Why don’t more congresspeople do this? Columnist Bruce Ramsey in the Seattle Times interviews the courageous, retiring congressman.
In an interview, Baird recalled a speech some years ago by Israel’s current premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). To Baird, the speech was "thinly disguised racism" — and he recoiled from it. When the crowd applauded, he and his wife walked out…
[Recently] "Colleague after colleague denounced a report they had never read, about a place to which they had never been," Baird said. "I read the Goldstone report. All of it. I found it credible."
It is remarkable that the report is often discussed, it’s content isn’t. It’s as if, upon Isaac Newton’s publication of Principia, the world’s scientists ignored the contents and argued about whether it had any merit given Newton’s fascination with alchemy.
“Baird is not running for re-election.” Some say he committed the unpardonable sin, specifically criticizing Israel and recommending remedy with teeth. This might be true to a s degree, but I say it is much deeper than this, what he found was that the only game in town has nothing to do with representation of the people except in minor concession. On the main points he has no chance, the system is stacked against any honesty or the name that it goes by – that you are serving the American people at all, it is to serve the few. THAT is why he is not running, you can quibble about all of the other secondary considerations – and I say, if he were interviewed to that specific point, you would hit the bulls eye.
I wish he would discuss it.
How do you tell the American people that it is all a lie potsherd, that it is all a scam? However, it is all brought about through a process of exposure, that will never be allowed to air on national media. So it is voiced on a series of smaller conventional media, and on the web as we are doing right now.
I say let the people, who already know by a majority that what I am saying is correct, lose everything – till they are reduced to begging, and their children stomachs begin to swell as they roam homeless. Till their financial institutions shut their doors so they can see what they think they have go up in smoke. Their businesses doors finally shuttered as they can find no capital to fuel their desperate flailing for something that has been killed – the financial stability of the people gone. All the while the pockets and wallets of the few expanding, with them thinking that all they have to do is close their gated communities and sit snug behind walls of seeming security.
The gap between the rich and poor is now greater than during the days of the robber barons, and still the other financial shoe has not dropped which will be the second dip in the economy – it is not far off. If you look on my site you will see all of these issues and more covered long before they hatched and became public knowledge – is it because I am a prophet? No, I just know the nature of the beast.
LETS BUST CHAINS
“When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.”
~ Marquis De Lafayette
You say, “It’s all a lie, it’s all a scam.” This isn’t exactly news, after all. What’s news is when someone openly says it, someone who has been on the inside.
This is the point of quitting the system, you get to speak openly about it.
” Years ago, on a radio show, when I condemned Israel for taking Palestinian land, my host asked if I would give New Mexico back to the Mexicans.”
From the article
————————–
The creeps use this argument all too often.. “oh yeah, how about you give back the land you stole from the aboriginals?” when I mention land grab in the West Bank, which never fails to make me think we’re dealing with a seriously and pathologically unscrupulous group.
The weakness of the argument of course, other than that the USA was settled centuries ago, is that it works equally well in reverse…. “so you are saying that the Palestinians are absolutely right to try to recolonise Israel?”
Yes, it is a circular argument. And it points back to the horrors depicted in the old testament, to wars of conquest and pillage, and erases any distinction between “barbarians” and “civilized” people. Might makes right, as every good Nazi use to say.
Perhaps irony has no meaning? A war of aggression is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense. Waging such a war of aggression is a war crime under the customary international law especially developed in the wake of the Nuremberg Trials. It is generally agreed by scholars in international law today that the military actions of the Nazi regime in World War II in its search for so-called “Lebensraum” are characteristic of a war of aggression. Israeli settlements anyone? Gee, is Tel Aviv occupied territory too?
Making lebensraum in the Middle East:
link to counterpunch.org
Netanyahu says no Israeli will ever be tried for war crimes:
link to buchanan.org
Netanyahu says no Israeli will ever be tried for war crimes:
——————
Not surprising. It rarely happens that criminals accept to be trialled and judged.
Il faut les trainer par la peau des fesses devant le tribunal de La Haye..
“All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” – Voltaire
This is the same position as the US
Or if Israel tries its own troops, they are invariably acquitted, as was the murderer of Bassem Abu Rahmeh. Then the Israelis congratulate themselves for their great legality.
Southern Observer,
“The weakness of the argument of course, other than that the USA was settled centuries ago…”
Maybe I am missing something, but I find this answer quite weak, in turn. You are saying that all that is required to “resolve” the displacement of an indiginous population is the passage of time? How much time? If that is the case, all that is required of the Israelis is to “hold on” for a few more decades, and by this reasoning…50 (or whatever) years from now…all is forgiven, and hey, what’s the problem?
And in fact, Native Americans continue to be subject to gross injustice. As one Native American woman said to me in a private email a few years ago, “Don, you need to understand that what your white history books call “the Indian Wars”…never really ended”. Upon looking into it…it is easy to discover she was quite correct.
Why not acknowledge that we do in fact have issues here as well? That strikes me as far more morally and ethically persuasive. As opposed to simply letting us “off the hook” because “it happened a long time ago”. It certainly started a long time ago, and continued for hundreds of years. And more importantly, continues still.
“Wounded Knee II” occurred in 1973, unless I am mistaken.
Your (and others) arguments in this matter simply do not “hold water”, ethically, morally, or logically., in my opinion.
I do not see why you (and others) find it necessary to deny “our injustice” in order to justify criticizing “Israeli injustice”.
Weak indeed. If you have any doubts about it…why not get on line and ask some Native Americans? Who are you (or any of us) to dismiss what was done, and continues to be done, to these people?
Morally, there is no difference. None.
I sound like I’m agreeing with myself, but that’s all true. We shouldn’t respond to this argument by denying our crimes towards Native Americans. I do think it’s legitimate to point out Native Americans do have the vote, unlike Palestinians on the West Bank. OTOH, if there were 200 million Native Americans confined to reservations, I’m not so sure white America would have allowed this. When you steal someone’s land, it’s best if you badly outnumber them, so that a few generations later you can give the survivors the vote and say everything is fine now.
I do find it weird to see Israel defenders bringing up America’s treatment of the Native Americans in defense of their own behavior, because it seems like exactly the analogy they would want to avoid. In fact, Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein have used the analogy themselves, in condemnation of Israel, the US, and western imperialism in general. SoI was startled a few years ago to see Benny Morris invoke it, only to say that what white Americans and Israelis did was justified because their culture was superior. And that was only a start. Nowadays one not only sees the Native American example used, but Israel defenders also start bringing up the civilians the US kills in its own Asian wars.
The whole argument is a moral surrender, as far as I am concerned. Of course the Native Americans have been treated badly. Is that Israel’s defense? The argument only “works” because they know that with some Americans it will trigger some irrational patriotic response. I think it’s an attempt to divide leftwing criticism of Israeli war crimes from a more mainstream stance, because they know that the mainstream will back away from too much moral consistency. That’s even more true with the war crimes issue, where I’m pretty sure the Israeli officials are safe from ever facing war crimes trials precisely because American officials would not welcome a world where Westerners are held to account in that way. For that matter, mainstream American society in general probably isn’t ready for that. They’re all for war crimes trials for discredited dictators or captured terrorists, but start talking about trials for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, or Olmert and they all start talking about leftwing craziness.
So I don’t think the Israel defenders are actually being stupid here. Their argument is morally fallacious, but politically it’s brilliant.
it was the worst part of our history, nothing to be proud of or strive to replicate. what’s next, using the rack and then say ‘well, it was used in the inquisition’?
I agree. But as to brilliant? For that conclusion you would have to not recognize
any difference at all in human polity since the Old Testament, right down through the Middle ages, and on through the US & French revolutions, including erasing any distinction at all between “barbarians” and
“civilized” peoples/cultures. Nuremberg Trials, after all did set up some universal standards of conduct for sovereign states, and didn’t international conventions supplement that in detail? Israeli intellectual defense of its actions seems to
simply ignore any progression at over human history. Maybe Goering is right.
Which makes Israel right. Might makes right. To the economically and militarily
powerful goes all ethics and morality. The Israelis and the US seems to have
absorbed Goering and Goebbels completely. Should we all thank Bernays? I say this, smoking 2 PACKS A DAY.
it was the worst part of our history, nothing to be proud of or strive to replicate.
Annie
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Tell me about it. Every time I see those poor aboriginal kids in the streets sniffing glue my heart bleeds..This is the sort of fate the proud Palestinian people are pushed into by the genocidal Euro-American colonial settlers..
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As a former Constitutional Law professor, Obama must realize the dangerous centrality of
the settlements issue in Jerusalem; if he doesn’t actually DO something about them,
he’s a real loser, and is himself a danger to the USA at this juncture in time:
link to thejerusalemfund.org
“If the Palestinian population before 1948 had been mostly Christian, England and other European countries would never have allowed anyone to colonise this country.”
‘OH COME ALL YE FAITHFUL’ ….. BUT DON’T EXPECT TO PRAY HERE
“Normally, Palestinian Christians have a slightly easier time of obtaining permits to enter Jerusalem during Christian holidays than Muslims do during Muslim holidays. But with Jerusalem tense in recent weeks, because of demonstrations against Israeli settlement building in East Jerusalem, Christians were told last week that their permits would not apply this year.”
“I hope the Israeli government realises that it is unacceptable to us that Christians be denied the right to worship in Jerusalem, especially Christians whose roots in the region go back to the time of Christ,” Rev Kinnamon had told the Christian Post on Tuesday.
link to desertpeace.wordpress.com
This is another story not being told. Look in the MSM to see all the happy western tourist pilgrims celebrating Easter in Jerusalem, while the Palestinian Christians are being barbed wire on the outside.
Well, you know, they’re not really Christians–why they kinda look like–Jews!
My only point is that I have contacts in the USA with lots of ardent Christians
who look askance at the US Governmet, and none of them show even an iota
of fact of what actually happens to Christians in the holy land.
They’re not the right kind of Christians. They’re not Amurrkans.
CASE CLOSED IN MURDER OF PALESTINIAN ACTIVIST ~~ NO CHARGES FILED
Israel’s military said Thursday 01-04-10 it will not file any charges in the death of non violent Palestinian activist Bassem Abu Rahmeh last year.
“Before he was killed, this unarmed Palestinian was begging the Israeli soldiers not to shoot lest their bullets kill an Israeli! The last words he said “in Hebrew” were: “Officer, officer officer, listen, you killed an Israeli, wait a moment, wait a moment”. What he got was a canister in his chest that led to his death!”
link to desertpeace.wordpress.com
That’s the essence of Zionism. That scene you describe shows that Zionism boils down to morally bankrupt colonial interests with total disregard for the lives of, not only Palestinians (Muslim and Christian), but Jews, as well. The murder in Dubai and the passport identity theft that facilitated it, is just one blatant example that illustrates how the Zionist establishment treats Jews as pawns, expendable, all in the name of The State.
AVI- You are quite correct. The Zionists have always subordinated the welfare of Jewish people to the creation and expansion of the Jewish state.
To Southern Observer (and everyone else)…
Take the time to watch the video (link below) and then try to convince yourself that the the argument is “circular”, as Citizen put it.
link to videomeli.com
It is only “circular” if a person (any person) who decides to attend to this issue ALSO decides it is easiest to do so from a standpoint of “moral superiority”. What does that standpoint accomplish, please tell me?
We have our own continuing apartheid; that the oppression of Nnative Americans does not lead to the possibility of nuclear war….that is the only moral difference.
Don, I meant by “circular”that the argument is circular in the sense that if you take my land, then I can take it back; obviously this means that if the Jews can take back their land (from mythical biblical days), then it also means the Palestinians can take back their land, in the context of who has mostly lived in reality on that land for centuries.
You are not wrong in suggesting that the fact the native Americans don’t have nukes is a reality nobody can not observe. So, what do you suggest we do about Israel?
Dear Don, thanks for the interesting update on the state of indian reservations. Citizen has already lucidly commented on what was meant by circular. Let me add that this not in anyway meant to belittle the native american suffering. There are many strong parallels with what is happening in Palestine now, right down to the strategy of starving them out.
The late and unlamented Custer was universally reviled as “squaw-killer” Custer. Barak and Bibi would be worthy of this title.