A shocking story.
1. Emily McNeill graduates from Ithaca College last year and visits the West Bank with a Christian Peacemaker team. She writes a fine, earnest piece for the college's official magazine about Israeli settler violence against Palestinians.
The piece gets tons of response, including many favorable comments.
2. The College president, an obvious lightweight named Tom Rochon, issues a lengthy apology, including this:
3. The magazine's editor for the last 12 years, Maura Stephens, writes an "apology" that deserves long excerpt because it is such a monument of skulking pusillanimity:
I was remiss in both cases. For this I am very sorry, and I am particularly regretful that people who are close to Ithaca College and care about it passionately feel hurt by the institution. The institution is not to blame. I am the only one at fault here.
The last thing I intended was to fuel more conflict.
Maura Stephens, editor
Note that all this surrounds an article about an illegal occupation and pogroms in a foreign country halfway round the world. And it demonstrates why it is impossible to discuss the corruption of American foreign policy and journalism without talking about rightwing/even liberal Jewish money, the loss of which the president and the editor obviously fear.
I don't think you are in any position to accuse others of being cowardly, Phil, when you yourself are too cowardly to allow serious discussion, preferring obscene verbal shit-smearing and juvenile knock-about repartee to develop on these threads. Twice recently I have tried to start serious discussions here, and by serious I mean, having a direct bearing on the survival of the human species of this planet, and on both occasions you have totally ignored them and allowed them to be washed away by trollery and by conversations which are at best junior-college-level.
To refresh your memory, these have involved the conflict between the JHVH and EL cults (within Judaism and outside it)and the objective existence (or not) of more effective sexual mores among Jews.
Your ignoring of these serious topics, and your facile concentration on fourth- or fifth-hand reportage of mundane political repartee about diplomatic and journalistic niche posts and the behaviour of their occupants, is simply time-wasting.
I recently had occasion to unearth an old Burroughs quotation which captures far better than I can the real gravity of the situation:
To put it country simple, earth has a lot of things other folks might want … like the whole planet. And maybe these folks would like a few changes made. Like more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and room for their way of life. We’ve seen this happen before, right in these United States. Your way of life destroyed the Indians’ way of life. The Indian reservation is extinction. But I offer this distinction. I’m with the invaders, no use trying to hide that. And, at the same time, I disagree with some of the things they are doing. Oh, we’re not united, anymore than you are. Conservative factions is set on nuclear war as a solution to the Indian personality. Others disagree. I don’t claim that my methods are one hundred percent humane, but I do say, if we can’t think of anything quieter, and tidier than that … we are all not that much better than you earthlings.
Now, the non-human aliens, one of whom Burroughs in his whimsical way pretends to be, are perfectly familiar to you from the cinema; they have dark almond-shaped eyes and their proximity induces an uncanny and for most people quite frightening sensation, which in some though not all cases explains why they avoid direct conscious contact. Our age thinks of them as interplanetary, intergalactic, or interdimensional visitors; previous generations thought of them as angels and devils, good and evil djinn, and so forth. All our military activity is mere preparation for their emergence into the public human consciousness, which seems to be getting closer by the day. And you allow your internet space to be wasted by frivolous, dirty-minded children and fatuous, shallow, sophomoric debaters. It's downright suspicion-inducing; you cannot be as superficial as you seem, or as ignorant and stupid. Really.
The current financial crisis and especially the implosion of the heavily Jewish financial sector is substantially reducing the financial resources aviailable to the lobby.
Money quite possibly, but also israel lobby attitudes among Ithaca College faculty and administration is the other possibility.
I forgot to mention one important point about the climate that our alien friends and co-planetary-habitees-to-be prefer: In 2006, Japanese professor Dr. K. Yagasaki, by using the known amount of uranium used in the Hiroshima bomb — about the size of a two-litre milk container — calculated that a ton of DU used on the battlefield results in the equivalent of 100 Hiroshima bombs worth of radiation released into the atmosphere. So, when it was reported that 2,000 tons of DU were dropped on Iraq from 2003 to 2006, we need to understand that what was released in the Iraqi atmosphere, and then spread worldwide, was the equivalent of 200,000 Hiroshima bombs. The total amount of DU the US has used since 1991 is approximately 4,600 tons (1,000 in the first Gulf War, 800 in Kosovo, 800 in Afghanistan and a further 2,000 tons in the second Iraq war.) This amounts to approximately 460,000 Hiroshima bombs, ten times the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from all previous nuclear testing worldwide. And, it’s important to note this calculation was three years ago. Since that time, we’ve had three more years of non-stop DU bombing.
Hmm. Little Boy was about 15 kilotons.
15×200,000=3,000,000 kilotons = 3,000 megatons.
Considering that a 50 megatons would be the yield of one of a large hydrogen bomb, I think we would notice greater effects if the radiation of 60 doomsday H-bombs had been released into the atmosphere.
The health issues of DU are not adequately considered, I agree, but this kind of wacky exaggeration does not help. Nuclear blasts can vaporize uranium-235, Pu, and other nuclear isotopes and drive them high into the atmosphere. A DU shell has absolutely nothing comparable to the energy of a nuclear blast behind it.
Ah, the NYC coffin of thought.
I now live in the west. My car broke down. I have AAA. A clean tow truck arrived. The man had an accent. I asked what his nationality was, just for the hell of it. He said he was Israeli.
I asked him to step away from my car and leave. He was shocked. He asked why. I said You're not welcome in this country.He said What? I said you're Israeli, you take my tax dollars, yet you risk the national security of my country. He accused me of being anti-Semitic. I said I dont know what your religion is, I asked your nationality; you could be Druze, Christian, Moslem or Jewish, what do I know?
He ignited a tirade about my anti-Semitism. I said, No. Your country engages in apartheid against the Palestinians. You violate my US values with the temerity to steal my tax dollars to do it. I said, and furthermore, you are here in this country calling yourself Israeli and not American. THEN, he got nutso. I called AAA and asked them to send me a real American, a US citizen. [Even though I am very sympathetic to the immigration groups....this was fun.]
Check out the comments after the editor's apology.
The tide is turning.
Who would have thought there was so little radiation released into the atmosphere from Little Boy.
MRW's US values are his values, not America's. Just as his definitions remain his opinion built on facts he invents.
No wonder intelligent people go nutso when trying to have an adult conversation with slack jaws like MRW.
I went to a private high school in northern Ohio. It's actually in the top 10 high schools I think, if I remember correctly. Been about 5-6 years since then.
Anyways, our headmaster was very good in one respect: he got money from alumni. He was a good fund raiser.
But, the quality of the education suffered. It was just too easy. Even the AP classes (except the ones taught by decades long veterans and the sciences).
We were very similar to Exeter. We were focused a lot on Lacrosse and Basketball as well. All sports really. It was kind of crazy to see the recruits we'd bring in.
After awhile it seemed like the school was just about image/sports/money other than anything else.
It used to earn that top 10 rating during the early 90s from what my cousin tells me (she went there too, All-American lacrosse goalie, Johns Hopkins blah blah).
But during the 2000s it really declined. Too much focus on catering to donors. Catering to the rich kids. I remember the athletes getting away with lots of stuff because they were recruited. Lots of kids were given too many chances and while I admit it's a big deal to kick someone out of school, since it reflects on their record for college admissions, it was unfair. This special treatment.
So yea, this aspect of school – schools becoming like corporations/businesses is a major problem.
You end up compromising your values and ethics cuz some douchebag has lots of cash.
lol @ MRW's story. He forgot the punchline…he had to wait 2 days to get someone else to pick him up off the road…the Israeli went back and told the others what happened– and they forgot about him. hahahaha
Effin' cowards, the Cochons and Even Stephens of Ithaca college. Not fit to run a brothel, never mind a college.
Rowan wrote:
"I don't think you are in any position to accuse others of being cowardly, Phil, when you yourself are too cowardly to allow serious discussion, preferring obscene verbal shit-smearing and juvenile knock-about repartee to develop on these threads. Twice recently I have tried to start serious discussions here, and by serious I mean…."
Rowan, if you feel Phil's blog is so wrongly run why aren't you just happy to, say … run your own differently?
And Phil's not responsible for people not responding to your post or points here either.
Kinda puzzling. I enjoy reading your substantive comments here for sure, but I don't understand your hostility to the forum.
Rowan seems to make a lot of veiled threats. I wonder if Iranian operatives are bankrolling Phil through Rowan ?????
:-)
MRW, I don't understand why you would be so rude to a tow-truck driver who happened to be Israeli. This sort of personal prejudice without cause does nothing but fuel resentment.
Rowan does seem irritated all the time.
Take comfort in the fact that people like Suzanne mask their malcontent by smug condescension and a pervasive sense of entitlement in all her comments.
Oh Rowan, she actually may be your secret admirer. I mean, yesterday she was expounding on your bowel movements.
Actually, you know that may not be such a good thing…
Think Kathy Bates in Misery. Or Jason's mom in Friday the 13th…
Here's the thing. I graduated from Ithaca College in 1981. I remember the first time I set foot on the campus in 1977, there were tons of student demonstrations against South African apartheid. There was graffiti on the sidewalks, chalked invectives on the brick walls urging IC to "Divest Now!" from investments in corporations that supported the apartheid of South Africa. The students held rallies to protest, and insist on the College boycotting offending corporations. There was a passion about this, and an exhilarating academic freedom on the Ithaca College campus, a sense that students could express themselves freely and make a difference.
Flashforward to the AIPAC-ruled new millenium. You have the college president apologizing in the alumni publication for failing to present a "balanced and unbiased" counterside to Emily's exceptionally well-written piece.
Now President Cochon is doubly screwed, because many of us will now hold back OUR alumni dollars this year in protest to his attempts to undercut an important, rarely-published account of the modern-day apartheid happening right now in Palestine.
If you take the time to read the comments, as Judy noted, the commenters are overwhelmingly grateful that the alumni publication managed to run an important eyewitness account that the AIPAC-controlled mainstream media wouldn't have the cojones to print.
I did take the time to read the comments and President Rochon's remarks on staying away from "controversies" and "internally" reviewing processes.
Ah the editorial board seem to make sense of this a bit differently to that of labor in the process of exchange. Shocking really as Weiss suggests in this post.
Of course, liberals would assert that there is a difference between the public interest and the corporate interest in the making of the news.
I'd say the corporate thugs were running roughshod over the public interest in this relatively tame and certainly objective view of what life in the occupied territories looks like.
I think I hear nervous, hollow laughter coming from somewhere here.
Rowan, if you feel Phil's blog is so wrongly run why aren't you just happy to, say … run your own differently? … Posted by: Sin Nombre | March 06, 2009 at 09:02 AM
I do, o nameless or numberless one, whichever it is, I do.
MRW, I'm extremely critical of Israel's behavior, but acting that way to some individual because he happens to be Israeli is insane. You don't know his political beliefs and anyway, do you go into the political beliefs of every person you interact with? The world would fall apart if we all acted the way you did.
And anyway, you're an American like me, so given what our country has done to Iraq and numerous other places, why the hell would you prefer an American tow truck driver?
@Rowan
Wow, just wow. I mean I knew you were a bit off, but bug eyed aliens trying to take over the world? We're talking tinfoil hats and "oops, he forgot to take his meds".
Let me take a wild guess who the Alien's principal agents on Earth are. Now let me see. Could it be Jooooos?
Thom, what's even more amusing than Rowan are the so-called sane people here who think he substantive. Funnier than fiction! :-)
MRW, even though I am a strong critic of Israel, I disagree with your behavior towards the Israeli truck driver. It was totally unfair to attack him simply because he happens to be Israeli. How'd you feel if you were in a foreign country and someone refused to deal with you because of what the United States had done in Iraq?
I thought, upon reading it, that MRW's post was satire.
David F. et al | March 06, 2009 at 09:16 AM
You’re right about it being rude. You’re wrong about the guy just being the driver. He owned the company. Have to say it was the cleanest fanciest tow truck I ever saw.
I did it during the huge anti-immigration protest era in 2006 to discover a point. It was right after the May 1 or 5 the demontrations in LA and Chicago and Stephen Steinlight had written his June 2006 screed in The Forward: “Open Borders Threaten Jewish Clout.”
link to forward.com [The article is full of inaccurate statistics, but this guy is one of Lou Dobbs’ sources.]
Fox News was full of hyperventitaled complaints at the time about how dare all these Latinos wave Mexican flags: ‘They’re not American, blah-blah-blah’. Yet no one ever objects to the sight of an Israeli flag. Bush had no problem being photographed in front of one in the Capitol. The people screaming the loudest at that time were members of the Republican Jewish Coalition, if you will recall.
Read Steinlight, senior policy analyst for the Center for Immigration Studies:
Moreover, Jewish-Latino political interests clash. We have fought over both refugee and asylum slots: we wanted them for Soviet Jewry, Latinos for Central Americans fleeing the dirty wars in Central America. We won, but at a cost. And except for the evangelical part of the community, Latinos do not share any particularly strong bond to Israel. The rest of it is even more racist.
Substituting knowledge for Jewish sentimentality regarding immigration means debunking myths reflecting ignorance of Jewish immigration’s uniqueness. Unlike many other newcomers to America, Jews were refugees and asylum seekers escaping religious persecution, tyranny and pogroms. Most immigrants, by contrast, are not refugees: They come to make money.Who cares why they came? Rahm Emanuel's father didn't come to escape a pogrom. He came to make money and give his kids an opportunity. Ditto Sheldon Adelson's Israeli doctor wife (who does great hospice work).They however got instant legal entry into this country. Not so the immigrants from the south. There is tremendous inequity in this.
MRW, thanks for sharing the extended story. The Steinlight "analysis" is particularly revealing: it epitomizes the tribal mentality – everything is measured by whether or not it's "good for the Jews".
It will be interesting to see what the Zionists do to court the Latino population in this country. Latinos are predominantly Catholic, and Catholics are, generally speaking, less influenced by the Zionist narrative, and certainly less concerned with Israel, than the Protestant population of this country. That said, the Vatican seems to be going out of its way to appease Israel and the Zionists of late.
Thanks again.
Thanks, Dan.
@Rowan: Wow, just wow. I mean I knew you were a bit off, but bug eyed aliens trying to take over the world? We're talking tinfoil hats and "oops, he forgot to take his meds". Let me take a wild guess who the Alien's principal agents on Earth are. Now let me see. Could it be Jooooos? Posted by: Thom | March 06, 2009 at 01:17 PM
Thom, do learn how to spell. The word you seek is spelled 'J-E-W-S'.
Talking of telepathy (which we weren't), someone (I think I know who) has just asked me to explain the relation between this doctrine of the extra-terrestrials and the Jewish issue. In fact, having as I said studied occultism for many years, I can explain this quite simply.
Some of you may recall that the book by Michael Baigent et al, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" puts forward the thesis that the masonic and chivalric secret shared by the European royal families is that they are, or claim to be, descendants of a secret marriage between Jesus (who in this theory escaped crucifixion) and Mary of Magdala:
link to en.wikipedia.org
Now, all you have to do is to correlate that to Zecharia Sitchin's theory regarding the God-kings of Sumer, the 'Anunnaki':
link to en.wikipedia.org
link to en.wikipedia.org
The most famous exponent of the combined theory is 'Sir' Laurence Gardner:
link to en.wikipedia.org
But there are various eccentric and even sinister offshoots calling themselves 'Dragon Courts,' notably that of Nick Weir, who styles himself 'Nicholas de Vere von Drakenberg':
link to bibliotecapleyades.net
Actually, it should become clear after a little thought that if I, being a Muslim, reject the idolatry involved in the above tradition (both in its christian and its jewish variants), in favour of something rather more like radical, levelling republicanism, a la Oliver Cromwell, then it is absurd to describe me as a fascist. But I suppose that suzanne or c berel will assert that the nazis also claimed to be radical, levelling republicans, or something (even though, as far as I know, they did not).
I wonder how Phil, Kelly et al (the mere neurotics) justify krazies like Martillo and Rowan (and homicidal Ed).
Talk about inconvenient truths–these dudes are like a cobra necklace you're hoping no one notices…haha.
Or a star of david pendant we are sick of.
Hey MRW,
Thanks (I thought I had responded, but I guess typepad lost it.)