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Total number of comments: 8506 (since 2009-07-30 21:08:50)

MRW

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  • Kennedy's insistence on right of return prompted Ben-Gurion to rewrite history: They fled 'of their own free will'
  • Abulhawa declines to 'balance out' several Israelis in 'Al Jazeera' forum on Nakba
    • MRW May 21, 2013 at 2:43 am

      p.s. wondering what will happen to the mondo blog gems in a hundred years?

      Once a year the entire website/archives should be sent to some DVD creator place. It's a no-brainer operation. Mondoweiss FTPs the site data, gives us the name of the vendor, and we take it from there. We order a copy for whatever the DVD maker wants to charge (provided it is only put on good reliable media: link to digitalfaq.com and the forums there). Then we could donate the previous year's version to a local high school or public library branches. I, personally, would call it The History of Israel Blog on the disc sleeve. A few thousand deposited quietly around the country is a quiet subversive act.

    • MRW May 21, 2013 at 2:22 am

      Throwing all Israelis (or all citizens of any other country) into the same pot is unfair. That’s a fact! Just because Susan is Palestinian doesn’t mean that she should be allowed to get away with such an unfair generalisation.

      Unfairness is an applicable charge when you have a basis of justice to refer to. Newsflash There ain't any here and that is what Abulhawa is reacting to.

    • MRW May 21, 2013 at 2:18 am

      Also, my standard is not lofty. I simply want fairness.

      For Israelis first. The rest take a ticket, hunh GL?

  • Demonizing Mandy Patinkin is a tough sell
  • The meaning of solidarity in the Palestine movement
    • MRW May 19, 2013 at 6:48 am

      Anti-semitism charges don't trump everybody else's justice. The former has become subjective (in this country). The latter is legal and exists in spite of the former, and, in fact, will prevent or curtail it.

    • Page: 85
  • Richard Engel says Syrian rebel journalists are 'noble,' but journalists whose cause is Hamas aren't really journalists
    • MRW May 16, 2013 at 5:34 am

      Engels ain't no Glenn Greenwald, who has the balls to call out Israel time and again. Look at the number of commenters (hasbarists) who mount their steeds whenever Greenwald attacks Israeli interests versus the regular number of commenters per story.

      I had Engels' number years ago. He's just an adrenaline junkie.

  • International Criminal Court opens preliminary investigation into attack on Mavi Marmara
    • MRW May 19, 2013 at 8:04 am

      It was a big to-do at the time. Craig Murray had a number of posts on it then. Former ambassador Murray had written some of the law of the sea stuff so he was actively batting down the hasbarists who were weaving their standard San Remo cat's cradle of what they thought the laws were, and how the Israelis were justified in going into international waters and slaughtering people in a gunless boat.

    • MRW May 19, 2013 at 7:59 am

      lysias, Citizen, little more complicated than that. Everything changed in 2007.

      WHEN KEMAL ATATURK RECITED SHEMA YISRAEL
      "It's My Secret Prayer, Too," He Confessed
      By Hillel Halkin, Published in The Forward, January 28, 1994, scrubbed from The Forward and Lexis-Nexis. Available behind a paywall from Highbeam Research, which cites The Forward, but copy available here, scroll down:
      link to sunniforum.com
      Highbeam cite:
      link to highbeam.com

      Ataturk's Turkey Overturned
      By HILLEL HALKIN | July 24, 2007
      link to nysun.com

      More background on Ataturk:
      Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's Jewish Roots
      link to turkishwrestling.wordpress.com

  • Newseum honors newsman who ran guns for ethnic cleansing of Palestine
    • MRW May 15, 2013 at 3:48 pm

      Abby Martin of RT's Breaking the Set takes this on in a great piece:
      Israel's Narrative of Control | Brainwash Update
      link to youtube.com

    • MRW May 15, 2013 at 3:46 pm with 1 replies

      Then, be sure to watch this:
      link to personalgrowthcourses.net

      Robert Caro, LBJ’s biographer, was on NPR's Fresh Air Monday and added a lot of info about LBJ that I didn't know: the Kennedys called LBJ and Lady Byrd 'Uncle Cornpone and his pork chop', or Rufus Cornpone, and the morning of Kennedy's death, a guy named Don Reynolds was in a Senate room handing over checks and invoices that proved LBJ's involvement in the (then) huge Bobby Baker scandal, proof that would have sent LBJ to jail.
      link to npr.org

      Caro's revelations lend heft to the History Channel video I link to.

  • San Francisco bus ads condemn Israeli apartheid: backlash begins
    • MRW May 12, 2013 at 5:01 pm

      Since this is America, and the writers invoke our constitutional language to make one of their arguments, this needs correcting:

      While protected by the First Amendment, extremist language directed at any group has no place in our city.

      (1) The language they object to is, by their admission, protected by the First Amendment.
      (2) The word 'apartheid' is descriptive of a physical state or national policy.
      (3) The JCRC and ADL are not San Francisco's cruise directors or editors. The JCRC and ADL do not get to determine which part of the First Amendment the citizens of San Francisco are entitled to have.

    • MRW May 12, 2013 at 4:35 pm

      Cecilie, you write:

      The points they make against the ad are so off the mark, and often offensive, it’s hard to believe anyone could write them sincerely. (I’m deleting the names on the release because I don’t think it’s fair to blame them. I think people at the top should be held accountable for such nonsense.)

      It is absolutely fair to blame them, and disingenuous not to name them. They wrote it and even though there was undoubtedly an internal approval process, the press release circulated over PR Wire and other distribution channels with their names and phone numbers. The press release is here:
      link to jcrc.org

      Contact: Elka Looks, Communications Manager, Jewish Community Relations Council − 415.957.1551
      Seth Brysk, Regional Director, Anti-Defamation League - 415.981.3500

      The Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) describes itself (in this job call for Elka Looks position last January) as the central public affairs arm of the organized Bay Area Jewish community. It represents Bay Area synagogues and Jewish organizations on issues impacting the rights and protection of Jews as individuals and as a community.
      link to comnetwork.org
      It is clear from the job description what Ms. Looks' responsibilities were to be.

      For all you know, this was a collusion between Ms. Looks and Mr. Brysk that the rest of their respective organizations went along with. She is, after all, the Communications Manager of JCRC, and he is the Regional, not the local, Director of the ADL. Protecting them takes a face and name away from their actions; hence, responsibility and accountability.

  • Dershowitz calls Hawking an 'ignoramus,' a 'lemming,' and likely an anti-Semite
  • One-woman wrecking crew of Jewish community's image, Geller brings her show to Toronto
    • MRW May 8, 2013 at 9:57 pm

      Waaaay stricter. Think they're constitutional as well.

    • MRW May 8, 2013 at 9:54 pm

      Hate crimes are serious business in Canada. My relatives there told me years ago that Lou Dobbs would be in jail for what he implied and said on CNN via paid-for US cable programming about Mexicans. The JDL went north after the US classified the JDL as a terrorist group two decades ago.

      I often wondered if the reason why Dobbs went off the air was because of a Canadian govt complaint, because CNN is available there as a Canadian cable offering.

  • Mainstream turns against intervention, this time (Tom Friedman has spoken)
    • MRW May 7, 2013 at 2:06 pm with 2 replies

      Clemons entire comment is disgusting.

      I'm going to go over the wall here with a non sequitur that might apply. If Friedman got through even 1/3 of Jeremy Scahill's 4/23/2013 book Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, it would explain why he's pulling back. Scahill's book is one of the most disturbing and riveting things I've read in a long time: it shakes you to recognize the reality of what we are really doing in the world, and how complicit Americans and the press are in letting it happen. Stunning in its detail, research, and access to sources.

  • Shared values?
  • Fayyad warns Obama: 'A state of leftovers is not going to do it'
    • MRW May 4, 2013 at 3:55 pm with 1 replies

      Great lines:

      Everything about Cohen's experience says there are termites in that premise. If he could save one Palestinian child's life by giving up the dream-state he chooses not to live in, why not wake up?

  • 'NPR' suggests that opponent of Syrian intervention has dual loyalty
    • MRW May 3, 2013 at 8:36 pm

      yonah, you could have answered this yourself with google.

      The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) to which the United States is a party is monitored by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, based in The Hague. Its spokesman Peter Kaiser was asked if WP was banned by the CWC and he had this to say: [re: White phosphorous being used over Falluja]

      "No it's not forbidden by the CWC if it is used within the context of a military application which does not require or does not intend to use the toxic properties of white phosphorus. White phosphorus is normally used to produce smoke, to camouflage movement. [None of which applied to gated civilians of Gaza.]

      "If that is the purpose for which the white phosphorus is used, then that is considered under the Convention legitimate use.

      "If on the other hand the toxic properties of white phosphorus, the caustic properties, are specifically intended to be used as a weapon, that of course is prohibited, because the way the Convention is structured or the way it is in fact applied, any chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons."

      BBC. Google it.

    • MRW May 3, 2013 at 8:25 pm

      Phil, nicely put.

      I agree completely. I've been reading Landis for years. He's a fair and square reporter.

  • Anonymous sources in the Israeli US Embassy don't like what they see on television
    • MRW May 1, 2013 at 2:07 pm

      Maybe Ynet and the Israeli US Embassy didn't get the message:
      "The Truth about Youth"
      link to truthcentral.mccann.com
      I explained the genesis of it here, with more detail than is in the PDF above. I had watched a vid about it:
      link to mondoweiss.net

      You can be assured that Hollywood now has the message from McCann-Erickson's two-year global research into what will sell to kids. If you don't have the time, just read the penultimate page of the PDF (pg 23) I link to. I have a copy of the longer initial one that discusses the actual findings on a country-by-country basis and how they structured the research, but I can't find it at the moment. The findings so shocked the old guys at McCann-Erickson (mccann.com) that they completely changed their business and strategic focus.

      EDIT: the "oddly anonymously-sourced story" has the taint of a call-to-arms to fix the problem in Hollywood, but whoever wrote it is out to lunch on the consequences to Hollywood's bottom line if they go that route. Talk about being clipped by the consciousness of the times.

  • Close Guantanamo now
  • Treatment of Boston suspect exposes 'Muslim exception' to Constitution
    • MRW April 30, 2013 at 1:55 pm

      The surveillance program and Tsarnaev's treatment are striking examples of how there is “a separate justice system for Muslims,” as the New York Times’ Andrew Rosenthal astutely noted in March 2012.

      Has Andrew Rosenthal ever astutely noted that it's been Pamela Geller, Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, Robert Spencer and Richard Perle who created this Islamophobia in the first place?

  • When will the discourse of the 'two state solution' finally change?
    • MRW May 3, 2013 at 9:54 pm

      Hammer hits nail:

      When anyone talks about “two states” and “land swaps” rather than equal rights and democracy; when someone glorifies the top-down “international consensus” rather than respect for the rights of the indigenous people, these ideas are part of the problem.

    • MRW May 3, 2013 at 9:41 pm

      Agree with both of you. Witness what China has done in Africa, outdoing the ugliness of the World Bank and the IMF by giving loans at 2-3% to poorer African countries to help build their infrastructure, instead of setting up deals where they steal their resources in debt collection.

      Furthermore, to the media issue that CloakAndDagger brings up: we hear nothing about these events, no decent international news that indicates the changing geopolitical landscape. Our news, at least out here in the west where the public radio programming can be completely different than DC or NYC because of the programs they purchase, is so laden with pro-Israel this and that, Islamophobia, the public radio (NPR, PRI, etc) discussions are an endless parade of 'aren't we wonderful' Jewish American players/actors/writers, and if not that, we get stories about the holocaust and Anne Frank, still after 68 years. I'm being purposefully hyperbolic, but not really, it's a trend that people are noticing. A story two days ago led with the line that Anne Frank 'would be happy' about some new doll, as if she, a German, were a relevant icon in 2013 America!

  • Video: Olmert booed in NYC for saying Israel should re-engage in the 'peace process'
  • For backing '5 Broken Cameras,' 'Jewish Press' smears Dustin Hoffman as has-been 'figleaf' with 'Semitic nose'
  • Andrea Mitchell asks Michael Oren 7 questions. How many mention Palestinians?
    • MRW April 28, 2013 at 7:27 pm

      Precisely, annie! I haven't watched the segment either, but he was on to peddle some war dreck to unthinking Americans.

  • Our deadly democracy: 225,000 killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan
    • MRW April 28, 2013 at 7:02 pm

      $4 trillion to kill 225,000? That's $17,777,777.78 per person.

      Am I supposed to believe this BS? Or am I supposed to believe that the US military is so incompetent that it costs $17.7 million to rout one individual?

      The Dod in 2006 (summer I think) ordered the reporting of Iraqi deaths stopped, and told the various morgues and cemeteries in Iraq to shut up. I used to have the .mil order and the data, lost it in a harddrive dive.

  • Send in the clowns
    • MRW April 28, 2013 at 5:39 am with 2 replies

      This is further proof that Zionism has destroyed Jewish intelligence.

      No shit, sherlock. That and 68 years of obfuscating quasi-dialogue pretending to be intelligent about the issues yet incapable of resolving them or even addressing them intelligently. Jewish intellectual life in America has gone the way of the general population here. Small-minded. Categorical. Petty. Knee-jerk pilpul.

      Pity.

      Behavior/action/thought determines the culture. Culture rewires the brain.

  • Post-Boston vulnerability will at last force Americans to consider 'why they hate us'
    • MRW April 27, 2013 at 2:00 pm

      This is the significance of the bombing, he said: it marks a new moment in American vulnerability. Whatever the FBI did to drop the ball, we all understand now that nothing can stop every madman who wants to do something like this.

      Three points:
      (1) Terrorism on American soil was far worse in the 1970s.
      (2) The police and FBI handling of the bombing and searching for suspects was completely unprofessional. You never involve a POTUS. You never lockdown a city. You never allow the media to speculate about the suspects' motives because information is controlled. Why? Because one of your first jobs is not to create civic panic. Ask any professionally-trained hostage negotiator about how this was handled.
      (3) Which brings me to #3: why the theatre? Why were the police in military camouflage and gear with jackets that read POLICE on them?

      About (1) : The number-one US 40-year terrorism expert is Brian Michael Jenkins. From his November 2009 testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee: Going Jihad—The Fort Hood Slayings and Home-Grown Terrorism

      The plots show that radicalization and recruitment to terrorist violence is occurring in the United States and is a legitimate security concern. It has, however, yielded very few recruits. With roughly 3 million Muslims in America, although some estimates run much higher, 100 terrorists represent a mere 0.00003 percent of the Muslim population—fewer than one out of 30,000.

      Terrorist violence is not a new phenomenon. Al Qaeda and its jihadist followers did not bring terrorism to the United States. Along with its immigrant communities, the United States has imported numerous terrorist campaigns. Cuban, Puerto Rican, Croatian, Serb, Palestinian, Armenian, Taiwanese, and Jewish extremists have all carried out attacks on U.S. soil, in addition to the homegrown terrorist campaigns of the far left and far right. In fact, the level of terrorist violence was greater in the United States in the 1970s than it is today.

      And...

      The lack of significant terrorist attacks on the United States since 9/11 suggests not only intelligence and investigative success, but an American Muslim community that remains overwhelmingly unsympathetic to jihadist appeals. Modern communications, especially the Internet, offer access to violence-exalting narratives, but there is absolutely no evidence to show that attempts to exploit the dismay of some Muslims at policies that can be portrayed as an assault on faith or community have interrupted the integration of immigrant communities. What authorities confront are tiny conspiracies or the actions of individuals, which in a free society will always be hard to predict and prevent.

      link to rand.org

      The Council on Foreign Relations figures are the following:
      1980-2001 American extremists non-Islamic: 66%
      2002-2005 American extremists non-Islamic: 95%

  • Gideon Levy: It's time for a 'one person, one vote' movement to end Israeli oppression
    • MRW April 27, 2013 at 1:29 pm

      no evidence MRW? what you said is no different than Nakba or Holocaust denial.

      The total population of Jews in Israel was less than that, and that number included all the war refugees from Europe. Hostage debunked this two years ago with documents. Look up his archives.

    • MRW April 27, 2013 at 6:02 am

      Do you forget about the 800,000 who were forced out and/or “persuaded” to leave Arab countries?

      There is no evidence of that. You're making it up.

    • MRW April 26, 2013 at 4:06 am

      As everyone knows, Mars is full of Fascists

      lol. Yeah, I watched it.

  • Israel supporters use Boston bombing to call for firing of UN Rapporteur
    • MRW April 27, 2013 at 6:21 pm

      Phan, I'm going to print this off and give to some high school kids I know who need to see and understand the vigilance required to combat media propaganda. Good job.

    • MRW April 26, 2013 at 4:01 am

      That piece by Greenwald is a keeper and should be read aloud in every high school class across the country.

      I'm delighted that he called out Andrew Sullivan who, once again, is on the wrong side of the issue echoing Coulter and Geller. Sullivan was Bush's biggest fanboy for years until he realized it was safe, and more career-benefitting, to object.

    • MRW April 25, 2013 at 6:36 pm

      Truly OT.

      Has everyone seen Shadows of Liberty by a French-Canadian filmmaker? It features fearless leader Phil.
      http://shadowsofliberty.org

      Wait. You can watch the whole thing here for free for a bit:
      link to shadows.kcetlink.org

      I think it was Dickerson who turned me onto this, maybe someone else here. Everyone should watch.

    • MRW April 25, 2013 at 6:32 pm with 8 replies

      You diss the work of David Ray Griffin? You obviously haven't read one word of his. I don't know a sentient being in the US or in my circle who buys the official story of 911. You would have to be a scientific idiot to swallow the 'jet fuel fire brought down the towers' story. Truly a double-digit IQ. And Falk was right: "investigations must be, and must be seen to be, transparent, exhaustive and honest . . . the importance of carefully examining evidence before drawing conclusions about political and legal responsibility for highly tragic events."

      There was no investigation of 911. The 911 Commission's job was to determine how it should not happen in the future; it did not investigate the catastrophe. Senior counsel to the commission, John Farmer, laid that out in his book "The Ground Truth."

    • MRW April 25, 2013 at 6:21 pm with 2 replies

      The real tiger on this issue is Glenn Greenwald. He has created the space for MJ to say these things after the fact.

  • U.S. ambassador to UN says 'huge part' of her work is defending Israel
    • MRW April 25, 2013 at 6:03 pm

      The economist Michael Hudson was in Rimini, Italy a year ago. This quote was part of his speech.

      “300 years of classical political economy sought to get rid of landlords and bankers. A hundred years ago people spoke of technology. Nobody believed that the vested interests could fight back. But they did fight back in the way that parasites do in biological nature. I’ve read in the Italian newspapers—coming over on the airplane—that people talk about parasites. And people think about parasites, as taking the host’s energy and lifeblood. But, in biology, the smart parasites do something else: They take over the brain of the host. They make the brain think that the parasite is part of the body, to be protected.

      That's what the parasitic Israelis have done to the US, and Rice's remarks are clear proof of it.

  • Jewish Federations mount campaign against Berkeley divestment measure as 'alienating and hateful'
    • MRW April 23, 2013 at 1:46 pm with 1 replies

      American, OT (please, moderators). I've been meaning to chase you down to assure you that under no circumstances was I referring to you when I wrote this. I was referring to whomever you were writing about, and I was agreeing with you, albeit too briefly.
      link to mondoweiss.net
      Then I started traveling without my laptop, just my iPad with the forgotten-at-home charger and phone. But it's been grinding on me and wanted to make sure you knew.

    • MRW April 23, 2013 at 1:30 pm

      Mr. Landgraf needs to get in touch with Jeffrey Blankfort who has been through an onslaught like this and can help him. Mr. Landgraf, if you're reading this, contact Phil Weiss for his email address.

  • Double standard on killing collaborators
    • MRW April 23, 2013 at 1:21 pm

      Miriam,

      The extent to which the Khazars converted to Judaism has never been established. It is thought possible that it was only the elite who converted. . . . BTW Jews-Khazars , other than interviews with the attention seeking Mr Sand ,—– it’s really rarely mentioned of out here in the polite ,intelligent, educated, society I inhabit .

      Where might that be? From Arutz Sheva:

      Found: Ancient Capital of 'Jewish' Khazar Kingdom
      By Ze'ev Ben-Yechiel

      [...]"This is a hugely important discovery," said the leader of the Russian expedition, Dmitry Vasilyev, in a report by the French agency AFP. Vasilyev, from Astrakhan State University, made the comments after returning from the excavation site, located near the Russian village of Samosdelka just north of the Caspian Sea. The location of the site corresponds roughly to the area in which historians believe the empire may have existed.
      [...]
      The Jewish University in Moscow and the Russian Jewish Congress helped finance the excavations, which took place during the summer in various locations throughout the region in which the discovery was made. The project, overseen by a number of university professors, included some 50 students who assisted in the digs.

      link to israelnationalnews.com

      And...

      Discovery of Khazar capital unearths more about Ashkenazi Jews"
      By MANSUR MIROVALEV, Associated Press Writer Sat Sep 20, 2:13 PM ET

      [...] The Khazars succeeded in holding off the Arabs, but a young, expanding Russian state vanquished the Khazar empire in the late 10th century. Medieval Russian epic poems mention Russian warriors fighting the “Jewish Giant.”

      “In many ways, Russia is a successor of the Khazar state,” Vasilyev said.

      He said his dig revealed traces of a large fire that was probably caused by the Russian conquest. He said Itil was rebuilt following the fall of the Khazar empire, when ethnic Khazars were slowly assimilated by Turkic-speaking tribes, Tatars and Mongols, who inhabited the city until it was flooded by the rising Caspian Sea around the 14th century.

      The study of the Khazar empire was discouraged in the Soviet Union. The dictator Josef Stalin, in particular, detested the idea that a Jewish empire had come before Russia’s own. He ordered references to Khazar history removed from textbooks because they “disproved his theory of Russian statehood,” Satanovsky said.

      link to dianarn.wordpress.com

    • MRW April 22, 2013 at 5:32 pm with 8 replies

      Miriam is back, I see, with her great grasp of history and research.

      Mr Sand’s latest attention grabbing stunt ( other than digging up Arthur Koestler’s ridiculed Khazar theory) . . . . Koestler was ridiculed as a pretentious phoney for both his “Thirteenth Tribe eccentricities and his beliefs in the Paranormal by satirical magazine Private Eye when it was edited by Richard Ingrams.

      Koestler was never ridiculed. A single editor is to be believed over Koestler's oeuvre?

      Read:
      link to africaspeaks.com
      Also here:
      link to haruth.com

      The article ends:

      Serious scholarship into the Khazars only began in the 19th century, and throughout the 20th century many important discoveries were made. In modern Israel, there is considerable interest in the grand history of the Khazar Jewish people. Several Israeli novels include Khazarian themes and characters. In 1997 the Israeli journalist Ehud Ya'ari broadcast a fascinating 3-part documentary on the Khazars entitled Memlekhet ha-Kuzarim. Israeli media such as The Jerusalem Report and The Jerusalem Post have covered Khazarian history from time to time. In 1999 the first international Khazar Symposium was held in Jerusalem, bringing together many of the brightest scholars in modern Khazar studies from Russia, the United States, and Israel.

  • Preparing for Iran?: US on verge of $10 billion arms deal with Israel, Saudi Arabia and UAE
    • MRW April 20, 2013 at 1:05 pm with 2 replies

      What does Israel need troop transport planes for? And why does the UAE need warplanes?

    • MRW April 20, 2013 at 1:00 pm

      Citizen,

      Israel just acted on the MOU. It asked for $1.2 billion in oil shipped to it this past week.

      BTW, where is Shmuel? Did he get called up in the reserves a few months ago or is he back to lurking? ~/

  • Reality check-- John Kerry prepares to stick fork in two-state solution
  • Chris Matthews suggests that Boston suspects are Arabs
    • MRW April 19, 2013 at 12:50 pm with 8 replies

      Nobody gives a shit about religion defining you in Russia, not even Jews. Nobody cares. People are loyal to their town or village or district or city. That's the tie that binds. It's loyalty to some description or definition of the land. Mother Russia is the bigger umbrella over it if attacked, which is why Russians fought as they did in WWII. Friedman had a brilliant description of this in Red Mafiya. He was trying to use his Jewishness in Little Odessa to warm up a Jewish Russian gangster oligarch he wanted to interview. The guy couldn't give a shit how Jewish he was. By accident Freidman mentioned that his grandfather came from the same village the gangster was from. That was it. Instant blood brothers.

      I remember this land-loyalty-affinity thingey from my three months traveling all over the western half of Russia decades ago. At the time I thought it was because religion was banned. Only westerners wear their religion on their sleeves. (I mean, c'mon, think Bialystock and Israel.)

    • MRW April 19, 2013 at 12:30 pm

      True to form, Geller has done no homework. Interesting background on history of Chechnyan religion here, including the footnotes:
      link to lechailyasov-eng.com

      I looked it up because when I was in Chechnya and Stavropol Krai decades ago, I remember the so-called pagan and other symbols on buildings and churches/mosques/temples and free-standing shrines to deities that predated the Soviet Unio by centuries upon centuries.

      The simplistic way in which we adjudicate ancient cultures whose language we neither read nor speak is appalling.

    • MRW April 19, 2013 at 10:50 am with 1 replies

      IUD? Intra Uterine Device?

    • MRW April 19, 2013 at 10:29 am with 4 replies

      Who says they are Muslim? How does anyone know? There are lots of Juhuro in Chechnya, Russia, and Kyrgyzstan. Also in Israel. Maybe that's why Israel is sticking its nose into this affair; it has something to fear.

  • Exile and the prophetic: Boston and the drone wars
  • Fear of democracy in the Jewish community
    • MRW April 11, 2013 at 1:12 pm with 3 replies

      Yonah, baloney. Roger Cohen NYT did an indepth series on Iranian Jews in Iran a couple of years ago. His findings and interviews belie your uninformed assertions. Check our archives for the wealth of discussion on it.

  • The Ironic Lady: Margaret Thatcher, supposed champion of 'freedom and democracy', and her dictator friends
    • MRW April 10, 2013 at 5:35 pm

      Her biggest disaster was her financial rout against the British people. Watch Adam Curtis' series "The Trap."

  • Jimmy Carter to receive award from law school with Jewish affiliation; and opposition arises
  • Hiroshima epiphany
    • MRW April 11, 2013 at 12:06 pm

      Hostage, what a great response and observation.

    • MRW April 10, 2013 at 5:24 pm

      Well said, Eva. Thank you.

    • MRW April 8, 2013 at 11:59 am

      Thank you for quoting this, Dickerson. I am standing in line waiting for some government official to take my papers and fees reading this on my phone. It made my heart soar. Any man writing from the wisdom of Kabir or Rumi does it to me as well. Thx.

  • Talk about a tough neighborhood! 'UWS' prepares for revelry on Israel's birthday
  • Questioning Israel's 'international legitimacy,' Siegman says two-state solution would require Kerry to reject 'robbery' beyond '67 lines
    • MRW April 7, 2013 at 1:51 am

      BTW,

      I am trying to get you to explain your patently bigoted, and false, statement that “jews” alone possessed the right to hold multiple passports.

      Prove it's wrong. Go on. Prove it. No one else could hold two passports legally per US laws in the 70s.

    • MRW April 7, 2013 at 1:48 am

      I am amending nothing. Only Jews in the US during the 1970s could hold dual passports. Period. It's the truth. Now deal with it.

      It wasn't multiple passports. It was two. American and Israeli. So an Israeli Jew did not have to give up his or her Israeli passport when acquiring an American one, unlike people from other countries.

      If you came from Mexico and gave up your Mexican passport to become an American and wanted, because you were Jewish, to then get an Israeli passport, you could.

      Stop trying to turn the truth into some twisted anti-semitism charge.

    • MRW April 5, 2013 at 8:26 pm

      Implying, tacitly, that only Jews could have two passports: US and Israeli. No American, Jew or Gentile, could hold a US and Mexico passport in the 1970s. Stop playing cute.

    • MRW April 4, 2013 at 9:39 am

      Look it up yourself. I can't remember when they changed the law to allow two passports for all--why would I --but in the 1970s, the only ones who could hold two passports were Jews (for Israel). A foreigner/immigrant could get a Green Card, but if he or she wanted to become an American citizen, he or she had to give up his other nationality/passport.

    • MRW April 4, 2013 at 9:35 am

      Now that would be three passports, wouldn't it. And no, that wasn't permissible for American Jews in the 70s.

    • MRW April 3, 2013 at 7:36 pm with 13 replies

      Americans weren't allowed to hold two passports in the 1970s except Jews.

  • Rashid Khalidi on the Israel lobby
    • MRW April 5, 2013 at 8:22 pm with 1 replies

      The Israelis cut their defense industry teeth on S America in the 80s. Finkelstein and Chomsky are short-sighted and woefully ignorant of how finance capitalism, controlled by the Lobby, has worked to undermine the world since Reagan took office. The Lobby's fait accompli was getting the first US free trade agreement with Israel in 1985.

    • MRW April 5, 2013 at 7:56 pm

      even going so far as to pooh-pooh the strategic significance of oil

      We could have bought all the oil in Iraq many times over without going to war. Oil men don't like unstable countries to drill in. The first thing Bush did was put military protection in at the NW Iraqi bases H1, H2, H3, and H4. He planned it ahead of time. Those were the bases to open up the old Mosul to Haifa pipeline for the benefit of Israel until Paritzky spilled the beans in April 2003. See official Pentagon photo, bottom page 2:
      link to nogw.com

      [S]upport for Israel is overwhelmingly because of the Lobby, and that US actions in the Middle East are best interpreted by reference to the Lobby and Israel.

      Of course they are. Don't be ridiculous. The archives here are rife with evidence.

      We had these discussions for the last three years.
      link to mondoweiss.net
      link to mondoweiss.net
      link to mondoweiss.net

      More:
      link to mondoweiss.net

    • MRW April 5, 2013 at 7:37 pm

      annie

      Economist Michael Hudson at Rimini, Italy (“There IS An Alternative To European Austerity: Modern Money Theory (MMT)”, February 2012.

      [P]eople think about parasites as taking the host’s energy and lifeblood. But, in biology, the smart parasites do something else: They take over the brain of the host. They make the brain think that the parasite is part of the body, to be protected.

  • Slamming intellectuals who backed Iraq war, Hedges says he lost job at 'NYT' for opposing it
  • 'NYT' reporter's appeal to editor: young Jews raising money for IDF are 'just like your daughter'
    • MRW April 1, 2013 at 1:42 pm

      Underscores Cieply's journalistic integrity. Anything for the cause, including stretching it or lying.

    • MRW April 1, 2013 at 1:41 pm

      “Being that I’m Jewish, it absolutely shocked me,” Mr. Paletz testified. “I felt really small.”

      I wonder how Muslims feel when the tides are turned by these same people.

  • Federal anti-discrimination law being used to shut down criticism of occupation
  • Feeling the wrath of the Israel lobby, 'WSJ' neocon virtually accuses some advocates of dual loyalty
    • MRW March 31, 2013 at 6:11 pm

      House Republican Israel Caucus?
      Israel Allies Caucus?
      Congressional Hellenic Israel Alliance?

      What the hell are these? How many other foreign alliances are there like these in Congress? Does anyone know?

  • In Iraq, and now Syria, US seeks secular outcome by... promoting sectarian division
    • MRW April 2, 2013 at 11:30 am with 1 replies

      Why Washington Wants ‘Finito’ with Putin – F. William Engdahl
      link to dprogram.net

      Salafism+CIA: The winning formula to destabilize Russia, the Middle East by F. William Engdahl
      link to voltairenet.org

      The assassination of the most respected Sufi religious leader in Dagestan, Russia’s volatile Caucasus, comes as Salafist jihadists in Libya murder a US Ambassador who was actually a key player in ousting Gaddafi and bringing the Salafist Muslim Brotherhood and Jihadists into power. Throughout the entire Islamic world today, a wave of hate is being unleashed in the name of Islamic fundamentalism that could bring a new world war. This is the consequence of the Greater Middle East Project put in play in 2010 and earlier by the Washington-London-Tel Aviv axis. Manipulating religious fervor is an explosive cocktail as F. William Engdahl shows here.

      "Washington sees manipulation of Muslim groups as the vehicle to bring uncontrollable chaos to Russia and Central Asia. It’s being carried out by some of the same organizations engaged in creating chaos and destruction inside Syria against the government of Bashar Al-Assad. In a real sense, as Russian security services clearly understand, if they don’t succeed in stopping the Jihadists insurgency in Syria, it will come home to them via the Caucasus."

      CHECK THE MAP. A war sprouted in the Caucusus is a launching point for Iran. China fears the same.

  • Anthony Lewis's death unleashes an 'outpouring of vitriol' about his views critical of Israel
    • MRW March 30, 2013 at 11:47 am

      Lewis started out as a journalist covering the courts and law. He taught law writing at Columbia's J School. His second and last wife was a judge in Massachusetts. (She was South African, if I remember correctly.) Lewis' thing was injustice.

      EDIT: And he was American. He believed the bullshit about this being a nation of laws, not men, which it no longer is at this time.

    • MRW March 30, 2013 at 11:43 am

      I have a difficulty in believing that Lewis was not aware of Israeli plans.

      But do you think the NYT op-ed editor would let him write that? As Chris Hedges said in a 2010 interview with Christopher Lydon everyone who works at the NYT knows the line they can't cross there and if they did, like Sydney Schanberg (Westside Highway development) or Hedges (Iraq War and Israel), they were out. Hedges said we weren't stupid, we knew we were crossing their line, and accepted the consequences. Lewis opted to stay in the salad bowl, and probably for reasons Blownaway described above.

    • MRW March 30, 2013 at 11:28 am with 1 replies

      marc b.,

      Lewis did a lot in the 80s. He pushed against the Likud tide bigtime. He was lucky to have a column at the NYT because if he had come along at any time later, the NYT would never have given him space.

  • Obama allowed Zionists to feel cool again
    • MRW March 29, 2013 at 1:22 pm

      "Does the Khazar stuff ever get old"

      Not if it's accurate. A Russian Jewish archeological team a couple of years ago discovered pottery shards with Jewish text on them in Khazaria that proved there was a connection, or don't you know that? Google it.

    • MRW March 29, 2013 at 1:21 pm

      "nor does the stuff about the Earth being round"

      ;-)

    • MRW March 29, 2013 at 1:18 pm

      “[They are] primarily of Western European origin, which is rooted in the Roman Empire, and Middle Eastern origin, whose source is probably Mesopotamia [a name for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, corresponding to modern-day Iraq, the northeastern section of Syria and to a lesser extent southeastern Turkey and smaller parts of southwestern Iran]

      An area, if I remember correctly, known as the Persian Empire in those times, the people Israelis now want to kill. Their own.
      link to wall-maps.com
      OR
      link to wwnorton.com

  • Another bad review: 'Obama takes Palestinians for granted'
    • MRW March 27, 2013 at 3:11 pm

      Yeah, hoist your flag, MJ, because you've gone nothing to lose either. They can't ruin your career now.

      You know what I would write if I had your new job? I'd go for the jugular with Obama. I'd tell him that now he knows what it's like to be white and powerful, how those good 'ole boy southerners felt, the surge, when they could tell who got to live where and when. Hozzit feel, Obama? Feels good, hunh. How soon you forgot your Joshua and Moses generation speech. Mr. Go Along to Get Along.

  • Hat's off to Anthony Lewis, who in '99 understood that Israel wanted a Palestinian Bantustan
    • MRW March 27, 2013 at 2:54 pm

      I knew Tony briefly in the early 80s when he lived at 40 W. 67th St. across and down a bit from the Cafe Des Artistes. I think he had Ira Gershwin's old pied-à-terre; I know it was in the same building because I was in there all the time. He used to get accosted along Columbus and on 67th St by little old lady Jews thumping on his chest with frail hands that he was no William Safire and shame on him for bringing down the Jews! His eyes took it in with a certain kindness. He was so tall and they were so short. He always loped away. This was around the time Sharon was running on testosterone 24/7. Never saw him after he got divorced and moved away. But I read his pieces, and I think the distance from Manhattan gave his writing a force and fearlessness that flourished in Cambridge.

    • MRW March 27, 2013 at 1:38 pm with 1 replies

      Alexander Cockburn ran it on CounterPunch.

      And under a paywall.

  • Lessons learned from a box of matzoh
    • MRW March 27, 2013 at 11:32 am

      I love the stuff. I grew up on it in my house, with mate tea. My grandmother served it for high tea, and they didn't want me eating scones and jam (sugar).

  • NPR can't stop talking about Jews
    • MRW March 26, 2013 at 3:46 am with 1 replies

      palijustice,

      It happened in the early aughts (00s). There was a huge kerfuffle that started with the Boston public radio station and grew to include NPR in DC. Jewish donors and foundations threatened to take every penny away unless they complied. I don't have links, and I'm too lazy to research it now, but it happened.

    • MRW March 26, 2013 at 3:42 am

      Yet again. You actually went and did this. Do you realize how you look, Henry? Do you realize what kind of people you’re channelling?

      Thinking ones. The public airwaves belong to all of us. This assessment was done to correct the paucity of coverage of the 20% US Black population at one time. Even the NYT has undergone this scrutiny. It's completely appropriate.

    • MRW March 26, 2013 at 3:08 am with 1 replies

      What about Philip Glass? Allen Ginsberg? Leonard Cohen?

      Exactly. What about them? They're old. One's dead. And the other is a Canadian.

    • MRW March 26, 2013 at 3:06 am

      Krauss,

      I don't think the issue is the numbers. It's the reluctance to discuss controversy, which used to be the point of public radio. I mean, why listen to it otherwise? Imagine a world where we would have to listen to Muffy and Buffy WASP radio, preening about their wonderfulness and entitlement. Well, now we have the Jewish version of it and it is no less unpleasant.

      Thank god for internet radio. That's where I'm going. Bridget Kandall's Forum on BBC is excellent. Ditto their Global News and In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg, or Tim Harford's Pop-Up Economics. BBC's Hardtalk puts Chris Matthew's Hardball to shame. I'm not giving the BBC a general pass because they, too, have fallen prey to hasbara on the I/P issue; however, the general quality of their radio is the sun to NPR's puny earth.

      N.B. I don't get east coast NPR programming, so maybe you have different stuff.

    • MRW March 26, 2013 at 2:52 am

      Good point, lysias. And the people they did have on during the rare times they discussed it were ill-equipped intellectually to explain the centuries-old complaints on both sides. I mean, what does Martin Indyk have to do with it? I grew up listening to those complaints. So I know "our side" of it.

      The thing that CBC does is they call the principals wherever they are in the world and talk to them; moreover, they listen and let us listen (unlike that tedious NPR Science Friday guy who, one, can't stop interrupting as if he's exasperated, and two, wont let his knowledgable guests talk longer than 10 seconds at a clip, he won't let them explain themselves or their complex science; it's all tabloid).

    • MRW March 26, 2013 at 1:38 am

      dimadok,

      You don't live here. You don't hear it.

      Further, the airwaves, by law since 1934, belong to the public. While commercial outfits who buy licenses can broadcast what they want or within FCC rules, the National Public Radio has to reflect the public.

      As I write this, NPR here is broadcasting one hour (out of three) of Canada's As it Happens. The top story of the hour is Ezra Levant's apology to the Roma six months after insulting them on his September Sun TV show called "The Source." Levant is a Calgary AB personality. Levant's rant was called 'The Jew vs. The Gypsy'. Levant is now being charged with hate crimes, and Sun's application to the CRTC for its TV license hangs in the balance this week for violating Canadian broadcasting codes. Levant apologized the day of application. Carol Off, the host who has Barbara Frum's former job, is grilling the VP of Sun network, reading portions of what Levant said (truly racist), and demanding to know why Levant wasn't fired. She says, correctly, that she would have been fired for saying what he did. This is the kind of public radio that you don't have down here anymore since the big Jewish donors—if anyone can remember—threatened NPR in the early aughts for discussing Palestinian rights and discussing Israel's role in the Iraq War. It chilled public radio.
      The CBC clip is worth listening to.
      link to cbc.ca

    • MRW March 25, 2013 at 4:36 pm with 2 replies

      Henry, I heard that same clip on St. Paddy's Day, and I was shocked. Actually, I was fed up. In my neck of the woods it's all Holocaust all the time; if I hear one more maudlin story about Anne Frank I'm gonna scream. The only time I hear Ms. Fresh Air get animated is when she's interviewing a Jewish subject. "Oooo, look how wonderful we are." Jack Black is a comic genius? People I know who used to listen to NPR have abandoned it, including my cleaning ladies (Latino) who used to love NPR on the way to work. No longer. NPR can't even get 10,000 subscribers here in a city of 1.5 million. National Public radio has abandoned the American people for some tribal bullshit no one is interested in. It's so dumbed-down it's astonishing, and Jews claim they are smart? The only good thing about my NPR is BBC in the middle of the night, which I rearranged two days ago to get via iTunes podcasts (Forum, Global News, Documentaries, etc). BBC's Jewish-centric programming is light years above the bullshit we get here, and entertaining, informative, and thought-provoking. The maudlin crap we are force-fed in the USA is aggravating.

      But when you factor in the proportion of the population that identifies as Christian or Catholic, the frequency of references to Jews is indeed astonishing.

      No. It's stupid. But they'll learn. I got an email about how they are trying to get the 20-somethings. Fat chance.

      I am also fed up with every story about Blacks and Latinos being loser stories as if Blacks and Latinos never rise beyond the stereotypes the NPR producers place them in. Someone in that joint thinks it's still the 1950s.

  • On 'socially conscious' dialogue tour, Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra will visit Bethlehem but not 'occupied territories'
    • MRW March 26, 2013 at 6:29 pm

      Ah. Andrew. Thanks for the laugh. Consider that many in the arts suffer from a ‘Jesus Complex’, [...] their message would ring universal peace and love all over the motherfucker.

    • MRW March 26, 2013 at 6:27 pm

      I second that, Peter.

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