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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
Not to be too vulgar, but here in DC that is now called "Getting Diane Reemed."
WAMU hosts (including Kojo) will not brook any call for warranted attention to the lobby issued.
I was Diane Reemed last year for bringing up the Netanyahu - Krytron smuggling case in the most appropriate forum - the Friday reporter roundup.
link to irmep.org
I think it says something about the absolute weakness of the other side's arguments that gatekeepers like Diane usually cut off such questions, though she is occasionally magnanimous.
g.
I emailed several people in charge of fielding the survey, mentioning this discussion. Two of them responded with essentially the same answers:
Response #1
"many thanks for making us aware of this discussion. As concerns your
question, the only reason why the survey has been only conducted once in
Israel and why responses to many of the questions we usually ask are
missing is deficient funding.If we were able to raise sufficient funds, we
had surveyed Israel more frequently and with a more complete questionnaire. I hope this explanation answers your questions."
Response #2
"We would love to have more complete data from Israel. The problem has simply been one of obtaining funding. The World Values Surveys are generally funded from within each country and up to now, it has been difficult to obtain funding there. Nevertheless, we hope to include Israel in the present wave...the University of Haifa is currently seeking funding to carry out the (complete) current wave of the World Values Survey in Israel."
That cited 43 megabyte SPSS dataset only lists Israel survey data for a single year: 2001 (column S020, rows 130600 to 131798) or 1198 registries (responses).
The SPSS Israel dataset for the neighbors question that fed the WAPO map (A124_02) scores -4 in every cell which seems to be the designator for no response, so it doesn't look like the question was even asked. Actually, if that assumption is correct, many survey questions were not asked.
There seems to be valid year 2001 survey data only for less politically sensitive questions like "How often discusses political matters with friends." And "the importance of child obedience." (A042).
I've written the World Values Survey organization (which claims its survey results cover 90% of the world's population) to determine why the Israel data is so scant. Obviously, given Israel's huge influence in the US, and despite the flaws in any survey, it would be valuable to have comparative quantitative survey data, rather than only rely on the constantly trumpeted assertions of "shared values" (especially from WAPO).
g.
This is really interesting. If, for example, the US and Israel results were radically different, it would provide a quantitative verification of the Mearsheimer/Walt thesis that the US and Israel don't really share common values.
The WAPO certainly isn't the first place one would look for that sort of data point. But perhaps the reason they didn't publish Israel data, is that the study did not include Israel.
link to ifn.se
So the question becomes, why wasn't Israel data included? The data used in the cited study appears to come from the World Values Survey Association.
link to worldvaluessurvey.org
Unhappily, simple data links to "Country 54" World Values data appear to be broken.
link to worldvaluessurvey.org
But if a statistically-minded Mondoweisser with SAS or SPSS wants to solve this mystery, and be more informative that the Post (easy) and study authors (not so easy), some data through 2005 on Israel appears to be available at:
link to wvsevsdb.com
It is 43 MB of data. (SPSS)
As Tim Berners Lee says, open data can change the world...(but only if you can analyze it!)
The petition to change the name of the "Greenspun Terrace" will be faxed every week to the executives at the Newseum until we reach 10,000 signatures, or hang heads with embarrassment.
link to thepetitionsite.com
The Greenspun's gave $7 million in 2006.
link to newseum.org
The Newseum was able to look beyond Hank's felony and terror ties.
link to irmep.org
Wonder what would have happened if the Pal journalists had coughed up $14 million before their demise?
One more thing. According to a declassified FBI report, "Greenspun and "immediate followers" had become discredited for ties with Irgun terrorists."
link to irmep.org
A guy with ties to the "right kind" of terrorists getting a terrace at the Newseum kinda sums up the current state of US establishment journalism on the Middle East.
This kerfuffle is drenched in irony and dusted in hypocrisy.
The Newseum *has a terrace honoring Hank Greenspun.*
link to newseum.org
Greenspun was a convicted felon who parlayed hundreds of thousands of profits on smuggled arms stolen from the US Navy (and elsewhere) to Jewish fighters in Palestine into a media empire author Dan Moldea characterized as "bad news."
link to spytalkblog.blogspot.com
Perhaps as a consolation, any plaque commemorating journalists of all stripes killed by Israel (and other countries) will be untouchable. Yet anyone can go still go walk all over the Greenspun terrace (and metaphorically, everything it represents) for a quite reasonable fee...
Actually, every US taxpayer supports the policy, since they fund the Jewish Agency, which funds the JPPPI, which is anti-assimilation. So your heart may say "yes," even as your own IRS form 1040 says "no...."
***********************************************************************
...according to a recent Congressional Research Service report (PDF) by 1973 the Jewish Agency began receiving $25 million a year in U.S. taxpayer funding for its settlement and other activities – totaling $460 million by 1991. CRS reveals that between 2000 and 2013 the Jewish Agency will have received another $534 million ($41 million per year) in funding from Congress – none of it easily auditable by U.S. taxpayers."
link to fas.org
Still looks remarkably similar to disingenuous lobbying for the "free" trade agreement.
When that came under fire, the "pro-Israel community" stepped forward urging that the U.S. would be at a competitive disadvantage to Europe, implementing trade preferences with Israel.
Like the Boxer "tougher" assertion, it was 100% misdirection.
Non-reciprocity is the essence of many AIPAC-drafted bills, no surprise there.
America's first "free" trade agreement in reality unilaterally dropped tarrif and quotas on all Israeli goods, while Israel was allowed to maintain "floating" tarrifs and quotas to protect certain industries.
Predictably, the "free" trade agreement turned a more-or-less equal trading relationship into one favoring Israel two-to-one.
It would be interesting to know what might be going on behind the scenes as AIPAC tries to ram this through. In the "free" trade case, it was investigated as espionage and theft of government property.
link to IRmep.org
Congrats, a VERY revealing video. "Give me your phone and he'll answer the question...." Now THAT would have been a decent trade...if there had been another camera in the room.
AIPAC has been trying to cover up the Israeli nuclear weapons program for decades. Just as more were beginning to pay attention to Dimona, AIPAC executive director Isaiah Kenen ran Judy-Miller type articles in the Near East Report about why Israel would never be able to produce an arsenal. At the same time, Abraham Feinberg (Israel's North American nuclear fundraising coordinator according to Avner Cohen) was writing checks to AIPAC. Coincidence?
The US National Security Council will still not release any documents outlining official US policy on the nuclear arsenal. If the policy were in any way defensible, surely some from the 1960s and 70s would have been released by now. But it's logical to conclude that since Israel has stolen material, know-how and technology from the U.S., the political thinking is it's easier to continue with the policy of "strategic ambiguity" than reveal to taxpayers just how corrupt this particular lobby/Israel/US policymaker issue is. Americans are children who aren't welcome into this adult discussion.
It was hard not to take Bret Stephen's piece as driven by the loss of a speaking honorarium that will not likely be easily replaceable in the near future. Poor Bret.
A recently (but only partially) declassified CIA damage assessment reveals Pollard thought of himself as a spy for Israel very early. Given the Weizmann Institute's clandestine activities in the U.S., it is possible that Pollard started doing work for Israel by the early 1970s. As is normally the case, however, the American people are deemed still not ready by the declassifiers-that-be for the full CIA damage assessment, and the still-classified Weinberger memorandum in aid of sentencing.
link to antiwar.com
g.
It is useful to review the American Zionist Council public relations plan for 1962-1963, seized during Foreign Agents Registration Act investigator raids and subpoenas.
"TV, Radio, Fims
The Department arranges for talks and interviews on Radio and TV, and servicing of film requests.
It also cultivates leading personalities in these media.
It encourages networks and stations to create programs revolving around Israel."
link to irmep.org
Nuclear ambiguity makes a *huge* difference. It is a corrupt stance in which the U.S. doesn't deal with the ongoing illegal diversions of nuclear technology and material to Israel. It means U.S. presidents can pretend the Symington and Glenn amendments prohibiting foreign aid to nuclear states outside the NNPT are not applicable to Israel. It allows journalists and so-called "media critics" and ombudsmen from Brooke Glandstone to WAPO's Patrick Pexton never to mention Israeli nukes as they prattle on in unbalanced discussions of the "Iran threat." link to articles.washingtonpost.com
Nuclear ambiguity is to pretexts for attacking Iran, what mobile anthrax labs, aluminum tubes, Niger yellowcake and mushroom clouds were to the whole Iraq outrage.
But it's not really targeted at the world. It's a policy administrations from Nixon to present and Israel have targeted at the American people. It's an anti-accountability policy.
The IRS doesn't know why ZOA was tax exempt. They couldn't come up with an application or exemption letter when asked several years ago.
ZOA was ordered to register as a foreign agent SEVEN TIMES. But the AG, with no statutory authority to do so, let them off the hook, undermining FARA enforcement.
See: link to wrmea.org
The documentary record reveals that AIPAC itself came out of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
It's therefore obvious why AIPAC objects to such characterizations.
One problem that may have caused the cut: the skit simply wasn't funny, at least as far as SNL goes. It was close to the bottom and even wasted their top talent.
Watch any 20 second clip of Fred Armisen on "Portlandia." Laugh riot. Look at the lines he dropped in this sketch with a blank stare. Creepily uncomfortable and not funny.
It's too bad it couldn't have been groundbreaking AND funny. Hope they keep trying and actually get funny stuff onto the air. Maybe they need Franken and Davis back.
This is *exactly* how history indicates AIPAC would kill the Hagel nomination.
1. Find a stalking horse seemingly unrelated to Israel, with broad support (conservatives, Benghazi)
2. Mount a reliable asset on the horse. (Graham)
2. Sweeten the deal to an even broader audience by connecting it in another troublesome nominee. (Brennan, progressives).
3. Remain the anonymous figure behind the scenes, use intermediaries. (Standard operating procedure on this type of thing).
An AIPAC official quoted in The National Journal once said “...there is no question that we exert a policy impact, but working behind the scenes and taking care not to leave fingerprints, that impact is not always traceable to us.”
Mainstream and alternative media keep bleating that AIPAC is out of the Hagel battle...because they aren't issuing press releases...Great research.
PS, if you don't believe AIPAC does that kind of thing, consult the shenanigans of AIPAC executive Michael Goland... If AIPAC is behind this, the damage will be done, even if the cover is blown years down the road. Even proven election fraud didn't magically unwind Cranston's horrible legislation.
"Terror-linked Official." Interesting.
Been looking for moniker "Nuclear weapons technology smuggling linked" PM Netanyahu...
"Missile Secrets Trafficking" former AIPAC Director Morris Amitay...
"Stolen Trade Secrets Receiving" former AIPAC lobbyist Doug Bloomfield...
But they just don't seem to stick! Will spare the links.
Thanks.
If you're carrying a Palestinian flag and see Allen, Irwin, Zollie and Hal coming down the street, better run!
Former Treasury official Levey's thesis is well worth reading over several times. Had not seen the gem highlighted by Phil.
"It demonstrated that the JDL had so cheapened the currency of civil disobedience and violence that it had lost whatever meaning and purpose it might have had if selectively and intelligently employed."
In other words, the guy the lobby appointed to wage economic warfare on Iran, apparently believed that if JDL had been a bit more purposeful and judicious in its killing in the United States, it might have preserved the community's support. Spoken like a mafia don. In the movie "Goodfellas" Tommy (Joe Pesce) had to be whacked because his killing spree got out of hand and brought too much attention onto the mob.
No wonder the DOJ is fighting tooth and nail not to release another prominent Treasury official's FBI file... The inner thoughts and true actions speak louder than the press releases and briefings at WINEP.
"...He [Abourezk] uses the word ‘Zionist’ in precisely the same bigoted way Bilbo..."
Dershowitz is such a vandal of the English language through conflation. Perhaps it is a habit picked up from running with real vandals destroying Arab property in New York back in his younger years...
link to irmep.org
Released from the National Archives fall, 2012
This morning on Morning Edition (NPR) it was Max Boot sharing his (allegedly) deep knowledge on guerrilla warfare against technologically advanced military forces.
One has to wonder what expert interview pools a more diverse NPR (at the executive, top reporter, booking levels) might produce for its listeners.
Can't wait to hear John Bolton's analysis of the UN, and Richard Perle's insights about a Hagel DoD.
Today Robert Reich, on the George Stephanopoulos Sunday yak show, wondered why Obama would expend political capital on confirmation, but wouldn’t touch the Israel lobby angle that George laid out on the table.
A few moments later, Reich launched into an in-depth analysis of the NRA’s “modus-operandi” to keep gun-control issues off the table.
As Phil previously noted, Reich’s approach to the Israel lobby is “affected ignorance.” This time in service to the anti-Hagel drive.
link to mondoweiss.net
Today Robert Reich, on the George Stephanopoulos Sunday yak show, wondered why Obama would expend political capital on confirmation, but wouldn't touch the Israel lobby angle that George laid out on the table.
A few moments later, Reich launched into an in-depth analysis of the NRA's "modus-operandi" to keep gun-control issues off the table.
As Phil previously noted, Reich's approach to the Israel lobby is "affected ignorance." This time in service to the anti-Hagel drive.
link to mondoweiss.net
To any who follow the issue, David Gregory's inability to deal with the true source/issues surrounding the expected Hagel nomination sounded like a cover-up. But even when reporters have been (rarely) asked to deal with it straight-on, they don't want to talk about the contours of the Israel lobby. Diane Rehm pitched the real question of "character assassination" to her journalist panel in the last 2012 "weekly roundup."
REHM11:21:43
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she would leave at the end of President Obama's first term. It is said that the White House will announce the appointment of John Kerry as secretary of state. There has also been the story that Chuck Hagel would be nominated as secretary of defense. I have a Tweet here -- two Tweets actually. "Please have your guests discuss the Israel lobby's character assassination of Chuck Hagel. Should Chuck Hagel be thrown under the bus for lack of deference to Israel and its U.S. lobby?" Susan.
GLASSER11:22:37
Well, you know, this is really interesting. This is now the second time in really the last few weeks that we've seen a controversy over a nomination that President Obama hasn't even made. I feel like we've entered a whole new phase of the Washington news cycle where would-be nominees are being attacked and going up to the Capitol Hill to defend themselves even before anything is announced. And I have to say it does look like Hagel, who's been extensively vetted according to sources reporting we've had on Foreign Policy, for the defense secretary job. It does seem as though the White House was interested in making him the defense secretary.
GLASSER11:23:14
But now it looks like he's hanging out there yet again in almost the same way that Susan Rice was where her nomination, which never happened by the way, was thrown up in a trial balloon where she went through the whole process, was exploded and really left in a very uncomfortable situation by President Obama refusing to publicly push her forward or even to make the nomination official. So now we have that situation.
GLASSER11:23:38
The controversy that former Senator Hagel, a Republican by the way, has excited really revolved around the question of whether he is deemed sufficiently pro-Israel in his policies. And there's a particular quote that he gave to an author, one of Foreign Policy's columnist as it happened, in which he referred to the quote unquote "Jewish lobby" as opposed to the quote unquote "Israel lobby." That’s being taken in some quarters as a sign that he is not a real supporter. He's been critical of Israeli settlement policy for example.
GLASSER11:24:12
But I think unfortunately what you see happening is a real almost tar and feathering situation here in which some people bandied about phrases like anti, semi, that's caused many people across the political spectrum in Washington to rally to his defense.
REHM11:24:30
Yochi.
DREAZEN11:24:31
And it's obscured, I think, the very real questions about is this the right pick for secretary of defense. I mean, there's the political question of whether you should have three of the last four democratic appointed secretaries of the defense be Republican. Bill Clinton picked Bill Cohen. You had obviously Bob Gates staying on. Now you might have Chuck Hagel. He has no management experience other than on the business side. He's never managed a major agency. He's never been part of the Pentagon running the biggest, most expensive, most complicated agency in the world.
DREAZEN11:24:57
He's been out of office for six years almost. It's not clear what his stand is on the world stage. Bob Gates had standing. Leon Panetta had standing. It's not clear Chuck Hagel does. So there are very legitimate questions about whether this is the right pick substantively or politically, as I think with Susan Rice as potentially with Benghazi, obscured completely by the politics. And I think the politics will get uglier now that the Kerry thing is -- if it's locked that's off the stage a little bit.
DREAZEN11:25:19
Hagel's the one person that's hanging. I think Susan's exactly right that it's strange that he's hanging there with no defense coming from the White House or from -- really from Democrats. He's becoming a piñata.
REHM11:25:27
Hisham.
MELHEM11:25:29
Look, I mean, you have to accept the presumptive right of a president who is reelected to pick his own cabinet period as there was a presumptive right of the president to pick his own nominees for the Supreme Court. These things are changing now. And now some people are presenting certain litmus tests for people. The President of the United States capitulated when it came to Susan Rice. I'm not a big support of Susan Rice. I'm not against Susan Rice. That's not the issue. He has the right to pick his own people.
MELHEM11:25:59
There was a character assassination against Susan Rice essentially blaming her for things she was not that responsible for. She was not even nominated. And the sight was ugly really, the way the -- you know, sharpening the knives for her and the way they dealt with her. And none of them now is even rethinking whether they've done something wrong or not. This is -- Chuck Hagel is a mainstream Republican. He's a moderate. Maybe this species in the Republican world is dying, is becoming extinct obviously.
MELHEM11:26:31
He's the leader, he's the chairman of a mainstream think tank called the Atlantic Council, which is highly respected. That includes highly respected Republicans like Brent Scowcroft and others. The man served in the Senate of the United States, had two Purple Hearts, he fought in Vietnam. Many of those who are criticizing him never fought in Vietnam or any war but they would like to wage all sorts of wars, as we've seen them pushing for the war in Iraq and other places.
MELHEM11:26:58
There's nothing anti-Semitic about the man's record, absolutely not. He believes in the mainstream American position, which is a two-stage solution. And yes, the man criticized settlement activities where there are a lot of Israelis. And there are a lot of pro-Israelis in this country who criticized settlement activities. And we've seen them on the record doing so. So to let this man bleed like that and with the White House almost capitulating on him really tells you something about how dirty politics has become in Washington.
REHM11:27:29
Last word, Susan.
GLASSER11:27:30
Well, I think those are all important points. Two quick other ones to throw into the mix, the other factor here with Hagel now that he's nominating Kerry is what I would call Obama's white male problem. And if you look at these national security appointments he basically would be not only appointing the first white male secretary of state in a long, long time but he -- the other reported contenders for defense secretary, for CIA are also white men. And so I think that's a concern after the Susan Rice nomination didn't come through.
Good find, Annie.
Aaron David Miller's claim that the Israel lobby is something of a non-factor outside the beltway is weird. Guess he's never heard of Israel PACs. Even if what Miller said was true, why would it matter? Also, he reaches back decades to find examples of presidents overruling an Israel lobby initiative. Just about every one an exception that proves the rule.
Thoroughly unimpressive. But that Greenwald, on the other hand.....wow.
--grant
Pretty amazing that the org that provided safe haven to an AIPAC exec credibly accused of espionage advances a foreign agent attack.
The hard-core Israel lobbying organizations, which have successfully resisted direct orders to register as foreign agents,
link to irmep.org
should clearly be the first priority of any DOJ attempt to enforce FARA and show that justice is blind.
The indispensable Harry Shearer played extended audio clips of Petraus on his "Le Show" a couple weeks ago. Creepy to listen to. Starts around 22:00
link to download.kcrw.com
Could someone please provide some watercolors and make this into a bedtime storybook? Bril.
PRI's NPR syndicated "the World" tried the same line yesterday—bring in Israeli "experts" and conflate Palestinian resistance with the school shooting. People who commented largely didn't buy the attempt.
link to theworld.org
I wonder if Saban has begun to buy up the necessary number of superdelegates for a Hillary bid? One can never start too early...
link to opensecrets.org
NPR's financial pivot point is the foundation and large individual contributor segment.
Until 2009 NPR used to identity by contribution range who they were in its annual report. American Jewish World Service appears as a donor of up to $999,999. George Lucas pitched in up to $499,999 in 2009. For many years, the top donor has been anonymous.
link to npr.org
But if you want to see how that segment shifted in 2010, (such as how much American Jewish World Service is now giving, stacked against those dropping out, vs newcomers like Yeshiva University or its supporters), it's no longer possible. As of 2010 segmented information no longer appears in NPR annual reports:
link to npr.org
In short, if you want to look beyond NPR's somewhat less-than-diverse lineup of managers, news personalities and programmers for factors contributing to its obvious slant, it's no longer possible to "follow the money" and determine where the large-dollar financial impetus for Israel-happy news may be coming from.
The photo of Saban sitting with Clinton reminds one of another photo: Uber-lobbyist Abraham Feinberg sitting with Atomic Energy Commission chair Glenn Seaborg.
link to irmep.org
Seaborg had just left the AEC when Feinberg offered him the equivalent of 10% of his annual salary for a single keynote address at the 1970 Weizmann Institute annual dinner in New York. For years, Israel lobby types supported Seaborg, helped his kids get into law schools, and invited him to honorarium-laden speaking events featuring other Nobel laureates (though he turned down the money until leaving gov't). During his career, Seaborg effectively derailed investigations into the NUMEC uranium diversions and helped launch the corrupt policy of "strategic ambiguity," or ignoring Israel's nukes and tech thefts from the U.S. Feinberg was Israel's nuclear weapons fundraiser in the U.S., and he surely viewed co-opting LBJ and Seaborg as part of the job.
Saban, like Feinberg, gets much more than he pays for from the Clintons. Phoney peace processing, no consequences for illegal settlements, rubber stamp on US taxpayer funded weapons, no prosecutions of foreign agents and espionage.
Just a cost of doing bidness.
Robert Siegel earns $375,655 in salary and benefits per year (near the top) ostensibly as a credible, unbiased news host. I wonder, as a percentage, how his honorarium for this single Saban gig compares to that. I'm sure Siegel will disclose it on the next "all things considered."
It is becoming more and more difficult to ignore all the prominent announcements of financial support from "American Jewish World Service," the George Lucas Educational Foundation, and various donors to Yeshiva University interspersed with those serialized nationally broadcast NPR "feel good" pieces about Israel.
If it's raw talent they need for entertainment, what could possibly beat an appearance by the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers? Bet Saban could get them....or maybe the mighty morphin Neocons...
link to wrmea.org
Brzezinski and Carter had a real opportunity to team up with Senator John Glenn and finally bust the perps of the NUMEC
link to irmep.org
(and by extension ZOA) link to s.tt
nuclear material theft from the U.S. scam.
But Zbig wouldn't give Glenn the access to secret docs he needed. (see doc) He and Carter "dropped it." Today we have a half billion dollar toxic cleanup at Apollo, and are still flummoxed by the corrupt policy of "ambiguity" in which the Israelis and President lie (by omission) to Americans about Israeli nukes, and don't properly enforce the Symington and Glenn amendments which would cancel U.S. aid to Israel.
Dropped indeed.
Annie is right--the money trail is now the real question.
The Schedule B list of contributors would at least reveal the dollar figures of contributions of over $5,000. From their revenue curve, I'd guess that a small number of donors suddenly made large contributions.
To get their Schedule B, it'll take a few weeks soliciting it from the IRS, which will censor the donor names.
If a foundation funded this, that might be available from the Foundation Center database.
Yeah. Board member earning $26,400.
Media for Christ is a tax-exempt nonprofit. According to their 2011 IRS form 990, their revenues shot up from $47k in 2009 to just over a million in 2011. They spent $648,980 on TV/ recording production in 2011 (which seems about right given the cheesy production values and number of actors in "Innocence of Muslims."
link to IRmep.org
Wonder who suddenly gave them the big (tax-deductible) bucks to make agit prop? And who the heck is Rania Mossad?
Very interesting indeed. Sam Bacile, aka Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, seems to be a red herring--just a petty criminal, taken down for identity theft and financial fraud in 2009.
Glad to see MW piercing the veil....following the money.
BTW, if the terms of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula's parole prohibits him from assuming false identities or communicating over digital technology, I wonder why we haven't heard of him returning to the slammer? Who's pool is the red herring swimming in?
Kudos to Phil for trying to get answers. Operatives from the unit Cohen leads at Treasury have briefed AIPAC's think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Poilcy, on TFI activities. Apparently they felt more free to take questions from that crowd. The question of how many Israel partisans staff TFI is relevant since it is a relatively new unit that appears to have been set up to enforce AIPAC-drafted legislation passed by Congress. Economic warfare bills have been AIPAC's key lobbying initiative over the past few years.
IRmep filed a FOIA to obtain the names and positions of all TFI unit employees in April. Hugh Gilmore, the FOIA liaison, was initially very cooperative stating that of course such directory information should be public, "since there's no such thing as secret government." In June Brian Sonfield, also of Treasury, suggested that the FOIA could be fulfilled simply by looking at the OPM employee records.
link to php.app.com
But searching there doesn't allow a focus in on TFI (or any particular unit). So, for now, we do have a secret government. And whatever the views of Cohen, his predecessor clearly seemed to be primarily motivated by concerns about Israel, as those who have been privileged enough read his thesis overseen by Martin Peretz can attest.
"'Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.' do those three sentences strung together in that order make sense to anyone?"
Use your decoder ring. For example “Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East. Israel supports a Middle East free of all weapons of mass destruction following the attainment of peace.”
That statement of policy in practice means:
"Israel will build and deploy as many nuclear weapons as it wishes, by any means necessary, but will not officially confirm their existence or ever dismantle them."
So the statement on Jerusalem means the United States must recognize the whole city is Israel's undivided capital. Full stop. The voice vote, on the other hand, will be a viral video example educating millions about how the Israel lobby really works. It really says it all. I bet there'll be a more successfull attempt at publically legitimating before the convention closes.
Stay tuned.
AIPAC founder Isaiah Kenen had the following to say about political platform writing in the July 15, 1960 "Near East Report"
"The importance of Platforms. Many people are skeptical about political platforms. But skepticism is unjustified. Platform declarations have a positive value in the clarification and implementation of our national policies. They help to mold public opinion at home because they inform and guide candidates, who stand for election on their party's program. They have importance abroad because they transmit to other governments the views of the American people. Sometimes our foreign policy is expressed more forcibly and plainly in a platform than when masked in the language of diplomacy. "
Keep in mind that Kenen (ten years before an employee of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs) was being paid by the Jewish Agency (a quasi governmental Israeli organization with access to tax revenue and review powers over Knesset legislation) to publish the Near East Report. He directly participated in Democratic Party platform negotiations. This was a couple of years before Walter Pincus noted (as a Senate investigator of foreign agents) that the Jewish Agency/Israeli goverment were essentially writing some US legislation. In this case, the Jewish Agency was "expressing the views" of the "American People" through a party plank few would ever know about.
And the charade of consent continues.
It is interesting that when U.S. oscilloscopes are smuggled to Pakistan, it is a huge international incident.
When the same export-controlled equipment (used in nuclear weapons development) is smuggled to Israel through a front company (Telogy):
link to efoia.bis.doc.gov
...all it generates is a mild rebuke from the Albright "think tank" and an inconsequential monetary penalty.
link to isis-online.org
In the 1960s and 1970s, there would be FBI and CIA investigations. In 2010, it seems as though the U.S. has outsourced export control enforcement on dual-use nuclear technology to what appears to be yet another node of the Israel lobbying network.
"I recall reading Medea Benjamin’s account of their (Tighe Barry, Grant Smith and herself) frustrating meeting with the Office of Congressional Ethics about this complaint. Edit: I now see it was cross-posted on MW on 9/28/11."
That's right. And the complaint heavily relied on innovative grants research first publicized on MW.
Walter Pincus, who investigated the Jewish Agency (sugar daddy to AIPAC and its founder) back in the day, was recently interviewed on C-SPAN. He said the following about his boss J. W. Fulbright. "“Not only on that because he was then considered sort of anti-Israel which was partly my fault because part of the investigation of foreign lobbying was the Jewish Agency for Israel which was doing all sorts of things that they weren’t supposed to do.” Fascinating interview (HT/Washington Report)
link to q-and-a.org
So *fifty years ago*, Israel lobbying groups and stealth foreign agents were found "doing things they weren't supposed to do." Yet nothing was/is done about it. So my overall point was that years pass. Legitimate complaints are filed. Violations seem to have been committed. Public attention and ire is raised. A new conduit is established. Ensuing darkness. It's a pattern.
It needs to be broken.
-g.
The American Israel Education Foundation looks like what, in any other circumstance, the IRS would rule to be a "sham" organization. According to our September 9, 2011 complaint:
1. It has essentially no infrastructure.
2. AIEF has no significant board independence from AIPAC's board due to overlap.
3. Although claiming to be an educational nonprofit, none of its curriculum is readily available for independent outside review.
4. AIPAC controls AIEF's programs and audiences.
5. From a benchmarking standpoint, AEIF does not have enough staff to do what it claims to do.
6. There are suspicious fund transfers between the tax deductible AEIF and non tax-deductible AIPAC.
7. AIEF obtains huge "faculty and staff" development grants. But again, has no staff to develop.
8. Like AIPAC, AEIF files deceptive form 990s that do not allow easy analysis of its donor concentration.
There has been no public response from the IRS about these concerns.
Full complaint and exhibits at:
link to irmep.org
Actually, an argument was made that Dennis Ross, as an employee of the Jewish Agency (which has a long and sordid history in the US), was an acting foreign agent. A public call that he duly register coincided with his move from State to the White House...
link to reuters.com
“entering or serving in the armed forces of a foreign state engaged in hostilities against the U.S. or serving as a commissioned or non-commissioned officer in the armed forces of a foreign state (Sec. 349 (a) (3) INA);”
This is why the US quickly stripped Michael Oren of his citizenship after he became an officer spokesperson for the IDF in 2006....not.
The Atlantic could have moderated a long-running, overdue and serious discussion of the Israel lobby in 2002 when it was in discussions with Mearsheimer and Walt to publish their seminal article. Instead, they told them to take a hike. The Israel lobby debate has, thankfully escaped the constricted bounds of establishment outposts like the Atlantic, thanks to Mondoweiss.
It is a debate that will continue to grow and confront serious questions in places like
Mondoweiss. It is a huge compliment that they're going after Alex and Phil with such drivel. In reading the hit piece, it seems frankly that the Atlantic is now....jealous.
Given the Atlantic's funding and history, the site is now limited to a role of trying to referee a vibrant competition on the gridiron a decade later....from high up in the stands.
link to original.antiwar.com...
For the past two years, IRmep has been pitching an hour-long WAMU program about the clandestine Israeli nuclear weapons program to Diane Rehm. We've suggested experts such as Avner Cohen for historical aspects, John Mearsheimer for a strategic analysis including on the issue of "ambiguity", Sasha Polakow-Suransky on proliferation dangers, and Grant Smith about the material smuggling/criminal aspects.
They haven't gotten back to us on that...
Weinberger's 46 page memorandum in aid of sentencing is still classified. Pollard's defense team tried to obtain it from the court in 2008, but were denied.
link to irmep.org
The Department of Defense office of the SECDEF refused to declassify and release the 46 pager directly.
I agree with you that some of the other organizations on that graphic (such as AIPAC for espionage, or the Jewish Agency for FARA violations) are also dangerous because they routinely break important US laws with utter impunity.
The ZOA was at the periphery of Arms Export Control violations over conventional smuggling in the 1940s, and was by the 1960's supplying board members to NUMEC.
The DOJ should have compelled ZOA's registration as a foreign agent in the 1940's when it became clear they were operating on behalf of the WZO.
"The ZOA isn’t really a mainstream organization anymore. At one time they were, but now they are considered the far-right in the Jewish community."
ZOA agitation triggered a request that they register as a foreign agent a half century ago. Like the AZC/AIPAC, they staged a corporate reorganization that allowed the ever-credulous Justice Department to ignore their dangerous activities.
see: link to irmep.org
This looks like the basis for another meeting at the Foreign Agents Registration Act office at the Justice Department.
If anyone is interested in getting AIPAC reregistered under FARA (like its parent the AZC) would like to go along, let me know and I'll set it up. It'd be great if MJ Rosenberg came along this time.
Grant
gsmith@irmep.org
In following Mondoweiss, I don't see much overestimation of the lobby's "clout." Many of the arguments seem to follow along the lines of:
1) The Israel lobby has too much influence.
2) That influence harms the majority of Americans.
3) The lobby gained and maintains that influence through illicit means.
The Lavi was cancelled partially due to illegal activity—Israel wanted to repackage and resell proprietary US technology to other countries, including US adversaries. Even the US Congress would not have been able to keep up US contractor involvement much longer if all of their best stuff was leaking to competitors. The issue, by the way, has not gone away. Israel is complaining that too many systems (paid for by US taxpayers) are "black box" and don't allow Israeli access to the underlying technology. They are now chafing at not being allowed access to the source code for the F-22.
The 1956 Suez Crisis seems a little dated as a test of present-day influence. The lobby was somewhat hobbled by the Eisenhower administration's insistence that it could not use tax-deductible charitable contributions to lobby Congress. It's been a long time since anyone seriously looked at all those hundreds of millions of dollars flowing out of the US as "charity." Although we've tried: link to original.antiwar.com
The lobby has undue influence, but sometimes overextends itself, confident that there won't be any real consequences...
-grant
PS It's too early to tell on Pollard. Let's see what happens by next February.
Kathleen is on to something. This little exchange is *very* illuminating:
"CK: If they have your gmail address, they can get in without your password.
ST: What do you mean? How?
CK: They're good!"
Chris Kane seems to be saying either a) that the Israeli government can easily crack a Gmail password having access only to the email address b) that the Israeli government can somehow obtain user passwords from Google on an expedited routine basis, perhaps as a condition for Google to operate in Israel.
Either way, this account, if accurate, clearly has implications for *all* Gmail users.
Former AIPAC officials are highly active and highly useful. If Michael Goland had still been an AIPAC director when he was violating election law to get Alan Cranston elected in California, perhaps the mothership would have been similarly indicted and taken down. Since he was operating "independently" it wasn't.
Block seems to be following a long cherished AIPAC tradition. Founder Isaiah Kenen never really left the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or ever cut off funding from the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem (another org he allegedly "left").
If AIPAC didn't file such horribly misleading/delayed IRS form 990's, perhaps we'd see that it has now retained Block as an outside spokesperson. Block "left" right before the AIPAC porn scandal, during the organization's legal counsel's effort to muddy the waters about what AIPAC meant by saying Steve Rosen was fired because his activities didn't 'comport' with its accepted behaviors during the defamation lawsuit.
link to original.antiwar.com
1. Why promise not to write about it? There are plenty of reasons. During the Foreign Agents investigation, which covered many countries, investigators like Judge Sifton and Walter Pincus were aggressively obtaining records under subpoena, making lawyers mad, getting tax returns from the IRS, and keeping lines of communication open with the Justice Department for potential prosecutions. They also stumbled across CIA front companies operating out of SE Asian and had to wind back their investigation of those after run-ins. One of the reasons Pincus landed the job with Fulbright, which is evident in the documentary record, was for his in-depth news reporting about corrupt foreign agents working out of the Caribbean. I think there was a mutual (Fulbright/Pincus) concern that a reporter brought in to investigate not leak privileged information, particularly with so many white shoe law firms representing foreign agents and making attorney client privilege claims involved.
2. Why would Pincus hold back about writing facts about I/P? Pincus knows how the lobby really operates and what its capable of. I think he judged (accurately) that it was better for his reporting career to work around them, and he's far from alone in doing that. The claim isn't that he made a promise never to write about the Israel lobby, leveraging his inside knowledge. The claim is that he probably found it in his interest not to. If you look around establishment media for an elite and informed reporter covering the lobby with the warranted scrutiny it merits, you'll find there aren't any.
3. Pincus wrote inaccurate AIPAC espionage case coverage? Yes, but in 2006. Pincus, who had relatively recently received a law degree, wrote that the standard of evidence needed to convict Rosen and Weissman was much higher than it actually was, misleading readers. When called on it, it took a month of fighting with the WAPO ombudsman to get him to correct his flawed story.
link to irmep.org
4. "Can it be verified through other sources that Fulbright allegedly asked him not to write about the investigations? Pincus writing inaccurately about the Aipac espionage case would sure bring that claim into question." Apples and oranges. The Pincus note in the National Archives is about not talking about the *1960s* foreign agents investigation, not the 2005 AIPAC espionage investigations. Two different things. Can the Pincus note currently be verified through other sources? No. But anyone who wants to can go crack the boxes that have been declassified at the National Archives.
Pincus did incredible work on the investigation. But there were many Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee who wondered where Isaiah Kenen was getting his funding for massive lobbying and PR campaigns.
When they started tracing it back to the Jewish Agency, Kenen promptly fled the country for a year.
There is a note in the Archives of Pincus promising Fulbright not to write about the Foreign Agents investigation. Maybe he still feels bound by that.
Walter Pincus has more insight into the Israel Lobby than any other American journalist. That is because, as a special investigator on Sen JW Fulbright's staff during the investigation of foreign agents in the United States, he could see how the Israeli government, through the Jewish Agency and AIPAC's parent organization the AZC, were basically writing legislation for Congress, or as he said,
"I think this is a good example of a foreign principal — the Israeli Government– using the U.S. Senate to promote its aims.”
His best investigative work is still classified at the National Archives where it may be fully released in 2013. The investigation was launched because the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was worried about "Lavon style" overseas Israeli provocations influencing US policy.
Since leaving Fulbright's staff in the 1960's, Pincus has mostly avoided this issue, when he wasn't writing inaccurate coverage of the AIPAC espionage case. That he's taking it up again is probably a sign that he's getting ready to retire.
Those interested in that infamous "Memo" where AIPAC coordinates allegedly "independent" PACs (many of which it set up) can see it here:
link to irmep.org
There were decades of legal action, up to the Supreme Court, but judges finally ruled that coordinating PACs wasn't AIPAC's "major purpose" so there were never any consequences.
link to wrmea.org
A State Department memo where AIPAC exec Amitay imperiled US national security by obtaining classified missile sale information is here:
link to irmep.org
Normal Americans do jail time for that kind of thing. Not AIPAC alumni.
Just think, if we didn't have AIPAC originating campaign corruption, such as former director Michal Goland fixing California races so Alan Cranston could win, we wouldn't have inexplicable blank checks to Israel, such as the "Cranston Ammendment" loan guarantee laws.
link to articles.latimes.com
Americans need to face harsh facts. Our legal infrastructure has been unable to properly regulate AIPAC & Co as they stomp around accumulating power through illegal means.
Total capture.
There were never any charges. The foreign agent/espionage investigation fizzled out in the late 1960s. When AG Edward Levi restarted it in 1976 (and expanded the scope to include obstruction by US gov't officials) there were already serious considerations that the statute of limitations had/or soon would run out.
Hopefully the book reveals that the larger ecosystem in which Shapiro operated thwarted any sort of prosecution or accountability of enabling organizations. Unlike a Stewart Nozette or even Jonathan Pollard, Shapiro was so well-connected that putting him on trial would have been tantamount to putting Zionism on the witness stand.
Glad you bought the book. Kindle version has bonus features.
--grant
The Treasury Department is one of the most intransparent and irresponsible agencies in the government when it comes to Middle East matters. They refuse to respond to FOIAs about the funding flows to illegal West Bank settlements. Even Senate Foreign Relations queries about why AIPAC was granted tax-exempt status received only cursory and dismissive responses.
As in previous cases involving illegal activity in the US, the following arguments will be advanced behind closed doors. Was the PR effort done in the name of advancing Israel's security, misguided or not? If insiders argue that it was, this case, like so many before it, will be swept under the rug. Attempts to find out what happened will be quashed for a half century.
An alternative to registering AIPAC would be for Attorney General Eric Holder to declare AIPAC exempt from it. In a way, affirming AIPAC's de facto status as essentially above the law now, rather than waiting for the next crisis, would be the most honest thing to do...
link to turcopolier.typepad.com
-gfs
Great analysis, Wolman. Here is one perspective of that wonderful FTA negotiating process: link to irmep.org
Here is the graph of the $10 billion US deficit growing from an initial balanced trade relationship: link to IRmep.org
Back in the mid-1980s, no insider ever referred to the US-Israel agreement as "free trade." They called it what it was, "Duty Free Treatment for U.S. Imports from Israel." Of course, the lobby's position has always been that the agreement was a vital US interest and "1985 affords American products the opportunity to compete on an equal basis with European goods, which all have free access to Israel's domestic markets." So sez the bard:
link to jewishvirtuallibrary.org
Guess that's what made disenfranchising 70 opposing US industries and workers okay. The propaganda truly never stops. Calling a cat a mouse indeed.
-g
AIPAC's parent organization's (the American Zionist Council) 1962-1963 plan for Public Relations is still operative. Perhaps slot in "cultivation of bloggers" in Section 1, and "Podcasters" in Section 2 (TV, Radio and Films). Section 10, "Visitors to Israel" is still a core program. "Provide suitable arrangements in Israel for handling of American visitors."
link to irmep.org
The cartoons appeared in various editions of the Near East Report, which was originally owned by founder Isaiah Kenen, later put under AIPAC's roof and published by Near East Research, and subsequently spun off to the American Israel Education Foundation (the free travel agency for Congress members looking to vacation in Israel). Fulbright balked at this kind of stuff landing on his desk, free of charge, and sent to all top editors and influencers AIPAC could find, along with the membership base. Why? Because it was subsidized by the Jewish Agency, and many in Congress thought foreign aid was being recycled into US lobbying.
link to irmep.org
These Near East Report cartoons were originally examined within the context of Israeli funds laundered into US lobbying and publicity in the book "America's Defense Line" by Grant Smith, with an intro by Philip Weiss.
link to amazon.com
GFS
Actually, you don't have to Photoshop many Israel-lobbying cartoons to find them amusing. Sometimes I wish AIPAC would drop the pseudo-intellectualism and go back to publishing what they REALLY think in the Near East Report....
Arabs as subhumans. Arabs as inherently terrorist, underdeveloped and incapable of making peace. Syria as a powerful puppeteer, pulling strings from behind the scenes...Well, maybe *that* one's a bit dated now.
link to irmep.org
Technion is one of many fronts for the Israeli nuclear weapons program. A 1987 Pentagon-sponsored study conducted by the Institute for Defense Analyses found Technion University participated in designing Israeli nuclear missile re-entry vehicles. US officials also claimed that Technion scientists worked at the Dimona complex, which led to a 1989 denial of a supercomputer export license.
What a joke.
GFS
Americans should be VERY concerned about Saban. His tax advisers arranged an illegal dodge to keep him from paying any capital gains on his sale to Disney in 2001.
link to accountingtoday.com
Saban claimed ignorance of the shelter when Congress called him in to testify. His tax adviser, who is doing all the jail time, claimed otherwise.
Likewise his offer to buy Hillary some of her very own super delegates with a tax exempt donation miraculously did not result in election law violation indictments.
link to democraticunderground.com
Saban uses tax exempt donations and financial shenanigans to saddle the average Americans with huge war and aid liabilities. (There used to be a great video of Martin "Lock and Load" Indyk singing his praises while pimping for the Iraq war, but Brookings wisely deleted it). Saban's many dealings with the Israeli government are in-transparent, though broadly known, yet he refuses to register as a foreign agent. Rich, but slippery, he's kinda Abraham Feinberg and Nahum Bernstein rolled into one slick media package.
link to irmep.org
link to irmep.org
Average Americans may not know Haim, but they're paying the taxes he doesn't.
Thanks. For an analysis on selective FARA enforcement (Pakistan v Israel) please see the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs at:
link to wrmea.com
-GFS
The AIPAC registration complaint submitted November 4, 2009 to the head of the Foreign Agents Registration Act section, Heather Hunt, is available online at:
link to irmep.org
It documents AIPAC's emergence from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and foreign agent activity in great detail.
Eric Holder turned down an opportunity to meet with a delegation to discuss it during AIPAC's confab in May, so there was a protest at the Justice Department instead.
-GFS
Josh Block and AIPAC are really milking his "former spokesman" role. He left the mothership right before the AIPAC porn scandal hit:
link to google.com.,cf.osb&fp=a5e30d51accb9ad0&biw=922&bih=520
Now he's the go-to flack for a rapid, ever prickly AIPAC response. AIPAC doesn't have to take any responsibility for what Block says, he gets to broadcast from some obscure outpost. Nice work all around, if you can get it.
link to google.com.,cf.osb&fp=a5e30d51accb9ad0&biw=922&bih=520
Arlen Specter forwarded information from Shapiro's slippery lawyer that he hoped would lead to a formal statement by the NRC that Shapiro had not been involved in diversion. The NRC wisely declined to issue such an exoneration.
link to irmep.org
Unfortunately for Shapiro, his Arnold and Porter lawyers tried to deceive the NRC about the key point—the missing uranium—using dubious data. A 2001 Energy Department report confirmed that NUMEC had the highest HEU loss (roughly double) of any player in the industry before 1968. Perhaps if Shapiro hadn't partnered his company with an Israeli front for the Israeli nuclear weapons program and palled around with Rafi Eitan and Avraham Hermoni so much, he could have gotten his NMTI award. His only hope now is a private inquiry from Netanyahu. That's the way Arnon Milchan got out of being charged for smuggling nuclear triggers...Perhaps Eric Holder's phone is already ringing.
One of the reasons Bronner can get away with these outrages is that the donor and taxpayer funded, self-appointed "media critics" at NPR (Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone at the hugely influential "On the Media") refuse to do their jobs.
Last week, Bob huffed and puffed about an NPR contractor who was cut off for being at Occupy Wall Street. But Bob and Brooke almost certainly follow the much bigger story about Bronner. I think everyone on Mondoweiss who cares about the meaing of Bronner should ask Bob and Brooke to cover this story in a serious, credible way. That includes interviewing Max Blumenthal about his findings. His sheepish withdrawal from the panel is a hook for hearing about this on the next show. It is important.
link to onthemedia.org OTM comment form
Focusing only on elite members of the Israel lobby, there's a major factor that's been left out: blanket immunity from criminal prosecution.
Abraham Feinberg had it. An unconnected Joe without friends on the bench would have been prosecuted for fraud in avoiding the WWII draft. A mafia don would have been prosecuted for arms smuggling. Not Abe. He existed on the higher plane.
link to irmep.org Israel Lobby Archive
Same goes for Nahum Bernstein. Most Americans don't have NYC police officers on their payroll, and a law partner who is a District Attorney. But these assets helped Bernstein when he openly funded violations of the Neutrality Act, conducted espionage on behalf of Israel against Arab UN diplomats, and established smuggling front companies.
link to irmep.org Israel Lobby Archive
It's not a matter of historic curiosity either. Arnon Milchan (nuclear trigger smuggling), Marc Rich (illegal trade with Iran), Haim Saban (tax evasion through Quellos, pledging $1 to manipulate 2008 superdelegates), Jane Harmon (obstruction of justice in Aipac case).
Col Larry Franklin, offered a bribe to flee the US to quash the AIPAC espionage case was right. There is a group of people who truly are "beyond good and evil." Perhaps if the Justice Department did its job....
Yep, the file name is misspelled.
But again, does it seem at all weird that Ynet gets Halpern's name wrong? When Douglas Bloomfield (former AIPACker's) heavy involvement in that espionage caper came out,
link to irmep.org
...his byline was suddenly changed to D. Bloomfield.
link to jpost.com
Do such small tactical spelling changes absolve responsibility? What's going on?
It's a classic worth repeating. It's great that Americans can receive an economics lecture from the likes of Halpern, without laughing out loud.
Wonder why Ynet just couldn't seem to spell his last name correctly, while using Danny when other news outlets use the shorter "Dan". Oh the mysteries that continue to unfold....
link to google.com.,cf.osb&fp=2e49ba54b151fb33&biw=1024&bih=653
"Danny Halperin Israel's former economic attaché in Washington"
"Danny" doesn't mention his own specialty, economic espionage. In 1984 he stole a classified US International Trade Commission compilation of US business secrets and gave it to AIPAC to pass the US Israel Free Trade Agreement. Here is his FBI interview, which better explains how things sometimes REALLY work...
link to irmep.org
Walter Pincus was lead investigator for Senator J. W. Fulbright's hearings on the activities of the agents of foreign principles back in the early 1960s. He knew the score way back then. Consider the young lion's outraged memo to Fulbright (declassified in 2010) complaining about how Israel was basically writing legislation for Congress while simultaneously censoring the key Fulbright findings about Israeli agents influencing the US through money laundering and subterfuge.
link to irmep.org (Israel Lobby Archive)
"I think this is a good example of a foreign principal -- the Israeli Government-- using the U.S. Senate to promote its aims."
Reading Pincus today, you'd think he'd forgotten everything he learned at Fulbright's knee. What a shame.
GFS
If the PLO is astroturfing US campuses, they need to get their "student activists" registered as foreign agents of the PLO at the Justice Department.
Following the Jewish Agency/stealth US Israel lobby group support model isn't very smart, if that's what they're doing. Palestinians simply don't have the demonstrated legal immunity Israel lobbyists enjoy. If they're ordered to register and refuse, they likely would be prosecuted as harshly as Pakistani Kashmir activists.
link to wrmea.com
GFS
It's been worse. Mortimer Kroll used to broadcast NY Times radio back in the day. The Jewish Agency funneled money to him through AIPAC's parent organization, the American Zionist Council. The Justice Department ordered AZC to register as a foreign agent in 1962. Under an agreement, they were allowed to file only a "representative" 3 month disclosure of people receiving payola/grants/bribes, etc. The DOJ kept the AZC disclosure classified until 2008.
Kroll was on the AZC summary payola list:
link to irmep.org
There are a million ways to pay people off. That crude effort no doubt has been surpassed.. For the record, Vivian Schiller of NPR was interested in this story, Brooke and Bob Garfield of "On the Media" were apparently not...
G.
Most interesting is NYT chose Douglas Bloomfield to make the response. Few Americans know that back when Israeli minister of economics Dan Halpern passed AIPAC an important, stolen classified document about the US-Israel "free trade" agreement, Bloomfield was the AIPAC employee who made an illegal copy before returning it to the US Trade Representative.
link to irmep.org
That stolen document is only now being declassified so that Americans can see why the Israeli government and AIPAC just had to get their hands on it.
Traffick classified information against the lobby, do time. Traffick for the lobby, become an NYT pundit.
GFS.
Returning to a grand old tradition. A CIA report detailed Adolph Schwimmer's false-flag operations with smuggled C-46 Commandos in Europe and his Jewish Agency funded "Service Airways":
"The history of a single operation undertaken by an aircraft owned by Service Airways is here cited as typical of the traffic which has now grown to large proportions. A C-46 air transport carrying a Jewish American crew departed from the US for Italy early in March, 1948. The crew obtained clearance for the aircraft and US visas for themselves by false statements and the exhibition of letters from their company. This correspondence implied that a contract existed with an Italian aircraft manufacturing concern for the conversion of several aircraft from cargo to passenger accommodation. The aircraft took off from a New Jersey airport and was next reported at Geneva, Switzerland, having flown the route by way of Greenland, Iceland, and France. The crew, dressed in US Army uniforms without insignia, permitted only the Swiss airport superintendent to board the plane. Secrecy evidenced by the crew, and the fact that they were wearing uniform caused the Swiss official to believe that this was a US Air Force operation and no inquiry was made other than to learn that the aircraft's next destination was Rome."
"Clandestine Air Transport Operations: Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense," Central Intelligence Agency, May 28, 1948, Declassified and released on September 27, 2001, CIA Freedom of Information Act electronic reading room
GFS
It is questionable that just because AIEF says the funds they gave AIPAC were for" education" that it was okay. If AIPAC had not received that transfer, it would have had to report declining revenues for the first time in a long time. Also, if donor #1 ($50 million) is really just some new bundling entity (there are no other obviously affiliated AIPAC shells, except for WINEP and AEIF), what other purpose does it serve other than hiding the distribution curve of the 2,000 individuals who are the key funders. Something is clearly wrong...
Okay, here's part of what happened. On its 2010 form 990, the American Israel Education Foundation declared that it transferred $13,503,472 (of presumably tax deductible funds, which helped donors reduce their payments to Uncle Sam).....to the.....wait for it......American Israel Public Affairs Committee....for "education" purpuses.
Since AIPAC is a 501(c)(4) (and donations are not tax deductible) that raises a lot of questions....
Excellent research, Phil. I think the ruse that AIEF is in any way functionally separate from AIPAC has gone on too long. Something VERY fishy is going on. AIPAC, which used to list some 1,700 donors giving more than $5,000, in its last IRS filing said there were only two major donors. One gave fifty million, another gave $13 million, in non tax-deductible contributions.
Right.
link to original.antiwar.com
g.
Sorry the audio tag didn't work (my signature is screwed up as well, it's Grant Smith).
Steve Roberts is a frequent host/guest on the Diane Rehm show, usually presented as a syndicated columnist. Here's the transcript of what I found amusing enough to post as an audio file:
Steve Roberts, Syndicated Columnist: "The big solution that is supposed to come out of the Baker-Hamilton commission is somehow expanded Middle East discussions, bring in Iran, bring in Syria. He made the point that Iran has been extremely recalcitrant on its nuclear program. Syria has been equally recalcitrant if not more so. They helped assassinate a leading Christian, the evidence is pretty clear, they helped assassinate a leading Christian politician just last week...
Diane Rehm, host: "And here's an email from Grant who says "your guest stated that Syria was involved in the assassination of a 'Christian Politician'. There is no hard evidence of that. Is it the Israeli propaganda hour now?""
Steve Roberts, Syndicated Columnist: "That's a very unfair comment, the "Israeli propaganda hour." If anybody in this government doubts, or any thinking person doubts that Syria was involved in the assassination of Pierre Gemayel, I'd like to know that..."
Diane Rehm, host: "I wonder if we do have any proof?"
Steve Roberts, Syndicated Columnist: "I didn't say there was proof. But there is an international investigation going on into the assassination of Rafic Hariri, and other politicians. Syria has done everything to try to block that investigation. Every bit of evidence we have, in the long history here, is of a violent intervention in Lebanon, and I don't know anybody who knows anything about that region, who doubts that Syria is involved in that assassination. It has nothing to do with Israeli propaganda."
[audio=http://www.irmep.org/MP3/12012006_Diane_Rehm.mp3]
The $36 million is the present value of what the Jewish Agency spent on US PR in the early 1960's.
What the Atlantic won't publish, is many times as important as what it does.
"ALI: Briefly describe your initial journey towards publication at the Atlantic Monthly. Why did they ultimately reject the draft, and how did you find a publication home at London Review of Books?
MEARSHEIMER: Stephen and I decided in early 2002 to think seriously about writing a piece on The Israeli Lobby and U.S. foreign policy. Then, in the fall of 2002, we were commissioned by The Atlantic to write that piece, and we began working on it. We were slowed down by the fact the Iraq war was about to take place. We couldn't write about it while it was still happening, because the Lobby was involved in pushing that war. So, we didn't get a draft of the piece to the Atlantic until the Spring of 2004. After they saw the initial draft, they were very happy with it and asked us to make a number of changes, which we did. We submitted the second draft in January 2005, and shortly thereafter they rejected it. We believe they rejected it because they came to believe the subject was too controversial and would cause problems."
link to counterpunch.org
It would be very, very difficult, but the grounds for doing so are undeniable.
It is interesting that Thomas Dine, the former executive director of AIPAC who was also involved in the theft of government property/economic espionate investigated by the FBI in 1984, link to IRmep.org went on to consult in a big way for Al Hurra:
link to propublica.org
How could that network ever achieve any credibility if all it does is function as a kind of JTA - Arab Market? What a waste of taxpayer money.
The interesting thing about the Conference is it's location (visible in the Whois query, 633 New York Avenue. This is the very same address as the World Zionist Organization - American Section (An Israeli foreign agent that spends around $10 million a year in the US).
The WZO in Jerusalem was revealed by Israeli prosecutor Thalia Sasson in 2005 as being at the very center of illegal Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank. Shimon Peres estimated that up to $50 billion was laundered into illegal settlement construction. In the United States, the WZO/Conference of Presidents run "education" initiatives include organizing rabbis to effectively campaign for war on Iran (as reported on Tikkun Olam).
It is a mystery why the Conference/WZO are running clandestine propaganda ops about law in the United States instead of facing warranted criminal charges over illegal settlements and the US funds laundered into them.