surely here they are speaking of the good professor bollinger

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 25 2007 16:54 utc | 3

When demonization (Ahmedinejad) and deification (Petraeus) stop working, it’s time to move on to stronger measures.
From the SF Examiner:
Vice President Dick Cheney was philosophical about the possibility of a Democratic president fundamentally reversing the policies that he and Bush have worked so hard to implement in Iraq. “It’s the nature of the business, in a sense,” he shrugged during an interview in his West Wing office. “I mean, you get two terms. We were fortunate to get two terms. And I think we’ll increasingly see a lot of emphasis on deciding who the next occupant of the Oval Office is going to be.”

Posted by: Dick Durata | Sep 25 2007 17:16 utc | 5

Interesting dick durata…
ho hum, it’s just part of the game. It stands to reason, in my opinion, that all world leaders are part of the same gang. There may be a faction or two working against that gang but I seriously doubt it, whether it is chavez, castro, ahmadinejad or putin, they are all working towards the same objective: a global neo fascist corporate police state that further seperates and protects the wealthy elites from the rest of us.
Osama Bin Aiwazz and Ahmadinejinn: Good little puppets
I am now almost entirely convinced this tableau of cardboard cutout super villians paraded in front of us are directly or indirectly stooges of the very “Great Satan” Western globalists they claim to hate.
Mere coincidences, or more evidence of the world being a big WWF wrestling script?
Osama bin Goldstein comes out days after 9/11 saying he is innocent, and the CIA/Mossad musta been behind it
Then he comes out and says “ok, yeah that was me…but wow, the towers falling was a shocker”
Then 3 years later he reemerges to tell people to “vote for Kerry!”
(haha, we get it…voting for Kerry=voting for Osama)
Then he goes into hiding and a tubby Jewish American kid becomes the new spokesperson
Now Osama is back, claiming to now be a green progressive intellectual liberal talking about how great Chomsky and global warming awareness is.
And NOW Ahmadinejad is in the headline news for his “questioning of 9/11″……..and the holocaust. Of course.
I swear, I wouldnt be surprised if Osama comes back with another tape saying “oh yeah, Bush did 9/11, check out Loose Change”.
I’ve still yet someone to explain why the new Osama tape freezes up right when he starts talking about current events, or why al Qaeda claims to hate Jews and beheads anyone even remotely thought to be Jewish…
but then says Jews woulda been protected by al Qaeda in WW2(even tho the Muslim Brotherhood al Qaeda precursor was part of the Hitler SS),
proclaims Noam Chomsky a hero and uses an American Jewish kid as their new poster child.
I swear, you can’t make this stuff up. I just wonder who’s writing the scripts.
As Zawahiri and Osama seem to always come out with a coincidentally timed wag the dog tape saying EXACTLY what will back up the GOP hawk’s luntatic rantings and war policies.
Yeah…never mind Osama’s family built the twin towers with Rockefeller and are in bed with the Bush family.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 25 2007 17:38 utc | 7

on rewatching the video b has offered i am struck by the eloquence & coherence of ahmedinejad. as someone has noted bush is completely incapable of speaking two coherent sentences even in environments he owns or who offer no form of resistance a la the press room at the white house
ahmedinejad’s politics are not mine but in this talk he showed great restraint & spoke clearly. whatever the washington post want to see (wmd’s in iraq, aq & saddam hussein etc etc) they did not observe & listen to the same speech that i did. it is clear even a largely unsympathetic student body understood the complete inelegance of the situation the president of iran was placed in
there is an excerpt of david halberstams book on korea in vanity fair – where we read of the complete derangement of gen mccarthur & his cronies in inteliigence – who, through vanity & underestimation led their troops to slaughter & long time in detention in north korea. we witness the same level of underestimating going on here. as in iraq a complete absence of understanding of the histroy & culture of iraq. importantly also was missing any form of nuance – of where ahmedinejad actually is placed in the iranian political landscape – which contrary to the crude thinking of rupert murdoch & his mendiants – is hardly hegemonic. there are both qualitative & quantitative differences between a whole series of political impulses
even the classic army & beauracracy are not without their proper differences. there is already quite distinct differences amongst the religious leadership. the opposition itself is largely full of schisms too
when i see the united states at this time – at an elemental level – there exists a far more hegemonic indeed dictatorial situation than the one in iran
on a whole series of questions including homosexuality – which indeed has had a long but but discreet life & is part of its literature – is completely ignored at a public level. this is largely like the vatican telling us that their priests don’t molest children, or lord levy suggesting his confession has nothing to do with the way he dealt with the situation in israel & the occupied palestinian territories. we know as he knows – it is not true.
when i see what level the public discourse is at, how it is managed by murdoch (‘the evil has landed’ ‘mad mullah’ etc etc) – all i am suggesting is that i take ahmedinejad at his word – on the questions of knowledge & science. & that in any case i would take his word more seriouslyy when he is preceded by some neocon hysteric whose foul mouth besmirched free speech
& i’m sure that is how it was seen by both the persian & arabic audience. or more pertinantly, they watched the u s express a hatred of the people of the middle east & a complete disrespect for their leadership. i don’t think that public confuses who with whom
in fact it revealed more about the current politcal landscape in the u s, it expressed darkly what some of us see as the coming war & the brutality with which it will be carried out & apologised for while it sends the bodies of america’s working class & marginalised people back home in coffins

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 25 2007 17:52 utc | 9

Pat Buchanan: Infantile Nation

It would be an obscenity, we are told, if Ahmadinejad were allowed to place a wreath at Ground Zero. This is a public relations stunt that should never be permitted.
That the Iranian president has PR in mind is undoubtedly true. Much of what national leaders do is symbolic. But that wreath laying would have said something else, as well.
It would have said that, to Iran, these Americans were victims who deserve to be honored and mourned and, by extension, the men who killed them were murderers. Bin Laden celebrates 9/11. So do all America-haters. By laying a wreath at Ground Zero, the president of Iran would be saying that in the war between al-Qaida and the United States, he and his country side with the United States.
How would we have been hurt by letting him send this message?

He makes lots of other good points as well in this piece.
My sense is that the whole “Iran is our enemy” hysteria/propaganda campaign is backfiring, and that Ahmadinejad accelerated that trend.
Here are two pieces that strongly come out in support of a “hey wait a minute — let’s stop and separate the US national interests from Israel’s before it is too late.”
Glenn Greenwald: Giuliani’s Proposal for Endless Wars Against Israel in the Service of Israel

Like most countries, Israel deems all of its wars to be defensive wars in response to threats. So Rudy Giuliani, as President, would in essence deem any war in which Israel is involved to be, by definition, a war on the U.S., and would use American resources and lives to become involved in any such war and fight on behalf of Israel. Shouldn’t the fact that the leading GOP candidate for President believes such a thing be the source of a bit more discussion? Other than John Edwards’ views regarding haircuts, is there any major presidential candidate who has espoused a view anywhere near this radical or controversial?
Israel has been involved, and will continue to be involved, in an endless series of wars with its neighbors over matters having nothing to do with U.S. interests. As Matt Yglesias noted, Guiliani’s policy would, among many other things, “commit[] the United States to the armed defense of the borders of a country that lacks internationally recognized borders.” A Giuliani presidency would mean that we would be almost immediately deemed to be at war with Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. It is hard to imagine a more certain and rapid guarantee of endless American wars in the Middle East than this.

And Congressman Paul Findlay: America’s Religious-based Wars: The Price You Must Pay (Speech from 2005, re-posted on Buchanan’s website last week)

The cover-up [for the USS Liberty incident in 1967] cleared the decks for massive U.S. aid to Israel. It set virtually a sky’s-the-limit precedent for tapping the U.S. Treasury, the Defense Department’s munitions stockpiles, and all of America’s top-secret technology.
The aid began to soar in all forms-financial, military and diplomatic. All of it was unconditional and remains so today.
No rules or strings are attached. U.S. officials are even denied the usual authority to monitor how aid money is spent. Israel demonstrates its command of the U.S.-Israeli relationship in various ways. One is especially ugly: Israel occasionally tortures detained U.S. citizens, even teenagers, with impunity.
This calamitous criminal tide is the byproduct of President Johnson’s fateful cover-up. And the original, root cause of this horror is the disappearance of free speech and integrity in the making of U.S. Middle East policy. For years, there has been no real debate, no unfettered exchange of opinion, no thorough discussion of this vital of policy anywhere in our government.
There is no dip in U.S. aid even when Israeli prime ministers publicly defy U.S. presidents, as they occasionally do. Our officials routinely look the other way when Israel steals secrets. The imprisonment of Jonathan Pollard was the exception that proves the rule. These crimes get little attention in our thoroughly intimidated major media, but the rest of the world sees our Congress as a bunch of trained poodles that jump through a hoop held by Israel. Once revered worldwide, America is now reviled.

Posted by: Bea | Sep 25 2007 18:41 utc | 11

DoS,
my limited frame of reference doesn’t leave much room for justifying honor killings, even if my sister were a prostitute and my brother a transvestite meth freak.
There is a big difference between acknowledging a simple fact of life and appearing as a guest speaker at the Teheran gay pride parade.
Gay people exist, I have no problem with that and have never seen them as a threat to myself, my family, my family’s honor or my country’s moral standing.
But there is a bit of hypocrisy in criticizing Ahmadinejad’s medieval view of homosexuality in the light of the Republican Party’s antideluvean viewpoint.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Sep 25 2007 18:51 utc | 13

Ah, the good ol’ U S of Amnesia… It was only one generation — 40 years — ago…

In society at large, the penalties for homosexuality were severe. State laws across the country criminalized same-sex acts, while simple affectionate acts in public such as two men or women holding hands could lead to arrest. Even declaring oneself as a gay man or lesbian could result in admission to a mental institution without a hearing.
[…]
In particular, during the war the gay population of San Francisco had started to rise as lesbians and gay men purged from the army settled in the city. Over the course of a decade, this, combined with California state’s less repressive policy towards gay bars – plus factors such as the validation of homosexuality offered by the literary movement of the “Beats” around writers such as Jack Kerouac – would help transform San Francisco into the “gay capital” of the U.S.
Recently, in Britain we have seen with successive Conservative and New Labour governments, who both support the free market, how the ideology of the family is used to buttress the social and economic system. The two parties’ attacks on single parents provide one example.
In the U.S. of the 1940s and 1950s, post-war reconstruction and the shift to consumer production, taking place against the background of the Cold War, resulted in the authorities heavily promoting the model of the orthodox nuclear family. The other side of the coin was a clampdown on those who stepped out of the magic circle of matrimony, parenthood, and home-making by engaging in same-sex relationships.
The inquiries of the House Un-American Activities Committee led to thousands of homosexuals losing their jobs in government departments. The ban on the employment of homosexuals at the federal level remained in place until 1975. D’Emilio demonstrates the comprehensive nature of the attack on homosexuals. In the District of Columbia alone, there were 1,000 arrests each year in the early 1950s. In every state, local newspapers published the names of those charged together with their place of work, resulting in many workers getting fired. The postal service opened the mail of gay men and lesbians and passed on names. Colleges maintained lists of suspected gay students.

footnote
There’s ample anecdotal evidence that US police in the 50’s and 60’s were beating and raping (with impunity) gay men and women who had been arrested for “pubic indecency,” i.e. holding hands, going to a gay bar — gay bars being Illegal Dens of Vice at that time and subject to raids. There were good and long-festering reasons for the Stonewall riot. There’s an infamous prison at Atascadero, Calif, where many gay men were imprisoned and subjected to ECT and drugs to “cure” their “perversion”.

Timmons added, “The laws and customs of the era were stringently anti-homosexual; in California, as in most states, any sexual act except the missionary position between a heterosexual couple was a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Anyone caught doing anything else could be made to register as a sex offender. Repeat offenders and those whose partners were minors were often sent to Atascadero state prison and given electroshock ‘therapy,’ or even subjected to castration. Since any public mention of homosexuality was equated with scandal, few workplaces would retain an employee whose involvement with such an organization became public.” (“The Trouble with Harry Hay”)
As the Mattachine founders met to discuss organizing, the “Lavender Scare” was becoming a sensationalized propaganda component of the McCarthyite anti-communist witch hunt. The Senate was making public its report rooting out “sexual perverts” from government employment.
The deep-freeze Cold War climate was meant to have a chilling effect on all progressive and revolutionary organizing. And the Mattachine founders, as young revolutionaries, understood the powers of the state that the capitalist class could unleash. They were well-aware that the German Homosexual Emancipation Movement and communists were early targets of the Nazi state capitalist regime.

footnote
These were conditions in the US within living memory. One generation. And there are still plenty of people who want to restore those conditions. Is having your brain cut off with ECT and heavy pharmaceuticals much better than having your hand cut off? Is the US, or the UK, or any of the so-called “enlightened” Western states — where the very idea of gay marriage is still enough to polarise the electorate and distract voters from far more significant survival issues — in a strong position to critique the barbarism of old-world patriarchy?
That would be like the arriviste who made his fortune last month sneering at the even more nouveau riche who only made his packet last week. The US and Iran both come late to the table when we speak of the integration of gay people into a culture — many of the aboriginal N Am nations had far more tolerance and long-established social niches in place for the “two-souled”, berdache, etc. — cf Williams, The Spirit and the Flesh…

Posted by: DeAnander | Sep 25 2007 20:12 utc | 15

DeA wrote:
Ah, the good ol’ U S of Amnesia… It was only one generation — 40 years — ago…
and following of r’giaps theme of us apes..
1. Start with a cage containing five apes. In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put stairs under it. Before long, an ape will go to the stairs and start to climb for the banana. 2. As soon as the ape touches the stairs, spray all of the apes with cold water. After a while, another ape makes an attempt with the same result “ all the apes are sprayed with cold water. 3. Turn off the cold water. If, later, another ape tries to climb the stairs, the other apes will prevent it even though no water sprays them. 4. Now, remove one ape from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new ape sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the apes attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted. 5. Next, remove another of the original five apes and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The other newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm. 6. Again, replace a third original ape with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four apes that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest ape. 7. After replacing the fourth and fifth original apes, all the apes which have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no ape ever again approaches the stairs.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 25 2007 20:25 utc | 17

Good comments all. Part of the misunderstanding begins with the term “homosexuality” itself. Some other cultures understand these phenomena in different ways. Including “other cultures” within the USA. (Capitol Hill republicans for example – “there are no homosexuals in “our” country”).
DeAnander – those were interesting references to Berdache etc. I had never seen those before.

Posted by: Maxcrat | Sep 26 2007 1:05 utc | 19

Moon of Alabama gets its props and contributes to someone’s home work.
“3 AFRICOM: US Military Control of Africa’s Resources
Source: MoonofAlabama.org 2/21/2007
Title: “Understanding AFRICOM”
Author: Bryan Hunt
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2007/02/understanding_a_1.html
Student Researcher: Ioana Lupu
Faculty Evaluator: Marco Calavita, Ph.D”
No 3 Secret in USA

Posted by: BenIAM | Sep 26 2007 1:29 utc | 21

Wow… from bea’s link at #11
snip:

What is best for America in the Middle East is never examined on Capitol Hill or in the executive branch, much less given the priority it deserves. I know. I was a Member of Congress for twenty-two years. I have followed the grim scene closely ever since.

snip:

This policy bias could not have occurred, even for a year, if free speech had prevailed on Capitol Hill or in the White House. Any U.S. president in the last 38 years could have prevented 9/11 simply by suspending all U.S. aid until Israel vacated the territory it has held illegally since 1967.

I’m kinda speechless after reading that…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 26 2007 2:42 utc | 23

you should still be able to find findley’s 1985/89 book they dare to speak out: people and institutions confront israel’s lobby in used bookstores or such.

Posted by: b real | Sep 26 2007 2:58 utc | 25

b real , i received my update in the mail yesterday

Project Censored will host the award winning authors of the Censored 2008 stories at the second annual Media Accountability Conference October 26-27 at Sonoma State University. (my alma mater btw)
are you going?

Posted by: annie | Sep 26 2007 4:12 utc | 27

thanks annie. unfortunately for me & as things stand today, another obligation prevents me from being able to attend. still working on it, but running out of time. sounds like a good lineup. freespeech tv & real news are supposedly covering it, so great op for even more awareness-building on the subject. be a shame to let it slip by. i’ll let you know if my situation changes.
[we now return you to your regularly scheduled on-topic discourse. bzzzt]

Posted by: b real | Sep 26 2007 4:46 utc | 29

I’m no fan of the current regime of Israel, but the question, “What did the Palestinians have to do with the Holocaust?” does have an answer. The Palestinian spiritual leader at the time, The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, issued a fatwa backing The Third Reich in World War II and echoed Hitler’s call for the wholesale extermination of the Jewish people.
And let us not forget that many of the Arabs who were living in Palestine at the time moved there from other countries to work in the highly productive enterprises that recent Jewish immigrants to Palestine had established. Before so many Jewish people started moving to Palestine, the place was very sparsely populated. Mark Twain said as much when he travelled there in the Nineteenth Century.
Remember, every story has at least two different sides to it.

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 26 2007 6:43 utc | 31

Nah, every story has three sides to it, yours, mine and the truth.

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 26 2007 6:45 utc | 33

I didn’t know this – weird: Sex change funding undermines no gays claim

Iran has between 15,000 and 20,000 transsexuals, according to official statistics, although unofficial estimates put the figure at up to 150,000. Iran carries out more gender change operations than any country in the world besides Thailand.
Sex changes have been legal since the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, spiritual leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution, passed a fatwa authorising them nearly 25 years ago. Whereas homosexuality is considered a sin, transsexuality is categorised as an illness subject to cure.
While the government seeks to keep its approval quiet, state support has increased since Mr Ahmadinejad took office in 2005. His government has begun providing grants of £2,250 for operations and further funding for hormone therapy. It is also proposing loans of up to £2,750 to allow those undergoing surgery to start their own businesses.

Posted by: b | Sep 26 2007 9:09 utc | 35

Never did like Black Sabbath.
So, Love and Light, got a reference for this fatwa, or are you just a liar?

Posted by: DM | Sep 26 2007 10:30 utc | 37

having just spent the night with dershowitz & finklestein – i recognise that love & light is copying the arguments of the plagiarist alan dershowitz who copied his text from the extremely contested book which quotes twain which dershowitz copies & love & light repeats
& the grand mufti is not co complex – he was neither very respected by muslims & in no way represented a national leader of the palestinians
love & light i think you need to read beeny morris – or in fact any of what the israelis themselves call ‘the new historians’
& occupation is occupation is occupation

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 26 2007 13:37 utc | 39

b 35, actually that doesn’t seem weird to me.
At Columbia University on Monday, Mr Ahmadinejad said homosexuality did not exist in Iran. “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country,”
he did not say ‘homosexuality did not exist in Iran.’
he said iran doesn’t have homosexuals LIKE WE DO. in other words, condoned or recognized as being healthy and not inflicted w/a curable disease.
aside from the legal standing and civil rights issues (big deal i know), i don’t see the difference w/evangelicals who think homosexuality is a disease that needs to be treated. there is a big difference between a gay person and a transsexual. one is born in the wrong gender body, the other is attracted to ones same sex. so it sounds like iran, by funding and encouraging gender change operations, views homosexuality in a similar fashion to the dominionists although i doubt dominionists would fund gender operations.
“In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who has told you that we have it.”
certainly not the dominionists, because they don’t think we have them either! gays are just sick sick sick!
i wish people would show as much outrage about these types permeating the halls of our justice system.

Posted by: annie | Sep 26 2007 14:04 utc | 41

whoops, i was making coffee and reading the RS link while posting , didn’t notice loyal just made the same point

Posted by: annie | Sep 26 2007 14:07 utc | 43

So, Love and Light, got a reference for this fatwa, or are you just a liar?
He may not have as fully public in his support for the Holocaust as I had just thought, but according to Wikipedia:
The Mufti’s knowledge about the Holocaust while living in Nazi Germany has been debated with the Mufti himself denying any such knowledge after the war. Testimony presented at the Nuremberg trials, however, accused the Mufti of not only having knowledge about the holocaust but of also actively encouraging the initiation of extermination programs against European Jews. Adolf Eichmann’s deputy Dieter Wisliceny testified during his war crimes trial in 1946 that … “The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan… He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chambers of Auschwitz.”
When the Red Cross offered to mediate with Adolf Eichmann in a trade prisoner-of-war exchange involving the freeing of German citizens in exchange for 5,000 Jewish children being sent from Poland to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, Husseini directly intervened with Himmler and the exchange was cancelled.[9]
Among the sabotage al-Husayni organized was an attempted chemical warfare assault on the second largest and predominantly Jewish city in Palestine, Tel Aviv. Five parachutists were sent with a toxin to dump into the water system. The police caught the infiltrators in a cave near Jericho, and according to Jericho district police commander Fayiz Bey Idrissi, “The laboratory report stated that each container held enough poison to kill 25,000 people, and there were at least ten containers.”[5].
In his memoirs after the war, Husayni noted that “Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: ‘The Jews are yours.’”
Recent Nazi documents uncovered in the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Military Archive Service in Freiburg [6] by two researchers, Klaus Michael Mallmann from Stuttgart University and Martin Cüppers from the University of Ludwigsburg, indicated that in the event of the British being defeated in Egypt by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps the Nazis had planned to deploy a special unit called Einsatzkommando Ägypten to exterminate Palestinian Jews and that they wanted Arab support to prevent the emergence of a Jewish state. In their book the researchers concluded that, “the most important collaborator with the Nazis and an absolute Arab anti-Semite was Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem.”[7] According to the German researchers Husayni was a prime example of how Arabs and Nazis became friends out of a hatred of Jews. Al-Husseini had met several times with Adolf Eichmann[8], Adolf Hitler’s chief architect of the Holocaust[10][9],[10],[11],[12],[13].
So do you hate the Jewish people or are you just an asshole?

Posted by: Loveandlight | Sep 26 2007 14:41 utc | 45

So do you hate the Jewish people or are you just an asshole?
lol

Posted by: annie | Sep 26 2007 14:45 utc | 47

l and l
i was reading that section of your wiki link. it seems this site carries the same references. palestinianfacts.org? a little cruise around that site shows a certain bias.
Adolf Eichmann’s deputy Dieter Wisliceny testified during his war crimes trial in 1946 that … “The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry
well, if wisliceny said it under oath, it must be true? other sources might be helpful.

Posted by: annie | Sep 26 2007 15:00 utc | 49

the US is busy creating staging areas for world domination all thru out the ME. israel just happens to be our largest permanent fixture.
Indeed. I have also heard it claimed on some forums that Israel might have lost the Yom Kippur War in the early 70’s had it not been for some last-minute US assistance. I’ll have to read up on the YKW, but in the meantime, can anybody here speak to that one?
i was reading that section of your wiki link. it seems this site carries the same references. palestinianfacts.org? a little cruise around that site shows a certain bias.
Yes, there are some dubious assertions on that site to be sure, and indeed there is some lively discussion on the matter on the “Talk” page for this topic. I will consider the assertion controversial but not outright refuted.

Posted by: Loveandlight | Sep 26 2007 15:48 utc | 51

Thanks, b. A fuller quote is even more revealing about the nature of what went on:
…the American resupply included 815 total sorties bringing Israel 56 combat aircraft and 27,900 tons of munitions and supplies. Taken together with the Soviet resupply to Arab countries fighting Israel, ‘military analysts’ told Time magazine that it was ‘the largest airlift in the history of both countries.’
So even if it wasn’t technically the largest in either country’s history to that date, we can still assume it was pretty damn big.

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 26 2007 16:21 utc | 53

Paul Woodward at War in Context has an editorial that expands on this very point. Ahmadinejad’s Free Speech is worth reading in full. The conclusion reads:

Ahmadinejad is far from alone in questioning an idea — implicit but never clearly articulated — that the Holocaust provided a moral justification for whatever it would take to create a Zionist state. Just as 800,000 Palestinians could be swept aside in the process of creating the modern state of Israel, likewise any questions about the means being used to create that state could also be suspended.
As the Israeli historian, Avi Shlaim, writes:

…the tragedy of European Jewry became a source of strength for Zionism. The moral case for a home for the Jewish people in Palestine was widely accepted from the beginning; after the Holocaust it became unassailable. The poet Robert Frost defined a home as the place where, if you have to go there, they have to let you in. Few people disputed the right of the Jews to a home after the trauma to which they had been subjected in Central Europe. (The Iron Wall, pp.23-24)

But even while its easy to understand that the trauma of the Holocaust would lead many Jews to seek a safe haven outside Europe, the creation of Israel did not absolve Europe and the United States of the need to examine why so many Jews could not regard as home, countries in which their ancestral roots went back centuries. In as much as few gentiles disputed the right of Jews to a home, the implication was that they could find no such home outside Israel. By the end of World War II, Nazism had been defeated but the swamp of anti-Semitism out of which it had arisen had not been drained. And in as much as an effort to accomplish that goal was not regarded as an integral element in the reconstruction of Europe, a new state of Israel became a convenient necessity. While the Holocaust provided Jews with an unassailable right to a homeland, it simultaneously provided a rhetorical shield for obscuring the fact that this right had been secured by denying the Palestinians’ own right to remain in their own homes.

Posted by: Bea | Sep 26 2007 16:23 utc | 55

Jewish community in Iran slams US protest against Ahmadinejad’s visit

Heads of Iran’s Jewish community ‘outraged by the disrespect’ shown to the Iranian president during Columbia visit
The Jewish community in Iran published a statement Wednesday, slamming the disrespect shown to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by human rights and freedom activists on his recent visit to the United States….
“The constant disrespect and disturbance demonstrated (during Ahmadinejad’s speech at Colombia) prove once more that those claiming to be peace loving people have no real grasp of the concept,” said the statement.
Published by the Iranian news agency IRNA, the statement also said that the Jewish community in Iran was “outraged by that kind of behavior”.
The Jewish community in Iran spans some 25,000 people, who are considered loyal to the country’s radical Islamist regime’s anti-Zionist policies; but many believe the community’s loyalty is merely a means of survival. [Note: This view is inserted by the Israeli newspaper, presumably as a means of diminishing the impact of the report.]
The statement was signed by Morris Mottaned, the Jewish delegate to the Iranian parliament and by the heads of the Iranian Jewish communities.

Posted by: Bea | Sep 26 2007 16:40 utc | 57

re the Mufti
Whatever the Mufti may or may not have believed, said, done, or agreed to as far as Nazi Germany was concerned, the actions of one leader do not ever justify punishing or causing harm to an entire people. That would be considered collective punishment, which may we remind our kind audience, is illegal under international law, behavior of a number of current parties on the world stage notwithstanding.
It’s as if you were to say, “George Bush invaded Iraq with the intent to destroy it, therefore it’s reasonable, right, and just to allow all 27 million Iraqis to resettle in the US and make it their new home, displacing everyone in their way, regardless of the impact on the present US residents.”

Posted by: Bea | Sep 26 2007 16:49 utc | 59

Whatever the Mufti may or may not have believed, said, done, or agreed to as far as Nazi Germany was concerned, the actions of one leader do not ever justify punishing or causing harm to an entire people.
I certainly would not agree with any such collective punishment sentiments. As a gay man, I’m particularly sensitive to that because there are ignorant people who take it for granted that gay-bashing and -killing are justified behaviors because a heterosexual man was the victim of homosexual rape.

Posted by: Loveandlight | Sep 26 2007 16:58 utc | 61

Regarding the Mufti’s alleged pro-nazi sentiments;
Keep in mind in 1936, lots of countries had normal, even cordial, relations and trade with Nazi Germany, including the United States. Countries Such as Hungary, Romania and Finland were active allies of Germany during the war and yet no one claims they deserve ethnic cleansing as a consequence. No serious individual advocates such a thing for Germany itself. And yet the Palestinians deserve eternal punishment for a single visit taking place 5 years before the U.S. bothered to enter the war.
Truly we are witnesses to an astonishing degree of dehumanization before our eyes that such an argument could even be advanced without total embarrassment.

Posted by: Lysander | Sep 26 2007 17:47 utc | 63

Annie:
That does give me something to at least consider, not in the least because the pic at the bottom of the page is one of the most crassly obvious photoshopping jobs I’ve ever seen. The light/shade contrasts on the Mufti’s head is dramatically different from the entire rest of the photograph. Ugh.

Posted by: Loveandlight | Sep 26 2007 17:58 utc | 65

Homosexuals in Iran.
A minor point, except insofar as the US bashes, well.
.
As far as I understand it, very superficially, perhaps misguidedly, from scarce info, have no links to back it up, the mainstream doesn’t report on these things:
Iran is the number one country for safe sex-change operations, both ways. Ppl from France and Switz go there regularly for that, much like getting your teeth fixed in Hungary. (From personal experience.) The stamp is given by two doctors, one must be a psychiatrist, or not, stories vary. The medical acts are top class, the care wonderful, the price low.
The general idea in Iran is that everyone must belong to one of the genders: a man can easily become a woman: he is a submissive sexual partner, his identity is at heart female, etc. This is completely accepted. By families, parents. Painful, but can be taken on board. In Iran, men who become women are ridiculed and marginalized, or upbeat and successful, depending – mostly on social position. They can make their way. Women are treated more harshly. (? i guess it depends..) But they too can live their lives as men. The whole scene is regulated by gender roles – biology means little, social behavior, position, all.
This obligatory gender ascription, the need to fit into ‘female’ or ‘male’ roles is of course devastating for many. In this way, transformations become obligatory, which is a pain for male homosexuals, who don’t like it at all. To conform, they are forced into feminine shapes, roles, clothes, not their desire. For women, that is always easier, as it means going from weakness to strength, sociallly speaking, and is less transforming in habits and dress or even body.
Then there is also the thing that men with men or women with women can hug and kiss and sleep together….
When A, the pres of Iran says there are no homosexuals there, what he should say is that there is no homosexual lobby, no such group, there are two genders and anyone is welcome to choose or change, and ppl are free to same sex kiss and hug ..whatever… that’s the positive spin.
Trivialities obscuring geo-politics with magazine type identity crap.
Did gay men in the US ever support their counterparts in Iran? Or course not.

Posted by: Tangerine | Sep 26 2007 19:25 utc | 67

was there ever a consideration of making a homeland for jews in europe? why was this rejected?
ho ho ho, surely you jest! at the time, there were plenty of housing developments, yacht clubs, schools and corporations in the oh-so-democratic-and-enlightened US of A that were closed to anyone identifiably Jewish. (required viewing: Gentlemen’s Agreement.) in British literature Jews were still being referred to as “Orientals” and “Hebraic” (or by cruder nicknames in prole discourse) and considered nonWhite. Jewish homeland on Anglo/Euro turf, are you kidding? the anglo overlords were almost as keen to get rid of their resident Jews as the Nazis — they just didn’t want the bad PR of mass murder, from which Hitler had kind of blown the wallpaper for a while. they discussed founding a Jewish Homeland in S America (the Colonies doncha know) but the religio-mytho-historical resonance of the Promised Land and the useful fanaticism of the Eretz Yisroel faction w/in the Jewish community seemed to settle (so to speak) the issue.
plus the terrorist actions of Stern gang and Irgun in Palestine were quite effective in making the British want to give them what they demanded and get out. I am always amused when people say that terrorism never gets you anywhere. it sure got the Stern gang a nation-state, and don’t think for a moment any Arab or Palestinian has forgotten this.
Simha Flapan The Birth of Israel was not a bad read iirc (it’s been a few years), a bit dry. Benny Morris’ early works are definitely worth the time, but it’s odd how he has detoured into militant (or nihilist?) Zionism towards the end of his life… oh yeah, and Brodkin’s How the Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America.
also recall that a lot of Jews in Euro and Anglo land were socialists and labour organisers, and the post-war regime was very keen on destroying any socialist movements in the bud. sending the idealistic socialists off to found kibbutzim in Israel was way preferable to having them organising your factory workers in Stuttgart, Lyons, or Manchester 🙂
I suspect there was also a class shift in the Jewish survivor population. since many of those who escaped only did so via class privilege, i.e. bribery or being able to afford travel expenses, and because working class Jews were disproportionately socialist and hence doubly targeted, there was a culling effect that tended to shift the demographic towards more affluence and conservatism (even if that affluence was lost in the Shoah, the attitudes and ideology of childhood upbringing tend to persist). never yet read any analysis of this, but it seems to be true of emigre populations that they are more uppercrusty and conservative than the average of their original homeland… partly trying to preserve their nostalgia, memories, and distinctiveness, but partly I suspect just ‘cos you had to have money to get out. have always thought there was more than a touch of commonality between the “White Russian” emigres of Paris who fled the Bolshevik revolution, and the post-Hitler disaporic Jewish community of UK, Canada, and USA. except that in the latter case their revanchist dream was realised, with all its sorry implications… [grain of salt time: I am practising history without a licence here and could be totally out to lunch, pls feel free to deflate this halfbaked theory into a fallen souffle.]

Posted by: DeAnander | Sep 26 2007 19:48 utc | 69

was there ever a consideration of making a homeland for jews in europe? why was this rejected?
Yes. There were 2 possibilities – Israel, or hacking off part of Germany as compensation. Zionists wanted Israel. Western Powers wanted toehold in Oilville. Ergo – setup for disaster.

Posted by: jj | Sep 26 2007 19:59 utc | 71

Thanks DeAnander@69
also recall that a lot of Jews in Euro and Anglo land were socialists and labour organisers
and to add, socialists & labour organiziers can come from any race, religion or class. For such (assuming they are real/sincere) people, a Jewish heritage, or Chinese or Mexican or African … is cosmetic.
this may seem like a trivial point, but if the Mongols/Huns/Vandals are not producing their share of progressives, its not because they are not there. Maybe we just do’nt know who they are. We might find them or they might find us, whichever comes first.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Sep 26 2007 20:49 utc | 73

http://history1900s.about.com/od/holocaust/a/madagascarplan.htm

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Sep 26 2007 21:10 utc | 75

After having a few hours to think about it, I don’t know what to think about al-Husayni, AKA “The Grand Mufti”. I am pretty sure that those who have a truthful historical case to make don’t fake photographs. And I don’t have any problem acknowledging that al-Husayni was most likely not the head-honcho spiritual leader of Palestinian Arabs. His “Grand Mufti” title gave me a probably false impression that he was kind of like an Islamic equivalent of the Archbishop of Canterbury or Patriarch of Constantinople.

Posted by: Loveandlight | Sep 27 2007 3:41 utc | 77

Iran is the number one country for safe sex-change operations, both ways. Ppl from France and Switz go there regularly for that, much like getting your teeth fixed in Hungary. (From personal experience.) The stamp is given by two doctors, one must be a psychiatrist, or not, stories vary. The medical acts are top class, the care wonderful, the price low.
I’m pretty sure the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a statement saying that transexualism was a real phenomenon and sex-changes were compatible with Islamic teaching. I sometimes wonder if Khomeini knew a transgendered person during his youth that he had what we all would consider an enlightened view on the matter.

Posted by: Loveandlight | Sep 27 2007 3:58 utc | 79

From the site Bea linked:
was appointed by High Commissioner Samuel as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem on 8 May 1921 until the 1950s;
I was really surprised that a non-Muslim would be able to make such an appointment and have that appointment be recognized by other Muslims.

Posted by: Loveandlight | Sep 27 2007 14:14 utc | 81

>i>The bottom line is that when it comes to Israel/Palestine, it’s always best to consult a myriad of sources to check claims that sound this extreme. They are most likely distorted.
well stated, thanks for the additional research. i smelled fish too.

Posted by: annie | Sep 27 2007 15:31 utc | 83

President Ahmadinejad meets Jewish rabbis in New York
Tuesday September 25, 2007

A senior rabbi of the group said that they considered the visit to New York of President Ahmadinejad as an exceptional opportunity and would never forget it.
[snip]
…[the senior rabbi] called President Ahmadinejad “a pious man who is seeking to restore peace in the world and has humanitarian plans.” Appreciating the rabbis for their gift, President Ahmadinejad said he was happy to visit them.

Posted by: Rick | Sep 28 2007 2:40 utc | 85

Re Hussayni et al:
Following Bea’s link in the Monuments of Liberation thread, I found this. Curiouser and curiouser…

Posted by: Tantalus | Sep 28 2007 14:13 utc | 87

RGiap:
I agree. I hadn’t realized that this was such a heavily mined theme at the moment, though. Lurid, certainly. Frothing, as well.

Posted by: Tantalus | Sep 28 2007 14:38 utc | 89

Ahmadinejad Invites Bush to Speak at a University in Iran

His comments were aired on state TV Friday and signaled an unusual readiness by Iran to receive an American president after more than a quarter century with no diplomatic ties.

Posted by: Bea | Sep 28 2007 17:06 utc | 91

I’m sorry, but “God’s law” – great though it may be — is just not a fit topic or guide for a uniformed military leader or any other government employee – be they military or civilian – to reference when carrying out their duties. Military or civilian, all take an oath to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution…not God’s law.

Posted by: Maxcrat | Sep 29 2007 1:52 utc | 93