This is fabulous. Eli Clifton at Think Progress has blown the lid off the funding for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the neocon shop that helped give us the Iraq war and that "has become one of the the premiere DC organizations promoting more aggressive actions against Iran." The people who underwrite this stuff have traditionally remained anonymous. Clifton:
While FDD has a 10-year history of engaging in alarmist rhetoric and fear mongering — e.g. in 2002 FDD aired a series of ads conflating Osama bin Laden, Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein — and helped promote the “Bush doctrine” which led to the invasion of Iraq, its donors have, for the most part, hidden behind their anonymous contributions to the organization.
And who's funding this shop?
Clifton's exclusive--based on records he obtained that he links in a pdf with his story-- says that a lot of the usual suspects in the Israel lobby, Saban, Bronfman, Steinhardt, Mizrahi, Marcus and oh, Doug Feith's father.
Canadians Edgar M. and Charles Bronfman, heirs to the Seagram liquor company fortune, contributed $1,050,000 to FDD between 2001 and 2004. Edgar M. Bronfman served as president of the World Jewish Congress from 1979 to 2007. Charles Bronfman, along with fellow FDD donor Michael Steinhardt cofounded Taglit Birthright which offers free trips to Israel for young Jewish adults. Steinhardt is a hedge fund mogul who contributed $850,000 to FDD from 2001 to 2004.
Other notable donors included: Home Depot cofounder Bernard Marcus who contributed $600,000 between 2001 and 2003; mortgage backed securities pioneer Lewis Ranieri contributed $350,000 between 2002 and 2004; and Ameriquest owner, and Bush administration ambassador to the Netherlands from 2006 to 2008, Roland Arnall contributed $1,802,000 between 2003 and 2004.
Other notable, but less generous, donors included: media mogul and Democratic Party donor Haim Saban, a surprising donor considering FDD’s Republican bent and Clifford May’s former role as an RNC spokesperson; The Israel Project director Jennifer Mizrahi; and Dalck Feith, father of former Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith.
these traitors – there, I said it – should renounce their citizenship at Customs as they board flights for Tel Aviv never to return
yep
Cue the backlash.
if these people think attacking Iran is going to be “good for the Jews” they have another thing coming. Its abundantly clear to everyone who is pushing for this and why, I dont see how there isnt a major backlash against Jews worldwide if that happens – I for one, would hate to see that happen. But it is going to happen. Someone needs to tell the Feith’s and Saban’s of the world that they are doing a HUGE disservice to themselves and the people they say they care about.
I dont see how there isnt a major backlash against Jews worldwide if that happens
i’ll tell you why it won’t happen. because most people don’t and won’t blame all jews for the actions of some. only racist people do that.
Unfortunately there are always parts of any population that can be swayed, worked into frenzies and propagandize into anything. Hitler did it with Jews, Neos and Zios did it with Muslims.
Here’s a good example:
link to haaretz.com
Netanyahu, (by satellite), Beck and Hagee speaking to the zio Christians telling them they should think of themselves as Jews and Israelis.
annie,
i got alot of love for your posts, and your views – to be sure. but i think you might be a little naive on this topic. we’re talking about a potential WWIII here, if the US attacks Iran, on behalf of Israel. WWIII would mean tons and tons of conscripts from countries all over the place, and I think, alot of those potential conscripts would be really pissed off by that.
I dont see that happening in the US so much – but in Europe, where there are already HUGE protests against Israel, I can see that going further, if an attack on Iran were to happen.
Let me be clear, I am not a racist person who would “blame all Jews” but given history, and what alot of Jewish leaders are proposing here
( total war) – I dont think its unfounded to think there might be a backlash ( maybe not against individual Jews) but surely against Jewish institutions, and of course, the Jewish state.
I was just trying to draw attention to the fact that there seems to be alot of Jewish folks constantly advocating for War, and more specifically, for war to be fought on their behalf – and I dont see how it ends well for them ( or any of us, if they get what they want) – take me for example, I’m only a couple years off of active duty, I could still be called back to service for something like an invasion of Iran. That would REALLY piss me off, and all Im saying is that, some people in that same position might be really really pissed and take that anger out on the people they think are responsible – and alot of those people in the US are either jewish themselves, or are ardent supporters of Israel as a Jewish state. And also remember, unlike Iraq, the potential war in Iran is explicitly being sold as a war to “protect Israel.”
Again, I am NOT ADVOCATING A BACKLASH, I just see a potential for one, and so do Walt and Mearsheimer.
dan, i know you are not advocating a backlash that goes without saying. but i just do not see it. the hard core zionists in this country pale in numbers compared to the christian zionists, that’s just a cold hard fact. if this country divides it will be along ideological grounds where the extremist and religious fanatics (both christian and jewish zionists) are aligned on one side against the normal people who include most jews and most educated non racist people and most minorities.
the only remote possibility i see of that changing is if for some reason the rightwing religious christian extremists turn on israel and zionism.
if we invaded iran it seems unfathomable we would blame our jewish community when the rightwing bible belt is pushing for war as well. bomb bomb bomb iran was a mccain calling card as well as rush limbaugh and ann coulter. this is bigger than just ‘the jews’.
that’s my opinion and i’m sticking with it. i’d fight tooth and nail on the side of justice if any of our ethnic groups were targeted and i am not alone.
annie,
its not often that i change my opinion, but in this case – I will. you make some great points – and like my post said, i seriously doubt that would happen in the US, especially for the reasons you cited. Europe might be a different circumstance, but hopefully not.
Cheers!
I agree with your sentiments, Annie.
Unfortunately, we have really only been experimenting with this anti-racism thing for a couple hundred years and as we speak there are major wars and activities based on racism, taking place all over the world and in our favorite governments.
But, keep carrying the banner, girl…and I’ll spell you when you need a break ;-)
This is all true, and thanks for the reliable Jeffrey Blankfort for the expose. However, this is really not news for those who follow FDD. Back in 2007 (4 years ago), SourceWatch had lots of revealing information about FDD and who was funding it and running it.
link to sourcewatch.org
agreed. cliford mays? micahel ledeen? snuff said
slightly OT. excellent greenwald (as usual) on the anthrax case, a case as influential in the call for war against iraq as 9/11, as he puts it, the attacks then being linked to s.hussein. what wasn’t he responsible for?
link to salon.com
The Office of Special Plans, the Office of Net Assessment morphed into the FDD. Many aware but what could anyone do about the same Iraq invasion pushers moving shop to push for a military confrontation with Iran (which Terri Gross, Rachel Maddow have helped set the stage for by allowing unsubstantiated claims about Iran to be repeating and repeating those claims themselves)…except what former Bush administration official and former middle east analyst Flynt Leverett did
Race for Iran
link to raceforiran.com
Marcy Wheeler (Emptywheel) has gone out on her own. Left Firedoglake. She writes about Iran today
Links, 7/19/11
By: emptywheel Tuesday July 19, 2011 3:42 pm
Our American Empire
Yesterday, I noted that Bob Baer predicts an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities this fall. Today, Reuters reports that Iran is adding more sophisticated centrifuges to its nuclear development program, presumably to repair some of the damage done by Stuxnet
link to emptywheel.net
pretty sure jeff goldberg said the same thing about an israeli attack this fall, or was it last fall?next fall? two falls ago? just kiddin kathleen, i always enjoy your posts…
i think the iranians are safe from the israeli’s – too lazy to find the link(s), but juan cole, steve walt and others have pretty clearly stated why they really “can’t” – and its nothing to do with politics or diplomacy, but rather the lack of long range aircraft – they wouldnt be able to get their pilots back. they are still barred from turkish airspace, and if they flew through other countries to carry out those missions, they’d be starting “total war” in the region. so if you hear of “long range fighter bombers to Israel” – yea, that’s going down – until then, the Zio’s are gonna have to have the goy do it for them
i find it significantly <50% iran is attacked this fall… but still a high enough chance to be very wary. though the military and political elites in the US *largely* do not want it, congress would jump to join israel.
i think israel received some bunker busters during bush's terms. we know they can do a limited strike on key targets, and where it would go from there is very bad and unpredictable, and the US would be involved from hour 0 in some minor or major capacity.
i think we just need to watch to see what reports come out from israel, and from MSM regarding iran, and iran's actions in afghanistan/iraq. it was also inconceivable the US would invade iraq… until 9/11. if the same power players who ran the show post-9/11 want a joint US-israeli strike (as pointless, and horrid as it will be), we will have it. come hell or high water, or false-flag attack, or simply a fever of AIPAC kissing congressmen jumping in to follow israel with our bombers/cruise missiles, we would be in it i fear.
a long shot perhaps, but i am *not* assuming it is *not* possible. israel and the US have shown many times that inconceivable things can happen. how else can we follow the script of huntington's "clash of civilizations", which we have been following and pushing along, like kicking a can down a road to nowhere, since 9/11? the script seems to play, but the speed it plays is what you do not know. take heed of the list of nations wesley clark states…. they continue to be knocked off, one way or the other link to youtube.com
so if you hear of “long range fighter bombers to Israel”
Nope. They’ve developed their own air refueling capability, a handful of tankers. That’s how the US employs the same weapons systems on long range missions. link to worldtribune.com
Here is a picture of one link to 1.bp.blogspot.com
your missing the point – those tankers risk being shot down as soon as they leave Israeli airspace – and they cant refuel their fighters over Turkey any longer, like they have done before.
There are always solutions for logistical challenges. You can bet they are working on them.
btw, Israel does have the re-fuelers they need to make the return trip.
I remember Scott Ritter showing the problem that anyone has attacking Iran from the west: the NW-SE mountain range with many 14,000 ft peaks that forms a diagonal protection from top to bottom and one-third of the way into the country.
He said any attacker has to fly 1/3 of the way in over anti-aircraft sites buried deep in the mountains as protection. The Israelis certainly couldn’t attack on foot. Their soldiers aren’t trained for that level of combat, altitude, and most of them appear to be out-of-shape (remember the Mavi Marmara attacker crew?) So they need a proxy: us.
Look at a satellite map of Iran.
Plenty of in the know folks say Israel will more than likely preemptively attack Iran. Scott Ritter, Seymour Hersh. I think they are crazy and careless enough. They could give a rats ass if they help take down the US.
Marcy Wheeler (Emptywheel) has gone out on her own. Left Firedoglake.
any inside news on why or how? gossip please.
Really have not asked Marcy (Emptywheel) who I think is one of the best investigative reporters/writers and bloggers going. She was on the MSM once with David Schuster (what ever happened to him?) and said something that I have been saying for years that our congress was more interested in investigating blow jobs I always add not WMD snowjobs.
She said “blowjobs” and not sure if this is why she has not been back on the MSM. She is smarter than most the folks on the MSM so they might be afraid of her. Have tried like mad to get Chris Matthews to have her on. I think Matthews would like her…she is no nonsense, adds a dash of humor and lots of facts that she backs up with evidence.
She is remarkable. Actually I was sad for Firedoglake. While Jane and Rayne whacked me for challenging Jane and then Phil picking this up….they soon after whacked me from the site. Jane does so much remarkable work on so many issues. But will not touch (well once) the I/P issue. Think Jane may be a PEP
EW is a intellectual queen. If you want facts and depth go to her site She is allowing some of the Firedoglake refugees back on her site.
thanks kathleen. yes i agree about marcy. she’s brilliant.
Seems to me presumptuous—and in fact probably wrong—to now think we *really* “know” who funded that thinktank.
Pretty damned dumb of Israel not to just be using people like Saban and etc. to funnel money through to places like this, and indeed not the kind of trick it misses I don’t think. Esp. the delicious aspect of Israel essentially funneling our *own* money back into these kinds of things given the monstrous amount of dough we ship to Tel Aviv every year.
No different than the possible delusion involving the suspiciously high relative number of jewish billionaires and etc., so many of whom do seem so oddly devoted to blind support of Israel. Yeah, that is, without thinking about it, one probably just accepts that hey, these guys are just brilliant at making money.
But then you think … hey, if *I* were Israel you damned right I’d be on the lookout for smart guys abroad absolutely devoted to me, and help them *become* powerful as hell in all different ways I could. Underwrite their ventures, help ‘em defeat their competitors, help ‘em get whatever special considerations I could, and etc., etc., ad infinitum. (Plus, once you’ve helped ‘em, you got ‘em by the balls too in any number of big ways.)
For instance, I’ve heard that Saban somehow got what amounts to an exclusive deal from the Chinese gov’t to run some gambling on Macao. Now … gee, just how the hell does that happen?
And look at the incredible stats with re: those Russian “oligarchs” that sprang up. Really it’s just … coincidence or jewish business genius that of only 10 of ‘em or so 7 or 8 were jewish? *That* much coincidence or genius? *That* much coincidence given what seems the clear truth that to even *begin* to do any moderate-size business after the fall of the Sov. Union it took lots and lots of big, continued bribes to accomplish same. So how is is that of the 10 or so with the big enough dough to do that 7 or 8 just happened to be jewish?
Possible I guess, but…
So huge sectors of the Russian economy were basically stolen out from under the Russian people. The life expectancy for Russian men is 63 years, which is a lot higher than it used to be, while the Gorbachev-era economic reforms caused immense human suffering, unemployment, and early deaths, including from a tuberculosis outbreak. Yet you want to focus on the fact that “7 or 8″ (was someone’s brit milah subject to dispute or something?) were Jewish. Or that Haim Saban, a scoundrel no doubt, “somehow” got a gambling monopoly on Macao, and that “somehow” is linked to his being Jewish, as opposed to his being a well-connected billionaire.
What is tragic here is that you are almost on to something:
This is the point. Israel has helped a hell of a lot of “smart guys” become richer. Most of them have not been Jewish, although the role of Jewish “smart guys” and also Jewish rich guys in cementing the links between other smart guys and Israel has been real. Their role in investing in Israel such that it could help make other rich people richer is also real. But it will not help to myopically focus on the Jewish angle. Not because many Jews haven’t covered their hands with blood in this business over the last 80 years. They certainly have. But it is far from the whole story.
The point that was being made, was that a lynch mob/primitive people…don’t care, want or need the full story.
In fact, the full story is fatal to the mob, which is why they reject it.
SINNOMBRE- You make an interesting point. Israel, to a significant degree, depends for its survival and prosperity upon the largesse and influence of American Jewish fat cats. What do these fat cats get in return? For starters, they get Jewish solidarity, organizational effectiveness and influence made possible by Zionism. Additionally, they may well get the benefit of financial assistance and intelligence information from the Jewish state. And, of course, there are the Kidon teams to deal with troublesome competitors. Max Ajl’s contention that the main beneficiaries of the Jewish state are Goyim seems a stretch, to put it charitably. Conventional business deals with Gentiles, sure, but special consideration? Unless he has mounds of data to demonstrate that the Jewish state is in the Gentile promotion business, I’m going to assume that his comment is a Jewish knee-jerk response to perceived anti-Semitism.
And I’m going to assume you’re either a bigot or functionally illiterate, but since mis-reading my comments and then going for my background is apparently cool with the coward moderators, by all means, bring it up. Whatever makes you feel good!
On the other hand, here’s what I actually wrote: “Israel has helped a hell of a lot of “smart guys” become richer.” Are most of the investors who snapped up tens of billions of dollars of Israeli assets in the 90s Jewish? Are the stock-owners of Intel Jewish? Are the stock-owners of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Exxon Jewish? That’s who Israel has helped become richer. It’s true that I haven’t checked their last names to see if they end in -stein or -berg, but something makes me think they are just regular members of the aristocracy of wealth that runs this country.
“something makes me think they are just regular members of the aristocracy of wealth that runs this country.”
Well put, Max! Thanks
??? Are most of the investors who snapped up tens of billions of dollars of Israeli assets in the 90s Jewish? Are the stock-owners of Intel Jewish? Are the stock-owners of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Exxon Jewish? That’s who Israel has helped become richer.
What are those ” billions of dollars of Israeli assets” that became available to investors in the 90s?
Israel helped the stock-owners of Intel become richer? How? Because Andy Grove put a factory in Israel, and transferred US R&D technology there? (Then same could be said of Albuquerque.)
Israel helped the stock-owners of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Exxon become richer? By making plane parts? Exxon? ISrael doesn’t have oil.
How is that, Max? Because it represented a lower-cost labor area? Or are you going to say it’s some great invention, and if you are, name it.
MAXAJL- “Are most of the investors who snapped up tens of billions of dollars of Israeli assets in the 90s Jewish?”
I doubt it. As I wrote: “Conventional business deals with Gentiles, sure, but special consideration?” The whole point being that circumstances suggest that there may be some benefit to Jewish fat cats for supporting Israel, such as funding and intelligence information. Special consideration refers to the relationship between Israel and some of these fat cats. Robert Maxwell, for example, seems to have had a special relationship not available to the average Intel stock owner. I think that this is a valid area of inquiry for those interested in the dynamics of this particular aspect of political economy.
“And I’m going to assume you’re either a bigot or functionally illiterate, but since mis-reading my comments and then going for my background is apparently cool with the coward moderators, by all means, bring it up.”
I assume you are upset and overreacting to my comment that “…I’m going to assume that his comment is a Jewish knee-jerk response to perceived anti-Semitism.”
I specifically made reference to you because of your overreaction to Sin Nombre’s comment. You said “Yet you want to focus on the fact that “7 or 8″ (was someone’s brit milah subject to dispute or something?) were Jewish. Or that Haim Saban, a scoundrel no doubt, “somehow” got a gambling monopoly on Macao, and that “somehow” is linked to his being Jewish, as opposed to his being a well-connected billionaire. …What is tragic here is that you are almost on to something….”
Apparently there are some areas of inquiry where speculation is verboten for you. Do you feel that “Jewish knee-jerk response to anti-Semitism” is the creation of a functionally illiterate bigot (strong words, Max) totally without foundation? That the charge and/or implication of anti-Semitism hasn’t permeated this whole debate for as long as anyone can remember? Perhaps before you accuse people you hardly know of functional illiteracy and bigotry, and the moderators of cowardice, you should look in the mirror. Some of your comments and reactions to others suggest to me that in spite of your academic background, you differ from David Mamet in degree, not in kind.
MRW:
Apparently, you were not paying attention when tens of billions of American and Russian dollars started flooding into Israel to snap up Israeli assets in the 1990s, nor when the Israeli government offered Intel effective guaranteed profits of 33 annually percent on its investment there, nor when Israeli belligerence served as an excuse for oil majors to opportunistically raise prices at the pump having nothing to do with supply/demand factors, or when the Israeli-catalyzed Middle Eastern arms race secured profits for Boeing and Lockheed Martin from 1970 onwards, nor when US taxpayers circuitously routed 2.25 billion dollars yearly to the US MIC through “military aid” to Israel.
Here, read this book and catch up: link to bnarchives.yorku.ca
Keith: thank you for confirming. Just functionally illiterate. I wrote, “Israel has helped a hell of a lot of “smart guys” become richer. Most of them have not been Jewish, although the role of Jewish “smart guys” and also Jewish rich guys in cementing the links between other smart guys and Israel has been real. Their role in investing in Israel such that it could help make other rich people richer is also real. But it will not help to myopically focus on the Jewish angle.”
In other words, the political economy of Jewish investments in Israel is a research topic worth looking at, but not the way it was presented above. You responded, “Max Ajl’s contention that the main beneficiaries of the Jewish state are Goyim seems a stretch, to put it charitably. Conventional business deals with Gentiles, sure, but special consideration? Unless he has mounds of data to demonstrate that the Jewish state is in the Gentile promotion business, I’m going to assume that his comment is a Jewish knee-jerk response to perceived anti-Semitism.”
Except first you invented a straw-man — the distinction between “special consideration” and “conventional business deals,” which was not my distinction, since all I talked about were most of the beneficiaries. A point which you don’t dispute. Then you said I had a “Jewish knee-jerk response,” which comes covered in chicken soup or what? Plz explain.
Now, things aren’t verboten, and I don’t come from an academic background. The thing is, where I was brought up, reading the Talmud with David Mamet — wait, it was actually just kindergarten –we learned to read the words in front of us before responding to them. You might try that at some point, or you could stick to degenerating into an Israel Shamir doppelganger. Either way.
MAX AJL- You are nothing if not predictable. I expected this “ignore the facts” response and was not disappointed.
“Then you said I had a “Jewish knee-jerk response,” which comes covered in chicken soup or what? Plz explain.”
Chicken soup? My, but aren’t we clever. What don’t you understand? Are you denying that the discussion of Jewish power has been met with charges of anti-Semitism? Are you denying that your response to Sin Nombre implied that his question concerning the relationship of the Russian Jewish oligarchs to Israel and Zionism bordered on anti-Semitism? You are not an anti-Gentile chauvinist in the mold of David Mamet? No? Why the invective? Why the condescending insults? Why are you taking this so personal? Plz explain?
“I don’t come from an academic background.” Excuse me! Your websites states that you are a “PhD student in development sociology at Cornell.” So sorry that I insulted you by implying that you had an academic background! Jeez, are you for real?
“In other words, the political economy of Jewish investments in Israel is a research topic worth looking at, but not the way it was presented above.”
Who, besides you, has talked about “Jewish investments in Israel”? The whole discussion, which you have attempted to divert, is about the relationship of Jewish fat cats to Israel and Zionism. It’s about all those Russian Jewish oligarchs who escaped justice by fleeing to Israel, taking their ill gotten gains with them. Possibly it is about George Soros, and the role he played. It definitely is about Wall Street and the IMF, and perhaps the effect of Jewish influence in these two areas. Or is all of this beyond the pale of discussion? Of inquiry? Shall we shine a light to seek the truth, or muffle our discussions lest we offend?
“…or you could stick to degenerating into an Israel Shamir doppelganger.” Cute. It’s a pity, really. Only recently I had bookmarked your website because I liked some of what you had said. Mistake, big mistake, which you can be assured I will correct. “Keith: thank you for confirming. Just functionally illiterate.” Into mud wrestling, are you? Give my regards to the folks at Cornell. I’m sure they must be delighted to have you as their representative.
Keith:
I don’t know if you don’t know how to read or you simply read into what other people write whatever you wish they said, as opposed to what they actually said. The discussion started from a comment expressing dismay that in the face of the destruction of Russian society, “Sin Nombre”‘s moral energy was not devoted to that destruction and its effects on real human beings, the question of privatization of public assets, the Sachs-shock reforms on the Russian economy, and so on, but to the question of Jewish power, a common occurrence here, where moral outrage is basically hollow, and more importantly mis-understands the nature of the system in which we live. It is insistently myopic and unprincipled, and that is the issue, and I am not sure how to make that clearer.
Now this is a neat trick to discuss what I “suggest” or “imply” rather than the words I write on the page, which were that he “almost got it,” but that the “myopic” focus is not helpful because it ignores that big bugaboo, “the system.” Now in case you wish to mis-understand that as well, here is what he wrote: “Esp. the delicious aspect of Israel essentially funneling our *own* money back into these kinds of things given the monstrous amount of dough we ship to Tel Aviv every year,” which since I assume is a reference to the military aid is making so many fundamental errors of mis-interpretation of the basic political economy that I responded, not with an accusation of bigotry, but with an accusation of myopia. They are not the same thing. You are a prime example of that, bigoted but not myopic.
Here are the words I wrote, which you find impossible to quote: “Israel has helped a hell of a lot of “smart guys” become richer. Most of them have not been Jewish, although the role of Jewish “smart guys” and also Jewish rich guys in cementing the links between other smart guys and Israel has been real.” That is the blend of nationalism and capitalism has yielded very big fruits, but that the most important role here has been Israeli politics as an intermediary, an intermediate link in the chain of other profit-making endeavors. My concern is to get people to think systemically, which is not a question of diverting blame but of understanding the system, because you cannot understand the system’s constituent parts without a holistic understanding of what you are looking at more broadly.
Now, if you want to actually discuss the political economy of Jewish money in an intelligent way, why don’t you write something up and submit it to a left-wing website, or Dissident Voice, or a scholarly journal. (good luck dealing with the methodological issues). I would recommend against the inquiry into yahood finance, or your proclamations that “It definitely is about Wall Street and the IMF, and perhaps the effect of Jewish influence in these two areas.” That seems more like a subject for Stormfront.
Now, I don’t know how to write in such a way that you cannot mis-interpret my words, but the issue is not antisemitism, which is a demeaning and bigoted racialization of my motives. The issue is mis-apprehending the nature of power in this country and mis-conceiving what must be done to change the distribution of that power. You don’t seem interested in that project. Fine. If it helps in avoiding the recognition of your own issues to call me an “anti-Gentile chauvinist,” fine: be a lunatic. You’re in good company. Now, you are an illiterate bigot, but that only concerns me insofar as you insist on mis-interpreting my words. Stick to what I write and you’ll be ok.
NB: The Elders of Zion at Cornell have given their full imprimatur to the words above, I sent it to the majlis for pre-publication approval.
Seems to me the MIC (& Homeland Security) is so enmeshed with Israel it’s really hard to separate them as they all profit immensely. I guess participants who are Zionists/Israel Firsters get an emotional bonus, a sense of righteousness, sizzling fries along with their big whopping burgers.
RE: “I would recommend against the inquiry into yahood finance, or your proclamations that ‘It definitely is about Wall Street and the IMF, and perhaps the effect of Jewish influence in these two areas.’ That seems more like a subject for Stormfront.”
What does this statement mean? How are the cautionary words “perhaps” and “seems” connected?
Counting jewish heads in some systems or avenues of human endeavor are OK, but in others, taboo? Where were similar taboos and “kosher” stamps while the America transitioned from a WASP establishment?
Look. Capitalism and imperialism always work through an intermediary layer of culture and ethnicity. The history of race, culture, and class are deeply intermixed, but different in every case. There is nothing wrong with spelling out that history, so long as one is careful about it. Palestinian oppression mostly occurs along national lines. Those carrying it out – in Israel – are Jewish. The ones in positions of power in Israeli society are also European white. The former fact gets far more attention here than the latter fact. Both are relevant. As we get further from the local oppression of the Palestinians, the respective relevance of whiteness vs. Jewish whiteness changes. And whiteness is only short-hand for the real issue, which is control over capital. The Saudis are plenty complicit, against what Chomsky might suggest.
Yes, it was Jewish capitalists who invested in Israel starting in the late 1800s such that today it is a powerful state with a per-person GDP half that of the US. But contrary to the snake oil peddled here, since 1967 the role of Israel in the political economy of accumulation has been to make rich people richer. Those rich people are more often non-Jewish than Jewish, although Jewish people have been disproportionately the ones making money off direct investments in Israel, and Jewish nationalism in America has played an important legitimating role in American support for Zionism. That much is clear. How Zionism became such a powerful ideology amongst organized American Jewry is a worthwhile subject of investigation. I agree that excising Zionism from American Jewry and ending American support for Israel are important goals. I agree that the Israel lobby is a powerful fragment of the ruling class. It should be challenged directly, not least because so much of its power resides in its ability to operate in the shadows.
I don’t engage in the practice of “counting Jewish heads,” although if someone wants to write an objective sociology of how exactly American Jews have entered and commingled with the American elite over the last 50 years, I would be interested in reading it. I don’t engage in that practice not because it is irrelevant, but because most often, especially on this site, it is a right-wing populist diversion from anti-systemic struggle. It is not white power that is the issue, but Jewish power; not American imperialism, but Zionism. It’s a rotten analysis, not because it is necessarily antisemitic, but because it is wrong, it leads to wrong-headed political conclusions, it hefts off responsibility for empire and capitalism onto the Jews, it makes creating radical social change harder, and it rests on the idiotic notion that the internet-chattering brigades of the Palestine solidarity movement understand the interests of the powerful better than the powerful do.
If someone is really thick-skulled enough to think that we can understand American power by thinking that “It definitely is about Wall Street and the IMF, and perhaps the effect of Jewish influence in these two areas,” a cowardly weaselly “perhaps,” and Keith’s, not mine, I can help them out with that line of thought by bringing them a copy of Mein Kampf from the bookstore on the corner. It is worthwhile being honest about what we are talking about. Not because there will be another Holocaust. And not because the pogrom will return to my part of America. But because if the commenters here – and Phil – want their flirtation with right-wing populism, here moving towards it, here backing away, but not articulated, they want to toy with the idea, pretend not to be toying with it, and so on, they should have it openly, with no bones about it. If the agenda is to make the Palestine solidarity movement an ally of white right-wing racism, please be clear about it, and I have no question that on the topic most Palestinian and Arab activists will shoot that idea out of the sky. See, the pogrom starts with those it can identify easiest. And they are the ones identifiable by the color of their skin.
MAX Ajl- I hadn’t planned on making another comment on this thread, however, your latest libelous diatribe is such a fact free over the top attempt at character assassination that I am compelled to do so.
Let me begin by noting that Israel/Palestine is a side interest for me. My basic interest is in political economy and social organizational dynamics. I am deeply concerned about the accelerated pace of neo-liberal globalization which involves the financialization of the global economy, and the IMF style structural adjustment of the first world economies, including the US. I like to think that during the 15 months or so that I have been commenting on Mondoweiss that I have provided some big picture balance to the focus on the Israel Lobby. Of course, you are not aware of that, nor do you care. Since I took issue with your comment to Sin Nombre, I have become an enemy to be attacked. An “illiterate bigot” and “a lunatic” who makes “cowardly weaselly” qualifications. Someone who should be associated with “Mein Kampf” and “Stormfront.” You’re very casual with your name calling, partner. And with your insinuations.
Getting back to those Russian oligarchs, you pretend that your attempt to divert the discussion away from the original topic was solely based upon your dismay that we lost sight of the big picture. “The discussion started from a comment expressing dismay that in the face of the destruction of Russian society, “Sin Nombre”‘s moral energy was not devoted to that destruction and its effects on real human beings, the question of privatization of public assets, the Sachs-shock reforms on the Russian economy, and so on, but to the question of Jewish power, a common occurrence here, where moral outrage is basically hollow, and more importantly mis-understands the nature of the system in which we live. It is insistently myopic and unprincipled, and that is the issue, and I am not sure how to make that clearer.”
A discussion about the Russian oligarchs role in the privatization of Russia under Yeltsin (not Gorbachev) is myopic and unprincipled? Discussing their relationship to Wall Street, the IMF and Soros “mis-understands the nature of the system in which we live.”? Wall Street and the IMF are not integral parts of the capitalist system in which we live? I am being “thick-skulled” for thinking they are? Listen pal, anyone who attempts to separate Wall Street and the IMF from the capitalist system of imperial control is the one who is “thick-skulled.” As for the question of Jewish power, I’m sure you are aware that a disproportionate number of these oligarchs were Jewish, some of whom escaped to Israel. Also, that Jews are amply represented on Wall Street. Is there a connection between Jewish Zionists in Israel, Jewish Zionist on Wall Street and the Jewish Russian oligarchs? I don’t know and have no way of knowing, however, I think it is a relevant topic for discussion, which is far preferable to squelching legitimate inquiry. Pursuing this line of inquiry doesn’t imply ignoring the nature of the system, as you imply. Nor does it imply a lack of feeling for the Russian victims of the IMF/oligarch rape of the Russian economy, which you seem to insinuate.
“…because if the commenters here – and Phil – want their flirtation with right-wing populism, here moving towards it, here backing away, but not articulated, they want to toy with the idea, pretend not to be toying with it, and so on, they should have it openly, with no bones about it.” You seem to be suggesting that Phil and some commenters (me, apparently, based upon your other comments) are crypto fascists? Or is there some other interpretation to an unarticulated flirtation with right-wing populism?
Finally, “Now, if you want to actually discuss the political economy of Jewish money in an intelligent way, why don’t you write something up and submit it to a left-wing website, or Dissident Voice, or a scholarly journal. (good luck dealing with the methodological issues).” Hey, terrific advice Max. Folks shouldn’t make comments on Mondoweiss unless they publish in the scholarly literature or Dissident Voice. Or at least those comments dealing with Jewish power. Perhaps it would be best if the majority just shut up and left the discussion to some vanguard of the elite? I guess that you would be a charter member of this elite group? Perhaps if you made an attempt to participate in the discussion rather than vilifying those who disagree with you on a particular issue, or who bring up an issue that you want to squelch, you could provide your own special insights into our otherwise “rotten analysis.” On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to cramp your elitist, condescending style too much. God forbid you should develop a civil tongue.
the monstrous amount of dough we ship to Tel Aviv every year,” which since I assume is a reference to the military aid is making so many fundamental errors of mis-interpretation
The discussions here at Mondo have mentioned US loan guarantees for Soviet and Ethiopian Jewish Refugees; that tax-exempt US organizations are thought to contribute between 2-3 billion a year to the Israeli economy; and that Prime Minister Sharon’s office manager/bureau chief, Dov Weissglass, said that without the EU and US contributions to Israel’s balance of trade, Israelis would be like the Palestinians living on $200 dollars a month.
Regardless of the “system” we live in today, published reports say that the government of Israel and the WZO have managed to raise and spend at least $100 billion on colonizing the occupied territories in defiance of international law and the routine expressions of displeasure over that situation from about 180 other states.
It’s also fascinating, but true, that members of the Jewish community often brag about Jewish “control” of media, finance, & etc. when they aren’t busy condemning others for making the same sort of observations. So, of course, the discussions here have also mentioned the fact that Herzl himself wrote about the Jewish “power of the purse”; that in the early days of the movement Barons de Hirsch and Rothschild were active in Jewish colonization projects; that the Zionists quickly founded their own Bank and Trust Companies; and that Jews fund scores of institutions that make-up “The Israel Lobby” – like the one mentioned in this article. BTW, although many of the Zionist banks and trust companies have been privatized, the State of Israel is still the largest share holder in the successor institutions.
Keith:
Most of what you say isn’t worth replying to. If you don’t want to be considered a bigot, don’t bring up people’s backgrounds unwarrantably, and do your research. Having not done so, you may “speculate” all you wish, but don’t be shocked when those speculations elicit judgments. One point however is worth replying to, even if it responds to another one of these “interpretations” you seem to prefer to deal with, rather than simply reading the words on the page. I did not call Phil a crypto-fascist. Nor did I call Phil a right-wing populist. I said that there are flirtations with that kind of thinking. I don’t think they are helpful. I think they’re damaging, not least because they open the movement up to the accusation of bigotry and ease the way for the wavering middle to remain in denial.
Hostage: there isn’t much to dispute about what you said, except for the fact that yes, the military aid is indeed the most commonly alluded to and most commonly mis-understood facet of the “aid” and the Special Relationship. Beyond that most of you say repeats what I said, except for your placing in quotation marks the word “system,” which was obnoxious but to be expected. One area I differ is that while I agree that “members of the Jewish community often brag about Jewish “control” of media, finance, & etc,” you should try to think about what marks that control as characteristically Jewish. I’ll answer: it’s the way lower- and middle-class Jewish identity was mobilized behind policies that lined the pockets of the Jewish upper-class, for the most part.
Finally you discuss the occupation. I am aware of it. What do you propose to do about it, go to the bought-and-paid-for ICC? The occupation and apartheid will end when it’s cheaper for Israeli and global elites to end them than to continue them. Same with the Special Relationship which, pace a lot of writing here, is a core policy of the American elite. It’s part of that quotation-marked chimera, “the system.” How to change that system is an open question. But one way not to change it, one way to be absolutely sure that it will remain rock-solid, is to deny that it exists.
Beyond that most of you say repeats what I said, except for your placing in quotation marks the word “system,” which was obnoxious but to be expected.
Here is an except from the book you recommended at the link above. Note the use of quotes around the term system:
The authors are really only trying to debunk the notion of Israeli “Statism”. But I’ve always viewed the WZO, WJC, & etc. as transnational extraterritorial organizations run by Jewish elites who act according to their own private agendas – regardless of the political parties in power in Israel, e.g. see the Sasson report for details on the role of WZO Settlement Division. The authors of the book list some Transnational Groups, but they are all Jewish, if not Israeli, e.g. Ted Arison, Eliezer Fishman, Bear Sterns, Lazard Freres, Edmond Safra’s Republic Bank of New York, Jeff Kyle, Charles Bronfman, Goldman Sachs, George Soros, Michael Milkin, the Dankner family, Len Abramson, Michael Steinheart, Charles Shustman and Lou Reinary.
Arison purchased an interest in Bank Hapoalim, The transnationalists purchases were financed by other banks, primarily Bank Leumi, First International Bank, Discount, and United Mizrahi Bank. According to the study those Israeli banks were mostly government owned, and financed up to 85 per cent of the privatisation and merger activity of the 1990s. The majority of the global information technology and communications companies were eventually purchased by these same Jewish transnational groups.
The authors don’t, or can’t, explain the rapid capital growth (‘Releasing Value’) in Bank Hapoalim and Histradut holdings (Shikun Ubinui) that were sold to Ted Arison. They appealed to the same sort of political patronage you rebuked Sin Nombre for mentioning:
you discuss the occupation. I am aware of it. What do you propose to do about it, go to the bought-and-paid-for ICC?
The ICC is primarily funded by the member states (which does not include Israel or the USA). The members have also nominated individuals to be Judges, like Prof. John Dugard. Some of the jurists who have served there are the current UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay (Appeals Chamber) and the head of the UN HRC flotilla inquiry Karl Hudson-Phillips. If those jurists have been “bought-and-paid-for”, then I’d suggest we buy a few more just like them.
The ICC is a court of last resort. I’ve posted elsewhere that I’d recommend pursuing criminal prosecutions there and in the national courts of the member states. Many of them already recognize the State of Palestine. I have also recommended that the Palestinians go after Israel’s foreign assets, and etc.
The Supreme Court decision in Samantar v. Yousuf appeared to clear the way for lawsuits against former government officials under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). The Supreme Court will probably have to decide if corporations are liable under ATS.
*Last September the Second Circuit decision in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum held that corporations can’t be held liable for violations of customary international law under the ATS.
*The DC Circuit disagreed. In its recent decision on Doe v. Exxon-Mobil it held that corporations can be liable, but in Ali Shafi v. Palestinian Authority it held that non-state actors may not be held liable under the ATS.
*The Eleventh Circuit decision in Romero v. Drummond held that corporations can be held liable.
*The Ninth Circuit agreed that corporations may be held liable in its Bauman v. Daimler Chrysler Corp decision.
The reason for the hostile and willful illiteracy is beyond me, and I use those words because you are clearly more-than-capable of understanding what is being said to you. The authors put the PHRASE “interest of the capitalist system” in quotation marks, because the system is an abstraction for understanding the systematic logic of how particular interests are expressed. The quotation marks are not there to suggest that there is no system.
The authors are concerned also with far more than “trying to debunk the notion of Israeli ‘Statism.’” They are trying to understand how Israeli policies carried out both within Israeli territorial borders and outside of them augment the power, measured in capital, of diverse interests, with the common denominator being that they are capitalist interests. With that said, it is stunning that you think I rebuked “Sin Nombre” for mentioning a “sort of political patronage.” I rebuked him for the specific direction of conspiratorial non-sense at the religious background of the Russian oligarchs in the absence of either concern over what is important, namely what has happened to Russia, or with direct analysis of the relevance of their background, which in the context of their proximity to the to-be-privatized corporations I doubt had much to do with Israel. If there is evidence to the contrary, bring it.
I wish there were far more discussion of the transnational groupings that benefit from investments in Israel. I think it is very relevant that many of them are Jewish and have said so repeatedly, here and elsewhere; I am about 95 percent sure that they are largely the ones who fund or compose the Jewish lobby, if it was seriously conceptualized, and which makes clear that the nature of the lobby is business-as-usual in the system, although yes, there is obviously direct complicity within that system for specific crimes that people within it carry out – American elite Zionists for Palestinian statelessness, in this case.
What I added is that in terms of both direct and indirect benefits, there are many that are not Jewish. It’s beyond me why you think Goldman Sachs or Lazard Freres are “Jewish,” other than their names. Their management is disproportionately Jewish, no doubt, in line with a disproportionate number of Jews in the upper reaches of finance in New York as well as in the American upper-class. But an objective sociology has to establish how that matters beyond speculative gestures. There’s a difference between Jewish nationalism as a legitimating force in American imperialism and Jewish nationalism as a drive element in American nationalism, and that’s all the difference between knowing the difference between the “system” and its cheerleaders.
Now if that’s your methodology for establishing “Jewishness” I guess it follows that “The majority of the global information technology and communications companies were eventually purchased by these same Jewish transnational groups”; personally tracking down the precise ownership of capital flows into Israel over the last 20 years does not seem to me the easiest thing to do. It’s certainly not in the Sassoon report, and it’s not in the book I suggested.
What is in the book I suggested is that GTE, United Technology, and Siemens, Itek, Motorola, and so on were major investors in the 1970s and 1980s, mediated, as I wrote above, by Israeli Jews: “During the mid-1980s, Israeli ‘policy makers’ increasingly found themselves as ‘go betweens’, flying back and forth across the Atlantic to mediate the various interests of American and Israel contractors.” In the 90s they included the GE pension fund and Disney. Jews again? Or Duetsche Telecom, France Telecom, Bellsouth, Motorola (again)? The issue is systemic, which explains the hesitance to push for full-scale end of the occupation: the structure will have to be re-structured. Hence why the ICC’s rulings have no force and why the US Supreme Court will never enforce a civil judgment against Israel, unless there is a social revolt that will suddenly make it “interpret” the law differently. Hence why it is bought and paid for. And finally the suggestion that we can buy it back, just with different currency.
Finally, you say that the “authors don’t, or can’t, explain the rapid capital growth…” etc. What they say is that “What exactly happened during these two and half years to ‘release’ this sixfold increase in value was unclear. Arison himself knew nothing about construction. He did understand politics, though. And indeed, after the sale there were calls for independent inquiry into why the Histadrut was so eager to get rid of its prized assets, and for so little” – in other words, the economic base built up by settler-colonialism and a war-economy with little labor unrest was stolen by politically connected capitalists. No wonder American Jews love their Israel so much. For the rich among them, it really does a hell of a job of making them richer. A more complete explanation of Zionist hegemony amongst American Jewry than the partial one we tend to rely on, I think.
The reason for the hostile and willful illiteracy is beyond me
I think some of the other commentators have already noted your hostility, evidenced by remarks about others being illiterate, obnoxious, & etc. The authors you mentioned put quotes around a Marxist theory regarding the capitalist system that they didn’t accept. I did the same thing.
Their management is disproportionately Jewish, no doubt, in line with a disproportionate number of Jews in the upper reaches of finance in New York as well as in the American upper-class.
The number of Jews in the upper reaches of finance isn’t attributed to a greater than normal measure of overall merit in the literature. There is no need to conduct a study in order to suggest it’s the result of patronage and network effects. There already have been studies which suggest that. See for example Barbara J. Smith, The roots of separation in Palestine, 1920- 1929. Syracuse University Press, 1993.
Sin Nombre didn’t mention any conspiratorial nonsense about the “religious background” of the Russian oligarchs. He did suggest that the State of Israel might operate through the agency of its friends or their businesses. That wouldn’t prevent the government from also making any number of non-Jewish transnationals wealthy at the same time. Despite the fact that you think the government of Israel is too busy to do the two things at once, there have been a deluge of stories saying that the Mossad and IDF used the Ofer Brothers Shipping business to infiltrate and exfiltrate agents into and out of Iran. So, I don’t see any harm in mentioning that sort of thing in other connections. Caroline Glick certainly acts as if everyone at the State Department should have known about these cozy relationships all along, e.g. link to carolineglick.com
The authors of the book you recommended noted that many of Russia’s new businessmen, including Gregory Lerner, Eduard Ivankov, Sergei Mikhailov, Berezovsky, Roman Abramovitch, Lev Leviev and Vladimir Gusinsky became Israeli citizens. The authors also broached the taboo subject of religion, when they claimed that Lev Leviev and his Leviev Group had “religious support” – “drawn from the Lubavitch clan of Chabad Hassidim”.
GTE, United Technology, and Siemens, Itek, Motorola, and so on were major investors in the 1970s and 1980s, , mediated, as I wrote above, by Israeli Jews
Governments and Corporations are legal persons, not natural persons. Financiers have always leveraged other people’s money (OPM) and other people’s businesses. See for example Louis Brandeis, Other People’s Money And How the Bankers Use It (1914). When the technology bubble burst, the investor’s capital disappeared, not the investment banker’s.
In the 90s they included the GE pension fund and Disney. Jews again?
Shamrock Holdings of California, Inc. was founded by Roy E. Disney, but it leverages OPM, just like GE Asset Management and its GE Pension Fund. Together they established The Shammrock Israel Growth Fund, which is operated by a largely Jewish team. The authors of the book you cited noted that the majority of the new international information and technology companies were connected to the Israeli military and they suggested those companies took advantage of insider knowledge of its unpatented research and development.
Hence why the ICC’s rulings have no force and why the US Supreme Court will never enforce a civil judgment against Israel
The ICC’s rulings in criminal cases that are subject to its jurisdiction are legally binding. The ICJ doesn’t have compulsory general jurisdiction, but it does have legally binding subject matter jurisdiction over the genocide and many other conventions. It’s practice is still evolving in that area, since the first genocide case (Bosnia). In Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Uganda), the ICJ found Uganda liable and assessed $10 billion in damages. The Court found that Uganda violated the principles of non-use of force in international relations and of non-intervention; that it violated its obligations under international human rights law and international humanitarian law; and that it violated other obligations owed to the Democratic Republic of the Congo – The Court also found that the Democratic Republic of the Congo violated obligations owed to Uganda under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961. The ICC is investigating the individuals responsible for related Uganda and Congo crimes.
*link to icc-cpi.int
*link to icc-cpi.int
The US legal system already allows for enforcement of judgments against Israeli government officials for violations of treaties or the laws of nations without any further intervention by the Supreme Court. The District Courts are divided over liability of corporations.
Big article I read earlier today linking Murdoch and a Hollywood mogul; they’ve been aiding Israel maintaining and enhancing its nuclear and normal military weapons for years–a way to do it without public notice.
“Most of the major donors are active philanthropists to “pro-Israel” causes both in the U.S. and internationally. ”
And just think these donations to Israel or charities in Israel are tax exempt here in the states…another “special situation” that applies to donations to Israel and not to other countries.
Same group of folks trying to get the MEK off the US terrorist list since Israel and the US have been funding the MEK for quite some time.
link to nationalreview.com
Michael B. Mukasey, Tom Ridge, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and Frances Fragos Townsend
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January 10, 2011 4:00 A.M.
MEK Is Not a Terrorist Group
The material-support statute is fine; the designation is the problem.
The moral of this story may be that sometimes it’s better not to have friends, especially the sort with easy access to the op-ed page of the New York Times, or “The Newspaper of Record,” as it sometimes bills itself.
About a week ago, in the guise of defending us against an imagined prosecution for materially assisting a foreign terrorist organization based on our comments at a conference where we urged that Mujahadin e Khalq (“MEK”) be removed from the State Department’s list of such organizations, Prof. David Cole of Georgetown Law School took to the op-ed page of the Times with a bit of rhetorical jujitsu designed to enlist us in his campaign to change the federal statute that bars such assistance. The liberal blogosphere salivated at the suggestion that four conservative Republicans were providing material support to a terrorist organization, notwithstanding Professor Cole’s tongue-in-cheek defense.
link to english.aljazeera.net
A longtime CIA officer who spent 21 years in the Middle East is predicting that Israel will bomb Iran in the fall, dragging the United States into another major war and endangering US military and civilian personnel (and other interests) throughout the Middle East and beyond.
Earlier this week, Robert Baer appeared on the provocative KPFK Los Angeles show Background Briefing, hosted by Ian Masters. It was there that he predicted that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is likely to ignite a war with Iran in the very near future.
Robert Baer has had a storied career, including a stint in Iraq in the 1990s where he organised opposition to Saddam Hussein. (He was recalled after being accused of trying to organise Saddam’s assassination.) Upon his retirement, he received a top decoration for meritorious service.
RE: “Thinktank that promoted war w/ Iraq (& now Iran) was funded by… Marcus (of Home Depot)” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: Bernie Marcus, former CEO of Home Depot, is a real ass! (As opposed to Home Depot cofounder and former CFO Arthur Blank, who seems to be a very fine person.)
SEE & LISTEN TO:
“Bailout Recipients Hosted Call To Defeat Key Labor Bill” – link to huffingtonpost.com
Anti-union call between Bank of America, Bernie Marcus, et al. and Rick Berman, 17 Oct 2008 – link to wikileaks.org
P.S. The very first Home Depot was very near to where I lived, and I frequented it from its opening day.
That is, until I heard Bernie Marcus on the 2008 conference call. Now I only go to Home Depot as a last resort.
P.S. RE: “Thinktank that promoted war w/ Iraq (& now Iran) was funded by… Marcus (of Home Depot)” ~ Weiss
FROM MICHAEL WINSHIP, 07/29/11:
SOURCE – link to commondreams.org
Looks as if I’ll have to start patronizing Lowe’s exclusively (Home Depot’s competition)
Sorry Lance but Lowes founder is also a Zionist who makes big contributions to the Israeli cause. I do a lot of business with hardware stores and lumber yards. Both Home Depot and Lowes are out. I have found good outlets that are not tied into these Zionist entities — there still remain small franchises where we can buy our supplies.
In fact the routine purchases are not more expensive. What these two chains do is present lost leaders that suck in the customers. I use these special sales (lost leaders) whenever I can, but avoid using them for routine purchases. I have also discovered that local outlets will match their prices if you bring it to their attention. I hate doing this because it really hurts their profit margin and I want these local hardware stores and lumber yards to survive.
Jeez, how about ACE Hardware? Is it owned by Israel Firsters too?
ACE Hardware? Yes, owned by an Israeli, I believe. I remember when we were checking into all this back in 2008 here that ACE Hardware was my biggest shock.
Thanks for the additional info TS. I like your actions to support local enterprises and will try to do likewise myself much more in the future.
I would like to see a viral ad campaign showing all the items at Lowes or Home Depot forbidden to the Palestinians by Israel because it’s been deemed as having potential for use by terrorists.
I wonder what would be left to actually purchase?
That’s the Dual Loyalty List.
But I’d just call them traitors. They used their money and influence to get the US to engage in wars for Israel. Period. No other reason. It’s as plain as day. It will be the same for Iran, should they attack. If there is an attack on Iran and we are dragged into it, I hope the backlash against these bastards is severe.
Now that Doug Feith, he’s a particularly slimey one. Most of it has been scrubbed from the net, but early on in the Iraq crime, his relationship with Farouki, (don’t recall his first name) was especially suspicious, considering that the two of them were both, allegedly by accounts on the internet, collecters and dealers in Middle Eastern art and antiquities. I was able to determine through some online sleuthing that Farouki (Saleh???? I’ll try to find it and post it) was definitely into Iraqi and Middle Eastern antiquities , but Feith’s interest was a bit harder to determine. They both are attorneys, and apparently were partners in a law firm. Considering what happened to the Iraqi museums, and Farouki’s presence in Iraq, he was remarkably well placed for someone dealing in Middle Eastern antiquities. I’ve often wondered if my intuitions about Feith and Farouki were on base about their positioning to recieve stolen Iraqi antiquities..
Heres the rancid taste of a Feith sandwich…..
link to informationclearinghouse.info
Excerpt….
For instance, there was the Undersecretary of Defense, Doug Feith, largely credited for fabricating the tales that got the US into the war to begin with, along with his fellow neocons and best buddy, Ahmed Chalabi.
Feith was a partner with Marc Zell, in the Feith & Zell, DC law firm before joining the administration. After he left for the White House, Zell renamed the firm, Zell, Goldberg & Co, and teamed up with Salem Chalabi, Ahmed nephew, to solicit contracts for clients in Iraq. This scam operated under the name, “Iraqi International Law Group.”
At the time, the National Journal quoted Salem as saying that Marc Zell was the firm’s “marketing consultant” and had been contacting law firms in Washington and New York to ask if they had clients interested in doing business in Iraq.
According to its web site back then, the IILG was made up of lawyers and businessmen who “dared to take the lead in bringing private sector investment and experience” to the war-torn country and offered to “be your Professional Gateway to the New Iraq.”
“The simple fact is,” the site stated, “you cannot adequately advise about Iraq unless you are here day in and day out, working closely with officials at the CPA, the newly constituted governing council and the few functioning civilian ministries [oil, labor and social welfare, etc].”
It is highly likely that the preceding statement was absolutely true when made because Feith helped set up the Coalition Provisional Authority in May 2003, with its leader Paul Bremer, and Feith’s office and the CPA were in charge of awarding reconstruction contracts with Iraqi money.
For his part, Salem was a legal adviser to Iraq’s governing council, of which his Uncle was a member, and Bremer even tried to appoint him to lead the tribunal that would try Saddam.
Uncle Chabali footprints in the profiteering racket can be traced back to September 2003, when the CPA awarded an $80 million contract to Nour USA, a company with ties to Winston Partners, which is a whole other story in itself because Winston Partners is headed by none other than Marvin Bush, the brother to the president.
In May 2003, Nour was founded by, Abul Huda Farouki, whose financial ties to Ahmed Chalabi date back to 1989, when Chalabi was CEO of the Petra Bank, and helped Farouqi finance projects around the world.
Nour’s website at the time described the firm as an “international investment and development company” with more than 100 employees based in Iraq, and listed expertise in telecommunications, agribusiness, internet development, recruitment, construction materials, oil and power services, pharmaceuticals and fashion apparel.
In January 2004, Nour picked up another contract to equip the Iraqi armed forces and police worth $327 million. However, shortly thereafter, Nour came under fire when a shady deal surfaced involving the first $80 million contract and Ahmed Chalabi.
Newsday reported that Chalabi had received $2 million for helping to arrange the contract, but as it turned out, the contract was actually awarded to Erinys International, a firm set up in Iraq immediately after the invasion. The problem arose, Newsday said, because within days of receiving the contract, Erinys became a joint venture operation with Nour.
End excerpt……..
If you have read Naomi Klein’s “Bagdad Year Zero”, you can’t help but realize how the Chalabis and those such as Farouki and Feith were positioning themselves to make fortunes from the THEFT of the Iraqi assets, and how PERFECTLY Naomi exposed the neocon’s “master plan” for Iraq. It was only through Sistani’s intervention that the plan was derailed. If not for Sistani, these scumbags like Feith and the Chalabis, (and their crony corporatists), would own Iraq, lock, stock, and barrel.
link to naomiklein.org
Gettin’ old, I guess. It was Salem Chalabi that Feith was law partnered with. I gotta do a bit more digging, and ressurrect ny understanding about the relationships between these maggots. IT is truly astounding that people this slimey, so unbelievably corrupt, are still active players, and aren’t rotting away in prison. And here they were, actually SPEARHEADING huge aspects of the Iraqi adventure. This feckless little insipid monkey, George Bush, should hang his head in shame. He ramrodded what will go down as the darkest days in our nation’s history, exposing us as the REAL “evil empire”.
A great deal about their relationships in PHase II of the SSCI
The devil is building another wing in hell for these characters. They are all drowning in the Iraqi peoples and American soldiers blood who have died in an unnecessary and immoral war. They just have not noticed
Feith’s lies are brought up in Phase II of the SSCI
link to web.mit.edu
Lt Col Karen Kwiatowski wrote a few things about Feith in her article “The New Pentagon Papers”
link to commondreams.org
“Doug Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, was a case study in how not to run a large organization. In late 2001, he held the first all-hands policy meeting at which he discussed for over 15 minutes how many bullets and sub-bullets should be in papers for Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. A year later, in August of 2002, he held another all-hands meeting in the auditorium where he embarrassed everyone with an emotional performance about what it was like to serve Rumsfeld. He blithely informed us that for months he didn’t realize Rumsfeld had a daily stand-up meeting with his four undersecretaries. He shared with us the fact that, after he started to attend these meetings, he knew better what Rumsfeld wanted of him. Most military staffers and professional civilians hearing this were incredulous, as was I, to hear of such organizational ignorance lasting so long and shared so openly. Feith’s inattention to most policy detail, except that relating to Israel and Iraq, earned him a reputation most foul throughout Policy, with rampant stories of routine signatures that took months to achieve and lost documents. His poor reputation as a manager was not helped by his arrogance. One thing I kept hearing from those defending Feith was that he was “just brilliant.” It was curiously like the brainwashed refrain in “The Manchurian Candidate” about the programmed sleeper agent Raymond Shaw, as the “kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known.”
I spent time that summer exploring the neoconservative worldview and trying to grasp what was happening inside the Pentagon. I wondered what could explain this rush to war and disregard for real intelligence. Neoconservatives are fairly easy to study, mainly because they are few in number, and they show up at all the same parties. Examining them as individuals, it became clear that almost all have worked together, in and out of government, on national security issues for several decades. The Project for the New American Century and its now famous 1998 manifesto to President Clinton on Iraq is a recent example. But this statement was preceded by one written for Benyamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party campaign in Israel in 1996 by neoconservatives Richard Perle, David Wurmser and Douglas Feith titled “A Clean Break: Strategy for Securing the Realm.”
Jason Vest in his article “The Men from Jinsa and CSP”
focused on Feith a bit
link to thenation.com
“Not a hard sell: There’s always been considerable overlap beween the JINSA and CSP rosters–JINSA advisers Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle and Phyllis Kaminsky also serve on CSP’s advisory council; current JINSA advisory board chairman David Steinmann sits on CSP’s board of directors; and before returning to the Pentagon Douglas Feith served as the board’s chair. At this writing, twenty-two CSP advisers–including additional Reagan-era remnants like Elliott Abrams, Ken deGraffenreid, Paula Dobriansky, Sven Kraemer, Robert Joseph, Robert Andrews and J.D. Crouch–have reoccupied key positions in the national security establishment, as have other true believers of more recent vintage.
While CSP boasts an impressive advisory list of hawkish luminaries, its star is Frank Gaffney, its founder, president and CEO. A protégé of Perle going back to their days as staffers for the late Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (a k a the Senator from Boeing, and the Senate’s most zealous champion of Israel in his day), Gaffney later joined Perle at the Pentagon, only to be shown the door by Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci in 1987, not long after Perle left. Gaffney then reconstituted the latest incarnation of the Committee on the Present Danger. Beyond compiling an A-list of influential conservative hawks, Gaffney has been prolific over the past fifteen years, churning out a constant stream of reports (as well as regular columns for the Washington Times) making the case that the gravest threats to US national security are China, Iraq, still-undeveloped ballistic missiles launched by rogue states, and the passage of or adherence to virtually any form of arms control treaty.
Gaffney and CSP’s prescriptions for national security have been fairly simple: Gut all arms control treaties, push ahead with weapons systems virtually everyone agrees should be killed (such as the V-22 Osprey), give no quarter to the Palestinians and, most important, go full steam ahead on just about every national missile defense program. (CSP was heavily represented on the late-1990s Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, which was instrumental in keeping the program alive during the Clinton years.)
Looking at the center’s affiliates, it’s not hard to see why: Not only are makers of the Osprey (Boeing) well represented on the CSP’s board of advisers but so too is Lockheed Martin (by vice president for space and strategic missiles Charles Kupperman and director of defense systems Douglas Graham). Former TRW executive Amoretta Hoeber is also a CSP adviser, as is former Congressman and Raytheon lobbyist Robert Livingston. Ball Aerospace & Technologies–a major manufacturer of NASA and Pentagon satellites–is represented by former Navy Secretary John Lehman, while missile-defense computer systems maker Hewlett-Packard is represented by George Keyworth, who is on its board of directors. And the Congressional Missile Defense Caucus and Osprey (or “tilt rotor”) caucus are represented by Representative Curt Weldon and Senator Jon Kyl.
CSP was instrumental in developing the arguments against the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Largely ignored or derided at the time, a 1995 CSP memo co-written by Douglas Feith holding that the United States should withdraw from the ABM treaty has essentially become policy, as have other CSP reports opposing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the International Criminal Court. But perhaps the most insightful window on the JINSA/CSP policy worldview comes in the form of a paper Perle and Feith collaborated on in 1996 with six others under the auspices of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. Essentially an advice letter to ascendant Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” makes for insightful reading as a kind of US-Israeli neoconservative manifesto.”
Feith
link to slate.com
It’s not that the 50-year-old Feith is at fault for everything that’s gone wrong in Iraq. He’s only tangentially related to the mystery of the missing weapons of mass destruction, for example. (Though it’s a significant tangent: An anonymous “Pentagon insider” told the Washington Times last year that Feith was the person who urged the Bush administration to make Saddam’s WMD the chief public rationale for going to war immediately.) Nor was it Feith who made the decision to commit fewer troops than the generals requested. (Though Feith did give the most honest explanation for the decision, saying last year that it “makes our military less usable” if hundreds of thousands of troops are needed to fight wars.) But if he isn’t fully culpable for all these fiascos, he’s still implicated in them somehow. He’s a leading indicator, like a falling Dow—something that correlates with but does not cause disaster.
And Phase Two actually ended up being a very belated white wash, delivered waaaaaay after promised. If you recall, Reid’s insincere posturing and antics about “demanding” Phase Two is where the monicker “Give ‘Em Hell Harry” came from. Trouble is, after posturing, he didn’t follow through, and although his antics elicited a promised timeline to recieve the report, it was not delivered on, and Reid crawled back in his hole, getting credit for “givin’ ‘em hell” even though he actually wimped out in the end. I’ve always believed he sold out, did some sort of back room quid pro quo. (sp?)
Bottom line, if these investigations and “reports” had of been credible and accurate, there would be a bunch of Bush Administration maggots languishing in a federal prison right now.
BTW…Feith is now foreign policy advisor to Gov Rick Perry’s campaign.
Much written about this over at Think Progress. I was howling on every national radio show I could get on. First they were stalling with Phase I and then I believe Phase II was due to be released before the 2004 election. Senator Pat Roberts did everything to stall divert…delay and piss all over the investigation. It really is true why the f investigate if you are not going to follow through and prosecute the war criminals.
Just what was the point of those investigations. I have read most of both. Makes for very interesting and worthwhile reading.
Senator Pat Roberts ran great defense for the Bush administrations illegal and immoral programs and false intelligence. Think Progress did a run of articles about Pat roberts doing everything he could to divert and delay the investigation into the creation, cherry picking and dissemination of false pre war inteligence. What did we witness as a result of Phase I and Phase II of the SSCI? Nothing
Senator Cover Up Roberts
Remember this claim
link to thinkprogress.org
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS): Chairman of the Senate Cover-up Committee
link to thinkprogress.org
OMG…thanks for this
If I remember correctly Judith Miller of the NYT was the one who ‘stumbled’ upon the largest Iraqi antiquities building that had been bombed and she called Harold Rhodes uber zio to” come look”, and shortly thereafter Iraqi treasures started being airlifted out of Iraq. Rhodes claimed they were all things that dealt with Iraqi Jewish history.
Miller and Rhodes were the last people on earth you would want anywhere near Iraq, much less running around Iraq with access to anything.
Rhodes claimed they were all things that dealt with Iraqi Jewish history.
how reassuring.
I think Wurmser was handed some deal for talking to Fitzgerald about the Plame outing
link to rawstory.com
Cheney aide passed Plame’s name to Libby, Hadley, those close to leak investigation say
Jason Leopold and Larisa Alexandrovna
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David WurmserWith the possibility of indictments just days away, sources close to the investigation into who outed covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson have provided RAW STORY a more detailed account into how and why Plame’s name was leaked and what role the Pentagon and the vice president’s office played.
Those close to the investigation say that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has been told that David Wurmser, then a Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney on loan from the office of then-Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs John Bolton, met with Cheney and his chief of staff I. Lewis �Scooter� Libby in June 2003 and told Libby that Plame set up the Wilson trip. He asserted that it was a boondoggle, the sources said.
Libby then shared the information with Karl Rove, President Bush’s deputy chief of staff, the sources said. Wurmser also passed on the same information about Wilson to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, they added.
Had never read about this. So while the Bush administration was pulling all sorts of evidence that allegedly the Carlysle group etc had done business with Saddam and erasing all evidence that Bush, Rumsfeld team had sold him some of the bio weapons and allegedly even more…Judy and Wurmser were stealing from Iraq’s treasures. Just as Holocaust survivors collected stolen goods from German caches hopefully Iraq can demand their nations treasures back from those thieves.
link to middle-america.blogspot.com
They really did act like they are a “cabal”
The Iraqi Jewish Archive Harold Rhode’s and Judith Miller’s Little Charity Project
The Iraqi Jewish Archive: “The Iraqi Jewish Archive
Preservation Report
October 2, 2003
Background
Rare, historic and modern books, documents and parchment scrolls pertaining to the Iraqi Jewish community were found in the flooded basement of the Iraqi Intelligence (Mukhabahrat) headquarters in Baghdad in early May 2003. Upon removal from the basement, the wet materials (known as the Iraqi Jewish Archive) were packed into sacks and transported to a nearby location where they were partially dried. Dr. Harold Rhode, expert in Middle Eastern and Islamic Affairs, Department of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense, provided a general review and initial sorting of the contents during the retrieval process, after which the materials were placed in 27 metal trunks. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) arranged for the materials to be frozen, which served to stabilize the condition and eliminate further mold growth.
At the request of the Coalition Provisional Authority, conservators from the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) traveled to Baghdad June 20-23 to assess the condition of the materials and develop recommendations for their preservation. The following report outlines the preservation action plan and funding requirements for preserving this important collection.
Description of the Iraqi Jewish Archive
The Iraqi Jewish Archive contains 16th-20th century Jewish rare books, correspondence and document files, pamphlets, modern books, audio tape and parchment scrolls. Languages represented in the Archive include Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Arabic and English (a few items).
The following descriptive information, provided by Hebraic and Arabic area study specialists at the Library of Congress, was gleaned from the photographs taken of the frozen materials in the open trunks. Once the materials are dried and have had the mold remediated it will be possible to provide a clearer and more detailed assessment of the contents.
Think Tanks, Fifth Columns, Financial Elites…..they are all part of our Shadow Government. No consiracy theory necessary, it’s a fact those paying attention observe everyday. They don’t even try to hide it any more…they actually do run our government. And it’s amazing how the same players go thru each administration dem or repub like it’s a revolving door.
Nice little book outlining some of it:
link to alternet.org
RE: Thinktank that promoted war w/ Iraq (& now Iran) was funded by… Feith …” – Weiss
SPEAKING OF THE FEITHS, THIS FROM Think Progress:
SOURCE – link to thinkprogress.org
P.S. ALSO SEE: Tx. Gov. Rick Perry compares the US and Israel… (and my comments thereto) – link to mondoweiss.net
P.P.S. Colbert: Perry prayer event ‘erases’ line between church and state – link to rawstory.com
Terrifying that, in a world so ravaged, for thousands of years, by religious fanaticism, we find ourselves seeing religious fanatics paraded before us as viable Presidential candidates.
Humanities worst nightmare could well be the ascendency of one of these wackjobs like Perry, Bachman, Huckabee, (etc) to the Oval Office.
The days are gone when these crazies merely sent their armies out with spears and bows, rifles and bayonets, tanks and carriers. Now we have nukes, drones, chemicals, and germs. Thus far, religious fanaticism has been held at arm’s length from the nuclear football.
But now? Will one of these zealots successfully convince the flock that God is his/her lobbyist? It appears there is a real danger of such a nightmare becoming reality.
Perry, this morning, seen on the news, insinuated God’s sanction for his candidacy, and voiced his intention to solve our problems with prayer. It is a very small leap from God sanctioning a candidate, to God sanctioning a policy. And with someone like Feith advising on foreign policy, I wouldn’t wanna be a Muslim with President Perry asking God what to do about me.
The FDD is a truly scary place. They have a program for university teachers and students that takes place in Israel. A few years ago, they had some students face off against an elite Israeli military unit in paintball!! I do not know if they are still holding the paintball matches.
link to pepperdine.edu
This is from their website. link to defenddemocracy.org
“After 9/11, numerous colleges and universities added terrorism and homeland security courses to their curricula. Many professors and graduate students who taught these courses complained of having insufficient access to the top practitioners or the latest research in the field. In response, FDD created the Academic Fellowship program for university professors entitled “Defending Democracy, Defeating Terrorism.”
The program features an intensive, 10-day course on terrorism and the threat it poses to democratic societies. Using Israel as a case study, professors are given access to top researchers and officials who provide cutting-edge information about the terrorist threats to democracies worldwide. The goal of the program is to offer information to teaching professionals about the latest trends in terrorists’ ideologies, motives, and operations, and how democracies can fight them.
The course of study occurs both in the classroom at Tel Aviv University and in the field with lectures by academics, diplomats, military and intelligence officials, and politicians from Israel, Jordan, India and the United States. It also features visits to military bases, border zones and other security installations to learn the practical side of deterring terrorist attacks.”
Justin Raimando has written many informative pieces about this group of bloody thugs.
if you google Justin Raimando and neo cons many articles
link to original.antiwar.com
Micheal Ledeen has been pounding on Iran for years now. His history is so twisted. He is mentioned quite a bit in Phase II of the SSCI. Many believe he had a great deal to do with putting the Niger forgeries together.
He started over at National Review with one article in 2001 and 2002 then really starting banging on the go get Iran drums in 2003 as did most of the above thugs as well as Wolfowitz and Cheney.
here is Ledeens archive starting in 2003. Attacking Iran is often is focus
link to nationalreview.com
ledeen was mired in iran contra too.
At one point I was reading everything I could find about Ledeen. He had come to speak at the Baker Peace Conference here at Ohio University soon after the invasion of Iraq. Have no idea what he has to do with peace. He was on a panel with Mearsheimer, Leon Fuerth I think David Kelly and Micheal Ledeen.
I asked the panel this question “should Israel be pressured to sign the IAEA non proliferation treaty” I asked another question but can not remember what it was. Ledeen responded first “you do not like Israel do you” I responded “please do not put words in my mouth, try to flip the script and please answer my question…he did not. Leon Fuerth’s response “the holocaust” Kelly ” Israel will not sign” Later on I had a conversation with Mearsheimer and he said the “I lobby owns the congress” and much much more. He also shared that he and Walt were coming out with a very important paper at that point. This was all before the Israel lobby book.
Ledeen is kind of a creepy guy. I think he did his masters on fascism. Seems he incorporated some of the things he learned writing his thesis.
he was cheney’s adviser.
Funny how Zionists will peddle their Holocaust-denial tactics up and down the other threads, but this one? They won’t touch this with a ten foot pole.