Freedom’s Watch Fuels Anti-Semitism

October 2, 2007

Anti-semitism justifies itself through conspiracy theories of "Jewish bankers ruling the world" and with outright forgeries like the protocols of the elders of zion.

These nutty thoughts can are easy to refute by facts. But one cannot deny that some rich Jewish supporters of Israel are doing there best to fuel new anti-semitic claims. Consider the new Jewish-Republican group Freedom’s Watch:

Freedom’s Watch is dedicated to educating individuals about and advancing public policies that protect America’s interests at home and abroad, foster economic prosperity, and strengthen families.

While that sounds benign and not really controversial, the organization real agenda is hardly about these lofty claims. After defending Bush’s continued "surge" with full page advertisements, the group is planing to launch a campaign for war on Iran:

Next month, Freedom’s Watch will sponsor a private forum of 20 experts on radical Islam that is expected to make the case that Iran poses a direct threat to the security of the United States, according to several benefactors of the group.
…
Last week, a Freedom’s Watch newspaper advertisement called President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran “a terrorist.” The group is considering a national advertising campaign focused on Iran, a senior benefactor said, though Matt S. David, a spokesman for the group, declined to comment on those plans.

“If Hitler’s warnings were heeded when he wrote ‘Mein Kampf,’ he could have been stopped,” said Bradley Blakeman, 49, the president of Freedom’s Watch and a former deputy assistant to Mr. Bush. “Ahmadinejad is giving all the same kind of warning signs to us, and the region — he wants the destruction of the United States and the destruction of Israel.”

As the Jewish Telegraphic Agency writes:

Four of five members of the board of a campaign promoting President Bush’s policies in the Iraq war are Republican Jews.

The board of "Freedom’s Watch" includes Ari Fleischer, Bush’s former press secretary; Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition; Bradley Blakeman, a senior White House staffer in Bush’s first term; and Mel Sembler, a longtime RJC leader and former ambassador to Rome.

Brooks told JTA that the fifth member, William Weidner, a casino operator in Las Vegas, is not Jewish. However, Weidner’s wife, Lynn, is Jewish and is active in that city’s federation. Blakeman is the group’s president.

Freedom’s Watch press release (pdf) notes:

Supporters of Freedom’s Watch include Former U.S. Ambassador Anthony
Gioia, Former U.S. Ambassador Kevin Moley, Former U.S. Ambassador Mel Sembler
and Former U.S. Ambassador Howard Leach; Dr. John Templeton, Edward Snider,
Sheldon Adelson, Richard Fox, Ari Fleischer, Gary Erlbaum, and Matt Brooks.

Adelson is, according to the Forward, "considered by many to be the richest Jew in the world" and best friend with the Israeli rightwing politician Benjamin Netanyahu. Richard Fox, Gery Erlbaum and Ari Fleischer are also wealthy and involved in rightwing Jewish groups. The members of Freedom’s Watch have given "$4.2 million — overwhelmingly to Republicans — since the 2000 election cycle."

The current actions of the group obviously aim to instigate a war by the U.S. on Iran. This in the perceived interest of Israel. The campaign is in continuation of other Jewish lobbying efforts against Iran with more to come. As Jim Lobe reported:

[I]t was Lieberman and Republican Senator John Kyl – an honorary co-chair of the pro-Likud Committee on the Present Danger – who co-sponsored the Senate amendment naming the IRGC as a terrorist group in an effort clearly designed to help tilt the internal balance within the administration.

As introduced, the amendment, which according to several Capitol Hill sources was drafted by AIPAC, actually went considerably further, deploying language that some senators argued could be interpreted as authorizing war against Iran.

The Likudniks claim that Iran is a threat to the U.S., a ridiculous idea, and to Israel. But even the hawkish Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld does not believe that Iran, with or without nukes, would be a danger for Israel. The Freedom’s Watch people are deeply wrong. But their actions fuel anti-semitism.

Joe Alterman fears this too:

Call me a Nervous Jewish Nellie, but I don’t like it when enormously wealthy Jews use their enormous wealth exactly the way anti-Semites have historically tried to accuse them of doing. This administration has lied us into one war with the help of some of these same people and it has inspired what many insist are a spate of anti-Semitic accusations against Neocons and others. Just what do they expect from this one? We are at war with Iran and they are striking back at us through terrorist acts the world over? How are people supposed to distinguish their dishonesty about Iraq and Iran from their commitment to protecting Israel? Oh, right, I forgot. There is no such thing as a conflict between U.S. interests and Israeli interests, period. Well, that settles that.

The best interest of the U.S. and of Israel is a peace agreement with Iran based on guarantees of non-aggression. In 2003 Iran made such an offer but was rejected.

Iran is now subject to a constant barrage of right wing and Zionist propaganda. If this leads to a war the consequences will be rightly blamed on Freedom’s Watch, AIPAC and other mainly Jewish rightwing circles. It will be balmed on "rich Jews". The actions of these groups will be cited as proof by the anti-semites that their racism is justified.

How could that be in anyones interest?

Posted by b on October 2, 2007 at 13:30 UTC | Permalink

Comments

And when we lose the war, we can blame that on Jewish war profiteers…

Posted by: ralphieboy | Oct 2 2007 14:04 utc | 1

Well, that’s what I’ve been saying till I’ve gone blue in the face. Zionist propaganda is both increasingly transparent and self-defeating. We saw the results with Bollinger who BUSHwacked Ahmadinejad to safeguard his university’s Jewish endowments and now faces an unexpected and refreshing torrent of criticism from his own countrymen and women and from within his own university.
Now we have ‘respected’ columnists like Roger Cohen who has set up a Blog that fails to disguise his hatred of Germans whom he considers ‘uniquely evil’, conveniently forgetting all the pogroms and holocausts pre- and post- WWII that DIDN’T involve Germans. Here’s one poster’s response to claims that Roger Cohen’s personal loss justifies his rants disguised as scholarship:
“Professor Finkelstein also lost family members but had the courage to write his scholarly work “The Holocaust Industry”, which got him labelled anti-Semitic and denied tenure at DePaul university. 50,000 Jews signed a petition in the NYT condemning Israeli and Zionist policies some time ago, many of them victims of unimaginable horrors and personal loss.
‘Personal loss’ explains but by no means justifies an Agenda.
The title of the Blog “Ausschwitz Recreation” and the subtitle “Downtime from Murder” were both gratuitously inflammatory, as were statements like:
“…….the German murderers in all their dumb humanity, flirting and joking and lighting Christmas trees, as if what awaited them after the frolicking were just the bus to some dull job in a dental office rather than the supervision of Auschwitz’s industrialized killing machine.”
And what of the KKK, ordinary Americans playing with their children by day and turning their black victims into human torches by night? Does Roger believe their collective conscience was any stronger than the Nazis’? If they had had Hitler’s opportunity to gas every black in sight and get away with it, do you think they would have rejected the chance? No way.
As I said, neither extreme evil nor extreme kindness are the monopoly of any single nation or race or religion.
All Roger achieves is to create sympathy for the eternally hounded Germans, and resentment for an Agenda that emphasizes Holocaust suffering to the exclusion of all else.
Prior to the invasion of Iraq the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans was established in September 2002, run by “Dr. Strangelove” Feith, for the specific purpose of ‘producing’ evidence contrary to the CIA’s findings. (Feith admitted as much in interviews but this was conveniently ignored by the heavily Jewish-influenced Western media after a brief mention). The OSP was teeming with Israeli generals in the run-up to the invasion, and Pentagon Whistleblower Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatowski described in congressional testimony, in vivid detail, how the Israeli generals acted as if they owned the Pentagon, refused to sign in as required by Pentagon protocol and even screamed in anger in the hallway when Feith wasn’t there to receive them. (Talk about the tail wagging the dog!).
After having served its ‘purpose’ the OSP was disbanded in June 2003, just 3 months after the invasion and just 9 months after its inception. It is definitely ‘conspiratorial’ when the mainstream Western media hangs on every word uttered by Ahmadinejad and refuses to publicize, as the scandal of the century, the Neocon-Israeli conspiracy to invade Iraq for no better reason than to safeguard Israel and bring pressure on Syria and Iran (the only 2 remaining countries in the region which refuse to snap to attention at Israel’s and America’s command).
Nobody will ever convince me that the invasion of Iraq was anything but the result of a Neocon-Israeli conspiracy to dominate the Middle East and secure U.S.-Israeli interests, by military means if necessary, as embodied in the Project for the New American Century, which is the modern equivalent of ‘Mein Kampf’.
The sad part about deriders of conspiracy theory is the ease with which they interpret the chaos in the Middle East as the work of a few ‘loose canons’, as though the events of the past 6 years were a mere aberration, and that once Bush disappears the ‘evil’ will also disappear. Very convenient, but which conveniently ignores the fact that, like Nazi Germany, the evil perpetrated by the U.S. and Israel required many “willing helpers” and the combination of diverse phenomena — a compliant Congress/Senate, a brainwashed population, the appeal to nationalist sentiments, scare tactics, manipulated evidence, the rejection (and even mockery) of international treaties and conventions, the ‘re-interpretation’ of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, cooperation with enemies (the U.S./Israel cooperated with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan just as Hitler cooperated with Stalin), the widespread use of torture as a weapon of war, Extraordinary Rendition (the outsourcing of extreme torture that would have been impossible on U.S. soil in today’s age of communication) and, finally, a complete absence of justice and retribution against the dominant power (in this case the U.S.), with all the main U.S. culprits being awarded Congressional Medals of Honour or Freedom (or whatever) instead of lengthy jail sentences.
If Hitler had ruled in today’s instant communicatins environment he wouldn’t have been permitted to get away with a fraction of his evil deeds. Conversely, if Bush had enjoyed, today, the same power as the democratically elected Hitler possessed 60 years ago, Bush would have committed far more evil than his current disgraceful record reveals. That’s a pretty frightening thought, but maybe it would have accelerated the disappearance of the new Evil Empire.

Posted by: Parviz | Oct 2 2007 14:08 utc | 2

b
i have referred to the brad blakemen fellow before – & he is a regular guest on aljazeera – towing the genocidal line towards all things arab or persian
he is a mad dog who looks like one of the daughters in ‘father knows best’

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Oct 2 2007 14:23 utc | 3

Funny you should mention this b, as I just finished watching an interview originally aired June 12, 1980. Frank Zappa – Interview on Dick Cavett Show pt 1 where Zappa had just released a song entitled “Jewish Princess” for which he was labeled an anti-semitic by the anti-defamation league. Interesting what he has to say about being labeled as such, even way back then I suggest watching all three parts. Further, something that came to my attention in another news story of late, Suspected Nazi War Criminal Found In Metro Atlanta (bare with me, there is a point to this):

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — Nazi hunters have tracked a suspected World War II concentration camp guard to Lawrenceville.
Members of the Justice Department’s elite Nazi tracking force said Paul Henss, 85, served as a prison guard and attack dog handler at the notorious Dachau and Buchenwald Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany.

Two points, aside from the fact that the glaring hypocrisy of the following,
Snip:

Henss admitted on March 13 that he served as an SS guard at Dachau and Buchenwald for two to three months each as a dog handler,.

“Did you see dogs or did you train dogs to attack prisoners who tried to escape?” Henss paused for a while, appeared confused and then said, “Sure, we trained them in Berlin.”

Investigators also said that Henss taught other concentration camp guards at Dachau and Buchwenwald how to use attack dogs to guard prisoners and prevent their escape.

Henss himself is also accused of personally guarding prisoners and labor details with an attack dog.

And this typical response …

“When somebody run away, they supposed to catch them,” Henss said. He then said he, “Didn’t do anything, the dogs were just trained like that.”

is some serious cognitive dissonance* What does that say about our treatment of the Iraqi’s? Abu Ghraib etc?;especially in light of our PR** narrative of Testimony Further Links Procedures at 2 Facilities Abu Ghraib Dog Tactics Came From Guantanamo? Oh really??
But what really piques my curiosity, or in other words sends up red flags forme personally, is, since when did the Justice Department form a Nazi tracking force?
*Think Klein’s shock doctrine complex.
** Propagenda Retention

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 2 2007 14:30 utc | 4

& i would love to know what ‘experts’ on islam they will have at their forum. i imagine they are getting thin on the ground

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Oct 2 2007 14:32 utc | 5

And, by the way, CNN and AIPAC employee Wolf Blitzer was in fine form this weekend: I saw Blitzer trying to put words into Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s mouth about Iran and continually interrupting a visibly frustrated Talabani each time the latter began referring to the negative role of “other neighbours”, by which he meant Saudi Arabia. He wasn’t given a chance to amplify. It doesn’t serve the Neocon-Israeli cause to muddy the waters with news that contradicts their Disinformation efforts.
In the end it’s self-defeating and disastrous for America, because Iran and Israel have a lot more in common than Israel and the Arabs, stretching all the way back to 1500 BC when Cyrus the Great saved their sorry asses in Babylon and set the Jews free!
Iran has 200 churches and 30 synagogues and Jewish/Armenian MPs, while the penalty for possessing a Bible in Saudi Arabia (let alone the Talmud!) is instant beheading! And whom are the Zionists and America supporting? The same fanatics who financed and executed 9/11, the same nation contributing 45 % of all Iraqi insurgents (I will dig up the Pentagon link on demand), the same nation whose particularly virulent brand of Islam (Wahhabism) calls for the murder of all Jews and Christians on sight. Contrast this with the comments of ‘extremist’ and ‘evil’ Ahmadinejad who stated clearly in Columbia University that “we love our Jews”.
That’s precisely why, b, you’re dead right in emphasizing the self-destructive stupidity of the Neocon-Israeli Conspiracy to conquer the Middle East via “Divide and Rule”. All it does is alienate potential friends and create new monsters. One Bin Laden is enough.

Posted by: Parviz | Oct 2 2007 14:36 utc | 6

Not to make excuses for this guy, but it appears from the story that Henss was all of 20-22 years old at the time and had little to say about overall policy or how a camp was run. I don’t know of many 20 year olds in America who would have the moral courage to stand up to their superiors, and we certainly have lots of young American volunteer soldiers who believe in Bush’s Iraq Holocaust and have no problem going over to murder civilians, whatever their religion — and especially if they are Muslim.

Posted by: Ensley | Oct 2 2007 14:48 utc | 7

They are clearly setting up Israel as the moral equivalent of Great Britain in WWII, standing alone against the Nazi/Iranofascist menace in order to appeal to the USA for material and military assistance.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Oct 2 2007 14:55 utc | 8

I just received this email from a very politically involved Iranian lady in the U.S.:
“If you watched Ahmadinejad’s Columbia U. interview, when they asked him about the Israel issue he said: “We have no problems with any country, we want to live in peace and have relationships with all countries. The only two countries that from the onset of the Revolution we never acknowledged was the Apartheid Gov. of South Africa and the Zionist Regime of Israel. Now the Apartheid Gov. of S. Africa has been eliminated, and we have a friendly relationship with them.” …. Basically meaning that Iran didn’t eliminate the Apartheid Gov. of South Africa, and South Africa is not ‘destroyed’. We have also resumed relationship with them. He is saying the same with respect to Israel.
In another meeting at the Asian Society, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, explained the same thing to an audience of foreigners. In fact, one of the Congressmen, Dennis Kucinich who is a presidential hopeful stated that he took the correct translation of what Ahmadinejad said and published in the New York times and presented as record, that he never meant Iran was going to wipe Israel off the map. Anyway, we all know they are just using these excuses to create the demon they always need to have to justify their evil intentions.”
Does this sound to you like an Islamo-fascist? I can’t stand the guy personally, but he’s Mother Theresa compared with Bush and Olmert and the rest of the Neocon-Israeli co-conspirators like Lieberman, Cheney, etc.,.

Posted by: Parviz | Oct 2 2007 15:03 utc | 9

Yeah, Ensley, like someone from another board said, “Yet Nazis were used in espionage etc by the gov’t and now they try and showcase an 85 year old geezer. Something stinks.”

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 2 2007 15:04 utc | 10

@Parviz – as the democratically elected Hitler
His party got some 33% or so in the 1932 election.
Then followed some heavy lobbying by the “military-industrial-financial complex” to make him chancellor:

Meanwhile, Papen tried to get his revenge on [General]Schleicher by working toward the General’s downfall, through forming an intrigue with the camarilla and Alfred Hugenberg, media mogul and chairman of the DNVP. Also involved were Hjalmar Schacht, Fritz Thyssen and other leading German businessmen. They financially supported the Nazi Party, which had been brought to the brink of bankruptcy by the cost of heavy campaigning. The businessmen also wrote letters to Hindenburg, urging him to appoint Hitler as leader of a government “independent from parliamentary parties” which could turn into a movement that would “enrapture millions of people.”

Not many thought of this as a “democratic process”.

Posted by: b | Oct 2 2007 15:49 utc | 11

I know I’m getting a bit OT, but let’s add industrialists like Joe Kennedy and the Bushes who cozied up to Hitler, yet have never been hauled before war crimes courts. But some dumb 20-year-old Nazi camp guard is a “big fish” to catch sixty years later. Can’t help wondering if the American dog handler who was involved at Abu Ghraib will be hauled before a tribunal some time around 2064 as a heralded war criminal while the Bushes, Cheneys and their ilk and progeny sit back and enjoy the benefits of their ill-gotten war wealth, paid for with the blood of a million Iraqis.

Posted by: Ensley | Oct 2 2007 16:55 utc | 12

on experts –
“management scholar Henry Mintzberg: “An expert has also been defined as someone who knows more and more about less and less until finally he or she knows everything about nothing. Perhaps this means that if you understand only certain discrete chunks, ultimately you understand nothing”
cite in todats counterpunch

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Oct 2 2007 16:56 utc | 13

Saying the Unsayable
The links between the Israel lobby and US foreign policy are a Washington taboo. But a controversial new study is opening up a long-stifled debate

….It’s a cliché of present-day bigotry that only blacks can call themselves niggers or Jews make jokes about Jews, so I will leave it to a veteran Israeli commentator and a former member of the Bush administration to say the unsayable for me. Akiva Eldar, of Ha’aretz, says that the likes of Feith and Perle are “walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments . . . and Israeli interests”; while Colonel Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, says he has put this book on his students’ curriculum because it contains “a lot of blinding flashes of the obvious but, that said, blinding flashes of the obvious that people whispered in corners rather than said out loud at cocktail parties where someone could hear you”.
It is a major symbolic step forward that, following the publication of Jimmy Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid last year, a mainstream American publisher in New York should dare to pay an advance of $750,000 to two academics – albeit distinguished ones from the University of Chicago and Harvard respectively – to write a book that represents such a huge political and commercial risk for them. It is almost impossible to convey the degree of sensitivities and touchiness that the subject evokes – among both Jews and gentiles – throughout the US.
The thesis put forward by Mearsheimer and Walt, briefly, is that Israel has become a “strategic liability” for the US and that ending the special relationship – the one the British delude themselves they, rather than Israel, have with Washington – would benefit not only the US, but the rest of the world, including Israel itself. They are proponents of the “offensive realism” school of foreign policy thinking, which (put simply) argues that the more powerful a major power becomes, the more aggressively it will act in what ultimately becomes a relentless quest for hegemony. ..
The genesis of this book is highly revealing in itself. The authors were first commissioned to write a long, scholarly article on the Israel lobby by Atlantic magazine in 2002, but editors sat on the manuscript for months before deciding not to publish it. The article ended up in the London Review of Books in March 2006, and the authors then wrote a longer, 42-page version (plus an additional 40 pages of footnotes), which was posted on the website of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Furious denouncements followed. Dr Eliot Cohen, a prominent neocon who was appointed by Condoleezza Rice as her adviser in the state department as recently as last March, accused Mearsheimer and Walt in a prominent comment piece in the Washington Post (headlined “Yes, It’s Anti-Semitic”) of having “obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews” whom he said they accused of “disloyalty, subversion or treachery, of having occult powers and of participating in secret combinations that manipulate institutions and governments”.
The ubiquitous academic showman Alan Dershowitz, meanwhile, law professor at Harvard and author of The Case for Israel, likened Mearsheimer and Walt’s writings to “contemporary variations on old themes such as those promulgated in the notorious czarist forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in the Nazi and America First literature of the 1930s and early 1940s, and in the propaganda pamphlets of the Soviet Union”. Harvard soon caved in under such pressures, removing the Kennedy School’s logo from the web pages carrying Mearsheimer and Walt’s study; Walt stepped down as academic dean at the Kennedy School.
Reading any of the articles or the book itself – 484 pages with 127 of them footnotes and indexes – it is hard to understand what has inspired such extravagant venom.

It seems to me that “Freedom’s Watch” combines this intensive bullying approach to influencing policy with some very heavyweight funding, and I too fear that it is bound to backfire at some point.

Posted by: Bea | Oct 2 2007 17:15 utc | 14

b, re your post 11, if you substitute the Neocons for the German “military-industrial-financial complex”, the Texas Oil Mafia for the German business interests (Thyssen, etc.,.) and the Supreme Court for Hindenberg, I think you’ll know why I referred to the dictator as the ‘democratically elected Hitler’.
Bush stole the Florida vote in 2000 the same way Hitler tricked his own way to power. I think the parallels between Bush and Hitler are striking in more ways than one. As I said, Bush can’t do a fraction of what Hitler did in his day, because times have changed, but if he could he’d be emulating Hitler with the same religious-Neocolonialist fervour.
I recall a visit between Nixon and the Shah around the time of the Kent State killings by the National Guard. On hearing how easily the Shah locked up and tortured protestors Nixon remarked with complete sincerity: ” I envy that you can just shoot people the way you do in your country.” (The quote is not verbatim but as close as I can remember)

Posted by: Parviz | Oct 2 2007 18:36 utc | 15

Wow! Here’s a guy (from India or Pakistan) echoing Ahmadinejad’s sentiments on the IHT Blog:
“While the Germans, Poles and Russians committed atrocities on the Jewish People, the Brutish (yes not British but Brutish!) decided to stab the Arabs in the back and make promises to ZIONIST (=JEWISH EXTREMISTS) for settlement in lands not belonging to the Brutish. In other words the extremists were rewarded. This is a lesson taken by a lot of people. Now we have Muslim Extremists who want to liberate their brethren from AMERICAN INSTALLED OR AMERICAN BACKED THUGS of the type: Saudi Princes, Mubarak, the Runt of Jordan, the Mubashar of Pakistan, etc. Why cannot the Western Countries treat these estremists with equal curtsy and consideration?
The Teutonic Knights conducted the Northern Crusades to kill the people of the region called OST Prussia. In the second World War, the Nazis were booted out of this area and the area was divided between the expanded Polish State and the Soviet Union. Since the demise of the Soviet Union Russia has taken over the enclave. This Russian enclave is causing a lot of problems between the EU and Russia. Here is a SANE suggestion which may not be to the liking of the Europeans or the Zionists: the Zionist state should be formed in the area which between the two World Wars was called OST-PRUSSIA. Since, the three nations that committed the most crimes against the Jewish people are Russians, Poles and Germans, an area that they rule (or historically ruled) should constitute a Jewish State. Note I am not recommending a Zionist State but a Jewish State. The EU, America, Russia, Japan, and the sniveling Saudis can pay for the DISMANTELING of the Zionist Entity and the creation of the Jewish State.”
[127] Posted by: Jamil M Chaudri, Huntington, West Virginia, 25705, USA — 02 October 2007 12:03 pm
While I don’t agree with everything he writes he clearly reveals the hypocrisy behind the creation of the Zionist entity, and also explains the origins of ‘Palestinian terrorism’.

Posted by: Parviz | Oct 2 2007 18:47 utc | 16

My own feeling is that people only pretend to be Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Druidic etc once they’re serious enough about taking care of business to be Luciferian.
But this is so laughable to right thinking people that the tippy top are immune to such attack, as they are so far to attacks about the kiddie parties in the White House and other seats and pivots of power.

Posted by: plushtown | Oct 2 2007 18:55 utc | 17

From TPM, referring to NYT & AP articles:

… the AP makes explicit what the list of personnel makes clear: These aren’t people close to “Bush” or “the White House”. It’s more specific than that: The activists and givers are people close to Dick Cheney.
Second, as the NYT explains, coming off the Petraeus press-rollout, Freedom’s Watch’s next press campaign is for confrontation (i.e., war) with Iran.
Put the two together, and you understand what’s coming.

Posted by: small coke | Oct 2 2007 18:56 utc | 18

Sorry to have link spillage above and on previous post, don’t know how to fix, only how to separate. (Bernhard kindly separated previous one, so I separated that one.)
By the way, I don’t think Luciferianism (or Satanism, looks like same thing in practice)is what they’ve told us. But it certainly involves exercising power over children and others through screaming and rape unto the point of death. Remember that David Berkowitz claimed from prison 10-15 years ago that Sam had several Sons and that he was part of the group The Process which got significant income from snuff films, an expensive taste at best.

Posted by: plushtown | Oct 2 2007 19:09 utc | 19

I’m Finkelstenian on this issue – the power of the Israel lobby etc. is way overestimated; it furnishes an excuse. If the US invades Iran (as it did many other countries in the past) it will be because it decided to do so, for its own interests.
The US is a juggernaut, Israel is a tiny, dependent, tin pot, confused and desperate place. A manipulated toe hold in the ME, but good for stirring up the US populace, making hay out of myths, etc. Israel of course cannot exist without the external support (US, EU, other frightened parties) so it has no choice, it has to kill Palestinians, cannot ever ‘make peace’ …
Finkelstein interview on Z net:
excerpt:
McLeod: What do you think about the recently-released book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt?
Finkelstein: Parts of it I agree with, parts of it I don’t. For example, I don’t think there’s any evidence that the is lobby was a crucial factor in the decision for the US to go to war in Iraq and I don’t think that there is evidence that US policy in the Middle East in general is shaped by the lobby.
However, I do think that the lobby is a crucial factor in determining US policy towards the Palestinians.

I don’t think it determined US policy in Iran, in Turkey or in Iraq. But on the Israel-Palestine conflict – the building of settlements and the colonisation of Palestine, I think it is a crucial factor.
link
The talk of the ‘jewish lobby’ or ‘ israeli influence’ (to mix the terms) and the accompanying easy accusations of ‘anti-semitism’ serve to distract from, obscure, muddle, and finally legitimize, US actions. — “duh, we in-vayded eye-rak because we are subservient to jewish bankers”….etc. Rubbish.
And Finkelstein is unarguably right on one point, imho, all of US policy, since before (?) the Oslo accords, has been pointed to repressing / killing Palestinians. It is a constant, and very evident if one digs into UN documents, etc. Btw, what happened to Tony Blair, as special envoy? His predecessors have published their despair, on the net, no less, but Tony has gone missing.

Posted by: Tangerine | Oct 2 2007 19:19 utc | 20

@Tangerine
What Tony Blair is up to

Posted by: Bea | Oct 2 2007 20:18 utc | 21

Silverstein Has Their Number:
Moveon is a true grassroots group with hundreds of thousands of donors and Freedom’s Watch is a fatcat’s private club. Or, as Congresspedia calls it to distinguish it from the term “grassroots,” “astroturf.”
as to the relation of these wealthy Likudniks to the US government, I tend to see them as a modern survival of the Court Jew — an ambiguous figure in Anglo political life, used by Christian princes to float unpopular programmes and then take the blame if they go wrong.
as wikipedia notes

They were of service to their fellow-Jews only during the periods, often short, of their influence with the rulers; and as they themselves, being hated parvenus, often came to a tragic end, their co-religionists were in consequence of their fall all the more harassed. […]
Like all businessmen, Court Jews functioned at the mercy of the prevailing economy and changes in the regional/global economic conditions over which they had little or no control. Nevertheless, they were usually assigned the blame. Particularly odious, were their functions as shopkeeping tradesmen and petty-lenders to the Christian working and agricultural classes on the continent. Their Sovereigns also sometimes assigned them the role of local tax collection from the above named classes of the ruler’s subjects. These roles built up a long (and some would say still) standing enmity between the Jewish (educated middle and upper) professional class; and the Christian lower middle, working, lower and agricultural classes. The resentments had far-reaching consequences in the history of European Jews.
These Christian classes were encouraged by their rulers and their church to blame Court Jews for the economic hardships that would periodically befall the local economy. The high taxes demanded by the ruler to pay off his war debts after the all too frequent wars, were blamed upon the Court Jews who had helped finance the war in the first place.

situation today not identical, but strong parallels seem obvious.
btw, speaking of double standards…
Israel’S Toy Soldiers attend an extremist madrassah with weapons training, become a turrist suspect; attend an extremist zionist summercamp with weapons training, no problemo. surely it should be recognised as some kind of child abuse to teach kids to hate and kill for any reason… but then we’d have to stand down our armies, and that would be so bad for business.

Posted by: DeAnander | Oct 2 2007 20:36 utc | 22

Ok, I’ll try this link for the Whited House stuff. Sorry about earlier.

Posted by: plushtown | Oct 2 2007 20:57 utc | 23

@plushtown Not to derail this topic but hre are several links you may want to pursue. The Israeli lobby made damn sure anyone that asked questions lost their seats, check out this Cynthia McKinney video. And remember that like other things she never got her reports from these fucks. Cynthia McKinney’s primary run-off opponent tapped into the pro-Israel.
It’s a sad fact, most child kidnapping rings world wide are directly connected to governments, corporations like Dyncorp and the UN.

UN shipping crates filled with kidnapped children for overseas sex slavery
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,6682018%255E401,00.html\
http://www.prisonplanet.com/un_ship_carried_child_prostitutes.html
UN involved in massive child sex kidnapping
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/03/wsudan03.xml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6195830.stm
UN involved in large scale Congo child kidnapping operations
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,149334,00.html
Top government officials in Portugal involved in child sex kidnapping abuse
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3355621.stm
Halliburton and Dyncorp try to stop a ban that would outlaw this sick crap
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0512270176dec27, 0, 1632557.story
Same thing with top Chilean officials
http://boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/01/10/sex_scandal_divides_conservative_allies_in_chiles_congress/
Belgium elites and politicians involved in child sex kidnapping and Satanic sacrifices
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/03/03/belgium.trial/index.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/correspondent/1944428.stm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/08/17/wbelg17.xml
Blair UK government officials involved
http://www.counterpunch.org/james01292003.html
Leaders of Dubai United Arab Emirates behind 30,000 children used in slavery:
http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=187580
Saudi elites/government involved in child trafficking
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_world/6431957.stm
Evidence of UN involvement in massive global child kidnapping, and attrocities mounting
http://www.jfednepa.org/mark%20silverberg/unsrealmission.htm
“Fla. can’t find 1,000 kids in state custody,” CNN, June 4, 2002 http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/06/03/florida.child.welfare/
“1989 News: Call boys in Bush Sr’s Whitehouse,” jaketom3, December 14, 2006 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5OJPeHCmhA
“1989 #2 News: Call boys in Bush Sr’s Whitehouse,” jaketom3, December 15, 2006 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU-k-tfiPfs
“Father attacks ‘cover-up over child sex ring,'” Toby Helm, Telegraph (U.K.), Issue 999, February 18, 1998 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1998/02/18/wabu18.html
“Pedophile Israeli diplomat arrested by FBI in Atlanta,” Nathan Guttman, Jerusalem Post, August 31, 2006 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525981602&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
“British government link to ‘snuff’ videos,” Jason Burke, Amelia Gentleman and Philip Willan, Observer (U.K.), October 1, 2000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4070446,00.html
White House officials and DC elite involved in child sex slavery and abuse
http://www.thelawparty.org/FranklinCoverup/franklin.htm
Italy rocked by Satanic child sex abuse in schools
http://www.maltastar.com/pages/msfullart.asp?an=11655
“Homosexual Child Prostitution Ring Involving George Bush Sr.: Archive of Published Articles of Yet Another of Massively Suppressed Story Involving the Family Who is Above All Laws–the Bushes” http://www.voxfux.com/features/bush_child_sex_coverup/article_archive.htm
Dyncorp US defense company involved in child sex slavery on an epic scale
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/06/26/bosnia/index.html
(edited, added)
CIA involved in child kidnapping in 1980’s America
http://www.whale.to/b/mcgowan2.html
http://p216.ezboard.com/frigorousintuitionfrm9.showMessage?topicID=4.topic
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewtopic.php?t=8555&highlight=findersl
http://www.spiritualteachers.org/the_finders.htm
Texas Corrections involved in teen boy rape rooms and torture
http://www.dallasnews.com/investigativereports/tyc/
One of the heads of Homeland Security trying to lure children
http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/04/04/homeland.arrest/index.html
Big pharma companies turn black kids into lab rats:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_world/4035345.stm
a bunch of mainstream links posted in great articles at prisonplanet:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/archive_elite_sex_ring.html
http://infowars.net/articles/january2007/030107UN_Sex.htm
From 1997
Last December a UN study on children in war reported that blue berets had been involved in child prostitution in six of the 12 countries which had been studied. In country after country unfortunate enough to attract the UN’s “humanitarian” intervention, “the arrival of peacekeeping troops has been accompanied with a rapid rise in child prostitution,” the document reported. Following the signing of a peace treaty in Mozambique in 1992, for example, “soldiers of the United Nations operation … recruited girls aged 12 to 18 years into prostitution.”
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/UN/peace.html

finally, if that doesn’t give you nightmares, and put you off, check out, the Finders.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 3 2007 0:00 utc | 24

crap, sorry yall…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 3 2007 0:01 utc | 25

Uncle $cam @4: “But what really piques my curiosity, or in other words sends up red flags forme personally, is, since when did the Justice Department form a Nazi tracking force?”
DOJ has had this office since at least the Reagan Administration. I’m not sure if that is when it started or not, but it is when I first became aware of it.
Every few years for the past couple of decades they’ve had a spurt of notoriety along the same lines as now: fingering some old geezer for having played some minor role in the camps, e.g. guard, and getting some screaming headlines out of it. I had just assumed that by now that office had gone out of business, though. Didn’t realize they’re still out there, til the last guard dies, I guess.

Posted by: Maxcrat | Oct 3 2007 0:10 utc | 26

Addendum:
The pedophile behind boy bands

October 2, 2007 — LOU Pearlman – the hog-fat, boy-band honcho who created *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys and launched the careers of Justin Timberlake and Nick Carter – was a pervy pedophile who preyed on the young men he mentored, Vanity Fair reports.
“I would absolutely say the guy was a sexual predator. All the talent knew what Lou’s game was,” Steve Mooney, an aspiring singer who was Pearlman’s assistant, told VF’s Bryan Burrough. “Some guys joked about it. I remember [one singer] asking me, ‘Have you let Lou [fellate] you yet?’ ”
Mooney said he once asked Pearlman, who was known as “Big Poppa,” what it would take for him to get into a band. “I’ll never forget this as long as I live. He leaned back in his chair, in his white terry cloth robe and white underwear, and spread his legs,” Mooney told Burrough. “And then he said, and these were his exact words, ‘You’re a smart boy. Figure it out.’ ” Mooney added that a singer groped by Pearlman told him, “Look, if a guy wants to massage me, and I’m getting a million dollars for it, you just go along with it. It’s the price you got to pay.”
Phoenix Stone, an early member of the Backstreet Boys, tells Vanity Fair Pearlman was “definitely inappropriate” with Nick Carter. Nick’s mom, Jane Carter, wouldn’t get into specifics, but said, “Certain things happened and it almost destroyed our family. I tried to warn everyone. I tried to warn all the mothers . . . I tried to expose him for what he was years ago.”
Tim Christofore, a member of Take 5, recalls that during a sleepover at Pearlman’s house, the music czar swan-dived onto his and another boy’s bed and wrestled with them wearing only in a towel, which came off. “We were like, ‘Ooh, Lou, that’s gross.’ What did I know? I was 13,” Christofore told Vanity Fair.
Rich Cronin, lead singer of LFO, recalled Pearlman told him of an “ancient massage technique that if I massage you and we bond in a certain way, it will strengthen your aura.”
Pearlman, 53, is in a Florida jail awaiting trial on bank fraud charges. Prosecutors say he scammed more than 1,000 investors out of $315 million. He’d been a fugitive until June when he was busted in Indonesia, living under a fake name. His lawyer did not return calls from Page Six.

I wonder if Lance Bass of N’Sync, who is openly gay, has a story to tell about this man.
Lou Pearlman is in trouble because he no longer had sufficient money and power to get away with sexually abusing kids. The hypocrisy of the “protect the children” hysteria is beyond belief and literally shreds my frontal lobes.
Also this…Torture and rape reported in Iraqi children prisons
k, no more off topic posts, plushtown or anyone else, we can pick this up in the OT.
Thanks for cleaning that up b…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 3 2007 2:08 utc | 27

Amen for Israel, say Christian Zionists

McCaleb and some 7,000 mostly evangelical Christians from across the world flocked to the Holy Land this week to celebrate the Jewish festival of Sukkoth and to show support for Israel.
During the event, busloads of pilgrims travelled in bullet-proof buses to Jewish sites in the West Bank — which some Jews call Judea and Samaria — and to Jewish settlements, which are deemed illegal under international law.
Some pilgrims toured army bases and donated gifts to Israeli soldiers while others gave money to buy mobile bomb shelters for communities near the border with the Gaza Strip, which are often targeted by rockets from Palestinian militants in the enclave.

Israel’s Toy Soldiers

If you are a young Muslim American and head off to the Middle East for a spell in a fundamentalist “madrassa,” or religious school, Homeland Security will probably greet you at the airport when you return. But if you are an American Jew and you join hundreds of teenagers from Europe and Mexico for an eight-week training course run by the Israel Defense Forces, you can post your picture wearing an Israeli army uniform and holding an automatic weapon on MySpace.

The Teflon Alliance with Israel

Without closer examination, both Greenspan’s and Wilkerson’s statements seem to let Israel and its U.S. lobbyists off the hook, something that in differing ways serves the interests of Israel and the lobby, of the right in the U.S., and of the left. Israel’s U.S. supporters — fearful that Jews will be blamed for leading the U.S. into the debacle that Iraq has become and fearful of reviving old anti-Semitic canards about Jews exerting undue power — roundly deny any Israeli connection to the war.

Finally, ANTI SEMITISM FOR DUMMIES

Many Jews look at Abe Foxman as nothing more than a ‘kvetch’, a constant complainer. He spends his days searching for traces of anti Semitism, in most cases creating it where it does not exist.

Hopefully this will make up for the brief sidetrack…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 3 2007 2:20 utc | 28

Follow up on #26 Maxcrat… and my question on the office/department charged with Nazi hunting:
Nazi Hunters to Take On Other War Crimes Cases
found this: –Which is why I was asking, and as I intuitively suspected there’s more to the story here since the Bushcult took over, behold:

For the past quarter-century, a rarely noticed unit inside the Justice Department has investigated and prosecuted alleged Nazis from World War II, resulting in the removal of nearly 100 former concentration camp guards and other suspected war criminals from the United States.
But now, with many of its targets dead or dying, the Office of Special Investigations is being remade to take on an even bigger task: tracking down war criminals within the United States who have connections to other genocidal conflicts around the globe. The new mission, included as part of the broad intelligence restructuring package recently passed by Congress and signed by President Bush, has Justice officials scrambling to assemble an operating plan and proposed budget for the tiny office. Currently, OSI has 28 employees and $5 million in annual expenses.

You were close, time wise Maxcrat,
Snip:

OSI was created in 1979 to identify and deport former Nazis and their allies suspected of war crimes, as well as to keep suspected war criminals from that era from entering the United States in the first place. Expectations were low, with most officials predicting the removal of a handful of Nazis before the office would shut down within a few years.

Yeah we see how that went…
Snip:

“For the first time since Nuremberg, the world is really getting serious about these kinds of cases,” he said, referring to the war-crimes trials held after World War II. “This is emblematic of that.”

Oh? Really?

The OSI’s work has been sharply criticized by some defense lawyers, who argue that the office usually targets low-level concentration camp guards who played no part in supervising or carrying out crimes against humanity.

God, I can’t bold that one dark enough!

The unit also has been shadowed by its role in the tangled case of John Demjanjuk, a Cleveland autoworker wrongly identified as “Ivan the Terrible” who ran the gas chamber at Treblinka. After being stripped of his U.S. citizenship in 1981, Demjanjuk was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death in Israel. Based on new evidence, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned his conviction, and a U.S. appeals court accused the OSI of “reckless disregard for the truth” in pursuing the case. But Demjanjuk, now 84, has lost his U.S. citizenship again, this time based on evidence that he was a guard at three other Nazi death camps. The Justice Department in December asked an immigration judge for a final ruling to deport him.

Wendy Patten, U.S. advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, praised the overall goals of the OSI legislation, which was sponsored by Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) and has been under consideration in one form or another for five years.

Mark (un-convicted child abuser) Foley eh?
Wonder if this OSI will consider “appropriate legal action,” including prosecutions here on our home grown war criminals? I wouldn’t bet on it.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 3 2007 3:08 utc | 29

@Tangerine – 20 – The talk of the ‘jewish lobby’ or ‘ israeli influence’ (to mix the terms) and the accompanying easy accusations of ‘anti-semitism’ serve to distract from, obscure, muddle, and finally legitimize, US actions. — “duh, we in-vayded eye-rak because we are subservient to jewish bankers”….etc. Rubbish.
On Iran:
Livni urges UN to see danger, take action against Iran

NEW YORK – “There are still those who, in the name of consensus and engagement, continue to obstruct the urgent steps … to bring Iran’s sinister ambitions to a halt,” Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told the United Nations General Assembly in New York yesterday, days after the UN Security Council decided to postpone a vote on imposing tougher sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

I can find you equal quotes by Israeli officials and AIPAC lobbyists on Iraq …
Israel and its lobby were not the only reason to attack Iraq. But they certainly were pushing for it …

Posted by: b | Oct 3 2007 9:47 utc | 30

Thank you to Uncle $cam for all the links, but disagree that talk of where these people are vulnerable is off-topic. Similarly, Yasser Arafat, with all the supposed enemies he had, was never publicly attacked for pedophilia though according to a mainstream published biography (sorry can’t find in the stacks) of a few years back such was an open secret vice of his too.
Power corrupts, and it also looks like only blackmailable people are allowed access to evermore power.
Since the Holocaust, the charge of anti-semitism is like kryptonite to Superman: undefendable, so proximity needs to be avoided. Attacking the elite as Luciferian is doable, and child body counts are part of the evidence.

Posted by: plushtown | Oct 3 2007 11:08 utc | 31

Bea, thx for the update on Tony Bliar.
b at 30. Oh yes I know they were pushing for it (Israel, invasion of Iraq.) And were seemingly, partly, or very, effective. I could quote tons of that stuff as well.
But when I say ‘they’ who exactly are we talking about? Israeli statesmen, the Israeli Gvmt, which is in essence a military, right-wing Gov? Zionists? Jews? Israeli citizens? The Jewish lobby in the US and elsewhere? Hidden corporate influences? Warmongers who clumsily latch onto acceptable scripts? Mafia types who act for personal profit and domination only, and cloak themselves in pious hysteria? Possibly, all of those, to some degree, in some way, is the short and easy answer, with footnotes for the category ‘Jews’ (too broad and undefined, etc.)
Yet, where is the nexus of that power, its heart?
Certainly the general interests of Israeli citizens, or ‘Jews’ are not being taken into account, though most of them don’t realize that. (Not minimizing the crimes towards the Palestinians, etc.)
Who calls the shots?
The US, that’s who, and make no mistake about it, as my granny used to say.
The US-Isr. symbiosis makes it hard to figure what belongs to fruit cake ideology (eg. US Christian Zionists, aspiring lobbyists, etc. ) and what should be attributed to clever control and manipulation of a subservient, co-opted entity, that survives in its present form, completely unacceptable according to ‘modern, UN, human rights’ type principles, because it serves long term ‘Western’ interests in the ME.

Posted by: Tangerine | Oct 3 2007 13:59 utc | 32

@Tangerine – as I wrote in my piece above – these politics are certainly is not in the Israeli people interest – but the are promoted from Israeli politicians and from U.S. jews who calim to act in Israels interest.
Hersh’s interview with Amy Goodman yesterday – on the reasons for Hillary’s vote to declare the IRCG “terrorists”

SEYMOUR HERSH: Money. A lot of the Jewish money from New York. Come on, let’s not kid about it. A significant percentage of Jewish money, and many leading American Jews support the Israeli position that Iran is an existential threat. And I think it’s as simple as that. When you’re from New York and from New York City, you take the view of — right now, when you’re running a campaign, you follow that line. And there’s no other explanation for it, because she’s smart enough to know the downside.
AMY GOODMAN: And Obama and Edwards?
SEYMOUR HERSH: I — you know, it’s shocking. It’s really surprising and shocking, but there we are. That’s American politics circa 2007

Another interesting bit on Ahmedinejad’s remarks on homosexuality:

And I asked somebody about the famous line about homosexuality, because it seemed so inept. And the Arab view is, if you talk to — I’m talking about American Arabs and international, my friends overseas and those who know Farsi, what he said was — and I’m not defending him; I’m just telling you what they say he said: “Homosexuality is not a problem in Iraq.” In other words, it’s just not a problem.
AMY GOODMAN: In Iran.
SEYMOUR HERSH: In Iran, rather. They don’t — it’s just not a problem. He didn’t mean — I don’t know whether the translation was flat, you know, when translations are always pretty bad, as any of you know. I’ve given speeches in foreign countries, and getting the translation back is always pretty comical. It’s never very good.

Posted by: b | Oct 3 2007 16:19 utc | 33

b. Yes all that. Money. Etc. I know all that.
As I understand it homosexuality is not a problem in Iran, in the words of A (and a deep dig into bloggers from there will show many blatant gay sites, etc.) because the general concept is that there are two sexes and anyone is free to belong to either.
Inner essences count over body shape; Iran is a number one destination for safe, cheap, expert sex change. One can adopt, freely, a masculine or feminine role; but the adoption must be thorough, conform, not necessarily in physical characteristics, but in social ones first. Iran, and Muslim society, has a long history of accepting women in men’s positions, provided they dress and act in consequence. There is a hadith that deals with that situation, but I can’t look it up now.
Of course all that leaves no room for man on man sex such as between pols in Armani suits, bikers, soldiers, etc. except in secret. A ‘marriage’ between men cannot be accepted.
Men who give up their masculinity and become ‘women’ are degraded socially and ostracized, rejected, mocked. Women have an easier time of it, as they will be accepted as men if they take on that role, and no one is too worried about their sex lives.
They rise socially…
That is just from gossip and some reading.
So it is “not a problem”…
Overall, the pornography of the West, available to those who seek it out, is considered proof of extreme depravity and social breakdown.

Posted by: Tangerine | Oct 3 2007 17:32 utc | 34

for some reason I have trouble writing to Tangerine, one day you will have to tell us why you chose that nick. the previous ones all made perfect sense but this one makes me wonder if you died your hair orange….
the finger pointing and assigning of blame to Israel can’t be taken away from certain Jews. They must be held responsible for much of the current relations with the people of the middle east. IIRC prior to 1947 the US had alliances with most of the nations there and were reluctant to break those in order to get close to Israel. There was a lot animosity toward Jews in the US, not able to get into clubs and such up until not all that long ago. One reads about the Italian mafia and the Irish underworld but not so much about Jewish organized crime though it certainly existed. I suspect that the Kennedy family coming out of the underworld and becoming respectable has some parallels in some Jewish families as well.
now, I see that organizations such as AIPAC have tremendous influence. It may very well have started out with a lot of help from the evangelicals in the US. I know many Christians who can think of no greater thing than to visit the Holy Land. There is a strong attraction to the land of Israel among nearly all Americans. it is the home of Jesus after all. we hear about it in church every Sunday. so who would be against helping out the current residents of that country?
However, that has changed. given the extremely good conditions under which money is given to Israel, no interest, no requirements on how it is spent, and the overall amount (more than what is given to everyone else put together) the Israelis have been clever enough to use that money to buy votes that ensure they are given even more money. The US just gave Israel 30 billion and no one even noticed. Bush today vetoed a bill that would provide health care to poor children that would have cost around 10 billion. ‘splain that to me.
of course the energy companies have a stake in controlling oil and gas production but the choice of using brute force to do that does not seem to be the only way they go about it. The US has not invaded Canada or Mexico (lately) nor Venezuela (yet) nor other oil rich areas. Only the enemies of Israelis get stomped on.
I am not saying that things would surely be different were it not for the Israeli influence….who knows? but I don’t believe you can just cover your eyes and ears and say nah nah nah either.

Posted by: dan of steele | Oct 3 2007 18:38 utc | 35

Lol dos, whenever I read the new nick, I sing it.

Posted by: beq | Oct 3 2007 19:43 utc | 36

b on Livni advocating action against Iran #30:
I can find you equal quotes by Israeli officials and AIPAC lobbyists on Iraq …
Israel and its lobby were not the only reason to attack Iraq. But they certainly were pushing for it
Yes but what were the reasons? Is this any different from Blair supporting the invasion of Iraq? Do the billions of US dollars poured annually into Israel have any influence? Or how about the millions poured into Jewish organizations in the US under homeland security:
Most of the money allocated by the Department of Homeland Security, as part of the Urban Areas Security Initiative Nonprofit Security Grant Program awards, is going to Jewish institutions.
“2007 UASI NSGP provides funding support for target hardening activities to nonprofit organizations that are at high risk of international terrorist attack”.
308 nonprofit organizations were awarded funds. Jewish groups received most of the money ($19.6 million out of $24 million).
American Jews are in great danger. Here’s the proof.
Does this buy influence? Doesn’t Abbas do the same thing for US largesse? Ditto for Sinora and Maliki. They all do the same thing in following and urging US ME policy. Does this have anything to do with US State Welfare?

Posted by: Sam | Oct 3 2007 19:50 utc | 37

Slightly relevant here: The Chicago Trubune just had a big piece about the USS Liberty which was bombed at by the Israelis in 1967. It is interesting that this is launched now as the theme was tabu outside the “fringe”
New revelations in attack on American spy ship

For Lockwood and many other survivors, the anger is mixed with incredulity: that Israel would attack an important ally, then attribute the attack to a case of mistaken identity by Israeli pilots who had confused the U.S. Navy’s most distinctive ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and had a dissimilar profile. And they’re also incredulous that, for years, their own government would reject their calls for a thorough investigation.
“They tried to lie their way out of it!” Lockwood shouts. “I don’t believe that for a minute! You just don’t shoot at a ship at sea without identifying it, making sure of your target!”
…
Their anger has been stoked by the declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel, including some quoted in this article for the first time, which strengthen doubts about the U.S. National Security Agency’s position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots — communications, according to those who remember seeing them, that showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel.

The documents also suggest that the U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel’s reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation.

Posted by: b | Oct 3 2007 19:54 utc | 38

Uri Averny also sees the danger of a backslash: Two Knights and a Dragon

The political views of the two professors, which are briefly stated at the end of the book, are identical with the stand of the Israeli peace forces: the Two-State Solution, ending the occupation, borders based on the Green Line, and international support for the peace settlement.
If this is anti-Semitism, then we here are all anti-Semites. And only the Christian Zionists – those who openly demand the return of the Jews to this country but secretly prophesy the annihilation of the unconverted Jews at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ – are the true Lovers of Zion.
Even if not a single bad word about the pro-Israel lobby can be uttered in the US, it is far from being a secret society, hatching conspiracies like the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. On the contrary, AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the Zionist Federation and the other organizations vociferously boast about their actions and publicly proclaim their incredible successes.
Quite naturally, the diverse components of the Lobby compete with each other – Who has the biggest influence on the White House, Who scares the most senators, Who controls more journalists and commentators,. This competition causes a permanent escalation – because every success by one group spurs the others to redouble their efforts.
This could be very dangerous. A balloon that is inflated to monstrous dimensions can one day burst in the face of American Jews (who, by the way, according to the polls, object to many positions adopted by the Lobby that claims to speak in their name.)
…
This lobby has become a Golem. And like the Golem in legend, in the end it will bring disaster on its maker.
…
When the original article by the two professors appeared, I argued that “the tail is wagging the dog and the dog is wagging the tail”. The tail, of course, is Israel.

Anopther success of the lobby: Put off by his controversial words on Israel, the University of St. Thomas snubs a Nobel Laureate – Banning Desmond Tutu

But in a move that still has faculty members shaking their heads in disbelief, St. Thomas administrators—concerned that Tutu’s appearance might offend local Jews—told organizers that a visit from the archbishop was out of the question.

Posted by: b | Oct 4 2007 10:10 utc | 39

Well I am not saying nah nah really, just that the Israelis understand what they have to do to survive. Without the US -uk -eu behind them, they would be some kind of toast, not that I think anyone is going to invade or nuke them, but a hell of a lot of pressure (re. Palestinians, walls, etc etc) would be applied, and some of it might be very ugly. At the very least, the 67 borders and an independent ‘Palestine’ would be insisted on. I believe the world would be quite forgiving, an adopt a lets-move-on attitude, that somehow the ‘right of return’ could be negotiated and managed (Yossi Beilin style), etc. Everyone would congratulate each other on ridding the world of this cancer, the desperate problems, etc., rush in to invest and shake hands!
Israel, its leaders, will not accept that, as their present situation is more advantageous. (Outrageous and disgusting..) That situation is care of the USuk, and nobody else, the others joiners are hangers-on, coerced, afraid, etc. So Israel knows it has to adopt US aims and foreign policy, in public, loudly if possible, ostensibly in function of its ‘own’ stated aims. If the US has to help poor beleaguered Israel, the keepers of the holy land, so be it – for the US public. This position in turn gives Isr. power, as they become a needed accessory, an indispensable second rank henchman. The result is a symbiosis where it becomes very difficult to say who influences whom, how or why. It becomes an ingrained habit, to conserve the status quo and keep the money coming in, both ways! (US and Isr. exchange huge sums for all kinds of purposes, everyone seems to think they benefit…)
Realistically, why should the US bow down to a minuscule, blatantly racist, poor in resources, problematic country in that region? Because Xtian cooks love the Holy Land? No way. They do it for geo-political reasons only. What does Israel have to fear from Iran? Nothing. Israel wants to continue ethnically cleansing, Eretz Israel nuts apart, it wants the Palestinians gone, and some kind of territorial ‘integrity’ within the bounds of what in summary atlases is labelled ‘Israel.’ The US, on the whole, has tolerated this attitude, as it is a *condition* for collaboration, and helps with the ‘Ayrabs are violent lunatics who deserve to be killed’ meme but has also made objections (human rights, too much concern on internal matters, not enough commercial development, too much social aid, lazy, etc. etc.) as the whole structure of Isr. is contrary to US principles. US foreign policy is a duplicitous, hypocritical mess, Israel knows how to benefit from that. So both parties are locked in their own contradictions but cannot separate.
The US would like Isr. to be ‘democratic’, a model for US support and influence, i.e. get rid of the Palestinian problem, and have its nukes and forces pointed outwards at US bidding. That didn’t work in the latest Lebanon war, at all. Which was a disappointment all round, but when the heart isn’t in it… So the two parties have to juggle around their somewhat contradictory aims. And Israel’s interest is in keeping that going (see the Lobby) whereas US interests are in fact not well served. In that sense, Isr. has the upper hand, and benefits more, which is quite common in the position of the ‘lower’ partner. But the partner who could change things, the one who has power, is the US.
But the winds are slowly turning, mostly because the US has lost power and status big time (9/11, Bush, Iraq, Katrina, sub primes, etc.), and so ppl are beginning to speak up. The result is that the ‘lobby’ (etc.) are defending themselves in the usual way with the conventional tools, which will do them a lot of harm. Their recent forays into Academe are very telling – they have to squash what previously did not really arise (or attracted little attention if it did. Like Finkelstein, who was accepted at his Uni.)
I chose Tangerine because I wanted a colorful positive name!

Posted by: Tangerine | Oct 4 2007 18:43 utc | 40

The result is a symbiosis where it becomes very difficult to say who influences whom, how or why. It becomes an ingrained habit, to conserve the status quo and keep the money coming in, both ways!
Very astute and succinct. Sad to see the left debating over whether the front or the rear of the animal is more “cat,” wasting valuable time and energy.
Tangerine is also a very bright name!

Posted by: Malooga | Oct 4 2007 19:09 utc | 41

@Tangerine #40
Very well stated. I completely agree with your analysis. Except for this one tiny point:
The US, on the whole, has tolerated this attitude, as it is a *condition* for collaboration, and helps with the ‘Ayrabs are violent lunatics who deserve to be killed’ meme but has also made objections (human rights, too much concern on internal matters, not enough commercial development, too much social aid, lazy, etc. etc.) as the whole structure of Isr. is contrary to US principles.
This was once true, but I think it is safe to say that those times are now bygone. Since Bush II, there has been no light between the two government’s positions at all — not even the pretense of creating some for the sake of appearances — with a plethora of very adverse implications on all kinds of levels. In the long (and near) term, this does not serve Israel’s genuine national interests at all.

Posted by: Bea | Oct 4 2007 19:33 utc | 42

Oops in my last past, by “this” I meant the bolded part of the sentence — the objections part.

Posted by: Bea | Oct 4 2007 19:34 utc | 43

Also, one more point: I believe that the closure policy, Separation Wall, and bypass roads — all implemented, in my view, by Israel in a somewhat futile attempt to try and crush and rollback the onrushing “Demographic Threat” — have all made very concrete and visible what once used to me more insidious, subtle, and invisible. It is hard to deny the apartheid in the system when it takes such blatant and undeniable physical form as concrete walls and bifurcated roads, whereas when it was purely instituted through invisible, hard-to-explain administrative sleights of hand, it was much less obvious. What is concrete and undeniable must, in turn, be defended in ever more shriller and louder and more hysterical terms, because to defend the indefensible the only true weapon is to attack the character of the messenger (viz. Jimmy Carter). This is why, I think, we are seeing an escalation of “bullying” tactics on the part of the lobby — all of which will, ultimately, backfire badly — a consequence that I already see beginning.

Posted by: Bea | Oct 4 2007 19:40 utc | 44

oh Malooga,
it is so hard to ask and write about this stuff. you can do it and never have to worry about being thought of in a poor light, the worst that can happen is some idiot calls you a self loathing Jew.
perhaps I see what I want to see but I did read that Tangerine kinda sorta agreed with what I said. it all started out one way but the tables have been turned and the master is now the knave.
btw, did you watch the film Ben suggested at zeitgeistmovie.com? quite a nice explanation of how religious figures evolved. I haven’t watched all of it because it is two hours long and it is sometimes hard to find that much time but liked a lot what I did see.

Posted by: dan of steele | Oct 4 2007 19:47 utc | 45

Maybe it is time to call this ever-more symbiotic relationship between the US and Israel by a name from an earlier era — Mutually Assured Destruction (or MAD). (Tragically).

Posted by: Bea | Oct 4 2007 19:51 utc | 46

one other question,
if the US needs Israel because of the strategic position it had in the middle east, what is to become of it now that the US has a much more strategic location (12 permanent bases in Iraq) in the heart of all the arabs and so much oil?
if the US were running the show solely for their own benefit they would dump Israel so fast it would make your head spin.

Posted by: dan of steele | Oct 4 2007 19:57 utc | 47

it is so hard to ask and write about this stuff. you can do it and never have to worry about being thought of in a poor light, the worst that can happen is some idiot calls you a self loathing Jew.
It is time to cast fear aside and stand up for humanity. Remember, providing a secure and dignified existence for all is truly the best and only way to ensure security for all. Feeling afraid to speak out against injustice for fear of being maliciously maligned only in fact harms the interests of Jews the world over in the long run. Whatever is said about you, you will be at peace with yourself for having spoken up for justice. If justice and human dignity are your compass, I truly believe you can never go wrong. Would you accept such treatment as Palestinians are currently receiving for yourself? Would you accept it for any other nationality on earth? For the French? For the British? For the Irish? For the Japanese? If any of those peoples were being so oppressed, would you feel a moral obligation to speak out?
Yes? Then by all means, do.

Posted by: Bea | Oct 4 2007 20:02 utc | 48

Tony Karon on banning Desmond Tutu form speaking because of his “anti-semite” remarks.
My Favorite ‘Anti-Semite’

The utterly charming thing about the Zionist Thought Police is their apparent inability to restrain themselves, even from the very excesses that will prove to be their own undoing. …

Posted by: b | Oct 4 2007 20:07 utc | 49

theres something in Bishop Desmond Tutu’s statements that really scares the AIPAC/ADL crew. Or maybe theres more than one thing. But I am guessing its the unfavorable referral to apartheid.
and trying to practice apartheid or Jim-Crow without making it the state doctrine and proclaiming it as such for the world to hear is like trying to be half-pregnant. It is obviously a very unstable & poorly defined situation to be in.
Israel may actually be better off if it came out & declared itself an apartheid state, Like the Afrikaaners did for so long. The demographics are much more in favor for Israel than they were for the Afrikaaners and Israel has a much stronger historical claim to the land. Also, Israel is far better armed than the Afrikaaners ever were. And they have a blank check from the USA for whatever it takes. Not bad at all.
it may be possible that apartheid can be practiced properly in a mannner that respects the rights of all the parties involved, in a manner that guarantees equality in all aspects as long as each party keeps to its side of the tracks. After all, apartheid in principle should not be about hate or exploitation or moral superiority or racial superiority. It is about separate, but equal.
maybe the moral issue to apartheid is just way way over-blown. But we wont know for sure till we try apartheid in a form thats much kinder & gentler than in the past.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Oct 5 2007 1:08 utc | 50

it may be possible that apartheid can be practiced properly in a mannner that respects the rights of all the parties involved, in a manner that guarantees equality in all aspects as long as each party keeps to its side of the tracks. After all, apartheid in principle should not be about hate or exploitation or moral superiority or racial superiority. It is about separate, but equal.
maybe the moral issue to apartheid is just way way over-blown. But we wont know for sure till we try apartheid in a form thats much kinder & gentler than in the past.
??????????????
Too many posters seem to be channelling George Bush I these days on this blog. This is another one from a usually very solid poster which is simply incomprehensible.
If each party keeps to its side of the tracks, then I, for one, would like to be on the side where the ports, the rail system, the manufacturing facilities, the rainwater, the army bases, the arms industry, the nuclear weapons facilities, the transportation and communication infrastructure, the embassies, the “commanding heights” of industry, the tourist sites, etc., are located. The other side can get a few scraggly olive trees clutching the rocky soil of steep and thirsty hillsides.
Separate but equal. Actually this sounds like my divorce settlement, but that’s another story.
I propose that if we are going to “try apartheid in a form thats much kinder & gentler than in the past,” we ought not to even stop there: Why not go back to a gentler and kinder form of slavery, like that depicted in “Gone With the Wind,” where the servants really do love their masters, and the happy and contented slaves sing “Kum Bay Ya” while toiling away in the fields on long golden summer evenings.
Sorry, I forgot, we are going to be trying this very soon throughout the US as millions lose their homes due to the engineered asset bubble and loan product scandal, and lose their jobs due to NAFTA and gov’t trade policy.
Ah, for the halcyon days of “separate but equal.” A flat tax. My eyes mist up, as if I were reading Atlas Shugged again.

Posted by: Malooga | Oct 5 2007 2:36 utc | 51

@Malooga #51
Amen.

Posted by: Bea | Oct 5 2007 3:48 utc | 52

That is to say, THANK YOU for expressing my exact sentiments on apartheid better than I ever could.

Posted by: Bea | Oct 5 2007 3:49 utc | 53

Malooga/Bea,
the primary reason why the concept of apartheid is popularly rejected today seems to be because it has been used as a device by one group to perpetuate & instituitionalize its oppression & exploitation of another, and to also instituitionalize superiority.
but there are also other deeply felt reasons for rejecting apartheid that can derive from a spiritual standpoint. Bishop Desmond Tutu is an excellent example. In his case, few of us may be capable of a full grasp of his rejection of apartheid. But its worth thinking about. It can only make us better.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Oct 5 2007 13:41 utc | 54

Bea at 42 wrote: This was once true, but I think it is safe to say that those times are now bygone.
Yes, you are right, I think. For ex. The Baker-Hamilton proposal is no longer current, discussed (??)
The question is what exactly are the entities we are talking about? Are we talking about “Israel and the US” – ie. nations with geopolitical interests – or about other entities one can’t deliminate or describe properly, supra-national groups of individuals who have a hidden grip, orchestrate behind the scenes, etc.
Baker-Hamilton – Wiki
Upping the ante, and going public (walls etc.) will be catastrophic, as Bea posted.
Dan of steele wrote: if the US were running the show solely for their own benefit they would dump Israel so fast it would make your head spin.
Right. but: Israel is armed, has plenty nukes, is subservient and war-hungry. And old ally, and propaganda to the US populace to support it, are hard to unwind, abandon. Being a benevolent fixer of the ‘Palestinian’ problem, which could be done without too much money or effort, would send the US up into the all time hit parades of super powers. The whole Arab world would cheer (say), commerce would boom, stellar photo ops would appear in the New York Post. But no. NO.
Because the issue is one of control, it is serious (energy, not just business as usual) and the US needs all the guns it can muster, and may even, in the dealing and counter-dealing, be wary and afraid of its creation..Or, dumb habits die hard.

Posted by: Tangerine | Oct 5 2007 17:23 utc | 55

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