Total number of comments: 22 (since 2010-04-22 23:25:40)
fillmorehagan
Retired economist.
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- Resume builders: Be a broken record on Iran, cheer authoritarians … 1
- UN Committee: Israeli system ‘tantamount to apartheid’ 0
- Slater on Beinart 0
- And we live on… 0
- US official — we went to Israel first 3
- Israel lobby’s favorite senator tries to erase Palestinian refugee status … 23
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- BDS victory: South Africa strips Ahava’s ‘made in Israel’ label 713
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- ‘This is not fair play’: Mahmoud Sarsak’s family demands his … 389
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- The Messiah’s Donkey: Settlers fire on Palestinian villagers as the … 235
- Aharon Appelfeld’s rage at the German language (and Arendt’s need … 156
- US to differentiate between ‘personally displaced’ Palestinian refugees and their … 129
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- Affirming a Judaism and Jewish identity without Zionism 110
- Feeling the hate in Long Island 97
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- WaPo’s Walter Pincus says US is ‘going above and beyond … 87
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Recent Comments
click link to see last 100 comments- Resume builders: Be a broken record on Iran, cheer authoritarians in Gulf (1)
- Annie Robbins: Having recognized its weakness, the US knows that it will be the UN that takes the lead in Syria and...
- Did Israeli Eurovision contestant watch too much Juliano Mer Khamis? (54)
- Annie Robbins: GL, urban dictionary has PEP, just no explanation of progressive except for palestine....
- German Lefty: Annie, it looks like you got infected with the Eurovision virus. Great. The more fans, the better. The...
- US official — we went to Israel first (3)
- traintosiberia: OMG! Why I don”t have that Stockholm Syndrome yet! How long do I have to feign that I have it.
- Annie Robbins: a U.S. official…asked to remain anonymous owing to the sensitive nature of the issue. sensitive?...
- Carllarc: proof of ‘Israel firsters’, for sure
- Israel lobby’s favorite senator tries to erase Palestinian refugee status for millions (23)
- piotr: How many Jews who made aliya were actual refugees from Roman persecution? Thus the “Jew who taunted...
- Affirming a Judaism and Jewish identity without Zionism (113)
- yourstruly: what was that sound? the special relationship breaking down and the loud and sustained chorus that...
- MHughes976: I’m still a bit uncertain about what R.Brian means by ‘Zionism’: what proposition did...
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- Resume builders: Be a broken record on Iran, cheer authoritarians in Gulf (1)
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Phil
Really hope you are right about a new era for Arab-American relations, but I recall you very optimistic early on that Obama would chart a new course in the Middle East. This optimism was misplaced to put it mildly.
One thing that opponents of the Israel lobby need to hammer home is that aid to Israel continues to flow unabated year after year, even as many millions of Americans are facing serious hardship. Zero rates and zero hikes in social security benefits are squeezing many seniors and former members of the middle class. Medical costs for Americans are soaring while Israeli Jews have (I think) a fully socialized medical system that is essentially free and their economy is strong.
To add insult to injury the American Jewish community is rich enough to itself provide a few billion dollars of aid to Israel every year without burdening the hard pressed American taxpayer sill further.
WP editorial page editor Fred Hiatt is a notorious neo-con, Israel firster, and warmonger. Not surprising he is hiring folks who think like him
It is not only Zionist billionaires who are pushing an Israel-first agenda and striving for an attack on Iran.
Incredibly the AFL-CIO continues to send huge amounts of money to Israel even when unions and workers in general are under incredible pressure here at home.
link to counterpunch.org
Who else but the Israel lobby could bring together plutocratic billionaires and what remains of organized labor to fund the continued disposession of the Palestinians and push for war with Iran
There will be no attack on Iran as long as the Israelis understand that the price would involve a big loss (thousands) of Jewish lives. Iran's ability to hit back effectively is the ONLY thing preventing a catastrophic regional conflagration IMHO.
Cutting off or substantially reducing aid to Israel would give the numerous billionaires and near-billionaires who are the real power centers of the Israel lobby a chance to demonstrate how sincere is their Zionism.
To be blunt these people have sufficient resources to offset any reductions of US aid. But would they do so? I suspect many of them would greatly tone down their dual loyalist war mongering if they had to pay for much it out of their own pocket rather than burden the hapless US taxpayer as they have been doing for generations.
Good essay on why the Israel lobby is so powerful by James Petras
The State and Local Bases of Zionist Power in America
Any serious effort to understand the extraordinary influence of the Zionist power configuration over US foreign policy must examine the presence of key operatives in strategic positions in the government and the activities of local Zionist organizations affiliated with mainstream Jewish organizations and religious orders.
. 08.31.2010
There are at least 52 major American Jewish organizations actively engaged in promoting Israel’s foreign policy, economic and technological agenda in the US (see the appendix). The grassroots membership ranges from several hundred thousand militants in the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) to one hundred thousand wealthy contributors, activists and power brokers in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In addition scores of propaganda mills, dubbed think tanks, have been established by million dollar grants from billionaire Zionists including the Brookings Institute (Haim Saban) and the Hudson Institute among others.
Read essay [PDF]
Hamas has repeatedly vowed vengence in response to the Israeli killing of Hamas members such as that assassination in Dubai.
Just to put recent events in perspective
Back in 1864 Colorado militia under the command of Colonel Chivington carried out the infamous Sand Creek massacre of 150 peaceful Indians. When asked why his men had deliberately killed Indian children Chivington is reported to have replied "nits make lice."
When another people is demonized as sub-human the most unspeakable atrocities become not only possible but probable.
Chivington and modern day genocidal rabbis are truly brothers under the skin.
This kind of thinking is not limited to Israel.
A few months ago Chuck Schumer --one of the leading Israel firsters in the Senate -- was quoted as saying the Palestinians should be economically strangled because they did not accept the Torah and King David.
I live in Palm Beach County, Florida which has a very substantial Jewish population.
Just to give an example of how low the mainstream media here have sunk re: Middle East issues THE PALM BEACH POST now has a daily debate column ON THE LEFT versus ON THE RIGHT.
Today the issue was Israel and Iran. ON THE LEFT was Zionist war monger Thomas Freidman. ON THE RIGHT was Christian Zionist warmonger George Will who thinks Netanyahu is a modern day Churchill sounding the alarm about another Hitler.
Hard to imagine how the mainstream media could sink any lower on vital issues of war and peace.
The anti-Zionist movement could make much more progress IMHO if they point out forcefully and repeatedly that those pushing for war in the Middle East are in many cases the same people (Wall Street Zionist sharks and fat cats) responsible for the financial crisis that has inflicted such pain and misery on avererage Americans.
Interesting Analysis by Paul Woodward
You must do what we can’t, because if you don’t, we will
by PAUL WOODWARD on AUGUST 11, 2010
There are those who would have us believe that:
[O]ne day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon, to inform them that their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just ordered roughly one hundred F-15Es, F-16Is, F-16Cs, and other aircraft of the Israeli air force to fly east toward Iran — possibly by crossing Saudi Arabia, possibly by threading the border between Syria and Turkey, and possibly by traveling directly through Iraq’s airspace, though it is crowded with American aircraft.
Worried about an Israeli attack on Iran? That’s the idea.
You must do what we can’t, because if you don’t, we will.
This is how some Israelis are trying to twist Washington’s arm to get the US to attack Iran.
A more honest way of making the argument would be to say this: If the US won’t attack Iran, then Israel will — even though it won’t accomplish its military objectives and it will open Pandora’s box. Desperate nations sometimes do desperate things. You have been warned.
Another name for this: blackmail.
It’s hard to counter an irrational argument when the irrationality is intentional. Such are the means by which someone like erstwhile Israeli army corporal and current Atlantic commentator, Jeffrey Goldberg, attempts to persuade his readers — not through cogent reasoning based on clear evidence, but by an insidious form of argument that has the clarity of slime.
Consider the way he tries to close his case for an attack on Iran — even while avoiding saying straight out that he supports such a course of action.
The United States must not take the risk of letting Israel attack Iran because if President Obama orders US forces to attack instead, this would be the most patriotic thing to do. Obama would not be serving Israel’s interests; he would be defending Western civilization.
Based on months of interviews, I have come to believe that the administration knows it is a near-certainty that Israel will act against Iran soon if nothing or no one else stops the nuclear program; and Obama knows — as his aides, and others in the State and Defense departments made clear to me — that a nuclear-armed Iran is a serious threat to the interests of the United States, which include his dream of a world without nuclear weapons. Earlier this year, I agreed with those, including many Israelis, Arabs — and Iranians — who believe there is no chance that Obama would ever resort to force to stop Iran; I still don’t believe there is a great chance he will take military action in the near future — for one thing, the Pentagon is notably unenthusiastic about the idea. But Obama is clearly seized by the issue. And understanding that perhaps the best way to obviate a military strike on Iran is to make the threat of a strike by the Americans seem real, the Obama administration seems to be purposefully raising the stakes. A few weeks ago, Denis McDonough, the chief of staff of the National Security Council, told me, “What you see in Iran is the intersection of a number of leading priorities of the president, who sees a serious threat to the global nonproliferation regime, a threat of cascading nuclear activities in a volatile region, and a threat to a close friend of the United States, Israel. I think you see the several streams coming together, which accounts for why it is so important to us.”
When I asked Peres what he thought of Netanyahu’s effort to make Israel’s case to the Obama administration, he responded, characteristically, with a parable, one that suggested his country should know its place, and that it was up to the American president, and only the American president, to decide in the end how best to safeguard the future of the West. The story was about his mentor, David Ben-Gurion.
“Shortly after John F. Kennedy was elected president, Ben-Gurion met him at the Waldorf-Astoria” in New York, Peres told me. “After the meeting, Kennedy accompanied Ben-Gurion to the elevator and said, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, I want to tell you, I was elected because of your people, so what can I do for you in return?’ Ben-Gurion was insulted by the question. He said, ‘What you can do is be a great president of the United States. You must understand that to have a great president of the United States is a great event.’”
Peres went on to explain what he saw as Israel’s true interest. “We don’t want to win over the president,” he said. “We want the president to win.”
Israel only wants what’s good for America — and we’re supposed to believe that, even while few if any Israelis could be persuaded that America only wants what’s good for Israel.
The truth is that everyone gets to define their own interests so let’s ignore the obsequious crap from Peres and consider Goldberg’s core claim: that Israel is gearing up to strike Iran.
Even if Goldberg is participating in a neocon game of bluff, the only kind of bluff worth engaging in is one that has credibility. To make a credible argument that Israel has the intention of going it alone, Goldberg would have to present the outline of a credible plan of attack. He doesn’t even try.
Israeli planes would fly low over Saudi Arabia, bomb their targets in Iran, and return to Israel by flying again over Saudi territory, possibly even landing in the Saudi desert for refueling—perhaps, if speculation rife in intelligence circles is to be believed, with secret Saudi cooperation.
And he prefaces this “plan” by saying Israel only gets one try. That’s not even a back-of-an-envelope war plan. It’s more like a Twitter war plan.
Five years ago Kenneth Pollack dismissed the idea that Israel could attack Iran on its own. I don’t see any reason to doubt that his analysis on the military logistics of an attack still remains sound. Indeed, there seem to be plenty of Israeli analysts who concede that Israel simply does not have the option of going it alone. Even Goldberg quotes an unnamed Israeli general who says: “This is too big for us.”
In The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America, Pollack wrote:
[T]he United States … should not count on Israel to conduct a counterproliferation strike for us. It is almost certainly the case that Israel would be willing to absorb the diplomatic costs of a strike, would be prepared to deal with Iran’s retaliation in the form of either terrorist attacks or missile strikes on Israel, and probably is not overly concerned about Iranian behavior in Iraq. The problem for Israel is much simpler: Iran is too far away. Most of the known Iranian nuclear facilities are around 1,000 miles away from Israel. Its Jericho II ballistic missiles could reach these targets, but they lack the payload, accuracy, and numbers to be able to significantly damage (let alone destroy) more than one or two of the large Iranian nuclear facilities, which leaves the matter to the Israeli Air Force. Even assuming that Israeli aircraft were to fly directly to Iran, overflying Jordan and Iraq, the only aircraft in its inventory that could reach Iran’s known nuclear sites are its 25 F-151 strike fighters. (Israel would need to set up aerial refueling stations at three to five locations between Israel and the Iranian targets for its roughly 350 F-16s to be able to participate, which would be practically impossible.) Because the F-151s would have to carry a considerable amount of fuel, they could not carry a great deal of ordinance. Given the size of the various Iranian nuclear facilities, it would not be possible for Israel to destroy all of them in a single raid as it did Osiraq. Nor would it be politically, militarily, or logistically possible for Israel to sustain multiple such strikes over the many days, if not weeks, it would take for all its F-151s to accomplish the job. [My emphasis.]
The neocon game of bluff will only box in the Obama administration if the Israeli “threats” are treated seriously. A more appropriate response would seem to be to focus on the limits of Israeli military action — unless that is one imagines that Israel would launch a nuclear attack on Iran, which to my mind is wildly implausible. (If Israel wants to permanently seal its global pariah status, the first offensive use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki is a sure way.)
Goldberg reports, but apparently didn’t take seriously, the observations of some Israelis who given their positions of military command seem to merit close attention:
Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli army chief of staff, is said by numerous sources to doubt the usefulness of an attack, and other generals I spoke with worry that talk of an “existential threat” is itself a kind of existential threat to the Zionist project, which was meant to preclude such threats against the Jewish people. “We don’t want politicians to put us in a bad position because of the word Shoah [Holocaust],” one general said. “We don’t want our neighbors to think that we are helpless against an Iran with a nuclear bomb, because Iran might have the bomb one day. There is no guarantee that Israel will do this, or that America will do this.”
The message Netanyahu, Goldberg and other panic-stricken Zionists are unintentionally sending out is that come the day Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, Israelis may as well back their bags and abandon the Jewish state.
That probably won’t happen because in such an event Israel will “discover” what many Israelis no doubt already think: that retired General John Abizaid was right when he said that the United States and its allies can “live with” a nuclear-armed Iran. “Let’s face it — we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we’ve lived with a nuclear China, and we’re living with nuclear powers as well,” Abizaid told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
That was true in 2007 and it’s true now. It’s also true that spineless politicians remain the playthings of fear-mongers who are addicted to war.
Is it only me or is anyone else bothered by the fact that war mongering Zionists like Friedman account for a GROSSLY disproportionate percent of MSM columnists?
Perhaps this is one reason why the MSM is steadly losing ground to the Internet.
Someone on this thread suggsted that dual-loyalist Jewish oligarchs like Haim Saban be required to pay reparations to the victims of Israeli aggression.
I have a simpler and more feasible suggestion. Stop all US aid to Israel and let the Zionist billionaires provide these funds themselves if they want to continue to aid the Jewish state. The idea of hard pressed American taxpayers being saddled with a burden the Zionists could easily handle themselves is outrageous. How dumb can the goy get?
GIVE THEM ENOUGH ROPE AND THEY WILL HANG THEMSELVES
The Zionists think this ancient adage does not apply to them.
But it does and perhaps much sooner than many think.
The US has long supported the wholesale murder of civilians if deemed ncessary to acheive imperial objectives
Who can forget the "death squads" that rampaged in Central America during the 1980s killing tens of thousands.
The diference between then and now is that then we trained local killers to carry out these murders; now we do it ourselves via drones and special ops.
These days people are accused of anti-semitism if they talk about FACTS that might raise public ire towards warmongering Zionist plutocrats.
Extremist Israeli rabbi acused of incitement to kill gentiles who "threaten' the state of Israel.
Bernadotte fits this bill for sure. The more things change the more they remain the same.
link to uruknet.info
OT
Here is the correct link. How the Zionist boss of the world's biggest body armor maker got enough loot for a $10 million bat mitvah for his daughter.
link to afterdowningstreet.org
OT
People here might be interested in the following story from the UK
link to
The people who determine who gets the Nobel "Peace" Prize seem to be under heavy neo-con and Zionist influence.
The unseemly haste to give this award to Obama despite his pledge to escalate the Afghan War was a disgrace to put it mildly.
Would not surprise me if the give the award to Netanyahu if he makes the slightest concession to the Palestinians despite his history of massacres and war mongering
This truly is 1984 in spades.