Carter and the EU’s ‘Equal Position’

May 26, 2008

Jimmy Carter criticizes the Europeans for not standing up against the U.S. and Israel for the people in Gaza:

Britain and other European governments should break from the US over the international embargo on Gaza, former US president Jimmy Carter told the Guardian yesterday. Carter, visiting the Welsh border town of Hay for the Guardian literary festival, described the EU’s position on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as "supine" and its failure to criticise the Israeli blockade of Gaza as "embarrassing".

Referring to the possibility of Europe breaking with the US in an interview with the Guardian, he said: "Why not? They’re not our vassals. They occupy an equal position with the US."

Thanks Mr. Carter. You are right on Gaza and the ‘vassal’ point but I doubt the ‘equal position’.

Europe has no single voice and if it had one, I am afraid, that voice would sign in tune with the U.S. just like many of the separate European voices do now.

There are several structural reasons for this, like a common U.S. and European fear about the inevitable rise of Asia and a general trend of converging "western" media opinion. (I’ll expand on the first issue in another piece.)

But there is also a strange change that happened in the European media and some political parties between the five years of European protests against the War on Iraq and today’s numbness in Europe against U.S. and Israeli aggressions.

I suspect a large part of this to be designed.

European politicians, often those in their early careers, are now regulary shiped to Washington and dined and wined by the usual think tanks free of charge.

Then there is the new European Council on Foreign Relations funded by George Soros, a dubious American involved in many ‘regime change’ operations. Why does an American finance a European Foreign Policy think tank?

In 2005 Rumsfeld lauched a huge information operation targeting ‘allies’:

A $300 million Pentagon psychological warfare operation includes plans for placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets without disclosing the U.S. government as the source, one of the military officials in charge of the program says.
…
The program will operate throughout the world, including in allied nations and in countries where the United States is not involved in armed conflict.

$300 million – how many editors and TV producers in Europe can you buy with such an amount of money? How much ‘equal position’ is left after such an onslaught?

Posted by b on May 26, 2008 at 20:09 UTC | Permalink

Comments

I watched the interview with Jimmy Carter on Sky News (Murdoch genocided the Arabs, and now the Persians) by Adam Boulton (a sorry piece of shit). Rummy gave £1 to BBC because Blair paid off BBC by doing fuck all to it so they would remain compliant, so he handed $299,999,897.00 to Murdoch. Reguritate into McCain who can win. But I suspect ….. Post my thoughts later.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | May 26 2008 20:37 utc | 1

Soros, regime change? That’s news to me. You referring to the Open Society Institute? I always saw that as human-rights work with no clear axe to grind. He’s an American of Hungarian origin so I see him more as a rootless cosmopolitan. I like him anyway because the US right makes a crucifix with their fingers whenever they mention him. Shit, he’s the biggest scary head in the NRA’s agitprop! Gotta love ‘im.

Posted by: …—… | May 26 2008 20:37 utc | 2

@2 – U.S. money has helped opposition in Ukraine

The Bush administration has spent more than $65 million in the past two years to aid political organizations in Ukraine, paying to bring opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to meet U.S. leaders and helping to underwrite an exit poll indicating he won last month’s disputed runoff election.
…
The four foundations involved included three funded by the U.S. government: The National Endowment for Democracy, which receives its money directly from Congress; the Eurasia Foundation, which receives money from the State Department, and the Renaissance Foundation, part of a network of charities funded by billionaire George Soros that receives money from the State Department. Other countries involved included Great Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

Posted by: Anonymous | May 26 2008 20:55 utc | 3

It looks as though both Russian and US interests funneled money into the electoral process in the Ukraine. We should all mark our scorecards now as to who the good guys and the bad guys are. But it should be remembered that it was the goons in the former, Putin-friendly, regime that roughed people up at the polls; and their confederates, who took it upon themselves to poison opposition leader, Yushchenko, with the intent of killing him.

Posted by: Copeland | May 26 2008 22:06 utc | 4

I admire Carter for making this plea for Europeans to stand up for an end to the suffering of people in Gaza. But Europe is appeasing U.S. and Israeli policy, and will probably keep doing so. They are afraid to risk offending an administration that is prone to irrational bouts of aggression and violence.
This Western Alliance is one big dysfunctional family; and no one going to criticize Dad for drunken rampages in the pasture, where he occasionally abuses the livestock.

Posted by: Copeland | May 26 2008 22:44 utc | 5

Ooops I knew as soon as someone, even b, described Soros as the sort of low life wheeler dealer scum that he is it would promote a backlash from those amerikans who imagine he bankrolls the dems outta the kindness of his heart rather than him being the chief corrupter of dem machinery.
Just as mentioning the Ukraine was gonna mean the “I”m a victim of the kgb” legend would get another outing. Somewhere way back when, on either MoA or the Whiskey Bar’s archives is a comprehensive analysis of the Ukranian poisoning debate which debunks the story. I’m sure someone more interested in the Ukraine that I will dig it out. Myself, I dunno whether the amerikan puppet was poisoned or was a drunk but I do believe he acted against the long term interests of Ukranians.
Soros has been undermining nations’ (frequently nations in the South who can least afford it) economies since the 70’s. He seems to specialise in ‘shorting’ these nations currency, and then claiming he uses his advanced intellect to discover those countries whose currency’s underlying positives have been over estimated and therefore can be called ‘over valued’.
I have always suspected that Soros uses paid agents in key positions in a ‘targets’ economy plus what he can get from USuk intelligence sources. He’s an insider trader on grand scale, whose business deals have left millions without a pot to piss in or a hospital to get cured in.

Posted by: Debs is dead | May 26 2008 22:55 utc | 6

BTW, Israel has displayed its commitment to free speech and democracy by deporting and banning Norman Finkelstein. The Israeli Association for Civil Rights (kinda like the ACLU) stood up against the Gummint on this one and called it a proto-totalitarian move — good on them.
It’s funny, but I’ve read NF and never thought that his work was all that scary. He doesn’t froth, he barely inveighs; and he’s pretty heavily footnoted. There are more ranting, dramatic critics of the Likudite faction w/in Israel who don’t get the heavy censorship treatment. It suggests to me that the diasporic Jewish population in the US is seen by the Likud as a more important demographic than their own voters back home…? I guess with $2B or whatever it now is annually in US aid, the American audience is indeed very important; so Finkelstein’s critique of Likudite Zionism, Israeli exceptionalism, the occupation of Palestine and all the rest, is more dangerous to the hardliners than their own more outspoken and fiery dissidents who get published in Ha’aretz without any official attempts to shut the paper down… go figure… anyone have more informed perspective on this?

Posted by: DeAnander | May 26 2008 23:17 utc | 7

I’ve read Finklestein and I agree. Those who froth at the mouth (like me) are easily dismissed. One who creates an honest foot note trail? Deport him. He’s a rock you can build reform upon. That’s dangerous to the neo-kkk-ons.

Posted by: Diogenes | May 26 2008 23:41 utc | 8

“Myself, I dunno whether the amerikan puppet was poisoned or was a drunk but I do believe he acted against the long term interests of Ukranians.”
That’s not cool at all. The toxicology was pretty clear and it was not alcohol poisoning, but dioxin, I believe, and a pretty nasty piece of work, at that.
I begin to smell the smell of apologists for Putin whenever this style emerges. Debs is Dead, this surprizes me. Are you one of those people who believes the Nord-Ost theater atrocity wasn’t Putin’s own state terrorism?
I’m sorry for you if you believe (as you apparently do) that evil only and always emanates from one source. The world is roiling with evil. We are surrounded with monstrous crimes. Some of it isn’t even remotely political. Some of it comes from Usuk, but there are other sources, brother.

Posted by: Copeland | May 26 2008 23:56 utc | 9

I don’t think Soros is that easy to pigeonhole. He lately has gone long emerging market equities and short the dollar, and his most recent screwup was missing the astounding dirigisme that underlay the scuttling of Bear Stearns. If he was really an insider he would have seen that coming a mile away. And his politics are mainly anti-autocratic. Is he an opportunistic capitalist? Sure. But if he wound up on the same side as the Bush administration, which reviles him, it’s likely a coincidence. The enemy of my enemy &c.

Posted by: …—… | May 27 2008 2:31 utc | 10

I’m taken by the direction of this thread. It begins with Jimmy Carter pushing for basic justice and evolves into George Soros’ machinations.
I came to Canada just before the launch of Pierre Trudeau, a man of even more charisma, intelligence and whatever than Osama; and villified by some because of his easy talents: Jesuit educated, articulate, fluent in several languages, had back-packed China as a student, Quebecois radical against the then catholic fuedelism, teen heart-throb.
His principle message was the JUST SOCIETY. Not the great society of American and LBJ excepionalism, but JUST. Do unto others…
This is what Jimmy Carter has been pushing in the Middle East and elsewhere – simple justice. How can that fundamental concept be so elusive? Why does it need jaw-boning and arm-twisting and bribery. Aren’t all the players sworn to the bible and koran and all other mytholygies premised on that fundamental tenant? Maybe they are all heritecs.
At Trudeau’s funeral in Montreal’s Notre Dame Cathedreal, the US delegation sat as a group, as expected. Jimmy Carter and Fidel Castro sat side by side, in another pew on the other side of the aisle. They came in together, they wept side by side during the eulegy, they left together.
The Just Society may have gone out the same door that day. Its not going to be back in the next little while.

Posted by: Allen/Vancouver | May 27 2008 3:52 utc | 11

a thread is created from twisting together different fibers. some fibers fray more than they adhere. it’s because of strong fiber that threads at MoA don’t routinely unravel.

Posted by: Anonymous | May 27 2008 5:43 utc | 12

me @ 12

Posted by: Lizard | May 27 2008 5:46 utc | 13

@Copeland I have no difficulty in believing Putin blew up a mob of apartment blocks or rather had a business associate who was in ‘negotiations’ with another Moscow businessman an blow up some apartments and then Putin blamed the whole lot on the people of Chetchnya. That decision led to the deaths of tens probably hundreds of thousands of ordinary humans.
I recognise that the Russian response to terrorism has often been worse than the alleged ‘terrorist acts’, I have no trouble believing that other countries’ leaders also use other humans as pawns, but I also happen to have seen at least one thread either in here or the now defunct whiskey bar and articles in Counterpunch which debunked the then ‘evidence’ published in the mainstream media that Victor Yushchenko was poisoned by the russians. Since then I haven’t bothered to stay across the issue partially because Yushchenko quickly revealed his true colours to the people of the Ukraine and the Orange revolution has been discredited, meanwhile Yushchenko has swung backwards and forwards between washington and moscow sacrifing the Ukraine’s interest on the altar of his ambition.
He has been caught lying on many subjects not least of which was a lightening strike on him and other members of his party when ascending Hoverla mountain in 2005. First of all Yushenko claimed no one had been hurt when it subsequently came to light that other members of the party had been killed.
I have no idea of the exact truth of whether he was ever poisoned, much less who did it, but I do remember that at the time the western media lied and exaggerated all the way through that story.
This ’emperors clothes’ site provides some details.
Back when the iron curtain was up and he distortions were flowing thick and fast from all sides I developed my own method of deciding the degree of evil between the soviet union and amerika. Who ran the most evil empire? Who was looking after the empire’s subjects better? This was no idle meandering, we always tend to hear most about oppression of the political class and while that is a bad thing there are plenty of worse acts an empire can perpetrate on the states it subjugates. Most people care more about food, shelter and health than they do about selecting their leader. That is true everywhere including amerika. So I figured the easiest way to settle who was the cruellest and most callous towards their empire’s subjects, would be to ask myself which empire would I rather be to be born into. Born into as one of the many, not as some member of an elite.
Would I rather be born as one of the masses into Czechoslovakia, Hungary Poland; or Nicuaragua, Chile, Colombia? I think most would agree in life in any of the first three countries (Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland) would have a better chance of a/ getting through infancy without disease and death, b/ getting an education and c/not getting murdered or disappeared by the PTB.
They were both evil empires and Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland were subjected to military intervention by the soviet union just as Nicuaragua, Chile and Colombia were by the amerikans but in the Soviet Empire things were not nearly as dire for the masses of ordinary people as they were in the amerikan satellites where disease, poverty even starvation! was a possibility.
One would never be able to discover that by reading the western media at the time. I was horrified when I first travelled to the Northern hemisphere ( early 1970’s) to discover that people were actively told the most outrageous lies about iron curtain countries and that many believed them.

Posted by: Debs is dead | May 27 2008 9:32 utc | 14

I see it as Soros is out to benefit Soros. To buy the next emperor on the eagle throne is one way, to promote conditions that benefits his businesses by think tanks is another. If Soros has a political ideology it is neoliberalism. That makes him opposed to the neoconservatives on some accounts, but do not imagine he is a leftie.

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | May 27 2008 13:52 utc | 15

Just to beat this dead horse some more, I was not reasoning from Soros’ Christlike qualities, but from the way local NGOs work: they will get a grant with defined terms of reference from, say, a foundation run by some sinister Freemason Jewbanker speculator who wants to take your guns away. Then they will typically beat the bushes for more funding, going to multilateral IFOs, international NGOs or bilateral aid agencies – maybe even USAID. This diversification tends to bolster their autonomy. So to me this confluence of money does mean lots of Spy versus Spy. What interests me about this case is that, under this administration it’s hard to get US money for human rights work (I suppose because real progress there leads to Bush and Cheney in the war-crimes dock.) Good grant-writers can finesse that by using US-sanctioned terms such as “public participation” etc.

Posted by: …—… | May 27 2008 14:31 utc | 16

uh, does not mean lots of Spy versus Spy
And that wasn’t a Freudian slip, either, so don’t say it is.

Posted by: …—… | May 27 2008 14:34 utc | 17

“Spy vs. Spy”, as in Gaines’ Mad, keeps us and the operatives occupied, paid in brain cells and booty.

Posted by: plushtown | May 27 2008 14:48 utc | 18

Me too, like — , I don’t think Soros has much to do with this, not smart or influential. He sort of trails behind, and offers stale opinion, which is listened to because of his past as a money maker, his foundation, etc. Soros, too, goes where the wind blows. No hidden plots there, it is all so obviously half-baked and very middle of the road, he is the arch anti-communist, a free marketeer, and financial profiteer.. The founders of the Eu Council of Foreign relations (and what a dumb name!), it’s true, look like a roster of minor atlanticists wannabees and humanitarian interventionist creeps. There is money behind it but it smells of irrelevance. The only ones influenced are those on the pay roll, the website for ex. is beyond lame. Standard stuff. Just my 2 cents.
I suspect a large part of this to be designed.
But not by Soros and the like. (?)
Anecdote: I remember being surprised and upset at the swift change at the one French public radio station I listen to, France Culture. About 6 months before Sarko was elected (May 07) this station turned to glorifying Israel and weeping over the Holocaust, whereas previously it had either avoided the topic or had treated it briefly but fair-handedly, in line with the majority of French public opinion, with focus on Palestinian’s plight. It was quite extraordinary: in the culture section (“jewish roots”, “judeo christian” values, etc.), social science (“intractable conflicts”, etc.) news (“3 terrorists killed in Gaza”), politics (“americans learn from mistakes’’ – “Israel, the only democracy…”) etc.

Posted by: Tangerine | May 27 2008 16:15 utc | 19

DeAnander wrote on Finkelstein:
It’s funny, but I’ve read NF and never thought that his work was all that scary. He doesn’t froth, he barely inveighs; and he’s pretty heavily footnoted. There are more ranting, dramatic critics of the Likudite faction w/in Israel who don’t get the heavy censorship treatment.
Strong or rabid anti-Zionists (or even anti-semites, but let’s not get strangled with definitions), such as those one may meet at Xymphora (google ok) tend, and I do say tend, to class Finkelstein amongst the gatekeepers; those who mildly critisize, intellectualize, normalize and thus defuse Israeli state-craft, laws, actions, atrocities. Some make excuses or allowances for him: his background, his apparent sincerity, the difficulty of being in his position, etc.
I don’t have time to look up numbers and so on now, but F’s book The Holocaust Industry has been translated into about 15 languages, it was, and is, an all time bestseller for a book on – ? – I have seen it classed in History, Current Affairs, Philosophy, Religious Studies, etc. – which testifies to its broad and innovative scope. (I used to be very involved in libraries..)
Anecdote: Here in Switz, I know two ppl who learnt English to read it in the original (Shakespeare can’t compete) and school teachers keep proposing it be put on reading lists. Every library, library trucks, etc. has multiple copies. The prison has more than 10 in different languages… It is a good book, and echoed powerfully all over the EU, the ME, and in Latin America (where according to one colleague of mine it is on the reading list..skipping details here.)
Enormously influential, as the Guardian might write.
And that, of course, is the problem.
Israel has a free-er press and public discourse than the US, it can wash and discuss its dirty laundry in public more like some EU/unaligned countries, but its image outside the country, the myths it upholds towards the outside world, were dented more powerfully by that one Finkelstein book than by anything Carter could say, or Walt and M. could write, or more radical scribblers or agitators could hope to do.
It is a classic, and the beginning of Israel’s public image downfall. Millions of ppl read it – and said, yes. Yes. It opened the way, actually, for others, including Carter.

Posted by: Tangerine | May 27 2008 17:02 utc | 20

George Soros’ & NATO’s Propaganda Factory of Lies

Posted by: denk | May 28 2008 3:28 utc | 21

A Jules Verne octopus. Awesome. They should show a picture of it wearing a top hat and eatling babies and strangling babushkas and waving money bags around.

Posted by: …—… | May 28 2008 13:30 utc | 22

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