A must-see 12 minute wrap up on the state of affairs in this seasons Republican primary, the Adelson/Netanyahu/Gingrich connection, the push to war with Iran, and the dangers of fanning the flames of anti-Semitism. Real News host Paul Jay asks Blumenthal to 'unravel all this' and unravel he does. Max is not known for mincing words and he doesn't disappoint. He opens warning: 'It's a dangerous American election that could accelerate the ongoing drive to war'.
Blumenthal, speaking of Netanyahu (6:10):
He wants regime change in two countries, the first country is Iran, the second country is the United States. He wants to replace Barack Obama with a Republican. He tried the same thing when he was Prime Minister in the 1990's against President Bill Clinton. He leaned on Gingrich, he leaned on people who were seeking to impeach President Clinton using Israel as a partisan wedge issue the same way the Christian Right uses abortion and gay marriage. And this campaign is the fulfillment of Netanyahu's strategy to use Israel and now Iran as a political tool to unseat Barack Obama. And Newt Gingrich is just one candidate who is assisting this effort. Mitt Romney is also happy to assist this effort and he has surrounded himself with neoconservatives who have a seamless connection to Israel and to the Israeli military intelligence establishment and to Netanyahu's advisors.
On the American Jewish vote:
I don't believe there is a 'Jewish vote', it's kind of rediculous when the term 'Jewish vote' is used...it's really about Jewish money and it's sort of forbidden to say that but a minority within the Jewish community which is very liberal play a disproportionate affect in politics through campaign finance.
Blumenthal cites other key American Jewish fundraisers; IDF donor Haim Saban ("I'm a single issue guy, my issue is Israel") the man who funded the construction of the Democratic National Committee Headquarters and Mel Sembler's connection to Romney's campaign. But it's at the end of the interview when Blumenthal pulls these elements together and encapsulates the danger of the impact these donors could have on the future of the American election landscape where his strength lies.
Citing Steven Pease, author of the book 'The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement', Blumenthal drives home the crux of the problem with our elections:
MB: Pease claims that 45% of individual political contributions in American campaigns are from Jewish donors, so this is really where the issue lies and it's sort of a forbidden topic in the United States.
PJ: Right, so it's not about the broad opinion of Jewish Americans, it is about a small elite of Jewish Billionaires.
MB: Absolutely...I think this is an incredibly dangerous, troubling scenario because they are making American foreign policy a domestic issue. And now with Israel's push to war with Iran they are, in the words of former AIPAC researcher Keith Weissman, they are advancing the 'War of the Jews', that's his words. So I think the danger of encouraging or fanning the flames of anti-Semitism is very real when an element in the United States is pushing the rest of the country to go to war for a foreign country. It's sort of a fulfillment of past anti-Semitic stereotypes and I think Jews in the United States, most of whom oppose this war and oppose the neoconservatives agenda, should be aware of this.
Max Blumenthal will be speaking with at PennBDS this Sunday afternoon. Hope to see you there.
(Hat tip commentor Mndwss)
Video has been removed by user.
Try this one:
link to youtube.com
Thanks, FreddyV–the video is an unlisted YouTube video, which means nobody can watch it who does not have the url given to them by someone, rather than, say arrive at it by a general search within YouTube.
actually citizen, i replaced the original video (which was shorter and shut down)with this same one (thanks feddy!) so it should work up top. it is an excellent video, just excellent. i hope lots of people watch it.
The Super PAC influence and the Supreme Court decision in 2010 that allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts on federal elections are very destabilising and have implications for democracy in the US.
link to nybooks.com
“Beneath the turbulent political spectacle that has captured so much of the nation’s attention lies a more important question than who will get the Republican nomination, or even who will win in November: Will we have a democratic election this year? Will the presidential election reflect the will of the people? Will it be seen as doing so—and if not, what happens? The combination of broadscale, coordinated efforts underway to manipulate the election and the previously banned unlimited amounts of unaccountable money from private or corporate interests involved in those efforts threatens the democratic process for picking a president”
I’m reading “the view from lazy point” at the moment and Carl Safina says that modern corporations were essentially illegal at the foundation of the US. The founders would never have tolerated the malign influence of Zionism either.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the United States democratic system, said “I hope we shall crush … in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country”.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an April 29, 1938 message to Congress, warned that the growth of private power could lead to fascism:
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power
seafoid: thanks for great stuff on Jefferson, FDR, wikipedia and fascism. I’ve added it to my essay on fighting Citizens United
‘We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
Louis Brandeis
Pabelmont
Do you know the Monthly Review? They have some great analyses of the economic system that would fit well in that piece of yours.
link to monthlyreview.org
The United States, Europe, and Japan are involved in a descending spiral. Up to now, capital of generalized monopolies has retained the initiative and tirelessly pursued its sole objective: the growing accumulation of monopoly rent, which, in turn, produces the runaway growth of inequality in the distribution of income. Moreover, the growth of the latter itself is weakening. This inequality increases the impossibility of monopoly rent finding an outlet in expansion of the productive system and leads headlong into the growth of the public debt, which offers a possible outlet for the investment of excessive surplus profits. The austerity policies implemented do not permit reduction of the debt (which is their avowed objective) but, on the contrary, produce its continuous growth (which is the real, but unacknowledged, objective). Despite the victims’ protests, the electoral majorities (including the left) do not challenge the economy of the monopolies and consequently allow the descending movement to continue indefinitely. Naturally, the growing inequality calls for increasingly authoritarian political management internally and militarism on the world scale.
Funny, you don’t censor Max Blumenthal’s comments when he says that.
Chaos,
although Phil and other Mondo writers identify and condemn the problem that many Jews think that only one of their own is allowed to criticize them, it seems that sometimes they slip up and show that attitude themselves. I think it’s not part of any agenda, only an instinct when scanning the comments for moderation. With time, it will cease. I, too, had comments blocked which did not go any further than writers on this site went.
No actually, it won’t cease. Censorship is always the character of “comment moderation.” It’s why I’ve opposed it since day one, and frankly, if I didn’t have people asking me to stay, I’d probably have left over it. It’s why I’ve left every other blog I’ve visited and why I’ve come to the determination that the left/center left of the US, taken on its whole, is irretrievably corrupt and ineffectual.
As a community, as a whole, we’re hypocrites on the question of free speech, because of choices like this. But I don’t want to distract from the article more than I am, so I’ve said my peace and I will make an effort to say nothing more on a tangent.
The fact of the matter is, Max Blumenthal is right and people need to listen to him.
The whole comment from Blumenthal is great. Especially this:
“It’s sort of a fulfillment of past anti-Semitic stereotypes and I think Jews in the United States, most of whom oppose this war and oppose the neoconservatives agenda, should be aware of this.”
Hitlerite anti-Jewish ideas and, later, acts, are a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. They inflicted psychosis in many Jews (the only partly justified notion of “they all want to kill us”), which in turn produced in some of those Jews exactly the mindset and even some of the deeds “The Jews” as a group where wrongly accused of back then: Racism, mistrust of non-Jews, secret machinations, control of political, economic and maybe even cultural processes.
If Jews today can’t see this, they are in part the makers of their own, possibly bad, future fate.
When even Netanyahu himself admits that early Zionism was promoted and primarily supported by American Protestant sects (aka evangelical fundamentalists.. ‘fundies’), folks should stop to wonder what this is agenda is really about.
Demographics alone is proof enough that “The Jewish Vote” is wealthy Israel-centric political donors. I would wager that “The Jewish Vote” is a lot like Israel-firster as in it is not limited to Jews. It’s also billionaire Israel-firster non-Jews. I’m also convinced that many American Jews are not aware of this. They believe that ‘the Jewish vote’ concerns actual Jewish voters. It may be taboo to mention the Jewish billionaire donors, but that doesn’t make it less true or mean we shouldn’t talk about it. Some folks believe that it should be kept under wraps in fear of antisemitism, but I also believe that this will lead to that exact mindset Justice Please is talking about at some point.
What I feel is far more important, yet still very related, is wealthy control over the political process period. Doesn’t matter if the wealthy are Jews or non-Jews. Most of them are non-Jews and they are still Israel-firsters and donate based on positions toward Israel and Israel-centered foreign policy. IMO their alleged Jewishness thus becomes a straw man to debate over. The reality is that Israel and the I/P status quo is desirable for the entire wealthy ruling class. That’s what people need to realize. And I hope that the Jewish people of today see this before the rest of the masses get the wrong idea. Kind of like if a revolution between the rich and the poor were to break out and the poor burned down the McMansions while the real wealthy ruling class sat back and laughed. Problems are always deeper than what is perceived superficially.