Talk about familiar faces, the Forward says that Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross are in the race to be Obama's point man on the Middle East. As is the truly superior Dan Kurtzer. Let's pray it's Kurtzer. All three are Jews. Kurtzer and Aaron Miller have told us we need more diversity on the team. I guess Obama's the diversity? Signed, sealed, delivered I'm yours.
Speaking of Indyk, here he is over at the Council on Foreign Relations, along with CFR Pres Richard Haass, recommending "a new U.S. strategy for the Middle East." Wait, weren't these the guys who gave us the old strategy? Haass was in Colin Powell's State Department during the Iraq war runup. You remember Haass--he was the one who stood up and resigned in outrage (Not!). Haass and Indyk's CFR report is filled with the conventional wisdom, and horrors like this:
The Rafah crossing is in Egyptian hands. Why not open that up and have EVERYTHING, and I do mean EVERYTHING. come in that way. And if they need a hospital, let it be Cairo. Enlighten me has to the problem
A chance to enlighten SoG? Let's hope this helps guide a way through your impenetrable darkness.
link to btselem.org
Why doesn't he have any arab advisors? even bush ahd that one guy khalilzad
Despite having the legal, moral and civic authority of its own Supreme Court however the Israeli gov't and indeed Israeli society is right now in a state of near paralysis over merely trying to evict a few settlers from one single house. So how in the world does anyone expect it to have the will much less the ability to do so with the hundreds of thousands of houses that would be required to be evacuated/abandoned/ or etc. in any reasonable peace deal? And this doesn't even mention the questions of Jerusalem or the Right of Return.
No matter who they are any Israelis who agree to or favor any substantial withdrawal/evacuation/abandonment of the occupied territories will ultimately have to back down given that their position will effectively be one of advocating civil war between jews merely so as to return land to the arabs.
And what would you call a reasonable peace deal Irv. And what indication do you have that Hamas would go for it.
But your right, ( the second guy ) this whole thing is actually getting kind of boring, I notice that even Witty has tossed in the towel. It's always the same thing, Jews=evil. Palestinians=goodness and light. aipac=satan. Cair, MPAC. = utopia. Phil wants the Jews out of Israel, but also out of the US. Why else is he embarassed about anything concerning Judasim here.
Jews=brilliant saints. Palestinians =evil and dumb darkness. aipac=from G-D's mouth to your ear. Cair, MPAC =swampland.
SOG wants Israel uber alles, but he's not ready to wing himself over
there as he feels the need for a host nation he can con. Why else is SOG always flinging his own infantile turds on this blog? He sucks his accident of birth as he has no individual identity to be proud of.
Go ahead, feel free to talk about Judaism, Bill.
What's on your mind? Tikkun olam?
Well, its like this Irv. Your wife would miss me .
Obama increasingly reminds me of an incompetent black judge in a Scott Turow novel (I believe it was Presumed Innocent) who somehow winds up presiding over a huge case he is totally unqualified to handle, and frantically runs around the courthouse picking everyone's brain about how he should rule. In Obama's case, the courthouse is the former Clinton administration, and the issue is the governance of the United States of America and its foreign policy.
Ed, I think you've received an Apache vision.
SOG, not really–she's Jewish and easily disgusted by your sort.
Generally, since you won't be reading it in the usa msm:
The Free Gaza Movement's ship The Dignity docked Tuesday evening. It had left from the Cyprus port of Larnaca Monday night, the Cyprus Mail reported. Passengers included British academics studying the effects of Israel's blockade on Gaza, a British surgeon, a Palestinian who has been unable to return to Gaza and journalists, according to the newspaper.
One ton of food and medical supplies is reported to be on board.
Israel's navy permitted three other Free Gaza Movement voyages carrying activists and food to land in Gaza's port — in August, October and November. The organization is attempting to focus international attention on Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. It plans to leave with as many students waiting to study abroad as it can carry.
Israel recently turned back without incident a Libyan ship that was trying to enter Gaza with supplies.
No what she said Irv, or was that your mother.
Phil wants the Jews out of Israel, but also out of the US. Why else is he embarassed about anything concerning Judasim here.
Bill, this is bullshit and you know it! Your constant insults of Phil are beneath you.
The person that made me aware of Philip Weiss, did a hard job in defending Zbig in tinfoil hat US circles (not all of them, but as a tendency). Incidentially Phil seems to estimate Zbig too. Have you read his interview with him a while back?
Today he linked to an interview Haaretz did with him. It's not as good as Phil's but interesting anyway.
Obama increasingly reminds me of an incompetent black judge in a Scott Turow novel
Ed, flying off into the world of imagination. Notice dear reader: is it possible he can have real life data to support this vision? But tells us what he reads. I heard about Turow. Isn't the fascinating thing about him, that he knows much about the world he writes of?
maybe better: writes about? MM? Anonymous? Gone to finish latest book.
Indyk and Ross uh? I wonder why he doesn't ask Dershowitz …
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cur
Main Entry: cur
Pronunciation: \ˈkər\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, short for curdogge, from Middle English *curren to growl (perhaps from Old Norse kurra to grumble) + Middle English dogge dog
Date: 13th century
1 : a mongrel or inferior dog
2 : a surly or cowardly fellow
3 : Sword of Gideon (SOG)
Placing Dennis Ross in that position would be a horrible, horrible sign of what Obama's policy would look like. Dennis Ross was, there is no other way to say it, an Aipac mole placed in the Clinton administration to disrupt the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. His role at Camp David in 1999 can not be interpreted in any other way. Obama or his advisers must know of this history. When Dennis Ross visits Israel, which he does often, he stays with Natan Sharansky. Look at that man's position on the West Bank. This choice would be horrible. Indyk is another Aipac fellow traveler and would not be much better.
yeah, because when it comes to representing America in the Middle East it MUST be a Jewish (american) to do so…
I'm sorry. My bad. Obama's lack of decades of political experience and diplomacy, preceded by a lack of years of successful stewardship at the helm of a large entity that employed thousands, preceded by a lack of boot-strapping his way into the upper ranks of the Dem Party without the aid of intra-party affirmative action — all that qualifies him eminently for the U.S. presidency. Now pass the kool aid.
First we had Bush, who was basically an idiot brother-in-law hire who was promoted because he apparently wasn’t anything like Bill Clinton; now we have Obama, who the Dems promoted strait to the top as a way of throwing a bone to people of color in order to preserve the illusion that they themselves aren’t corrupt elitists and grifters gaming the system for the benefit of themselves and their own made men, and who was hired because he apparently isn’t George W. Bush.
That America continues to fall for this political theatre and charade is final proof: we are now officially living in an Idiocracy, right down to the completely unqualified black president. Forget the kool aid, make it a whisky-double.
Thanks JH. Your genial riddle brought the mondoweissian immortal to life again. Not even the imminent inclusion of the evil empire media into the Ariel Sharon vegetation brotherhood was enough to disturb the taciturnity caused by the end of the women's field hockey season let alone us monkeys who furiously beat our woks in vain.
LeaNder, do you need some help? I couldn't understand your question. As for MM I don't know. Probably he is with Metalepsis the mûmak fighting some ugly imperial cloned nerds in AT-AT's who tried to close the penguin supply lines down there in South America where he hydes.
Seems to me that to be intellectually honest one not only has to keep an eye out for claimed change that isn't, but also to acknowledge change that does exist and that challenges one's own (possibly too pat) understanding of things too.
For instance, Olmert *did* evict those settlers from that "House of Peace/Contention" and so Israel did at least abide by the rule of law as enunciated by its court system. And Olmert has said he was "ashamed" of them and he and many others *have* unequivocally denounced those settlers and their compatriots that attacked the Palestinians and harshly described what they did as a "pogrom." And Netanyahu/Likud *is* trying to rid Likud of that Feiglin guy, and Israel is obviously trying to get out of the Golan Heights and it did evacuate Gaza and Olmert himself has raised the "apartheid" analogy and so on.
After one has formed an opinion of things it's always seductive and may even represent some deep psychological phenomenon to then unconsciously polarize everything that happens afterwards so as to see it as irrelevant or supporting that opinion. It's like what happens even to scientists as Thomas Kuhn has so famously noted and prevents science from smoothly accepting new "paradigms" even though the evidence behind them is strong and growing. Or as another scientist put it, science doesn't really advance via additional evidence, it advances one funeral at a time.
I'm not saying that there's any evidence out there for anyone's whole "paradigm" to shift, but come on, one has to admit it's not as if any one side has some monopoly on right, virtue or etc.
Many many Israelis have now unreservedly condemned what these settlers have recently done. As someone here has noted, some Palestinian who smashed the skull of a little Israeli girl against a rock with a rifle butt and killed another got released recently in an exchange for Israeli remains, and so far as I could tell was unequivocally greeted in the Palestinian world as some kind of role model. And when's the last time anyone has seen the rule of their own law much honored in, say, Gaza or Syria or Iran?
It might just be the case that only those who say that the U.S. ought to have nothing to do with the conflict over there and is absolutely neutral can claim any kind of real consistency. Otherwise the Israeli partisans obviously have their intellectual difficulties, but so do the partisans of the Palestinians.
After all to cheer for them to have this or that "right" is first and foremost merely saying that you wish your values obtained over there. And that's fine. But what about the rest of your values when they then cry tears of joy over the release of the head-basher? Do your values really just stop at the "process" point of saying people are entitled to their own state, but then can act as beastly as they want within same?
I don't think there's anyone who gets a galled or mad as I do at what I see as the manipulation of the U.S. by Israel. Nor anyone who is as against Israel's occupation as I am. But that isn't the entire universe of all the issues out there either I don't think.
To save time I am just going to ditto everything Ed said.
As for Sin Nombre…Americans (and everyone else) doesn't like unfair fights. Give the Palestines the same money and weapons we have given Israel and at least it would be a fair fight.
The Israelis are basically cowardly fops..great at snipering women and children and killing by remote control and bulldozers. But put them aginst an equally armed force and they would wilt…even Hezbollah kicked their asses. The IDF is bunch of snot nosed high school bullies. They need to meet a real army.
This sounds like a rather obvious attempt by Herb Keinon
to make Gordon Brown (a widely acknowledged moron) paranoid about the unlikely idea that Miliband (a fully paid up labor zionist operative) is going to sell the farm to the Arabs:
Britain, according to Israeli officials, has joined other EU countries in holding quiet talks with Hizbullah in Lebanon, saying that they were only meeting with parliamentarians and not members of the organization’s armed wing. Israeli officials said these moves, which they believe have their origins with Miliband and not with Brown, are meant to place pressure on Israel to stop all settlement construction. One diplomatic source speculated that the sudden rise in Brown’s popularity, as a result of the way he has handled the financial meltdown, has sent Miliband looking for favorable headlines, something that can be found by coming across as a champion of Palestinian rights…
It shows, like everything organised Jewry gets up to, how stupid they think non-Jews in general are.
There are so many bigger questions than zionism, but as long as it is this invisible elephant in the room, with the enormous trunk, truncating the discourse you might say, bringing everything back to "security" (meaning: war), you begin to see how such a paranoid and harmful status quo can be made to appear so normal, so rational.
Capitalism is in crisis, and nuclear and petroleum-fueled industrialization is in crisis. Geopolitical war-gaming is how we escape those questions.
The thing is, my loyal devotee Anonymous, the Dr. Shlomo Sand of my fevered anti-zionist dream (typhoid) (again) did seem to have the answers, but as they were blowin' in the wind I could hardly hear everything.
Maybe the name of the elepgant was actually Metonymy, and not Metalepsis.
But it hardly matters.
It's not every day that you find an elephant trained to make us all feel unconsciously guilty about what the Pharoah and the Queen and the Cossacks and Hitler all did, singularly, to one well-organized peopledom, for one eternal vile reason.
And on the topic of this post–Obama's verbal guns are a puny thing next to that narrative.
But I am OPTIMISTIC about 2016!
Nader! Nader! Nader!
"for one eternal vile reason"–ah, yes–there's the rub for anyone with a relentless, inquiring mind.
Sin nombre – that Palestinian was actually from Lebanon and the evidence suggests he didn't do what the IDF accused him of.
But regardless – after 40 years of dreadful war crimes and atrocities by Israel against the Pals and in Lebanon( the vast majority civilians) it's quite understandable why some consider any good Israeli a dead Israeli.
The real surprise is that there are so many that don't feel that way…
I pretty much agree with Ed about Obama, and American would be happy to know that when I was in Israel, I was informed several times by Israelis (once by a complete stranger) that Israel's military is superior to the U.S. military. There seemed to be a need to inform Americans of this fact, since I never started a conversation about either nation's military prowress.
I like Sin Nombre's post because I understand that the Palestinians have been wronged, but it isn't really my problem. The U.S. seems to be corrupt and decaying at all levels, so spending untold sums of money over decades, debasing the system and trashing the national reputation, while destabilizing a whole region and making enemies where we shouldn't have them, or just plain wasting time, material and anything else by supporting something as unimportant to the average American as Isreal is is senseless and maddening.
U.S. support of Israel is like being married to a dishonest, domineering, gold-digging, violent, wasteful, unfaithful, manipulative and bi-polar woman, and taking a similar lover. It makes no sense.
In response to my post stevieb wrote:
"that Palestinian was actually from Lebanon and the evidence suggests he didn't do what the IDF accused him of."
stevie, in fact I guess he was a Lebanese Druze but was clearly in the Palestinian liberation movement, although I don't see how either goes to my point. And as to your "evidence suggesting" he didn't smash that child's skull well of course you're right that same exists. But it's also my understanding that such evidence consists pretty solely of his own denial. Otherwise after he was apprehended he admitted killing the little girl (and shooting her father in front of her), but then by the time of his trial he reversed himself and denied doing either. And witnesses testified that he had indeed not only killed her but smashed her skull with his rifle too as I said, and her brain matter was said to be found on the stock of his gun. And given his initial confession about killing that little girl, who really would have thought it necessary to add the lie about his smashing her head? Just doesn't ring true to me.
Moreover, regardless, I think my point still stands. Firstly because while there may indeed be "some evidence" that he didn't do it, there's alot saying he did, and yet what happens on his release but that it seems that no-one in the arab community in Lebanon or Syria has any qualms about rapturously celebrating this man. In fact I think Assad even gave him a medal. And the one thing the guy doesn't deny at all is that he was on a mission to kidnap Israeli civilians.
And there's just too many other instances of things to cite as well: Black September at the Olympic games murdering Israeli hostages; the Palestinians just loving the butcher Saddam when he invaded Kuwait and continuing to love him later too even after his mass graves were found and his gassing of the Kurds was exposed; the reaction to the video-taped beheading of Danny Pearl, and on and on.
I know, I know, this is not in the least comprehensive, and there's no dearth of horrors that the Israelis have participated in too. (Indiscriminately shelling Beirut, carpet-blanketing with anti-personnel weapons, and etc.) But all I was saying is that it's not comprehensive either to ignore it, or other things as well. Especially what seems to me to possibly be a big big thing which is a possibly distinct turn by the Israeli body politic against the settlers. That to me is something, and I don't think we ought to miss it if indeed it's happening.
In short all I was saying is that I think you have to give credit where credit is due.
In case there are any lingering doubts, it's official: Barack Obama has earned a well-deserved rating of "center-right" politician, courtesy of the New York Times. The president-elect worked hard to pull himself rightward, after starting off with a reputation as a liberalish "peace" candidate. Nobody calls Obama that anymore, not since he endorsed the bankers' bailout, put the economy's future in the hands of the same people that set the stage for financial meltdown, and let Bush's War Secretary keep the keys to the imperial armory. So let's give it to Obama. He won't ever have an identity crisis, again. There are lots of political appointments to go before Obama's roster is complete, but the heavy lifting is done. The ideological pillars of America's first Black presidency have been planted wholly within the parameters of governance allowed by big capital and the imperial military. Obama's "transition" is more accurately seen as a "continuity" of rule by the lords of finance capital and their protective screen of warriors and spies. The Obama regime, still incomplete, already reeks of thieves and war criminals. Obama's "national security" and economic lineup is an infinity of ugliness, more repulsive than I could have imagined back in the summer of 2003, when Obama's rise to glory was about to begin. The supremely talented actor/state senator's capacity for obfuscation; his refusal to take a firm position on any subject of real controversy; his transparently false denials of fealty to the corporate Democratic Leadership Council, which had publicly claimed him – all this should have marked Obama as bad news for Black America. But his was a fatally attractive package, like the shiny little cluster bomblets that kids pick up in places like Afghanistan.
My colleagues and I were most fearful of the effect Obama's corporate-rigged explosion onto the national scene would have on the black polity – both the masses and leadership circles. Obama's phony progressivism didn't fool us for a second – although we yearned as much as other African Americans for the appearance of a Great Black Hope. Obama wasn't "The One," no matter what Oprah said. Rather, he became a menace to black folks' collective mental health. We knew that a mass hallucinatory phenomenon was about to occur, that would loosen many black folks' grips on reality no matter how often and loudly we warned that Barack Obama was a cynical corporate striver who encouraged whites to believe that his election would mark the end of black politics as we have known it. (Take breath, here.) He was the anti-Jesse, the anti-Sharpton, a fraudulent peace candidate, an eager servant of the rich. We diligently provided evidence of Obama's true political nature, and at every juncture before and during the primaries we were proven correct in our analysis. But no matter. African Americans' pent up hunger to see a (pretty) black face in the highest place, would not be denied. They desperately needed the Obama of their imaginings, and would draw and quarter anyone that questioned the senator's sainthood. Were black folks "losing their damn minds," as comedian David Alan Grier puts it on Comedy Central's Chocolate News? Yes, they were. Black America became a fortress, impregnable to truth. The ever-mounting evidence of Obama's abhorrence of real social change beyond his own singular elevation; his fawning deference to big business; his call for an additional 100,000 soldiers and Marines; his early refusal to consider a moratorium on housing foreclosures; his reversal on electronic spying on Americans – none of these actual, real world occurrences could puncture the mass delusion. A kind of collective autism sealed off the African American mind from reality-based phenomena. The cruelest, blanket insults to African American dignity issued repeatedly from Obama's mouth, yet were gratefully accepted as proof of the candidate's "tough love" for "his people."
Fast forward to the present. Obama has awarded his administration's economic and imperial military portfolios to plundering investment bankers and their servants (Robert Rubin's derivative-addicted sidekicks) and endless-warriors (Iran-Contra super-spook and master of intrigue Robert Gates). In this scariest chapter of world history to date, the Secretaries of War (let's have some truth in language) and Treasury will be the dominant players in determining the nation's economic and military place on the planet. That's where the bulk of the national wealth will be diverted. Everyone else will scramble for crumbs. The store has already been given away to the military and economic Right. Thank you, Obama. Macro military and economic adventures and experiments will be the governmental order of the day – and whatever else happens will be sideshows, dwarfed by the massive movement of mega-money deployed to salvage the imperial system. Which is why it is pitiful – and sad in the extreme – to hear influential black activists make a huge deal out of Obama's proposed White House Office on Urban Policy. "Just you wait and see," these wishful souls seem to be saying. "Obama's gonna come through for us. Yes, he will." As if a little advisory outfit tucked into the White House organizational chart will make a damn bit of difference as the giants of the cabinet battle over trillions.
Our world changed fundamentally between Obama's acceptance speech in August, and his endorsement of the banker bailout in early October. The bottom fell out of the global capitalist financial system. From now on, it's all crisis, all the time. Obama has done everything humanly possible to assure the Lords of Capital that he is at their service. His appointments prove it. But some African Americans – far too many – still labor under the illusion that a solemn pact exists between themselves and Obama. It is a belief based on blind faith and things unseen – or an imagined exchange of winks. A prominent and highly intelligent, lifelong New York activist assures audiences that Barack Obama is winking at black folks, to confirm the understanding between the president-elect and his people. White folks can't see the wink, but if a black person looks closely – there it is! And black folks shouldn't hesitate to wink back at him, to acknowledge the secret we share. I assume the organizer is speaking metaphorically, though I sometimes wonder. The point is, although it might appear that Obama has broken his commitment to African Americans (actually, he never made one), we should rest easy – his thoughts are with us. Whenever it seems like he's brushing us off, well, that's just his way of fooling the white folks – in our interests, of course. When the psychological need is great enough, people will believe anything. But chasing mirages is no road to freedom.
The above excellent and pungent essay on the prospects for the USA under Obama is by Glen Ford, editor of the Black Commentator. It also appears in CounterPunch.
MM: "It's not every day that you find an elephant trained to make us all feel unconsciously guilty about what the Pharoah and the Queen and the Cossacks and Hitler all did, singularly, to one well-organized peopledom, for one eternal vile reason."
——
Great insight. I might add that perpetual guilt-peddling and the "never enough" mindset is a tactic adopted first by the Left, and now by big government of both Left and Right in general. Apparently it learned from the experts.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21415.htm
The conjurer who spoke of ‘change’ now speaks of ‘experience’ in appointing to every key and minor position the same political hacks who rotate seamlessly between Wall Street and Washington, the Fed and Academia. Instead of ‘change’ there is the utmost continuity of policy makers, policies and above all ever deepening ties between militarists, Wall Street and the Obama appointments. True believer-progressives, facing their total debacle, grab for any straw. Forced to admit that all of Obama’s appointments represent the dregs of the bloody and corrupt past, they hope and pray that ‘current dire circumstances’ may force these unrepentant warmongers and life long supporters of finance capital to become supporters and advocates of a revived Keynesian welfare state. On the contrary, Obama and each and everyone of his foreign policy appointments to the Pentagon, State and Justice Departments, Intelligence and Security agencies are calling for vast increases in military spending, troop commitments and domestic militarization to recover the lost fortunes of a declining empire. Obama and his appointees plan to vigorously pursue Clinton-Bush’s global war against national resistance movements in the Middle East. His most intimate and trusted ‘Israel-First’ advisers have targeted Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Palestine and Iraq.
What it all boils down to is that Philip Weiss has given up an admittedly disgusting career as successful jewish-american lickspittle, in the vain hope that some sort of 'kumbaya' moment may occur for Jews. Blacks, Whites, etc. Clearly, it will not occur until violent revolutions, killing many members of the middle classes such as him, not because "they're Jews", but merely because it is universally obvious that the western middle class is happy to see the working classes die, and be replaced by other imported working classes that will also die, and so on. This isn't about the utterly boring 'Jews'. It's about capitalism.