Bruce Wolman writes:
Incoming Israeli P.M. Bibi Netanyahu tells Jeffrey Goldberg:
“Iran is a composite leadership, but in that composite leadership there are elements of wide-eyed fanaticism that do not exist right now in any other would-be nuclear power in the world. That’s what makes them so dangerous.”
Well, actually as of today there currently is a nuclear power in the world with a composite leadership with "elements of wide-eyed fanaticism," and Mr. Netanyahu heads it.
In the interview Netanyahu exempts the Jewish people from international law. According to Netanyahu, history gives Israel a pass. The United States needs to understand Netanyahu's thinking and determine whether it wants to share in his strategic thinking.
Jeffrey Goldberg, a self-proclaimed supporter of the two-state solution, doesn't raise any objections in this shot across the bow at Obama.
In the interview Netanyahu exempts the Jewish people from international law. According to Netanyahu, history gives Israel a pass. The United States needs to understand Netanyahu's thinking and determine whether it wants to share in his strategic thinking.
Jeffrey Goldberg, a self-proclaimed supporter of the two-state solution, doesn't raise any objections in this shot across the bow at Obama.
Uri Avnery in today's counterpunch.org has a good analysis of and prediction for the new Netanyahoo govt. Basically it is being set up to perpetuate a big lie. The question, will the Obama adminstration find it easier to let itself be deceived or not.
We often believe we are more "high-information" than even our elected officials on this topic. Obama and his team has everything they need to know about Netanyahu and his cabinet. The question is not whether Obama will be deceived, but will he continue to be passively complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
The judgment of history has been unkind to America for not getting involved in World War II sooner to save Jewish lives from the Nazis. Is history repeating itself two generations later? And will Obama permit his legacy to be defined as the American president who had the last clear chance of preventing a people from being annihilated with US-taxpayer funded weapons, and did nothing?
Deceit has nothing to do with it — Obama has eyes-open clarity of the war crimes committed by the previous administration which was under the spell of the "Clean Break" neo-con cabal. He was elected in large part because of his repudiation of the sins of the neo-con infiltrated Republican party. After caving on the Freeman issue, the coming weeks will be the litmus test to see whether Obama is mere rhetoric, or an agent of change.
Here is another issue that will put Obama and Congress to the test.
Title "Israeli Nuclear Arsenal Prohibits US Foreign Aid Under Symington"
WASHINGTON, March 31 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The American
Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Zionist Organization of America
(ZOA) are heavily lobbying Congress for $2.775 billion in military aid to Israel.
However credible reports from the US Army and a former president confirm
the existence of an Israeli nuclear weapons arsenal. This could prohibit US
taxpayer funded fiscal year 2010 foreign aid.
The declassified US Army report titled "The Joint Operating Environment 2008"
identifies Israel as a nuclear weapons power. Specifically the US Army highlights
"a growing arc of nuclear powers running from Israel in the west through an
emerging Iran to Pakistan, India, and on to China, North Korea, and Russia
in the east." Jimmy Carter became the first former President to confirm in 2008
that Israel has secretly financed, developed and deployed an undeclared
arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 as amended by the Symington Amendment
of 1976 and the Glenn Amendment of 1977 prohibit US military assistance to
countries that acquire or transfer nuclear reprocessing technology outside of
international nonproliferation regimes. Israel, unlike Iran, is not a signatory to
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. If Congress wishes to provide US taxpayer
funded foreign aid to Israel in compliance with US law, it may do so only under
a special waiver from the office of the President as in the case for Pakistan.
Upholding the Symington Amendment could be an early litmus test as Congress
and Executive branch strive to restore public confidence in the aftermath of the
US invasion of Iraq and global financial crisis. According to IRmep director of
research Grant F. Smith, "Governance depends on rule of law– it is imperiled
if government openly flouts important laws. It is no longer acceptable for
Congress or the President to invoke 'strategic ambiguity,' a practice whereby
US government officials publicly pretend to the American people that Israel
possesses no nuclear weapons."
Links to the US army report on nuclear proliferation may be found at the Israel
Lobby Archive: link to IRmep.org
The Archive is a unit of the Institute for Research:
Middle Eastern Policy in Washington. The Archive digitizes declassified
documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act filings with law
enforcement, intelligence, and trade agencies.
http://tinyurl.com/WSJ-Nukes
RE: "Israeli Nuclear Arsenal Prohibits US Foreign Aid Under Symington"
MY CONTRIBUTION – Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis elaborated in Olmstead v. United States (1928): "In a government of law, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."
Conscientious Objector I guess Avnery was too subtle for you. I will point out what he was saying. The new government in Israel will come on with a big lie. If Obama wants to fight them he will have to take that on. If not, he allow himself to be "deceived". This will give him political cover. See. Get it. We all know that they all understand. The game is to deceive the public so they believe "there is no one to talk to", 'it is just too complicated to deal with'. or whatever bs line they create. The point of all this is that there is going to be a major propaganda line coming soon from Israel as to how they really want peace. They will be bending over backwards. The hasbara will be out in force claiming how this proves Israel seeks peace. Then it will all fall apart and the argument will become "now whose fault was that". In the meantime another 1000 Palestinian homes will be bulldozed and another 1000 homes built in the colonies.
That is what is coming up.
Well, actually as of today there currently is a nuclear power in the world with a composite leadership with "elements of wide-eyed fanaticism," and Mr. Netanyahu heads it.
yes… try conveying that to a zionist and see where it gets you…
Conscientious Objector wrote:
"The judgment of history has been unkind to America for not getting involved in World War II sooner to save Jewish lives from the Nazis."
Um, firstly I don't think anyone believes that even when America did get involved in World War II it was to save jewish lives from the Nazis. It got involved because Hitler essentially declared war on the U.S. simultaneously with Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.
Secondly, lots of the industrialized killing of jews by the Nazis didn't start until later in the war.
Thirdly, even after it had started the scope of that killing wasn't even known for sure.
Fourthly, and not to put too fine a point on it for one who purports to speak for "the judgment of history," but there's lots of people whose view of things is that even if those killings had started earlier and had been fully known, the U.S. still should not have gone to war trying to stop same. And that's true not only because it probably could not even have accomplished same under those circumstances, but because U.S. citizens had no duty to go get themselves killed on that account.
And of course while one can say that they did have that duty, then one also has to say that they had that same duty to go to war with the Soviet Union who was killing tens of millions, and, later, China under Mao which killed more, and perhaps on and on fighting all other kinds of endless wars against foreign monsters.
All nuclear powers and would-be nuclear powers have elements of wild-eyed fanaticism within their leaderships. Israel, in particular, is a nation/state whose leaders explicitly justify its existence on religious identification, going as far to rationalize its geographical location on territory their god promised to their 'ancestors' thousands of years ago. Israel's religion is also messianic. Israel is no less wild-eyed than Iran, and probably more nationally fanatic about expanding its boundaries and using military force. Iran has not exhibited any of the aggression ascribed to it, but its combined opposition to US and Saudi Arabian hegemony and Israeli military aggression has made it a frequent target of continuous market saturated lies. If Israel should strike Iran it would demonstrate which of the two nations is most prone to acting out its dark phantasies. The US, unfortunately, does it all the time.
Um, firstly I don't think anyone believes that even when America did get involved in World War II it was to save jewish lives from the Nazis. It got involved because Hitler essentially declared war on the U.S. simultaneously with Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor… Posted by: Sin Nombre | March 31, 2009 at 09:33 PM
I think it is clear that the USA deliberately forced Japan to declare war on it, by blockading its oil supplies. The logical inference is that the US, Britain, and Russia had reached a secret understanding to re-divide the colonial empires, as they eventually did at Yalta, and that the US entered the war on the basis of this secret understanding.
Rowan:
A.) Nothing you said conflicts with the central point of my post that America did not get involved in WWII to save jewish lives.
B.) For what it's worth I don't think you can prove that "the USA deliberately forced Japan to declare war on it." (Not least because the whole idea that I can somehow "force" you to declare war on me would seem to have its weaknesses.)
C.) Nor even accepting your "forced" assertion anyway is it a "logical inference" that he USA forced Japan into war pursuant to an agreement with Britain and whoever else "to re-divide the colonial empires."
A logical *possibility,* yes. No different than the logical possibility that it was caused by little green men from Pluto.
A logically *possible* inference even, yes. As one amongst the cosmos of all possible inferences, such as that it was indeed little green men from Pluto.
But not a "logical inference." An inference is a belief, not a person or process. A person or process can be logical, but a belief can only be logically *arrived* at or not. Just as a cracker box cannot be said to be "logical."
Inferences can be inductive as well as deductive. I did a logic "a"level at school, rather unusually, so i do know something about the subject.
"Inferences can be inductive as well as deductive."
Wrong again, they are still only beliefs and can only be *arrived* at. The inductiveness or deductiveness refers merely to the form of the logic that you said you used to do that arriving.
Not sure of Rowan's ultimate conclusions as he expresses above, but seems pretty clear to me
Rowan's right that Roosevelt did all he could to cut off oil supplies to Imperial Japan (before the USA entered the war directly), the anxious reason why
Japan decided it had no choice but to hit Pearl Harbor preemptively (before that was term was part of our lexicon, especially before Israel used it in '67 & the USA followed suit by attacking Iraq, the country Israel had also already used it on by bombing Iraq's nuclear center).
BTW, HItler declared war on the USA first–Hitler felt he had to honor his alliance with Japan.
Citizen:
Don't disagree with any of your factual assertions I don't think. It's still something else to say that the US "forced" Japan to go to war with us: In the first place just because of the logic gap in that phrase theoretically, and in the second place because Roosevelt placed conditions on the Japanese oil embargo he instituted that Japan could have met. I.e., withdrawing from its occupation of the Asian mainland.
Regardless of the mere theoretical logic gap then, the plain clear truth is that Japan chose war with us rather than take other actions that were within its easy power to do so, and moreover would not even have remotely constituted the commission of national suicide. They chose to try to remain an imperial power, which meant choosing war.
And I don't know who you are responding to but you are again right re Hitler declaring war on us first. Is interesting too; I've seen it described as the single biggest mistake he ever made, allowing Roosevelt to direct our forces firstly towards Europe rather than Japan. But it was clear he wanted to do that anyway and so might have just done that anyway after first declaring war on "the Axis" generally after Pearl.