi, wrote about 500-year old events – why should they bestir themselves? In the Middle ages, use of blood, necromancy, black magic were not an exclusively Jewish realm. Witches and wizards of gentile background did it too. So just join the human race, warts and all! But this is too demeaning to the arrogant Chosenites.
“It is incredible that anyone, much less an Israeli historian, would give legitimacy to the baseless blood libel accusation that has been the source of much suffering and attacks against Jews historically," said ADL National Director Abe Foxman. The Anti-Defamation League called the book “baseless and playing into the hands of anti-Semites everywhere.”
Not much of an historian, not much of a rabbi, Foxman has a priori knowledge, based on faith and conviction, that it is “baseless”. But then, he said the same about the Jenin Massacre.
In a press release, Bar-Ilan University “is expressing great anger and extreme displeasure at Toaff, for his lack of sensitivity in publishing his book about blood libels in Italy. His choice of a private publishing firm in Italy, the book's provocative title and the interpretations given by the media to its contents have offended the sensitivities of Jews around the world and harmed the delicate fabric of relations between Jews and Christians. Bar-Ilan University strongly condemns and repudiates what is seemingly implied by Toaff's book and by reports in the media concerning its contents, as if there is a basis for the blood libels that led to the murder of millions of innocent Jews.”
These are firing words. Toaff came under strong community pressure: he was about to find himself at 65, on the street, probably without pension, without old friends and students, ostracized and excommunicated. Probably his life was threatened as well: Jews employ professional secret killers to deal with such nuisances. In the old days, they were called rodef, now they are called kidon, still as efficient as of old, and they were intercepted less often than bloodthirsty maniacs. His reputation would be annihilated: a Sue Blackwell would “consult her Jewish friends” and call him a Nazi, an ADL-sponsored Searchlight would discover, invade or invent his private life, many small Jews in the Web would denigrate him in their blogs and in their flagship, the Wikipedia. Who would befriend him? Probably not a single Jew, and not many Christians.
In the beginning of the attack, he tried to brave it: “I will not give up my devotion to the truth and academic freedom even if the world crucifies me.” Toaff told Haaretz earlier this week that he stood by the contention of his book, that there is a factual basis for some of the medieval blood accusations against the Jews.
But Toaff was not made of stern stuff. Like Winston Smith, the main character of Orwell’s 1984, he broke down in a mental cellar of Jewish inquisition. He published a full apology, stopped distribution of his book, promised to submit it to Jewish censorship, and “also promised to donate all the funds forthcoming from the sale of his book to the Anti-Defamation League” of good Abe Foxman.
His last words were as touching as those of Galileo recanting his heresy: "I will never allow any Jew-hater to use me or my research as an instrument for fanning the flames, once again, of the hatred that led to the murder of millions of Jews. I extend my sincerest apologies to all those who were offended by the articles and twisted facts that were attributed to me and to my book."
Thus Ariel Toaff surrendered to the community pressure. Not that it matters what he says now. We do not know what mental tortures were prepared for him in the Jewish Gestapo of ADL, how he was forced to recant. What he gave us is enough. But what has he given us? In a way, his contribution is similar to that of Benny Morris and other Israeli New Historians: they repeated the data we knew from Palestinian sources, from Abu Lughud and Edward Said. But Palestinian sources were not trusted - only Jewish sources are considered trustworthy in our Jewish-centered universe. Thus Morris et al helped millions to free themselves from the enforced Zionist narrative. This would not be necessary if we were able to believe a goy vs. Jew: an Arab about the Expulsion of 1948, an Italian about St Simon, maybe even a German about war deportations. Now Ariel Toaff has freed many captive minds by repeating what we knew from a variety of Italian, English, German, Russian sources. If “blood libel” turned out to be not a libel but a regular criminal case, maybe other Jewish claims will go down, too? Maybe the Russians were not guilty of pogroms? Maybe Ahmadinejad is not a new Hitler bent on destruction? Maybe Muslims are not evil Jew-haters?
Ariel Toaff gave us also a window to view processes inside Jewry, in order to learn how this incredible discipline of Swarm is maintained, how dissidents are punished, how uniformity of mind is achieved. Jewry is indeed exceptional from this point of view: a Christian (or Muslim) scientist who would find a blemish in the long history of the Church will not hide it, he is not likely to be terrorized into obedience; he will not be ostracized if he embraces the most vile view; even if excommunicated, the scientist or the writer will find enough support, as Salman Rushdee, Voltaire and Tolstoy discovered. Nor Church neither Ummah command this sort of blind discipline, and nor Pope neither Imam wields the power of Mr Abe Foxman over his coreligionists. And Foxman does not care for truth, but goes for what is (in his view) good for the Jews. No amount of witnesses, not even a live broadcast of Jewish blood sacrifice would force him to accept unpleasant truth: he will find a reason why. We saw it in the case of Qana bombardment, when Israeli planes destroyed a building and killed some fifty children, surely more than the wizards of Umbria did. Thus do not expect Toaff’s book will convince Jews – nothing can.
Do not envy this unity of Jewish hearts and minds; this unity’s obverse side is that No Jew Is Free. A man is forced to become a Jew by his parents; he has no freedom of mind on any stage; he has to follow the orders. My Jewish reader, if you’ll understand that you are a slave, not in vain you’ve read that far. Until you are able to answer the rhetoric question “Aren’t you a Jew?” with simple “No”, you’ll remain a prisoner on parole, a captive on the string. Sooner or later they will pull the string. Sooner or later you’ll have to lie, to search for weasel words, to deny what you know is right and true. Freedom is at your gate; stretch your arm and take it. Like the Kingdom of Heaven, freedom is yours for asking. Freedom is Christ, for a man chooses Christ with his heart, not with his foreskin. You are free when you accept Christ and are able to reply as the Gospel says (Matth 5:37) “Let your 'Yes' mean 'Yes, I am a Christian' and your 'No' mean 'No, I am not a Jew.' Luckily, it is possible. Toaff could have had it; what a pity his courage failed him!
His fate reminds me that of Uriel (almost the same name!) Acosta. A noble forerunner of Spinoza, Acosta (born c. 1585, Oporto, Portugal - died April 1640, Amsterdam) attacked Rabbinic Judaism and was excommunicated. “A sensitive soul, Acosta found it impossible to bear the isolation of excommunication, and he recanted, writes Encyclopedia Britannica. Excommunicated again after he was accused of dissuading Christians from converting to Judaism, he made a public recantation after enduring years of ostracism. This humiliation shattered his self-esteem, and he shot himself.” Acosta’s error was that he went far, but not far enough.
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[i] Uncannily, this church process practically coincided with the first Perestroika (Debunking of Stalin) initiated by Khrushchev on the XXII Party Congress in 1961, when the Communist Party repented sins and crimes of its great old leaders. One generation, thirty years later the Party collapsed, its membership was decimated by the second Perestroika. Penitence is good for soul, but then, soul is immortal.
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Saturday, May 05, 2007
David Ray Griffin: No Airphones on Flight 77
No Airfones on Flight 77 - DRG on Jack Blood
Jack Blood Radio Show
Apr. 24, 2007
Interview with Prof. David Ray Griffin
Excerpt
Discussion of Prof. David Ray Griffin’s latest book on 9/11:
Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory
-------------------------------------------------------
Griffin: Let me tell you a new thing that most people don’t know. This was dug up by Rowland Morgan and Ian Henshall who wrote wrote the book, “9/11 Revealed.” ... it has to do with the alleged phone calls from Barbara Olson. Now you know and many of your listeners know that Ted Olson, her husband, who claims he got the call from her from………
Blood: They say he is going to be the new AG (Attorney General). I just had to thump that in. That’s the rumor going around [crosstalk]
Griffin: Yeah, more than likely. But he claims that he got this call from Barbara, his wife, from Flight 77 but he was unclear. First he would say it was from cell phone and then he would say, well no it was from one of the seat back phones. And he’s gone back and forth. So, it turns out now we know that cell phone calls were not possible. So, that makes everybody say, well sure maybe she did it on airfones. It turns out that particular Boeing, American Boeing 757 that Flight 77 was, was not equipped with airfones. This was a stunning development.
Blood: This was a stunning development. How come I haven’t heard that before, David?
Griffin: Because Roland’s book hasn’t got much attention. It’s a shame because it’s such a great book.
Blood: So it only could have been done by cell phone. They had no in flight phones on 77. Is that what you are saying?
Griffin: That’s right. And they checked and they double-checked and I quote all of their correspondence with American on that issue.
Blood: Did we have people on the record, David, saying that people used in-flight phones on that flight where there were no in-flight phones? Do we have them on the record trying to manipulate previous information to that level?
Griffin: Well, it was the call from Barbara Olson that some people have claimed was on the in-flight. I don’t know about other callers.
airfones | David Ray Griffin | Flight 77 | Jack Blood
(Edited for clarity.)
Jack Blood.com
You can D/L the April 24 Jack Blood show at http://nw0.info - follow the "radio" link. File is .ogg which is the http://www.videolan.org format - (VLC player).
This excerpt starts at the 54:27 mark.
Transcript by "ratcat" at LibertyForum.org;
Jack Blood Radio Show
Apr. 24, 2007
Interview with Prof. David Ray Griffin
Excerpt
Discussion of Prof. David Ray Griffin’s latest book on 9/11:
Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory
-------------------------------------------------------
Griffin: Let me tell you a new thing that most people don’t know. This was dug up by Rowland Morgan and Ian Henshall who wrote wrote the book, “9/11 Revealed.” ... it has to do with the alleged phone calls from Barbara Olson. Now you know and many of your listeners know that Ted Olson, her husband, who claims he got the call from her from………
Blood: They say he is going to be the new AG (Attorney General). I just had to thump that in. That’s the rumor going around [crosstalk]
Griffin: Yeah, more than likely. But he claims that he got this call from Barbara, his wife, from Flight 77 but he was unclear. First he would say it was from cell phone and then he would say, well no it was from one of the seat back phones. And he’s gone back and forth. So, it turns out now we know that cell phone calls were not possible. So, that makes everybody say, well sure maybe she did it on airfones. It turns out that particular Boeing, American Boeing 757 that Flight 77 was, was not equipped with airfones. This was a stunning development.
Blood: This was a stunning development. How come I haven’t heard that before, David?
Griffin: Because Roland’s book hasn’t got much attention. It’s a shame because it’s such a great book.
Blood: So it only could have been done by cell phone. They had no in flight phones on 77. Is that what you are saying?
Griffin: That’s right. And they checked and they double-checked and I quote all of their correspondence with American on that issue.
Blood: Did we have people on the record, David, saying that people used in-flight phones on that flight where there were no in-flight phones? Do we have them on the record trying to manipulate previous information to that level?
Griffin: Well, it was the call from Barbara Olson that some people have claimed was on the in-flight. I don’t know about other callers.
airfones | David Ray Griffin | Flight 77 | Jack Blood
(Edited for clarity.)
Jack Blood.com
You can D/L the April 24 Jack Blood show at http://nw0.info - follow the "radio" link. File is .ogg which is the http://www.videolan.org format - (VLC player).
This excerpt starts at the 54:27 mark.
Transcript by "ratcat" at LibertyForum.org;
Friday, May 04, 2007
John Walsh: Why is the Peace Movement Silent About AIPAC
Subject: CounterPunch: John Walsh -- "Why is the Peace Movement Silent About AIPAC?"
Bob wrote:
Right on, Mr. Walsh!!! Jeff Blankfort, this will really resonate with you. I signed the petition before sending this...Bob
Is there really some movement by the Democrats on AIPAC?
http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh04172007.html
April 17, 2007
www.counterpuch.org
Capuano and Kucinich Come Clean About the Lobby
Why is the Peace Movement Silent About AIPAC?
By JOHN WALSH
"AIPAC!" was the forceful one-word answer of Congressman Michael Capuano when we asked him, "Why was the Iran clause forbidding war on Iran without Congressional approval taken out of the recent supplemental for the Iraq war funding?" I nearly fell out of my chair at his reply - not because this was news but because of who had just said it. Capuano is a close ally of Nancy Pelosi, her fixer and enforcer. That was last Friday morning when a small delegation from Cambridge and Somerville, MA, were visiting the Congressman, known for his bluntness, as part of the nationwide UFPJ (United For Peace and Justice) home lobbying effort during the Congressional recess.
Later that day, Dennis Kucinich made an appearance at Harvard, where he was asked the same question, the reason for removing the Iran provision. "AIPAC," I volunteered out loud. Kucinich looked my way and said, "Exactly." Again my chair almost failed to contain me.
A few weeks earlier we had gone to the offices of Senators Kennedy and then Kerry to discuss the war. (My intention was to call their attention to www.FilibusterForPeace.org to which the Kennedy aide was sympathetic and the Kerry aide predictably hostile.) I raised the question of AIPAC directly with Kerry's aide, inquiring about its hawkish influence on Kerry and other Senators. Suddenly the aide was quite engaged. Leaning forward, he said: "That will never be discussed publicly. That will never be discussed publicly." Clearly even Kerry's office is unhappy with the pressure that comes from AIPAC.
It is widely acknowledged that the reps and senators are ticked at AIPAC, and their hostility seems to be growing these days. With upwards of 60% of their campaign contributions coming directly or indirectly from the Israel Lobby, the Democratic congressmen are not free to respond to their antiwar base. This opens them to an antiwar electoral challenge on the Left or Right from forces not subservient to AIPAC. And that could cost them their next election, a little thing which has them very worked up. Capuano's cry of "AIPAC" was no simple outburst of candor but a cri de coeur for his career.
So here we have even Congressmen and Senator's aides complaining publicly about AIPAC. AIPAC is being outed all over the mainstream media, largely thanks to the door opening work of Mearsheimer and Walt. AIPAC is skewered routinely by Justin Raimondo on Antiwar.com and by Alex Cockburn and many others here on CounterPunch. But there remains no anti-AIPAC campaign within the mainstream antiwar organizations, like UFPJ or Peace Action. (Even one supposed Congressional ally of the peace movement was announced as a celebrity guest at the recent colossal AIPAC meeting in Washington, where half the Congress shows up and Dick Cheney is a regular speaker. What gives?)
I have been told by leaders of the peace movement that AIPAC is a distraction from the main thrust of the antiwar movement. And so we should not engage it; AIPAC is to be immune. But with all due respect to the sentiments of that leadership, immunity for AIPAC is a prescription for disaster. To use a military analogy, which I do not especially like, suppose that we were trying to take a hill in Germany in 1944. And suppose we said that we would not attack one pillbox, which kept devastating our forces. Leave just that one pillbox alone! The result would be devastating; we would be cut down with every succeeding attempt at advance. So it is with AIPAC which campaigns relentlessly for war on Iraq, war on Iran, war on Syria, war on Lebanon and the slow genocide of the Palestinian people. AIPAC constantly puts the peace movement on the defensive while it is free to be on the offensive all the time.
AIPAC is not just an issue for Jewish Americans or the Jewish wing of the peace movement like Jewish Voice for Peace; it is a major force, although not the only one, driving the U.S. to wars in the Middle East. AIPAC is no less a force for war than is the Republican National Committee. In fact it is worse, because it sinks its teeth into the foreign policy establishment of both parties, perhaps the Dems more so than the Republicans. If the peace movement is to be worth its salt, then it must take action against AIPAC. (It is marathon season here in Boston and my friend, Israeli expatriate Joshua Ashenberg, tells me that the foregoing thought harbors a logical error. As he says: "A 'movement' that does not work against AIPAC is NOT a peace movement by definition. It will not help if I call myself a marathon runner, while I never ran a marathon.")
In the Boston area, AIPAC appears to be especially powerful, and so we have a special responsibility to take it on. At the recent AIPAC conference in Washington, the delegates from Boston/New England were the most hawkish toward Iran. Just before the last election a notorious ad in the Boston Globe, cheering on the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, was engineered by the Jewish Community Relations Council, an arm of AIPAC here. Every major political figure in MA signed the ad, including our "liberal" governor, Deval Patrick, and supposed peacenik Congressman Jim McGovern. Only Conressmen Capuano and Delahunt withheld their signatures. In addition AIPAC appears to raise a lot of money in our neck of the woods.
So I have a modest suggestion. On Sunday, April 29, beginning at 6 pm, AIPAC has its annual fundraising dinner at the Westin Hotel in Copley Square in Boston. (Last year a good table for 10 went for a modest $10,000.) Show up at 5 pm to protest the machinations of AIPAC. Which peace organizations in our area will be there? Which ones will promote the rally? And which will maintain their silence?
* American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com.
He urges one and all to sign and circulate the petition at WWW.FilibusterForPeace.org. The Senate Dems have the power to stop the war with 41 votes; tell them to use it.
Bob wrote:
Right on, Mr. Walsh!!! Jeff Blankfort, this will really resonate with you. I signed the petition before sending this...Bob
Is there really some movement by the Democrats on AIPAC?
http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh04172007.html
April 17, 2007
www.counterpuch.org
Capuano and Kucinich Come Clean About the Lobby
Why is the Peace Movement Silent About AIPAC?
By JOHN WALSH
"AIPAC!" was the forceful one-word answer of Congressman Michael Capuano when we asked him, "Why was the Iran clause forbidding war on Iran without Congressional approval taken out of the recent supplemental for the Iraq war funding?" I nearly fell out of my chair at his reply - not because this was news but because of who had just said it. Capuano is a close ally of Nancy Pelosi, her fixer and enforcer. That was last Friday morning when a small delegation from Cambridge and Somerville, MA, were visiting the Congressman, known for his bluntness, as part of the nationwide UFPJ (United For Peace and Justice) home lobbying effort during the Congressional recess.
Later that day, Dennis Kucinich made an appearance at Harvard, where he was asked the same question, the reason for removing the Iran provision. "AIPAC," I volunteered out loud. Kucinich looked my way and said, "Exactly." Again my chair almost failed to contain me.
A few weeks earlier we had gone to the offices of Senators Kennedy and then Kerry to discuss the war. (My intention was to call their attention to www.FilibusterForPeace.org to which the Kennedy aide was sympathetic and the Kerry aide predictably hostile.) I raised the question of AIPAC directly with Kerry's aide, inquiring about its hawkish influence on Kerry and other Senators. Suddenly the aide was quite engaged. Leaning forward, he said: "That will never be discussed publicly. That will never be discussed publicly." Clearly even Kerry's office is unhappy with the pressure that comes from AIPAC.
It is widely acknowledged that the reps and senators are ticked at AIPAC, and their hostility seems to be growing these days. With upwards of 60% of their campaign contributions coming directly or indirectly from the Israel Lobby, the Democratic congressmen are not free to respond to their antiwar base. This opens them to an antiwar electoral challenge on the Left or Right from forces not subservient to AIPAC. And that could cost them their next election, a little thing which has them very worked up. Capuano's cry of "AIPAC" was no simple outburst of candor but a cri de coeur for his career.
So here we have even Congressmen and Senator's aides complaining publicly about AIPAC. AIPAC is being outed all over the mainstream media, largely thanks to the door opening work of Mearsheimer and Walt. AIPAC is skewered routinely by Justin Raimondo on Antiwar.com and by Alex Cockburn and many others here on CounterPunch. But there remains no anti-AIPAC campaign within the mainstream antiwar organizations, like UFPJ or Peace Action. (Even one supposed Congressional ally of the peace movement was announced as a celebrity guest at the recent colossal AIPAC meeting in Washington, where half the Congress shows up and Dick Cheney is a regular speaker. What gives?)
I have been told by leaders of the peace movement that AIPAC is a distraction from the main thrust of the antiwar movement. And so we should not engage it; AIPAC is to be immune. But with all due respect to the sentiments of that leadership, immunity for AIPAC is a prescription for disaster. To use a military analogy, which I do not especially like, suppose that we were trying to take a hill in Germany in 1944. And suppose we said that we would not attack one pillbox, which kept devastating our forces. Leave just that one pillbox alone! The result would be devastating; we would be cut down with every succeeding attempt at advance. So it is with AIPAC which campaigns relentlessly for war on Iraq, war on Iran, war on Syria, war on Lebanon and the slow genocide of the Palestinian people. AIPAC constantly puts the peace movement on the defensive while it is free to be on the offensive all the time.
AIPAC is not just an issue for Jewish Americans or the Jewish wing of the peace movement like Jewish Voice for Peace; it is a major force, although not the only one, driving the U.S. to wars in the Middle East. AIPAC is no less a force for war than is the Republican National Committee. In fact it is worse, because it sinks its teeth into the foreign policy establishment of both parties, perhaps the Dems more so than the Republicans. If the peace movement is to be worth its salt, then it must take action against AIPAC. (It is marathon season here in Boston and my friend, Israeli expatriate Joshua Ashenberg, tells me that the foregoing thought harbors a logical error. As he says: "A 'movement' that does not work against AIPAC is NOT a peace movement by definition. It will not help if I call myself a marathon runner, while I never ran a marathon.")
In the Boston area, AIPAC appears to be especially powerful, and so we have a special responsibility to take it on. At the recent AIPAC conference in Washington, the delegates from Boston/New England were the most hawkish toward Iran. Just before the last election a notorious ad in the Boston Globe, cheering on the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, was engineered by the Jewish Community Relations Council, an arm of AIPAC here. Every major political figure in MA signed the ad, including our "liberal" governor, Deval Patrick, and supposed peacenik Congressman Jim McGovern. Only Conressmen Capuano and Delahunt withheld their signatures. In addition AIPAC appears to raise a lot of money in our neck of the woods.
So I have a modest suggestion. On Sunday, April 29, beginning at 6 pm, AIPAC has its annual fundraising dinner at the Westin Hotel in Copley Square in Boston. (Last year a good table for 10 went for a modest $10,000.) Show up at 5 pm to protest the machinations of AIPAC. Which peace organizations in our area will be there? Which ones will promote the rally? And which will maintain their silence?
* American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com.
He urges one and all to sign and circulate the petition at WWW.FilibusterForPeace.org. The Senate Dems have the power to stop the war with 41 votes; tell them to use it.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Ronald Bleier: presents two papers on US Middle East Policy
Conference on US Middle East Policy, LaGuardia Community College, NYC
Friends:I'll be giving two papers on Thursday morning, May 10th at a conference on U.S. Middle East Policyto be held at LAGCC. The first, at 9:15 AM, will be on Bush-Cheney's exceptionalism with special regard to the Iraq war. The second, at 11:45 AM, will be a panel on the U.S./Israel relationship. There I’ll be debating Toufic Haddad of the (sadly defunct) Between the Lines (Jerusalem) onthe power of the Israel Lobby to control U.S. Middle East policy. The organizers have assured me that the public is welcome. Ronald***See below for directions to LAGCC. Here is their e-flyer about the Conference. United States Foreign Policy in the Middle East:
United States Foreign Policy in the Middle East Conference
Thursday May 10, 2007
LaGuardia Community College
Little Theater
The conference will provide an analysis of the domestic and
international consequences of United States Foreign Policy in the Middle
East. Scholars and activists will present, discuss, and debate their
perspectives on the history and contemporary involvement of the United
States in this region. The conference will provide students and faculty
with the opportunity to extend their knowledge beyond conventional
discourse and thereby open up further avenues for research and political
engagement.
PROGRAM
9:15 – 10:15 am – Panel 1- History and Contemporary U.S. Policy in the
Middle East
Panelists: Sara Flounders and Ronald Bleier.
Moderator: Prof. Tim Coogan
This panel will explore the history and contemporary application of U.S.
Policy in the Middle East. Panelists will examine the origin and
evolution of U.S. intervention in this region, the objectives of U.S.
involvement, the social costs of these policies, and their present
manifestation.
10:30 – 11:30 am – Panel 2 – Palestine: History and Narrative
Panelists: Toufic Haddad and Aaron Levitt
Moderator: Prof. Terence Julien
This panel will explore the history and contemporary narrative of
Palestine. The panelists will present both an oral and pictorial
exposition of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe), the historical
struggle for Palestinian self-determination, and the present conditions
of life for the Palestinian people.
11:45 am – 12:45 pm – Panel 3 - The U.S./ Israel Relationship
Panelists: Toufic Haddad and Ronald Bleier
Moderator: Prof. Michael Frank
This panel will explain the unique relationship that exists between the
United States and Israel. The panelists will examine why both Democratic
and Republican Administrations provide unconditional support for
Israel’s policies of occupation, settlement, and war; the role of the
Israel Lobby in U.S. domestic politics; and the role Israel plays in the
U.S. strategic objective of dominating the Middle East and controlling
its resources.
1:00 – 2:00 pm – Panel 4 – The Assault on Civil, Constitutional, and
Human Rights
Panelists: Lynne Stewart and Maria Lahood
Moderator: Prof. Donald Monaco
This panel will examine selected aspects of the assault on civil,
constitutional, and human rights by the U.S. Government in its ‘War on
Terror’. The panelists will explain how legal protections guaranteed by
the U.S. Constitution and by International Laws and Conventions are
being subverted in the name of national security.
2:15 - 3:15 - Panel 5 - Resistance to Occupation and Oppression
Panelist: Dr. Barbara Nimri Aziz and Donia Mili
Moderator: Prof. Donald Monaco
This panel will explore the social and political context of resistance
movements in the Middle East. The panelists will examine the origin,
evolution, and contemporary manifestation of key struggles for national
liberation and self- determination that are distorted,
de-contextualized, and criminalized in Western political discourse.
SPEAKERS
Dr. Barbara Nimri Aziz is a currently a freelance journalist and
broadcaster. She received her Ph.D in 1974 in Social Anthropology at the
School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. For
eighteen years she did ethnographic research on Asian society and
history. She left that career to become a journalist, and has recently
focused largely on Iraq. Since 1988, she has spent a total of 26 months
living in the Middle East, visiting Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait,
Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, the West Bank, Turkey, and Israel. She
has been published in the Christian Science Monitor, the Manchester
Guardian, Middle East International, the Detroit Free Press, Natural
History and numerous other publications. She is also the author of
several books including an upTigris: Real Life Encounters with Iraq and Heir To A Silent Song: Two
Rebel Women of Nepal. Since 1989 Aziz has worked on a community radio
station in New York - WBAI Pacifica Radio (RadioTahrir.org). She works
as a producer, commentator, and interviewer, and also as a correspondent
reporting from the Middle East. She donates a lot of time to non-profit
organizations that work for justice in international affairs. She has
recently been awarded a Fulbright Professorship in North Africa for the
coming academic year. Aziz, with colleague Leila Diab, founded an
organization called "Radius of Arab-American Writers in 1992, which is a
network of established and emerging Arab-American fiction and
non-fiction writers, essayists, poets, journalists, photojournalists,
and academics.
Ronald Bleier is a journalist and writer who lives and works in New
York City. He spent two years in Iran as a Peace Corps Volunteer. He
edits the Demographic, Environmental and Security Issues Project
website, and he writes on Middle East Issues, the Bush Administration,
and 9/11 analysis.
Sara Flounders is a writer, political activist, and Co-Director of the
International Action Center with former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey
Clark. Among her extensive publications, she is co-editor along with
Teresa Gutierrez of War In Columbia: Made In U.S.A., a contributor to:
Challenge To Genocide: Let Iraq Live, and a contributor to: Metal of
Dishonor: How the Pentagon Radiates Soldiers and Civilians with DU
Weapons.
Toufic Haddad is a Palestinian-American activist and writer who edited
the radical journal “Between The Lines”, published from Jerusalem and
Ramallah. He is also a frequent contributor to the International
Socialist Review and Znet. He is currently co-editing a book with
Dr.Tikva Honig-Parnass on the Palestinian Intifada.
Maria Lahood is an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights,
where she specializes in international human rights litigation, seeking
to hold governments responsible for extrajudicial killings and war
crimes abroad. Her cases include Arar v. Ashcroft, against U.S.
officials for sending Canadian citizen Maher Arar to Syria where he was
tortured and detained for a year; Matar v. Dichter, against an Israeli
official responsible for a “targeted assassination” that killed 15
Palestinians; Belhas v. Ya’alon, against a former Israeli official
responsible for the 1996 shelling of a U.N. compound in Qana, Lebanon
that killed over 100 civilians; Corrie v. Caterpillar, on behalf of
Palestinians killed and injured in home demolitions and Rachel Corrie,
an American human rights defender who was killed trying to protect a
home from being demolished; and Wiwa v. Royal Dutch/Shell, for the
torture, detention and execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other human rights
activists and protestors in Nigeria.
Aaron Levitt is a photographer, a member of Jews Against the Occupation,
and a member of the International Solidarity Movement with Palestine.
He is a member and past board member of West End Synagogue. He is also
a director of research at a New York City homeless services agency.
Donia Mili was born in 1973 in Paris, France to French and Tunisian
parents. Donia was 16 years old when she first started in television at
the grass roots level while studying in Ottawa, Canada. While pursuing
an M.A. degree in Near East Studies at NYU, she became involved in
documentary production. After contributing to several projects, she
produced and directed her first film, "Uprooted" in 2006. The film
addresses the debate of non-violent versus violent resistance in the
context of the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.
Lynne Stewart is a radical human rights attorney who has been falsely
accused of helping terrorists. Now convicted, she faces 30 years in
prison. This is an obvious attempt by the U.S. government to silence
dissent, curtail vigorous defense lawyers, and instill fear in those who
would fight against the U.S. government’s racism, seek to helMuslims being prosecuted for free speech and defend the rights of all
oppressed people. Ms. Stewart has a long history of representing
unpopular, politically controversial, and socially marginalized clients
who come from the most oppressed segments of U.S. Society.
We would like to thank the following:
The Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs
The Office of the Vice President for External Affairs
The Faculty Focus Group on Peace and War
The Social Science Department
LaGuardia Student Campus Anti-War Network
Directions to LaGuardia CC By SubwayVia 7 Train: Get off at 33rd Street station. Walk two blocks westbound to Thomson Avenue and Van Dam Street.
For a handy map and many more directions by train, car, and bus, etc. go to: http://www.lagcc.cuny.edu/visit/
More directions:The conference will be held in the Main Building (31-10 Thomson Ave). Enterthe front door, proceed straight ahead down the hall of flags. Go tothe end of the hall, pass through the double doors, make a quick left,walk up 8 stairs, and you are at the Little Theater.
Friends:I'll be giving two papers on Thursday morning, May 10th at a conference on U.S. Middle East Policyto be held at LAGCC. The first, at 9:15 AM, will be on Bush-Cheney's exceptionalism with special regard to the Iraq war. The second, at 11:45 AM, will be a panel on the U.S./Israel relationship. There I’ll be debating Toufic Haddad of the (sadly defunct) Between the Lines (Jerusalem) onthe power of the Israel Lobby to control U.S. Middle East policy. The organizers have assured me that the public is welcome. Ronald***See below for directions to LAGCC. Here is their e-flyer about the Conference. United States Foreign Policy in the Middle East:
United States Foreign Policy in the Middle East Conference
Thursday May 10, 2007
LaGuardia Community College
Little Theater
The conference will provide an analysis of the domestic and
international consequences of United States Foreign Policy in the Middle
East. Scholars and activists will present, discuss, and debate their
perspectives on the history and contemporary involvement of the United
States in this region. The conference will provide students and faculty
with the opportunity to extend their knowledge beyond conventional
discourse and thereby open up further avenues for research and political
engagement.
PROGRAM
9:15 – 10:15 am – Panel 1- History and Contemporary U.S. Policy in the
Middle East
Panelists: Sara Flounders and Ronald Bleier.
Moderator: Prof. Tim Coogan
This panel will explore the history and contemporary application of U.S.
Policy in the Middle East. Panelists will examine the origin and
evolution of U.S. intervention in this region, the objectives of U.S.
involvement, the social costs of these policies, and their present
manifestation.
10:30 – 11:30 am – Panel 2 – Palestine: History and Narrative
Panelists: Toufic Haddad and Aaron Levitt
Moderator: Prof. Terence Julien
This panel will explore the history and contemporary narrative of
Palestine. The panelists will present both an oral and pictorial
exposition of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe), the historical
struggle for Palestinian self-determination, and the present conditions
of life for the Palestinian people.
11:45 am – 12:45 pm – Panel 3 - The U.S./ Israel Relationship
Panelists: Toufic Haddad and Ronald Bleier
Moderator: Prof. Michael Frank
This panel will explain the unique relationship that exists between the
United States and Israel. The panelists will examine why both Democratic
and Republican Administrations provide unconditional support for
Israel’s policies of occupation, settlement, and war; the role of the
Israel Lobby in U.S. domestic politics; and the role Israel plays in the
U.S. strategic objective of dominating the Middle East and controlling
its resources.
1:00 – 2:00 pm – Panel 4 – The Assault on Civil, Constitutional, and
Human Rights
Panelists: Lynne Stewart and Maria Lahood
Moderator: Prof. Donald Monaco
This panel will examine selected aspects of the assault on civil,
constitutional, and human rights by the U.S. Government in its ‘War on
Terror’. The panelists will explain how legal protections guaranteed by
the U.S. Constitution and by International Laws and Conventions are
being subverted in the name of national security.
2:15 - 3:15 - Panel 5 - Resistance to Occupation and Oppression
Panelist: Dr. Barbara Nimri Aziz and Donia Mili
Moderator: Prof. Donald Monaco
This panel will explore the social and political context of resistance
movements in the Middle East. The panelists will examine the origin,
evolution, and contemporary manifestation of key struggles for national
liberation and self- determination that are distorted,
de-contextualized, and criminalized in Western political discourse.
SPEAKERS
Dr. Barbara Nimri Aziz is a currently a freelance journalist and
broadcaster. She received her Ph.D in 1974 in Social Anthropology at the
School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. For
eighteen years she did ethnographic research on Asian society and
history. She left that career to become a journalist, and has recently
focused largely on Iraq. Since 1988, she has spent a total of 26 months
living in the Middle East, visiting Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait,
Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, the West Bank, Turkey, and Israel. She
has been published in the Christian Science Monitor, the Manchester
Guardian, Middle East International, the Detroit Free Press, Natural
History and numerous other publications. She is also the author of
several books including an upTigris: Real Life Encounters with Iraq and Heir To A Silent Song: Two
Rebel Women of Nepal. Since 1989 Aziz has worked on a community radio
station in New York - WBAI Pacifica Radio (RadioTahrir.org). She works
as a producer, commentator, and interviewer, and also as a correspondent
reporting from the Middle East. She donates a lot of time to non-profit
organizations that work for justice in international affairs. She has
recently been awarded a Fulbright Professorship in North Africa for the
coming academic year. Aziz, with colleague Leila Diab, founded an
organization called "Radius of Arab-American Writers in 1992, which is a
network of established and emerging Arab-American fiction and
non-fiction writers, essayists, poets, journalists, photojournalists,
and academics.
Ronald Bleier is a journalist and writer who lives and works in New
York City. He spent two years in Iran as a Peace Corps Volunteer. He
edits the Demographic, Environmental and Security Issues Project
website, and he writes on Middle East Issues, the Bush Administration,
and 9/11 analysis.
Sara Flounders is a writer, political activist, and Co-Director of the
International Action Center with former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey
Clark. Among her extensive publications, she is co-editor along with
Teresa Gutierrez of War In Columbia: Made In U.S.A., a contributor to:
Challenge To Genocide: Let Iraq Live, and a contributor to: Metal of
Dishonor: How the Pentagon Radiates Soldiers and Civilians with DU
Weapons.
Toufic Haddad is a Palestinian-American activist and writer who edited
the radical journal “Between The Lines”, published from Jerusalem and
Ramallah. He is also a frequent contributor to the International
Socialist Review and Znet. He is currently co-editing a book with
Dr.Tikva Honig-Parnass on the Palestinian Intifada.
Maria Lahood is an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights,
where she specializes in international human rights litigation, seeking
to hold governments responsible for extrajudicial killings and war
crimes abroad. Her cases include Arar v. Ashcroft, against U.S.
officials for sending Canadian citizen Maher Arar to Syria where he was
tortured and detained for a year; Matar v. Dichter, against an Israeli
official responsible for a “targeted assassination” that killed 15
Palestinians; Belhas v. Ya’alon, against a former Israeli official
responsible for the 1996 shelling of a U.N. compound in Qana, Lebanon
that killed over 100 civilians; Corrie v. Caterpillar, on behalf of
Palestinians killed and injured in home demolitions and Rachel Corrie,
an American human rights defender who was killed trying to protect a
home from being demolished; and Wiwa v. Royal Dutch/Shell, for the
torture, detention and execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other human rights
activists and protestors in Nigeria.
Aaron Levitt is a photographer, a member of Jews Against the Occupation,
and a member of the International Solidarity Movement with Palestine.
He is a member and past board member of West End Synagogue. He is also
a director of research at a New York City homeless services agency.
Donia Mili was born in 1973 in Paris, France to French and Tunisian
parents. Donia was 16 years old when she first started in television at
the grass roots level while studying in Ottawa, Canada. While pursuing
an M.A. degree in Near East Studies at NYU, she became involved in
documentary production. After contributing to several projects, she
produced and directed her first film, "Uprooted" in 2006. The film
addresses the debate of non-violent versus violent resistance in the
context of the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.
Lynne Stewart is a radical human rights attorney who has been falsely
accused of helping terrorists. Now convicted, she faces 30 years in
prison. This is an obvious attempt by the U.S. government to silence
dissent, curtail vigorous defense lawyers, and instill fear in those who
would fight against the U.S. government’s racism, seek to helMuslims being prosecuted for free speech and defend the rights of all
oppressed people. Ms. Stewart has a long history of representing
unpopular, politically controversial, and socially marginalized clients
who come from the most oppressed segments of U.S. Society.
We would like to thank the following:
The Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs
The Office of the Vice President for External Affairs
The Faculty Focus Group on Peace and War
The Social Science Department
LaGuardia Student Campus Anti-War Network
Directions to LaGuardia CC By SubwayVia 7 Train: Get off at 33rd Street station. Walk two blocks westbound to Thomson Avenue and Van Dam Street.
For a handy map and many more directions by train, car, and bus, etc. go to: http://www.lagcc.cuny.edu/visit/
More directions:The conference will be held in the Main Building (31-10 Thomson Ave). Enterthe front door, proceed straight ahead down the hall of flags. Go tothe end of the hall, pass through the double doors, make a quick left,walk up 8 stairs, and you are at the Little Theater.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Alison Weir: PBS: Some Muslims are OK --Crossroads Series
Thanks once again to the indomitable and very special Alison Weir for exposing the deep racism, corruption and vicious ideology of PBS as exemplified on their Crossroads series. On this issue it seems that they felt they could mimic the ruthless arrogance and irresponsibility of Bush and Cheney. What they are doing is worse than Imus because of the context. Apparently they thought that because of those they designated as their victims, there would be no price to pay. Now what if it were more widely understood who the terrorists were on 9/11? It's noteworthy that on 9/11, most people, including those on the left, prefer to believe Bush.
(See Alison Weir's outstanding article for The Link http://www.ameu.org/summary1.asp?iid=262)
--Ronald
***
Bob wrote:
This is a great commentary by Alison Weir, journalist-activist-humanitarian extraordinaire. Although she generously offers the hope that PBS will redeem itself via the final series, I can have no such optimism and indeed was made hopping mad at PBS (our tax money; our PBS!!) by the general content and tenor of her discourse. My recurring thought/outrage was: this is a loaded deck just as a State Department panel/conference on the Holy Land morass with no intelligent Muslim, much less any Palestinian, in sight, or a Senate/House hearing featuring only "moderate" and "radical" Jewish Zionists as MidEast "experts" makes me hopping mad. I hope everyone will take Alison's suggestion and contact the PBS Ombudsman. Letters to editors as the series unfolds are also appropriate as expressions of resistance to imbalanced presentation...Bob
Willis wrote:
This piece was so good, I have printed it for distribution to my Chaminade University Course in THE MIDDLE EAST tonight. I hope some of my student will watch the PBS series, and with the Alison Wier piece in their hands!
Willis H A Moore, Adjunct Faculty in History and Political Science, Chaminade University of Honolulu
***
www.counterpunch.org
April 17, 2007
Some Muslims Are Not Bad
The Message of PBS's "Crossroads" Series
http://www.counterpunch.org/weir04172007.html
By ALISON WEIR
I attended an extremely disturbing event Thursday night. It was hosted by WETA, the PBS station in Washington DC, and was part of the national launch of an 11-part PBS series, "America at a Crossroads," to begin airing April 15. It featured clips from the series followed by a panel discussion with some of those involved in the films, moderated by Robert MacNeil. The panel discussion represented a "wide" spectrum of opinions: all the way from, at one end, suggesting that all Muslims are terrorists to, at the other end, suggesting that some Muslims are not terrorists.
In other words, from what we were shown on Friday, it appears that much of the series contains subtle, intellectually "acceptable" Muslim-bashing. While the title of the series claims that it is focusing on America, many of the clips seemed to be focusing, over and over again, on Islam, largely examining "bad Muslims" (the majority) with a few "good Muslims" thrown in (often consisting of those who bash bad Muslims).
One entire program in the series, funded with federal money dispensed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), is dedicated to Richard Perle, the neoconservative strategist who pushed for "regime-change" in Iraq and is now promoting it once more in Iran. While his opponents are also included in the segment, Perle is given the opportunity to rebut each one; the film was produced by his associate Brian Lapping. The title of the program, "The Case for War: In Defense of Freedom," seems to indicate a perspective that few facts would support. While only short clips were shown on Friday, Perle's approving, and welcomed, presence at the screening seems to indicate a happy CPB-PBS-Perle relationship. Happy for Perle that is; not for those of us who are less than pleased at manipulations that destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives, at least, and whose agenda appears to be an Israeli American empire based on a mutilating sword, and whose deathly swath cuts many ways.
At the other end of Friday night's "A" through "C" gamut of views was Michael Isikoff, whose rebuttal of Perle's claims about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction was deservedly applauded by the audience. Isikoff's own clip portrayed him as a crusading investigative reporter, a la Dustin Hoffman in "All the President's Men." However, it turned out that Isikoff's form of crusading reporting was not to uncover presidential malfeasance but to expose "dangerous Muslims," i.e. those who oppose tyrannical regimes or who dare to suggest that Hamas and Hezbollah are resistance movements opposing brutal Israeli aggression.
Practicing the reverse of A.J. Liebling's dictum that the duty of journalism is "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable," Isikoff's offering in this series appears to be to go after arguably the most attacked community in the US today. A few miles away from where Isikoff was being feted by PBS for his work in exposing "Muslim terrorists," Sami Al-Arian (who has never been convicted of any crime, but who has spoken out passionately in favor of Palestinian rights) is spending his fourth year in prison, largely in solitary confinement. Perhaps Isikoff will now turn his investigative skills to examining the role of Israel and its partisans in Al-Arian's persecution and in the Crossroads series itself. He may wish to begin with CPB's head, Cheryl Halpern, a former chairwoman for the Republican Jewish Coalition, who, according to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, currently sits on the board of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (a spin-off of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), whose husband is a member of AIPAC, and whose family has business interests in Israel. Her predecessor at CPB was similarly solicitous of Israel, as are so many of the neocons now associated with the organization.which brings me to my next point:
Missing
It is interesting that in an 11-program series focused largely on the Middle East, no mention is made of the core issue of the region: the enormous injustice perpetrated in 1948 when Israel ethnically cleansed most of the indigenous population, and its ongoing and ruthless efforts in this direction today. While the series focuses on the activities of people who are opposing past and present dispossession, it appears that no mention is made of the oppression they are resisting. It is a little like describing the actions of someone being attacked by wolves without mentioning the wolves.
The issues in the Middle East and 9/11 have far more to do with the usual causes of war, competition over territory and resources, than with religion. Nevertheless, there are religious dimensions to the conflict, and it would certainly be valuable to explicate these. Yet PBS ignores the fact that there are three major religions centered in the Middle East, not just one, and that the major ethnic-cleansing at the region's core was done in the name of one of the two religions ignored in the series. If one of the religions is going to be examined, with much of the focus on its alleged warts, it seems to me that the other two should be exposed to equal scrutiny. Why was this not done?
Fundamentalist Jewish settlers are among the most fanatic and violent populations in the Middle East, and they proclaim that their violence is endorsed, even required, by their religion. Growing numbers of Christians endorse and fund this violent dispossession of the world's original Christians and others, and also claim to base their activities on their religion. Similarly, violent Jewish and Christian extremists operate in the United States, some cells defined, even by the US government, as "terrorist." While at least six out of PBS's eleven programs focus on Muslims and their connections to violence, not a single program focuses on Jewish extremists who torture farmers, attack children regularly, and whose core beliefs include the proposition that a non-Jew is "not worth the fingernail of a Jew." Similarly, there is not a single program examining American Christians who advocate violence at home and abroad, and who eagerly anticipate mass slaughter, in the name, they say, of their religion.
Moreover, with all this attention on Islam, one would at least expect some depth from a $20 million, publicly funded series that spends so much time on this subject. Sadly, however, despite a surface appearance of balance, there is much to suggest that PBS has actually provided little more than tokenism. In Washington DC there are numerous scholars on Islam, many of them living and working within a short distance of Friday's event. Yet, PBS gave us a panel in which two Jews and one Christian informed us about Muslims. While I suspect that no one would accuse the panelists of undue humility, I sincerely doubt that even one would claim to be an Islamic scholar. In addition, for the only program of the series in which a Muslim is the main "expert" on Muslims, PBS has chosen to utilize a woman whose new-found media fame, and resultant fortune, have come from attacking Muslims.
Soft Core
Let me emphasize that I am not accusing PBS of hate speech. I fully anticipate that the 11-part series will contain many uplifting and accurate statements about Islam and Muslims. My expectation is that the series will be skillfully produced, its approach will be intelligent, and its tone will be tolerant. (One of the shows that received Public Broadcasting Corporation funding for the series, by neoconservative Frank Gaffney, a member of the Project for a New American Century who previously worked under Perle, was deemed too openly "alarmist" and has been postponed for further editing. A second program, by yet another neoconservative, Robert Kaplan, is also being held for broadcast later.)
Overall, I expect that the series will provide what appear to the general public to be nuanced and thoughtful answers. My concern is simple: that it will so rarely, if ever, ask the right questions. Most of all, I am worried that in its many hours of programming, the wolves, and these are many and diverse, will be missing.
In some ways, the title of the series is quite correct; America is indeed at a crossroads, but of a very different nature than the series discusses. Either we will continue to let our mainstream media, from the "public" to the commercial, from the liberal to the conservative, manipulate Americans into fear and hatred of Muslims, thereby enabling Israeli and American aggression; or we will stand up and oppose this media manipulation, and refuse to allow the resultant policies of barbarism.
During the question and answer period following the screening, I briefly raised a few of the points mentioned above. (Robert MacNeil responded that PBS probably should have included something about Israel-Palestine; Isikoff misconstrued what I said and then disagreed.) Afterwards, several people came up to tell me they agreed with my comments. One man who expressed deep concern at the targeting of a minority population explained his own experience with such activities: he had fled Nazi Germany at the age of seven.
Instead of undertaking a thinly veiled prosecution of Muslims in which it found some of the accused "not guilty," it would have been valuable for PBS to do what it claimed: examine ourselves and the divergent paths from which we must choose. Either we will continue in the direction promoted by Perle, Gaffney and others, and continue destroying more and more of the globe, and quite possibly ourselves; or we will turn back to efforts to build a nation and a world in which ethnic agendas and outmoded tribalisms give way to universal principles of justice, equality, and coexistence.
In my opinion the second path is not only the direction that morality decrees, it is also the only path that will ever provide the safety from violence and cruelty that we all seek for ourselves and our children.
If you agree, I hope you will let PBS ombudsman Michael Getler (http://www.pbs.org/ombudsman/) know: 703-739-5290. He's never returned any of my phone calls (even in his previous incarnation as ombudsman at the Washington Post); maybe he'll return yours.
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew (www.ifamericansknew.org). Her blog is alisonweir.org. She can be reached through either website.
(See Alison Weir's outstanding article for The Link http://www.ameu.org/summary1.asp?iid=262)
--Ronald
***
Bob wrote:
This is a great commentary by Alison Weir, journalist-activist-humanitarian extraordinaire. Although she generously offers the hope that PBS will redeem itself via the final series, I can have no such optimism and indeed was made hopping mad at PBS (our tax money; our PBS!!) by the general content and tenor of her discourse. My recurring thought/outrage was: this is a loaded deck just as a State Department panel/conference on the Holy Land morass with no intelligent Muslim, much less any Palestinian, in sight, or a Senate/House hearing featuring only "moderate" and "radical" Jewish Zionists as MidEast "experts" makes me hopping mad. I hope everyone will take Alison's suggestion and contact the PBS Ombudsman. Letters to editors as the series unfolds are also appropriate as expressions of resistance to imbalanced presentation...Bob
Willis wrote:
This piece was so good, I have printed it for distribution to my Chaminade University Course in THE MIDDLE EAST tonight. I hope some of my student will watch the PBS series, and with the Alison Wier piece in their hands!
Willis H A Moore, Adjunct Faculty in History and Political Science, Chaminade University of Honolulu
***
www.counterpunch.org
April 17, 2007
Some Muslims Are Not Bad
The Message of PBS's "Crossroads" Series
http://www.counterpunch.org/weir04172007.html
By ALISON WEIR
I attended an extremely disturbing event Thursday night. It was hosted by WETA, the PBS station in Washington DC, and was part of the national launch of an 11-part PBS series, "America at a Crossroads," to begin airing April 15. It featured clips from the series followed by a panel discussion with some of those involved in the films, moderated by Robert MacNeil. The panel discussion represented a "wide" spectrum of opinions: all the way from, at one end, suggesting that all Muslims are terrorists to, at the other end, suggesting that some Muslims are not terrorists.
In other words, from what we were shown on Friday, it appears that much of the series contains subtle, intellectually "acceptable" Muslim-bashing. While the title of the series claims that it is focusing on America, many of the clips seemed to be focusing, over and over again, on Islam, largely examining "bad Muslims" (the majority) with a few "good Muslims" thrown in (often consisting of those who bash bad Muslims).
One entire program in the series, funded with federal money dispensed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), is dedicated to Richard Perle, the neoconservative strategist who pushed for "regime-change" in Iraq and is now promoting it once more in Iran. While his opponents are also included in the segment, Perle is given the opportunity to rebut each one; the film was produced by his associate Brian Lapping. The title of the program, "The Case for War: In Defense of Freedom," seems to indicate a perspective that few facts would support. While only short clips were shown on Friday, Perle's approving, and welcomed, presence at the screening seems to indicate a happy CPB-PBS-Perle relationship. Happy for Perle that is; not for those of us who are less than pleased at manipulations that destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives, at least, and whose agenda appears to be an Israeli American empire based on a mutilating sword, and whose deathly swath cuts many ways.
At the other end of Friday night's "A" through "C" gamut of views was Michael Isikoff, whose rebuttal of Perle's claims about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction was deservedly applauded by the audience. Isikoff's own clip portrayed him as a crusading investigative reporter, a la Dustin Hoffman in "All the President's Men." However, it turned out that Isikoff's form of crusading reporting was not to uncover presidential malfeasance but to expose "dangerous Muslims," i.e. those who oppose tyrannical regimes or who dare to suggest that Hamas and Hezbollah are resistance movements opposing brutal Israeli aggression.
Practicing the reverse of A.J. Liebling's dictum that the duty of journalism is "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable," Isikoff's offering in this series appears to be to go after arguably the most attacked community in the US today. A few miles away from where Isikoff was being feted by PBS for his work in exposing "Muslim terrorists," Sami Al-Arian (who has never been convicted of any crime, but who has spoken out passionately in favor of Palestinian rights) is spending his fourth year in prison, largely in solitary confinement. Perhaps Isikoff will now turn his investigative skills to examining the role of Israel and its partisans in Al-Arian's persecution and in the Crossroads series itself. He may wish to begin with CPB's head, Cheryl Halpern, a former chairwoman for the Republican Jewish Coalition, who, according to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, currently sits on the board of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (a spin-off of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), whose husband is a member of AIPAC, and whose family has business interests in Israel. Her predecessor at CPB was similarly solicitous of Israel, as are so many of the neocons now associated with the organization.which brings me to my next point:
Missing
It is interesting that in an 11-program series focused largely on the Middle East, no mention is made of the core issue of the region: the enormous injustice perpetrated in 1948 when Israel ethnically cleansed most of the indigenous population, and its ongoing and ruthless efforts in this direction today. While the series focuses on the activities of people who are opposing past and present dispossession, it appears that no mention is made of the oppression they are resisting. It is a little like describing the actions of someone being attacked by wolves without mentioning the wolves.
The issues in the Middle East and 9/11 have far more to do with the usual causes of war, competition over territory and resources, than with religion. Nevertheless, there are religious dimensions to the conflict, and it would certainly be valuable to explicate these. Yet PBS ignores the fact that there are three major religions centered in the Middle East, not just one, and that the major ethnic-cleansing at the region's core was done in the name of one of the two religions ignored in the series. If one of the religions is going to be examined, with much of the focus on its alleged warts, it seems to me that the other two should be exposed to equal scrutiny. Why was this not done?
Fundamentalist Jewish settlers are among the most fanatic and violent populations in the Middle East, and they proclaim that their violence is endorsed, even required, by their religion. Growing numbers of Christians endorse and fund this violent dispossession of the world's original Christians and others, and also claim to base their activities on their religion. Similarly, violent Jewish and Christian extremists operate in the United States, some cells defined, even by the US government, as "terrorist." While at least six out of PBS's eleven programs focus on Muslims and their connections to violence, not a single program focuses on Jewish extremists who torture farmers, attack children regularly, and whose core beliefs include the proposition that a non-Jew is "not worth the fingernail of a Jew." Similarly, there is not a single program examining American Christians who advocate violence at home and abroad, and who eagerly anticipate mass slaughter, in the name, they say, of their religion.
Moreover, with all this attention on Islam, one would at least expect some depth from a $20 million, publicly funded series that spends so much time on this subject. Sadly, however, despite a surface appearance of balance, there is much to suggest that PBS has actually provided little more than tokenism. In Washington DC there are numerous scholars on Islam, many of them living and working within a short distance of Friday's event. Yet, PBS gave us a panel in which two Jews and one Christian informed us about Muslims. While I suspect that no one would accuse the panelists of undue humility, I sincerely doubt that even one would claim to be an Islamic scholar. In addition, for the only program of the series in which a Muslim is the main "expert" on Muslims, PBS has chosen to utilize a woman whose new-found media fame, and resultant fortune, have come from attacking Muslims.
Soft Core
Let me emphasize that I am not accusing PBS of hate speech. I fully anticipate that the 11-part series will contain many uplifting and accurate statements about Islam and Muslims. My expectation is that the series will be skillfully produced, its approach will be intelligent, and its tone will be tolerant. (One of the shows that received Public Broadcasting Corporation funding for the series, by neoconservative Frank Gaffney, a member of the Project for a New American Century who previously worked under Perle, was deemed too openly "alarmist" and has been postponed for further editing. A second program, by yet another neoconservative, Robert Kaplan, is also being held for broadcast later.)
Overall, I expect that the series will provide what appear to the general public to be nuanced and thoughtful answers. My concern is simple: that it will so rarely, if ever, ask the right questions. Most of all, I am worried that in its many hours of programming, the wolves, and these are many and diverse, will be missing.
In some ways, the title of the series is quite correct; America is indeed at a crossroads, but of a very different nature than the series discusses. Either we will continue to let our mainstream media, from the "public" to the commercial, from the liberal to the conservative, manipulate Americans into fear and hatred of Muslims, thereby enabling Israeli and American aggression; or we will stand up and oppose this media manipulation, and refuse to allow the resultant policies of barbarism.
During the question and answer period following the screening, I briefly raised a few of the points mentioned above. (Robert MacNeil responded that PBS probably should have included something about Israel-Palestine; Isikoff misconstrued what I said and then disagreed.) Afterwards, several people came up to tell me they agreed with my comments. One man who expressed deep concern at the targeting of a minority population explained his own experience with such activities: he had fled Nazi Germany at the age of seven.
Instead of undertaking a thinly veiled prosecution of Muslims in which it found some of the accused "not guilty," it would have been valuable for PBS to do what it claimed: examine ourselves and the divergent paths from which we must choose. Either we will continue in the direction promoted by Perle, Gaffney and others, and continue destroying more and more of the globe, and quite possibly ourselves; or we will turn back to efforts to build a nation and a world in which ethnic agendas and outmoded tribalisms give way to universal principles of justice, equality, and coexistence.
In my opinion the second path is not only the direction that morality decrees, it is also the only path that will ever provide the safety from violence and cruelty that we all seek for ourselves and our children.
If you agree, I hope you will let PBS ombudsman Michael Getler (http://www.pbs.org/ombudsman/) know: 703-739-5290. He's never returned any of my phone calls (even in his previous incarnation as ombudsman at the Washington Post); maybe he'll return yours.
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew (www.ifamericansknew.org). Her blog is alisonweir.org. She can be reached through either website.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Global Research on the Mysterious Death of Dr. David Kelly, the UK Whistleblower
Annie Machon and her partner, and MI5 colleague, David Shayler make clear in her book about whistleblowing on the intelligence services that they have grave doubts about the official story that Dr David Kelly committed suicide. However they provide no evidence, indeed the opposite, saying that the government had destroyed his career and he would have had a hard time going forward.. The brief article below presents some of the evidence. -- Ronald
Chris wrote:
It would appear from this article that Norman Baker, MP, announced his findings at a public meeting last Wednesday. Googling appropriately reveals reports only in The Daily Mail, not a leading newspaper. I have seen no reference in any TV news programme though to be fair I haven't looked. The Argos is a local Brighton/Lewes newspaper.
Chris
Mysterious Death of Dr. David Kelly: Murder theory that just won't go away
MP Norman Baker sets out in detail why he believes the secret service murdered Dr David Kelly
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070414&articleId=5383
Global Research, April 14, 2007
The Argus - 2007-04-13
Email this article to a friend
Print this article
The greatest British conspiracy theory of the modern age was unveiled this week. Lewes MP Norman Baker set out in detail for the first time why he believes the secret service murdered the Government scientist Dr David Kelly.
MILES GODFREY and KATYA MIRA report on a one-man crusade for the truth which has catapulted an unassuming Parliamentarian into the international spotlight.
It was the start of 2006 and the time was right to bring down the British Government. In March last year Norman Baker, serial thorn in the side of the establishment and by his own admission "not the Prime Minister's favourite person", resigned his role as a frontbench MP for the Liberal Democrats.
It was a typically low-key announcement, timed to coincide with the anointment of the party's new leader Sir Menzies Campbell.
The time had come, the MP said, for a new man to take over.
But to those who knew Norman Baker, the decision to resign was made for another reason.
It would allow him more time to do what he does best: investigate, challenge, push, probe - specifically into the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly. He was about to embark on an amazing investigation into the murky world of secret service agents, national security and the death of the man who very nearly halted the start of the war in Iraq.
If he could prove conclusively that members of the Government had conspired to get rid of Dr Kelly, it would have been - and still could be - the biggest single scandal this country has ever known.
The official report into the death of Dr David Kelly concluded he committed suicide after a row between the BBC and the Government over the "sexed up" dossier on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction thrust the normally private scientist into the glare of the limelight.
But Mr Baker didn't believe a word of it. He said at the time: "The public out there can smell a rat and they don't think it's finished business either."
The scientist's death was, the MP said, just too convenient, too riddled with inconsistencies and so unlike a man like Dr Kelly.
His year-long investigation culminated on Wednesday night at a meeting at which he proclaimed Dr Kelly had been murdered and set out his evidence.
Mr Baker told a packed community hall in Lewes: "I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that this could not be suicide.
"The medical evidence does not support it and David Kelly's state of mind and personality suggests otherwise.
It was not an accident so I am left with the conclusion that it is murder."
He told of how the world's leading WMD expert had spent the morning before his death sending "upbeat emails" and even booking himself a flight to Iraq from his rural home in Southmoor, near Oxford.
Mr Baker questioned the cause of death - a haemorrhage caused by cuts to the ulnar artery in the wrist.
He said such wounds were "matchstick thick" and hidden, difficult to get to, as well as rarely leading to death.
The knife said to have been used was a gardening pruner Dr Kelly had kept since childhood - an unlikely and blunt choice.
Paramedics have said he had lost little blood and was "incredibly unlikely" to have died from the wound they saw.
Police said 29 tablets of the painkiller Coproxamol were missing from his home but all that was found in Dr Kelly's stomach was the equivalent of one fifth of a tablet.
The MP told The Argus: "It has taken more than a year to investigate and it has been an incredible and fascinating journey which has taken a large number of twists and turns.
"I have met experts on weapons of mass destruction in Brussels and uncovered more evidence about the lies the Government told about weapons of mass destruction before the war."
Along the way Mr Baker has had personal run-ins with high-profile Government figures, not least Tony Blair.
He said: "I wouldn't say it has been easy, certainly the Foreign Office has done a lot to put obstacles in my way and other people have too. It has been hard work but at the same time it has been extremely worthwhile."
He has also been hugely encouraged by the public, who he claims can see Dr Kelly's death for what he says it was. Mr Baker said: "There is a world in Westminster and the rest of the world and I think most people in the public world can see that Dr Kelly was murdered.
"He was the world's foremost expert on weapons of mass destruction who could single-handedly destroy the Government's case for war so it was no wonder he was killed.
"It may have also been intended as a message to other people out there who speak to the press when the Government doesn't want you to.
"I was appalled at his death and at the Hutton Inquiry into it. It was a procedural disaster from start to finish and I felt compelled to look into it."
Mr Baker has signed a book deal to explain in greater detail his findings on Dr Kelly's death and he expects to publish it later this year.
But the MP insists he will continue to investigate.
He has nagging doubts about the official line taken over the recent Navy hostages taken in Iran and over the death of Robin Cook, the MP who resigned in protest at the Iraq war.
He said: "Robin Cook was on Ministry of Defence land, I believe, when he died and certainly I have doubts over what happened."
There are those, of course, who doubt Norman Baker's theories.
But for every person out there who does there are an equal number for whom the MP has become a beacon of truth in an increasingly murky world.
---
Chris wrote:
It would appear from this article that Norman Baker, MP, announced his findings at a public meeting last Wednesday. Googling appropriately reveals reports only in The Daily Mail, not a leading newspaper. I have seen no reference in any TV news programme though to be fair I haven't looked. The Argos is a local Brighton/Lewes newspaper.
Chris
Mysterious Death of Dr. David Kelly: Murder theory that just won't go away
MP Norman Baker sets out in detail why he believes the secret service murdered Dr David Kelly
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070414&articleId=5383
Global Research, April 14, 2007
The Argus - 2007-04-13
Email this article to a friend
Print this article
The greatest British conspiracy theory of the modern age was unveiled this week. Lewes MP Norman Baker set out in detail for the first time why he believes the secret service murdered the Government scientist Dr David Kelly.
MILES GODFREY and KATYA MIRA report on a one-man crusade for the truth which has catapulted an unassuming Parliamentarian into the international spotlight.
It was the start of 2006 and the time was right to bring down the British Government. In March last year Norman Baker, serial thorn in the side of the establishment and by his own admission "not the Prime Minister's favourite person", resigned his role as a frontbench MP for the Liberal Democrats.
It was a typically low-key announcement, timed to coincide with the anointment of the party's new leader Sir Menzies Campbell.
The time had come, the MP said, for a new man to take over.
But to those who knew Norman Baker, the decision to resign was made for another reason.
It would allow him more time to do what he does best: investigate, challenge, push, probe - specifically into the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly. He was about to embark on an amazing investigation into the murky world of secret service agents, national security and the death of the man who very nearly halted the start of the war in Iraq.
If he could prove conclusively that members of the Government had conspired to get rid of Dr Kelly, it would have been - and still could be - the biggest single scandal this country has ever known.
The official report into the death of Dr David Kelly concluded he committed suicide after a row between the BBC and the Government over the "sexed up" dossier on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction thrust the normally private scientist into the glare of the limelight.
But Mr Baker didn't believe a word of it. He said at the time: "The public out there can smell a rat and they don't think it's finished business either."
The scientist's death was, the MP said, just too convenient, too riddled with inconsistencies and so unlike a man like Dr Kelly.
His year-long investigation culminated on Wednesday night at a meeting at which he proclaimed Dr Kelly had been murdered and set out his evidence.
Mr Baker told a packed community hall in Lewes: "I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that this could not be suicide.
"The medical evidence does not support it and David Kelly's state of mind and personality suggests otherwise.
It was not an accident so I am left with the conclusion that it is murder."
He told of how the world's leading WMD expert had spent the morning before his death sending "upbeat emails" and even booking himself a flight to Iraq from his rural home in Southmoor, near Oxford.
Mr Baker questioned the cause of death - a haemorrhage caused by cuts to the ulnar artery in the wrist.
He said such wounds were "matchstick thick" and hidden, difficult to get to, as well as rarely leading to death.
The knife said to have been used was a gardening pruner Dr Kelly had kept since childhood - an unlikely and blunt choice.
Paramedics have said he had lost little blood and was "incredibly unlikely" to have died from the wound they saw.
Police said 29 tablets of the painkiller Coproxamol were missing from his home but all that was found in Dr Kelly's stomach was the equivalent of one fifth of a tablet.
The MP told The Argus: "It has taken more than a year to investigate and it has been an incredible and fascinating journey which has taken a large number of twists and turns.
"I have met experts on weapons of mass destruction in Brussels and uncovered more evidence about the lies the Government told about weapons of mass destruction before the war."
Along the way Mr Baker has had personal run-ins with high-profile Government figures, not least Tony Blair.
He said: "I wouldn't say it has been easy, certainly the Foreign Office has done a lot to put obstacles in my way and other people have too. It has been hard work but at the same time it has been extremely worthwhile."
He has also been hugely encouraged by the public, who he claims can see Dr Kelly's death for what he says it was. Mr Baker said: "There is a world in Westminster and the rest of the world and I think most people in the public world can see that Dr Kelly was murdered.
"He was the world's foremost expert on weapons of mass destruction who could single-handedly destroy the Government's case for war so it was no wonder he was killed.
"It may have also been intended as a message to other people out there who speak to the press when the Government doesn't want you to.
"I was appalled at his death and at the Hutton Inquiry into it. It was a procedural disaster from start to finish and I felt compelled to look into it."
Mr Baker has signed a book deal to explain in greater detail his findings on Dr Kelly's death and he expects to publish it later this year.
But the MP insists he will continue to investigate.
He has nagging doubts about the official line taken over the recent Navy hostages taken in Iran and over the death of Robin Cook, the MP who resigned in protest at the Iraq war.
He said: "Robin Cook was on Ministry of Defence land, I believe, when he died and certainly I have doubts over what happened."
There are those, of course, who doubt Norman Baker's theories.
But for every person out there who does there are an equal number for whom the MP has become a beacon of truth in an increasingly murky world.
---
Friday, April 20, 2007
Petras & Finkelstein Debate the Primacy of the Pro - Israeli Lobby
Debating the Primacy of The Pro-Israel Lobby
The debate between James Petras and Norman Finkelstein
Intifada February 8, 2007
Hosted and produced by Hagit Borer for the SWANA (South and West Asia and North Africa) Collective of KPFK
Hagit Borer: There is little question in anybody's mind about the special relation between Israel and the United States. Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid to the tune of more than $3 billion dollars a year, plus miscellaneous additions like surplus weaponry, debt waivers and other perks. Israel is the only country that receives its entire aid package in the beginning of the fiscal year allowing it to accrue interest on it during the year. It is the only country which is allowed to spend up to 25% of its aid outside of the United States, placing such expenditures outside US control. Apart from financial support, the United States has offered unwavering support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine and for the ongoing oppression of the Palestinians, and has systematically supported Israel's refusal to make any effective peace negotiations or peace agreements. It has vetoed countless UN resolutions seeking to bring Israel into compliance with international law. It has allowed Israel to develop nuclear weapons and not to sign the nuclear anti-proliferation treaty and most recently it strongly supported Israel's attack on Lebanon in July of 2006. Support for Israel cuts across party lines and is extremely strong in Congress where criticism of Israel is rarely if ever heard. It also characterizes almost all American administrations from Johnson onwards, with George W. Bush being possible the most pro-Israel ever.
What is the reason for this strong support? Opinions on this matter vary greatly. Within strong pro-Israeli circles, one often hears that the reason is primarily moral: the debt that the United States owes Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust; the nature of Israel as the sole democracy in the Middle East; Israel as the moral and possible strategic ally of the United States in its War on Terror. Within circles that are less supportive of Israel and which are less inclined to view Israel and Israel's conduct as moral, opinions vary as well. One opinion stems from the position of Israel being a strategic ally of the United States - its support is simply payment for services rendered coupled with the stable pro-American stance of the Jewish Israeli population. Noam Chomsky, among others, is a proponent of this view. According to the opposing view, the United States' support for Israel does not advance American aims, it jeopardizes them. The explanation for the support is to be found in the activities of the Israel Lobby, also known as the Jewish Lobby, or as AIPAC (the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee), which uses its formidable influence to shape American foreign policy in accordance with Israeli interests. The opinion as most recently been associated with an article published in the London Book Review, co-authored by Professor Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Professor Walt of Harvard University.
This debate is the topic of our program today.
Let me introduce our guests: Norman Finkelstein is a professor of political science at De Paul University. Welcome to our program, Norman. Norman Finkelstein: Thank you.
Hagit Borer: Professor Finkelstein is the author of several books on the history of Zionism and the role of the Holocaust in present day Israeli policies. His latest book, published in 2005 , Beyond Chutzpah, on The Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.
Our second guest is James Petras. James is an Emeritus Professor of sociology at SUNY Binghampton. Welcome to our program, James.
James Petras: Glad to be here, Hagit.
Hagit Borer: Professor Petras is the author of numerous books on state power and the nature of globalization in the context of the US and Latin America, and most recently in the Middle East. His latest book, published in 2006, is titled The Power of Israel in the United States. Perhaps starting with you, James, perhaps you could tell us by way of a short opening statement where you would place yourself on this issue of a debate on the source of the United States lasting and enduring support for Israel.
James Petras: Well, I think I would probably argue that the pro-Israel lobby, the Zionist Lobby, is the dominant factor in shaping US policy in the Middle East, particularly in the most recent period. And I think one has to look at this beyond AIPAC. I mean, we have to look a whole string of pro-Zionist think tanks from the American Enterprise Institute on down, and then we have to look at a whole power configuration, which not only involves AIPAC, but also the President of the Major American Jewish Organizations, which number 52. We have to look at individuals occupying crucial positions in the government, as we had recently with Elliott Abrams and Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and others. We have to look at the army of op-ed writers who have access to the major newspapers. We have to look at the super-rich contributors to the Democratic Party, Media moguls etc. And I think this, together with the leverage in Congress and in the Executive, is the decisive factor in shaping US foreign policy in the Middle East. And I want to emphasize that.
Hagit Borer: James, just to stop you and maybe we can also have some kind of an opening statement from Norman.
Norman Finkelstein: Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I would say that I situate myself on the spectrum somewhere towards the middle. I don't think it is just the Lobby which determines the US relationship with Israel. And I don't think it is just US interests which determine the US relationship with Israel. I think that you have to look at the broad picture and then you have to look at the local picture. On the broad picture, that is to say, US policy in the Middle East generally speaking, the historical connection between the US and Israel has been based on the useful services that Israel has performed for the United States in the region as a whole. And that became most prominent in June 1967, when Israel knocked out the main challenge, or potential challenge, to US dominance in the region, namely Abdul Nasser of Egypt. So, on the broad question of the US-Israel relationship that is the regional relationship, I think it is correct to say that the alliance has been based fundamentally on services rendered. On the other hand, it is very clear from looking at the documentary record, that the US was euphoric when Israel knocked out Egypt - or knocked out Nasser and Nasserism, it is also clear from looking at the documentary record, that the United States has never had any big stake in trying to maintain Israel's control over the territories it conquered in the June 1967 war, that is to say, the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, the Syrian Golan Heights and, at that time, the Jordanian West Bank and Jerusalem. The US clearly had no stake in it and already from July 1967, wanted to apply pressures on Israel to commit itself from fully withdrawing. It was pretty obvious, if you look at the record again, that Israel, at that point, was able to bring to bear the Lobby. In 1967-68 it meant principally the forthcoming Presidential election and the Jewish vote. It was to bring to bear the power of the Jewish vote to resist efforts to withdraw. And since '67, the Lobby has been very effective, I think, in raising the threshold before the US is willing to act and force an Israeli withdrawal pretty much like the withdrawal it forced on Indonesia in 2000 to leave Timor. The two occupations begin in roughly the same period: in 1974, Indonesia invades Timor with the US green light and in 1967, Israel conquers the West Bank, Gaza and so forth with the US green light. And so the obvious question is: Both occupations endured for a long period. The Indonesian occupation was infinitely more destructive, killing more than one-third of the East Timorese population. But it is true to say come 2000 the US does order Indonesia to withdraw its troops. Why hasn''t it done so in the case of the Israel-Palestine occupation? And there I think its true to say, 'It's the Lobby'.
Hagit Borer: I have a feeling that one of the things we really need to start with when we try to address this issue is: What is it that we recognize, if we could recognize, on more or less a global level, as 'American Interests'? Such that we can say that they have so some degree systematically characterized different US Administrations. This is because it seems to me that it would be very difficult to evaluate to what extent policies that are going on with respect to Israel aren''t compatible with American interests, if we don't talk a little bit about what we perceive to be 'American interests'. So James, would you like to talk about that a little bit?
James Petras: Yes, I would. As a matter of fact, on that question, we have to be clear if we are talking about the US government and corporate interests in the Middle East, in particular, or if we are talking about what should be US interests.
Hagit Borer: Let's talk about what they are.Let's say, what the aims of various administrations are as opposed to what is in the best interest of either the American or the Israeli people, which may be very different.
James Petras: Very good. On that count, I think it is very clear that US policy is directed toward empire-building, extending its political, economic and military control over the world as a whole and, in particular, in the Middle East. And it pursues that policy, either through military means or through market mechanisms, such as the expansion of corporations, the capture of pliant client regimes, etc. And if we look at the Middle East, in particular, the US has been very successful in securing agreements with most of the oil-producing countries, except Iraq and Iran, and even there it is mainly because of its own rejection of relations with both those countries. US oil companies have done extremely well through non-military means. They have expanded their commercial ties- Goldman Sachs has just signed a big agreement with the biggest Saudi bank. Britain is organizing a secondary market in Islamic bonds. Wall Street is very interested in that. None of the oil companies supported a war in Iraq. And it is part of the rubbish that has been peddled - that the war was about oil. The oil companies were doing fabulously before the war and were very nervous about getting involved in a war. This, I think, leads us to the whole question of 'why then' if it was prejudicial to the major US economic interests. As we can see, there were many US military people who were opposed to going into Iraq because they felt it would prejudice the US overall military capacities to defend the Empire - just like the war in Viet Nam prejudiced the capacity of the US to intervene in Central America against the Sandinistas, against the overthrow of the Shah, etc. So from the point of view of global imperial interests, the war in Iraq was certainly not on the behest of the oil companies. I have looked at all the documents, I''ve done interviews with oil companies, I''ve looked at their publications for the five years in the run-up to the war and there is absolutely no evidence. On the contrary, if you pursue research on the various members of the Zionist power configuration in the United States, which I think is a conceptually more correct way of talking about this, rather than 'the Lobby', you will find that people of dubious loyalties, like Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle and Elliott Abrams - the felon, that had an agenda of furthering Israel's interests.
Hagit Borer: James, maybe we should go on with this: Basically if I understand what your are saying, your are suggesting that up to the point of getting involved militarily with Iraq, you would characterize American policies in the Middle East - you know, the Lobby notwithstanding, as extremely successful. So, I am just wondering.
James Petras: It's what we call 'market imperialism'.
Hagit Borer: Yes. Norman, do you want to comment on this?
Norman Finkelstein: Well. You have to look at the interests at many different levels. And unfortunately it becomes murky and complicated, where one would prefer a simple picture, I don't think it is all that simple when you try to figure it out. Number one, you have to look at the interests in terms of who is defining them. And, I agree, I think it is fairly obvious certainly to your listeners that there are different interests that are being defined by corporate power, or are being defined democratically by the desires and choices of ordinary people in any democratic system. So, lets limit ourselves to the first - the question of the corporate interests, since obviously they are playing the dominant role in determining US policy. Or it should be obvious, not that it always is.
Hagit Borer: Let's assume it is fairly obvious.
Norman Finkelstein: It's playing the determinant role. Then you have to look at 'how do they conceive the best way to preserve and expand their interests.' Now the way they perceive it may seem to a person like you and me to be irrational. It's that they are pursuing policies which are actually hurting them. But the fact that they may seem irrational to us, does not mean that that is the way they perceive these as the best way to preserve their interests. So you take the concrete case at hand. It may be the case that it was irrational for the US to go into Iraq because there are other ways to control the oil, or as some people have argued, that the market mechanisms are such that, on a world scale, you no longer need to control a natural resource in order to make sure you get the lowest price or make sure it is flowing at the lowest price. Control isn''t all that important anymore in the modern world. It is not like when Lenin was writing his Imperialism. Now that may be rationally correct and maybe there is a good argument for making it. But that doesn''t mean that those in power aren''t making decisions to further their own interests, which may seem irrational to us. In the case of Iraq, if you look concretely at what happens: Number 1 - There is no evidence, whatsoever, that people like Wolfowitz or the others were trying to further an Israeli agenda.
Hagit Borer: Let me interrupt. What would be the Israeli agenda, if there was one?
Norman Finkelstein: There is an Israeli agenda, and I am not disputing it. The Israeli agenda is basically the following: Israel does not care which country you smash up in the Middle East, just so long as, every few years and, sometimes, every few months you smash up this or that Arab country to send a lesson or to transmit the message to the Middle East that we are in charge and whenever you get out of line we are going to take out the 'big club' and break your skull. Now, it happens that in the late 1990's that Israel would have preferred the skull that was cracked would have been the Iranian one. There was no evidence that Iraq was upper most on the Israeli agenda. In fact, all of this talk about the famous document that was written up by these neo-cons to attack Iraq - that famous document - was handed to Netanyahu when he came to office to try convince him to put Iraq at the top of the agenda. It's not as if Israel passed that document to the neo-cons, who then plotted to get the US government to attack Iraq. It was the opposite. Israel would have preferred to attack Iran. However, once those in our government, maybe for misguided reasons for all I know, decided to fasten on to Iraq - that is to attack Iraq - Israel was of course 'gung ho' because Israel is always 'gung ho' about smashing up this or that Arab country. That has always been its policy for the last hundred years - since the beginning of Zionism. The most common place, the cliché of Israeli power is 'Arabs only understand the language of force'. So, when the US embarked on its campaign against Iraq, the Israelis were gleeful - but they are always gleeful. It doesn''t mean that people like Wolfowitz, let alone people like Cheney, are trying to serve an Israeli agenda. There is no evidence for claims like that. Its pure speculation based on things like ethnicity.
Lets take a simple example, that, I'll call him James, I don't usually call people by their first names, but Jim Petras mentioned.Let's take the case of Elliott Abrams. These are interesting cases. Elliott Abrams is the son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz. And Norman Podhoretz was the first big neo-conservative supporter of Israel, the editor of Commentary , the magazine. But if you look at people like Podhoretz, you look at their history, I'll take a book which I am sure Jim is familiar with, in 1967 Podhoretz publishes his famous memoir called Making It. It's how he succeeded and made it in American life. He was a young man and the editor of Commentary Magazine. You read that book, his celebrated memoir written two months before the June 1967 war, there is exactly one half of one sentence in the whole book on Israel. People like Podhoretz, Midge Decter, all the neo-cons.I have gone through the whole literature on the topic and have read it quite carefully. Before June 1967, they didn''t give a 'hoot' about Israel. Israel never comes up in any of their memoirs, in any of the histories of the period. They become pro-Israel when Israel is useful to them in their pursuit of power and fortune in the United States. Elliott Abrams is as committed to Israel as his father-in-law, Norman Podhoretz, was committed to Israel: When it is convenient and when it is useful. This idea of trying to serve an Israeli agenda, especially coming from somebody as sophisticated as Jim Petras, strikes me as absurd. He knows as well as I do that power.
Hagit Borer: Lets me just interrupt to let James.
James Petras: Its very strange that one says Wolfowitz was not influenced by the Israeli agenda when he was caught passing documents to Israel in the 1980's. And Douglas Feith lost his security clearance for handing documents to Israel. Elliott Abrams has written a book calling for maintaining the 'purity' of the Jewish race.
Norman Finkelstein: I know. They write that crap.and you believe them? Jim, do you think they care.?
James Petras: Its not a question of believing them, it's a question of looking at the documentary evidence of uncritical, support for Israel in all of its policies - A position that is taken by the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations. They give unconditional support! Hagit Borer: Let me perhaps interject here a little bit. I think that there a couple of things. One is.I am wondering, for instance, I don't know whether you would agree, James, with the particular Israeli interest that Norman had identified with respect to the invasion of Iraq. But assuming that you would agree that the Israeli interests is precisely that, namely to smash some Arab country mainly because it is a 'good idea'. James Petras: I think that's very superficial. Hagit Borer: The question is also.has it been in American interests? So we have seen America go after countries, which are sometimes, in terms of their power, are otherwise really quite negligible - just so as to make a point that anybody who dares to stand up to American power is just a bad example and needs to be smashed.
Norman Finkelstein: I totally agree with that.
James Petras: Israel was running guns to Iran as late as 1987 during the infamous Iran-Contra Scandal.To say that they weren''t interested in destroying Iraq as a challenge to Israel's hegemony and Iraq's support for the Palestinians, particularly funding the families of assassinated Palestinian leaders.that's absurd. And I think . Norman Finkelstein: Oh look. Hagit Borer: Could I stop you at this particular point.because we need to take a station break. James Petras: I want to answer your question. Hagit Borer: We will come back to it.At this point I think we should try to shift the topic a little bit and. James Petras: Let me finish my last comment. I think when the Pentagon offices are flooded, like a crowded bordello on Saturday night, with Israeli intelligence officers, crowding out even members of their own Pentagon staff - full of Mossad, full of Israeli generals, in the making of Iraq policy, I don't think you can say that they are 'just any old Pentagon officials'. I think you can't dismiss the fact that Feith, Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams have a lifetime commitment to putting Israel's interests as their prime consideration in the Middle East. I think it is absurd to think that somehow they just happen to be right-wing policy makers that happen to support a militarist policy. Wolfowitz designed the program. Feith put together the Office of Special Plans, the policy board that fabricated the information for the Iraq war. They were constantly consulting on a day-day, hour-to-hour basis with the Israeli government. This has absolutely been documented a hundred times and I think it is impossible to deny this and say 'Well, you can't deduce policy from ethnic affiliations." Yes, you can! When that ethnic group puts forward a position that puts the primacy of a foreign government at the center of their foreign policy and prejudices the lives of thousands of Americans.its economic interests in the area.then it's absurd to say, 'These are a bunch of irrational policy-makers.'
Hagit Borer: James, let me pursue this and actually go into a slightly different point. That is: Wouldn''t it be possible, you know, it's a question for both of you, for instance to think about whatever the neo-con group is.it's not a group that represents Israeli interests, it's a group which represents interests which 'happen' to perhaps coincide for both countries and which represent alliances of particular politicians in both countries with one another, and particular power configurations in both countries with one another - but not by any means - all Israeli politicians or the entire Israeli power structure - or all American politicians or all American power structures.
James Petras: Absolutely.
Hagit Borer: So in that case, these are not really American interests. These are just interests of a particular group of people, which is just as interested in bringing to effect in the United States as it is in Israel. Its just basically, if you wish, a wonderful symbiotic relationship. What would you say, Norman to something like that?
Norman Finkelstein: I''ve said in my remarks at the beginning that there is an overlapping of interests in a regional level for reasons for which, in part you suggested earlier. You said that the United States often goes after weak regimes as a kind of demonstration effect of its power and Israel also has a desire for demonstrating its power. Often there is an overlapping, or confluence, of interests. I think, however, its also true to say on the specific question on the occupation - there is a conflict of interests. Were there not a Lobby, its quite likely that the US would have exerted the kinds of pressures needed to force an Israeli withdrawal. On questions like Iraq and Iran, I don't see any evidence whatsoever, of its being driven by cloak in dagger type of operations in the Pentagon. These operations, which Jim mentions, are so trivial - next to the very high level planning that goes on between the United States and Israel, conscious, legal high-level planning on a daily basis. High level planning and high level coordination. You don't have to conjure up 'cloak and dagger' tales, many of them true, going on inside the Pentagon, in order to demonstrate there is collusion, planning and coordination between the United States and Israel. The question is not whether that goes on, the question is 'whose interests are being served by it?' There is this notion that somehow they are managing to distort and deform US policy in a crucial region, on a crucial resource, doesn''t, in my opinion, have any basis in fact. It defies any kind of reason or any kind of common sense reasoning - especially coming from, in my youth, I used to be a student of James Petras at SUNY Binghamton from 1971-74 and he used to be a Marxist and at that time he would tell you how people in power act from interests, which spring from .a basis in which they are the main beneficiaries.
Hagit Borer: Norman, let me ask you .
Norman Finkelstein: Just a second.Mr. Wolfowitz., Mr Feith and all the others.their power springs from the American state. If Israel gets stronger, their power does not increase. If the United States gets weaker, their power decreases. So now we are having this weird phenomenon of people, due to their ethnic loyalties, are willing to strengthen another state and thereby weaken the sources of power from which their power comes.that doesn''t sound believable. James Petras: This is a convoluted thinking. I am sure Norman didn''t take that logic from my classes. I'm afraid he has gone off the track somewhere - despite some very good books he has written on the Zionist 'shakedowns', on the Holocaust and the refutation of the plagiarism of Dershowitz. I am afraid that when it comes to dealing with the predominantly Jewish lobby, he has a certain blind spot, which is understandable. In many other national and ethnic groups - where they can criticize the world but when it comes to identifying the power and malfeasance of their own group..
Hagit Borer: I think maybe we should all.perhaps we can move away from this topic. OK?
James Petras: Let me finish my sentence. There is nothing 'cloak and dagger' about the multiplicity of pro-Israel groups, that have pressured Congress, that are involved in the executive body in shaping American policy in the Middle East. The US does not support any other colonial power, it has opposed colonial occupation/imperialism since World War II. They opposed the British occupation of the Suez in 1956/1955. They have been pushing these countries of Europe and other countries out in order to establish US hegemony through economic and military agreements. The policy with the Israelis is very different from the policies the US follows everywhere else in the world. It's the only country that gets $3 billion dollars a year for 30 years. This is not just something that happens because of 'cloak and dagger'. This is the result, as Norman knows - as a very brilliant analyst, from organized power, an organized power that openly admits and states very explicitly that Israel is their major concern.and 'what's good for Israel is good for the United States'. They say that, Norman. Norman Finkelstein: I know that. But regardless of what they say. Hagit Borer: Let me interrupt you. I need to do a station ID and maybe we could change the topic.
James Petras: OK. Norman was a good student of mine.
Hagit Borer: I think that at this point we can agree that you guys have a lot of mutual respect for each other. But obviously you do not agree on some topics. I wanted to move on to the question of whether there are in fact cases that show that when there are conflicts of interests, say between the US and Israel, that there are instances where the United States does in fact pressure Israel to at least in some cases to act in ways which are against what Israeli wishes would be. Because it seems to me that if we don't find cases along these lines, then basically the discussion becomes one of 'the eyes of the beholder'. We see a lot of cooperation, a lot of joint interest, but they could be coming from either side. If there are cases where perhaps there are interests, which part ways and where we can see in fact there is a discord that we can talk about. Norman, since you are the one who believes that this is a possibility, could you talk about that?
Norman Finkelstein: Well, the thing is: I don't want to make the argument that these kinds of individual cases can prove one side or the other. You pick up a book by Steve Zunes, and he is going to demonstrate that the US government always gets its way. You pick up something by somebody on the other side, and they are going to demonstrate that it's Israel that always gets its way when there are conflicts of interests. And each side can give a list of examples - to demonstrate his or her case. I don't think you can prove anything by citing a handful of cases on one side - Professor Chomsky will cite the recent case where Israel was severely reprimanded by Bush for trying to sell technology to China -and then you will find cases on the other side. Even though it's important to look at the empirical record, I don't think the empirical record - in and of itself- resolves the question. Let me give you a couple of examples of how I think it works: Let's take two prime examples. Let's start with 1948. Why did President Truman recognize Israel? There are all sorts of debate about that question. One claim that is constantly made was/is the role of the Jewish lobby. Namely Truman was heading for elections and wanted in particular, the New York vote.and the Democratic Party wanted Jewish money. It was due to the Jewish lobby of its time that Truman quickly recognized Israel, even though he was bound to alienate Arab interests which were very hostile to Israel's founding. What does the record show? I have gone through the record very carefully. The records shows: Number 1 - our main interest at that time was in Saudi oil and the US enters into discussions with the Saudis: 'What will you allow the US government to do regarding the founding of the state of Israel?' And the Saudis basically said the following: 'We will let you recognize Israel, but if you supply arms then there is going to be trouble. They are referring to arms after Israel was founded when there was an imminent war. What does the US do? It recognizes Israel, that is to say, it goes the limit. Truman goes the limit, because he wants that Jewish vote and he wants Jewish money. But he immediately slaps an arms embargo on the region. And the Secretary of State, Marshall, at the time says: 'It looks like Israel is going to lose the war.' That is what our intelligence tells us. We were wrong, but that is what US intelligence said at the time. So they were willing to let Israel be annihilated, because that's what our intelligence told us, if the price was losing the support of the Saudis. It is true that Truman went the limit - the limit was 'recognizing Israel' to get the Jewish vote, but he never went beyond the limit of alienating a prime US interest in the region, namely the Saudis. Let's take 1956, which Jim mentioned, but I don't think he knows what happened. In 1956, it's true - the United States told Britain, France and Israel - they had to get out of Egypt. And its true, we looked very anti-colonial. But the only reason the United States did that was because the British, the French and the Israelis acted behind the back of the United States. The very moment the tri-partite invasion of Egypt occurred, the US was plotting to overthrow the government of Syria. And the US wanted to knock-out Nasser, but they didn''t like the timing - because the timing was not the US choosing but rather the British, French and Israelis behind our backs. Once again it was the US interests that determined US policy, not any commitment to anti-colonialism or crap like that. It was the US interest.
James Petras: He's had five minutes already. I demand equal time. He's been giving us long lectures. If you look at US policy toward Israel, the US alienates practically the whole world in favor of a tiny country, which has practically no economic value to the United States, which is a diplomatic albatross and has its own hegemonic, military and political interests in dominating the Middle East. We go into the United Nations and we alienate the whole of Europe and the Third World when Israel destroys Jenin, when it engages in genocidal policies in the Occupied Territories, when it violates the Geneva Agreements. The US backs it and totally discredits itself before anyone seriously concerned with international law, with the niceties of international relations. I am not just talking about Moslem opinion, Arab opinion.I am talking about world opinion. Secondly, to say that the United States has overlapping interests with Israel is totally 'off the wall', I mean - I don't know where Norman's head is. The United States gets involved in countries to set up neo-colonial regimes. They are not into occupying and setting up colonial governments. They'd prefer local clients. And they had one in Lebanon - with the President (Fouad) Sinoria - who was receiving US backing when Israel attacks Lebanon, presumably to attack Hezbollah - but totally undermines the US puppet. Is that is US interests?
Norman Finkelstein: Yes.
James Petras: And when you talk about the fact that Israel is taking measures, overlapping with US policy-makers, you are overlooking the fact that most of the US generals were opposed to the war in Iraq and the Israeli agents in the United States, and that's what they are and they should register themselves as agents of a foreign power, were attacking them (the generals) as wimps, attacking them because they wouldn''t follow the war precepts of the Zionists in the Pentagon. There is a whole string of military officials and conservative politicians who were opposed to going into Iraq. And if you look at the data .if you look at Cheney, Cheney was getting his from Irving (Scooter) Libby - another landsman, another member of the fraternity linked to Wolfowitz. He's a protégé of Wolfowitz.
Norman Finkelstein: I think Cheney can think for himself.
James Petras: Look, if you are trying to set up a matrix of power, dealing with US policy-making in the Middle East, to simply say that this is 'shared interests' without looking at the fact that the Israelis blew up a US surveillance ship, killing scores of US sailors and get away with it and continue to get US economic aid and the US officers that were wounded or murdered by the Israeli warplanes, with US flags flying over the ship, and say.that's overlapping interests. That's chutzpah! That is really chutzpah. And it is very revealing that you went into a detailed explanation, or purported to be explanation, about the Suez, that you leave out that in 1967 the Israelis are the only country in US history that bombs a US ship and doesn''t even have to apologize - and receives no retaliation from the United States. Now that is 'power' for you. That's 'influence' for you. And I thank to deny these realities.and say: 'this is just overlapping interests, the Zionists have no power in the US government or if they are Zionists then they are not tied to Israel etc..' That's a strange kind of Zionist that doesn''t have allegiance to the state of Israel.
Hagit Borer: We have only five minutes left. I want to ask you about a couple of things that I want the cover. Maybe the most important one has to do with the fact that this debate, about the Israel Lobby in general has broken surface into the mainstream in the last year or so. Of course, a lot of it had to do with the Mearsheimer and Walt article, and subsequently, let's say, by the attacks on Carter's book. There were attacks before and reviews and debates about the role of the Lobby before. But they never made it too the mainstream and they were never reviewed by, lets say, the New York Review of Books, and they were never discussed by major outlets in the United States. In fact the Mearsheimer and Walt article originally was turned down for publication by the Atlantic Magazine that had commissioned it. So maybe you can comment a little bit about why this debate is finally breaking surface and why is it that it is now a much more legitimate thing to debate within American mainstream circles.
James Petras: I'll give your three fast reasons: One, because of the disaster in Iraq, the public is open to discussion, particularly with the prominence of Zionists in bringing about the war - so I think you have public opinion open because of the discontent with the war and their concern about who got us into the war and into this mess. Second reason is that there is an inter-elite fight in the United States, between sectors of the military, sectors of the Congress, conservatives versus the pro-Israel crowd, the pro-war crowd. And the third reason is the arrogance and bullying by the Zionists, in particular, their organizations that go around trying to prevent this discussion has backfired and I think people are fed up with the Zionist banning (the play about Rachel) Corrie in New York and elsewhere - so I think these are the reasons.
Hagit Borer: James, we have to move on. We have only a few minutes. We have only a minute and a half. So Norman, could you say some final words?
Norman Finkelstein: Well, I agree with the reasons.maybe I wouldn''t state them the same way as Jim does. Its clear that the debacle in Iraq forms the overall framework for the opening up of discussion. In my opinion, that's probably not the most positive result because its going to end up with, I think, creating a 'scapegoat' for disastrous war by the US. I think the second reason is that the Israeli approach which seemed to have been successful since 1967, the approach of simply applying force to every break in conformity with US policy, of applying overwhelming force, plainly is not working. And so there are questions about the 'usefulness' of Israel's guidance and instruction in how to control the Middle East. It has not worked in Iraq and it proved to be a disaster in Lebanon this summer (July-August 2006). So there is a question about the 'effectiveness' of the Israeli approach, in addition to the effectiveness of Israel itself as a 'strategic asset', which is very different than it was in 1967. And the third reason, it seems to me is that, Israel is becoming more and more what you might call a 'bloated banana republic' with scandals daily and this kind of squandering of resources and that being the case - it has alienated large sectors of American 'liberal' Jewish opinion.
Hagit Borer: I thank you very much, James and Norman. I think on this point of accord between you, we need to end. Thank you so very much for being here.
Quite independently of this blog, Blogger Xymphora wrote:
Watch Finkelstein do the Chomsky
This is sad. Norman Finkelstein, who has done such important work in ripping Dershowitz apart – admittedly, an absurdly easy task – shows his true colors as a ‘Zionist lite’ and feebly attempts to make the argument, against mountains of conclusive evidence to the contrary, that the Lobby wasn’t really behind the attack on Iraq. Fortunately for truth and sheer decency, he is up against James Petras, who rips every one of Finkelstein’s pathetic arguments to shreds without even raising a sweat. You can see how important the Lobby is for Zionists when someone like Finkelstein has to look like a fool in order to protect it. Finkelstein even mentions my old friend Lenin, and the single most ridiculous of the Chomsky arguments, regarding Israeli arms deals to China, an issue I must return to (as, contrary to Chomsky’s desperate argument, the facts regarding covert Israeli sales of secret American military technology to China so conclusively proves the power of the Lobby).
The debate between James Petras and Norman Finkelstein
Intifada February 8, 2007
Hosted and produced by Hagit Borer for the SWANA (South and West Asia and North Africa) Collective of KPFK
Hagit Borer: There is little question in anybody's mind about the special relation between Israel and the United States. Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid to the tune of more than $3 billion dollars a year, plus miscellaneous additions like surplus weaponry, debt waivers and other perks. Israel is the only country that receives its entire aid package in the beginning of the fiscal year allowing it to accrue interest on it during the year. It is the only country which is allowed to spend up to 25% of its aid outside of the United States, placing such expenditures outside US control. Apart from financial support, the United States has offered unwavering support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine and for the ongoing oppression of the Palestinians, and has systematically supported Israel's refusal to make any effective peace negotiations or peace agreements. It has vetoed countless UN resolutions seeking to bring Israel into compliance with international law. It has allowed Israel to develop nuclear weapons and not to sign the nuclear anti-proliferation treaty and most recently it strongly supported Israel's attack on Lebanon in July of 2006. Support for Israel cuts across party lines and is extremely strong in Congress where criticism of Israel is rarely if ever heard. It also characterizes almost all American administrations from Johnson onwards, with George W. Bush being possible the most pro-Israel ever.
What is the reason for this strong support? Opinions on this matter vary greatly. Within strong pro-Israeli circles, one often hears that the reason is primarily moral: the debt that the United States owes Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust; the nature of Israel as the sole democracy in the Middle East; Israel as the moral and possible strategic ally of the United States in its War on Terror. Within circles that are less supportive of Israel and which are less inclined to view Israel and Israel's conduct as moral, opinions vary as well. One opinion stems from the position of Israel being a strategic ally of the United States - its support is simply payment for services rendered coupled with the stable pro-American stance of the Jewish Israeli population. Noam Chomsky, among others, is a proponent of this view. According to the opposing view, the United States' support for Israel does not advance American aims, it jeopardizes them. The explanation for the support is to be found in the activities of the Israel Lobby, also known as the Jewish Lobby, or as AIPAC (the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee), which uses its formidable influence to shape American foreign policy in accordance with Israeli interests. The opinion as most recently been associated with an article published in the London Book Review, co-authored by Professor Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Professor Walt of Harvard University.
This debate is the topic of our program today.
Let me introduce our guests: Norman Finkelstein is a professor of political science at De Paul University. Welcome to our program, Norman. Norman Finkelstein: Thank you.
Hagit Borer: Professor Finkelstein is the author of several books on the history of Zionism and the role of the Holocaust in present day Israeli policies. His latest book, published in 2005 , Beyond Chutzpah, on The Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.
Our second guest is James Petras. James is an Emeritus Professor of sociology at SUNY Binghampton. Welcome to our program, James.
James Petras: Glad to be here, Hagit.
Hagit Borer: Professor Petras is the author of numerous books on state power and the nature of globalization in the context of the US and Latin America, and most recently in the Middle East. His latest book, published in 2006, is titled The Power of Israel in the United States. Perhaps starting with you, James, perhaps you could tell us by way of a short opening statement where you would place yourself on this issue of a debate on the source of the United States lasting and enduring support for Israel.
James Petras: Well, I think I would probably argue that the pro-Israel lobby, the Zionist Lobby, is the dominant factor in shaping US policy in the Middle East, particularly in the most recent period. And I think one has to look at this beyond AIPAC. I mean, we have to look a whole string of pro-Zionist think tanks from the American Enterprise Institute on down, and then we have to look at a whole power configuration, which not only involves AIPAC, but also the President of the Major American Jewish Organizations, which number 52. We have to look at individuals occupying crucial positions in the government, as we had recently with Elliott Abrams and Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and others. We have to look at the army of op-ed writers who have access to the major newspapers. We have to look at the super-rich contributors to the Democratic Party, Media moguls etc. And I think this, together with the leverage in Congress and in the Executive, is the decisive factor in shaping US foreign policy in the Middle East. And I want to emphasize that.
Hagit Borer: James, just to stop you and maybe we can also have some kind of an opening statement from Norman.
Norman Finkelstein: Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I would say that I situate myself on the spectrum somewhere towards the middle. I don't think it is just the Lobby which determines the US relationship with Israel. And I don't think it is just US interests which determine the US relationship with Israel. I think that you have to look at the broad picture and then you have to look at the local picture. On the broad picture, that is to say, US policy in the Middle East generally speaking, the historical connection between the US and Israel has been based on the useful services that Israel has performed for the United States in the region as a whole. And that became most prominent in June 1967, when Israel knocked out the main challenge, or potential challenge, to US dominance in the region, namely Abdul Nasser of Egypt. So, on the broad question of the US-Israel relationship that is the regional relationship, I think it is correct to say that the alliance has been based fundamentally on services rendered. On the other hand, it is very clear from looking at the documentary record, that the US was euphoric when Israel knocked out Egypt - or knocked out Nasser and Nasserism, it is also clear from looking at the documentary record, that the United States has never had any big stake in trying to maintain Israel's control over the territories it conquered in the June 1967 war, that is to say, the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, the Syrian Golan Heights and, at that time, the Jordanian West Bank and Jerusalem. The US clearly had no stake in it and already from July 1967, wanted to apply pressures on Israel to commit itself from fully withdrawing. It was pretty obvious, if you look at the record again, that Israel, at that point, was able to bring to bear the Lobby. In 1967-68 it meant principally the forthcoming Presidential election and the Jewish vote. It was to bring to bear the power of the Jewish vote to resist efforts to withdraw. And since '67, the Lobby has been very effective, I think, in raising the threshold before the US is willing to act and force an Israeli withdrawal pretty much like the withdrawal it forced on Indonesia in 2000 to leave Timor. The two occupations begin in roughly the same period: in 1974, Indonesia invades Timor with the US green light and in 1967, Israel conquers the West Bank, Gaza and so forth with the US green light. And so the obvious question is: Both occupations endured for a long period. The Indonesian occupation was infinitely more destructive, killing more than one-third of the East Timorese population. But it is true to say come 2000 the US does order Indonesia to withdraw its troops. Why hasn''t it done so in the case of the Israel-Palestine occupation? And there I think its true to say, 'It's the Lobby'.
Hagit Borer: I have a feeling that one of the things we really need to start with when we try to address this issue is: What is it that we recognize, if we could recognize, on more or less a global level, as 'American Interests'? Such that we can say that they have so some degree systematically characterized different US Administrations. This is because it seems to me that it would be very difficult to evaluate to what extent policies that are going on with respect to Israel aren''t compatible with American interests, if we don't talk a little bit about what we perceive to be 'American interests'. So James, would you like to talk about that a little bit?
James Petras: Yes, I would. As a matter of fact, on that question, we have to be clear if we are talking about the US government and corporate interests in the Middle East, in particular, or if we are talking about what should be US interests.
Hagit Borer: Let's talk about what they are.Let's say, what the aims of various administrations are as opposed to what is in the best interest of either the American or the Israeli people, which may be very different.
James Petras: Very good. On that count, I think it is very clear that US policy is directed toward empire-building, extending its political, economic and military control over the world as a whole and, in particular, in the Middle East. And it pursues that policy, either through military means or through market mechanisms, such as the expansion of corporations, the capture of pliant client regimes, etc. And if we look at the Middle East, in particular, the US has been very successful in securing agreements with most of the oil-producing countries, except Iraq and Iran, and even there it is mainly because of its own rejection of relations with both those countries. US oil companies have done extremely well through non-military means. They have expanded their commercial ties- Goldman Sachs has just signed a big agreement with the biggest Saudi bank. Britain is organizing a secondary market in Islamic bonds. Wall Street is very interested in that. None of the oil companies supported a war in Iraq. And it is part of the rubbish that has been peddled - that the war was about oil. The oil companies were doing fabulously before the war and were very nervous about getting involved in a war. This, I think, leads us to the whole question of 'why then' if it was prejudicial to the major US economic interests. As we can see, there were many US military people who were opposed to going into Iraq because they felt it would prejudice the US overall military capacities to defend the Empire - just like the war in Viet Nam prejudiced the capacity of the US to intervene in Central America against the Sandinistas, against the overthrow of the Shah, etc. So from the point of view of global imperial interests, the war in Iraq was certainly not on the behest of the oil companies. I have looked at all the documents, I''ve done interviews with oil companies, I''ve looked at their publications for the five years in the run-up to the war and there is absolutely no evidence. On the contrary, if you pursue research on the various members of the Zionist power configuration in the United States, which I think is a conceptually more correct way of talking about this, rather than 'the Lobby', you will find that people of dubious loyalties, like Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle and Elliott Abrams - the felon, that had an agenda of furthering Israel's interests.
Hagit Borer: James, maybe we should go on with this: Basically if I understand what your are saying, your are suggesting that up to the point of getting involved militarily with Iraq, you would characterize American policies in the Middle East - you know, the Lobby notwithstanding, as extremely successful. So, I am just wondering.
James Petras: It's what we call 'market imperialism'.
Hagit Borer: Yes. Norman, do you want to comment on this?
Norman Finkelstein: Well. You have to look at the interests at many different levels. And unfortunately it becomes murky and complicated, where one would prefer a simple picture, I don't think it is all that simple when you try to figure it out. Number one, you have to look at the interests in terms of who is defining them. And, I agree, I think it is fairly obvious certainly to your listeners that there are different interests that are being defined by corporate power, or are being defined democratically by the desires and choices of ordinary people in any democratic system. So, lets limit ourselves to the first - the question of the corporate interests, since obviously they are playing the dominant role in determining US policy. Or it should be obvious, not that it always is.
Hagit Borer: Let's assume it is fairly obvious.
Norman Finkelstein: It's playing the determinant role. Then you have to look at 'how do they conceive the best way to preserve and expand their interests.' Now the way they perceive it may seem to a person like you and me to be irrational. It's that they are pursuing policies which are actually hurting them. But the fact that they may seem irrational to us, does not mean that that is the way they perceive these as the best way to preserve their interests. So you take the concrete case at hand. It may be the case that it was irrational for the US to go into Iraq because there are other ways to control the oil, or as some people have argued, that the market mechanisms are such that, on a world scale, you no longer need to control a natural resource in order to make sure you get the lowest price or make sure it is flowing at the lowest price. Control isn''t all that important anymore in the modern world. It is not like when Lenin was writing his Imperialism. Now that may be rationally correct and maybe there is a good argument for making it. But that doesn''t mean that those in power aren''t making decisions to further their own interests, which may seem irrational to us. In the case of Iraq, if you look concretely at what happens: Number 1 - There is no evidence, whatsoever, that people like Wolfowitz or the others were trying to further an Israeli agenda.
Hagit Borer: Let me interrupt. What would be the Israeli agenda, if there was one?
Norman Finkelstein: There is an Israeli agenda, and I am not disputing it. The Israeli agenda is basically the following: Israel does not care which country you smash up in the Middle East, just so long as, every few years and, sometimes, every few months you smash up this or that Arab country to send a lesson or to transmit the message to the Middle East that we are in charge and whenever you get out of line we are going to take out the 'big club' and break your skull. Now, it happens that in the late 1990's that Israel would have preferred the skull that was cracked would have been the Iranian one. There was no evidence that Iraq was upper most on the Israeli agenda. In fact, all of this talk about the famous document that was written up by these neo-cons to attack Iraq - that famous document - was handed to Netanyahu when he came to office to try convince him to put Iraq at the top of the agenda. It's not as if Israel passed that document to the neo-cons, who then plotted to get the US government to attack Iraq. It was the opposite. Israel would have preferred to attack Iran. However, once those in our government, maybe for misguided reasons for all I know, decided to fasten on to Iraq - that is to attack Iraq - Israel was of course 'gung ho' because Israel is always 'gung ho' about smashing up this or that Arab country. That has always been its policy for the last hundred years - since the beginning of Zionism. The most common place, the cliché of Israeli power is 'Arabs only understand the language of force'. So, when the US embarked on its campaign against Iraq, the Israelis were gleeful - but they are always gleeful. It doesn''t mean that people like Wolfowitz, let alone people like Cheney, are trying to serve an Israeli agenda. There is no evidence for claims like that. Its pure speculation based on things like ethnicity.
Lets take a simple example, that, I'll call him James, I don't usually call people by their first names, but Jim Petras mentioned.Let's take the case of Elliott Abrams. These are interesting cases. Elliott Abrams is the son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz. And Norman Podhoretz was the first big neo-conservative supporter of Israel, the editor of Commentary , the magazine. But if you look at people like Podhoretz, you look at their history, I'll take a book which I am sure Jim is familiar with, in 1967 Podhoretz publishes his famous memoir called Making It. It's how he succeeded and made it in American life. He was a young man and the editor of Commentary Magazine. You read that book, his celebrated memoir written two months before the June 1967 war, there is exactly one half of one sentence in the whole book on Israel. People like Podhoretz, Midge Decter, all the neo-cons.I have gone through the whole literature on the topic and have read it quite carefully. Before June 1967, they didn''t give a 'hoot' about Israel. Israel never comes up in any of their memoirs, in any of the histories of the period. They become pro-Israel when Israel is useful to them in their pursuit of power and fortune in the United States. Elliott Abrams is as committed to Israel as his father-in-law, Norman Podhoretz, was committed to Israel: When it is convenient and when it is useful. This idea of trying to serve an Israeli agenda, especially coming from somebody as sophisticated as Jim Petras, strikes me as absurd. He knows as well as I do that power.
Hagit Borer: Lets me just interrupt to let James.
James Petras: Its very strange that one says Wolfowitz was not influenced by the Israeli agenda when he was caught passing documents to Israel in the 1980's. And Douglas Feith lost his security clearance for handing documents to Israel. Elliott Abrams has written a book calling for maintaining the 'purity' of the Jewish race.
Norman Finkelstein: I know. They write that crap.and you believe them? Jim, do you think they care.?
James Petras: Its not a question of believing them, it's a question of looking at the documentary evidence of uncritical, support for Israel in all of its policies - A position that is taken by the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations. They give unconditional support! Hagit Borer: Let me perhaps interject here a little bit. I think that there a couple of things. One is.I am wondering, for instance, I don't know whether you would agree, James, with the particular Israeli interest that Norman had identified with respect to the invasion of Iraq. But assuming that you would agree that the Israeli interests is precisely that, namely to smash some Arab country mainly because it is a 'good idea'. James Petras: I think that's very superficial. Hagit Borer: The question is also.has it been in American interests? So we have seen America go after countries, which are sometimes, in terms of their power, are otherwise really quite negligible - just so as to make a point that anybody who dares to stand up to American power is just a bad example and needs to be smashed.
Norman Finkelstein: I totally agree with that.
James Petras: Israel was running guns to Iran as late as 1987 during the infamous Iran-Contra Scandal.To say that they weren''t interested in destroying Iraq as a challenge to Israel's hegemony and Iraq's support for the Palestinians, particularly funding the families of assassinated Palestinian leaders.that's absurd. And I think . Norman Finkelstein: Oh look. Hagit Borer: Could I stop you at this particular point.because we need to take a station break. James Petras: I want to answer your question. Hagit Borer: We will come back to it.At this point I think we should try to shift the topic a little bit and. James Petras: Let me finish my last comment. I think when the Pentagon offices are flooded, like a crowded bordello on Saturday night, with Israeli intelligence officers, crowding out even members of their own Pentagon staff - full of Mossad, full of Israeli generals, in the making of Iraq policy, I don't think you can say that they are 'just any old Pentagon officials'. I think you can't dismiss the fact that Feith, Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams have a lifetime commitment to putting Israel's interests as their prime consideration in the Middle East. I think it is absurd to think that somehow they just happen to be right-wing policy makers that happen to support a militarist policy. Wolfowitz designed the program. Feith put together the Office of Special Plans, the policy board that fabricated the information for the Iraq war. They were constantly consulting on a day-day, hour-to-hour basis with the Israeli government. This has absolutely been documented a hundred times and I think it is impossible to deny this and say 'Well, you can't deduce policy from ethnic affiliations." Yes, you can! When that ethnic group puts forward a position that puts the primacy of a foreign government at the center of their foreign policy and prejudices the lives of thousands of Americans.its economic interests in the area.then it's absurd to say, 'These are a bunch of irrational policy-makers.'
Hagit Borer: James, let me pursue this and actually go into a slightly different point. That is: Wouldn''t it be possible, you know, it's a question for both of you, for instance to think about whatever the neo-con group is.it's not a group that represents Israeli interests, it's a group which represents interests which 'happen' to perhaps coincide for both countries and which represent alliances of particular politicians in both countries with one another, and particular power configurations in both countries with one another - but not by any means - all Israeli politicians or the entire Israeli power structure - or all American politicians or all American power structures.
James Petras: Absolutely.
Hagit Borer: So in that case, these are not really American interests. These are just interests of a particular group of people, which is just as interested in bringing to effect in the United States as it is in Israel. Its just basically, if you wish, a wonderful symbiotic relationship. What would you say, Norman to something like that?
Norman Finkelstein: I''ve said in my remarks at the beginning that there is an overlapping of interests in a regional level for reasons for which, in part you suggested earlier. You said that the United States often goes after weak regimes as a kind of demonstration effect of its power and Israel also has a desire for demonstrating its power. Often there is an overlapping, or confluence, of interests. I think, however, its also true to say on the specific question on the occupation - there is a conflict of interests. Were there not a Lobby, its quite likely that the US would have exerted the kinds of pressures needed to force an Israeli withdrawal. On questions like Iraq and Iran, I don't see any evidence whatsoever, of its being driven by cloak in dagger type of operations in the Pentagon. These operations, which Jim mentions, are so trivial - next to the very high level planning that goes on between the United States and Israel, conscious, legal high-level planning on a daily basis. High level planning and high level coordination. You don't have to conjure up 'cloak and dagger' tales, many of them true, going on inside the Pentagon, in order to demonstrate there is collusion, planning and coordination between the United States and Israel. The question is not whether that goes on, the question is 'whose interests are being served by it?' There is this notion that somehow they are managing to distort and deform US policy in a crucial region, on a crucial resource, doesn''t, in my opinion, have any basis in fact. It defies any kind of reason or any kind of common sense reasoning - especially coming from, in my youth, I used to be a student of James Petras at SUNY Binghamton from 1971-74 and he used to be a Marxist and at that time he would tell you how people in power act from interests, which spring from .a basis in which they are the main beneficiaries.
Hagit Borer: Norman, let me ask you .
Norman Finkelstein: Just a second.Mr. Wolfowitz., Mr Feith and all the others.their power springs from the American state. If Israel gets stronger, their power does not increase. If the United States gets weaker, their power decreases. So now we are having this weird phenomenon of people, due to their ethnic loyalties, are willing to strengthen another state and thereby weaken the sources of power from which their power comes.that doesn''t sound believable. James Petras: This is a convoluted thinking. I am sure Norman didn''t take that logic from my classes. I'm afraid he has gone off the track somewhere - despite some very good books he has written on the Zionist 'shakedowns', on the Holocaust and the refutation of the plagiarism of Dershowitz. I am afraid that when it comes to dealing with the predominantly Jewish lobby, he has a certain blind spot, which is understandable. In many other national and ethnic groups - where they can criticize the world but when it comes to identifying the power and malfeasance of their own group..
Hagit Borer: I think maybe we should all.perhaps we can move away from this topic. OK?
James Petras: Let me finish my sentence. There is nothing 'cloak and dagger' about the multiplicity of pro-Israel groups, that have pressured Congress, that are involved in the executive body in shaping American policy in the Middle East. The US does not support any other colonial power, it has opposed colonial occupation/imperialism since World War II. They opposed the British occupation of the Suez in 1956/1955. They have been pushing these countries of Europe and other countries out in order to establish US hegemony through economic and military agreements. The policy with the Israelis is very different from the policies the US follows everywhere else in the world. It's the only country that gets $3 billion dollars a year for 30 years. This is not just something that happens because of 'cloak and dagger'. This is the result, as Norman knows - as a very brilliant analyst, from organized power, an organized power that openly admits and states very explicitly that Israel is their major concern.and 'what's good for Israel is good for the United States'. They say that, Norman. Norman Finkelstein: I know that. But regardless of what they say. Hagit Borer: Let me interrupt you. I need to do a station ID and maybe we could change the topic.
James Petras: OK. Norman was a good student of mine.
Hagit Borer: I think that at this point we can agree that you guys have a lot of mutual respect for each other. But obviously you do not agree on some topics. I wanted to move on to the question of whether there are in fact cases that show that when there are conflicts of interests, say between the US and Israel, that there are instances where the United States does in fact pressure Israel to at least in some cases to act in ways which are against what Israeli wishes would be. Because it seems to me that if we don't find cases along these lines, then basically the discussion becomes one of 'the eyes of the beholder'. We see a lot of cooperation, a lot of joint interest, but they could be coming from either side. If there are cases where perhaps there are interests, which part ways and where we can see in fact there is a discord that we can talk about. Norman, since you are the one who believes that this is a possibility, could you talk about that?
Norman Finkelstein: Well, the thing is: I don't want to make the argument that these kinds of individual cases can prove one side or the other. You pick up a book by Steve Zunes, and he is going to demonstrate that the US government always gets its way. You pick up something by somebody on the other side, and they are going to demonstrate that it's Israel that always gets its way when there are conflicts of interests. And each side can give a list of examples - to demonstrate his or her case. I don't think you can prove anything by citing a handful of cases on one side - Professor Chomsky will cite the recent case where Israel was severely reprimanded by Bush for trying to sell technology to China -and then you will find cases on the other side. Even though it's important to look at the empirical record, I don't think the empirical record - in and of itself- resolves the question. Let me give you a couple of examples of how I think it works: Let's take two prime examples. Let's start with 1948. Why did President Truman recognize Israel? There are all sorts of debate about that question. One claim that is constantly made was/is the role of the Jewish lobby. Namely Truman was heading for elections and wanted in particular, the New York vote.and the Democratic Party wanted Jewish money. It was due to the Jewish lobby of its time that Truman quickly recognized Israel, even though he was bound to alienate Arab interests which were very hostile to Israel's founding. What does the record show? I have gone through the record very carefully. The records shows: Number 1 - our main interest at that time was in Saudi oil and the US enters into discussions with the Saudis: 'What will you allow the US government to do regarding the founding of the state of Israel?' And the Saudis basically said the following: 'We will let you recognize Israel, but if you supply arms then there is going to be trouble. They are referring to arms after Israel was founded when there was an imminent war. What does the US do? It recognizes Israel, that is to say, it goes the limit. Truman goes the limit, because he wants that Jewish vote and he wants Jewish money. But he immediately slaps an arms embargo on the region. And the Secretary of State, Marshall, at the time says: 'It looks like Israel is going to lose the war.' That is what our intelligence tells us. We were wrong, but that is what US intelligence said at the time. So they were willing to let Israel be annihilated, because that's what our intelligence told us, if the price was losing the support of the Saudis. It is true that Truman went the limit - the limit was 'recognizing Israel' to get the Jewish vote, but he never went beyond the limit of alienating a prime US interest in the region, namely the Saudis. Let's take 1956, which Jim mentioned, but I don't think he knows what happened. In 1956, it's true - the United States told Britain, France and Israel - they had to get out of Egypt. And its true, we looked very anti-colonial. But the only reason the United States did that was because the British, the French and the Israelis acted behind the back of the United States. The very moment the tri-partite invasion of Egypt occurred, the US was plotting to overthrow the government of Syria. And the US wanted to knock-out Nasser, but they didn''t like the timing - because the timing was not the US choosing but rather the British, French and Israelis behind our backs. Once again it was the US interests that determined US policy, not any commitment to anti-colonialism or crap like that. It was the US interest.
James Petras: He's had five minutes already. I demand equal time. He's been giving us long lectures. If you look at US policy toward Israel, the US alienates practically the whole world in favor of a tiny country, which has practically no economic value to the United States, which is a diplomatic albatross and has its own hegemonic, military and political interests in dominating the Middle East. We go into the United Nations and we alienate the whole of Europe and the Third World when Israel destroys Jenin, when it engages in genocidal policies in the Occupied Territories, when it violates the Geneva Agreements. The US backs it and totally discredits itself before anyone seriously concerned with international law, with the niceties of international relations. I am not just talking about Moslem opinion, Arab opinion.I am talking about world opinion. Secondly, to say that the United States has overlapping interests with Israel is totally 'off the wall', I mean - I don't know where Norman's head is. The United States gets involved in countries to set up neo-colonial regimes. They are not into occupying and setting up colonial governments. They'd prefer local clients. And they had one in Lebanon - with the President (Fouad) Sinoria - who was receiving US backing when Israel attacks Lebanon, presumably to attack Hezbollah - but totally undermines the US puppet. Is that is US interests?
Norman Finkelstein: Yes.
James Petras: And when you talk about the fact that Israel is taking measures, overlapping with US policy-makers, you are overlooking the fact that most of the US generals were opposed to the war in Iraq and the Israeli agents in the United States, and that's what they are and they should register themselves as agents of a foreign power, were attacking them (the generals) as wimps, attacking them because they wouldn''t follow the war precepts of the Zionists in the Pentagon. There is a whole string of military officials and conservative politicians who were opposed to going into Iraq. And if you look at the data .if you look at Cheney, Cheney was getting his from Irving (Scooter) Libby - another landsman, another member of the fraternity linked to Wolfowitz. He's a protégé of Wolfowitz.
Norman Finkelstein: I think Cheney can think for himself.
James Petras: Look, if you are trying to set up a matrix of power, dealing with US policy-making in the Middle East, to simply say that this is 'shared interests' without looking at the fact that the Israelis blew up a US surveillance ship, killing scores of US sailors and get away with it and continue to get US economic aid and the US officers that were wounded or murdered by the Israeli warplanes, with US flags flying over the ship, and say.that's overlapping interests. That's chutzpah! That is really chutzpah. And it is very revealing that you went into a detailed explanation, or purported to be explanation, about the Suez, that you leave out that in 1967 the Israelis are the only country in US history that bombs a US ship and doesn''t even have to apologize - and receives no retaliation from the United States. Now that is 'power' for you. That's 'influence' for you. And I thank to deny these realities.and say: 'this is just overlapping interests, the Zionists have no power in the US government or if they are Zionists then they are not tied to Israel etc..' That's a strange kind of Zionist that doesn''t have allegiance to the state of Israel.
Hagit Borer: We have only five minutes left. I want to ask you about a couple of things that I want the cover. Maybe the most important one has to do with the fact that this debate, about the Israel Lobby in general has broken surface into the mainstream in the last year or so. Of course, a lot of it had to do with the Mearsheimer and Walt article, and subsequently, let's say, by the attacks on Carter's book. There were attacks before and reviews and debates about the role of the Lobby before. But they never made it too the mainstream and they were never reviewed by, lets say, the New York Review of Books, and they were never discussed by major outlets in the United States. In fact the Mearsheimer and Walt article originally was turned down for publication by the Atlantic Magazine that had commissioned it. So maybe you can comment a little bit about why this debate is finally breaking surface and why is it that it is now a much more legitimate thing to debate within American mainstream circles.
James Petras: I'll give your three fast reasons: One, because of the disaster in Iraq, the public is open to discussion, particularly with the prominence of Zionists in bringing about the war - so I think you have public opinion open because of the discontent with the war and their concern about who got us into the war and into this mess. Second reason is that there is an inter-elite fight in the United States, between sectors of the military, sectors of the Congress, conservatives versus the pro-Israel crowd, the pro-war crowd. And the third reason is the arrogance and bullying by the Zionists, in particular, their organizations that go around trying to prevent this discussion has backfired and I think people are fed up with the Zionist banning (the play about Rachel) Corrie in New York and elsewhere - so I think these are the reasons.
Hagit Borer: James, we have to move on. We have only a few minutes. We have only a minute and a half. So Norman, could you say some final words?
Norman Finkelstein: Well, I agree with the reasons.maybe I wouldn''t state them the same way as Jim does. Its clear that the debacle in Iraq forms the overall framework for the opening up of discussion. In my opinion, that's probably not the most positive result because its going to end up with, I think, creating a 'scapegoat' for disastrous war by the US. I think the second reason is that the Israeli approach which seemed to have been successful since 1967, the approach of simply applying force to every break in conformity with US policy, of applying overwhelming force, plainly is not working. And so there are questions about the 'usefulness' of Israel's guidance and instruction in how to control the Middle East. It has not worked in Iraq and it proved to be a disaster in Lebanon this summer (July-August 2006). So there is a question about the 'effectiveness' of the Israeli approach, in addition to the effectiveness of Israel itself as a 'strategic asset', which is very different than it was in 1967. And the third reason, it seems to me is that, Israel is becoming more and more what you might call a 'bloated banana republic' with scandals daily and this kind of squandering of resources and that being the case - it has alienated large sectors of American 'liberal' Jewish opinion.
Hagit Borer: I thank you very much, James and Norman. I think on this point of accord between you, we need to end. Thank you so very much for being here.
Quite independently of this blog, Blogger Xymphora wrote:
Watch Finkelstein do the Chomsky
This is sad. Norman Finkelstein, who has done such important work in ripping Dershowitz apart – admittedly, an absurdly easy task – shows his true colors as a ‘Zionist lite’ and feebly attempts to make the argument, against mountains of conclusive evidence to the contrary, that the Lobby wasn’t really behind the attack on Iraq. Fortunately for truth and sheer decency, he is up against James Petras, who rips every one of Finkelstein’s pathetic arguments to shreds without even raising a sweat. You can see how important the Lobby is for Zionists when someone like Finkelstein has to look like a fool in order to protect it. Finkelstein even mentions my old friend Lenin, and the single most ridiculous of the Chomsky arguments, regarding Israeli arms deals to China, an issue I must return to (as, contrary to Chomsky’s desperate argument, the facts regarding covert Israeli sales of secret American military technology to China so conclusively proves the power of the Lobby).
Monday, April 16, 2007
Krugman gets it half right: Democrats are fighting their base
The terrific Paul Krugman gets it half right in this important column. The Democratic base and a large section of independents understands that the Iraq war is doing everything the Bush-Cheney clique intended: the destruction of Iraqi and (somewhat more subtly) US civil society, the destabilization of the Middle East and, if they can pull it off, enlarging the war to Iran and Syria.
So the question is why, faced with the most brutal and destructive president in US history, the opposition won't challenge him on the most obvious and critical policy question facing the US and the international community.
Krugman's answer is that the Democrats are afraid to challenge the president despite the overwhelming majority begging them to do just that. Either Krugman is in denial about the power of the big New York money men or he chooses the better part of valor.
Alexander Cockburn and led the way in pointing out how Democratic leader, Rahm Emmanuel, has successfully headed off the most vocal and effective anti-war Democratic candidates from last November's elections. Emmanuel, on behalf of the Democratic Party, which is beholden to those extremist Zionist billionaires, has played a key role in insuring that there is no effective majority in Congress for immediate withdrawal -- something the whole country desperately wants and needs.
Similarly we observe no outcry from Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid to roll back torture, warrantless wiretapping, the stripping of habeas corpus. These are all seen as measures to control THEM, the Muslims, the anti-Zionists, the liberals and moderates, all those who represent threats to Israel and who are soft on terrorism.
--Ronald
http://desip.igc.org
April 16, 2007
New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
Way Off Base
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/opinion/16krugman.html?pagewanted=print
(note copyright issues)
Normally, politicians face a difficult tradeoff between taking positions that satisfy their party’s base and appealing to the broader public. You can see that happening right now to the Republicans: to have a chance of winning the party’s nomination, Republican presidential hopefuls have to take far-right positions on Iraq and social issues that will cost them a lot of votes in the general election.
But a funny thing has happened on the Democratic side: the party’s base seems to be more in touch with the mood of the country than many of the party’s leaders. And the result is peculiar: on key issues, reluctant Democratic politicians are being dragged by their base into taking highly popular positions.
Iraq is the most dramatic example. Strange as it may seem, Democratic strategists were initially reluctant to make Iraq a central issue in the midterm election. Even after their stunning victory, which demonstrated that the G.O.P.’s smear-and-fear tactics have stopped working, they were afraid that any attempt to rein in the Bush administration’s expansion of the war would be successfully portrayed as a betrayal of the troops and/or a treasonous undermining of the commander in chief.
Beltway insiders, who still don’t seem to realize how overwhelmingly the public has turned against President Bush, fed that fear. For example, as Democrats began, nervously, to confront the administration over Iraq war funding, David Broder declared that Mr. Bush was “poised for a political comeback.”
It took an angry base to push the Democrats into taking a tough line in the midterm election. And it took further prodding from that base — which was infuriated when Barack Obama seemed to say that he would support a funding bill without a timeline — to push them into confronting Mr. Bush over war funding. (Mr. Obama says that he didn’t mean to suggest that the president be given “carte blanche.”)
But the public hates this war, no longer has any trust in Mr. Bush’s leadership and doesn’t believe anything the administration says. Iraq was a big factor in the Democrats’ midterm victory. And far from being a risky political move, the confrontation over funding has overwhelming popular support: according to a new CBS News poll, only 29 percent of voters believe Congress should allow war funding without a time limit, while 67 percent either want to cut off funding or impose a time limit.
Health care is another example of the base being more in touch with what the country wants than the politicians. Except for John Edwards, who has explicitly called for a universal health insurance system financed with a rollback of high-income tax cuts, most leading Democratic politicians, still intimidated by the failure of the Clinton health care plan, have been cautious and cagey about presenting plans to cover the uninsured.
But the Democratic presidential candidates — Mr. Obama in particular — have been facing a lot of pressure from the base to get specific about what they’re proposing. And the base is doing them a favor.
The fact is that a long time has passed since the defeat of the Clinton plan, and the public is now demanding that something be done. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed overwhelming support for a government guarantee of health insurance for all, even if that guarantee required higher taxes. Even self-identified Republicans were almost evenly split on the question!
If all this sounds like a setting in which Democrats could win big victories in the years ahead, that’s because it is.
Republicans will, for a while at least, be trapped in unpopular positions by a base that’s living in the past. Rudy Giuliani’s surge into front-runner status for the Republican nomination says more about the party than about the candidate. As The Onion put it with deadly accuracy, Mr. Giuliani is running for “President of 9/11.”
Democrats don’t have the same problem. There’s no conflict between catering to the Democratic base and staking out positions that can win in the 2008 election, because the things the base wants — an end to the Iraq war, a guarantee of health insurance for all — are also things that the country as a whole supports. The only risk the party now faces is excessive caution on the part of its politicians. Or, to coin a phrase, the only thing Democrats have to fear is fear itself.
cuibono wrote:
cuibonote: "And the answer is..." (to the Q. Ronald poses): In a nutshell, UFPJ.
Which the Dems believe can be counted on to do in 2008 what they did in 2004: hold hands w/ the designated War Candidate-Lite & sing Happy Days Are Here Again. "Anybody But Bush, Hurrah For Our Side!" You think it will be "different this time"? Based on what? I'm all ears.
As near as I can tell, the main so-called "peace movement" leadership is actually a Misleadership in bed with the zionist-controlled tweedlecrat party. And I do mean JVP.
Yes, there are a handful of Demos who are really very convincing. Some may actually be sincere. But their main impact on the process is to provide cover for the other ones.
And thus perpetuate mass addiction to Tweedlism.
The challenge becomes how to wean a major sector of the Demo Base -- Labor, Civil Rights, the Healthcare movement, this "peace" movement? -- away from kneejerk support of anything Israeli.
The challenge as it appears to me right now & here in the Big Tomato, is how to establish a Pole* within this anti-Iraqupation movement that plays no footsie with Zionism, which means none with the Dumbocrat party or any of its subsidiaries, JVP, PDA, UFPJ, whoever.
Yes, we can cooperate toward shared objectives, as long as they're strictly defined, and no gag rules are imposed. But those of us who are really serious, and who are alert enough to have a clue what's going on, need to get together and really get clear about this Zionism business, about the true character of the so-called "state of israel" & its "democratic" Apartheid system.
Which for a lot of people means cracking some books, doing some serious homework. Which means getting up off the "do sthg even if it's wrong" addiction to mindless activism for activism's sake, & taking a little time to figger out where all this is going.
Which for me means finding a way to communicate what I know in a way that at least a few of the newbies can grasp it. Not that I know everything, but Miz Elliott din't raise no dummies. Quiet as it's kept, after all this "Time In Grade" I do know where a whole lot of the answers can be found, or how they can be collectively developed. Or if I don't, I know who to ask. (I do have to criticize myself: I haven't been communicating the message very effectively. But I'm working on it.)
However, I'm clear about this much: the question of what UFPJ/PDA really stands for must be placed at the very top of the movement's agenda. Until that question is squarely confronted, all this "Peace Activism" is nothing but masturbation.
*if no Pole is available, try a Littauer? -de]
So the question is why, faced with the most brutal and destructive president in US history, the opposition won't challenge him on the most obvious and critical policy question facing the US and the international community.
Krugman's answer is that the Democrats are afraid to challenge the president despite the overwhelming majority begging them to do just that. Either Krugman is in denial about the power of the big New York money men or he chooses the better part of valor.
Alexander Cockburn and led the way in pointing out how Democratic leader, Rahm Emmanuel, has successfully headed off the most vocal and effective anti-war Democratic candidates from last November's elections. Emmanuel, on behalf of the Democratic Party, which is beholden to those extremist Zionist billionaires, has played a key role in insuring that there is no effective majority in Congress for immediate withdrawal -- something the whole country desperately wants and needs.
Similarly we observe no outcry from Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid to roll back torture, warrantless wiretapping, the stripping of habeas corpus. These are all seen as measures to control THEM, the Muslims, the anti-Zionists, the liberals and moderates, all those who represent threats to Israel and who are soft on terrorism.
--Ronald
http://desip.igc.org
April 16, 2007
New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
Way Off Base
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/opinion/16krugman.html?pagewanted=print
(note copyright issues)
Normally, politicians face a difficult tradeoff between taking positions that satisfy their party’s base and appealing to the broader public. You can see that happening right now to the Republicans: to have a chance of winning the party’s nomination, Republican presidential hopefuls have to take far-right positions on Iraq and social issues that will cost them a lot of votes in the general election.
But a funny thing has happened on the Democratic side: the party’s base seems to be more in touch with the mood of the country than many of the party’s leaders. And the result is peculiar: on key issues, reluctant Democratic politicians are being dragged by their base into taking highly popular positions.
Iraq is the most dramatic example. Strange as it may seem, Democratic strategists were initially reluctant to make Iraq a central issue in the midterm election. Even after their stunning victory, which demonstrated that the G.O.P.’s smear-and-fear tactics have stopped working, they were afraid that any attempt to rein in the Bush administration’s expansion of the war would be successfully portrayed as a betrayal of the troops and/or a treasonous undermining of the commander in chief.
Beltway insiders, who still don’t seem to realize how overwhelmingly the public has turned against President Bush, fed that fear. For example, as Democrats began, nervously, to confront the administration over Iraq war funding, David Broder declared that Mr. Bush was “poised for a political comeback.”
It took an angry base to push the Democrats into taking a tough line in the midterm election. And it took further prodding from that base — which was infuriated when Barack Obama seemed to say that he would support a funding bill without a timeline — to push them into confronting Mr. Bush over war funding. (Mr. Obama says that he didn’t mean to suggest that the president be given “carte blanche.”)
But the public hates this war, no longer has any trust in Mr. Bush’s leadership and doesn’t believe anything the administration says. Iraq was a big factor in the Democrats’ midterm victory. And far from being a risky political move, the confrontation over funding has overwhelming popular support: according to a new CBS News poll, only 29 percent of voters believe Congress should allow war funding without a time limit, while 67 percent either want to cut off funding or impose a time limit.
Health care is another example of the base being more in touch with what the country wants than the politicians. Except for John Edwards, who has explicitly called for a universal health insurance system financed with a rollback of high-income tax cuts, most leading Democratic politicians, still intimidated by the failure of the Clinton health care plan, have been cautious and cagey about presenting plans to cover the uninsured.
But the Democratic presidential candidates — Mr. Obama in particular — have been facing a lot of pressure from the base to get specific about what they’re proposing. And the base is doing them a favor.
The fact is that a long time has passed since the defeat of the Clinton plan, and the public is now demanding that something be done. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed overwhelming support for a government guarantee of health insurance for all, even if that guarantee required higher taxes. Even self-identified Republicans were almost evenly split on the question!
If all this sounds like a setting in which Democrats could win big victories in the years ahead, that’s because it is.
Republicans will, for a while at least, be trapped in unpopular positions by a base that’s living in the past. Rudy Giuliani’s surge into front-runner status for the Republican nomination says more about the party than about the candidate. As The Onion put it with deadly accuracy, Mr. Giuliani is running for “President of 9/11.”
Democrats don’t have the same problem. There’s no conflict between catering to the Democratic base and staking out positions that can win in the 2008 election, because the things the base wants — an end to the Iraq war, a guarantee of health insurance for all — are also things that the country as a whole supports. The only risk the party now faces is excessive caution on the part of its politicians. Or, to coin a phrase, the only thing Democrats have to fear is fear itself.
cuibono wrote:
cuibonote: "And the answer is..." (to the Q. Ronald poses): In a nutshell, UFPJ.
Which the Dems believe can be counted on to do in 2008 what they did in 2004: hold hands w/ the designated War Candidate-Lite & sing Happy Days Are Here Again. "Anybody But Bush, Hurrah For Our Side!" You think it will be "different this time"? Based on what? I'm all ears.
As near as I can tell, the main so-called "peace movement" leadership is actually a Misleadership in bed with the zionist-controlled tweedlecrat party. And I do mean JVP.
Yes, there are a handful of Demos who are really very convincing. Some may actually be sincere. But their main impact on the process is to provide cover for the other ones.
And thus perpetuate mass addiction to Tweedlism.
The challenge becomes how to wean a major sector of the Demo Base -- Labor, Civil Rights, the Healthcare movement, this "peace" movement? -- away from kneejerk support of anything Israeli.
The challenge as it appears to me right now & here in the Big Tomato, is how to establish a Pole* within this anti-Iraqupation movement that plays no footsie with Zionism, which means none with the Dumbocrat party or any of its subsidiaries, JVP, PDA, UFPJ, whoever.
Yes, we can cooperate toward shared objectives, as long as they're strictly defined, and no gag rules are imposed. But those of us who are really serious, and who are alert enough to have a clue what's going on, need to get together and really get clear about this Zionism business, about the true character of the so-called "state of israel" & its "democratic" Apartheid system.
Which for a lot of people means cracking some books, doing some serious homework. Which means getting up off the "do sthg even if it's wrong" addiction to mindless activism for activism's sake, & taking a little time to figger out where all this is going.
Which for me means finding a way to communicate what I know in a way that at least a few of the newbies can grasp it. Not that I know everything, but Miz Elliott din't raise no dummies. Quiet as it's kept, after all this "Time In Grade" I do know where a whole lot of the answers can be found, or how they can be collectively developed. Or if I don't, I know who to ask. (I do have to criticize myself: I haven't been communicating the message very effectively. But I'm working on it.)
However, I'm clear about this much: the question of what UFPJ/PDA really stands for must be placed at the very top of the movement's agenda. Until that question is squarely confronted, all this "Peace Activism" is nothing but masturbation.
*if no Pole is available, try a Littauer? -de]
Law.com: Ashcroft was less political than Gonzalez
How could we have imagined that we were tossed from the proverbial frying pan when Ashcroft was fired? We didn't realize then that the reason he was fired was because, according to Bush and Cheney, he wasn't sufficiently political. --Ronald
From Laura Rozen's warandpiece.com
April 14, 2007
Law.com: Justice Department's independence 'shattered,' says former DOJ director:
... Ashcroft's Justice Department appointees, with few exceptions, were not the type of people who caused you to wonder what they were doing there. They might not have been firm believers in the importance of government, but generally speaking, there was a very respectable level of competence (in some instances even exceptionally so) and a relatively strong dedication to quality government, as far as I could see.
Under Gonzales, though, almost immediately from the time of his arrival in February 2005, this changed quite noticeably. First, there was extraordinary turnover in the political ranks, including the majority of even Justice's highest-level appointees. It was reminiscent of the turnover from the second Reagan administration to the first Bush administration in 1989, only more so. Second, the atmosphere was palpably different, in ways both large and small. One need not have had to be terribly sophisticated to notice that when Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey left the department in August 2005 his departure was quite abrupt, and that his large farewell party was attended by neither Gonzales nor (as best as could be seen) anyone else on the AG's personal staff. Third, and most significantly for present purposes, there was an almost immediate influx of young political aides beginning in the first half of 2005 (e.g., counsels to the AG, associate deputy attorneys general, deputy associate attorneys general, and deputy assistant attorneys general) whose inexperience in the processes of government was surpassed only by their evident disdain for it. ...
Xymphora/The Forward: A handful of extreme billionaires control the media
Good morning, class:
The question for today is:
Is Canadian blogger Xymphora correct when he writes that a "handful of extreme Zionist Jewish Billionaires control much of the American media, and use such control to influence American politics?"
Take out your notebooks, and in 150 words or more explain why you think he's right or wrong.
-- Ronald
Xymphora wrote:
Lobbyology 101: Media Control
Thursday, April 12, 2007
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/
It is apparently the height of anti-Semitism to point out that a handful of extreme Zionist Jewish Billionaires control much of the American media, and use such control to influence American politics. Sam Zell is probably about to own the Tribune Company, which owns 23 television stations and many newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, From an article in the Forward on Zell (emphasis throughout in red):
“The Chicago Tribune, the company’s flagship publication, has had a famously antagonistic relationship with the Jewish community in Chicago – historically because of its right-wing, isolationist stance during World War II, and more recently because of its critical coverage of Israel. Newspaper watchers say that Zell and the Tribune will be an interesting mix.”
and:
“Even before the Tribune went with Zell’s bid to take the company private, it was clear that the white, Anglo-Saxon culture of the Tribune would be challenged by a Jewish businessman. The major bidder besides Zell was Los Angeles Jewish businessman Eli Broad and his business partner, Ronald Burkle, (who has widely but wrongly been described as Jewish). The deal for the Tribune is not closed, and Broad and Burkle still could be able to best Zell’s offer of $34 a share.
Another Jewish businessman, Hollywood supermogul David Geffen, is said to be in talks now with Zell to buy control of the Los Angeles Times. The Times is the largest single property owned by the Tribune and has a contentious history with the Los Angeles Jewish community, strikingly similar to the Tribune’s in Chicago.”
and (on the hilarious ‘debate’ on whether Zell’s ultra-Zionist politics will end up influencing the newspapers):
“Given that Zell appears to be close to closing the deal for the Tribune, much media scrutiny has shifted toward how his background might shape the papers. One question that is asked frequently is whether Zell will follow the model of Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, who has pressed his political views on his media properties, or whether he will concentrate only on the business side.
In an interview with the Tribune last week, Zell suggested that he would not be involved editorially. ‘Do I look naive enough to think I have any influence about what people write?’ Zell asked in his blunt fashion.
Still, Zell has made it clear that he does have an interest in the things his new media properties cover. In the interview last week, he said that his favorite newspaper columnists are Charles Krauthammer, Thomas Friedman and David Brooks, all of whom are Jewish and two of whom write frequently and sympathetically about Israel.
Zell himself is a major donor to causes in the Middle East. His donations include a $3.1 million donation to the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center in Israel and separate donations to the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress, a right-wing Israeli think tank. In the United States, he has given major gifts to such Jewish causes as the American Jewish Committee and a Chicago Jewish day school named after his father. All this is on top of his political donations, which have gone mostly to Republican candidates.”
and:
“Ken Reich, a former Los Angeles Times reporter who operates a blog about the paper, said he assumes that Zell will shape the policy of his papers to some degree.
‘If he cares about the State of Israel, he won’t want his newspaper to be out there chipping away at Israeli interests,’ said Reich, who reported mostly on politics during his 39 years at the Times.
Reich said that at the Times, shifting the editorial policy would require only that Zell be consulted in the hiring of the new editorial page editor – a position that was recently vacated.
‘It would not take very much tweaking by him to sharply alter the Times editorial policy on the Middle East,’ Reich said. ‘I tend to expect this to happen.’”
and:
“Zell’s arrival at the Tribune has been met with some disappointment in Los Angeles. That has included newspaper staffers who have expressed anxiety over the financial deal structured by Zell whereby he uses employee pensions to finance most of the deal, putting in only $315 million himself and pushing much of the risk onto the employees.” (Xymphora's emphasis in red)
Seth writes:
In a message dated 4/16/2007 3:23:45 PM Eastern Standard Time, rbleier@igc.org writes:
Charles Krauthammer, Thomas Friedman and David Brooks, all of whom are Jewish and two of whom write frequently and sympathetically about Israel
Krauthammer is one of the key neo-con ideologues. He is a far-right fanatic--you cannot get any worse than this wheelchair bound psychiatrist (Dr Sttrangelove type) --except--maybe--neo-con Mussulini admiirer and Ollie North partner during contra affair Michael Ledeen. I think Kauthammer still claims Iraq was
involved in 9--11, and strongly advocates bombing Iran. Friedman--a centrist Zionist--is far-left compared to Krauthammer. He originsally supported Iraq war, but later had second thoughts
Anyone whose favorite columnists include CK is not going to take a laiisez fauire position: It won't b e long befpre Chicago Tribune reads like the NY Post. There will be some purges at the Tribune.
Seth
4.18.07
Carl wrote:
Dear Ronald
It's an empirical question that can be researched --- once you have definitions of 'handful', 'extreme', 'Zionist', 'Jewish', and 'much'. "Billionaires' seems unambiguous enough although one can be quite influential with somewhat less.
Also, ownership is only part of the problem. Advertisers have influence, official sources are the providers of the basic commodity of the news media: news stories, and, last -- but by no means least: accusations of antisemitism are a handy way of dealing with independent journalists.
Sorry, I don't think I've used enough words.
Carl
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