Jim Lobe has a devastatingly-smart analysis of the new State Department, including the bad news that Dennis Ross seems to have legs, on the 7th floor, guiding Iran policy, and that Hillary is reading neocon thinktank papers. Ideas, ideas, ideas–the ideas are bad. Ross was for colonies in the West Bank in the early 90s, the neocons were for the Iraq War. Today on NPR Tom Ricks says that the Iraq war was "the greatest mistake in the history of American foreign policy." It came out of bad ideas.
-
-
- Bob Simon misses the story on Tel Aviv 3
- ‘This is not fair play’: Mahmoud Sarsak’s family demands his … 0
- Senate fight today over the number of Palestinian refugees 4
- Turkish prosecutor recommends ten life sentences for Israeli generals behind … 7
- Day after pogroms, Likud MK calls for internment camp for … 30
- Munayyer in the ‘NYT’: ‘For all the talk about shared … 3
- ‘Obama will only go as far on Iran as AIPAC … 16
- Because of all my father and mother did to liberate … 11
-
- BDS victory: South Africa strips Ahava’s ‘made in Israel’ label 708
- ‘New York Review of Books’ calls it ‘apartheid’ and prepares … 565
- Neverending Nakba: Israel breaks lull, attacks Gazan farmers 411
- March of the Flags 317
- Neocons in Washington Post: Military strike on Iran would ‘calm … 277
- Nabi Saleh’s Bassem Tamimi convicted by Israeli courts based on … 262
- International attention must be paid to the Palestinian nonviolent movement 219
- Passive-aggressive George Bush namechecks neocons for getting us into that … 197
-
- The Messiah’s Donkey: Settlers fire on Palestinian villagers as the … 231
- Aharon Appelfeld’s rage at the German language (and Arendt’s need … 156
- March of the Flags 123
- Feeling the hate in Long Island 97
- Israeli judge to issue verdict in Rachel Corrie case 94
- WaPo’s Walter Pincus says US is ‘going above and beyond … 87
- Bill Kristol celebrates Republican Party purge of ‘oldfashioned Arabists’ Scowcroft, … 83
- Video: Israeli mob demands all African refugees be deported from … 82
-
Recent Comments
click link to see last 100 comments- ‘Where is my children’s democracy?’ The Jilani family speaks out two years after the execution of Ziad (23)
- Annie Robbins: Instead he went right up to Ziad stepped on his neck and shot him point blank in the face. the actions...
- Rania: Iman, arguing with Fredblogs is a gigantic waste of time. It’s almost, but not quite, as effective as...
- Rania: “LOL. Fredo might not be the smartest Corleone in the family, but his problem is a lack of ethics and...
- Day after pogroms, Likud MK calls for internment camp for African refugees (30)
- lysias: b of Moon of Alabama‘s take on this: Never Again?
- ahadhaadam: Notice that the mini-pogrom took place a day after 60 Minutes aired Bob Simon’s segment about Tel...
- Dutch: @ Krauss, Have you seen French mobs chasing Africans lately? Or French MP’s behaving like Knesseteers?...
- Aaron Sorkin’s anachronism (14)
- The Messiah’s Donkey: Settlers fire on Palestinian villagers as the Israeli military watches (231)
- Annie Robbins: i’m almost positive, but not quite. they were old (films probably), a series of interviews. it...
- The occupier’s agenda: divorcing Gaza from the West Bank (2)
- Keith: Separating Gaza from the West Bank and fobbing it off on Egypt appears to be an Israeli objective. Since Gaza...
- ‘Where is my children’s democracy?’ The Jilani family speaks out two years after the execution of Ziad (23)
Our Writers
- Philip Weiss
- Adam Horowitz
- Annie Robbins
- Allison Deger
- Kate
- Alex Kane
- Today in Palestine
- Eleanor Kilroy
Blogroll
Looks as if Clinton is picking up her marching orders from Israel:
"In order to press their case the Israeli foreign ministry, in conjunction with the Israeli defense establishment have formulated a 'red lines' document in regard to Iran which is being presented to Clinton.
"The document lays out the following guidelines for the United States in its dialogue with Tehran according to the Israeli daily Haaretz:
"1. Any dialogue must be both preceded by and accompanied by harsher sanctions against Iran, both within the framework of the U.N. Security Council and outside it. Otherwise, the talks are liable to be perceived by both Iran and the international community as acceptance of Iran's nuclear program.
"2. Before the dialogue begins, the United States should formulate an action plan with Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain regarding what to do if the talks fail. Specifically, there must be an agreement that the talks' failure will prompt extremely harsh international sanctions on Iran.
"3. A time limit must be set for the talks, to prevent Iran from merely buying time to complete its nuclear development. The talks should also be defined as a 'one-time opportunity' for Tehran.
"4. Timing is critical, and the United States should consider whether it makes sense to begin the talks before Iran's presidential election in June.
"Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Olmert approved the 'red lines' document following a meeting with senior defense officials last week."
from:
http://www.metimes.com/International/2009/03/04/israel_lays_out_red_lines_for_us_relationship_with_iran/2219/
Delia if Hillary is reading neocon think tank material we can see
what lies ahead and that is the past.
The Nobel prize winning poet Joseph Brodsky said that "had we been choosing our leaders on their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth."
It is too late for her to read Stendhal, Dickens and Dostoevsky so prepare for the whole neocon wheel to turn again.
John
Report: Israel ‘Seriously Considering’ Attacking Iran
A report issued today by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) warned that the Israeli government believes that it still retains the ability to destroy Iran’s nuclear program with a unilateral attack, and as the international community’s diplomatic path remains unsuccessful in stopping a weapons program or indeed proving that one exists, Israel is “seriously considering” attacking Iran.
The prospect of an attack is primarily in the near term, because the attack on Iran’s illusory secret nuclear weapons program would be seriously complicated by the prospect of the Iranian government acquiring an S-300 air defense system from Russia. Russia has repeatedly insisted that it doesn’t intend to give Iran the system, but the IAEA insists Iran doesn’t have the ability to make nuclear weapons either. The Israeli government is less interested in the reality of the situation than with what has been repeated over and over domestically: that Iran is an “existential” threat to Israel and has to be stopped with military force.
But the WINEP report points out that Israel isn’t the only one that stands to lose from such an attack: the US would pay an enormous penalty internationally because whether it is the case or not they will be perceived as having given Israel a green light for the attack.
Israel ‘Seriously Considering’ Attacking Iran
Israel is mulling Iran military action
Terror on civlians as a means of dissent.
Intel Council Head Draws Ire of Israel Lobby
Although the coalition of media figures lining up against Freeman – such as Rosen, Peretz, The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb, and The New Republic's James Kirchick – are known primarily as vociferous defenders of Israel, they have focused most of their fire on his ties to Saudi Arabia, pointing in particular to a one-million-dollar donation made by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to the Middle East Policy Council, a think tank headed by Freeman, as evidence that he was a "puppet" of Riyadh.
They also seized upon an email that Freeman sent to a private listserv in 2007, in which he argued that the Chinese government's primary mistake regarding the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations was its "failure to intervene in a timely manner to nip the demonstrations in the bud." Freeman's alleged callousness regarding human rights issues in China was held up along with his Saudi ties as a reason to scuttle his appointment.
The campaign gained a much higher profile this week when the ranking Republican and former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra, called on the administration to withdraw Freeman's appointment in an interview with the Wall Street Journal whose neoconservative editorial page had already denounced the appointment, and a New York Democrat, Rep. Stephen Israel, urged an investigation of his ties to Saudi Arabia.
Ten other members of Congress made a similar demand in a letter addressed to the DNI's inspector-general Tuesday.
Four of the signatories – Republican Rep. Mark Kirk and Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley, as well as the top two Republicans in the House of Representatives, Minority Leader John Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor – were among the five top recipients in the House of campaign contributions from pro-Israel political action committees (PACs) closely tied to AIPAC during the 2007-8 election cycle, according to figures compiled by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Kirk himself has been the House's top recipient of Israel-related PAC money over the past decade, according to the Report.
Freeman's defenders, most of them veterans of the national-security bureaucracy, have strongly rejected charges that he would be beholden to Saudi Arabia or to the Chinese Communist Party and counter that his attackers are practicing a form of McCarthyism against anyone who might question the wisdom of unconditional support for Israel.
"They seek to eliminate from public life all those whom they think are not completely in the control of 'the lobby,' write Pat Lang, the former senior Mideast analyst at the Defense Intelligence agency, on his blog. "Charles Freeman is a man awesomely educated, of striking intellect, of vast experience and demonstrated integrity… Who could possibly be better for this job?"
Similarly, David Rothkopf, a former managing director of Kissinger Associates who has written an authoritative work on the history of the National Security Council, charged in his blog on the "Foreign Policy" website that "there is something ugly to these attacks on Freeman… The notion… that there is no room in the U.S. government for people who are skeptical of Israeli policies or for people who are not in lockstep with one view of, say, Saudi Arabia, is both absurd and dangerous."
His defenders have also noted that his critics have not raised similar objections to other officials whose organizations have accepted Saudi donations.
In December, for example, shortly before Hillary Clinton was confirmed as secretary of state, her husband Bill Clinton disclosed that his foundation had received between 10 and 25 million dollars from the Saudi kingdom, among other foreign donations. Although some isolated critics in the media raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest, she was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate.
Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, now a top Obama economic advisor, also accepted a 20-million-dollar donation from Alwaleed bin Talal himself when he was president of Harvard University in 2005.
More generally, donations from foreign donors to think tanks are fairly common. "Half the think tanks in this town take money from someone overseas," former U.S. ambassador to Israel Sam Lewis told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in Freeman's defense.
M.J. Rosenberg of the dovish Israel Policy Forum (IPF) also accused those of Freeman's critics who attacked him for his comments about the Chinese government's handling of the 1989 pro-democracy movement of hypocrisy.
"(I)f Freeman was pro-settlement and pro-Likud, and if he was a major donor to AIPAC and Israeli institutions, if he had a billion dollars worth of investments in Israel, and was unsympathetic to human rights in China to boot, would any of these critics have opposed his appointment?" he asked. "The answer is no. We probably would never have even heard his name."
Intel Council Head Draws Ire of Israel Lobby
I found it funny that the Israel haters thought Ross was being shafted. Why would he take a job where he had no authority and would be humiliated with the Obama admin, when he could stay at his sweet job at a think tank and make big bucks? Didn't make any sense, yet Phil,Loeb and other Israel haters bought into it. Just goes to show how little they know.
Hillary was speaking (and being promoted) in Israel when her husband was president, she is a friend of Israel.
D. Ross type …
Terror on civilians is Israeli state policy. 1,400 Gazans recently killed; Witty's still only outraged about those rockets.
You'd think witty would come around, if only on aesthetic principles.
I found it funny that the Israel haters thought Ross was being shafted. Why would he take a job where he had no authority and would be humiliated with the Obama admin, when he could stay at his sweet job at a think tank and make big bucks? Didn't make any sense, yet Phil,Loeb and other Israel haters bought into it. Just goes to show how little they know.
I'm amazed at the extent of how little their finger is on the pulse. At first I thought it was intentional lying and smearing. I do think there is some of that…but it's really more a case of serious ignorance and being stuck in their own fantasy.
The only way crazies like this could gain influence and true power is if things fell apart completely and there was a leadership void…kind of like what happened with the brown shirts.
Not going to happen as far as I can see…
Do tell us more about the leadership void that happened with the brown shirts, Suzanne. I am sure you possess enormous expertise of this as on many other topics, and are just pretending to be a babbling, malicious idiot.
Planning to get your shirt out of hock, Rowan?
The Clintons are of course intimately familiar with the Democratic machine, and the hugely disproportionate role that Jewish Zionists play in financing it. And they pander to them, and always have.
And this is how corrupt, entrenched regimes work: they cultivate a superficial, skin deep "outsider;" they run their first choice (Hillary) and plan their outsider second choice possibly for VP. If the outsider spoils, as did Obama, they still win, because the two-party regime only operates within a very narrow ideological framework, and the Democratic framework is narrower still, hence Obama (who seems to have few ideological principles outside of mainstream Dem thinking anyway) has only so many places to turn for appointments and brain trust.
Therefore, he turns to…the Clintons. And we're back at square one (Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton).
More than 70,000 Iranian students have volunteered to carry out suicide bombings against Israel, Iran's state news agency reported Monday, but President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has not responded to their request for permission.
link to huffingtonpost.com
This is what Phil tries to sell us as a normal country.
70,000 volunteer suicide bombers and the highest rate of heroin addiction in the world. What a mess.
More than 70,000 Iranian students have volunteered to carry out suicide bombings against Israel, Iran's state news agency reported Monday, but President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has not responded to their request for permission.
This is a lie. The students volunteered for "Esteshhadi", which are "martyrdom-seeking" operations. The Huffington article then incorrectly translates that into "suicide bombings", even though it goes on to say, "The hard-liners started signing up volunteers after Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a religious decree Dec. 28 saying anyone killed while defending Palestinians in Gaza against Israeli attacks would be considered a martyr."
Here is the IRNA report: Over 70,000 students sign up for martyrdom operation list
Unbelievable the lies the Zionists and their enablers will come up with to further their agenda, and to absolutely humiliate and dehumanize anyone and everyone in their path.
I don't know what's more depressing: the fact that Zionist outlets will lie about anything, or the fact that so many people willingly believe their lies.
Most of the comments on Huffpost seemed to take it in stride that 70,000 people from Iran would sign up for "suicide missions". That's how far from reality people are in relation to Iran, and the Middle East in general, due to Zionist propaganda.
What we do here is a lot like watching a runaway train and commenting on it's path… inch by inch… till it finally smashs into somthing or flys off the rails.
Israel isn't going to change folks. Not Hillary,nor Obama, nor congress is going to change and do what is necessary about Israel until Israel smashs into something that blows up in their faces.
I use to get very vocal and outraged at every zio-neo crime and trick but now I just look at it from a distance because I am convinced of the imbedded destructive nature of the holocuast zionist and their state. I now just wait and watch because Israel and the zionist will never suceed in their dream of Greater Israel as world superpower and axis of the universe.
What form Israel will take in the long run, if they even survive, and how much damage they will cause between now and their final failure and whether or not any country will be willing to help them after that is about the only thing in question.
A commenter on another blog made the best remark about the Israel problem and madness I have seen….
"It's time to let the dog catch the car".
A shaheed is a shaheed is a shaheed…
However you call it, it appears that Iran wants to get directly involved in an aggressive action against Israel.
They are going to be churned into Persian butter.
If I were an Iranian Jew, I'd get out of Dodge NOW.
It appears as if Iran's saber rattling is to get the price of oil up, and to actually have an excuse to pursue a nuclear weapons program. Israel will not devestate Iran, only generate more outrage. It's becoming quite a chess game here.
Churned into Persian butter?
You're really sick Suzanne. Since you spend quite a lot of time on this blog AND you're a female AND you're a sociopath in the vein of Dolores Umbridge/Nurse Ratched… I'm going to assume you're a bit of a hermit, ya? Not many friends? Don't get much sunlight?
Where did all this passive-aggressiveness come from? It seems like you're using the comment section of this blog to just generally vent against the evil antisemitic goy.
LD, Suzanne has a habit of openly rooting for violence. In fact, she does the same thing towards the Palestinians in another thread from today.
Also, notice this: "If I were an Iranian Jew, I'd get out of Dodge NOW."
She is only concerned with the Jewish population. Who cares about Iranian Christians, Iranian Muslims, secular Iranians – they can all be damned and die already. Yet she and her cohorts have the audacity to call the rest of us bigots.
Given just a short sampling of some of the stuff Suzanne has written here, it's not a stretch to label her a genocidal maniac. Where does this inhumanity come from?
There are a lot of misconceptions around the concept of martyrdom. A person can become a martyr without ever taking part in any fighting or willingly being involved in any violence of any kind.
True, Suzanne is an example, Shirin. She's trying to make up for the fact she's half Irish by being 400% Zionist. She actually thinks her Irish side is the romantic one.
Here are some Arab Martyrs:
These Palestinian terrorists shot at her car, it spun off the road, then they went in and in cold blood and with malice aforethought, deliberately murdered a pregnant woman and her four daughters.
Those palestinians murderers, after they died, were hailed as Martyrs by Arafat.
I remember back when I fully bought into the Zionist narrative, I was thoroughly outraged by the violence against the "settlers." It wasn't until I learned how the settlers were encroaching on more and more Palestinian land while being oblivious to Palestinian suffering that the context of what was happening became more clear.
Native Americans were called bloodthirsty savages because they tried to use whatever means at their disposal (asymetrical warfare) to prevent being overrun by European settlers. Even their habit of desecrating the bodies of their victims had a cultural aspect to it. They felt that they would meet their victims in the afterlife so they wanted to make it difficult for them to continue the battle by gouging out the eyes, removing hands and fingers, as well as genitals to prevent them from breeding more warriors in the afterlife. Though their actions were undeniably brutal, that did not make the theft of their land right.
Israelis brutalize Palestinians on a daily basis in pursuit of their theft of Palestinian land and resources while denying them any control of what they have left. They murder Palestinians wholesale as "punishment" for resisting.
That the Palestinians sometimes respond in kind showing brutality of their own towards their oppressors does not make the Israelis paragons of virtue.
If the Israelis want to stop hiding behind their civilian population, they need only allow the Palestinians the weaponry needed to hit military targets.
From: ANTI-SEMITISM & THE BEIRUT POGROM(Fredy Perlman – 1983)
link to libcom.org
The trick of declaring war against the armed resistance and then attacking the resisters' unarmed kin as well as the surrounding population with the most gruesome products of Death-Science; this trick is not new. American Pioneers were pioneers in this too; they made it standard practice to declare war on indigenous warriors and then to murder and burn villages with only women and children in them. This is already modern war, what we know as war against civilian populations; it has also been called, more candidly, mass murder or genocide.
Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that the perpetrators of a Pogrom portray themselves as the victims, in the present case as victims of the Holocaust.
Herman Melville noticed over a century ago, in his analysis of the metaphysics of Indian-hating, that those who made a full-time profession of hunting and murdering indigenous people of this continent always made themselves appear, even in their own eyes, as the victims of manhunts.
The use the Nazis made of the International Jewish Conspiracy is better known: during all the years of atrocities defying belief, the Nazis considered themselves the victimized.
It's as if the experience of being a victim gave exemption from human solidarity, as if it gave special powers, as if it gave a license to kill.
Fredy Perlman – now, there's a blast from the past. I have a situ (or, in Debord's jargon, 'pro-situ') pamphlet he wrote way back in 1969, called "The Reproduction of Everyday Life," which someone has recently re-issued in .pdf form. Truly classic stuff, which I imagine historians in 300 years time (if there are any) will value greatly.
Well duh, that's the colonialist mentality.
It's like how soldiers in our Army refer to the Iraqis – who they're supposedly defending and spreading freedom to – as Hajis.
The only threat to Israel is Israel.
Israel uses these 'existential threats' and the memory of the Holocaust/Nazis/etc. as a pretext to butcher anyone who delegitimizes them.
Not very complicated. It's something most of the world KNOWS.
Only the Jewish groups in the West and the coward/corporate press/government drink the koolaid.
Murder/vandalism/theft/lying/etc. are all kosher if a Zionist does it.