Seymour Hersh on Amy Goodman Friday. Thomas Pickering is old school, a Bush I guy, worked for Clinton too, a realist. The Obama isolation that Hersh describes is about Iran and Afghanistan but surely applies to Israel and Palestine too.
And I'll tell you the biggest problem he has, as awful as those things are, as
counterproductive, and as much as he's following, oh, yes, Bush and Cheney in those policies--and I think the President-- I'll be writing about this--I think he was really sandbagged by the Pentagon after he got into office, when he was new and innocent. And I still think--I think right now--I would almost use the word "cult" to describe what's going on in the White House. Everything is political. He's isolated. Very good people say they've never seen a president this isolated, in terms of being unable to get to him with different opinions, etc. So here's really captive of a few people there. I know this may sound strange, but I know what I'm talking about. You can't get to the guy--and even, for example, Pickering, as competent as he is. And Pickering has done some wonderful stuff for the United States intelligence community undercover, and so he's known as a trusted guy. Those guys who have been involved in talking to Iran off the record, Track II policy talks, for years can't get to the President. He may not even know they're looking for him. I just don't know.
Hersh has interesting things to say, as always. But he doesn’t challenge the notion of American Empire in a serious way. Perhaps he would lose his sources if he did. I’m suspicious of the “isolation” thesis, along with any effort to portray Obama as a kind of unwitting victim. I’m generally opposed to Psychobamanalysis, from Hersh, David Bromwich, or anyone else. Obama knows who he works for, and it’s a lot more than just the Israel Lobby.
Yep – spot-on, DG. It’s George Soros and the New World Order.
link to youtube.com
I’m suspicious of the “isolation” thesis
I’m not. The people around him have two decades of experience working in the WH. I could spend 30 minutes writing out how these scenarios work, but I don’t have the time.
How would Obama (or any new president) know that the processes are not what they are supposed to be? How? (Bush Jr knew, but he was a rare one.) This Prez is surrounded by career civil servants and staffers. Guess who set up the satraps? The new mayor of Chicago.
Does it seem likely that Obama knew Dennis Ross would curb Mitchell?
Why did he pick either? How about, what was on his mind when he originally selected Chas Freeman? Who advised that pick? And who derailed it? And was Obama suddenly cut off from some input, and given more access to other input? Same type of questions relative to Obama’s Cairo speech, and his later effective cancelling of the mission implied in that speech? And how about his waiting to the last moment to forsake Muburak? What has he done that he promised to do other than ram through Obamacare? His financial reform is window dressing.
The same people run the show after the Bailout that created the Bailout. There are many other examples. Perhaps Bush Jr was wiser at the starting gate because his father & other relatives clued him in?
Scary. This means, for instance, that WE don’t know whom to talk to. It means he isn’t listening to US. Our e-mails. Our telephone calls. He is surrounded by a decision-making shell (like a hard walnut shell), and perhaps not all of that shell consists of heads of large corporations (as we all like to imagine and fear), but the granules in that shell have short (and “political”) time-lines, so that they (and therefore Obama himself) have no concerns for the long term.
The USA with no concerns for: global warming; the cost of our ridiculous military empire and the much smaller but still large cost of our wars; the shift of scientific and industrial inventiveness to China and elsewhere from the USA, which was once a leader in fields other than military hardware. We’ve given the reins of power to people who do not care about the future of the country, but only about their own short-term gains. Don’t cry for us, Argentina.
Sunday’s Chris Matthews program focused on Obama and these two years. Being in a bit of a bubble. Not consulting his cabinet members. Obama “centralism”
link to video.thechrismatthewsshow.com
Confirms that Obama has been too focused on how the world sees him rather than consulting with cabinet members consulting outside of his inner circle. When the hell will he drop Dennis Ross? Start consulting with former middle east analyst Flynt Leverett and other experts on Iran instead of Israels lawyers?
Chris Matthews ” John he (Obama) has been more of a sole act. Is he going to make it more of a team effort than making it all about Obama?
John Heilemann goes into how Obama has not consulted with his cabinet members very often. In fact he states that many of his cabinet members have never even received a phone call from Obama. Heileman talks about “Obama centrism”
Obama has no one but himself to blame for his atrocious state of isolation. He was AIPAC’s willing executioner when it came to Chas Freeman — doing the bidding of Steve Rosen and forced Freeman to step down from consideration for Chairman of the National Intelligence Council. link to salon.com
It’s quite amusing watching the Israel-firsters pound Obama as the worst president Israel’s ever had, when Obama has not only bent over backward for Israel, he’s bent over forward (while dropping trou and grabbing his ankles). Operation Iron Dome, undercutting Mitchell in favor of Dennis Ross, saber-rattling over Iran . . . the list goes on and on.
Obama is a fraud of a president — he’s done almost nothing but cause more and more damage to the country that elected him. And yet those who have actually derived a benefit from his ineffectual presidency — the Israeli’s — despise him. Ron Paul 2012, everyone.
So what’s Ron Paul going to do? Bring home the troops, cut military spending, military aid to Israel. Fine. No more diplomatic support for Israel at the UN either. Fine. Israel will implode or explode. No more Jewish State or ‘iron-clad’ security. A few million Jews will leave the country and head for the one with the largest Jewish community in the world. That’ll break the power of the Jewish lobby for good. Welcome back, Kahanists! Hagee will roll out the red carpet for the religious settlers and Hilltop Youth. Sorry to tell you that Gideon Levy has decided to stay in Israel. So far. Then there’s the question of who exactly will inherit the most powerful military arsenal in the Middle East, this monstrous military base with a state wrapped around it. I don’t think it will be Gideon Levy. Who will be in charge of the nuclear warheads? And point them where? Hold a garage sale for interested neighbors?
So Obama is isolated, surrounded by a ‘cult’, ‘AIPAC’s willing executioner’? Not a great fan of Conrad Black, but I will cite this passage from his Roosevelt biography:
“Knowing nothing of the United States, [Hitler] conjured up a lurid picture of a physically defective Roosevelt manipulated by Baruch, Frankfurter, Morgenthau, Brandeis, Cohen, and the other prominent Jews in his entourage, possibly reinforcing the President’s susceptibilities by using the ‘Negro’ household staff at the White House to medicate him according to the wishes of the rabbinical masters.
When he finally realized that Roosevelt was not just another Chamberlain, Hitler was unable to imagine anyone but a Jew or someone directed by Jews to be capable of the depths of Roosevelt’s cunning and determination.”
I fail to see why Black and everyone else keeps harping on Chamberlain as a weak leader who failed to stop Hitler. I sure hope Obama is another Chamberlain, and not another FDR or Churchill. Looks good so far
“I fail to see why Black and everyone else keeps harping on Chamberlain as a weak leader who failed to stop Hitler. ”
Because they suffer from present-ism. They don’t understand why someone who was in his forties from 1914-1918 might act as Chamberlain did in 1938 (indeed, they probably don’t understand the significance of these dates, anyway) because they can’t view the man and his decisions in the context in which they were made.
It’s convenient, those post-war myths arising from wartime propaganda (First casualty of war is…?). All you have to do is scream ‘another Chamberlain’, ‘another Hitler’, and everybody reacts like Pavlov dogs, pressing and cheering for another war.
Or: another Holocaust. They’ve been pushing this tall tale at cnn, ushmm and hundreds of other sources: “In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces killed as many as 8000 Bosniaks from Srebrenica. It was the largest massacre in Europe since the Holocaust” in order to justify yet another illegal and unnecessary war retroactively by a show trial. At a tribunal inaugurated by Madeleine Albright who thinks it was ‘worth it’ to starve to death half a million Iraqi children – to bring down a dictator installed by the US, and goaded into attacking the neighbors with chemical weapons delivered by Germany. Does anyone remember how the Germans were vilified for using poison gas during WW I as the worst war criminals in human memory (although their enemies also did it)? Bearing the sole guilt for WW I? Funny how anything goes if you do it as an ally of the US. Then you’re automatically a ‘civilized nation’
link to louisproyect.wordpress.com
link to news.bbc.co.uk
History is usually written by the winning power, it omits the cruel and criminal acts of his own and blames the loser for everything.
Let a russian or chinese author write the history of the wars and occupations of the anglo-saxon lands and you will be surprised what comes to light. How many of us remember My Lai or the crimes commited by the british colonists.
The british think they brought culture and progress to the lands where they robbed the people blind!
“It’s convenient, those post-war myths arising from wartime propaganda (First casualty of war is…?). All you have to do is scream ‘another Chamberlain’, ‘another Hitler’, and everybody reacts like Pavlov dogs, pressing and cheering for another war. ”
Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I have to say that if someone is described as “another Hitler,” or there is a claim that such-and-such is an “existenial threat to Israel,” I just simply assume that this is someone or something which the Israelis believe to be a threat to their domination and theft of all of Palestine and nothing more. History has borne that out.
oops, my mother tongue must have pushed through. Happens all the time. I meant ‘everybody’ in the sense of ‘the average guy’, ‘Jane Doe’ etc. Not every single person. But you have to admit it has an effect on people – emotional, subliminal. I can assure you it worked on the most committed anti-war leftists and rightists in the German parliament when the Kosovo/another Holocaust parallel was pushed by, of all people, Green Party FM Joschka Fischer, now lecturing at some Ivy League think tank, forgot which. And plenty of other people. I mean there is no comparison, and I don’t just mean scale/numbers
He owes his political career to Chicago Zionists; and they’ve too much invested in him to let him make crazy decisions on his own. I agree – that is very scary. That he knows who his masters are and is either unwilling/or unable to do what he must know – MUST know – is driving his country down the drain.
Zionism is the cult par excellence.
Will Chris Matthews, Ed, O’Donnell, Rachel Maddow, CNN etc have Hersh on to discuss his new article in the New Yorker about Iran? Or will they ignore the latest NIE on Iran so they can continue to repeat unsubstantiated claims about Iran and allow guest to do the same?
link to newamericamedia.org
The cult is more comprehensive than Hersh seems to suggest — it is the cult of developing, nascent oligarchy. You see the cult in Obama appointees and in a wide, wide spectrum of policy, including his Daschle-confirmed opposition to the public option, his adoration of a very narrow school of economics, his near-exclusive reliance on Harvard Law School for legal counsel, his coddling of Wall Street, caving on environmental issues, willing slavishness to health insurers, the Israel Lobby, and on and on and on.
Thanks
“Sandbagged” is hardly a strong enough term.
Isolation or no isolation, imagining that he has any autonomy is magical thinking.
The US consumes one quarter of everything consumed in the world every year even though it has one twentieth of global population. Obama’s job is to keep it that way.
You never hear Obama say cut back on your consumption, travel less, use less fuel. Never ever. Transformative he is not. Status quo so far when it comes to Israel, banksters, killing of innocents via drones etc. I will give it to him the health care move hopefully will get better. I think Romney will actually stand more of a chance than anyone thinks right now.
Off topic Kathleen but are you following what is going on in Appalachia with that coal where they have blown up over 500 mountains because it is cheaper than mining? For 3% of the US electricity supply. Nobody seems interested in energy efficiency. There is so much waste.
Have been involved in the coal extraction, burning, repercussions, environmental hazards etc but not so during the last 10 years in Have several hydrologist friends who have been heavily involved with ground and surface water contamination.
Four coal burning plants in our area. Cheshire small town moved, paid off residents. Had them sign agreements that they would never sue the company if they had health complications.
Robert Kennedy Jr was just on MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan the other day about this issue
link to video.tvguide.com
“I think he was really sandbagged by the Pentagon after he got into office, when he was new and innocent.”
‘President Obama, now that we have agenius and top-drawer strategist like you in the White House, why, it’ll only be weeks until you get Iraq all settled and win a glorious victory in Afghanistan!’
When the CIA and the Pentagon gave JFK bad advice on the Bay of Pigs, that was when he learned how much their advice was worth.
Sandbagged? I disagree with everyone on this.
He has made a calculated decision, weighing the strength of the Israel Lobby versus, well, everyone else.
One of the greatest victories of the media and political classes has been the compartmentalization of policy, especially foreign policy versus domestic policy. The almost complete and nonsensical separation of issues such as I/P from all others, including “The Global War on Terror” allows certain lobbies with very (even increasingly) small numbers and large wallets to almost absolutely control the debate.
I don’t believe that Obama is a naive man. He is making decisions on policy with his eyes wide open. He’s a (seemingly amoral) pragmatist, maybe a cynic, but definitely not some childlike, trusting, empty vessel to be filled by the “right” advisers and handlers.
The argument that individual presidents such as Bush or Obama are stupid or naive is a smokescreen for and by the the “two party system.” The conventional wisdom insinuation/assumption always made is, hey, just elect the right party and everything will be fixed!
Wrong.
I think Hersh is accurate.
Consider the Bush reign….in Bush’s first term Cheney controlled almost everything and chose who was appointed to what….all neocons and zionist from the WH to the pentagon
It wasn’t until after Iraq and in Jr.’s second term that Bush Sr. became alarmed enough to do what said he wouldn’t do and semi interfered by sending Jim Baker to penetrate the WH circle and give Jr. a few words to the wise.
When Obama went in he was a newbie who so lacked confidence in his own self that he kept on most of who was already in place and appointed mostly those who no doubt were demanded by his donors like the big Jewish donors and his old Chicago gang.
Once the gatekeepers are in positions it is near impossible for anyone else to break in.
Dennis Ross and similar zionist in this adm aren’t going to recommend someone for a position that differs from then on Israel.
Ask yourself for instance why on earth Obama would have appointed someone like Alan Simpson to head a budget commission.
Why in the hell he would appoint Larry Summers as one of his economic advisor when Summers has been so completely and totally discredited on everything he ever said about the economy before?
Why would he appoint all the old Wall Streeters to FED— all over again after the giant mess they made?
The answer is O doesn’t know jack shit and will take whoever is recommended to him by one of the gatekeepers as long as it looks like his famous “bi-pastisan” pledge.
Once one person of a certain rigid ideology gets in anywhere and has a voice or clout they bring others just like them on board and shut out anyone who might upset their particular applecart.
So yeah, it operates like a cult.
And thank goodness for Baker/Bush 41 playing interference. That warmongering group would have gone on into Iran. And they still may have their way
Hersh “Those guys who have been involved in talking to Iran off the record, Track II policy talks, for years can’t get to the President. ”
Former Bush administration official as well as a former CIA middle east analyst Flynt Leverett has said that one US administration after the next has refused to talk directly with Iranian officials. Sure makes the I lobby and Israel happy
Democracy Now interview with Hersh:
“SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, very simply, it’s—you know, you could argue it’s 2003 all over again. Remember WMD, mushroom clouds. There’s just no serious evidence inside that Iran is actually doing anything to make a nuclear weapon. You know, making a weapon is a big deal. You have to have fabrication facilities. You have to convert a very toxic gas into a metal and then mold it into a core. It’s big stuff, and there’s no sign of any of it.
We’ve been looking—Cheney was convinced, Dick Cheney, the former vice president, there was a secret facility à la what we probably saw in the movie Bananas. Remember Woody Allen’s movie, the little robots running underground? He was convinced there was an underground facility somewhere. And we had special forces units in there since ’04, really, perhaps as late as—early as ’05, maybe, looking. We’ve been paying off people—the Kurds, the Azeris, the opposition groups. We’ve been giving a lot of money to various defectors. We’ve been looking with satellites for telltale signs, air holes, air vents, somewhere in the desert or somewhere in an arid area. And we’ve found nothing, not for lack of trying. We looked very hard. And there’s just no evidence on the inside.
And it’s not only here, it’s known in Europe. It’s a much easier situation, at least for a journalist, to go to Europe, because the European intelligence officials are much more open about it. “Yes, we are very skeptical,” they will say, “but we’ve found nothing.” So, the fact is, we have a—the evidence is pretty strong—I mean, very strong—that we have a sanctions program that’s designed to prevent the Iranians from building weapons systems they’re not building.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Sy Hersh, your article details some extraordinary efforts by the United States. You talk about the special forces operations actually replacing street signs in Tehran with radiation detectors and replacing bricks in buildings. Could you talk about some of that? I mean, because that’s enormous risk that they’re taking actually going into the country and doing that.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Oh, it’s amazingly complicated. And I will tell you, obviously, I hate to write about operational stuff, but let me just say that whatever we were doing, we have a new generation now that’s more sophisticated. But in those early days—early days being ’05, 2005, 2006—there was a tremendous concern that various buildings, laboratories and academic buildings in the city of Tehran were being used as secret facilities to enrich uranium to a high degree. Right now the Iranians are absolutely within the law. It turns out they’re signatories to the NPT, Non-Proliferation Treaty. And there’s no evidence whatsoever that—the IAEA, the group that Mr. ElBaradei headed, International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors nuclear developments, they consistently report that there’s no evidence of any diversion of any of the enriched materials they now have.
We’re enriching—the Iranians are enriching to about 3.7 or so percent to run civilian power plants. There’s one small pilot project for medical research that gets up to 20 percent. But everything that’s being enriched is under camera, under watch, by the IAEA. There’s just no sign of any diversion. There’s just no evidence. This doesn’t mean we can go to intent. It doesn’t mean that there’s a lot of concern in the United States and appropriate concern about the Iranian intent. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t watch what they do. But it does mean that we’re sort of beating a dead horse here.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about your sources, Sy Hersh.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Thanks a lot, Amy. Look, there’s been two very secret studies done, called National Intelligence Estimates, NIEs, and these are the most sort of sacrosanct internal studies done by the community. Almost all the time they’re private. There are studies going on, NIEs going on all the time—the situation now in Ecuador, for example, other issues. Venezuela is always looked at. The situation in the war, war-peace stuff, is constantly being looked at by groups of people in the intelligence community. And these documents are promulgated without anybody knowing it.
For some reason, in 2007 there was an NIE put out about the Iranian nuclear weapons program, and the White House wanted a summary made. And I think at that point 16 intelligence agencies were involved in the final conclusions. And internally, the guys running it, to their credit, voted 16 to nothing to say what they said, which is that, in a summary put out about the NIE—as I say, unprecedented summary—saying there’s no evidence they had done any weaponization since 2003.
And there’s a new study that was just done. It was published in February of this year. And it—we knew about it, but nobody has actually—you’re getting me in a tricky area, but I can just say, people that have worked on the study and have read the study will attest—have attested that it doesn’t take us any further. There’s no further evidence of any weaponization.
And what’s even more important that I write is that this, the latest study, was actually supposed to be promulgated—is the word they use in the community—last fall, and it was delayed because the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon intelligence agency, had an assessment that was—knocked everybody’s socks off. Their assessment was, the only reason Iran even looked at weaponization—and we’re not talking about building anything, we’re talking about doing studies, paper studies—was because they were frightened of Iraq. They had had an eight-year war, as many in your audience will remember, between 1980 and 1988, with Iraq, a terrible, brutal war. And when they—their worry was, in the early—in the 2001, 2002 period, that if Iraq went nuclear, they might need some deterrent. So what they even looked at, the papers they did, was aimed not at us or the Israelis, but aimed at the Iraqis. That didn’t get into the final judgment, but it affected the debate in a pretty positive way.”
And yet Obama, Clinton, Rumsfeld, Gloria Borger, Richard Engel, Rachel Maddow, Terri Gross etc keep repeating the unsubstantiated claims put out by Aipac and the Iraq warmongers.
At the Aipac site
link to aipac.org{13CD06B7-3E43-49DD-A1E0-2FF5E557E6AB}
“Iran continues its nuclear pursuit.
Please urge your House and Senate members to cosponsor important legislation that would impose tough new sanctions on Iran. The Iran Threat Reduction Act (H.R. 1905) and the Iran, North Korea, and Syria Sanctions Consolidation Act of 2011 (S. 1048) would sanction Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and enshrine in law for the first time that it is U.S. policy to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The bills also would increase sanctions against the regime’s human rights violators and sharply tighten the enforcement of existing sanctions law. The House bill was introduced by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Ranking Member Howard Berman (D-CA). The Senate bill was introduced by Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), and Jon Kyl (R-AZ).
The Jinsa website
link to jinsa.org
“Bolton Briefs JINSA: Iran is the Number One Obstacle to a Stable Middle East
In a May 20 conference call with JINSA leaders, Ambassador John Bolton discussed the meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu this past Monday and the issue of Iran. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, served in government most recently as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2005-2006 and was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security from 2001-2005.
Click here to read Amb. Bolton’s full bio
“Although [President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu] have a strong interest in giving the appearance that they work well together and that the relationship is strong,” Bolton said, “the views between [them] are widely divergent.”
President Obama is on record stating that progress on Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations would help to mitigate the problem of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Bolton went on to explain, however, that Netanyahu made it clear that Iran’s support for terrorism and its nuclear threat must be addressed before any talk about the future shape of a Palestinian state. “Neither leader needs to be perceived as in disagreement, but their was no progress on reconciling their fundamental views,” Bolton said.
Sy”So, the fact is, we have a—the evidence is pretty strong—I mean, very strong—that we have a sanctions program that’s designed to prevent the Iranians from building weapons systems they’re not building”
and who has been and continues to push the Iran sanctions hooey. Aipac
link to aipac.org{13CD06B7-3E43-49DD-A1E0-2FF5E557E6AB}
Seymour Hersh is running interference for Israel.
First, note his body language at 23:34 in response to the suggestion on
Second, he deflects attention from Israel and portrays its intelligence apparatus as the good guys.
Recently, an article on Mondoweiss stated that Israeli companies were trading with Iran with nary an objection for said trade from the Israeli government.
However, a Sunday Times article entitled “Israel’s tanker raids on Iran”
exposes the truth behind the affair.
Israel has been using the cover of commercial companies to carry out operations in Iran.
Yet, Seymour Hersh is deflecting attention from Israel, glorifying its intelligence community and basking in the glory of having been there less than two months ago.
Nonsense. Hersh is running interference for Israel on this issue and is diverting attention to “Bedouin desert livers” and the US empire, as if Israel hasn’t been actively encircling and attacking Iran. By the way, it’s a good thing he didn’t call them, nouveau riche sand niggers. Shame on him, both on the political aspect and the racial one.
I have wondered about this before. But generally think Hersh is a hard driving journalist with the desire to inform the public with accurate information
It’s evident from Hirsch’s language that he was wooed by Israeli officials during his recent trip. Much in the same way many a non-Israeli Jew goes gaga during his/her trip to Israel, so has Seymour Hersh.
And from his phraseology I am picking up hints that he has adopted a narrative that he himself wouldn’t normally have used. Namely, I am referring to the use of the phrase “Bedouin desert livers” and his characterization of them as though they were Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. It’s an oversimplified reductionist narrative. The language is not typical Seymour-Hersh language as it is riddled with Orientalism and devoid of objective political analysis. It simply reeks of Israel-speak.
“It simply reeks of Israel-speak”
That maybe true.
But I don’t “think” …as different from being absolutely sure….that Hersh really is covering for Israel. I think his forte is the US intelligence agencies and so that’s what he concentrates on.
He has uncoverd a lot of ‘stuff”…I think he was the one, or one of the ones who found out about Israelis in Iraq during the war stirring shit with the Kurds.
But I don’t think he would exposing the 2011 NIE to the public if he was really under Israel’s spell.
I saw a article by one of usual Isr suspect claiming that the 2011 NIE DID say Iran was making weapons….the exact opposite of what Hersh said.
Course we all know these usual suspects blatantly lie all the time if they know there is no report released to the public that can contridict them.
So if Hersh haven’t written about what is really in the NIE we might all be mislead so I don’t really think he an Israeli tool.
Course he could be a double double foil, but if so I don’t see the logic or benefit to Israel in the way Hersh operates.
Goldstone.
Absolutely!
Uh oh…did I miss something on Hersh and Goldstone?
Did he bash the Goldstone report?
Seems so, their similar mentality reflected by their change of course when they suddenly fully realized influential tribe members can only stand so much truth and their individually earned universal humanist credentials won’t save them from tribal rebuke. Shame, such public dirty linen!
I’m not really sure why people think Rachel Maddow is a beacon of the left/progressives. My understanding is that Maddow is a (pro-military), former military brat that brings in Richard Engel or some other simple-minded (Orientalist) gasbag anytime anything of *any* substance regarding the Middle East must be discussed. Her show’s coverage of Operation Cast Lead and the flotilla incident were nothing short of disgraceful. (My favorite part was her bringing in Richard Engel to discuss how Israel is this “teeny, tiny country in a sea of Muslim Arabs.”)
I am pro-gay rights; in other words, I believe that people should be able to marry, receive benefits, seek employment and citizenship, etc., without any regard to sexual orientation. As an attorney, I believe this is fully consistent with the Constitution and is absolutely required if we wish to claim that we are a Good and Moral Nation. But gay/civil rights is not the only issue I care about.
Watch Maddow’s show for 2 weeks and take notes. Every subject she covers is related to (1) gay rights; (2) hating the vile Republicans/conservatives/Tea Party; or (3) fluff “funny” pieces.
Someone on this blog or another commented that if the Palestinians (or was it Iraqis?) announced that they were gay, Maddow would completely change course and modify her coverage. There is a kernel of truth in there.
The leading progressives with a national audience? Glenn Greenwald, Michael Moore, even Keith Olbermann. Not Rachel “one issue” Maddow.
Side note/related: Those of you interested, please find and watch Melissa Harris-Perry’s disgraceful defense of Obama, largely based on his race, on last week’s Real Time with Bill Maher. This comes as the latest edition of The Nation (to which she is a contributor) had a good article about how, almost unbelievably, African-Americans actually fared better under G.W. Bush. With regard to her Real Time appearance, there was an incredible moment, after Rick Lazzio rightly asserted that Obama had adopted many Bush policies, when Perry actually said that Obama adopted those policies to take them away from the Republicans, who were going to use those issues to attack Obama.
Funny, I don’t remember Obama mentioning that he was going to co-opt Bush policies, for any reason, during his campaign. He clearly expressed that those positions, which John McCain apparently supported, were unequivocally wrong, if not illegal. So now we’re adopting policies, without modification, in order to change them? Huh?
“The leading progressives with a national audience? Glenn Greenwald, Michael Moore, even Keith Olbermann. Not Rachel “one issue” Maddow. ”
Have been saying very similar things about Rachel Maddow throughout the so called liberal blogosphere as well on some conservative sites. Total myth that Rachel Maddow is a progressive or all about human rights. On human rights is all about gay rights where ever it is in the world. Palestinian human rights she will not touch it. Never. Recently she had Steve Clemons on again (who I have been hammering to bring this issue up when he makes his rounds on MSNBC). Rachel hemmed and hawwed even through a question about the conflict. Have never heard her say UM so often. She has been very progressive on the health care issue. That I will give her. Banksters..on it. But I/P issue she is on Aipac’s side. Repeats unsubstantiated claims about Iran all of the time.
When she went to Iraq she did not talk about the Iraqi dead, injured, displaced. Privatization of the oil. Injured American soldiers. Nope nope nope. She covered particular weapons systems. She is cutting a big pay check and answers to her masters.
Glenn Greenwald, Steve Clemons, Dylan Ratigan, Cenk Uygar tows the line most of the time as well as Chris Matthews and Ed on the I/P issue
I don’t agree about Glenn Greewald or Cenk Uygar.
Greenwald writes about I/P issue with passion and principle. Cenk covers it very well on his Young Turks program but even his MSNBC show is more even-handed than any other establishment media show on the conflict.
Greenwald on Israel:
“The Israeli flotilla attack: victimhood, aggression and tribalism” link to tinyurl.com
“Obama and the Israel Lobby”
link to tinyurl.com
“U.N. Report finds Israel “summarily executed” U.S. citizen on flotilla”
link to tinyurl.com
“Torture prosecutions and aid to Israel”
link to tinyurl.com
“Great American Patriots”
link to tinyurl.com
“Finding Obama guilty of insufficient devotion to Israel”
link to tinyurl.com
“Talking about Israel with Eliot Spitzer on MSNBC”
link to tinyurl.com
Cenk/Young Turks:
Attemps To Defend Israel In Flotilla Attack
link to tinyurl.com
Israeli Soldiers Admit War Crimes
link to tinyurl.com
Obama ’1967 Borders’ Speech Analysis
link to tinyurl.com
There are many more articles/videos for both Greenwald and Cenk.
Kathleen,
Glenn Greenwald? Are you serious?! Glenn Greenwald has been consistently and eloquently writing about both the US’s and Israel’s abuses. Most of the time he focuses on the US, but he has written rather critically about Israel. In addition, he has a great mind for analytical thought, not to mention great insights.
What she did in Iraq was walk around in an abstract Arab neuter costume and fire an M-16, and oh yeah, buy a small native throw rug for her mother. Totally absurd.
Yeah I didn’t even bother watching that. I like her, but actually there have been times where I abandon watching specific episodes because she veers so far off track on global issues. She had good coverage of Egypt but not a word about Bahrain or Israel (or Saudi Arabia and Blackwater and their recent partnership, for God sakes!)
I know you said you didn’t watch the segment but I felt like when she was at the dinner with the Iraqi family talking about how bad the situation in Iraq has gotten since the invasion, especially for children, Maddow had a look like she couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.
I have to say, my gut feeling is there is a lack of empathy there for Muslims. I say Muslims rather than Arabs because I believe her views on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran are also callous.
I’m compelled to agree with you there. Admittedly I don’t wonder if she’s fallen for Israeli pinkwashing and the equal and opposite Islamophobia in LGBTs it is intended to foster.
Chaos:
She has a 20 second (I think) spot on MSNBC where she’s sitting in a diner with a salt and pepper shaker in front of her and something else, maybe a napkin holder or something, using them to represent Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, and she’s lecturing about how everything that Pakistan does is consistent with the idea that they are solely focused on developing more nuclear weapons to point at India. End of spot.
Now, admittedly, I am not very knowledgeable on the history of India and Pakistan, especially the nuclear arms race but this reeks to me of the “All Muslims, especially ‘Muslim States’ are violent and fatalistic” meme.
Does Islam have a fair amount of fatalism built in? Of course, but honestly, I have never seen fatalism and a willingness to cause violence and mayhem on a massive scale like I have seen with the born-again Christian movements that are dying (no pun intended) to see the Rapture happen, like, yesterday. That particular group had a fairly powerful voice in the last administration and look what that 8 years brought us.
Can’t stand Maddow. Just another partisan hack performing for a big paycheck.
She’s a beacon because she’s the ONLY voice we have left on the Big 3 cable networks for Progressivism since Olbermann left.
She’s terrible on foreign policy news, I’ll admit, but she’s pretty sharp when it comes to domestic issues.
I suppose I’ve been watching her show since it first came out so I might be a bit blind to whether her show has gotten too focused on a small subset of issues now, but I’m not sure it’s entirely fair to say she spends too much time on gay rights. For one thing, if she didn’t spend time on it, who would? And she’s got the only show I’ve seen that reliably uses factual data and presents it in a scientifically balanced fashion (DN! is a better show overall, I’ll admit, but they tend to favor interviews and on-site investigative journalism over data analysis).
I will admit you do have a point about what Maddow would do if the whole of Palestine somehow decided to announce they were gay. Of course the flip side is, as soon as she started talking about Palestinians as anything other than terrorists MSNBC would become the next NY LGBT center and Maddow would be the next person to be burned at the stake, metaphorically speaking.
I was a big fan of hers until the Operation Cast Lead coverage, if not before.
Funny how certain Liberals lose all sense of proportion and right or wrong whenever Israel is involved. [PEP Phenomenon.]
What I like about Olbermann is that even though I can tell he is pro-Israel in a general sense, he covers more than one viewpoint on the conflict and the Middle East in general.
Are you sure Olbermann’s pro-Israel? I get the exact opposite impression, considering he interviewed a ranking US vet who was on the Freedom Flotilla, after the the massacre (you’ll have to forgive me, his name is not coming to me presently).
Olbermann isn’t vocal on Israel/Palestine, but I don’t think he endorses Israel. I think he just doesn’t feel comfortable talking about it.
Chaos:
I think he’s pro-Israel in the sense that he buys a lot of the “Israel faces an existential threat unlike any other state” narrative. I have watched every Countdown since early 2008, either live or from the iTunes video podcast and that is just my impression. If I have time later today I’ll check Olbermann/ME videos out on YouTube and see if my memory serves me or not.
Speaking of Olbermann, a new interview with Rolling Stone came out online this week, for the print edition later this month. In it he said one of his greatest regrets about leaving MSNBC like he did was that he couldn’t take certain people with him, specifically Rachel Maddow, but that as contracts expire he might be able to remedy that. He also seemed very pleased that he was getting back on TV so quickly (June 20) with the same show format and against his replacement (The Last Word). His stated goal is to go head to head with MSNBC and “beat” them.
He claims to have 100% control over the news division he is developing for Al Gore on Current TV. I guess we’ll see fairly soon what the coverage of I/P is like on his show (still called Countdown) and the rest of the Current lineup when it’s developed.
It seems Olbermann was not afraid to go after Joe Lieberman for the latter’s Israel First pattern: link to huffingtonpost.com
Listening to Seymour’s interview over at Democracy Now again. This really jumps out at me this time around
“And so, here we have this very bright guy continuing insane policies that are counterproductive, do nothing for the United States, and meanwhile the real crisis is going to be about Iraq, because, whatever you’re hearing, IRAQ IS GOING BAD. Sunnis are killing Shia. It’s sectarian war. And the big question is going to be whether we pull out or not. And there’s going to be a lot of pressure to keep them—we’ve got 40,000 or 50,000 Americans there—to keep them there. I don’t know how it’s going to play out, but I’ll tell you right now, there are Sunni Baathist groups in Damascus, in various places, in the United Kingdom—Leeds is one place—ready, as soon as we get out, to declare an alternative government, a provisional government, and announce that they’re going to retake Iran from the Shiites and from—Iraq from the Shiites, who they believe are totally tied in to the Iranians, which probably isn’t true, but that’s always been the fiction we have, or the fear we have: Iran controls Iraq. There’s a mutuality of interests, but Maliki is a very tough customer. You know, Maliki worked for 21 years in Syria as a cop for the Mukhabarat, for the secret police. He was working as a sergeant there for 21 years in Syria, before he went back as an exile after we kicked out Saddam. He is nobody’s patsy. But there’s going to be a holy hell there. It’s going to be probably the biggest problem the President has next year, along with gas, along with the crazy Republicans that are running against him. He’s going to—and along with Afghan and along with Iran, it’s going to be Iraq. We’re going to be back looking at Iraq, as that country goes berserk.”
I have never let up on the situation in Iraq issue, the dead, the injured, the displaced, the control of the oil. Keep bringing it up on blogs, national radio programs, at MSNBC blogs. The death and destruction that the US invasion has caused is going to come back and bite the US in the ass in unspoken ways. And few are talking about this critical issue.
How many have died as a direct consequence of the invasion, the breaking down of the infrastructure etc is not being written about in detail or repeatedly. When was the last time you heard Chris Matthews have an Iraqi vet on his program? He is one of the only MSMers to go near the issue but scratches the surface
Just went through the Netroots Nation schedule. While it is stacked up with domestic issues like Washington Journal and the rest of our MSM. Netroots is doing amazing organizing and education in the domestic realm They barely dip their toes into international policy. Have brought this up many times on blogs and contacted Netroots nation organizers in the past about this. Sad that Netroots nation is being so complicit in these areas
One workshop on the Arab Spring. Another on getting out of Afghanistan. Nothing about the conditions, deaths, injuries in Iraq. Nothing about the I/P issue. The Goldstone report. Netroots Nation basically playing it safe, neutral in international policy realm
Netroots basically mimics the MSM on international issues. Avoids
link to netrootsnation.org
Steve Clemons will be there,
Only see one place for the I/P issue, the situation in Iraq, drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan can even get mentioned at Netroots
The Arab Spring: A Case Study for New Media as a Catalyst for Change
Thu, 06/16/2011 – 10:30am, L100 AB
The role of new media in fostering recent political uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa has been much debated. How did forces pushing for democratic reform use tools like blogs and social networking sites to gain popular support for their movements, and what lessons were learned about the benefits and limitations of using new media to advocate for change? Are bloggers armchair activists, or can they demonstrate and encourage an incremental movement of attitudes leading to long-term change? Have new media enhanced the voice of women in political dissent across the region and in other areas where their perspective is traditionally underrepresented?
link to netrootsnation.org