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- The Jewish community must not embrace Ayaan Hirsi Ali
OK, Don. Great reply. Let me take it point by point.
Point 1
Having emphatically dismissed the theory that Ali was set up by Brandeis, you obviously subscribe to the only viable alternative: Brandeis was too freaking stupid and incompetent to do their due diligence to check who they were inviting to receive a very prestigious award and speaking opportunity.
I'm willing to agree with you on that. No problemo.
Point 2
D: So a person couldn't be Jewish and hate Jews
That is correct. A person who hates Jews cannot be Jewish. His mother may be a Jew, he may wear a kippa, he may be foreskin-challenged -- but he is not Jewish. Ask your rabbi, assuming he doesn't hate Jews.
Point 3
You are putting words in my mouth, a clear indication of one's propensity to speak deceit to truth. Tsk, tsk.
I have not argued that courage gives anyone license to do anything. And as for preaching hate, in America one is not required to be licensed in order to preach hate. Anyone can go ahead and do it without a license and that's a 1st Amendment bonus for living in America. Geller, Foxman, Dershowitz, Oren -- they all have a right to spew hate if it suits them. Don't like it? Leave. Please.
Seems like we're missing the issue here. What was the point of extending the invitation to Ali just to yank it away? She was obviously set up by Brandeis to try and embarrass her. Here's their explanation according to the LAT:
"And we respect and appreciate her work to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the world. That said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University's core values. For all concerned, we regret that we were not aware of these statements earlier."
Like, we regret to inform you that we didn't know who the hell we were bestowing the honor on because we are too stupid to do a little due diligence. WTF?
Brandeis was just toying with this woman and they come out looking like idiots.
RR: Let's pretend that the antisemitic speaker is himself of Jewish origins,
"Jewish origins???" Kind of ambiguous here, eh? If you mean he's hypothetically Jewish, go ahead and say so. Then what we've got is the prototypical, hypothetical antisemitic Jew, which, I think, logically doesn't exist anymore than a misogynist feminist, unless you are using "semitic" in its broad and proper sense to refer to all the descendants of Shem -- Jews, Arabs, Palestinians, Assyrian Christians, yada yada -- it's a long list. I guess in that case, that hypothetical Jew could be selectively antisemitic if he, say, dissed Assyrian Christians. Abe Foxman would be OK with that.
BTW, this Ali lady is a very, very impressive and courageous woman, particularly considering how apostasy is considered punishable by death by a lot of these violent "pigheaded" radical Muslims -- and that is not merely a "pigheaded, unsophisticated stereotype about Islam.." Just ask the Saudi blogger Raif Badawi who's 600 lashes sentence for "propagating liberal though" was overturned in Dec.2013 and he is now awaiting a hearing on an upgraded sentence of stoning for apostasy.
- Is the U.S. quietly imposing travel sanctions on Israeli officials?
And now RT is reporting that GoI's Foreign Ministry has closed down its ministries all over the world and canceled the Pope's visit.
Now, that's encouraging. Maybe the GoI Ministry of Defense will close down next.
"In recent weeks, a number of Israeli news publications have reported an increase in the denial of visa requests to Israeli youth, military, and intelligence officials."
Is this part of Obama's program to get resolution on the peace negotiation?
The next step should be to revisit Fullbright's attempt to force DOJ to register AIPAC Foreign Agents' Registration Act.
Excellent article, Mike.
- Scarlett Johansson parrots SodaStream CEO in attack on Oxfam
Haven't we driven this ScarJo thing into the ground? Who cares if SJ talks to Birnbaum?
The SuperBowl is over, the ad's done with and forgotten, both SS and SJ made out big time by all the poopaa.
The conversation on MW is beginning to sound like a bunch of beauty parlor patrons whose understanding of world events is limited to what they find in Entertainment Today. Surely the bandwidth could be used for something more meaningful, and yes, I know, stop calling you "Shirley."
- Bill supporting God-given Greater Israel comes to New Mexico
Thanks, Alex. This article has bumped me up to a whole new level of incredulity at the power of the Israel-firsters. I am not appalled easily, but here I am.
I can get my mind around the way they could control Congress with their bribery otherwise known as "lobbying." That is just the way the American system is built, and everybody knows it and it seems to be OK with the slugs that comprise the American grass-roots. And the zios only need 300 or so votes in Congress to control the whole, disgusting shebang, starting with Lindsay Graham and John McCain.
(Lindsay Graham. Hmmm. Tell me it's just a coincidence that S. Carolina was the first state to take up the flag of zionism.)
But how does this work at the state level? I mean does AIPAC or ZOA or whomever have enough cash that they can put shekels into the pockets of a majority of state lawmakers for all 50 states? There must be 5000 of them, all tolled. And what then? Does this thing go down to the next level -- local government? OK, Brooklyn, sure. But what about Richmond, VA, or Omaha, NE? Do these zionists have the resources to control governments at all levels? Does this zionist rot of the American system of federalism have no limits?
Then I'm thinkin' maybe this is good. My experience is that people get far more passionate about what their state lawmakers are doing than what their federal ones are doing. If the dialog takes place x50, there will be a lot more noise. But there has to be the dialog and that requires anti-zionist activists in each state to be on the alert and start ringing the bell as soon as this crap comes to town, otherwise the "people's representatives" ( ha, ha, ha) will be selling them out to Israel behind their backs. (I don't know if Mississippi has any anti-zionist activists. Or West Virginia. Or . . .)
- 'NYT' reporter treats boycott as immoral and anti-Semitic, reminiscent of Nazis
@Phil: They are boycotting Jews because of the way they treat people under occupation when they boycott settlement products, the supposed focus of this story.
Um . . . maybe I'm confused. I'm having a problem with the first "they." I am not boycotting Jews at all. Period. I am boycotting zionists.
I am certainly not boycotting Jews "because of the way they treat people" because that "they" refers back to "Jews" and Jews as a group are not – so far as I can tell – treating people badly. If Jews are included in the people I am boycotting, even as a majority, their being Jews is irrelevant. Zionists is relevant – Jews, Christians, Hindi – I'm boycotting them all if they are zionists. Even Cub Scout zionists I am boycotting. There is no point in distinguishing the demographics of zionists; to do so is, in fact, misleading and it gives Uncle Abe Foxman an opening.
You almost have to do a Venn diagram to sort this out. Sorry, I don't know how to include figures in comments. I'll try a verbal Venn.
The big circle, Circle #1, is labeled "People boycotted", but it could be labeled "They."
Circle #2, is labeled "Jews." It lies mostly outside of Circle #1 with a portion inside. The portion lying inside Circle #1 is – by definition -- Jews behaving badly. ("Badly" being locally defined in reference to treatment of Palestinians.)
And then there is Circle #3, which is labeled "zionists." This circle lies wholly within Circle #1 and mostly within Circle #2, but with a bit sticking out of Circle #2 to represent the goy-zios.
The part of Circle #2 inside Circle #1 that is not occupied by Circle #3 represents non-zionist Jews who are acting badly. These are Jews who just want to mess with the Palestinians because they are Arabs, or Muslims, or for financial reasons, or whatever. My guess is that there are more of them than anybody really talks about, including Scarlett.
All of Circle #1 that is not occupied by Circle #2 is non-Jews who are acting badly – which includes 300 million goyim Americans who are funding this cluster f&*k with their tax money.
Circle #4 is that relatively small but noisy circle that is isolated from all the rest. It is labeled "People trying to set this mess right." You will not find Rudoren, Abramson, Sulzberger, or the Gray Lady inside Circle #4. They are all inside Circle #1.
So, why aren't we boycotting them?
- Congress is next battleground over boycott of Israel
That is a very interesting thought, although I read Harry's statement as not so much a constitutional statement but as saying we're not pouring US blood down the Palestine privy. I wonder whether there were any contemporaneous establishment of religion arguments by Harry or anyone else against using US force to support GoI. That would be fascinating.
I had a friend who was in the British forces in Palestine, and -- whew! -- you talk about someone who hated Zionists. If Harry had sent US soldiers to Palestine when the UK pulled out, and if Begin and Sharon had butchered them the way they butchered the English lads, we wouldn't have an Israel problem today. Probably wouldn't have an Israel. Certainly not an AIPAC. Harry's "ziophilia" had its limits.
SQ raises the issue of standing to file a 1st Amend suit to challenge US aid to the Jewish homeland. I would think any US taxpayer or association of taxpayers would have standing to seek a declaratory judgment in USDC that the 1st Amendment prohibits US tax money from being used to support any religious state government anywhere in the world.
Tom, whoa -- that HR 3830 baby sure expands Congress' role in trade negotiations, but I don't agree with your reading when you say: "This Bill enables any member of congress to enter into international trade agreements."
I think what you are referring to are two provisions that force the president to "accredit" so-called "designated congressional advisers" and "designated congressional advisory groups" as official advisers to trade meetings. As per example Section 4(b)(3):
Accreditation.--Each Member of Congress designated as a congressional adviser under paragraph (1) shall be accredited by the United States Trade Representative on behalf of the President as an official adviser to the United States delegations to international conferences, meetings, and negotiating sessions relating to trade agreements.
IOW, the House wants its own members at the trade negotiations. But that does not allow any member of Congress to "enter into trade agreements." I'm not sure where you're reading that part; maybe I missed it. If so, please sort me out.
A trade agreement is a treaty. Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution reserves to the president the right to make treaties, with the advice and consent of the Senate.
The bill seems to be an attempt to inject the House into the constitutional oversight role w/ respect to trade treaties. Can't believe the Senate would buy it. Can't believe any president would sign off on it. Can't believe any USSCt would sanction it. Actually . . . I can't believe Camp, Sessions, and Nunes wasted their time on this ante-statutory stool-sample.
For those with time to waste, it's here:
link to beta.congress.gov
Yes, I like the sound of this. If AIPAC backs this loser bill, it would be another nail in AIPAC's coffin, which is filling up with nails. If it fails to back it, it would still be another nail in its coffin.
There is another First Amendment issue with respect to GoI, but it never gets any mention so far as I have seen – that's the separation of religion and government. Taxpayers' money – and that includes local taxpayers and local taxes – cannot be used by any government at any level to promote any religion or any religious practice or ritual. And that makes sense to me, not that I'm a big Jefferson fan.
So how does the USG give $3Bn/yr in financial succor to the Jewish Homeland without supporting Judaism, and, hence, violating the 1st Amend? And that doesn't include the interest Americans pay on their own money until GoI accesses it.
I don't see how, under the 1st Amend., the USG can support any Muslim state, either. If a country commits to being a religious state, then that should make it constitutionally disqualified from receiving US taxpayers' money.
US taxpayers should not be bilked out of their tax money in order to support other countries' religions. Does the USG support Rome? God, I hope not . . . I would throw a 1st Amendment hissy-fit.
- SodaStream stock sinks, and Bloomberg cites 'sanctions over Jewish settlements'
seafoid, I read your comment to imply that SODA is reselling Palestinian water as its soda product. Uh . . . no.
SODA is not sucking up millions of gallons of water a year and selling it in Bloomberg monster drinks for consumption by fat New Yorkers. You're thinking of Coke and Pepsi, as in "Sorry, Coke and Pepsi."
Coke and Pepsi and Nestle – not SODA – are the ones destroying local communities' water sources and turning Americans into diabetics. That's an American business model. The fight over water in central Michigan has been horrendous.
That's SODA's point, and that's a point I think we should all agree with. SODA doesn't destroy communities to get to their water source – the SODA idea is that the customer uses tap water – i.e. locally sourced water. Putting aside their plant location choices, I think their basic idea is something worth supporting.
I would love to see them shut down the WB plant and become a bit more empathetic to the Palestinian's plight, because I would buy their product if they did. I think Johannson's "Sorry, Coke and Pepsi" should be the world's mantra. If you think annie is tickled pink about SODA's stock-plunge, think how the CEOs of Coke/Pepsi/Nestle must feel.
Chairman of Nestle, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, on this issue: "access to water is not a public right." T-bone Pickens was right, water is the new oil. And these international conglomerates are not content with destroying just rural communities in central Michigan.
Here's the effect of Nestle extending its devour-all-you-can-while-you-can business model to Pakistan.
In the small Pakistani community of Bhati Dilwan, a former village councilor says children are being sickened by filthy water. Who's to blame? He says it's bottled water-maker Nestlé, which dug a deep well that is depriving locals of potable water. "The water is not only very dirty, but the water level sank from 100 to 300 to 400 feet," Dilwan says.
link to globalresearch.ca
Of course, Pakistanis are not Palestinians, and so . . . screw them. We'll all give Nestle a bye and roast SODA.
By beating SODA into the ground, who benefits? Coke. But why is nobody here looking at Coke? Coke also exploits the WB settlements: Shadmot Mechola in the Jordan Valley and the industrial zone of the Golan. So, where is the MW call for a boycott of Coke?
Here are some fun facts re: Coke's Zionist bona fides:
In 1997 the Government of Israel Economic Mission honored Coca-Cola at the Israel Trade Award Dinner for its continued support of Israel for the last 30 years and for refusing to abide by the Arab League boycott of Israel.
In 2008 Coca-Cola tasked the Israeli venture capital Challenge Fund to locate suitable investments in Israel with a promise of "a blank cheque."
In 2009 a Coca-Cola sponsored award went to Israel's Lobby AIPAC for its lobbying of the Senate to reject of the UN call for "immediate ceasefire" and endorse the continuation of the Israel military assault on Gaza.
In 2009 Coca-Cola hosted a special reception at the Coca-Cola world headquarters to honour Brigadier-General Ben-Eliezer. Ben-Eliezer is a wanted war criminal, during the Six-Day War his unit was responsible for the execution of over 300 Egyptian POWs.
link to inminds.co.uk
I think we're making a big mistake if we lump SODA's Zionist issue in with the water resource issue and keep our fingers crossed that SODA will go broke and Johannson will develop a case of wet leprosy, as seems to be the majority sentiment here. There's a baby in that bath water.
- Rep. Grimm threatens to throw reporter off Rotunda balcony
amigo, just tell them to Google "Tammany Hall." The essential players haven't changed, except that more rabbis are, apparently, paying to play.
If I ever get to Eire, I'll shout you dinner and we'll resolve some of these prickly issues.
amigo: "As an Irishman and a Catholic, I resent your inference."
The reference was to those who are: 1) Irish-American, 2) Catholics, and 3) NY pols. Your resentment is based on you identifying with 1 out of 3 -- I really feel for you.
As one who was raised in an Irish-American Catholic family, has a surname with an Erin-green apostrophe, and who lived in Boston long enough to have a pretty good idea what E.Coast ethno-centric politics is about, I'll respectfully stand my ground on this one, amigo.
Sounds like you're bending over backwards to find a PC issue to whine about. Maybe you should go after annie's line (which gave me a chuckle, btw):
"A Catholic who prays every Sunday in church gets the loot from a rabbi?"
Éire go Brách!!
Good one, annie. I was waiting for you to get Michael Grimm in your cross-hairs. MW has been one of the best sources on this scary guy. (Unfortunately, MW's search engine is so hard to deal with anymore, trying to do the back research is a waste of time -- i.e. 500 hits and no way to sort them chronologically. . . hint, hint.)
One of the best articles on this Grimm creep is a 2011 New Yorker piece by Evan Ratliff.
link to newyorker.com
Ratliff's piece and Grimm's most recent violent outburst on camera gives one the impression that this Tea Party zio-monkey is, like, in perpetual 'roid rage.
"What's the story on these accusations of you shaking people down for campaign contributions?"
"STFUp or I'll break you in half and throw you off this balcony."
"OK, never mind."
Somebody needs to transition this violent thug out of Congress and, even better, out of society, perhaps with the help of a multi-count indictment.
Not that the voters of Staten I. suffered a great loss when Grimm beat McMahon:
"But Israel was plainly a factor in the race. McMahon even signed a letter calling on Obama to commute spy Jonathan Pollard's sentence. But McMahon won the Jewish vote in the district."
Sounds like good ole' American hard-place-and-a-rock democracy at work. Give a traditional Irish-American Catholic NY pol the scent of a few shekels and he'll follow it anywhere -- and here's proof x2.
Grimm's ace in the hole in that election was actually the one in Guillani's backside, the one Grimm had his head stuck up. But Grimm had to have significant financial resources to get that far. Given his wobbly career trajectory, it's really hard to see how he got from being an incendiary FBI turd being investigated for pulling a gun on his date's husband in a busy NYC restaurant to US Rep for Staten Isl.
This is an interesting question, for if you juxtapose Ratliff's piece and the current NYT series on Christy's people, you get the sense that there is an underworld in US politics of ex-FBI agents and ex-US prosecutors turned pols. The reason that's interesting is b/c Ratliff points out that the Justice Dept/FBI has access to hundreds of millions of dollars -- mostly forfeited drug money -- that is used to pay off tens of thousands of criminal-informants to entrap people.
That's a huge amount of money, and if a small percentage got siphoned off into a campaign here and there, who would know? Worse, who would prosecute? Anyone who has ever heard the names J. Edgar Hoover or John Connolly knows how filthy the FBI is. And if AIPAC were to tap into this underworld, they would have access not just to votes in Congress, but to information on every congressperson who doesn't vote the way they "should." Anyone who assumes J. Edgar Hoover's tactics died when J. Edgar Hoover did would be naive, and I'm thinkin' Franklin/AIPAC scandal here.
- Scarlett Johansson not only abandons Oxfam but throws it under the bus
I agree that Phan is one of the best writers on MW, but not this piece.
Sure, SJ makes me want to puke, too. And I wouldn't drink a SodaStream if I was dying of thirst in the middle of the Negev desert and had to choose between it and a pint of camel piss. But this hatchet-piece by Phan is uncalled for, even though everybody in the echo-chamber seems to be eating it up without calling him out on the factually anemic fantasy piece it is.
SJ's statement:
She and Oxfam have a fundamental difference of opinion in regards to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
Phan calls this line"
"—an unconvincing assertion since Oxfam has never taken a position on BDS."
What a sorry non sequitur. Why, pray tell, does Ox have to have a public position on BDS in order for there to be a genuine disagreement w/ SJ over the issue? Phan implies that the only "genuine" disagreements are those that are based on publicly held positions. There is no way Phan could know what disagreements SJ and Ox had or didn't have.
My guess is that sometime over the last few weeks Ox people made it clear to SJ that they support BDS, and she made it clear to them that she doesn't. That seems to me like very reasonable and mutual grounds for saying ciao. As a result of such a disagreement she could have decided it was a bad match, and they could have decided it was a bad match. That's the way I read her statement. Why is that "unconvincing"? Where's the bus in this? And who is Phan to jump in here and start telling the world that SJ didn't take the one-way walk over BDS as she claims?
Phan goes on to assert that b/c "Oxfam has never taken a position on BDS" that means that SJ left Ox in order to "throw Oxfam under the bus." What rubbish. SJ is not the one who went public on the Oxfam issue. If she was getting burned over it and decided to preempt them on pulling the plug, that is not throwing anybody under a bus. She was the one who was about to become bus-fodder, which is what Phan and everybody else on MW were waiting for.
Phan seems to be operating under the mistaken idea that because it was SJ and not Ox who terminated the relationship that a bus was involved. I would love to have seen his article if Ox had ended the relationship . . . ha! Would he assert Ox throws Johansson under the bus? Yeah, I don't think so. It would have read more like: "Oxfam dumps Johansson on moral grounds over BDS, no bus involved."
She was smart to preempt them, and that's what 's pissing off people on MW, judging by the comments to this piece. Everybody here was salivating at the prospect that Ox would dump her, but she deprived the vultures of the pleasure.
More Phan funny-logic:
"Johansson implies that she was being forced by Oxfam to honor the Palestinian BDS call."
There is no such implication in her statement. Saying that you have fundamental differences with someone over an issue is not an assertion that the other person is forcing you do to anything. What rubbish, Phan.
Phan normally does much better than this, but we all have our bad days. Sorely disappointed.
- Watch the Scarlett Johansson SodaSteam ad banned from the Super Bowl (not for the reasons you'd hope)
If that ad is supposed to be sexy, I gotta' get my testosterone levels checked.
If it's supposed to be funny, I gotta' get my hearing checked.
If it's supposed to be funky, I gotta' get my mojo checked.
. . .less bottles. A second-team Budweiser Clydesdale has more brains than this chick.
Birnbaum: I'm disappointed as an American.
Yeah, me too. . . . I'm disappointed that the country has spent 60 years funding your freaking GoI apartheid system.
BTW: Does this guy have dual US-GoI citizenship? I guess that qualifies him for Vice-Chair of the Fed.
- Truman always opposed a religious state, but caved to 'fanatical' Zionist lobby
Agreed – America needs this historical discussion badly. MW writers and commentors are very knowledgeable on the details of this subject, but most Americans don't have a clue what "AIPAC" means or where it came from, much less "AZEC" or the Jewish Agency. BTW, I loved the old UN map of Palestine. I hadn't realized that there were tiny points of connection between the Palestinian parts.
As welcome as a book on the subject is, what we don't need is Judis wading in and whitewashing Truman's moral cowardice and his abysmal contribution to the mess the world is now in. Judis' approach is to balance Truman's public record of unmitigated support of Zionism (by acquiescence) against his private musings and personal correspondence. Judis would have us judge Truman by what Truman claimed to believe and not by what he did. Hope I can be judged by that standard when someone writes my bio.
Yeah, Mr. Judis, convince us of what a moral giant Truman was when, for the sake of the Jewish vote, he turned his eyes from the Palestinians being butchered and robbed of their land. And while we're re-writing the Truman story, let's include a chapter on how he privately told Beth how much he really loved Japanese children but was "pressured" by the military to turn them into radioactive bacon-bits.
And as for the whitewashing, one is forced to question Judis' candor and/or competence in view of his deleting from this discussion Truman's most famous quote on the Palestinian Question:
"I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents."
That statement set the tone for America's view of the ME for 60 years and counting.
Thank you, very much, Harry, for your leadership and your moral stand. -- signed AIPAC.
Let me count the ways that Judis' own words undermine his attempt to present Truman as a paragon of morality, and instead of the Machiavellian zio-junkie he actually was:
1. That part of the proposal infuriated the Zionists who successfully lobbied Truman to withhold his endorsement of the [Morrison-Grady partition] plan . . .
2. Thus, after having given in on Morrison-Grady in August 1946, Truman withdrew and turned his attention elsewhere.
3. But after visits from Democratic officials worried about Jewish support, lobbying from a major Jewish contributor, and the threat of a Zionist ad campaign against the Democrats, Truman gave in and issued a statement of support [to the Jewish Agency partition plan].
4. Truman's political advisors warned that the [Zionist] rallies would be used to denounce the president. Truman once again gave in and agreed to recognize the new state that evening.
5. Truman, who was sensitive to criticism from the British, insisted that he was immune to political pressure on Palestine, but he gave in, and failed to endorse the proposal he had helped to design.
6. Truman, after tentatively backing a plan that would divide Palestine into parts roughly proportionate to the Jewish and Arab populations, agreed to help win support for a partition proposal that gave the Arabs only 40 percent of the lands.
7. In each case, however, Truman backed down under pressure from the Zionist lobby.
I mean, how many times can one person "give in" on doing what is right and exchange Palestinian lives for votes?
Judis himself makes the case that Harry Truman was precisely the Zionist hawk history paints him as – that label is supported by every step Truman took or refused to take at that incredibly horrific and vital junction of Palestine's history and future. To say Truman wasn't an Israeli Hawk because he privately admitted to his friends he 1) didn't have a clue what was going on in Palestine and 2) needed the Jewish money/votes to win re-election is ludicrous, if not duplicitous. Truman was the original Israel-firster -- he wrote the book on taking shekels and votes from American Jews and giving GoI what it demands.
I wonder if AIPAC funds Congress and the WH with bitcoins yet. Harry would be pleased.
- Calls grow for Oxfam to drop Scarlett Johansson following her defense of Israeli occupation
To whomever authored this post -- thanks. A lot of solid information here we really need to see to understand this cluster fk called SodaStream and its modus operandi.
If memory serves, it was not so much the sanctions [there weren't any] or the boycott of SA that brought down that apartheid. It was Harvard et al. liberal institutions divesting in SA investments. When you get Harvard to divest in Israel, the earth will shake, the wall will crumble, and Sharon will roll over -- paralyzed, dead, whatever, he will roll over. And that will be the end of . . . . . Harvard.
There 'ya go, Dan. And the Coen bros, too. At least SJ didn't refer to Arabs as camel fk'ers and collect a $1M "best Jews in the world" prize for doing it.
Get off my fk'ing planet, with your racist, Zionist crap Ethan and Joel. Goodman, you're out the door, too. Of course, when we complete this Zionist purge of Hollywood, the only actor standing will be Mel Gibson -- if you call that "standing."
- Deconstructing Scarlett Johansson's statement on SodaStream
That is so beautiful it brings tears to my eyes: grammatically mangling a sentence about having no brains. People who make their living being directed on what to say and how to say it are masters at extemporaneously demonstrating their single-digit IQs.
Me and SODA, we're a real team alright.
- Scarlett and Oxfam chat over Palestinian land loss
Talk about a work of art, did you see this ToI piece on the fiasco?
link to timesofisrael.com
Get this: the rationale for the SODA plant being where it is . . . (wait for it) . . .
the factory's location is in an area which [sic] will likely be incorporated into Israel in any future deal.
Well . . . sure, that makes it OK then. And the reason the land will be incorporated into Israel?? Well, because the factory is there. Round and 'round we go on the tautological merry-go-round of GoI "logic." Must be driving Abbas and Kerry nuts by now.
ToI also raises the precedent of Oxfam booting ambassador Kristin Davis for endorsing Ahava, an Israeli company operating in the WB. Apparently Ahava digs up and packages Dead Sea mud and sells it to rich Zionist women in NYC and London who are deluded enough to think that putting Dead Sea mud on their face will soften their Jay Leno jawline. It looks like Ahava is privately held – would have been interesting to see what long-term effect Oxfam/BDS had their stock price.
Here is Alex's Nov2012 MW piece on Ahava.
link to mondoweiss.net
Oxfam booting SJ would sure be a bonus for BDS. But not nearly as helpful as tens of millions of football-loving Americans (who couldn't find Palestine on a globe if it were circled in red) looking at the SODA commercial next Sunday and saying "Look at that chick's jawline!! She could use some Dead Sea mud on that. What's the deal with that boycott, anyway?"
Raising consciousness – even in the Velveeta/nachos crowd – is what BDS is all about.
- NY Mayor tells AIPAC: 'Part of my job description is to be a defender of Israel'
Shuki – well over 1M?? I don't think so, not unless you count LI and NJ as part of NYC. You're talking the metropolitan area, a lot of which is outside de Blasio's influence, meaning they are not his "constituents" or voters. Check your numbers.
Regardless of how far out on LI they live, Jews have money, and that is the point here. Money – not votes, not "constituents." That is always the point with Jews and AIPAC and American politicians. How many Jewish constituents does John McCain have? And how many Mexican-American constituents? Which group's ass does he suck, aka truckle? (You're right, annie. Great word.)
Even if we take your inflated number, it's only about 13% of the total NYC pop. and an even smaller % of the metro. What % is Muslim? How about Hispanic? Irish? Italian? Jews and Asians have about the same size of the demographic pie in the metro area – which has the most political clout with pols like de Blasio?
My point being that by sucking up to AIPAC de Blasio is not pandering to voters; he's pandering to donors.
These "progressive" Democrats who come busting in, promising a new approach – they're really just the same-old-same-old. They'll say what they have to say to get the votes, and do what they have to do to get the money.
A flock of Democrats will replace a mess of Republicans. It won't mean a thing. They will go in like all the rest of 'em. Go in on promises and come out on alibis. -- Will Rogers
de Blasio:
"City Hall will always be open to AIPAC," he said. "When you need me to stand by you in Washington or anywhere, I will answer the call and I'll answer it happily 'cause that's my job."
By "job" he means the job AIPAC is paying him to do, not the job the people of NYC elected him to do, which is why the speech was sub rosa. When he makes that city-hall-is-always-open offer to the American-Ethiopian Political Action Committee, I'll believe in the great Democratic progressive agenda. Until then, it's just another round of hope-a-dope.
Very interesting expose' Phil, Goldenburg, and whomever carried that recording out of the AIPAC meeting. AIPAC will likely go after you all for copyright violation, which would be a great lawsuit. You could depose AIPAC and find out how much they paid de Blasio for the speech, which is to say for access to city hall.
- Update: 'Blood bubbles' -- mainstream media turn on SodaStream and Scarlett Johansson
Thanks, Hostage.
I figured it'd be something like that. Maybe an "archeological site" turned into rental property.
When Mike said:
The ultimate point is: Who should have sovereign ownership over the land.
I thought:
Good. Somebody gets it.
When he said:
When a nation with more nukes than England, and the means to deliver them, reaches this point, it is dangerous.
I thought:
This guy is good.
When he said:
Scarlett Johannsen is not pretty. I do not like that Jay Leno Jaw of hers.
I thought:
When he said:
On top of that, there is a moral fact: Israel has a claim on the land.
I thought:
Wow, this crazy Zionist is so far out there he must have a huge, blue Star of David tattooed on his face.
I mean, if you're going to come dancing into MW and argue that Israel has a valid claim of sovereignty to the West Bank, you gotta' be draggin' brass ones, brother.
But I think you're touching on a legal point that has merit and is being ignored.
According to the DM article linked to by annie, SODA is saving about 70% on rent by being in the WB. Now, that raises the question of who gets the 30% that's paid? I mean, who has title to this land and the right to collect SODA's rent?
If the settlers or other Israelis are getting the rent b/c they have taken the land or title to it away from Palestinians, then I'm going to be cheering with everybody else on MW when SODA's stock flat-lines below $1.
BUT . . . if the land is held by Palestinians and SODA is paying them the rent, then what BDS is doing, essentially, is telling the Palestinians who they can and cannot rent to. IOW, that situation would mean you have one group of Palestinians trying to control another group of Palestinians' land. I don't think so . . . that would be a question of sovereignty, but not a question of Israel's sovereignty.
This issue of Palestinians who profit from the occupation has always been a sensitive one, for without them there would be no settlements. When you see the photos of those very modern Jewish settlements and you know durn well that Palestinians were paid to build those beautiful homes and in some cases – E. Jerusalem according to one story – Palestinians sold the land to Jews, well . . . it sort of makes the whole all-Palestinians-are-victims POV go out the window. Some Palestinians are doing OK with the way things are going in the WB. Abbas comes to mind first.
Same thing w/ SODA. If they are leasing from Palestinians who have good title to that land, then it's none of BDS' business. It's about a legitimate land owner's right to rent to whomever they want.
But if the factory is built on land stolen by settlers, or if the access roads are built on land stolen by Israelis, or if there are any other elements of coercion, then Ms. Johansson needs to use whatever small amount of cerebral cortex she may have to rethink her position. I'm not sure what she does about her jawline that disturbs Mike so much, probably b/c it came from her father's side.
annie: "what's miley cyrus got to do with this? did she make some reference i missed?"
Yes, ma'am, you apparently missed a major news item. This thing has everything to do w/ Cyrus viz Johansson
Cyrus famously said she didn't need a 70 yo Jewish guy to tell her how to run her career. Johansson is pretty obviously being handled by 70 yo pro-Israeli Jews. The contrast could not possibly be more striking.
Now let's watch the trajectory of their careers. My guess is that they will both plummet to the ground w/in 18 months, but for completely opposite reasons.
Cyrus b/c, as Mel Gibson will tell you, you don't ruffle Jewish feathers in show business.
SJ b/c, well, as you so perfectly said "It's game on." There's BDS blood in the water and I doubt whether her stable of 70 yo Jewish handlers are going to be able to avert a PR disaster – for SJ or SODA.
Personally, I don't twerk (except in the shower), but Cyrus is OK w/ me. Another of the 21st c. mavens at destroying entertainment decency standards and making huge money doing it. She shocks me most of all by proving – hey – you don't actually need a Jewish handler to shake your ass and get rich. Simply being more crude than Madonna & Gaga is enough. Cyrus could be a wrecking ball to the whole entertainment paradigm if she's not cut off soon.
Johansson, by comparison, is a bubble brain – in more ways than one. Stewart just had her on his show and I puked 45 seconds into the "interview." I don't even know if he asked her about SODA, which was the only reason I watched. This woman couldn't navigate her way from the limo to the curb w/out help. Everybody is attacking her personally for blowing SODA's bubbles, but she's just a puppet for the 70 yo Jews pulling her strings.
annie: "most people don't care if she's jewish or not, i don't anyway."
You are so right, and that's such an important point. The world doesn't love it's entertainers b/c they are Jews or aren't Jews, or Catholics, or gay, or any of that. Nobody cares -- except the agencies and producers -- and when they do care, it's in a good way. When I found out (only recently) that Jimmy Durante was a Catholic, I was shocked and a little disappointed that one of my favorite "Jewish entertainers" was a Catholic, not that I have anything against the Pope. Durante was just more lovable when I thought he was different ethnically than my boring family, particularly my uncle, who also had a big nose and played piano. And who didn't love Danny Thomas just a little bit more b/c of that Lebanese thing? Or Ricky Ricardo for being Cuban?
OTOH, I don't admire Jon Stewart more or less b/c he's a Jew; I just wish he'd stop reminding us. It's good for us all to make fun of our own ethnicity now and then – which Thomas and Ricardo did – but not 3 times a week.
I don't think admiring SJ more or less because of her bona fides was Citizen's point. Today Jewish bona fides don't get you public adoration, they get you access to the stage.
Cyrus may be crude, she may be disgusting, but she got to where she is by her (Disney-period) talent and her (post-pubertal) butt and brains – she obviously doesn't need a 70 yo Jewish agent to tell her how to get from the limo to the curb. Not so for SJ. Too bad for her that her agents are Israel-firsters who can't read the writing on the Wall.
- Jon Stewart plays 'Let's break a deal' with AIPAC
Krauss: Where was he a week ago, when it mattered much more?
His winter break?
In trying to understand Stewart's softball approach, you are missing a basic point: Comedy Central = Redstone. He can only go so far or they'll replace him with John Oliver.
Jesus Christ . . .? Did he leave a comment, or is that the rhetorical Jesus Christ?
The difference between annie's take on the JS piece and the zionist H'Po's take is telling.
Ross Luippold at the H'Po embeds a clip of part of the piece but Hulu won't play in Canada so I don't know if comments on Israel/AIPAC are edited out or not.
But they are certainly edited out of the text description of Stewart's main points. Luippold notes Stewart's surprise that Democrats would support sanctions, but Luippold paraphrases Stewart's explanation as: "difficulties caused by various interests in the Middle East." No names named, not Israel, not AIPAC, not even (the rhetorical) Jesus Christ.
H'Po, AOL . . . maybe they should have a little BDS comin' their way.
- Europeans with 'no legitimate claim' to America wiped out indigenous people -- 'totally different' from Israel (Harris)
David Harris? . . . blank. Is he the guy who was married to Joan Baez, and who spent years in prison for refusing to register for the draft while Joan and Bob Dylan rolled in the hay together and made huge amounts of money singing anti-war songs to poor hippy kids?
I could not finish Harris' HuffPo BS, my tummy was taking a tumble. And I'm not defending his POV, so all you anti-Israel Edward Scissorhands put your hands back in your pockets, but . . . I think one point he makes is indisputable: the 20th century history of Israel really does beggar belief. Nobody in their right mind in 1900 would have believed the trailer to this movie had one been available. For a bunch of clothes-on-their-backs migrants to Palestine to have evolved into a nuclear power and a menace to the entire world in not much more than half a century almost leaves one with a sense that it was preordained -- manifest destiny in the Middle East.
And that thought is unsettling. I mean a bunch of rabid zionists arising out of nowhere, now sitting on hundreds of nukes -- at least 2 of which are thermonukes -- in the land of Armageddon suggests a very serious question: Chosen to do what?
- Former US citizen, former Israeli ambassador, Oren gets job at CNN
just: Thank goodness for MW and other outlets on the internet.
Your "ugh" is going to get a whole lot more emphatic given Redstones' increasingly successful litigation to neuter net neutrality. When people wanting reliable information on the latest Israeli apartheid outrage have to wait 30-45 secs for MW to load while all the pro-zionist sites load in less time than it takes to say "Gut shabbes," we'll understand too late what this net neutrality fight is all about -- zionist domination of all media.
As Oren and every regular reader of MW knows, the Internet is the zionist propaganda machine's worst nightmare. Somehow the zionists have to get control of it the way they have control of the MSM. It they can't, and soon, they're doomed.
- Sharon's debris
Well, there's always the mirror problem, eh?
Maybe the real tragedy here is not the wall, or Blair, or Bush, or Sharon, or even Netanyahu. Maybe it's that we're the ones who let them get away with their outrageous behavior.
If those of us who are opposed to zionism had been as adamant in opposing Sharon as Sharon was adamant in destroying the Palestinians, there wouldn't be an apartheid Israel today. There are a lot more right-minded people in this world than there are zionists.
In fact, Americans have more than enough power to shut down the whole zionist enterprise. Without America's support, Israel would be about as welcome at the UN as a dog food ad at a pony show.
Whenever I see something on Sharon, I think of that "Bulldozer" moniker, and whenever I think that, I think of Rachel Corrie, and that just reminds me again of how freaking useless most of us really are in resolving this travesty.
To paraphrase Will Rogers' famous quip about dogs going to heaven, I don't know where Corrie went, and I don't know where Sharon went, but I want to go where she went.
- Scarlett Johansson for SodaStream: 'Set the bubbles free' but keep the Palestinians bottled in Area A
ritzl, it's the Jon Stewart effect. That guy just cannot shut up about it. He reminds people that he's Jewish so often, he should just wear a yarmulke and quit with the I'm-a-Jew jokes already.
When will we get to the point that religion is a personal matter and not a means for classifying or characterizing people?
BTW, Johansson was on Stewart's show last week. I have never seen more empty space between two ears in all my days. I had to shut it down after about 90 seconds. I'll BDS that ninny w/ no loss of sleep at all. Giving up on the Coen boys was the hard one.
- On House floor, Gohmert says Blumenthal is anti-Semitic Jew who'd welcome another Holocaust
@Gohmert: We're not thinking straight in this town
He sure got that right.
Arutz is reporting Obama has announced he has picked Fischer as Fed vice-chairman, but the headline is
Fischer to Serve as Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve
As if Congressional approval is either not necessary or is a foregone conclusion . . . and that would be right, too.
link to israelnationalnews.com
Why don't the Americans just turn their government over to the Knesset and avoid the middleman -- the voter.
- What if Obama wanted to transfer Miami to Cuba so as to lower percentage of Jews in U.S.?
No, no, no -- speaking on behalf of all of my Canadian friends, neighbors, and compatriots: Keep NYC and all your other dirty cities.
We could use some more Jews, tho'. Not Zionists, Jews. Send the good ones, like the ones on MW, and we'll give you some of our best tar sands crude, guaranteed to rot your pipes.
When Jon-boy Pollard gets out, keep him.
- Questioning Obama's nerve, Oren imagines 'massive' bombing campaign to 'flatten all of Iran'
Rozeb: Contempt expressed for US in this interview by interviewer & interviewee striking
Oren said: "There are differences of public opinion, where in the United States you have a lot of war-weariness, and actually support for the interim agreement [with Iran]."
Consider the arrogance of that word "actually." It's the most telling word in the entire interview.
"Actually" emphasizes the incredulity of this Zionist prick at America's balking to bleed and bomb for Israel -- as if to say how dare Americans have the chutzpah to support a peace initiative over a war Israel demands.
We get a lot of talk about how Americans should be better informed on how $8M/day of their tax dollars is going to GoI. What they really need to be better informed about is how Zionists like Oren dream of acquiring the Levant with American blood. And it's certainly working out that way. Getting Assad out of the way will be a big step. Then Iran. If they can keep the Shia and Sunni fighting over control of the Levant, and if they can keep the Americans in their current state of dumb acquiesce, they may be able to pull this off.
Boy, am I with you on this one.
If Kerry can get the Green Line back and the IDF out of Palestine on the condition that US forces take over the role and the UN administers Palestine, I'll re-enlist.
Ok, ok, . . . wet dream, I know. Just sayin'.
As per above, my reading is quite different.
Once Assad said, "Here take the CW's," Obama would have to be a total fool not to take him up on it before taking him out. CWs was all Assad had. Once they're gone, he's gone.
99% ??? Would love to see that reference. I don't think the US public has ever been in 99% agreement on anything, least of all taking out despots.
Bombing was scotched? I don't think so. It was put on ice, but the ice is melting as the clock tics.
Remember the goal here for USG and GoI is regime change, and that is going to be a lot easier once the CWs are out of Assad's hands. Just like it was a lot easier after Saddam pulled back on the Scuds prior to 2003 and Gaddafi gave up his nuke aspirations in 2005. Middle East despots who suddenly make nice with the USG to avoid being attacked have never fared will so far as I know.
- Should dual citizen of US/Israel be vice chair of our Federal Reserve Bank?
Hostage -- not at all clear on where you are going on the tax angle. Are you saying Cruz has to pay Canadian tax??? I don't think so.
A kid leaving Canada at 4 and living in the US thereafter is not a resident of Canada; therefore, no Canadian tax is payable on income earned in the US.
A citizen of Canada who is not a resident of Canada is treated no differently from other non-residents -- that's my understanding. If you're not a resident of Canada, you don't even file a return.
The US forces non-resident US citizens to file a return and a Form 555 to disclose non-US income merely b/c they are US citizens. I don't believe other countries do that. If you don't live in Canada and don't earn income there, you aren't taxed by Canada, even if you are a Canadian citizen.
@Citizen: The impact of Israel on the nature, the character of the US since JFK was killed and Johnson took over is just HUGE.
Isn't that an interesting juxtaposition: JFK's assassination and the sudden rise in the influence of GoI in US politics. GoI control of Johnson was demonstrably complete by the time of the Liberty, 1967.
Is it fair to say Afroyim reversed 200 years of US jurisprudence on the issue? It was, essentially, a 14th Amend. case. It was also a 5-4 reversing a 5-4, which is not all that uncommon and hardly indicative of undue Israeli influence. And it was not a dual citizenship case per se. Afroyim got his passport pulled because he voted in an Israeli election.
The idea that Congress can write laws to destroy individuals' citizenship is pretty scary to this ex pat. I see Afroyim as correcting a gross error made by USSCt in Perez. And I hope some USSCt will eventually correct a bunch of gross 5-4 errors made since about 1990.
Sorry, Kraus, but your analogy is dead wrong.
It completely breaks down because Carney as a citizen of Canada is also a citizen of the British Commonwealth. His allegiance is to the Queen, for the head of that British Commonwealth is the Queen whether you are a Canuk or a Limey.
If you want to concoct a counter-argument based on a valid BoE analogy, you'll have to wait until England appoints, say, a Russian, or a German, or a Frog to head the BoE. Or an Israeli.
I think the point with the Fischer appointment is that this is what really explains the sudden triggering of the Senate "nuclear option." It wasn't Obama failing to get a gay appellate court judge appointed; it was this issue coming down the pike.
- Kerry wants to imprison West Bank with massive security fence along Jordanian border
annie, predictable as vinegar in a dill pickle jar – when anyone offers the slightest sour comment about the Palestinians you will jump right in. Thanks for being there.
The Palestinians are victims, as I say. (And I, personally, think you should use upper case in "Palestinians" out of respect.) They are getting beaten up on badly, we all know that. It has to stop, we all hope for that. But the Palestinians are not perfect, or faultless, or beyond criticism, least of all the likes of Abbas and Arafat. The ability to see only black (Israel) and white (Palestine) is one of the mass mental defects that complicates analysis of this entire problem.
@annie: "denis, why are you using a 2003 link to rebut talknics [sic] 2005 blockquote?"
annie, do you see a date on taklnic's [please note punctuation] 2005 blockquote? Did you think I was actually going to buy a NYT subscription in order to read the crap talknic is throwing around in an attempt to divert the point of my comment? Do you think I was going to buy a FT subscription or sign up with them to read yours?
talknic twisted the conversation into a funk about Arafat . . .whatever. I prefer not to be drawn into some loser pissing-match over whether Abbas and Arafat have skimmed funds from the Palestinians. T'nic refuses to deny that assertion, so we'll go with it as true. The rest of the world knows it. Here is what the Palestinians themselves think. (Note the date is 7 years AFTER t'nic's link – I know that's important to you.)
Palestinian Public Opinion Poll (44) by PSR Jul10.12
(3) Domestic Conditions:
Positive evaluation of conditions in the Gaza Strip stands today at 22% and in the West Bank at 30%
Belief that there is corruption in public institutions in the Gaza Strip stands at 57% and in the PA institutions in the West Bank at 71%
34% say there is press freedom in the Gaza Strip and 21% say there is press freedom in the West Bank
25% say people in the Gaza Strip can these days criticize the authorities without fear and 29% say people in the West Bank can criticize the PA without fear
Perception of safety and security in the West Bank stands at 55% and in the Gaza Strip at 58%
Positive evaluation of the performance of Ismail Haniyeh's government stands at 38% and Fayyad's at 36%
Level of satisfaction with the performance of president Abbas stands at 49%
@annie: "and just to be clear, are you saying kerry's offer is more a reflection of arafat/abbas/fatah (or palestinian) graft/greed rather than abiding by israel's will. i'm not quite following your pt."
annie, if you can handle the NYT and FT, surely you can handle my simple assertions. I am a simple person, I speak simply, sometimes I drool.
Please go back, have another look at my comment. The elephant I have identified (which, being an elephant and such, it should be quite evident, which is why I use the elephant analogy) is this: What the Palestinian negotiators will or will not accept in these talks is determined by and large by the cash the Palestinians get from the US taxpayer, which is substantial, almost $2Bn in 2008.
These negotiations have been one rolling, 60 year-long, cluster f&ck for the Palestinian people. Not coincidentally, the "leaders" of the Palestinians have become very wealthy over the last 60 years while the people have suffered economically. Notwithstanding t'nic's paywall link to NYT, there is still $200M missing from Arafat's accounts. I mean the dude is almost 10 years dead and they're still looking for the money he stole.
Contrary to t'nic's irrelevant 2005 paywall link, here is one from Oct.2013 regarding a report by the European Court of Auditors. They are making the same point I am making. Excerpts for your benefit and t'nics:
EU investigators who visited sites in Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank noted "significant shortcomings" in the management of funds sent to Gaza and the West Bank.
These disturbing revelations followed closely on the heels of a report in Ma'an News on 10 October claiming that the Palestinian Authority's (PA) anti-corruption commission - established in 2010 - was working to retrieve PLO-owned land registered to individual PLO leaders - according to commission chief Rafiq al-Natsheh.
Natsheh's remarks were made after comments by him in the Jordanian newspaper al-Dustour the previous week that PA officials were moving deposits from Jordanian banks to foreign accounts.
"If suspects accused of stealing public money (are moving funds abroad), that falls within our jurisdiction, We will ask these countries to help us restore the stolen public money, Transferring money anywhere (abroad) will not prevent us from calling suspects to account and restoring that money,"
According to al-Natsheh, some of the money and property - which was supposed to be have been deposited into public accounts when the PA government was established in 1994 - still remains in private hands.
In the mean time Abbas, whose term ended 2009, refuses to allow the Palestinian people to hold general elections.
Now, anyone who tells me these "palestinians" [your spelling, annie] ain't crooks is full of t'nic's "red heifer sh*t," whatever that means – ask him/her. And anyone who says that the Palestinian people have not been getting consistently screwed at these negotiations for 60 years while the Palestinian leaders have gotten filthy rich, is double full.
Just sayin'.
t'nic, I know, I know. You are in total denial that any Palestinian would ever filch a dime. After all, they are the victims.
Just to be clear about your position, are you denying that Abbas has not skimmed any $$$, or are you just trolling?
You do the research -- and just to get you started on the road to reality, simply Google "palestinian authority graft" and you will be rewarded with boat-loads of evidence as to what bunch of crooks the PA bosses are.
Here is the real headline on the 2003 IMF Afarat investigation:
IMF audit reveals Arafat diverted $900 million to account under his personal control
link to electronicintifada.net
@t'nic: "Otherwise I might end up 'concluding' that you're simply spouting red heifer sh*te!"
Beg pardon? Are we talking about a red cow, or about red "sh*te"? You've lost me.
You have not addressed my point, which is that Abbas' goals are not about what is right, but about revenue. Camp David, Oslo, Dayton, . . . all about revenue, not rights. Once the Palestinian people realize that, they will see that their goose is good and cooked. And that ain't no red heifer sh*t.
Ignoring the elephant in this room, ain't we? It's called $$$ talks.
While the discussion on MW so often focuses on the $8M/day the US taxpayer sends to GOI, he/she also sends the PA a good chunk of change -- about $110 per West Bank resident per year (vs $460/person/year sent to Israelis). Of course, Abbas and his buddies pocket the lion's share of what Ma and Pa Ten-forty send them, but, still, pull US tax money out of the PA and it will slide back into the horrible recession that marked the 2nd Intifada. Just look at Hamas, which gets zilch USD.
And the reason I say it is, Kerry's position may look absurd from the POV of what is right, or what is fair, or how to solve this mess long-term, but look at the alternative from an economic POV (including Abbas' personal bank accounts) before concluding it'll never happen.
Sure, Abbas said that although the Palestinians need USD, they won't be pressured by the US economically. Right . . . as if they haven't been pressured economically by the US for 60 years.
When the US was in its hopey/changey mode in 2009-2010, there might have been some reason to believe that a guy with Hussein for a middle name would be the person to do the right thing in Palestine. Forget that. Americans are still too far removed from hating the zio-Jews enough to change the politics sufficiently to make a difference. Until that shift happens, nothing will change for the better in Palestine.
- 'Huffpo' shames pro-war Democrats, blames AIPAC (and gets lectured by Foxman)
It's interesting, all Uncle Abe can hope to do now with his public rants is try and keep the choir together, and, maybe, justify his $700,000 salary, although my guess is that if you could examine both sets of books closely enough you'd find that ADL is funded largely by GoI.
There was a time back when the KKK was still hot when Uncle Abe could expect a steady stream of scared new converts to his toxic, racist, zio-semetism, but those days are long gone. Now he turns even KKK-hating gentiles livid, and he is an embarrassment to fair-minded Jews. His dwindling choir is all he has. I might even wager that the percent increase in ADL's membership for 2013 is less than the percent increase in MW's subscribership.
But that doesn't mean ADL doesn't still have a lot of clout. Although it seems to be part of our collective POV here that AIPAC is the group most effective in working the controls of Israel-firster politicians like Menendez and Kirk, my guess is that ADL has far, far tighter control by means of dirt they have on these pols. Recall the 1993 ADL scandal in San Francisco where ADL offices were raided and the FBI found its own files on the ADL computers along with dossiers on over 9000 individuals and groups. Those files were just released in Nov.2013 on a FOIA request by the Israel Lobby Archive.
But did Uncle Abe get busted???? Here the way ILA puts it:
However, like San Francisco District Attorney Arlo Smith who failed to prosecute the ADL for invasion of privacy, tax evasion; or indict Tom Gerard and Roy Bullock as unregistered agents of a foreign government, the FBI investigation was suddenly stopped in its tracks.
They're sitting on a mountain of dirt on SFPD, FBI, prosecutors, local pols, national pols – who's gonna' bust them? We're talkin' the J. Edgar Hoover program for eternal immunity here, except it probably ain't eternal in the literal sense. At least I hope not.
- Coen brothers and Bob Dylan went to Zionist summer camp
"Most of the [Camp Herzl]'s programming, like swimming or softball . . ."
Brings to mind the greatest Jewish kid-camp ever, which was not explicitly identified as Jewish:
Hello, muddah. Hello, faddah. Here I am a Camp Grenada . . ."
Alan Sherman introduced a whole generation of us baby-boomer, non-Jewish Americans to the plight of our Jewish contemporaries struggling with their own cultural straight-jackets, the same way Cosby helped us white kids identify with the black ones.
@jon: Walter also says that he's "shomer-fucking-shabbes"
I don't know, dude. I mean I hate to get in a pissin' match with you over the BL script, but you gotta' understand, this is, like, scripture to some of us. We don't want people messin' with it.
So in spite of it being shabbas today, I dug this out for you. I'm goy anyway, so it's no big deal. Here's the verbatim script passage, which is Acts 7:27 in my BibLe.
I told that kraut a fucking thousand times I don't roll on shabbas.
It's already posted.
Who gives a shit, Walter? What about that poor woman? What do we tell--
C'mon Dude, eventually she'll get sick of her little game and, you know, wander back--
How come you don't roll on Saturday, Walter?
I'm shomer shabbas.
What's that, Walter?
Yeah, and in the meantime what do I tell Lebowski?
Saturday is shabbas. Jewish day of rest. Means I don't work, I don't drive a car, I don't fucking ride in a car, I don't handle money, I don't turn on the oven, and I sure as shit don't fucking roll!
Walter, how--
Shomer shabbas.
Later the Coens pick up this line of "thought":
What's your point, Dude?
His million bucks was never in it, man! There was no money in that briefcase! He was hoping they'd kill her! You throw out a ringer for a ringer!
Shit yeah!
Okay, but how does all this add up to an emergency?
I'm saying, I see what you're getting at, Dude, he kept the money, but my point is, here we are, it's shabbas, the sabbath, which I'm allowed to break only if it's a matter of life and death--
Walter, come off it. You're not even fucking Jewish, you're--
What the fuck are you talking about?
You're fucking Polish Catholic--
This would not be 1/10th as funny if the Coens weren't Jewish. This is the Richard Pryor approach of getting us to laugh at our differences, and maybe appreciate them more.
Maybe Goodman threw an extemporaneous f-bomb in there between shomer and shabbas, but the Coens have a wicked reputation for enforcing every single word and punctuation mark in their scripts.
But even if so, it it was "shomer-fucking-shabbas," that is not an insult to shomer, shabbas, or Jews. It's a means of adding internal emphasis, like "big fucking deal," a phrase immortalized by our esteemed vice-president, whose mouth is as foul as Joel and Ethan's.
Well, if truth be told, I have never been offended by shegetz, b/c it's one I've never heard before. Now that I know, I'll have the good manners to be offended, already.
Or maybe not. I am not offended by cracker, honk, mick, stud, slurpy-doll, white boy, anti-semite, expat, or half-wit. No problemo. But call me goy and you'll piss me off b/c to me it stands for Government of Yisrael.
I used to to love the Coen boys, and have spent hours memorizing large parts of the Lebowski script, including the entire opening and closing soliloquies.
And then they went to Yisrael to collect a $1M racist prize for being top Jews, and I haven't seen one of their flicks since. Probably won't.
One morning a couple years ago I woke up realizing what TBL was really all about. The joke is not for us, it's on us. It was these two Zionists' way to use the caricature of Walter to call Saddam a "camel-f&*ker" in public and get away with it. Hate speech dressed up as comedy is not hate speech if it's Islamophobic and packaged as a Hollywood product that is written/directed/produced by Jews.
The Coens, Goodman, and all of the Jewish backers must have laughed until they choked back Zionist tears at that line. Imagine anyone in 1998 referring to Sharon as a "camel-f&*ker" in a movie script. Not only would it not get a dollar of funding, the writers, directors, and producers would have all been run out of America . . . and I'm thinkin' Mel Gibson here. Miley Cyrus. Helen Thomas. A small myriad of other shiksa/shegetz who dared to say what was on their minds and paid the price for free speech.
Wal, uh hope you folks enjoyed yourselves. Catch ya further on down the trail. . . Say friend, ya got any more a that good sarsaparilla?
- Page: 4
- Former Israeli ambassador calls for legislation to impose 'penalties' on promoters of academic boycott
"Interesting window into just how thick the hasbara remains in the American air–even high up there."
Is it the hasbara that is thick, or the nincompoops who buy into it without knowing what they're supporting?
- On the death of Nelson Mandela: a dissenting opinion
@Donald: Try reading the piece again.
OK. I did. Thanks for recommending it. I also read all of the other rancid online commentaries circulated by impotent white guys who never accomplished squat in their lives and never will but have the gall to complain about Mandela b/c he didn't cure AIDS, and didn't make all the poor people in the world rich, and he didn't stop iPhones from plundering the planet, and he didn't . . . [enter your own personal bitch with the world here].
@Donald: And your last line is utterly bizarre.
Donald, this post is bizarre. I'll eat that last line if Cook writes Sandy Koufax's eulogy when the time comes and bitches b/c Koufax never won at Wimbledon, never won at Augusta, never won at Talladega, and never cured MBL's drug problems.
What a piece of rubbish, written by someone probably not even old enough to remember what SA apartheid was all about, or, more to the point, what Mandela's presidency was all about. Not a word here about Truth and Reconciliation.
After 27 years in Robben Island you apparently think Mandela was supposed to emerge and solve every problem in the world, and you fault him for falling short of your juvenile expectations.
Why don't you at least give the body time to come to room temperature before start in with your anti-eulogy and trying to show the world what a spiffy, out-of-the-box thinker you are.
My guess is that your real, inner complaint is that he wasn't Jewish.
- Israeli soldier discusses killing Palestinian children on Ukrainian game show
That's cool, ar, now "crafty Jews" is antisemitism.
Your rule: if any adjective used to modify "Jews" is not complimentary, the phrase is certified as antisemitism. Uncle Abe has a place for you on his editorial staff. Leave your Chicago Style Manual at home, they use the Jerusalem one.
And "crafty Palestinians" -- Islamophobic no doubt.
And "crafty Irish" -- that's just plain oxymoron, I guess.
'cuse me for stepping in here like this, Shmuel, but "anti-Semtic snark" is just such a beautiful phrase I can't help but comment on it. It brings to mind Abe Foxman's epic story "The Hunting of the Anti-Semitic Snark."
Ooops. Hold on. . . that was Lewis Carroll.
But I was confused about your dog-cam point. What, precisely, is your connection between Obsidian doubting the doggie-cam story and antisemitism? I hope you are not equating IDF Jews to dogs. You should be ashamed.
Thanks to such loose accusations of antisemitism, they have all become a joke.
- Jews who protest settlements are 'mutants' who should have been aborted, says ZOA leader
The point in the conference, Goldberg's toxic words, and the protestors should be, IMO: Free Speech.
We should recognize how lucky we are that malignant Zionists like Goldberg, Geller, Oren, and Foxman have the right to say what they think needs to be said. This is not Warsaw, or Berlin, or even London or NYC in the 1930's, when Jews could get beaten or lynched for speaking out.
We should thank Mr. Goldberg for going to the trouble to exercise that vital right, thus reminding us all how important it is.
(And then we should exercise ours and politely ask him to STF up and STF down, enough already with the anti-Semitic, mutant, hate stuff.)
- Why Israel wanted Arafat dead
Ellen, that is one of the hardest questions of all in this mess: is the extra-judicial killing of evil people justified either as a) retribution or b) to prevent future evil acts? I think the question is easier to answer when both objectives are met.
For instance, if the Brits had hung all the members of Irgun and the Stern Gang in 1945, with or without judicial oversight, in retaliation for their bloody crimes against the British and the Palestinians, it would not only have been retribution, it may well have prevented the Nakba, and, in the long run, made the world would a much safer place and made Palestine a far more peaceful place for Jews and Arabs.
Would the world have been a better, safer place without Stern, Begin, Dayan, Sharon in it? Absolutely. Would that justify killing them? Well, the problem is that if they had been killed in 1945, we'd never know what a mess they didn't leave in 1948 and beyond.
Is the world a better place without Arafat in it? In my opinion, absolutely, and for the same reason. But how could I prove that, not knowing how much more bloodshed, if any, was avoided by his assassination?
I think MHughes is right. But it is one thing to advocate assassination, which I am not doing, and it is something else to analyze an assassination in past tense and ask is the world a better place because of it. One could do that thought-exercise with respect to Lincoln, McKinnley, Kennedy, Sadat, Rabin, . . . . well, the world is a bloody place.
No, W.J., my idea is that in writing an article pointing a finger at GoI for Arafat's murder and failing to mention, say, BSO/Munich as a motive, is equivalent to writing an article pointing a finger at the Union Army for John Wilkes Booth's murder and failing to mention, say, Lincoln's assassination as a motive. Yeah, them Union soldiers shot him in a burning barn, can't imagine why . . . he was a purty good guy according to his mother. Them damn Yankees again, always killing innocent Southerners.
The fact that Arafat was taken out by an extrajudicial process doesn't mean he wasn't a villain, so let's not twist history by making him look like an innocent victim, which is what Cook seems to be doing by ignoring Arafat's most ignominious contributions to history. IMO.
I don't think anyone should underestimate the impact Munich had on the Israelis, nor should anyone underestimate how long they were willing to wait to finish off those responsible.
Black September Organization
I would like to register a few points of disagreement and for discussion:
1. I am incredulous that anyone could write an article on why the world, much less GoI, would want Arafat dead and not mention BSO one time. The 1972 Munich Olympics – not one time. The 1973 Khartoum massacre – nothing. Incredulous.
2. Cook says:
Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, warned that a move against Arafat would trigger "rage throughout the Arab world, the Muslim world and in many other parts of the world".
Wasn't the first time Powell got it completely wrong, was it?
For Cook goes on to say, in effect, Powell got it completely wrong:
Not only did the Palestinian national movement collapse, but the Palestinian leadership got drawn back into a series of futile peace talks, leaving Israel clear to concentrate on land grabs and settlement building.
3. Cook says:
Israel alone had the means, track record, stated intention and motive.
Oh? USG also has access to polonium, plutonium, and Pluto the dog, any one of which they could have sic'd on Arafat with devastating results. Given that Arafat personally orchestrated the murders of US Ambassador Cleo Noel, Jr., U.S. Charges d'affaires George Curtis Moore, and Belgian Guy Eid in Khartoum on March 2, 1973, USG had as much motive and means as anyone.
4. Arafat was reviled by almost as many people as Jerry Sandusky. He was a man with the right cause and the wrong approach. He set the Palestinians and the State of Palestine back at least 30 years. He was Atilla the Hun when what they needed was a Ghandi.
Good riddance. And to whomever popped him with polonium, good job.
- Israel will attack Iran unless you block nuclear agreement -- French Israel fixer warned Foreign Minister
@Taxi: LOL! Don't make me laugh! HOW is it going to do it, pray tell? Through Saudi airspace . . .
Funny you should mention it.
ToI Headline, Nov16.2013
Israel said to be working with Saudi Arabia on Iran strike plan
But here is the $60,000 question: GoI attacks IRI, takes out Arak and whatever. IRI retaliates with Ashoura ballistic missiles. What does Obama do now?
Bonus question: Russia has expanded its Med fleet big-time since the Ghouta CW attack. It is now led by one of the most sophisticated warships in the world, the 'Moskva', which is sitting off the GoI coast along with enough firepower to blow GoI and its nukes into the next galaxy. Does that change your answer to the first question?
Hawks to the left of me, chickens to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.
Agreed, American. This story doesn't make complete sense. We're missing a quid pro quo element here somewhere.
Are we saying:
That the Frogs botched the deal in order to protect the IRI? To prevent WWIII? To save the world? The last time the Frogs lifted a finger to save anyone but other Frogs was in . . . . hold on, I'll come up with it.
That Bibi didn't make that threat directly to Kerry or Hollande but made it through the backdoor of some Frog MP? Bibi's only conduit was through this Habib guy?
That Fabius is taking orders from Habib and not Hollande?
Very confusing . . .
- Kerry pleads with Congress to give diplomacy a chance
@Phil: Illegitimate and bastard, is that redundant?
It is in the context of 18th C. domestic law when "issue" born out of wedlock had no right under the law to an inheritance, i.e. they were illegitimate b/c they were not recognized under the law. And bastard meant the same.
But if you take "illegitimate" in a more literal, 21st C. sense and "bastard" it its more plebeian sense, he probably is referring to Israel as a country that has no foundation on international law and that is acting like a complete dick. "Dick" probably carried a different connotation back in the 18 C., too.
How far down the this road is Obama willing to go, holding hands w/ Bibi and turning his back on what is right and in the best interests of the ME?
And the reason I'm asking is b/c of Obama's absolutely despicable decision to cut off funding to UNESCO over the Palestinian statehood issue. That decision has once again floated to the surface of the bowl of Obama's greatest debacles, as USG and GoI have, essentially, gotten booted out of UNESCO.
In the mean time UNESCO's budget is down 22%, and assistance to those in this world who need it most has been slashed, to the disgrace of all actual Americans and to the glee of all Israel-firsters.
OK, I know there are blind, hood-winked Obamophiles out there who are going to say it's all Congress' doing, and, yes, AIPAC. Tired of hearing it. A leader would have done the right thing in spite of the elected Zionists and shamed them out of office, if necessary. Somebody needs to start leading the country.
- A lynching by another name would be a political murder
I would have looked at those red gloves for a month and still never made the connection to the Ramallah incident. But once someone mentions it, it jumps right out at you. Phil's powers of association are truly nonpareil.
@Roth: "while horrific, the 'lynching' was not actually extraordinary: it is not all that unusual for political militants to defile the bodies of their enemies."
This is where we're going a bit lop-sided here logically. That is a bit of a non sequitur. I think "lynching" is, in fact, extraordinary, while defiling bodies probably is common place. There are two entirely separate issues being conflated.
Issue 1: Lynching is the killing of the IDF guys by the mob.
Issue 2: Desecration of the bodies is a separate issue.
Most of the discussion here is about desecration of bodies were the people were killed not by lynching but in combat. If one is going to justify the Ramallah incident by providing counter-examples of i-Jews doing the same, one would need to cite an instance where crowds of i-Jews lynched a Palestinian or two and then desecrated the bodies. I can't think of an example of such savagery, but I'll give Pamela Geller a call. She's an expert on savagery.
The only other analogous instance of lynching/desecration I can think of in the Israel context is Palestinian on Palestinian. During "Pillar of Cast Lead" a mob of Palestinians summarily executed two (I think) Palestinians accused of being GoI spies and then dragged their bodies through the streets of Gaza behind motorcycles.
Desecrating bodies of those killed in combat is a whole different kettle of fish, and as an ex-combat Marine, my lingering impression is that it's more common than any civilian would ever imagine or want to imagine. That is trophy-taking, while lynching/desecration is a form of terrorism -- violence to gain some political objective. Waving your blood-soaked hands to the crowd is a this-is-what's-gonna'-happen-to-the-IDF sort of statement. Dragging the body of an outed spy through the streets is likewise a warning of consequences for spying. Gratuitous desecration of a fallen enemy is a more personal statement of I'm alive and you're not, or there but for the grace of my M16 lie I. No connection to lynching-desecration, IMO.
- My first post-Snowden moment
Suggested amendment to Ms. Miranda's bio, required b/c sometimes modesty trumps veracity (that's when commentors step in):
Katie Miranda is an illustrator, jewelry designer, and brilliant cartoonist living in Oakland, CA.
- LBJ and Obama both took insults from Israel in election years -- Helen Thomas
"LBJ's ignoring the USS Liberty attack in an election year "
To clarify: the only election in 1967 was the one for Caleb County, TN animal control officer. Correct. LBJ campaigned Elsie Butler and did not mention the Liberty attack. Nor did he mention holding his beagles up by their ears to make them "sing."
- You Americans are responsible for this, says a Bedouin whose village is slated for removal by Israel
"You Americans" -- mark that; it's important. How does a Bedouin come by such insight? Do these villages have access to Internet or MSM?
I used to feel that the problem was Jewish Americans because it is largely their mega-money going to the politicians that grease the wheels of this horrible, apartheid machine. But that position is not only not fair, it's not accurate.
All Americans are pushing the Zionist juggernaut forward. It's their congress and their president. It's their $3Bn a year being pissed away. It is the liberals as much or more than anyone -- scared silly of being called an anti-Semite for standing up against the Zionists and seeing everybody to the right of Jon Stewart as a Nazi.
(BTW, not to be overly rude, but I hope Irene has had that mole checked. Since losing a 45 yo brother to melanoma, I freak out at any spot darker or bigger than a freckle.)
- Christian Science Monitor asks, 'Why do Israeli settlements expand during peace talks?'
@Ludwig: "cancer" is completely out of line in any sensible discourse.
How could I? Lost control, I guess.
Looking at that CSM map again and they way all those settlement bits are spread out all through the body of the West Bank, I see what you mean. Completely out of line.
"Metastatic cancer" pretty well nails it, 'tho. And the thing with metastatic cancer: the prognosis is never good -- for the patient or the cancer. In the end they both die.
It is good to see the attempt to put this tragedy in pictures, even if the data are a bit twisted. Some thoughts.
1. Line graph of slide 2 shows an amazingly constant rate of increase in WB settlers over 20 years of 12,000/yr. But note it stops at about 340,000 and the total for E.J'salem and WB is given in slide 1 as 550,000. That means 210,000 settlers in E.J'salem. Wow. Wonder what that graph looks like.
2. How could anyone look at that first graphic and disagree with the Iranian "anti-Semites" who refer to Israel as a cancer?
3. I'm not sure Intifada II was b/c Camp David broke down. I thought it was more Sharon storming the Temple Mount w/ a bunch of IDF hoons.
4. Slide 9. Huh? Bibi froze settlements for 10 months in 2010 and yet 2010 saw a 4.9% increase. Does that mean settlements increased 4.9% in two months? And they call this Hillary's "settlement freeze." And then another 4.5% in 2011. Yeah, Hil. That was a tremendous job. Obviously another "Who cares?" situation.
5. The bar graphs are a bit screwed. 2006 is in two graphs. 1997 and 2002 are not shown at all. 2008 is represented both as a red year and a blue one. Obviously, it can't be both. If we put 2008 in the red category and ignore 1997 and 2002, then the average annual WB settlement increase for "peace years" is 6.6% and for "not peace" years 4.8%. Sounds like a sound argument for Intifada III to me.
6. Interestingly, if you average just the US presidential election years, you get a higher figure than even "peace years" – 6.8% – which has to tell ya' somethin'.
7. As far as averages for individual administrations go, here is a nose-count of new settlers per administration. (Multiply these figures by 2 to get the annual increase in the number of vicious i-Jew-boots on the ground making life miserable for Palestinians, minus of course the odd amputee.) :
Obama 50,000 over 4 yrs = 12,500/yr
Bush 110,000 over 8 yrs = 13,750/yr
Clinton 80,000 over 8 yrs = 10,000/yr
Now who woulda' guessed that the settler rate would be highest for the greatest neocon president since Harry Truman? The Palestinians can thank Scalia & Co. for that. Would be interesting to know if these figures correlate with AIPAC contributions to each campaign, as in how many AIPAC dollars per settler increase.
- 'The bra is a security threat': Harassment and interrogation at Ben Gurion airport
@Sammar: I am neither Arab nor Jewish.
@Sammar: And while most Western nations go to great length to protect their citizens in foreign countries, it seems in Israel they wont lift a finger to help. Why is that????
See it? You answered your own question. Isn't MW where the story appeared about goy Americans getting stiffed by the US Embassy? If memory serves, the question the Embassy asked when help was requested was "Are you Jewish?"
Golly, what an unpleasant day. Well written story, but it has a dog-bites-man familiarity. I mean at least it sounds like you and your tic-tacs made your flight.
Your story is nicely juxtaposed with that of Niels Gerson Lohman, who has written a similar abused-at-the-border saga -- the US border. Lohman, who also has a Jewish mother, was crossing from Canada into New York enroute to New Orleans by train. He was busted for 5 hours and sent back to Canada. Why? Who knows? Maybe b/c his mom isn't Palestinian. Maybe b/c of the Yemeni stamp on his pp. Border pigs don't have to give any reasons, which is one of the things that makes them pigs.
- Israel lobby group counters Palestinian dispossession with-- Jewish creationism
Taxi: In fact, the world begins to learn of the story of Jesus some 200 years AFTER his death
This is a good point. I'm going to un-baptize myself as soon as I can find a dry towel around here.
BTW . . . talking about fictional characters, how many years after the fact did we first get written notice that Moses was rapping with that burning bush? Was that a first-hand account or hear-say?
At least Mo had the good sense to write it all down as it was being dictated by Gabe. That makes the Quran admissible in court as a contemporaneous writing. The Jews and Christians have nothing but hear-say from centuries after the fact, which wouldn't even get them past a summary judgement hearing.
And Buddha . . . I don't think that guy even knew HOW to write. So he's got no cred at all.
@Kathleen: Christians paying for Russian Jews to move to Israel
If ex-Lt.Col. Shalom Eisner, that Cossack IDF creep we all came to know and loath last year, is any indication, I would think it would be the Russians passing the hat to get those creeps to go to Israel.
BTW, I don't know if it's been reported here, but he was just volunteered out of the IDF. That's the punishment for IDF's who bust unarmed peace activists in the mouth with the butt of a rifle. Well . . . check that. That's the punishment for IDF's who bust unarmed peace activists in the mouth with the butt of a rifle IN FRONT OF CAMERAS. Otherwise, they get promoted.
This is soooo funny. I am on my knees laughing. Now throwing up. Now laughing again. I hope King Abdullah II is reading this.
I live outside Vancouver. I gotta' go downtown and see this for myself.
I just love SWU. Their Captain Israel comic book. Their getting their butts kicked by the Olympia Coop. It's always something funny with them.
1000 BC (make that BCE, sorry) to 2013 --- still laughing . . .
- At liberal forum in D.C., Israeli pols obfuscate their country's nukes
Speaking of Hanegbi, here he is deciphering Bibi's threats at the UN:
"Therefore," Hanegbi went on, "the prime minister essentially is telling the Iranians: 'Do not delude yourselves. Even if the Americans will be prevented from acting against you, we will know how to defend ourselves, with our own forces.'"
More slithering disinformation from Likund. Bibi's "we'll go it alone" warning wasn't about self-defense. It was about a preemptive attack should IRI reach a break-out position. There has never been any question that USG would come to GoI's defense if GoI is attacked first.
If you followed Bibi's address you saw how he upped the ante from last year, or at least obfuscated it. This year the righteous goal of GoI is to prevent IRI from reaching break-out. Bibi even mentioned his stupid red line Acme bomb diagram, indicating that break-out is the new red line. Everything GoI does falls under the rubric of self-defense.
BTW Hanegbi's comment was in the context of the Syrian crisis and how Obama came so close to pulling the trigger on that one that he actually called GoI and gave them the heads up an attack on Assad was coming. His reversal was absolutely stunning. Makes you wonder if rumors that 5 US generals had warned Obama that they would resign if Obama attacked Syria w/out Congressional approval might be true.
More and more I have the sense that if control of the USG is to be wrested from the Israelis, it will be by the top military guys. They are about the only public institution left that is not controlled by pro-GoI money.
- State Dept: No US aid to Israel until budget deal is reached
Here is a WaPo reveiw of all 10 of the prior USG shut-downs.
2 specifically involved funding to GoI.
5 were under Reagan -- and it looks like he won every time, even w/ a Blue House.
Check me if I'm wrong, but I believe GoI has a special status such that all of the money that the USG pledges to it each year goes into an account at the beginning of the year and draws interest for GoI until the money is disbursed -- interest paid by the US taxpayer, of course. So GoI/AIPAC should not be too fussed by a delay in payment.
As for the GoI/AIPAC effect on Republicans jumping ship, I also dunno'. The Republicans who are jumping ship on this are the ones in R/D borderline states like PA, NJ, and VA, not so much the Israel-firsters. Here's HuffPo's list of Republicans who have flipped as of Weds. evening:
Meehan – PA
Rigell – VA
Runyan – NJ
Fitzpatrick – PA
Barletta – PA
King – KY
Nunes – CA
Dent – PA
Wolf – VA
Grimm – NY
Paulsen – MN
Wittman – VA
LiBiondo – NJ
Forbes – VA
Gerlach – PA
Lance – NJ
Simpson – ID
Young – FL
Diaz-Balart – FL
Hanna – NY
Davis – IL
My guess is Boner is going to screw this up and Obama is going to have his Democratic House and Senate next year.
- Netanyahu returns to the U.N. -- now guess the drawing!
It's probably not so much the silos, as the 5 German-made, nuke armed Dolphin class GoI subs, with one more on the way. There has long been chatter from disgruntled US military brass about GoI's nukes being more of a threat to the US than Russia's. I think Hersch talks about this. He certainly talks about why USG is concerned about the Samson Option.
- Pro-settler group uses nudity to promote cause in U.S.
"Pro-settler group uses nudity to promote cause in U.S."
'bout time.
- Violence works-- by ending complacency
Mahane: How do you describe an act in which a Palestinian enters bus in Tel-Aviv, blows himself and kills 15 people including children?
@Mahane: Only one thing I don't really understand: why so many people coming to this Apartheid state
Yeah, well it's not that hard to get a handle on this mystery, Mahane. All of those Ethiopian Jews are doing aliyah for the same reason all the Californian ones are: they want to get a free, subsidized piece of a West Bank settlement. It's called getting in at basement prices. They figure once the Palestinians are driven out in 30 years, the real estate prices are going to take off like an IAF F-16.
Similar economic forces were responsible for British and Dutch pouring into South Africa. If you were a Palestinian, you wouldn't have as much trouble seeing the obvious.
It seems to me that all historical analogies fall flat when it comes to the I/P problem, and all the other problems in the world that result from Israel's existential belligerence. The unique – and, possibly, defining – aspect of Israel's apartheid is that it could not exist without active American support – financial, military, political. In fact, Israel itself could not exist without American support.
If America were ever to withdraw its support and punish Israel for its human rights abuses and nuclear roguery the way it punishes Iran and NoKo, Israel would collapse through internal discord and/or be over-run by Arabs in a matter of minutes. If America demanded from Israel what it pompously demands from Iran, there would be no I/P problem. The anatomical reality is that America is the dog; Israel is the tail. Thus it is and ever will be. The anomaly is in the shaking, and that can be reversed. It must be reversed.
Consequently, the solution to the I/P problem lies entirely within the powers of the sleeping 98% of Americans who are no more connected to Israel than they are to, say, Kiribati. Wake this 98% up and Israel will have no choice but to cease its human rights abuses or disappear – let the Israelis figure out how best to resolve that conundrum. Maybe most of them will agree with Helen Thomas.
Perhaps those of us who have already opened our eyes to what is going on in Israel should be less focused on what solutions are viable or not viable and more focused on educating other Americans about their own blind complicity in this rolling cluster f*ck. Educating Americans on what an Israel-firster is and how their own government is dominated by them. Educating Americans on what the neocon agenda for the ME is and how it is related to the "Arab Spring" by virtue of the CIA and other clandestine American activities. Educating Americans on how money is flowing from their pockets into the pockets of those IDF ghouls shooting Palestinians trying to draw water from their wells.
Israeli apartheid is an American problem.
- Syrian chemical weapons deal puts pressure on Israel to sign weapons treaties
Here's the "contrary", Citizen: a Pentagon official, Michael Maloof, talking to RT reported on Sep17.
[Kerry] tells me that they have been scouring Syria for more than a year looking at all the Syrian military activities and that they have no information on any artillery having been fired that day at that time into that location.
The article makes the point that the insurgents have access to sarin produced by al-Qaeda in Iraq, which means, contrary to the neo-con/GoI position, the presence of sarin in the UN samples does not equate to or prove an attack by Assad.
I'm currently working my way through the UN report. So far what I see is a rushed, late, incomplete, self-contradictory investigation designed to imply a lot more than it informs. Stay tuned, I think this is going to become yet another exploding cigar for Obama, Lindsay Graham, and John McCain.
- Jews say no to AIPAC and say no to bombing Syria
American: Barney Frank was among the latest
And Harry Truman was probably the first. When asked why he supported the Jewish invasion of Palestine, he said he had hundreds of thousands of Jews voting for him and not a single Palestinian.
This person and this attitude are the root and source of the entire "I/P problem." Without Truman, and without his self-serving attitude, there would be no I/P problem today b/c there would be no I. The world would be a far safer place for us and our children.
AIPAC is to America what the Ba'ath party is to Syria -- minority control of the political process by fear and intimidation. The day is coming when it will be a serious liability for any American politician to be associated w/ AIPAC. When that day comes, these folks will be dancing.
- National Security Agency gives data on Americans to the Israeli government
You're on it, A-gal.
It's like the gut wrenching irony of David Miranda's 9 hour detention and loss of his computer at Heathrow. When Snowden was in the HK and Moscow airports, all the news-screws and politicians were outraged b/c China and Russia were going to confiscate his 4 laptops with US secrets. Well, they didn't touch him, and he was in the Moscow airport for what -- a month?
But as soon as Miranda disembarks at Heathrow, the UK is all over him, and w/out a warrant.
May the West drown in its own hypocrisy.
- The Russia-Syria deal: What it means and what now?
I regret to say, not long after I uploaded the paper on the lack of pharmocological evidence of a sarin attack, the server had its own attack -- a DNS attack.
The open letter to Congress can be found on Scribd
ritzl: It was a great interview, altogether. Unedited.
I thought Rose looked like an abusive dolt who has no concept of the difference between a sovereign nation and a puppet of the USG that is expected to do as USG says. He was incredulous that Syria would fight back against those who are attacking it. If USG says you are supposed to stop, then stop.
Assad erred in not admitting to and explaining the CWs. I would have said "Yeah, dude, we have CWs. You would, too. We're right next to the most belligerent country on earth who has already attacked us on numerous occasions and who is sitting on hundreds of nukes. The threat of a CW reprisal is the only thing keeping us from being nuked by these rabid Cossacks who call themselves Israelis."
Assad's rejoinder about Rose's constant use of the word "opposition" was one of the most brilliant pieces of impromptu put-down I've ever seen.
Unedited. No, I don't think so. Look closely and you'll see that there are breaks in the vid masterfully blended out -- almost. One is at 29:27.
Send him this link:
Lack of Pharmacological Evidence of a Sarin Attack at Damascus: An Open Letter to Congress
Taxi: Syria is a completely different equation, in a completely different political environment.
That's what you and Helena don't see: it's the same equation. Israel = control of Levant.
jaxi? Is that Yiddish?
Abdel-Jalil Abdel-Aziz, a doctor who accompanied the body in the ambulance and examined it, said Gaddafi died from two bullet wounds – to the head and chest.
Libya's chief forensic pathologist, Dr. Othman al-Zintani, carried out the autopsies of Gaddafi, his son and Jabr in the days following their death; although the pathologist initially told the press that Gaddafi had died from a gunshot wound to the head, the autopsy report was not made public
If I could be so effusive as Helena, I would change my username to "Pollyanna."
Gadaffi tried conciliation and it got him a bullet in the head. Saddam tried conciliation and it got him a noose.
What Gadaffi, Saddam, and Assad had in common was relying on CWs as the "poor man's deterrent" to a nuclear attack from Israel. It's all they had. GoI and the neocons knew that they had to neutralize the CWs of all three countries in order to establish GoI military hegemony in the region. GoI acting through USG has taken them down one at a time.
The ultimate outcome for Assad won't be any different than it was for Gadaffi and Saddam. Once the CWs are out of the way, he's a goner. I'm takin' bets.
- Shady PR operatives, pro-Israel ties, anti-Castro money: Inside the Syrian opposition's DC spin machine
Thanks, Hostage
It is akin to a mullah interpreting Sharia, IOW.
I am forever fascinated in the parallels between Judaism and Islam.
The significance of hats, for instance. Women cover their heads in Islam, but men don't. Men do in Judaism, but women don't. Christian women traditionally wear hats on the holiest of holidays -- Easter. Christian men, but not women, remove their hats when entering the place of worship anytime. These are rough generalities. But the diverging evolution of these traditions is interesting.
bugs, you're thinkin' waaay too far ahead here.
All that matters for the moment is that the vacuum/chaos that follows Assad doesn't have the wherewithal to contribute to the Shia retaliation that will come in response to the attack against Iran, which will happen a few weeks later Assad is taken down. IOW, taking out Assad will be equivalent to an Israeli walk-off homer in MLB terms -- finish your beer and dog and go on home. Game's over.
This will all be over by
ChristmasHanukkah, and Israel can then leisurely occupy Syria and Lebanon w/out Iran being a problem. Palestinians -- or should I say the rest of the Palestinians left over from 1948 -- will be relocated to Syria/Lebanon and the i-Jews will occupy the whole of Palestine, river to sea, and have most of the Levant under control. IOW they will have won the World Series.
It is all written . . . somewhere. I think in that anti-BDS comic -- Capt. Israel -- that Oren's front, Stand with US, publishes. link to captisrael.com
Hostage, I know I'm going to regret asking, but what's a Poskim? If it has anything to do with foreskins, I don't want to know.
- Will Obama strike without congressional or UN approval?
Unlike the British PM and many others, the US president does not serve at the pleasure of the legislature, Rudy. There are only three grounds for impeachment: "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
A president flipping the bird to Congress and asserting the right to dump a cruise missile into the lap of a despot is not Treason, not Bribery, and even if it is in violation of the 1973 War Powers Resolution would not rise to a high crime and misdemeanor, at least it didn't when Clinton bombed Bosnia against Congress' clear mandate not to.
However, Obama -- the Constitution scholar -- stated his position in 2007:
"The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation"
But then again, he also said:
"Warrantless surveillance of American citizens, in defiance of FISA, is unlawful and unconstitutional."
And we saw how well that played out.
So maybe we could hang him with his own words if he throws a missile at Assad w/out a Congressional OK. And if not, we can always go back and have another look at that birth certificate issue.
- NYT article raises questions about possible US allies in Syria as rebels ransack Christian village
As it looks more and more like Obama is not going to get Congressional support, it behooves us to review his comments in 2007 as a fast-talking Senator spinning his way into the WH. He said to Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe:
"The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation"
More at: link to logophere.com
Now, wouldn't it be cool if he really believed that then and still does? And if he knew the whole "I'm-takin'-this-to-Congress" schtick had no chance, but that it was a way to get the Israelis off his back and buy some time as more info came available.
If Congress votes the attack down and Obama accedes to their choice, he will go down in my book as one of the brightest presidents ever, and certainly as the brightest black president ever. But if Congress votes against an attack and Obama blows them off and goes ahead, I will rank him as one of the most mendacious.
Ya' don't get it, riy.
In the US the ULTIMATE RED LINE is Muslims wiping out Christians. That NYT article just cancelled Obama's megalomaniac dreams to bust Assad's butt.
As far as the Alawites being butchered, most Americans would probably agree with you. Who gave a damn when the Syrian insurgents wiped out hundreds of Alawite women and children in Latakia on Aug05.13.
Well, hold on, that Catholic nun in Syria, Mother Agnes, gives a damn -- she is about the only person talking about it. Of course, the Catholics don't control the MSM, so nobody hears what she's saying, except the Russians.
Bingo, Bando
7500 Taliban fighters who had surrendered to Northern Alliance placed in sealed containers. Between 250 and 3000 prisoners shot or suffocated en route to Sheberghan prison.
That is definitely not being treated very well, even in Renner's view.
NYT article:
link to nytimes.com
In a Jul13.2009 CNN interview Obama said he was ordering an investigation of US role in that massacre. Haven't heard a word since.
- Dubious Intelligence and Iran Blackmail: How Israel is driving the US to war in Syria
Bando, thanks for setting me straight on Focus. I was passing along someone else's opinion without verifying. I checked my notes and what they claimed is that Focus is a "miserable rag," which is what my mom used to call MAD Magazine when I was a kid, although we often caught her reading it.
The mixed intel on the Ghouta attack is getting almost as serious as the attack itself. If you check out ShoutWiki on Ghouta, Petri Krohn and pals are running an ongoing analysis of the incoming data. Analysis of conflicting videos there, too.
Petri says that the site where the GoI "intel" claims Assad's CW rockets were fired from has been under insurgent control since June. [I call these guys "insurgents" b/c they're mostly the same crowd the US has been calling "insurgents" in every other conflict and b/c being once from Virginia I can't bring myself to honor them with the term "rebels." ]
Thanks, annie. Not sure now what I think of Ceaucescu other than that his name is impossible to spell. What of the horrible stories about Gadaffi and Sadam butchering villages, kidnapping and holding schoolgirls for sex slaves . . . who know what's legit? But back in 1990 Saddam was a fine fellow when Rumsfeld was supplying him with hundreds of tons of sarin so he could gas the Iranians.
Assad is now "Hitler" in Kerry's words, but in 2009 he and his wife were sitting down w/ the Assad's at a posh restaurant thoroughly enjoying themselves.
Israel is rather clumsy at its propaganda compared to CIA. On MW we talk all the time about GoI training online hasbaristas, but there is no doubt the Internet is crawling w/ CIA agents that we never hear, talk, or think about. I might be one myself and not even know it.
Interesting experience that vid: trying to listen to subjects talking English, overdubbed in German, and trying to read the English subtitles gave me sea sickness.
What's FCO?
Yes, Max, it is a wild and crazy time. It's a deja vu time, too. Remember how wild and crazy it was just before Baby Bush pulled the trigger in 2003? Colin would like to forget.
One point in your timeline perhaps you would check. I believe the Focus article was dated Aug24, not Aug30. In fact, you link to an Aug26 ToI article about the Focus article.
The Focus report was the source of the Mossad propaganda about the intercepted Syrian officers' telephone conversation re: the Ghouta attack, almost certainly a savage piece of hasbra designed to suck the US into doing Israel's dirty work. Again.
The use of Focus is new as far as I know. Normally, when GoI/Mossad leak intel – for instance about Iran's Parchin "Pink Site" – they use Der Spiegel or George Jahn of AP or David Albright of ISIS. From what I read, Focus is a nasty right-wing rag that most of the German and European media avoid citing. Over all I find Mossad and GoI's dark association with Germany and its media rather fascinating.
One toxicological point I have not seen made in the media is that sarin causes rigid paralysis of both skeletal and smooth muscle. This means that among the symptoms of sarin poisoning is urinary and fecal incontinence, and vomiting. I have looked at a lot of gruesome vids purporting to show dozens and dozens of victims of the attack and there is no indication of such very visible symptoms. The bodies in white shrouds may have been cleaned up, but most of the vids are in situ – taken at the place of death – and there is no indication of sarin poisoning.
Also there is interesting evidence and discussion about how some of the vids have obviously been faked. For instance, one dead girl in a very conspicuous yellow sweat shirt keeps showing up in different insurgent vids taken at different venues. Besides, all of these people supposedly dying in their sleep were fully clothed in street clothes, shoes, jackets, etc.
Hopefully the UN people will sort these problems and accusations out before Sep09 when Congress "gets back to work." I'm afraid that in the mean time whoever is trying to force Obama's hand will pull off another attack and blame it on Assad.
Looking at the last 5 years or so one can see an obvious trend. Libya, Iraq, Syria all made it clear that they had CWs and delivery missiles, and were prepared to use them as a deterrent to GoI's nukes. The CWs in this context are referred to as the "poor man's nuclear deterrent." Other than Iran's possible nukes, they are the only thing standing in the way of Israel's complete military hegemony of the region.
Over these last years GoI has very artfully manipulated US sons and daughters, paid by US taxpayers, to take out the Libyan and Iraqi CWs. Now GoI is trying to get US sons and daughters to secure Syria's. In order for GoI to attack Iran, the Syrian CW's have to be neutralized no matter what the cost in (US and Syrian) lives.
- Terry Gross doesn't care about Edward Snowden
Thank you, Phil. Thank you Stateless American. Thank you Ellen. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Somebody's gotta' say it and if an embittered old goy like me does he's gonna' get busted for anti-S'tism. But Terry Gross is a banal, intellectual light-weight parading as some sort of sapient radio-spirit/guru. Once a person – even liberals – sees that, no TG program will ever be the same. Ellen's phrase – "in her breathy gee whiz voice as if she were interviewing someone about a major episode of influence in Western cultural history" – deserves to be recorded in the Internet hall of fame for future generations. OTOH, when Gross is on her game -- which is way too rare -- she has no equals.
In 1987 Reagan scrapped the FCC's "Fairness Doctrine" and vicious conservative talk radio exploded. I believe Gross was part of NPR's attempt to provide some middle-left counter-weight, but the conservatives beat up on them badly as government funded propaganda -- a thread they carried into the Big Bird debacle of the last election. By the 1990's the conservatives succeeded in turning NPR into a whipped dog that is afraid of its own shadow. NPR then went so far in the other direction as hiring an Islamophobe like Juan Williams to "balance" things a bit. Well, we saw how that went.
The individual liberal's problem w/ respect to NPR is recognizing that he/she holds the nuclear option right at the end of his/her right arm. It's called "forefinger." Just take that forefinger and punch the on/off button when NPR drones on and on with one its insipidly banal, mindless articles. You can do it!
It took me years to work up the courage but it works! Forefinger forcefully applied to the button and you will be rewarded with wonderful silence and some room in your mind for your own thoughts to bounce around. For some reason liberals feel they have a moral obligation to continue listening to NPR crap all the way home, and then sit there and do that drive-way thing.
No! You have a mind, you have options, you have a forefinger! Use them!
- Israeli diplomat is 'sick of... self-righteous commemorations for Hiroshima and Nagasaki'
Elliot -- there is a strong deju vu quality to this post on Seaman.
I clearly remember your comment to
Annie'sannie's Aug14 post. You also gave us one of Seaman's quotes: "I am the one who withheld press passes for Palestinian reporters."
And I contributed another toxic Seaman spew: "The Palestinians commemorated the Naqba with a 65 second siren in Ramallah. That's not nearly enough time to stop and pause to think about how stupid they are."
As GoI's once and future Minister if Internet Propaganda, Seaman is the reincarnation of Joseph Goebbels, with whom he bears a most remarkable likeness.
Compare . . .
link to logophere.com
link to en.wikipedia.org
My point here is not (just) to regurgitate past comments, but to take this opportunity to emphasize again how toxic this Seaman creep is.
- Questions about the Alice Walker case
Great memory, Phan
The situation at Michigan is getting very confusing, but it looks like they are pulling exactly the same switcheroo crap that U St Thomas pulled against Tutu.
According to DigitalJournal, Thomas has "re-invited" Walker, but not as the keynote speaker -- as a speaker in some forum. The ole' switcheroo once the Internet heat is on. Anything to keep this thing from going viral is what Thomas is hoping for.
An article at Mondoweiss suggests that Walker has been reinvited to speak. While this is true, it is at another forum not as keynote speaker for the celebration as originally planned . . . The actual letter makes it clear that the original decision not to have Walker as keynote speaker stands.
All I can say to Michigan is: Go Buckeyes!!
ya' nailed that one
Annieannie. There is no integrity here I don't care how they characterize Ms. Thomas. Dr. Thomas. Prof. Thomas. Whatever.
This is racism.
Not directed at Walker or blacks. Directed at the victims of Israeli apartheid: Palestinians.
What modicum of integrity can one possibly find in racism, in supporting apartheid?
Integrity my . . . [ ]ss. Anybody wanna' buy a vowel?
- 'The one and only Jewish state,' Netanyahu says, pounding the rostrum
"IF Israeli would accept numerous U.N. Resolutions condemming its behavior and asking that it comply with U.N. mandates on borders, right of return, occupation, refugees, the Seperation wall, apartheid, transfer of population, et al."
I love this thought, but it needs symmetry. Base the demands on both parties on UN and UNSC resolutions with respect to both sides. Use those resolutions -- all the way back to 1948 -- as the "road map." I don't recall anyone having suggested this. One would think Moon would be the first.
"The moral standing of the U.S. is being demeaned . . ."
Now ya' got me down of the floor laughing. The last shred of moral standing the US ever had in the Middle East went up in smoke with shock-and-awe. Obama's drone attacks, particularly the double-taps, have just served to emphasize what a moral vacuum USG operates in.
- 'You don't oppose settlements... once they're built' -- AP says to State Dep't
The Aug13 statement by JK is 100% clear: the USG views the settlements as illegitimate. Period. Past, present, future.
At 49:30 of yesterday's vid, the bald gentleman ran the discussion back to 1978 and Carter's characterization of the settlements as illegal. Who cares what Carter said 35 years ago? We only have to go back 2 days to JK's "illegitimate" characterization. Illegal, illegitimate. No difference.
So I don't get this dance between Psaki and Lee. I don't see Lee's point or problem and I don't get Psaki refusing to repeat what her boss said 2 days ago. Lee seems to miss the point that the issue is not what Psaki thinks or believes, it is what the Secretary says, and that is crystal clear. Who cares what Kerry's minions think? These reporters do the same thing with Carney. It's like they think that whoever is at the podium is the person running the country and so they want to get him/her to commit to what his/her personal beliefs are.
The point Lee should have pressed is: Given that it is the USG's position that all settlements are illegitimate, what has USG done on the ground to penalize GoI for building past illegitimate settlements and what has it done to prevent future ones? If nothing, why? That is the only question, not USG's characterization of the settlements.
I don't know who is the more annoying, Lee or Psaki. Neither one is serving the public in a competent manner. They both need a good bitch-slapping, IMO.
As for Obama/Kerry – I am hoping that their position that the announcement of new settlements should not affect the talks means that when the 1948 border is once again enforced, all those Southern California aliyah Jews are going to be forced out of their new West Bank homes or will start paying rent to Palestinian land-lords.
So let them keep building. After all, they're paying Palestinians to build settlements that will someday be owned by Palestinians. If you build a garage on my property knowing it is my property, it becomes my garage, thank you very much.
- Covert online students hasbara units directed out of Israeli PM Netanyau's office
We're missing Danny's most onerous quote, folks:
"The Palestinians commemorated the Naqba with a 65 second siren in Ramallah. That's not nearly enough time to stop and pause to think about how stupid they are."
Read the guy's bio on Wiki -- he's as toxic as they come.
This guy was the Minister of Internet Propaganda before Haaretz outed him for being the racist pig he is and he got
firedsuspended. But he'll be back. Soon as the non-peace talks end and the lights go dim all the kitchen cockroaches will come out again.
- Bored with the Jews
In submitting the 102nd comment in this thread -- and as a congenital, but faux-circumcised, goyim Salinger groupie and admirer of Jewish writers in general -- may I present some quantitative, objective data suggesting your predicament is real: the threads on MW that reach the century mark are not the ones about the I/P troubles but the ones about Jews per se, the angst of being an American Jew, the Shoah, . . .
I have yet to see here a comment about the angst of being Irish-American.
When you get the choir you are preaching to all singing the same song, you will only have reached 2% of the population. By then the other 98% will have drifted away knowing that they are not a part of that choir even if they agree with the song.
If you move on to global warming and over-population, will that be for a Jewish audience, too? [BTW -- over-population!!!! Man, where did you get that? How '60's can you get -- ZPG is the bell-bottom trousers of liberal causes. It's only the most important issue ever. There is only one green problem: too freakin' many people. And only one green solution, and it ain't solar and wind. Go for it! ]
PS: From the hints you have dropped, your wife's family must be a lot of fun; I bet they love you. I envy you -- none of my ex-sisters-in-law would have ever washed asparagus in my presence. Take some time off. If Stewart can, you can. Write a movie script about your annual summer gatherings -- something along the lines of The Big Chill/Same Time, Next Year from the viewpoint of Salinger's Lionel. Or something.
- Fukushima's Ice Wall meets the Israeli-Palestinian Apartheid Wall
Seems like a bit of a stretch connecting the Fuku "ice wall" to the Israeli apartheid wall, but as they are related to two of the most depressing, rolling-disasters of our time one can understand the attempt.
Just like no one outside of I/P really cares about the apartheid wall, no one outside of TEPCO or GoJ is really taking the ice wall idea seriously. A mile-long refrigerated band of ice? Give me a break. They don't even have the wherewithal to rat-proof their electrical boxes.
The ice wall is just something positive they can talk about to divert the NYT's attention from the real issues. It's like the captain commenting on how nice the violin concerto sounded as the Titanic sank. The leaking radiation is insignificant next to the catastrophe that is going to happen when reactor #3 with its MOX fuel pile finally blows or a 7.5 earthquake topples the spent fuel rods pool in reactor #4.
There is actually a world outside the NYT. The National Geographic Daily, for instance, is a more helpful/accurate source of info on Fuku. Here's a helpful summary of the problems from a couple days ago. No ice wall mentioned.
link to news.nationalgeographic.com
In my mind, the most significant nexus between Japan and Israel is not the ice wall/apartheid wall, but that both disasters highlight the inability or unwillingness of the world's leaders [UN] to come together and do whatever it takes – including suspending national sovereignty – to remedy problems that will lead to international catastrophes and millions of deaths if not resolved immediately.
Israel is a belligerent, bellicose, rogue nuclear state that could easily drag the world into a global, nuclear holocaust with its existential right/ manifest destiny mentality and its undisclosed stockpile of 400 nukes. Japan is, as is now obvious, a nuclear-powered country sitting on tons of nuclear fuel and waste without sufficient aggregate intelligence to prevent or solve complex technical problems that could well destroy millions of lives, not just there but around the globe.
Ice wall, my a**.
But I'll say this: If they were my kids come for a visit, I would hug them every day they're within reach to try to compensate a little bit for the mess we're leaving them. Too late now to say "sorry."
- Do Israelis want a real Palestinian state? The polls say no
Hostage, such an incredibly important point. I don't think I was ever aware of it: the GC opposes USG faux-peace initiatives in I/P. Amazing. Has Wolf Blitzer reported that? How about Anderson Cooper?
So, what we've got here is, essentially, the PFLP has been arguing, roughly, the GC's position?
What this tells me is that Abbas is on the take. If he wasn't, he would refuse to participate in any negotiations not under the auspices of the UN. There has always been this undercurrent of criticism that the Palestinian leaders are perpetuating the I/P schism because they are making so much money by the status quo.
I found your ref to the 1987 JTA article about Kirkpatrick, well . . . sorta' odd.
She was talking at a Kahane gathering. I get all these rabbi guys confused -- is that Meir David Kahane? aka David Sinai, aka Michael King, aka David Borac, aka Martin Keene. Violent, cretin, right wing-nut iJew who, thankfully, took a bullet to head in 1990? Maybe the only Jew since Hitler's alleged grandfather to ever make Uncle Abe's sh*t list?
I don't get the Kirkpatrick reference.
@miriam: Alex Kane's claim that the brand new Israel Democracy poll shows that 63% oppose a West Bank pull-out even with the retention of Ariel and Ma'ale Adumim settlement blocs is disingenuous.
Yeah, well, there's plenty of disingenuity to spread around here.
@Alex:The devil is in the details
No, sir. The devil is in the definitions.
Excepting the last poll referred to, these polls are advertised as being about "Israelis' opinions." Well, what's an Israeli?
I would define Israeli by the equation: Israeli = iJew + iArab. But that's me and that's waaaay too Pollyanna.
In reality -- and certainly w/ respect to most of these polls: Israeli = iJew. Period.
And the reason I say it is that there is a big push by MKs to limit Bibi's referendum on peace talks outcomes to iJews.
And that is very
funnyironic, if you see it. A referendum exclusively of iJews' will shut down any peace proposals leading to a sovereign state of Palestine, meaning that the only open door remaining will be to a one-state Israel, meaning the same iJew majority voting against 2SS will continue their apartheid policies, meaning eventually Israel will crumble.
- House passes AIPAC's 'strangle Iran' sanctions, 400-20
We need to keep in mind that AIPAC ain't gettin' to 'em all. There's reps in there that are not takin' shekels for votes, and we should be grateful to this small core of America-firsters.
These people and this term is where the attention needs to be focused. We need to promote and grow this group, if not by conversions, then by eliminations and replacements. A rep here; a rep there; pretty soon America is run by Americans again. If ever "change" was needed, it's running AIPAC out of town, and this list of 20 America-firsters in the House is where the runnin' begins.
Pelosi is not on this list of America-firsters -- never has been, never will be. She's doing more harm than good. Justin Amash is turning out to be a very interesting fellow.
Please note: these are not no-shows or abstentions. These are nays with the glaring light shining on them -- 3 Republicans, 17 Democrats.
Amash (R) MI -- Blumenauer (D) OR -- Carson (D) IN -- Edwards (D) MD -- Ellison (D) MN -- Grijalva (D) AZ -- Johnson, E. B. (D) TX -- Jones (R) NC -- Lee (D) CA -- Massie (R) KY -- McCollum (D) MN -- McDermott (D) WA -- McGovern (D) MA -- Miller, George (D) CA -- Moran (D) VA -- O'Rourke (D) TX -- Payne (D) NJ -- Price (D) NC -- Visclosky (D) IN -- Waters (D) CA
If your rep is not on this list, you've got work to do in 2014.
- Bradley Manning faces 136 years in jail for exposing American war crimes
Denis July 31, 2013 at 9:42 am
Probably not, but the joke is in the phrase "democratic country."
Seems to me that when a w-blower is asserting that the USG is committing crimes or violating the Constitution, in order to prosecute the w-blower a court must first determine whether the allegations against USG are, in fact, true. In other words, the truth of the message should be evaluated before a decision is made whether or not to shoot the messenger. As it is now, the truth of the message is ignored by the courts.
If the court finds that a preponderance of the evidence supports the illegality or unconstitutionality of the USG's actions, then the US employees responsible for the criminal activity should be tried and the w-blower should a) be found not guilty without further inquiry, and b) be rewarded. For it should never, under any circumstance or theory, be illegal to publicize criminal activity or violations of individual rights of the USG or its employees.
Specifically, the truth of Manning's allegations of US war crimes – particularly the ghastly "light 'em up" video – and Snowden's allegations of NSA's defecating on the Fourth Amendment are what the courts should investigate before trying – or even charging – Manning and Snowden.
Horse, then cart.
- On eve of talks, two-thirds of Palestinians in occupied territories say they don't trust US as honest broker
How can anyone NOT agree with the PFLP?
You've got right wing MK's like Hotovely and Elkin talking about "giving up" West Bank lands, as if any land in the West Bank does, or ever has, belonged to the i-Jews.
You've got Obama and every single administration going back to 1968 either standing by silently while the Israeli cancer grows in the West Bank, or affirmatively promoting that cancer.
You've got Palestinian loser-leaders like Arafat and Abbas who have been effective only in becoming personally powerful and rich while selling out their own people at "negotiations" like the one coming up.
If the USG wanted to resolve the I/P crisis, it would insist on negotiations in Geneva under the auspices of the UN General Assembly. The US is not a neutral player in this game, never has been, never will be, and holding these talks in the US under the control of the USG is like the spider asking the fly to come for dinner.
- I thought this was a copperhead snake
Denis July 27, 2013 at 4:48 pm
Wow, an online vid without a 2 minute commercial! I watched it twice just because of that. Thanks.
Definitely a northern watersnake. Down south they are mostly confused with water moccasins. This time of year you are likely to see a number of them swimming in a parade within a few feet of a river or lake bank.
Not a friendly snake, like, say, corn snakes or rat snakes. While not poisonous or preemptively aggressive, N. watersnakes have a rep for being quite nasty if messed with. I've seen a lot of them in Virginia, but have never tried to shake hands with one.
There is a great web site run by Dr. David Steen where David and other snake experts resolve these What kind of snake is it? questions. He would be the best person to ask to get an expert's view. No doubt he would appreciate seeing the vid. David's site has a number of examples of N. watersnakes being confused with moccasins and copperheads.
- Between the death of my nephew and my visit to Jerusalem, a Gaza story
@annie: "if these statistics bear true..which is something that will likely be fully calculated after 9 months, you will be hearing more about it right here."
I agree, but it's going to take longer than 9 months as one of the worries regarding depleted uranium is cancer. But until the data are in on Cast Lead II, the best we can do is, like you suggest, extrapolate from what we know about Cast Lead I. Is there anything from CL-I that would support the idea that munitions used by IDF could damage a fetus? Well . . . here's a clip from a MW comment by Wallid on May07:
On 20 December 2009 Al-Dameer had published another paper in Arabic on the increase in the number of babies born in Gaza with birth defects, thought to be the result of radioactive and toxic materials from Operation Cast Lead. The birth defects included incomplete hearts and malformations of the brain. During August, September and October 2008 the number of cases had been 27. In the comparable months in 2009 the numbers had risen to 47. There was a similar rise in aborted foetuses. Al-Dameer had called for scientific monitoring throughout the Gaza Strip to obtain statistics on deformed foetus cases relating to the intentional use of internationally banned weapons. . . Regarding the teratogenicity of parental prenatal exposure to DU aerosols, the evidence, albeit imperfect, indicates a high probability of substantial risk. Good science indicates that depleted uranium weapons should not be manufactured or exploded.
And three days before Fidaa published this piece, RT had a piece on the incredible rise in birth defects in Iraq attributable to the use of depleted uranium rounds, which pulverize concrete and produce huge amounts of radioactive dust.
In cities like Basra and Fallujah, where American and British forces used heavy munitions at the start of the war, it is estimated that over half of all babies conceived after the start of the war were born with heart defects. According to a study published in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology between October 1994 and October 1995, the number of birth defects per 1,000 live births in Al Basrah Maternity Hospital was 1.37. In 2003, the number of birth defects in the same hospital was 23 per 1,000 live births.
That is almost a 20x increase in the rate of birth defects, most likely from the toxic munitions.
We know from a number of discussions here on MW that one of the i-Jews' solutions to the "Palestinian problem" is population control, aka genocide. The i-Jews are scared sh*tless that the tilted demographics are going to derail their 60 year program to purloin the entire Levant. What better way to get control of the Palestinian birth rate than periodically boosting birth defects with toxic munitions?
BTW, annie, as to your travels to Israel or Gaza, you are pretty outspoken on MW as to your views of Israeli apartheid. Has your participation on MW caused you any difficulties getting into Israel or Gaza? I mean, if they don't screw with you, or Phil, or Alex at the border, the lowly commenters here should be well below the IDF radar.
- 'Nation' says rightwingers paint FDR as anti-Semite so as to manipulate US support of Israel
Powerful stuff.
One final revisionist-related thought is Rosenberg's assertion that: "about 132,000, or nearly a quarter of all German Jews, found refuge in the United States"
By that assessment there were 528,000 German Jews total pre-WWII.
But Wiki, citing Lucy Dawidowicz, says that prior to WWII there were 240,000 Jews in Germany and Austria and 90% were killed.
So by Wiki's numbers, if ALL the surviving German/Austrian Jews went to US, they could have numbered no more than 24,000. Somebody has to be waaaay off somewhere. It's, like, Shoah numbers never seem to add up, and the closer you look the less they do.
Uh, boy . . .now Uncle Abe will accuse me of "Holocaust-denial."
- The deal: Kerry gets an 'announcement,' Netanyahu gets EU to drop sanctions
Yeah, I think you're right MJ . . . it is no coincidence that EU started beating up on GoI and then BiBi started releasing prisoners and wanting to have a sit-down with the Palestinians. I think the part of the conversation you missed is where Kerry tells BiBi that if GoI makes major concessions on the West Bank, the 6th Fleet will unload on IRI.
Here's something I've never understood: Why does everyone refer to it as the 1967 line? By using the Six Day War as the reference point, one essentially erases 20 years of history. Why do we use the date the armistice was violated rather than the date it was established as the reference point? This convention is universal, but I don't know why.
It was the 1949 Armistice that established the "Armistice Demarcation Line," aka "Green Line." It seems that using the "correct" term, "1949 Armistice Line," one emphasizes the vital point that the GoI annexations of Golan (1981) and E. Jerusalem (1980), and the settlements, and the Wall are all part of one freaking illegal, post-armistice usurpation of Palestinian land.
Well, American, you pretty well bloated the blog with that Amy Goodman dump.
The main point made by all that is not what an i-firster Indyk is but what an a-hole Goodman is. I can't believe she ambushed Indyk they way she did. Obviously, Finklestein was given notice of what was happening so he could prepare, while Indyk, who was invited on the show to discuss his book, didn't know what the hell was going on until he was mic'd up. A disgusting display of unethical journalism by Goodman and Gonzales.
Man, I'll bet Indyk was seething when the cameras went off, and I'll bet she never gets the chance to interview him again.
- If Kerry fails, Israel will be an apartheid state 'and that didn't work too well the last time,' CENTCOM general warns
James, yes, Hamas has moderated its position and has opened the possibility of signing onto a deal based on the 1949 (aka 1967) border, Jerusalem as the Palestinian capitol, refugee problem "resolved", and no recognition of Israel.
Here's a recent al-Monitor interview with dpty foreign minister Ghazi Hamad supporting your comment.
I was thinking along the lines that if Hamas sees GoI as giving up the West Bank in return for US attacking Iran, I don't think Hamas would ever get on board that train. But maybe. I never really understand how the Sunni/Shia hatreds are balanced against the Muslim/Jewish hatreds in the area. It seems too fluid to really analyze with the way GoI plays Sunni against Shia.
I don't think the border issue, per se, would be important enough to Hamas to give up Iran unless there is a provision for connecting WB and Gaza, as in the 1947 borders. Egypt already has the Sinai back, essentially, so a deal to go back to 1949 borders wouldn't help Gaza. Now, if they could work a deal back to the 1947 borders, Hamas would go along with about anything.
Kerry is pushing a Devil's deal if ever there was one. When GoI agrees to anything as momentous as this and starts releasing Palestinian prisoners, you can bet a bunch of Muslims are going to die somewhere. My bet is they'll be Shia.
Kerry currently has EU doing the dirty work of wielding the stick to get BiBi in line w/out AIPAC squealing at Obama. That's smart, but where's the carrot?
The carrot is US agreeing to get on board with bombing the b'jeezus out of Iran.
Here's the deal that's coming down the pike. 1) The West Bank Palestinians (Hamas will never sign onto this Devil's deal) will get the Israeli monkey off their back and they will be permitted to administer their own land but not deploy a military. 2) Israel will get both the EU and Iranian monkeys off its back. 3) Iranians will get pounded into the mud with US GBUs and, possibly, GoI tactical nukes.
A win for the Israelis. A win for Obama. A win for the Sunnis. A loss for the Iranians and other Shia. But there's more . . .
Without Iran, Assad will fold his cards and end up in the Moscow airport with Snowden. Double win for Obama and Israel. But there's more . . .
Without Assad and Iran, Hezbollah will have to crawl into a hole somewhere. Triple win.
After Obama leaves office GoI will do a false flag missile attack from Hebron and use that as an excuse to re-occupy. Then we'll be back to square 1 for Palestine and GoI will be able to continue toward its manifest destiny in the Levant.
Mark my words -- a deal on Palestine guarantees that Iran will get attacked, and I'm not talkin' stuxnet.
What's missing here is what bone will Obama throw to China to sit this out. With China on the sidelines, Russia won't think of intervening.
Well, here's a clue: China is currently taking more than 50% of the Iraqi oil. China would be more than happy to stay out of a dust up with Iran -- maybe they'll get the lion's share of that oil, too.
Trump had this much right, as long as "we" and "we're" doesn't include Israel:
We spend $1.5 trillion, we lose thousands of lives, we destroy a country … but China is in there taking out all the oil, and we're getting nothing ...
- Helen Thomas dies
Denis July 21, 2013 at 1:36 am
"The Jews who live and were born in historic Palestine are home"
What's the huff about? When she says they should go back to wherever the hell they came from, if they came from Palestine, and they're still in Palestine, then they're cool. She was talking about the Cossacks. They should all go back to Siberia and the whole ME problem would be solved.
I never paid much attention to the lady before the "go the hell back to" comment. After that I put a pin up of her on my fridge.
Danny Thomas was Lebanese, too. Wonder if they were related. She looks like Danny Thomas. . .
RIP, Helen. You deserve to. The next generation won't ever know who you were, but many of our generation will remember you for decades.
- Talking -- about talking
"A real Palestinian state, with the settlements dismantled, the freedom to control their own internal affairs and borders, with their own military and ability to conduct a foreign policy? No one on the Palestinian side believes that any of these possibilities are seriously on the table."
Not on the table?? They are not even in the realm of vague possibilities. Anyone who thinks GoI will ever abide an armed Palestine is in la-la land. As long as Israel exists the West Bank will always remain a demilitarized buffer zone between Jews and armed Arabs. The best the Palestinians can hope for is swaps for the settlements, the right to administer a non-militarized West Bank, and, maybe, the right to call themselves "a state."
"What is the agreement to talk – about talking – really about? "
What it's really about is Iran. GoI is making huge concessions here for a reason. GoI will never do something because it is the right or moral thing to do, there is always a quid pro quo. When GoI is talking a quid as big as this, the quo has to be commensurate. That can only be USG agreeing to take the lead, or at least join in, on an attack on Iran.
Obama would love to be the president to crack this nut -- he probably wants it more than Carter does. If Obama has to pay the price of starting what will be an unpopular war to do that, well, so be it. At least he's smart enough to wait until he's on the way out of the WH to pull the trigger.
The Israelis win, the Iranians lose big time, the Americans pick up the tab with lives and lucre, and the ME could go up in smoke. That's going to be the price for getting GoI off the Palestinians' back, and that doesn't even address Gaza and Hamas, who are not going to buy into this deal with the devil.
A couple years after the dust settles, GoI will organize a false flag missile attack from Palestine and use that as an excuse to re-occupy, and GoI will be right back where it is now, but with Iran no longer threatening its hegemony.
- What's in a tweet? Islamophobe Emerson brings frivolous lawsuit over a joke
Denis July 18, 2013 at 7:56 pm
Woody: "I disagree completely. And you're wrong"
Dude, you sound just like my ex-wife.
Woody, seriously, with all respect, if you're a lawyer, you really need to go back and review your 1st year law school tort horn books. If you're one of McG's lawyers, you might want to advise him to get a second opinion. If you're not a lawyer, you need to stop pretending to be one. Someone could take you seriously and get into trouble. I've litigated a few unpleasant defamation cases in state and federal courts, most recently 2006. I'm certainly not the world's expert, but I've won or settled my cases and I've got a pretty good feel for the elements of defamation in Virginia; they're fairly uniform from state to state.
Your "asshole" analogy indicates you are out of your "element" here, pun intended. Defamation requires the publication of a false statement of fact. To call someone an asshole is an opinion, unless for some perverse reason you are calling the person the actual anatomical part, literally, as opposed to the slur ass-ociated [pun #2] with the anatomical part. But a person cannot be an asshole literally any more than they can be a mitral valve or prostate gland. Slurs, insults, trash-talk, and other opinions of a person's worth or uncertain parentage are not generally actionable as defamation. False light maybe, but not defamation.
OTOH, calling someone a conspirator in a child porn case is not an opinion, it is a statement of fact, which in the law is any statement that can be verified as objectively true or false.
As to McG's intent, you're wrong again. It makes no difference what McG intended, except with the possible exception of common law malice, which is ill-will or hatred and goes to one's state of mind. But for the basic finding of defamation, the statement is only analyzed as to what effect the allegation, if it were true, would have on Emerson's reputation in the community, irrespective of what effect McG wanted it to have.
I mean, c'mon, dude, think about it. You should know that you can't, for instance, accuse X of being a pedophile, and thereby wreck his reputation, get him fired, cause him all sorts of emotional anguish and embarrassment, and when you get dragged into court, say: "Ha, ha, ha. Only joking, Your Honor. No harm intended. Really."
But your are right so far as there possibly being a Sullivan question of actual malice [not common law malice] if Emerson is considered to be a public figure. But the actual malice here seems pretty obvious.
Actual malice is nothing more than publishing a false allegation of fact knowing that it is false at the time it is published, or publishing it with reckless disregard as to whether or not it was false. By saying "Ha, ha, ha, it was just a joke" it seems to me that McG is cutting his own throat by admitting he sent the tweet knowing full well that Emerson is not a co-conspirator in a child pornography case. In fact, McG's admission that it was a joke is probably all the evidence that would be needed for Emerson's case to at least survive summary judgment even if Emerson is a public figure.
But Emerson will argue actual malice regardless of whether or not he is a public figure b/c the great thing about actual malice is that once Emerson proves it, punitive damages are almost guaranteed. Actual malice is the gateway to punitive damages. That's also called "hitting the jackpot, baby."
Legal notice:
This is, of course, not legal advice and not intended as such, but rather off-the-clock babble upon which no one should rely without consulting either Wikipedia or their own on-the-clock attorney. Nor is this an advertisement or a solicitation, but to the extent that it is deemed by the Virginia State Bar to be an advertisement or solicitation, then I guess it must be and is hereby marked as such.
I agree 100% w/ iremp, below. It looks to me like an open and shut case FOR Emerson. If some one ever alleged that I was a co-conspirator in child pornography, there is no question that a suit would be all-on.
The tweet is clearly defamatory, absolutely. In many or most jurisdictions, it doesn't matter that it was only made to one or two people or in private. The allegation of a vile crime is defamation per se, which means Emerson will not have to prove he was damaged. Damages are presumed.
Emerson's lawyers' excuses are inane. They are trying to turn this into a SLAPP suit, but it ain't one. This is a valid cause of action. Islamophobia has absolutely nothing to do with this case. That sounds like Uncle Abe labeling every word he doesn't like or agree with as "antisemitism." It's gettin' to be that everything that ain't antisemitism is islamophoia.
Unfortunately for McG. there is no defense of "it was just a joke." Was the context of the joke somehow attached to the statement as it flew through twitter-space? If so, the joke was obviously lost on Emerson.
Maybe McG is a great guy and his work is something we should all admire. I have no idea, I've never heard of the guy before. But being a great guy and doing good work doesn't give him license to make such a vile accusation against anyone (unless the accusation is true and he can prove that it is true).
Here's what I'm not following b/c I don't tweet [and this is a good reason why] and I don't know how it works -- the post says McG. sent the tweet to only 2 "friends" who are identified as Linda Sarsour and Hussam Ayloush. And then the post says "[b]ut after someone sent the tweet to Emerson, he brought a defamation suit against McGoldrick." "Someone?" Who could that be?
Well, it must be either one of those two "friends" or else one or both of them sent it out into twitter land where is was reproduced who knows how many times before landing in Emerson's twitter inbox, or whatever.
Either way, McGoldrick's bacon is cooked, and good that it should be. Anyone who would say a thing like that about some one ought to get their bacon cooked.
You gotta' watch what you send out into cyberspace, including blog comments you think are pretty funny.
- I lose it at the post office
Denis July 18, 2013 at 1:05 am
. . .treading lightly here, I see a curious chaos in the disorder . . .
"I determined that the author is not Jewish, so it was not my material"
but . . .
"As Emily Dickinson said, 'The soul selects her own society Then shuts the door.' "
Have you have implicitly admitted that there are the few odd scraps of worthwhile material that were not penned by Jews. Oh . . . hold on. Emily was Jewish, wasn't she? And Thoreau. They never told us these things in high school, and it wasn't polite for a goyim to ask. Next thing ya' know they'll be saying Salinger was a Jew.
Going postal in the post office is perfectly appropriate, Phil. We all do it. It's the traces of ricin wafting in the air.
But I'm like you, I've got my agoraphobia and my browser to keep me warm on cold nights, or cold on warm nights, whatever. Let the soul shut the door. I'm fine.
At least until the bombs fly and NSA cuts the Internet connection.
- Goddamn the neoconservatives
"Was there anything "liberal" about the delusional American military adventure in Southeast Asia, in 1960s (and early '70s)?"
Well, now that you ask, two names come to mind: 1. Kennedy 2. Johnson.
How liberal does it get? The fact that Johnson personally turned-tail in 1968 as the USG was getting it's butt kicked during Tet didn't magically convert the war to a conservative cause. The Tonkin Gulf resolution was the work of liberals.
And before we conclude that Iraq was a neocon debacle we'd better go back and check the voting on the 2002 Joint Resolution to Kick Saddam's Butt. About 60% of Democrats [ala' liberals] in both houses backed it.
Congress and the WH has always been populated with evil people who are more than willing to kill hundreds of thousands or millions in the name of democracy in order to benefit Halliburton, or Lockheed, or Israel. Some are conservatives, some are neoconservatives, some are democrats. Who cares what they're called? The outcome is the same: US taxpayers footing the bill to kill other people's children.
Liberals are always getting into this holier-than-thou-bs about war and about Nixon/Reagan/Bush/Bush killing innocents. If you want to get into a pissin' contest over what congresses or what presidents have caused the most carnage, be careful. My guess would be that liberals have voted into office and/or supported those with the most blood on their hands, but you'll have to dig a bit deeper to find all the bodies. For instance, the hidden fact that Johnson supported the Indonesia genocide where 1 - 3 million were killed -- see Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing.
I would expand on Sibiriak's PoV. It's time to stop thinking liberal v. conservative, right v. left, us v. them. That whole us/them paradigm is pounded into Americans from the first high-school football pep rally they attend and it's all but impossible to purge by the time they're old enough to drive. But once one gets past ill-conceived biases and takes a holistic view, one notices that the number of dangerous, evil, idiots running the world suddenly doubles.
- Clinton and Israel-- the Marc Rich story
Perfect, Woody. A concise appraisal of that debacle by one of the very Clinton apologists I was implicitly referring to.
Even if, as I suspect, that whole Oral Office event was a set up, it still happened. The DNA made sure that neither WC nor his apologists can deny that. Having happened, it tells us all we need to know about the creep's morals.
The problem is that Monica over-shadowed Paula. We tend to forget that at the time Clinton was on the griddle for having the state troopers bring Paula Jones to his room and trying to intimidate her into sex while he was governor. For a man with that much power over a woman's job to pull a stunt like that, well . . . that was more than sufficient cause for criminal charges. It was attempted rape.
Don't know what happened to all the liberal fems over that whole thing. Not a peep out of them. Imagine if it had been Reagan, Bush I, Bush II. Whew!
Ex-presidents almost always look better the farther down the timeline we get, and I don't think any example of that is clearer than H.W. -- but Truman and Kennedy may be counter-examples. History even seems to be giving Bill a bye on converting the Oval Office into the Oral Office -- how the crowds loved him at the last Dem convention.
Even W is beginning to look like a Ghandi next to Peace Prize laureate Obama. Compare W's stand on principle in not scrubbing Scooter Libby's criminal record with Obama's complete lack of principle on any issue.
Prediction: Pollard will be Obama's Mark Rich -- the Democrats' gift to AIPAC. Unlike Bill, Obama can deliver Pollard w/out splashing the poo on Hill.
- Video: Israeli military detains five-year-old Palestinian for allegedly throwing a stone
Bingo! for the Palestinian media effort. We got a winner!
People opposing repression by armed thugs are learning that if you want to get the world behind you, you have to show the thugs beating up on or killing kids or dogs, preferably both. This latest kid-incident is (fortunately) not an "al-Dura moment" but it sure helps the cause.
Radley Balko has a series now circulating Salon and other sites on the militarization of small town police departments by the feds' funding of SWAT teams. He points out that what really pisses Americans off is when the SWAT creeps blow away pet dogs, and they do that routinely because for some reason dogs seem to bark when the pricks bust down the door. Beating or blowing away innocent adults just doesn't have the same headline punch as killing the family lab, who is almost always even more innocent than the adult.
SWAT thugs killing kids, for instance David Hawn blowing away 11-year old Alberto Sepulveda who was face down on the floor, outrages Americans almost as much as killing dogs. But SWATs killing an adult is hardly newsworthy anymore -- even for liberals whose president has gone bonkers funding these SWAT nightmare teams. The IoF and the US SWAT teams have a lot in common -- particularly from the viewpoint of the people at the bottom end of the boot -- and those opposing government brutality are learning from each other.
The Palestinians know they are getting their message out when it shows up in the UK Daily Mail, which is fairly balanced on Israel/Palestine but doesn't spend a lot of space on problems there. For instance, I could find only two articles on the al-Dura killing, and both of those are in 2013 and related to the French litigation – there were none about the actual incident in 2000.
In contrast, the DM covered the Wadi'a Maswadeh bust in detail.
Note that the DM explicitly points out that the Lt. Col. in the vid chastises his moron troops not for being morons and messing with the kid, but for being morons and messing with the kid in front of the cameras, although the DM uses slightly different wording. This comment leaves us wondering how many 5-year olds have been busted and held when the cameras weren't around. Probably dozens. It's likely routine.
The DM shows a photo of 6 of the IoF goof-balls standing around Wadi'a and his blind-folded dad, and the goof-balls are armed to the teeth and laughing. And in the corner of the pic there is a young boy in a kippa taking it all in. He seems to be awed by the armed thugs in purple covers. He is about the same size as Wadi'a, probably a settler's kid. The juxtaposition of these two boys is heart-breaking. Although he is not getting busted or messed with, I have more empathy for the Jewish boy than the Palestinian one. In 20 years that kippa-kid will likely grow into another hateful IDF cretin, despised by most of the world and incapable of understanding why.
And so it goes.
- Kissinger complained of 'Jewish lobby' but yielded to Israeli ambassador's threat of 'mutiny' by American Jews and press during '73 war
Denis July 10, 2013 at 9:11 pm
". . . staunch anti-Zionist to get to the top of any major newspaper"
Helen Thomas did. I love Helen Thomas. She articulated the best resolution of all: "Let them go back to wherever the hell they came from." Which means Russia, mostly.
Denis July 9, 2013 at 6:36 pm
This is absolutely fascinating – anything associated w/ the Yom Kippur war is. Phil's link to the Foreign Relations documents is to the State Dept Office of the Historian. I didn't even know there was such a thing. This is a treasure trove.
The document Grynaviski is quoting from is doc #166, here:
link to history.state.gov
Here's the scene: You've got GoI ambassador Dinitz, Minister of GoI Embassy Mordechai Shalev, and Brent Scowcroft in a meeting-on-the-record w/ Kissinger when Henry gets Schlesinger on the hook and starts slapping him around b/c the Israeli offensive against Syria is stalled for lack of ammo that was promised by Nixon. The whole phone conversation is in the document – both sides – presumably on speaker phone. Schlesinger thinks it's a private conversation with Henry, not knowing that Scrowcraft, Shalev and Dinitz are listening – HK never tells him. [One thing I've learned when someone turns on the speaker phone is to ask who else is in the room.] At one point Henry tells Schlesinger:
"Well, let's do that. Well, I will call Dinitz and tell him to have his military guy get in touch with you."
But Dinitz is sitting right there, so HK is lying to the Secretary of Defense in front of the Israelis and Scowcroft.
Most of this commotion is b/c Dinitz wanted US private airlines to fly charter planes w/ no US markings into Israel to deliver ammo and supplies, but Schlesinger's people could not get the private companies to go along. This was before deregulation of the airlines and Kissinger keeps popping off about how the airlines will cooperate if they ever want another rate increase. So the US consumer was ultimately going to pay the price for this Yom Kippur debacle, if HK had his way.
All through the document Dinitz is repeatedly warning Kissinger of the dire political consequences to Nixon if IDF doesn't get the ammo in time. Dinitz demands that US C-130's fly the supplies in.
Even with the charter [flights], it won't make it. The only thing now is to get American planes in, without markings. Even with the charter tonight, it won't make it in time. I warn you again, and I want it on the record.
A year later, Nixon would be totally destroyed in large part thanks to the j-press.
I wonder if this meeting wasn't a bit of play-acting for the Israelis. Nixon and Kissinger, and obviously Schlesinger, didn't want to be pulled into the YK war and they were dragging their feet thinking the IDF was going to kick some Arab butt – again – without US help. So when IDF started getting seriously punished, especially on the Egyptian front, everybody was surprised and Nixon/Kissinger needed a scapegoat.
Just try to argue that Jews control the press today and you'll get knocked on your figurative tush by the anti-semite police. Well, Nixon and Kissinger certainly feared the j-press in 1973. My guess is that goes for every president since then and every one into the foreseeable future.
- Shrewdly positioned as Syrian interventionist, Samantha Power has neocon backing
Denis July 9, 2013 at 10:00 am
James, the historical thread you raise is disturbing in its persistence and repetition.
Pillsbury was the Reaganite clown who teamed up with loser/boozer/womanizer Democrat congressman Charlie Wilson to deliver hundreds of millions of USD in military gear into the hands of the mujahideen, including the Stinger missiles.
Pillsbury is the person most closely associated with the disastrous "Reagan Doctrine" [next to Reagan, of course] of indiscriminately arming anyone who breathed as long as they opposed the Soviets. His buddy Wilson was one of the most enthusiastic Reagan-era I-firsters and liberal hawks, and a lot, if not most, of America's problems today can be placed at the feet of Wilson and Pillsbury, including the rise of al-Qaeda, the subsequent 9/11, the subsequent Iraq War, the subsequent explosion of US debt, and America's present descent into the police state it has become.
In arming the Syrian rebels, Obama and his generation of liberal hawks and I-firsters are repeating history by committing America to uncertain long-term outcomes to achieve short-term goals to benefit Israel, just like Pillsbury/Wilson/Reagan did 30 years ago. War without end, IOW.
- Palestinian journalist is humiliated by Israeli security at US ambassador's July 4th party
Denis July 6, 2013 at 5:39 pm
@Citizen: "the heavily disproportionate targeting"
I think you are absolutely on the right track in bringing that word "disproportionate" into the discussion, both of the IRS and racial profiling of journalists.
Nobody seems to be talking disproportion with respect to the attack on the IRS. But some are: link to logophere.com
I have no idea where your assertions are coming from, and you don't say. I don't know of any analysis that says the Tea Party hunt was disproportionate -- the question is pretty well ignored, certainly by Issa. But the right wing-nuts came out of the woodwork after Citizens United and Gregory of the IRS said that those right-wing groups were the predominate ones going for the 501(c)(4) tax breaks, which would seem to mean that any competent IRS mule would focus on right wing-nut names when drawing up a "be on the lookout for" list. See LogoPhere link above.
Did the security mules at the US ambassador's residence disproportionately search Arab journalists? Well, there is absolutely no evidence to support that allegation in the post or in the articles linked to in the post. Nothing but empty, imaginative accusations by commenters here who weren't there.
Stow the sanctimony?? I'm just warming it up.
The position I stated was that it doesn't do us any good to be too simple minded about these accusations of discrimination, but I see you disagree. No problem, simple mindedness fuels a lot of worthwhile sentiment in this world. But I am incredulous at your assertion that: "the comment right above you by just proves there is pattern of discrimination against Arab and Palestinian journalists."
Proves???? You calling that comment proof?? Let's check it out. . .
"just" quotes from an anonymous StarTribune article dated Jul04 that Ira linked to in the post. This quote is apparently the one that has your dander up for it is the only part of that article relevant to your assertions of generalized discrimination against Palestinian journalists. I reproduce it here once again because it is your "proof":
It was the latest in a string of incidents in which Israeli security have used heavy-handed tactics against Arab journalists, a practice Israel has defended as necessary for security. Jallad, who said he has covered Netanyahu on many occasions, is a Palestinian from east Jerusalem who holds full Israeli residency rights and has a government-issued press card.
Look closely and you might be able to see your glaring lack of logic. That quote, when read fairly, is actually evidence that there is no such generalized discrimination.
The paragraph says that Jallad, who was the one who had to drop trou at the US embassy, is an Arab reporter who has "covered Netanyahu on many occasions." And yet there is no assertion whatsoever that Jallad has been previously harassed or "strip searched." I mean, the whole purpose of that line is to emphasize how outrageous it is that in this instance an experienced reporter has been subjected to (what they are calling) a "strip search." The StarTribune hack did not say: "And for the 50th time in his career covering Bibi, Samer Jallad was once again singled out for harassment."
There is no assertion from Jallad – or anyone except the anonymous StarTribune hack – that this misadventure was same-old-same-old for him or any other Palestinian reporter. The event is newsworthy precisely because it was a one-off violation of Jallad's press credentials. The fact that the Foreign Press Assoc is making a stink further indicates that it was not an everyday event.
So, what we have is a tiny poll with n=1 in which a single Arab journalist who has covered BiBi for years has – for all we can tell by all the information before us – only been subjected to this type of harassment one time, and that was when gaining access to the US compound. And this is "proof" of what????
You feel that you are somehow able to devine proof in the comment by "just" or in the StarTribune article that Arab journalists are routinely subjected to such harassment while Jewish or other pro-Israel journalists are not. Well, if an anonymous StarTribune hack saying "[i]n the latest string of incidents" is all you need to be convinced that there is a string of such incidents, then I would like to hook you up with a rabbi friend of mine in Brooklyn who wants to sell you a really decent bridge.
And before more echo chamber cockroaches come out to misrepresent my position, I am not condoning what happened to Jallad, and I thank Ira for bringing this event to our attention. What I'm saying is that I am not willing to generalize from this single event to the conclusion that harassment of Palestinian journalists is a part of the whole Israeli apartheid thing.
Of course, I would not be shocked if they are not harassed; those in power almost always screw with whatever messengers are trying to expose their misdeeds – witness Snowden and Manning. But Bibi smoozing Shapiro on the Fourth of July is hardly a misdeed worthy of targeting reporters with international credentials. This Jallad event, however annoying it is, does not "prove" anything except that the US ambassador to Israel is surrounded by dick-head security, and even that conclusion is provisional until we get their side of the story.
With respect, Ira, I think the right question has to be asked here: Was this reporter singled out for such treatment or is it applied to non-Palestinians as well? We can't tell from what we have.
It's like the IRS "scandal." The right wing-nuts blew up b/c the IRS was searching on the term "Tea Party" for phony applications for 501(c)(4) status. But that was not the proper question. If the IRS was searching on all reasonable terms -- right and left -- and "Tea Party" was one of those terms, which it should have been, then there was no foul.
Discrimination does not occur when one side has been treated badly unless the other side has not. We don't know that is the case here, however likely it may be.
- A visit to the grave of mass-murderer Baruch Goldstein
Denis July 5, 2013 at 9:27 am
And, Mike. . .
Please rationalize being pro-Israel in the face of such outrageous violations of Palestinian civil rights as the IDF taking over the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron for "military exercises," throwing worshipers out, and preventing call to prayers. No, not in 1948. Yesterday.
Please provide right-minded and rational people all over the world who are watching Israeli apartheid unfold some reason not to hate Israel in the same way and for the same reasons we hated the Afrikaners. Why should any human being with a conscience be pro-Israel?
OK, Mike. You opened the door so I'm walkin' through it:
How on earth can any rational human being find this sort of thing "beyond belief" (which it is) and still be pro-Israel?
The bastard kills 29 Muslims, wounds 125 more, and the IDF closes the area to Muslims. I mean . . . closing the street is such a small thing in the context of the murders and the rest of what is going on over there, but it is so indicative of what the hateful Israelis are doing and their twisted thinking. How could anyone support it?
I am not being judgmental; I am being honestly curious.
- Israel's new political face on Palestinian refugees: 'we have been waiting... for more and more of them to die'
Denis July 2, 2013 at 9:35 pm
"This is such a deafening echo chamber I don't know why I'm bothering…"
I keep asking myself that, but some nonconforming thoughts do get through. Yours did, which was a very valid point. It would be a shame if Koll's actual position got turned 180 in "translation." She may be a very important ally in this fight.
"With that, I throw myself to the dogs."
Well, I'll tell ya', K, you gotta' get past the moderators before you can get to the kennel – and I ain't namin' names, but throw a stink bomb like that into this echo chamber and it's likely to be interpreted as "Nabka-denial," which is defined as any comment that is not sufficiently anti-Israel to piss off Michael Oren.
Defending someone who is alleged to have said something horrible about the Palestinians is pushing it.
But, the up-side is that your objective comment getting through suggests that MW has not sunk into a Richard Silverstein-style self-serving, my-way-highway-one-way monolog. Phil has waaay too much class for that.
"who claims to be on the Left, even as distorted and farcical of a label we know that is in Israel."
Uh . . . well, yeah. And in the US, too. The "Left" nominated and elected Obama twice, didn't they? And he's turning out to be both a distortion of every liberal principle he campaigned on and a farce on just about every level.
Maybe it's time to give up on the Left/Right thing. I did 40 years ago and doing so instantly doubled the number of idiots I see in the world.
"For me, the event was yet another confirmation that a just peace will not come from inside Israel."
Nor from inside Palestine until they get their own internecine hatreds sorted out, Sunni/Shia, Fatah/Hamas, Ben/Jerry, etc.
Here's the way to get the change to come from the inside Israel:
If 5 million American Jews "of conscience" were to exercise their "right of return" and do Aliyah (at least temporarily), that would likely be enough to:
1. swing the Knesset to where it ought to be,
2. force GoI to retreat to '67 borders, leaving all West Bank and Gaza real estate improvements to the Palestinians,
3. elect a PM who lies out of less than two sides of his mouth, and
4. elect a US president and Congress who will end US subsidies to GoI.
IOW, the solution to this horrible situation is in the hands of American Jews of conscience – they didn't cause it, but they can fix it.
- Leak inquiry launched over 'NYT' story on American-Israeli cyberwar targeting Iran
Denis June 29, 2013 at 3:25 pm
Obviously, this is going to take some time to sort through all the primary links – thanks for those Alex – but so far I ain't catchin' on.
I mean, I'm trying to get both of my two remaining neurons around that scene in the
OralOval Office, and at least one of 'em ain't cooperating.
First, I'm shocked that we've got a USMC guy in the middle of this IT mess. I mean, as ex-USMC myself I know "USMC" and "intelligent" are almost never found in the same sentence. They are mutually antithetical. If you asked me to characterize the type of government person who would be in charge – or even involved in – a high-tech cyber attack on Iran, the last one on my list would be "USMC general," well below, "USMC private," or even "Biden."
Nevertheless Obama brings in the Marines, so to speak, and puts this jar-head in charge of the cyber attack. It gets screwed up and he has to schlep back to Obama to tell him the bad news.
Now before that 2010 meeting Cartwright personally and precisely knew what role GoI played or did not play in this SNAFU. He surely didn't need Biden to tell him that. And yet, the leak that comes out of the meeting is a typical Biden-blurt: "It's got to be the Israelis." If it was the Israelis and the jar-head knew it was the Israelis, why didn't he just leak: "It was the Israelis." ?
I mean, was the leak that it was the Israelis, or was the leak that Biden said it was the Israelis?
Sounds to me that what Obama wanted the world to know was that it was not the USG, but GoI, that let Stuxnet free and that USG is pissed off at what the Israelis did, and so Obama orchestrated the Biden-said-it leak. Believe me, no 4-star USMC general is going to leak a syllable more than what he is ordered to leak – he could get sent to Gitmo, or even worse, back to boot camp.
Fast forward 3 years from the attack. You've got Stuxnet crawling around the Internet. You've got baby-Stuxnets like Flame and Duqu popping up like welfare babies in a recession. This disaster is just in the making and already billions of damage done, and somebody's gonna' own it.
You've also got Snowden with a lit blow torch in his hand sitting on a 55 gal barrel full of explosive information. You've got Assange sitting on untold terrabytes of thermonuclear info the world still hasn't had time to sort through. You've got Hastings' hacked Mercedes running into a tree hours after he Emailed that he was onto a big story.
The whole Stuxnet thing is going to blow up in Obama's face and he needs 1) to preempt what's coming, 2) divert the story to a national security one; i.e. the "leaks", and 3) trot out a scapegoat for the press.
I woulda' picked Broadwell myself. But I'm partial to abs.
- French court reaches understanding of al-Dura case that contradicts two 'NYT' accounts
jon: All the painstaking recreations and research point to the conclusion that (a) is the least likely.
Yeah, well, that's really an essential point -- the recreations. They were done on paper because the IDF bull-dozed the murder site w/in days, destroying the evidence. That in itself is circumstantial evidence of the IDF's guilt.
Have you ever seen a photograph of the kill-site showing it to be free of blood as GoI claims? No. And you never will because the IDF destroyed any evidence that would refute their position. (But then again, I have never seen a photograph of the kill site showing blood on the wall and ground, which you would think the Palestinians would have obtained right away by people on the scene.)
What can be completely proven -- and is proven by the comments here -- is that you will see in that video whatever you want to see. If you want to see a murdered Palestinian boy, bingo!, you got it. If you want to see a faked video, bingo!, you got it.
I must say that of all the arguments flying in both directions in this story, the stupidest one has to be: If the boy is alive, then why haven't the Israelis produced him? Just imagine a DA making that argument in a murder trial. "Jury, now I ask you: If the defendant didn't kill his wife, then where is she?"
Don't think so.
How should Wiki handle this?
Report that IDF killed the kid -- end of story?
No, because the story has become as much about the various representations of what happened as about what happened. That seems to me to be what Wiki is reporting.
Enderlin clearly screwed it during his second-by-second narration when he said: "Another burst of fire. Mohamed is dead and his father seriously wounded."
In the subsequent seconds, which were deleted from the France 2 broadcast, Muhammad moves enough to show that he wasn't dead when Enderlin claimed he was. So that -- and Enderlin editing out the boy's movement -- was enough for the Habaristas to jump on . . . and away we go. I admire Enderlin immensely, but he really screwed up here.
Wiki has an obligation to include these controversies. If you feel the Wiki article is not accurate or is slanted, then, hey, jump in there and edit the article in a way you think reflects the truth. That is what Wiki is all about.
- Obama succumbs to rightwing 'fearmongering' -- of Israel's 'delegitimization'
Thanks, Harry
This sick comment was made to one of those bobble-head FOX bimbos during the Boston bombing flak, so it wasn't widely picked up on the web. It generated a little blow-back at the time:
And it's beginning to circulate now
- 9-year-old dies in Gaza, without fulfilling 'human rights' dream, to see imprisoned father
On the subject of young Palestinian boys dying, it has not been widely reported that today the French defamation verdict against Philippe Karsenty, the creep who called the al-Dura murder a hoax, has finally been upheld.
This provides no solace for anyone in Palestine, but it is a case that has been widely discussed on MW largely b/c the i-Jews, including Netanyahu, have called the video of the al-Dura boy being killed by the IDF a "blood libel." Typical.
Wonder if they will somehow conclude that Tariq's death was also a blood libel.
- 'Democracy Now' focuses on 'TWA 800' documentary by Borjesson and Stalcup
Denis June 26, 2013 at 8:41 am
"This has to be one of the most frightening things I've seen on the Internet. . ."
Gotta' reconsider that line in view of . . .
Richard Clarke, Clinton's and Bush II's top security guy until he was booted for objecting to the Iraq "thing," has explained that Hastings' Mercedes could have easily been hacked. He told HuffPo
"What has been revealed as a result of some research at universities is that it's relatively easy to hack your way into the control system of a car, and to do such things as cause acceleration when the driver doesn't want acceleration, to throw on the brakes when the driver doesn't want the brakes on, to launch an air bag,"
Salon picked up the thread in an article yesterday:
link to salon.com
Denis June 25, 2013 at 2:08 am
Lots of things that never happen are "plausible." It's a weasel-word used by lawyers and academics -- and, yes, the conspiracy crowd.
There are multiple technical issues raised in the DN! vid debunking the fuel tank theory.
One was that the only electrical current to the fuel tanks was low voltage wires required to operate the fuel-level senors. Those wires are varnished and heavily insulated, as one would imagine. And it would take a spark of over 1000 v. to ignite the gas inside the tank. Wing tanks are built to contain vapors.
Second, damage to the fuselage indicated an external explosion according to the NTSB w-blowers. Looking at pics of the reconstructed fuselage, what you don't see is the whole tail end of the plane is gone. Why would the tail end disappear when the wing tank exploded? The tail end of commercial airliners are famous for being the most structurally sound part of the plane, and the one you want to be sitting in if a plane goes down. Heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles hit the rear of aircraft where the exhaust is. 2 + 2 = 4.
Third, there was radar evidence of debris being ejected laterally out of the side of the fuselage, which is entirely inconsistent with a center wing fuel tank explosion but totally consistent with a missile moving at Mach4 hitting the plane.
Fourth, there is the testimony of witnesses of nitrates detected on some of the debris, which could only come from explosives.
All in all, I don't know how reliable or smart your professor friend is, but the loose wire theory sounds pretty far-fetched to me -- plausible, yes; likely, no.
What seems to me to be the most "plausible" explanation going is that this was a Navy f-u and Clinton covered it up -- not that Bill or the FBI would ever lie, mind you.
I look forward to seeing the documentaries.
Set you off, too, eh?
What set me off even more than that FBIdiot was the one who threatened one of the people who witnessed the missile. "You did not see anything." That is illegal. It is obstruction of justice, essentially subornation of perjury, or even extortion.
If any FBIdiot said something like that to me, it would set me off like the missile itself and I'd probably end up with a bullet in the brain like Ibragim Todashev, who was killed by the FBI during questioning -- shot six times, once in the crown of his head, although he was unarmed.
The FBI has become Stassi; the CIA Mossad. Americans who are not directly victimized by these spooks are paying them to victimize other Americans. In the end apathetic Americans get the quality of government they deserve and the ones who deserve better get persecuted.