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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
"And no she wasn’t interested in her Catholic Church’s complicity in the Holocaust. I didn’t even broach it."
I was going to comment that for a woman who must have been at least 70 years old, she seemed attuned to current commercial activities (since she'd have to be about 70 to have present awareness of "her Catholic Church's complicity in the Holocaust"), but I noticed that you said she is a "young woman."
That being the case, did you discuss the complicity of Germany in facilitating Israeli belligerence against Iran by providing Israel with nuclear-capable submarines? How about any possible culpability of German corporation Siemens in the melt-down at Fukushima, given that Siemens provided the doorway for infecting Iranian computers with Stuxnet, and the virus got out.
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the subtle subtext is, Marc, in case it glides past you down a snow-covered Innsbruck slope, get over yourself.
Really.
The turning of Turkey is of major importance.
According to Ramadani, Turkey has patched things up with Israel over Mavi Marmara; turned away from formerly friendly relations with Assad in exchange for warmer relations with Saudi Arabia; turned its back on Iran, primarily over the US Radar towers on Turkey's soil that spy on Iran** in response to US-NATO pressure and in exchange for European promises for entry into EU organizations.
**Iran's telecommunications used to route thru a Turkish-maintained tower, but in 2007-2008 Iran constructed a tower in Tehran to manage its own communications networks to eliminate the possibility of Turkish spying.
excellent overview of the parties involved in Syria conflict by Sami Ramadani on Real News
"It is exactly the same as anti-semitism was a hundred years ago."
In fact, justicewillprevail, 100 years ago taxpayer funding was used to gin up hatred of Germans, not Jews. George Creel gave his name to the Creel Commission; Eddie Bernays burnished techniques learned from his uncle, Sigmund Freud, to whip up war frenzy/propaganda. The Wonskolaser (aka Warner) Brothers hit the big time with "My Four Years in Germany," a propaganda film in the form of a documentary purporting to show German brutality in World War I. And away we go.
"You can tell because Israel is still there."
so is Hezbollah.
"The only possibility that really comes to mind is an Iranian nuclear weapon landing on Tel Aviv. "
Danielle Pletka: The Biggest Problem is an Iran that HAS Nukes but Does Not Use Them!
which is another way of saying, Iran will have chopped the moral high ground right out from under Israel and the USA.
Vladimir Jabotinsky spent the best years of his life in Rome, soaking up Mussolini, whom he greatly admired and emulated in creating the "muscular new Jew."
Whose "our" are you talking about, Theo? I was not aware that Israeli soldiers were "fighting and dying in Iraq & Afghanistan right on the front."
Unless you mean what Robert Kagan & ux, & Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, Ledeen, Pipes, etc. do = fighting on the front lines.
All the time I was growing up I knew that my Dad had been injured in the war, but never gave it a moment's thought. That was just the way it was; he lived his life well and never, ever mentioned what happened or what might have been.
After my parents died, as we were sorting their papers, we came across letters between my parents, just courting, and at the time Dad was injured. I learned about a part of my Dad -- and Mother -- that I had never realized before: a very lonely and uncertain young man, simultaneously injured, discharged, and orphaned (his father died while Dad was at war). He was 20 years when he had all that to handle. For several years I could not stop my soul from bleeding at the pain my Father had endured; I kept thinking of my own children at that age.
I've lately come to a spot where I'm glad Dad was injured when he was, and though it dashed all his hopes and dreams for what he thought he wanted his life to be, his injury got him out of a violent environment in which he might have turned into a moral monster; he might have been harmed in so much worse a way if he had had to live with the realization that he had killed an innocent man -- a man who had hopes and dreams, and a wife and child -- just like he did.
But I am even more fearful for my children; they are slowly slowly seduced and lured into a universe that, to bastardize the Bard, "Looks on homicide and is never shaken." Killing, lying, and stealing to gain advantage have become far more than acceptable; they have become the new America, the New Jerusalem.
My Dad, and the thousands like him, and the founders of the US, did not put Their Lives, Their Fortunes, Their Sacred Honor, on the line to enable Hillary Clinton to go around the world hiring killers.
"Good luck finding a source that meets your criteria."
Most scholars of Judaism affirm that the central beliefs of Jews are "God, Torah, and Israel."
Reading Torah might provide an appropriate "source."
Ben Gurion relied on Torah.
Bnejamin Netanyahu is a passionate student of Hebrew scriptures, as is his son.
It seems reasonable to attempt to understand Jewish beliefs based upon celebrations in the Jewish calendar -- Purim, Passover, Yom Kippur, etc.
It's also instructive to observe how Israeli military operations are named for elements in Hebrew scripture; for example, Cast Lead, the assault on Gaza, is named for the "lots" cast in the festival of Purim; the Sampson option = mess with me and your temple goes down with me. Mike Evans and/or Joel Rosenberg (I forget which; both are Bibi's acolytes) run the "David Project."
It's also useful to view Jewish mythos in bas relief against the myths/epics of other nations with whom Israel is in an adversarial relationship. The Iranian people have a yin-yang relationship with Islam: Islam was imposed on Persia; some Iranians are devout Muslims, others are not, others still seethe with resentment at the imposition of Arab-ness on the Persian character. But ALL Iranians are united around the Persian epic, The Shahnameh, which most Iranians can recite and which forms their inner architecture. The Shahnameh celebrates Zoroaster, the ethos at Persia's heart. It's enormously unifying. Superimpose the conflictful Israeli thinking about Torah, Talmud, etc. against Iran's Shahnameh, and the gold goes to Iran, while Israelis argue over who will walk first in line on the way to the training camp.
(The US does not have a unifying mythos; that is its tragic flaw. Most people think "the bible" is the most meaningful & unifying thing that can be said about the US; the 23 busts in the US House of Representatives, and the painting in the Dome of the Capitol tell a much richer story. )
Klaus has an extremely important argument, in the realm of "ideas not people," as Dennis Prager emphasizes in his books, that should be considered objectively and intelligently. Dennis Prager is allowed to interpret, judge, and condemn other people's beliefs but those who subscribe to those beliefs are not permitted to defend their own beliefs without being slammed with "antisemite;" having their claims deliberately distorted as "racist," and shut down, even imprisoned, as "neo-Nazis." This has been going on for decades, perhaps centuries, and it affects not just Jewish-non-Jewish relations but also Christianity's interpretation of itself.
The core of the conflict is seated in the meaning of -- or thoughtless affirmation of -- "monotheism". The god of the Hebrew scriptures demands that his chosen people -- and that does not include anyone other than Hebrews/Jews -- worship hm alone, under pain of death to Jews under varying circumstances, and under a broad grant to Jews to take the lives of non-Jews for their failure to worship the "one god, yahweh." In "Still the Best Hope," Dennis Prager writes about what a "good thing it was" that Jews cleared out that cesspool in Canaan, where non-Yahweh was being worshipped. Canaanites might have a different pov.
Elijah gets props for killing the 450 priests of Ba'al. How is that act any different from a white supremacist killing priests and worshipers at a Sikh temple? Yet the work of Elijah is enshrined as a holy and to be emulated.
Monotheism is not the same as universalism. Abba Eban explains in "Heritage, Civilization & the Jews" how the god of the Hebrews becomes universalized: the Hebrew god acts in history. When, for example, the Egyptian people are seen to act in a harmful way toward Hebrews, the Hebrew process of interpreting religio-history casts Egyptians in the role of yahweh's instrument to express yahweh's posture toward his chosen people at the time. The Egyptian people are under the sway & control of yahweh -- i.e. Yahweh has universal dominion over them -- but they are decidedly not among his chosen people -- by definition.
Some people object to being the tool of a jealous and particularist god who uses them -- or kills them -- in order to send one message or another to his chosen people.
Most Christians, however, endorse full incorporation of Hebrew scriptures in their own belief system, and necessarily, by extension, the right and duty of adherents to the Hebrew god to eradicate any who deviate from the 'monotheistic' path. Christians deal with the irrationality of this situation by claiming that Christians are the "new chosen people." John Winthrop made that claim in staking the Massachusetts Bay colony as a Christian territory, destined to be a "light among the nations." Roger Williams, a contemporary of Winthrop's, held a different view, one more in line with the empirical ideas of Francis Bacon; although Thomas Jefferson, James Madison & Benjamin Franklin were closer to Williams' view (and certainly to Bacon's) than to Winthrop, the latter seems to have prevailed in the USA.
Abe Foxman has made it a personal mission to disabuse the Vatican and the Christian world of the view that Christians are the successor "chosen people."
The British, at least from the colonial times of Winthrop, fully endorsed the incorporation of Hebrew scriptures into their mythos and ethos.
German churchmen did not. Martin Luther was harsh and intemperate in his critique of the god of Hebrew scriptures. Four centuries later, Walter Grundmann took a more irenic approach, treading ground that Thomas Jefferson and Ernest Renan had ploughed before him -- sorting out the scriptural Jesus from the human Jesus, and detaching Christianity from a Hebrew matrix.
In "The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany,"Susannah Heschel distills the quest:
As Heschel notes, a large proportion of German scholars, preachers, and congregants supported Grundmann's quest. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth, and large and influential groups in the American Christian community condemned Grundmann's "rationalization" of the "inerrant" bible, and Heschel, of course, condemned the Institute as "anti-semitic" and Nazi, after first twisting herself and logic all out of shape in order to be able to call the Institute "racist."
At numerous junctures Heschel attacks Grundmann for "deviating from Christian tradition and doctrine."
That leaves wide open the question: Of what concern is it to Heschel or to any Jewish person how Christians choose to define their beliefs, and whether they choose to separate what they consider Christian beliefs and scriptures from Hebrew beliefs and scriptures? Neither Heschel nor any Jewish person has any standing whatsoever to define Christianity to Christians, any more than Dennis Prager has standing to define--and condemn-- Shari'a law for Muslims.
In the wake of the Colorado killings, a letter in a local newspaper declaimed on the necessity of "returning to God" to solve the ills manifest by the shooter's acts.
I'm forced to ask, What god? The god who endorsed and enabled the killing of the first-born of Egyptians? The god who endorsed Elijah's killing of the 450 priests of Ba'al? The god who affirmed the killing and plunder of the Canaanites and Jericho? I don't want anything to do with that god. Aren't the American people doing the same thing as that god -- killing those who are not monotheistically committed to the same beliefs as we are?
Jefferson, Madison, Franklin established the United States Constitutional republic on notions that included the moral code of a de-scripturalized Jesus. I don't find in that moral code of Jesus any endorsement of killing one's enemies OR friends, real or imagined. I think that's the Jesus Grundmann was trying to get at. Pity he did not succeed.
Grundmann and the thousands of German people who supported his views sought to diverge from that monotheistic path, in a principled and non-violent way.
"if you wanna help the jewish zionists in the holy lands, you should immediately and without wasting any further time, start figuring out how to raise reparation money on their behalf to pay for their vandalism and rape of Historic Palestine. "
got it covered
MKs Demand Reparations from Arabs
this has been going on for years.
I prepared a post that listed links to same kinds of resolutions in US Congress back to 2003 but the ethernet ate it. It was a thing of appalling beauty.
brilliant, CloakAndDagger.
sound of two hands clapping.
A Seventh Day Adventist website maintains a careful count of various faith communities, for purposes of knowing who remains "unchurched."
The most interesting thing their statistics revealed is that had Jewish people worldwide maintained the same growth rate post-WWII, relative to total population growth, as almost all other faith groups in the world, there should be over 40 million Jews in the world today. There are about 16 million Jews in ~2011, up from 12 million in 1953.
yawn
That name keeps popping up --
A few generations earlier, Martha Dodd, the daughter of the American ambassador to Germany 1933-1937, married
Alfred & Martha Dodd Stern were Communist spies who, in 1956, fled to Prague rather than comply with FBI subpoenaes to testify concerning their activities. They never returned to the USA.
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BDS Sears?
In May 2011 as the drama of the neutralizing of Osama bin Laden was broadcast on C Span, link to c-span.org
with shots of Obama & others watching as the actions unfolded, one of C Span's cover pages displayed a still photo of a crowd of young people magically assembled in front of the White House, well after midnight on a Monday.
I thought it was curious that young people would have assembled in a such a timely fashion, at such a late hour on a work night. Young people in DC party hard, but they are uncommon ambitious, and work hard too; the sidewalks roll up relatively early on work nights.
The revelers were identified on-air as "students from nearby Catholic University."
After about 5 or 6 hours, the photo was removed.
But there's a screen shot in odd corners in the ethernet.
The screenshot of the crowd shows a woman w/ blonde hair, apparently on someone's shoulders, holding an American flag outstretched behind her. She's wearing a black sweatshirt with the AEPi logo on it in gold letters.
Doesn't mean a thing, I suppose. Anybody can buy a sweatshirt.
If you come upon a 45 min. lull in Olympics IV drip, this 'll cheer you up --
Lt. General Richard Formica talked about missile threats against America and the possible responses to these threats.
spoiler alert: 1st question from the audience? "How is the US prepared to handle an Iranian attack on Turkey's something-something-something."
nb. not real encouraging that in a speech that included mounds of acronyms & jargon about how US "provides DOTMILPF of the TIPPY 2 Radars in 850 locations, space operations & ballistic systems around the world, . . .ready to defend our homeland against attacks from rogue states" on at least 3 occasions, the microphone the gen. was using, failed.
fer sure, Mooser. My Dad used to run into all kinds of vets at the VA hospital where he spent so much of his life, after having been injured in WWII.
He was still alive when the WWII Memorial in Washington, DC, was inaugurated, but his poor health made it impossible for him to visit.
Ah well, maybe next war.
Nearly 59 years after the end of World War II, the National World War II Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, May 29, 2004.
"The US had no guilt"
Today is the 67th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima that killed 140,000 Japanese civilians.
The United States chose to incinerate civilians rather than engage military-to-military.
Perhaps because the people of the United States have not contemplated the depth of their guilt -- for two nuclear bombings as well as for the firebombings that killed additional hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians and 600,000 German civilians -- Americans have assumed a false sense of righteousness.
Herodotus thought long and hard about the Persian wars against Greece, and how it came to be that a tiny power like Greece prevailed over the then-most powerful empire in the world. He concluded that the Persians displayed "arrogance and hubris, and failed to handle its earlier victory over Lydia with elegance and grace. " Due to that hubris, Herodotus concluded, Persia was vanquished, beginning the collapse of its empire.
There's a lesson in there, for those willing to see.
"Hateful" yes, it is hateful that " one of the main Jewish exports of our time is the Holocaust – this from America. Another major Jewish export is military weapons – this from Israel.” It is also true.
In the process of cornering the market on the sufferings of large groups of people, the suffering of two or three entire generation of Americans has been obliterated: the suffering of veterans returning from WWII were swallowed up in the narcissism that saw only jewish suffering as worthy of notice -- the holocaust memorial in the US capitol was built before a memorial to veterans of WWII.
" nonsense." yes, it is nonsensical that "one of the main Jewish exports of our time is the Holocaust – this from America. Another major Jewish export is military weapons – this from Israel.”
Not only nonsense but extremely dangerous nonsense, particularly when a government that finds its ideological blueprint & battle plan in 3000 year old mythologies of conquest and plunder is now armed with the most advanced and destructive weapons mankind has ever known. In 1500 BC, man's destructive capacity was limited to the strength of his arm and the (poor) quality of metals he was able to produce. Israelis have the same homicidal mentality as Joshua but the killing potential of Einstein.
Leon Panetta is Italian, in the mind and mold of Andrea Doria.
Two things you should know about Andrea Doria (and by extension, the cultural heritage of Panetta:
1. a successful mercenary, Doria nevertheless changed sides to advantage his home city/state, Genoa;
and
2. Doria remained fiercely loyal to Genoa
Don't assume that what Panetta tells the media is carved in stone; it might just be what it is useful for some to believe.
Do not EVER doubt that Panetta's first, last, and in-the-middle loyalty is to the USA. Panetta is NOT an Israel firster. Panetta is in his mid-seventies; he's not a fabulously wealthy man, but he's comfortable enough to have started his own small think tank. He's he's not doing what he does for the money, and he didn't need to return to DC at all; he is doing it because he sees public service as a patriotic responsibility. He does & says some stuff that makes me cringe, but I trust that he is doing what needs to be done to negotiate waters infested with Israel firster sharks.
considering Romney's declaration of willingness to attack Iran, please pardon me if offending Jewish sensibilities re money fails to move the outrage needle.
that said --
Why has no pundit or journo made the most obvious connection in the entire universe: If Israel has a GDP of $31 000/per kippa'd cap, why do they need US taxpayer's money to get along?
US has a per capita GDP of $48,100 (2011). The buying power of that figure is a different thing entirely. I can't find -- and would be challenged to interpret if I could find -- a chart that shows the relative buying power of US $48,100 to Israel's $31,000.
btw -- did y'all know that in 2008 Israel changed from a dollar-denominated economy to a shekel-based system?
link to haaretz.com
===
Speaking again of how Israel generates wealth/revenues -- link to jpost.com
Looks like a Congressionally-approved hedge fund against the possibility that Israel will be required to compensate Palestinians for dispossession in Nakba & subsequent.
===
Theodore Herzl died in 1904.
It is ludicrous to associate the founding of Israel with the Holocaust.
----
The perpetuation of statements like these:
and
and
force reasonable people who are trying to make sense of what is happening to their world to seriously question whether the "existential threats" that Herzl perceived in the 1890s, and that Rabbi Stephen Wise & Sam Untermyer perceived in 1933, and that Benny Morris wrote of link to historynet.com
Iran poses an existential threat to Israel's security, that has required the strangulation of Iran's economy, the assassination of Iran's scientists.
Hamas poses an existential threat to Israel and must be wiped out -- costing the lives of 400 Palestinian children.
How much more of this sh*t do people like Pinchas Goldschmidt and his Israeli and American counterparts think they can get away with?
could be there are things MSM chooses not to waste a lot of ink on
2008 Israeli Soldier commits suicide
2010 Two IDF soldiers commit suicide
2012 Despite tragic setbacks, army is lowering suicide rate within its ranks
2011 Overall violent offenses in Israel dropped by 22 percent between 2006 and 2010, according to police statistics revealed on Tuesday, but the murder rate rose by 10% over the past year.
Real men go to Tehran.
And it's safer, too (unless, of course, Mossad/MEK get there first).
spend an hour or so browsing Der Spiegel. See what a pistol-whipped nation looks like.
link to spiegel.de
link to spiegel.de
zionists administer guilt like an IV drip, to ensure German compliance with Israeli demands for more money, political cover, privilege to young Jews in Germany, nuclear submarines.
This is what will happen -- is happening -- to the United States.
"An example unto the nations."
Insurance against an "accident" in the prison shower.
link to spiegel.de
Rabbi Stephen Wise would know -- he represented that power.
Sassan tracks to a location just outside Camp Pendleton.
sometimes values suck.
for example, Joshua's values suck: voices in his head told him it was okay to steal the land of Jericho and slay all its inhabitants.
Based on Old Testament recidivism, United States claims the right decide who should be the leaders of sovereign states, and the right to kill leaders who are inconvenient to them.
Sergei Lavrov and Vitaley Cherkin stand on their values that coincide with an international consensus recorded in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2131 (XX) on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty, which falls under the general rubric of the Golden Rule: Do Unto Others as you would have Other Do Unto You.
Some prefer to erode both of those consensus holdings:
the housing is ugly.
Leila Shawa's family had orange groves in Gaza. She and her family were forced from their home and their family's plantation in 1948. Shawa, an artist, says the land and architecture were magically beautiful. She comments that the buildings that Jewish settlers built to replace the indigenous architecture was an "arrogant statement that we now control you."
Not only should universities become echo chambers, efforts are under way to create echo chambers in US public libraries:
In a major public library system that is over 100 years old, has over 70 participating branches and well over a million volumes, there are 2839 items under the subject 'holocaust;' but only 131 under the subject 'Persian history,' and at least a third of that number are graphic novels; another dozen are books on Esther, and most are written by authors with an antagonist point of view.
with respect to Ms. Weiss, whose feathers I would not want to ruffle even a little bit, there's a whiff of (ahem) tribalism swirling around the Penn State debacle.
Joe Paterno's grave has been (figuratively) desecrated -- his entire career and all the good he did at Penn State have been marked forever by NCAA decrees.
But Graham Spanier, former Penn State president at whose desk the buck should have stopped, was allowed to resign relatively quietly, and quickly landed a job with the Federal govt in the security arena.
Read the comments to the linked article.
Penn State students & alum are not pleased. Nor are they politically unaware.
great big wet smooch to Myron Kaplan (hope he doesn't smoke cigars) at CAMERA: he provides names and emails of people to contact to protest C Span' biased programming.
"“The academic research on Israel is no longer the footnoted “Exodus,” and younger Jews, when they go to college, are walking away with very different picture of Israel,” "
deep irony.
The Israel studies programs that megamillionaires (like Bronfman) have planted in universities all over the US will end up being the undoing of the zionist project.
Hell, Bronfman could have saved his money. A careful reading of Edwin Black's "Transfer Agreement" slaughters a whole herd of sacred cows.
Eleanor, first off, know that I'm on your side; I hate what is happening to the Syrian people. I've only observed it thru media but you've been exposed to it personally. That's a powerful dose of emotion.
Second, "the Ba'athist regime" was your term.
Quite honestly, I don't know exactly what is meant by "Ba'athist regime" in the context of Syria. Do you mind explaining what you mean by that term?
I'm aware of stresses among Alawites, Sunnis, and Shia that Assad worked to ease (i.e. Bashar is Alawite, his wife is Sunni. Their marriage was not a hit with Assad's mother but he married her anyway -- why would he now deliberately create cross-group fissures?); I think I understand that group tensions are being exacerbated to cause divisions -- similar to what took place in Iraq. But where does the Ba'athist factor come in?
Eleanor, you are over-invested in "effects" -- the horrible suffering of Syrian people caught up in whatever is going on in their country,
and with this statement --
-- you tip your hand that you take it for granted that the "Ba'athist regime" is the "cause" of the suffering.
Effects do not cause causes.
Some of us are sceptical about what we are being led to believe are the causal factors of the suffering of the Syrian people.
===
Annie passed along a link to a report by Guardian journalist Charlie Skelton that traced some of those causal factors -- and factotums.
Thanks, Annie, and recommend Skelton's research to all who are concerned about the suffering of the Syrian people.
Eleanor, you delude yourself if you think the Iranian protest in 2009 was "home grown."
Here's a clue: parse this recent statement on CAMERA's website:
How can Iran simultaneously be a dictatorship and have "fraudulent elections that erupted in a Green Movement protest?
As Stephen Kinzer has written, Iran is the ONLY Islamic state in the region that has the elements of a democracy and HAS elections.
As Eric Brill has demonstrated exhaustively, the 2009 elections were fair enough to make the outcome unmistakable: a majority of the Iranian people re-elected Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The rest of CAMERA's rant is so detached from reality that one hopes Avigail Abarbanel has some free time to deal with another set of nutcases.
The trope that Ahmadinejad is a religious fanatic etc. is lifted straight out of Yossi Melman's "Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran," a work that delivered orgasms of fear and delight to Israelis, according to Haggai Ram in Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession. It's a bogus assessment, more readily applicable to Israeli settlers from Brooklyn than to the broad swathe of Iranians and certainly not to Ahmadinejad -- a very pious Muslim but not a "fanatic."
back to CAMERA:
CAMERA is like the woman who has been divorced and crabby for the past 20 years and can still recite every single frickn' time the filthy bastard failed to put the lid down on the toilet, while conveniently forgetting that she tried to strangle him in his sleep. Specifically, CAMERA ignores that fact that Israel & US trained the Shah's SAVAK that tortured Iranian civilians; slaughtered as many as a dozen Iranian diplomats from 1980 to the early 1990s in Israel's "moral" quest to find airman Rod Arad (see Ronen Bergman, "The Secret War with Iran," pp. 158-160); fails to mention that Israel profited -- enormously -- from weapons sales to Iran throughout the Iraq war, a situation about which an Israeli Defense Ministry official said, "We didn't make any ethical assessment at all. All that interested us was to sell, sell, sell more Israeli weapons and let the Iraqis and Iranians kill each other with them." (Bergman, p. 43)
CAMERA concludes:
What can anyone say to a statement like that? It reflects the level of mendacity -- if not outright, psychopathic detachment from reality -- that one has come to associate with Israel firsters, Eleanor.
Given that evidence of the deluded mindset with which an Israel firster responds to an anonymous comment from a concerned American taxpayer, how should a reasonable and prudent person assess the kind of information high-level Israelis are whispering into the ears of US congressmen and key decision makers?
How could anyone place even a grain of credibility in statements that come out of Israel firsters like CAMERA & fellow travelers?
Sergei Lavrov has made repeated attempts to set up dialogue between "resistance" and Assad. Assad has repeatedly said he is willing and eager to sit down and talk. The opposition movements have insisted that "no talk of a transition government can take place until Assad steps down." Assad will not agree to that. Assad is doubly resistant to such a non-starter since he's extended several favors to the US and to Israel and gotten nothing in return. (similar to Khatami's overtures that were rebuffed by Bush admin, culminating in Axis of Evil).
It is the same gambit -- the same handful of sand -- that Dennis Ross has thrown into Iran negotiations: FIRST agree to preconditions, then we can negotiate. (btw, anybody got a bead on Jeff Feltman's activities lately?)
Thank you, W Jones. That's the way I understand the situation as well.
I'm afraid I have to take issue with Eleanor's assessment. I understand that she is talking to people who have suffered horribly and are personally caught up in a tragic situation.
But it is simply not an accurate representation of the whole situation to make statements such as 'Assad has been a brutal tyrant for 40 years.'
Blumenthal has done a lot of very good work, but this statement --
-- is viewing the trailer and thinking it is the whole dramatic arc. Max's Marxist hat is fitting a bit too tight.
According to analysts who have interviewed Assad and assessed his strengths, weaknesses, goals and obstacles, Assad is the opposite of the "rich neoliberal"; and constantly conflating Basher with his father in order to be able to say "tyranny for 40 years" fails to take account of witnesses such as the Syrian BBC journalist who said, "we lived in peace for most of my life;" and fails to acknowledge Assad's slow, hard slog to reform Syria FROM his father's era; against predictions that after Syria pullout from Lebanon Assad would fail; against all of US bets & actions against Assad's efforts; and mindless of Assad's tremendous assistance to US in the war on terruh.
You doubtless spoke with people who have suffered greatly, Eleanor; but I suspect their present state of distress does not represent the entire story of Assad's rule, nor do they seem to account for the reality that the US-Israel and western interests play a huge rule in their suffering.
On Annie's original Syria thread, someone linked to Vijay Prashad. [thank you, btw]
iirc, Prashad explained that Assad has been a reliable border guard for Israel. The picture that seems to be coming into focus is that Assad has made gestures to keep Israel and US happy but has received nothing in return -- something like Khatami in Iran -- while simultaneously attempting to phase in internal reforms of Syria's "old guard" by slowly replacing that entrenched deadwood with sophisticated technocrats and introducing economic and social reforms. The US has been unhelpful at every turn.
The mere fact that WINEP speaks with one voice seeking the ouster of Assad -- even supporting his assassination, is evidence enough for me that Israel sees some advantage in creating and sustaining chaos in Syria.
Tracking Hillary Clinton's numerous speeches and pronouncements on Assad, from ~2009 to the present, demonstrates a distinct ratcheting up of the pressure to remove Assad. The policy Clinton has been following was established by the Bush Admin. and Dick Cheney's office.
Deep deep in the background -- the Cheney administration supported the notions of Jeanne Kirkpatrick. During her stint as UN ambassador, Kirkpatrick worked diligently to fracture the Saudi-African alliance against Israel. Some of Kirkpatrick's earliest mentors were uber zionists, and Kirkpatrick was as well. She was stridently pro-Israel, anti-Palestine, anti-Iran. Now, Kirkpatrick's agenda is complete: Saudi Arabia & Qatar are forging temporary, tactical alliances with Israel & US with the goal of harming Iran. As Vijay observes, the alliances are not the result of a long-term vision but have at heart the determination to preserve Arab monarchies.
Israel firsters (WINEP) are probably supporting the overthrow of Assad, even tho it will harm Israel's interests, because Israel firsters think chaos in Syria will harm Iran.
As usual, the Israel first anti-Iran clowns are wrong at every level of their analysis, but they don't pay the price, Syrian people do.
Back in the 1950s, when US oil companies (Aramco) were building TAPLINE to get Saudi oil to the Mediterranean, Israel was a headache so TAPLINE needed Syria for a workaround but Syria resisted out of sympathy with Palestinian Muslims. US ginned up a war with Syria; within a short time, problem solved.
A similar scenario may be playing out again.
Anybody know what the Clintons' good friend Marc Rich is doing these days?
is the complaint that Iran is threatening to pray Israel to death?
using callers to C Span as a barometer, people are catching on and calling out BS when they hear it.
there is hope.
just a little bit, but hope.
same sh*t
different day
Center for New American Security, 'Game Changing Diplomacy,' Sept 2008
Bipartisan Policy Center April 2012
(what was most noteworthy about this conference was how thuggishly dumb the participants were, all of 'em -- Nicholas Burns, Michael Makovsky, Dennis Ross, Steven Ruderman, Elliot Abrams, Mort Zukerman. They fairly drooled with the prospect of causing suffering and fear of suffering to Iranians, and they did not seem to possess the capacity to reflect on their own essential immorality and mendacity. It's also remarkable how physically unattractive these people are -- the eyes are the mirror of the soul. How embarrassing for Americans and Jews to have to claim these buzzards as "my people.")
what intrigues me is why Romney went to Poland, and not to Auschwitz.
Not so much why he didn't go to Auschwitz, but why he went to Poland. For the Ohio-Wisconsin Polish bloc? I don't think so.
More likely to connive with Poland to plant anti-missile systems ostensibly to "defend" Poland AND Russia against Iran's "emerging" (definition: they don't have 'em yet, but maybe someday they might) long range missile threat) that are simultaneously intended to keep Russia in check and let Russia know that if Russia gets too uppity, it will be punished -- particularly re Iran.
and
===
re:
"brutal dictatorship" What are the grounds by which you stand behind (warrant) the claim that Assad's rule is a "brutal dictatorship?"
When did it become a "brutal dictatorship?"
Is Assad singularly responsible for creating a "brutal dictatorship?"
Has Assad done things that demonstrate that his rule is anything other than a brutal dictatorship?
Is there evidence pointing to Assad as the singular source for brutality?
Is there evidence that others may be responsible for brutality in Syria?
re:
"[Assad] create[s] the context where dissent can only be voiced through violence."
How do you know that?
Can you provide evidence of a pattern where dissent in Syria could be voiced only through violence? Can you provide evidence to show that Assad and only Assad is responsible for creating that context?
1. In 2005, Seymour Hersch said that "Basically, the neocons look at Assad and see Saddam. They want to take him out."
2. Also in 2005, Flynt Leverett said and wrote that the Bush administration was "inclining toward a policy of regime change" in Syria.
3. In 2011, Hillary Clinton made public statements that "Assad is not indispensable; he should step aside." (Assad countered that he does not answer to the West, he answers to the Syrian people. )
4. In May 2011, Franklin Lamb visited Syria and was astonished to find it peaceful, prosperous, and bustling.
5. In 2012, numerous reports revealed that the United States, Saudia Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar were funding, assisting, harboring and providing intelligence and other support to foreign fighters in Syria.
-Since Max Weber, nation states have held the principle that the state holds the monopoly on violence.
- United Nations Resolution 2131 (XX) declares that "1. No State has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. Consequently, armed intervention and all other forms of interference or attempted threats against the personality of the State or against its political, economic and cultural elements, are condemned."
6. Also in 2012, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was on the ground in Syria and witnessed armed "protesters" firing upon Syrian civilian protesters as well as attacking and firing upon Syrian army troops who were carrying out a state army's assigned duty: protecting the Syrian people from an armed rebellion.
7. In Feb. 2012 the people of Syria voted in a Constitutional Referendum. Syria claimed that a majority of the Syrian people approved the Constitutional reforms. (The vote was dismissed as a "farce" by numerous Western sources. But then, the vote for Hamas was rejected, as were the results of Iran's 2009 vote.)
How do these sets of facts either support or undermine the warrant that "Assad is a brutal dictator who is creating the context where dissent can only be voiced through violence?"
Annie, gotta say this -- your quiet (yes, your writing has a quiet tone; doesn't mean it's not bunker-buster powerful) relentless determination to look at 'just the facts' about Syria is awesome.
kudos & thx
Mr Saigon, encourage you to refrain from cheerleading for war without assessing all sides of the situation.
I just spent 90 min watching this video & it was time well spent
"Inheriting Syria," w/ Flynt Leverett, Seymour Hersch, Martin Indyk
Colin Wright, have you ever explored Basher Assad and Syria from Assad's point of view?
Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett have --
In 2005 Flynt Leverett published a book about Assad's leadership. He discussed it here, on the day after Syria pulled out of Lebanon, in a forum introduced -- "with pride" -- by Martin Indyk at Brookings Saban that paired Leverett with Seymour Hersh.
link to c-spanvideo.org
Foreign Affairs reviewed Dr. Leverett's work on Syria and Assad here --
Flynt & Hillary Leverett have discussed Syria a number of times on their blog --
link to raceforiran.com
Charlie Rose has interviewed Basher Assad several times:
2006 link to charlierose.com
2007 link to video.google.com
2010 link to charlierose.com
There is no excuse for Mondoweissians to express uninformed opinion.
the point i meant to hilight in the Sic Semper Tyrannis link was Lang's claim that chemical weapons in Syria is a "distraction; " bogus.
Pat Lang at Sic Semper Tyrannis
-There is no good outcome for Israel re Syria link to turcopolier.typepad.com
actually there is something the US could do, Oleg: the US could stop supplying weapons and mercenaries to attempt to overthrow the Assad regime.
plain. and. simple.
US & Israel firsters have done everything in their power to foment agony in Syria, and to cut off avenues of dialogue.
The civil war in Syria is Made in the USA, just as much as the 1953 overthrow of Mossadeqh in Iran. US State Department is staffed by slow learners.
Hillary Clinton's State Department planned and set in motion a scheme to topple the Assad regime over a year ago. From the first instance she had in mind the removal of Basher Assad -- from Haaretz, 2010: link to haaretz.com
This is a US and Israel -- more specifically, AIPAC-driven agenda.
The last charge, that AIPAC is driving the agenda, is based on the lopsided programming on C Span.
CAMERA sends out warnings to C Span producers/moderators -- "COMCAST is your funder; we will tell Comcast on you" -- and Comcast is owned by Israel firsters. (see CAMERA C Span, July 4, 2012).
Programming on Syria that C Span has carried in the past months:
-Ephraim Sneh (on a Wilson Center panel, moderated by Aaron David Miller, with Trita Parsi to hold the fort against Miller, Sneh, and Gaith Omani) In this Feb 22 2012 program, Sneh stated nonchalantly that "Syria will be in turmoil and it will spill over into Lebanon."
-David Pollock, WINEP, June 30 2012 link to c-spanvideo.org When a caller suggested that the best course of action might be to assassinate Assad, Pollock replied, "it's being tried; it's very difficult. An adviser to Assad had been poisoned but was hospitalized & survived."
- C Span aired a Center for Strategic & International Studies moderated by Anthony Cordesman and including Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International and Aram Nerguizian, Visiting Fellow at Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). July 13 2012. Nerguizian was quite pessimistic about Syria's future and stressed the fault-lines between Sunni, Alawite, and Shiite Muslims. (In a BBC news brief on July 22, 2012, BBC interviewed its own ethnic Syrian reporters who report on Syria. The first woman opened her commentary stating that "for all the 30 years I lived in Syria, we lived in peace and prosperity. I do not recognize what is happening in my country.")
-Joshua Landis, Syria expert, at Wilson Center, whose director is Jane Harman. Jul 16 2012 Landis repeated that "a cruise missile in the palace" could solve the situation; "Assad is a loser and needs to go;" "unfortunately, Christians will not fare well with Assad gone."
-Eliot Engel, D-NY, Washington Journal, July 19 2012. Lost count of the numbers of times Engel said, "Assad brutal dictator; Iran evil; slaughtering his people."
-Michele Flournoy, Washington Journal, July 20, 2012. Flournoy's demagoguery was flowery but otherwise not a dime's worth of difference between the substance of her message and that of Engel-- "doesn't matter how many Syrians have to die, GET IRAN." Flournoy said, "Assad needs to go, then democracy will come to Syria and the differing denominations will live together in peace." See Landis, above.
-Andrew Tabler, WINEP, Washington Journal July 22 2012 link to c-spanvideo.org Watch Tabler's body language as several callers present substantive rebuttals of Tabler's claims. Tabler closed the session with "taking down Assad will deny Iran . . ."
------
The Syrian ambassador, Imad Moustapha, has not been a guest on C Span since 2009. (After 100 people were killed in Houla, US pushed through the expulsion of Syria's ambassadors from all western countries. Houla was likely a false flag op.)
Syria's deputy ambassador to the UN, Fayssal Mekdad, has not appeared on C Span since 2005.
Buthaina Shaaban, the (female) Head of Syria's Foreign Ministry, was last on C Span in 2004.
The last time Basher Assad appeared on C Span was August 2011 when C Span aired Al Jazeera's interview of Assad, in which he said he would not step down inasmuch as he answers to the Syrian people, not to the West.
The biggest question the Book of Esther poses for me is this:
Why weren't Esther & Mordechai in Jerusalem?
Why did so many Yehud -- a majority, according to the book of Chronicles -- choose "voluntary exile" in Persia rather than obey the word of God and return to Jerusalem? Did Esther's "tongue cleave to her very mouth" and Mordechai "forget his right hand," because they "forgot thee, o zion?"
Interesting ranking results, when one considers that Iran has been subjected to a relentless campaign of demonization for ~30 years, while Israel has relentlessly promoted itself and hidden its crimes under dirt like a dog covers its poop.
what is it about history & counterfactuals that frightens you, Winnica?
"irrational logic" worked for USrael imperialists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Iran WIP.
remember what Chas Freeman said:
What defines a duck?
Clearly, and QED, Ducks and states have defined borders.
To paraphrase the great statesman Benjamin Netanyahu, in a speech that will go down in history for its Ciceronian elegance: link to informationclearinghouse.info
If it does NOT look like a duck;
If it does NOT quack like a duck;
It ain't a duck.
What's so great about monotheism?
Roger Williams argued that the "first tablet," or the first four commandments, about man's duties to god,
should be eliminated from the purview of the state.
That's absolutely the only position that could be contemplated under the 3rd Amendment:
Williams argued that the six remaining commandments, regarding man's obligations to his fellow man [using male pronouns in an inclusive fashion] were universal, or 'natural law' obligations.
On The Cyrus Cylinder, the Persian King Cyrus acknowledges the Sumerian god Marduk who inspired and strengthened him to guarantee the rights of all other peoples in the realm to return to their holy places and worship each their own god/gods/goddesses.
This Scientific American article is old -- 1968 -- but packed with fascinating information about Iran's qanat system of "making the desert bloom" -- providing water for irrigation and consumption to a country that is half-mountain, half-desert link to users.bart.nl
It's an underground water system that channels mountain runoff to and along 170,000 miles of streams deep under the desert floor.
The author writes that "the system provides 75 percent of the water used in Iran."
Dennis Ross and his henchmen Mort Zuckerman, Michael Makovsky, Elliot Abrams, Nicholas Burns and Steve Ruderman were delighted that the US Congress agreed to provide bunker busters to Israel, so that Israel could mount a "credible threat" to Iran.
Think about what a bunker buster would do to Iran's water system.
Factor in that same bunker buster releasing nuclear radiation.
Toss in the fact that much of Iran lies on an earthquake-prone geological platform.
Then explain to me why Ross & his merry band, AIPAC, Hillary Clinton, the US Congress are not in bullet-proof cages at the Hague facing charges of inciting to commit genocide.
The anniversary argument has been used before. link to mondoweiss.net
Curious that we haven't heard anything more about the fingerprints of the guy in the photo.
Few more curiosities:
1. comment on a Washington Times communities blog re Colorado killings: "the killer was wired by CIA. The Agency has a headquarters in Colorado. What is the likelihood that a lone dude could get all that firepower, and wire up his apartment . . ."
2. This morning, Dr. Larry Weinstein was guest on NPR (??) to discuss his book about CIA Mind Control experiments in the 1950s. Weinstein's father had been treated at a psychiatric hospital associated with McGill University in Canada, and emerged from treatment with the functional capacity of a 3-year old. link to enotes.com
The comment on the Washington Times blog sure seems like genuine conspiracy theory, until you recognize that the US can do and has done the things alleged.
3. Statement in a different Washington Times communities blog:
responses to statement:
A couple years ago I had a conversation with a librarian about Wilhelm Marr. The librarian is Jewish; a very nice person, helpful and intelligent, and we're good friends.
I said to him that Marr did not invent the word or concept "anti-semitism;" it had been used at least as early as the 15th century, to apply to both Moors and Jews in Andalusia.
He did not say anything in words, but I wish I could verbalize his body language; his eyes and face contorted and he moved his head and shoulders in a way that seemed to suggest to me that he had no 'receptors' to take in the information; the concepts were totally beyond anything he had the neural capacity to process.
I think some Israelis -- like Netanyahu-- really really believe they are the sharpest knives in the drawer, and they really believe they are behaving morally when they kill people. They have conditioned away -- snipped off -- the neural transmitters through which one would process information to the contrary.