FULL STORY WITH LINKS
Top AIPAC officials visited prostitutes, regularly watched porn at work: claim
Is US's most influential advocate for Israel about to implode?
A former foreign policy chief for the largest Israeli lobby in the US is threatening to provide evidence members of the organization regularly trafficked in classified US government information.
The claim comes in the midst of an increasingly ugly lawsuit in which parties have alleged or admitted to mass viewing of pornography among senior staffers at AIPAC as well as extra-marital affairs.
Steve Rosen, who was in charge of foreign policy issues at AIPAC until 2005, is suing his former employer for $20 million, alleging that AIPAC defamed him when they fired him. Rosen and colleague Keith Weissman were charged in 2004 with espionage for allegedly pressuring a Washington Post reporter into running classified US government information they had obtained about Iran. The charges were dropped last year, evidently due to lack of evidence.
But AIPAC fired Rosen years before the charges were dropped, on the grounds that Rosen's "conduct did not comport with what AIPAC would expect of its employees."
But Rosen disputes this, and his lawsuit aims to prove that what he allegedly did was standard practice at AIPAC. The Washington Post's Jeff Stein reports:
Rosen says his actions were common practice at the organization. He said his next move is to show that AIPAC, Washington’s major pro-Israeli lobbying group by far, regularly traffics in sensitive U.S. government information, especially material related to the Middle East.
“I will introduce documentary evidence that AIPAC approved of the receipt of classified information,” he said by e-mail. “Most instances of actual receipt are hard to document, because orally received information rarely comes with classified stamps on it nor records alerts that the information is classified.”
But Rosen said he would produce “statements of AIPAC employees to the FBI, internal documents, deposition statements, public statements and other evidence showing that [the] receipt of classified information by employees other than [himself] ... was condoned … for months prior to being condemned in March 2005 after threats from the prosecutors.”
"Unfortunately for AIPAC, Rosen has 180 documents which could prove that Howard Kohr, AIPAC's executive director, and probably the AIPAC board as well, knew exactly what Rosen was doing," reports M.J. Rosenberg at Al-Jazeera.
He suggests that Rosen's threat to reveal AIPAC trafficking of data is meant to intimidate the lobby group into settling out of court. Making the lawsuit go away "will not be easy - even if Steve Rosen ultimately accepts a payoff from the organization and refrains from telling what he knows," Rosenberg writes.
Other elements of the lawsuit could prove embarrassing, if not politically toxic. Lawyers for AIPAC got Rosen to admit he viewed pornography on work computers, but Rosen has countered that the head of AIPAC and his closest colleagues openly watched porn at work. The Jewish Daily Forward reports:
“I witnessed [AIPAC executive director] Howard Kohr viewing pornographic material, [Kohr’s secretary] Annette Franzen viewing pornographic material, probably a dozen other members of the staff,” Rosen said in his deposition. He added that, according to a Nielsen survey, more than a quarter of Americans regularly view pornographic websites at their workplace.
Later in his deposition, the former lobbyist also said he had heard from directors at AIPAC about their visits to prostitutes and he claimed Kohr had routinely used “locker room language” at the AIPAC offices.
Rosenberg posits that the lawsuit "could well destroy the lobby without ever making its way on to the front page. AIPAC is under siege, and is spending millions to stay alive."
Showing posts with label AIPAC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AIPAC. Show all posts
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Beck and Oreilly - Keeping The "Evil Nazi" Propoganda Fresh In Peoples Minds
If there is one goal that all jews work towards it is to insure that Nazi Germany and it's leader Adolf Hitler are to be synonymous with words like evil and hatred. The jews greatest tool is the pity card, the "oy vey ve are so persecuted" BS that well all are indoctrinated with constantly.
Why is this important? It is a license to steal, kill and squash dissent. If you suggest that the jews have no right to steal land from Palestinians and kill those who resist than guess what? You are an evil Nazi.
They use it on the left, the right and the center. The republicans are Nazi's the democrats are Nazi fascists. They want to keep Nazi Germany fresh in everyones minds so that we by default are all reminded who are the "victims" of the whole ordeal.
Beck claims that Obama is a Nazi, yet let's asses the situation honestly. Nazi Germany expelled the marxists (jews). Meanwhile here in America we have a President who is a marxist, surrounds himself by jews, and a RECORD number of jews in Congress, the most powerful lobby is AIPAC, and continue to give billions of dollars per year to the terror state of israel despite the fact that we are completely broke.
So clearly this is the anithesis to Nazi Germany and exactly what Hitler fought to purge from his country. Yet people lap up the propaganda spewed forth by Beck without even a passing thought to whether or not it is true.
FULL STORY WITH LINKS
Led by Glenn Beck -- who was once condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for saying Al Gore used "the same tactic" as Adolf Hitler -- Fox News personalities have frequently invoked Nazi Germany in their political commentary, often comparing progressives to Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and the Nazi "brownshirts."
Beck regularly invokes Nazis, Hitler, Goebbels, other Nazi imagery
Beck: Obama advisers show "the kind of thinking that ... eventually led to the Holocaust." On his October 5 radio show, Beck said that statements by Obama advisers John Holdren, Ezekiel Emanuel and Cass Sunstein indicate "the kind of thinking that led to ... the extermination program that eventually led to the Holocaust."
Beck likened reporting about him to "what Goebbels did." Complaining on the August 27 edition of his radio show that ABC reported a statement by Beck that blacks don't own Martin Luther King without also noting that he also said whites don't own Abraham Lincoln, Beck said: "You know what? I'm gonna get a lot of heat for this, but stand in line. That's what [Nazi propagandist Joseph] Goebbels did. That's what Goebbels did. The truth didn't matter."
Beck equates children singing about Obama with "Hitler Youth." On the June 17 edition of his radio show, Beck said that children singing about Obama was "the playbook of the progressives from ... the former regime in Germany, the Third Reich." Beck added, "This is Hitler Youth."
Beck: Putting "the common good" first "exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany." Attacking criticism of him by Jewish Funds for Justice's Simon Greer, Beck asserted on his May 28 radio show that Greer's comments about putting "human kind and the common good" first "is exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany," adding, "[a] Jew, of all people, should know that."
Beck: "frightening similarities" between Sunstein, Goebbels. On the May 27 edition of his radio show, Beck claimed there were "frightening similarities" between Cass Sunstein and Goebbels.
Beck: "You can't just change the law" to raise BP's liability cap; "Is that what we fought the Nazis for?" On his May 4 radio show, discussing a reported proposal to retroactively increase liability limits to cover the costs of the Gulf oil spill, Beck responded: "Did we go and fight Germany for this? Is that what we fought the Nazis for? Is that why those millions of people died?"
Beck: Progressives use "democratic elections" to push dictators -- "Hitler, 'democratically elected.' " On the April 28 edition of his Fox News show, Beck stated that progressives use "democratic elections" to push dictators, then stated, "You'll hear this when they talk about the 'democratically elected' leader of Iran; the democratic leader Chavez, 'democratically elected,' you know; Castro, 'democratically elected'; Hitler - 'democratically elected.' "
Beck: "Progressives build the structure that a communist, a Marxist, a Nazi would love to have." On the April 22 edition of his radio show, Beck stated that "[p]rogressives build the structure that a communist, a Marxist, a Nazi would love to have."
Beck invoked "first they came for the Jews" poem to respond to ad boycotts. On the April 8 edition of his Fox News show, Beck portrayed ad boycotts of his show as being orchestrated by the Obama White House in order to "destroy" his "career" and "silence" him, adding: "Is there absolutely no chance whatsoever that you might be a target at some point in the future? What's that poem? First they came for the Jews, and I stayed silent?"
Beck invokes Nazis to attack worker ID cards: "It was only one of the first things that Hitler did." On the March 9 edition of his radio show, Beck discussed a proposal by Sens. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) to implement national ID cards for workers and said, "It was only one of the first things that Hitler did."
Beck: Obama campaign videos were Goebbels-like "propaganda." On the February 16 edition of his radio show, Beck said that videos produced by Obama campaign manager David Plouffe were "propaganda" out of the Nazi "playbook": "Remember, Goebbels, king of propaganda. ... This is yet another playbook -- page taken right out of the playbook."
Beck documentary linked progressives to Hitler. Beck's documentary Revolutionary Holocaust purported to link progressivism to the atrocities of Hitler, among other brutal dictators. Numerous historians denounced the inferences Beck drew in the film.
Beck on NEA conference call: "You should look up the name Goebbels." On the November 3, 2009, edition of his Fox News show, discussing an NEA conference call in which artists reportedly discussed how "to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda," Beck said that "advocating through art is known as propaganda. Hmm. You should look up the name Goebbels."
Beck compared Fox News to Jews during Holocaust, other news organizations to silent bystanders. On the October 13, 2009, broadcast of his radio show, Beck compared Fox News to the Jews during the Holocaust, telling other media outlets, "When they're done with Fox, and you decide to speak out on something. The old, 'first they came for the Jews, and I wasn't Jewish.' " He went on to say, "When they're done with Fox and talk radio, do you really think they're going to leave you alone if you want to ask a tough question? ... If you believe that, you should open up a history book, because you've missed the point of many brutal dictators."
Beck on Obama's "civilian national security force": "This is what Hitler did with the SS." Discussing President Obama's call for a "civilian national security force" -- which was a reference to expanding the foreign service, AmeriCorps, and the Peace Corps -- Beck said on the August 27, 2009, edition of his Fox News program:
BECK: I'm finding this -- this is the hardest part to connect to. Because this is -- I mean, look, you know, David [Bellavia, former Army staff sergeant], what you just said is, you said, 'I'm not comparing' -- but you are. I mean, this is what Hitler did with the SS. He had his own people. He had the brownshirts and then the SS. This is what Saddam Hussein -- so -- but you are comparing that. And I -- I mean, I think America would have a really hard time getting their arms around that.
Beck told Newsmax: "I fear a Reichstag moment." On September 29, 2009, conservative news website Newsmax.com reported of its interview with Beck:
But his real worry is that many Washington elitists really don't like our form of government and want to see it abolished.
"I fear a Reichstag moment," he said, referring to the 1933 burning of Germany's parliament building in Berlin that the Nazis blamed on communists and Hitler used as an excuse to suspend constitutional liberties and consolidate power.
"God forbid, another 9/11. Something that will turn this machine on, and power will be seized and voices will be silenced."
Beck said he's "not comparing" Obama to Hitler, then urged his audience to "please read Mein Kampf" and learn from Germany's mistakes. On the August 12, 2009, broadcast of his radio show, discussing Obama's position on health care reform, Beck stated:
BECK: I am not comparing him to this, but please, read Mein Kampf for this reason. If you read it now, you see that Hitler told you what he was going to do. He told the Germans. It outsold the Bible. Germans read Mein Kampf, but what did they do? They didn't listen. 'Oh, he doesn't mean that.' 'Oh, he's just saying that to appeal to X, Y, Z.' All of the same lies we're telling to ourselves. 'No, that's crazy. Nobody would actually do that.' They buried their heads in the sand, and then it became too late. Please, America, take this man for what he says.
Beck compares media portrayal of "tea partygoers" to Nazi portrayal of anti-Nazi "complainers." On the August 11, 2009, edition of his Fox show, Beck compared the media's portrayal of the "tea partygoers" to a Nazi propaganda poster portraying "complainers" about Nazi policies, saying, "This is a poster of what you see every day now in the news media making the complainers, the tea partygoers, look somehow rotten."
Beck links health care reform to Nazis, suggests reform would kill elderly and newborns. On his August 6, 2009, radio show, Beck suggested that health care reform would lead to the eugenics programs undertaken in Nazi Germany, saying that "three people in the White House are in love with eugenics" and that reform would kill the elderly and newborns.
Beck said "the Germans" during Hitler's rise "were an awful lot like we are now." On the June 10, 2009, edition of his Fox News program, Beck stated: "I think the Germans, however, were an awful lot like we are now. We're kind of living in a denial, like, 'No, no, that can't really be happening. No, that really -- I -- you don't want to believe some things, but you have to. You have to actually think about them."
Beck compared car dealership closures to Nazism, warning "at some point, they're going to come for you." While discussing the closures of auto dealerships under the bankruptcy deals of GM and Chrysler, Beck said that the "poem that keeps going through my mind is 'First they came for the Jews,' " adding, "Gang, at some point they're going to come for you."
Beck compared auto bailouts to the actions of German companies "in the early days of Adolf Hitler." While discussing the auto company bailouts on the April 1, 2009, edition of his Fox News program, after stating, "I am not saying that Barack Obama is a fascist," Beck said, "If I'm not mistaken, in the early days of Adolf Hitler, they were very happy to line up for help there as well. I mean, the companies were like, 'Hey, wait a minute. We can get, you know, we can get out of trouble here. They can help, et cetera, et cetera.' "
Beck compared TARP to "what happened to the lead-up with Hitler." On the April 21, 2009, edition of Fox Business' Money for Breakfast, Beck said of the Troubled Asset Relief Program [TARP]:
BECK: This is not comparing these people to the people in Germany, but this is exactly what happened to the lead-up with Hitler. Hitler opened up the door and said, "Hey, companies, I can help you." They all ran through the door. And then in the end, they all saw, "Uh-oh. I'm in bed with the devil." They started to take their foot out, and Hitler said, "Absolutely not. Sorry, gang. This is good for the country. We've got to do these things." And it was too late.
Beck airs photos of Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, asks, "Is this where we're headed?" On the April 2, 2009, edition of his Fox News program, while teasing the next day's show, Beck asked, "Is this where we're headed?" while airing photos of Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Vladimir Lenin.
Beck has attacked progressive organizations as "brownshirts." Beck has repeatedly attacked the "brownshirts" at ACORN and "their henchmen" at the Service Employees International Union.
Beck warned of impending "national socialism." On the February 6, 2009, edition of The O'Reilly Factor, Beck claimed that "We are really truly stepping beyond socialism and starting to look at fascism." Then, purporting to "explain what happened in Nazi Germany," Beck claimed that "we're talking now about nationalizing the banks," which he called "national socialism." Beck said that "at first, all the big companies and the big capitalists in Germany said, 'Oh, thank goodness there's a savior. OK, great, we'll do that. Yes.' It didn't take too long before, like here in America now -- Goldman Sachs -- they started to see the writing on the wall and ... they couldn't get out of it fast enough."
ADL rebuked Beck for smearing Gore as a Nazi
Beck repeatedly compared Gore to a Nazi propagandist. Beck has repeatedly likened Gore to a Nazi propagandist for speaking out about global warming, notably comparing Gore to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Beck also suggested that by giving a speech to students, Gore was trying to "indoctrinate the kids" like the "new Hitler Youth" and said of Gore's 2006 Academy Award winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth: "It's like Hitler."
Beck compares Gore to Goebbels, says, "The government and its friends are indoctrinating our children for the control of their minds." On the February 5, 2009, edition of his Fox News show, Beck stated, "The government and its friends are indoctrinating our children for the control of their minds, your freedom, and our choice and our future." Beck then quoted Joesph Goebbels discussing the Hitler Youth and said, "If mom and dad decide the keep the temperature above 72, should our 'Gore youth' report mom and dad?"
Beck: Holocaust survivor's story of how Nazis drove a wedge between students and parents sounds like U.N. and Gore. On the September 24 edition of his Fox News show, Beck hosted a Holocaust survivor who said that the Nazis drove a wedge between students and their parents. Beck responded by saying, "I don't know about anybody else ... this, to me, doesn't sound like stuff necessarily that I've heard from Obama. This is stuff that I've heard from the U.N. This is the kind of stuff that we have heard from ... Al Gore."
In 2007, ADL rebuked Beck's smears of Gore. On May 2, 2007, the ADL issued a press release condemning Beck's April 30, 2007, statement that "Al Gore's not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. The goal is globalization. The goal is global carbon tax. The goal is the United Nations running the world." Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director and a Holocaust survivor, said of the remark, in part: "Glenn Beck's linkage of Hitler's plan to round up and exterminate Jews with Al Gore's efforts to raise awareness of global warming is outrageous, insensitive and deeply offensive."
Beck promoted Nazi sympathizer's book
Beck: The Red Network -- rife with racism and anti-Semitism and written by a Nazi sympathizer -- did "what we're doing now." On his June 4 radio program, Beck promoted The Red Network by Elizabeth Dilling, saying of the 1934 book: "This is a book -- and I'm a getting a ton of these -- from people who were doing what we're doing now. We now are documenting who all of these people are. Well, there were Americans in the first 50 years of this nation that took this seriously, and they documented it." As Media Matters noted, Dilling's book contains numerous passages that espouse anti-Semitism and racism. At various points throughout the book, Dilling attacked "racial inter-mixture" as a communist plot, referred to "un-Christianized" "colored people" as "savages," called Hinduism and Islam "debasing and degrading," and blamed Nazi Germany's anti-Semitism on "revolutionary Russian Jews." Dilling visited Germany in the late 1930s, where she attended Nazi party meetings and praised Adolf Hitler's leadership. She also spoke at rallies hosted by U.S. Nazi organizations after the outbreak of World War II. Following the war, she leveled anti-Semitic attacks against several U.S. presidents, calling Dwight Eisenhower "Ike the Kike," attacking Richard Nixon for his "service to the synagogue," and calling John F. Kennedy's New Frontier program the "Jew frontier."
Beck refused to apologize. On June 7, Beck briefly reacted to the controversy surrounding his approving citation of Dilling's work, but refused to apologize for promoting her hateful work on the air. Instead, Beck attacked "the left" for calling him "a Jew-loving Nazi sympathizer."
Beck has repeatedly invoked Weimar Republic
Beck has used his radio and TV programs to repeatedly warn that the U.S. is becoming the Weimar Republic, the post-World War I German system of government supplanted by Hitler's Third Reich:
On February 24, 2009, Beck suggested that the U.S. was on course to make the "scariest mistake that Germany made during Weimar Republic."
On October 28, 2009, Beck theorized that the United States, in order to pay its debts, would continue printing money and drive up inflation, at which point the country would drop the dollar as its currency and establish a new currency backed by land, which the government will seize through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Beck explained that this is exactly what happened in the Weimar Republic.
On January 5, Beck predicted a possible future of hyperinflation he described as "the Great Depression times 100," adding: "This is the reason I told you two years ago, please study the Weimar Republic."
On May 12, Beck said the U.S. is "devaluing the currency" through "digitizing money," adding, "What happens when you digitize money? Weimar Republic, collapse."
On July 8, Beck said that businesses working with the Obama administration resulted in a "short-term gain" followed by a "long-term loss of freedom," claiming that "if you look at the history of the Weimar Republic," events unfolded in a similar manner.
On August 2, Beck explained deflation and hyperinflation by saying, "See if you notice any similarities of the Weimar Republic" to the U.S. economy.
On August 5, Beck asserted of the Weimar Republic, "the patterns are repeating itself." [sic]
On August 12, Beck asked his viewers to "watch for three things" that were done in the Weimar Republic, saying that "you must educate yourself."
In an October 7 commercial for Goldline, Beck asserted that the U.S. is "officially in Weimar Republic territory."
On October 15, Beck's radio co-host Pat Gray claimed that the federal government is "taking over all our property," with Beck adding, "That is what they did in Weimar. They just took it."
O'Reilly, other Fox personalities have also invoked the Nazis
Gingrich: Obama, Dems threatening America as much as "Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did." On the May 16 edition of Fox News Sunday, Newt Gingrich said that President Obama and the Democratic Party present as great a threat as "Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did."
O'Reilly said liberals who support gun control are "totalitarians," compared them to Hitler. On the March 2 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly said liberals who support gun control are "today's totalitarians," adding that in the past people like "Hitler and Mussolini" held such positions in favor of "state control."
O'Reilly claimed media using Goebbels tactics to push "rank propaganda." In his July 16, 2009, syndicated column, O'Reilly wrote that "The far left is trying to create a huge federal apparatus that will promote income redistribution and "social justice." Also, the left sees a major opportunity to knock out Judeo-Christian traditions, replacing them with a secular philosophy." He added that "the left-wing media is marginalizing people like Sarah Palin who oppose the strategy. Under the guise of hard news reporting, the media is pushing rank propaganda on the citizenry. Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, successfully developed this tactic in the 1930's."
O'Reilly: Huffington Post uses "same exact tactics that the Nazis used." On The March 5, 2008, edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly said "And I said that these tactics that are being used on this website, The Huffington Post, are the same exact tactics that the Nazis used in the late '20s and early '30s to demonize certain groups of people, so it would become easier for them, the Nazis, when they took power, to hurt those people." Earlier, on February 27, 2008, O'Reilly said that "I don't see any difference between [Arianna] Huffington and the Nazis. ... I don't see any difference."
O'Reilly compared Tim Robbins' comments to those of "Von Ribbentrop in the Nazi hierarchy." On the December 13, 2007, edition of The O'Reilly Factor, Jane Hall said that comments made by actor Tim Robbins while campaigning for John Edwards were "valid." In response, Bill O'Reilly said, " But Von Ribbentrop in the Nazi hierarchy made valid points, Jane."
O'Reilly: Daily Kos is "like the Nazi Party." On the July 16, 2007, edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly said that the Daily Kos is "like the Ku Klux Klan. It's like the Nazi party. There's no difference here." A day later, O'Reilly said "That website traffics in [hate], as do the Nazi websites. No difference." On July 19, 2007, O'Reilly said of Daily Kos: "The hate this website traffics in rivals the KKK and Nazi websites."
Hannity: Using Quran for swearing-in is same as using a "Nazi bible." On the November 30, 2006, edition of Hannity & Colmes, Sean Hannity said that Rep. Keith Ellison using a copy of the Quran during his swearing-in ceremony "will embolden Islamic extremists and make new ones" and is comparable to using "Hitler's Mein Kampf, is the Nazis' bible."
Coulter on Media Matters: "little Nazi block watcher" website. On the December 1, 2005, edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter called websites like Media Matters "little Nazi block watchers" that "tattle on their parents, turn them in to the Nazis."
O'Reilly compares Michael Moore's "power" to what "happened in Nazi Germany." On the July 28, 2004, edition of The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly said that Michael Moore "has more power than probably anybody else other than [Senators John] Kerry and [John] Edwards," adding that Moore's purported "power" was "scary" because "this happened in Nazi Germany." O'Reilly went on to ask: "Who was the most powerful person in Nazi Germany other than Hitler and Himmler and Goering, who? You guys know? ... Goebbels. The propaganda minister."
O'Reilly likened Moore, Franken to Goebbels. On the June 14, 2004, edition of The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly compared both Michael Moore and Al Franken to Goebbels. O'Reilly also likened a group of Hollywood celebrities who attended a premiere of Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 to "the people who would turn out to see Josef Goebbels convince you that Poland invaded the Third Reich."
Why is this important? It is a license to steal, kill and squash dissent. If you suggest that the jews have no right to steal land from Palestinians and kill those who resist than guess what? You are an evil Nazi.
They use it on the left, the right and the center. The republicans are Nazi's the democrats are Nazi fascists. They want to keep Nazi Germany fresh in everyones minds so that we by default are all reminded who are the "victims" of the whole ordeal.
Beck claims that Obama is a Nazi, yet let's asses the situation honestly. Nazi Germany expelled the marxists (jews). Meanwhile here in America we have a President who is a marxist, surrounds himself by jews, and a RECORD number of jews in Congress, the most powerful lobby is AIPAC, and continue to give billions of dollars per year to the terror state of israel despite the fact that we are completely broke.
So clearly this is the anithesis to Nazi Germany and exactly what Hitler fought to purge from his country. Yet people lap up the propaganda spewed forth by Beck without even a passing thought to whether or not it is true.
FULL STORY WITH LINKS
Led by Glenn Beck -- who was once condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for saying Al Gore used "the same tactic" as Adolf Hitler -- Fox News personalities have frequently invoked Nazi Germany in their political commentary, often comparing progressives to Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and the Nazi "brownshirts."
Beck regularly invokes Nazis, Hitler, Goebbels, other Nazi imagery
Beck: Obama advisers show "the kind of thinking that ... eventually led to the Holocaust." On his October 5 radio show, Beck said that statements by Obama advisers John Holdren, Ezekiel Emanuel and Cass Sunstein indicate "the kind of thinking that led to ... the extermination program that eventually led to the Holocaust."
Beck likened reporting about him to "what Goebbels did." Complaining on the August 27 edition of his radio show that ABC reported a statement by Beck that blacks don't own Martin Luther King without also noting that he also said whites don't own Abraham Lincoln, Beck said: "You know what? I'm gonna get a lot of heat for this, but stand in line. That's what [Nazi propagandist Joseph] Goebbels did. That's what Goebbels did. The truth didn't matter."
Beck equates children singing about Obama with "Hitler Youth." On the June 17 edition of his radio show, Beck said that children singing about Obama was "the playbook of the progressives from ... the former regime in Germany, the Third Reich." Beck added, "This is Hitler Youth."
Beck: Putting "the common good" first "exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany." Attacking criticism of him by Jewish Funds for Justice's Simon Greer, Beck asserted on his May 28 radio show that Greer's comments about putting "human kind and the common good" first "is exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany," adding, "[a] Jew, of all people, should know that."
Beck: "frightening similarities" between Sunstein, Goebbels. On the May 27 edition of his radio show, Beck claimed there were "frightening similarities" between Cass Sunstein and Goebbels.
Beck: "You can't just change the law" to raise BP's liability cap; "Is that what we fought the Nazis for?" On his May 4 radio show, discussing a reported proposal to retroactively increase liability limits to cover the costs of the Gulf oil spill, Beck responded: "Did we go and fight Germany for this? Is that what we fought the Nazis for? Is that why those millions of people died?"
Beck: Progressives use "democratic elections" to push dictators -- "Hitler, 'democratically elected.' " On the April 28 edition of his Fox News show, Beck stated that progressives use "democratic elections" to push dictators, then stated, "You'll hear this when they talk about the 'democratically elected' leader of Iran; the democratic leader Chavez, 'democratically elected,' you know; Castro, 'democratically elected'; Hitler - 'democratically elected.' "
Beck: "Progressives build the structure that a communist, a Marxist, a Nazi would love to have." On the April 22 edition of his radio show, Beck stated that "[p]rogressives build the structure that a communist, a Marxist, a Nazi would love to have."
Beck invoked "first they came for the Jews" poem to respond to ad boycotts. On the April 8 edition of his Fox News show, Beck portrayed ad boycotts of his show as being orchestrated by the Obama White House in order to "destroy" his "career" and "silence" him, adding: "Is there absolutely no chance whatsoever that you might be a target at some point in the future? What's that poem? First they came for the Jews, and I stayed silent?"
Beck invokes Nazis to attack worker ID cards: "It was only one of the first things that Hitler did." On the March 9 edition of his radio show, Beck discussed a proposal by Sens. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) to implement national ID cards for workers and said, "It was only one of the first things that Hitler did."
Beck: Obama campaign videos were Goebbels-like "propaganda." On the February 16 edition of his radio show, Beck said that videos produced by Obama campaign manager David Plouffe were "propaganda" out of the Nazi "playbook": "Remember, Goebbels, king of propaganda. ... This is yet another playbook -- page taken right out of the playbook."
Beck documentary linked progressives to Hitler. Beck's documentary Revolutionary Holocaust purported to link progressivism to the atrocities of Hitler, among other brutal dictators. Numerous historians denounced the inferences Beck drew in the film.
Beck on NEA conference call: "You should look up the name Goebbels." On the November 3, 2009, edition of his Fox News show, discussing an NEA conference call in which artists reportedly discussed how "to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda," Beck said that "advocating through art is known as propaganda. Hmm. You should look up the name Goebbels."
Beck compared Fox News to Jews during Holocaust, other news organizations to silent bystanders. On the October 13, 2009, broadcast of his radio show, Beck compared Fox News to the Jews during the Holocaust, telling other media outlets, "When they're done with Fox, and you decide to speak out on something. The old, 'first they came for the Jews, and I wasn't Jewish.' " He went on to say, "When they're done with Fox and talk radio, do you really think they're going to leave you alone if you want to ask a tough question? ... If you believe that, you should open up a history book, because you've missed the point of many brutal dictators."
Beck on Obama's "civilian national security force": "This is what Hitler did with the SS." Discussing President Obama's call for a "civilian national security force" -- which was a reference to expanding the foreign service, AmeriCorps, and the Peace Corps -- Beck said on the August 27, 2009, edition of his Fox News program:
BECK: I'm finding this -- this is the hardest part to connect to. Because this is -- I mean, look, you know, David [Bellavia, former Army staff sergeant], what you just said is, you said, 'I'm not comparing' -- but you are. I mean, this is what Hitler did with the SS. He had his own people. He had the brownshirts and then the SS. This is what Saddam Hussein -- so -- but you are comparing that. And I -- I mean, I think America would have a really hard time getting their arms around that.
Beck told Newsmax: "I fear a Reichstag moment." On September 29, 2009, conservative news website Newsmax.com reported of its interview with Beck:
But his real worry is that many Washington elitists really don't like our form of government and want to see it abolished.
"I fear a Reichstag moment," he said, referring to the 1933 burning of Germany's parliament building in Berlin that the Nazis blamed on communists and Hitler used as an excuse to suspend constitutional liberties and consolidate power.
"God forbid, another 9/11. Something that will turn this machine on, and power will be seized and voices will be silenced."
Beck said he's "not comparing" Obama to Hitler, then urged his audience to "please read Mein Kampf" and learn from Germany's mistakes. On the August 12, 2009, broadcast of his radio show, discussing Obama's position on health care reform, Beck stated:
BECK: I am not comparing him to this, but please, read Mein Kampf for this reason. If you read it now, you see that Hitler told you what he was going to do. He told the Germans. It outsold the Bible. Germans read Mein Kampf, but what did they do? They didn't listen. 'Oh, he doesn't mean that.' 'Oh, he's just saying that to appeal to X, Y, Z.' All of the same lies we're telling to ourselves. 'No, that's crazy. Nobody would actually do that.' They buried their heads in the sand, and then it became too late. Please, America, take this man for what he says.
Beck compares media portrayal of "tea partygoers" to Nazi portrayal of anti-Nazi "complainers." On the August 11, 2009, edition of his Fox show, Beck compared the media's portrayal of the "tea partygoers" to a Nazi propaganda poster portraying "complainers" about Nazi policies, saying, "This is a poster of what you see every day now in the news media making the complainers, the tea partygoers, look somehow rotten."
Beck links health care reform to Nazis, suggests reform would kill elderly and newborns. On his August 6, 2009, radio show, Beck suggested that health care reform would lead to the eugenics programs undertaken in Nazi Germany, saying that "three people in the White House are in love with eugenics" and that reform would kill the elderly and newborns.
Beck said "the Germans" during Hitler's rise "were an awful lot like we are now." On the June 10, 2009, edition of his Fox News program, Beck stated: "I think the Germans, however, were an awful lot like we are now. We're kind of living in a denial, like, 'No, no, that can't really be happening. No, that really -- I -- you don't want to believe some things, but you have to. You have to actually think about them."
Beck compared car dealership closures to Nazism, warning "at some point, they're going to come for you." While discussing the closures of auto dealerships under the bankruptcy deals of GM and Chrysler, Beck said that the "poem that keeps going through my mind is 'First they came for the Jews,' " adding, "Gang, at some point they're going to come for you."
Beck compared auto bailouts to the actions of German companies "in the early days of Adolf Hitler." While discussing the auto company bailouts on the April 1, 2009, edition of his Fox News program, after stating, "I am not saying that Barack Obama is a fascist," Beck said, "If I'm not mistaken, in the early days of Adolf Hitler, they were very happy to line up for help there as well. I mean, the companies were like, 'Hey, wait a minute. We can get, you know, we can get out of trouble here. They can help, et cetera, et cetera.' "
Beck compared TARP to "what happened to the lead-up with Hitler." On the April 21, 2009, edition of Fox Business' Money for Breakfast, Beck said of the Troubled Asset Relief Program [TARP]:
BECK: This is not comparing these people to the people in Germany, but this is exactly what happened to the lead-up with Hitler. Hitler opened up the door and said, "Hey, companies, I can help you." They all ran through the door. And then in the end, they all saw, "Uh-oh. I'm in bed with the devil." They started to take their foot out, and Hitler said, "Absolutely not. Sorry, gang. This is good for the country. We've got to do these things." And it was too late.
Beck airs photos of Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, asks, "Is this where we're headed?" On the April 2, 2009, edition of his Fox News program, while teasing the next day's show, Beck asked, "Is this where we're headed?" while airing photos of Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Vladimir Lenin.
Beck has attacked progressive organizations as "brownshirts." Beck has repeatedly attacked the "brownshirts" at ACORN and "their henchmen" at the Service Employees International Union.
Beck warned of impending "national socialism." On the February 6, 2009, edition of The O'Reilly Factor, Beck claimed that "We are really truly stepping beyond socialism and starting to look at fascism." Then, purporting to "explain what happened in Nazi Germany," Beck claimed that "we're talking now about nationalizing the banks," which he called "national socialism." Beck said that "at first, all the big companies and the big capitalists in Germany said, 'Oh, thank goodness there's a savior. OK, great, we'll do that. Yes.' It didn't take too long before, like here in America now -- Goldman Sachs -- they started to see the writing on the wall and ... they couldn't get out of it fast enough."
ADL rebuked Beck for smearing Gore as a Nazi
Beck repeatedly compared Gore to a Nazi propagandist. Beck has repeatedly likened Gore to a Nazi propagandist for speaking out about global warming, notably comparing Gore to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Beck also suggested that by giving a speech to students, Gore was trying to "indoctrinate the kids" like the "new Hitler Youth" and said of Gore's 2006 Academy Award winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth: "It's like Hitler."
Beck compares Gore to Goebbels, says, "The government and its friends are indoctrinating our children for the control of their minds." On the February 5, 2009, edition of his Fox News show, Beck stated, "The government and its friends are indoctrinating our children for the control of their minds, your freedom, and our choice and our future." Beck then quoted Joesph Goebbels discussing the Hitler Youth and said, "If mom and dad decide the keep the temperature above 72, should our 'Gore youth' report mom and dad?"
Beck: Holocaust survivor's story of how Nazis drove a wedge between students and parents sounds like U.N. and Gore. On the September 24 edition of his Fox News show, Beck hosted a Holocaust survivor who said that the Nazis drove a wedge between students and their parents. Beck responded by saying, "I don't know about anybody else ... this, to me, doesn't sound like stuff necessarily that I've heard from Obama. This is stuff that I've heard from the U.N. This is the kind of stuff that we have heard from ... Al Gore."
In 2007, ADL rebuked Beck's smears of Gore. On May 2, 2007, the ADL issued a press release condemning Beck's April 30, 2007, statement that "Al Gore's not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. The goal is globalization. The goal is global carbon tax. The goal is the United Nations running the world." Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director and a Holocaust survivor, said of the remark, in part: "Glenn Beck's linkage of Hitler's plan to round up and exterminate Jews with Al Gore's efforts to raise awareness of global warming is outrageous, insensitive and deeply offensive."
Beck promoted Nazi sympathizer's book
Beck: The Red Network -- rife with racism and anti-Semitism and written by a Nazi sympathizer -- did "what we're doing now." On his June 4 radio program, Beck promoted The Red Network by Elizabeth Dilling, saying of the 1934 book: "This is a book -- and I'm a getting a ton of these -- from people who were doing what we're doing now. We now are documenting who all of these people are. Well, there were Americans in the first 50 years of this nation that took this seriously, and they documented it." As Media Matters noted, Dilling's book contains numerous passages that espouse anti-Semitism and racism. At various points throughout the book, Dilling attacked "racial inter-mixture" as a communist plot, referred to "un-Christianized" "colored people" as "savages," called Hinduism and Islam "debasing and degrading," and blamed Nazi Germany's anti-Semitism on "revolutionary Russian Jews." Dilling visited Germany in the late 1930s, where she attended Nazi party meetings and praised Adolf Hitler's leadership. She also spoke at rallies hosted by U.S. Nazi organizations after the outbreak of World War II. Following the war, she leveled anti-Semitic attacks against several U.S. presidents, calling Dwight Eisenhower "Ike the Kike," attacking Richard Nixon for his "service to the synagogue," and calling John F. Kennedy's New Frontier program the "Jew frontier."
Beck refused to apologize. On June 7, Beck briefly reacted to the controversy surrounding his approving citation of Dilling's work, but refused to apologize for promoting her hateful work on the air. Instead, Beck attacked "the left" for calling him "a Jew-loving Nazi sympathizer."
Beck has repeatedly invoked Weimar Republic
Beck has used his radio and TV programs to repeatedly warn that the U.S. is becoming the Weimar Republic, the post-World War I German system of government supplanted by Hitler's Third Reich:
On February 24, 2009, Beck suggested that the U.S. was on course to make the "scariest mistake that Germany made during Weimar Republic."
On October 28, 2009, Beck theorized that the United States, in order to pay its debts, would continue printing money and drive up inflation, at which point the country would drop the dollar as its currency and establish a new currency backed by land, which the government will seize through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Beck explained that this is exactly what happened in the Weimar Republic.
On January 5, Beck predicted a possible future of hyperinflation he described as "the Great Depression times 100," adding: "This is the reason I told you two years ago, please study the Weimar Republic."
On May 12, Beck said the U.S. is "devaluing the currency" through "digitizing money," adding, "What happens when you digitize money? Weimar Republic, collapse."
On July 8, Beck said that businesses working with the Obama administration resulted in a "short-term gain" followed by a "long-term loss of freedom," claiming that "if you look at the history of the Weimar Republic," events unfolded in a similar manner.
On August 2, Beck explained deflation and hyperinflation by saying, "See if you notice any similarities of the Weimar Republic" to the U.S. economy.
On August 5, Beck asserted of the Weimar Republic, "the patterns are repeating itself." [sic]
On August 12, Beck asked his viewers to "watch for three things" that were done in the Weimar Republic, saying that "you must educate yourself."
In an October 7 commercial for Goldline, Beck asserted that the U.S. is "officially in Weimar Republic territory."
On October 15, Beck's radio co-host Pat Gray claimed that the federal government is "taking over all our property," with Beck adding, "That is what they did in Weimar. They just took it."
O'Reilly, other Fox personalities have also invoked the Nazis
Gingrich: Obama, Dems threatening America as much as "Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did." On the May 16 edition of Fox News Sunday, Newt Gingrich said that President Obama and the Democratic Party present as great a threat as "Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did."
O'Reilly said liberals who support gun control are "totalitarians," compared them to Hitler. On the March 2 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly said liberals who support gun control are "today's totalitarians," adding that in the past people like "Hitler and Mussolini" held such positions in favor of "state control."
O'Reilly claimed media using Goebbels tactics to push "rank propaganda." In his July 16, 2009, syndicated column, O'Reilly wrote that "The far left is trying to create a huge federal apparatus that will promote income redistribution and "social justice." Also, the left sees a major opportunity to knock out Judeo-Christian traditions, replacing them with a secular philosophy." He added that "the left-wing media is marginalizing people like Sarah Palin who oppose the strategy. Under the guise of hard news reporting, the media is pushing rank propaganda on the citizenry. Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, successfully developed this tactic in the 1930's."
O'Reilly: Huffington Post uses "same exact tactics that the Nazis used." On The March 5, 2008, edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly said "And I said that these tactics that are being used on this website, The Huffington Post, are the same exact tactics that the Nazis used in the late '20s and early '30s to demonize certain groups of people, so it would become easier for them, the Nazis, when they took power, to hurt those people." Earlier, on February 27, 2008, O'Reilly said that "I don't see any difference between [Arianna] Huffington and the Nazis. ... I don't see any difference."
O'Reilly compared Tim Robbins' comments to those of "Von Ribbentrop in the Nazi hierarchy." On the December 13, 2007, edition of The O'Reilly Factor, Jane Hall said that comments made by actor Tim Robbins while campaigning for John Edwards were "valid." In response, Bill O'Reilly said, " But Von Ribbentrop in the Nazi hierarchy made valid points, Jane."
O'Reilly: Daily Kos is "like the Nazi Party." On the July 16, 2007, edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly said that the Daily Kos is "like the Ku Klux Klan. It's like the Nazi party. There's no difference here." A day later, O'Reilly said "That website traffics in [hate], as do the Nazi websites. No difference." On July 19, 2007, O'Reilly said of Daily Kos: "The hate this website traffics in rivals the KKK and Nazi websites."
Hannity: Using Quran for swearing-in is same as using a "Nazi bible." On the November 30, 2006, edition of Hannity & Colmes, Sean Hannity said that Rep. Keith Ellison using a copy of the Quran during his swearing-in ceremony "will embolden Islamic extremists and make new ones" and is comparable to using "Hitler's Mein Kampf, is the Nazis' bible."
Coulter on Media Matters: "little Nazi block watcher" website. On the December 1, 2005, edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter called websites like Media Matters "little Nazi block watchers" that "tattle on their parents, turn them in to the Nazis."
O'Reilly compares Michael Moore's "power" to what "happened in Nazi Germany." On the July 28, 2004, edition of The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly said that Michael Moore "has more power than probably anybody else other than [Senators John] Kerry and [John] Edwards," adding that Moore's purported "power" was "scary" because "this happened in Nazi Germany." O'Reilly went on to ask: "Who was the most powerful person in Nazi Germany other than Hitler and Himmler and Goering, who? You guys know? ... Goebbels. The propaganda minister."
O'Reilly likened Moore, Franken to Goebbels. On the June 14, 2004, edition of The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly compared both Michael Moore and Al Franken to Goebbels. O'Reilly also likened a group of Hollywood celebrities who attended a premiere of Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 to "the people who would turn out to see Josef Goebbels convince you that Poland invaded the Third Reich."
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Declassified Documents Reveal Massive Israeli Manipulation of US Media
This is one of the reasons I find Russia Today to be the fairest of all mainstream networks in their news coverage.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Helen Thomas An Appreciation
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
The propagandists for the Israel Lobby, who occupy the Wall Street Journal editorial page while pretending to be journalists, are determined to remove Helen Thomas from the annals of journalism. In case you have already forgotten, a few days ago the distinguished career of Helen Thomas, the 89-year-old doyen of the White House Press Corps, was ended by the Israel Lobby, which made an issue about her opinion that immigrant Jews should leave Palestine and go back to their home countries.
The White House Correspondents’ Association fell in line with the demands of the Israel Lobby, and the cowardly president of the organization added the association’s disapprobation to that of the neoconservative cabal.
Having removed Helen Thomas from the journalism scene, the Israel Lobby is now working with its agents on the Wall Street Journal editorial page to eliminate the Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Society of Professional Journalists.
A nonentity in the world of journalism, James Taranto, apparently is associated with the Wall Street Journal editorial page, although Wikipedia reports that he was incapable of graduating from journalism school at California State University, Northridge. On a Wall Street Journal web site, Taranto writes: “We’ve been calling Thomas ‘American journalism’s crazy old aunt in the attic’ for years,” and he asks who would now accept the Helen Thomas award after Ms. Thomas revealed she really was crazy by criticizing Israel.
I would for one. Of course the Society of Professional Journalists would never give the award, assuming the distinguished award survives the assault of the Israel Lobby’s assassins, to a critic of Israel. Helen excepted, American journalists are cowards. With the concentrated ownership of the corporate media today, no independently-minded journalist can have a career in print or TV media. You defend the Washington/Tel Aviv line, or you are out of work.
The absence of independently-minded journalists on the Wall Street Journal editorial page is an extraordinary change from my days as Associate Editor of that page. The editorial page editor, Robert Bartley was ambitious and forced himself to tolerate talented colleagues. Mere opinion was not our task. Often we scooped the reporters on the news side of the paper. Our editorials reported new developments and provided factual analysis.
I was hired as Jude Wanniski’s replacement. Jude, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, was fired, allegedly because the journal’s brass caught him handing out election campaign literature on a train platform, but if you believe American journalism was ever that pure, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale.
Jude was fired, because the neoconservatives got rid of him by telling Bartley that Wanniski was over-shadowing him. That was too much for Bob’s ego. Jude, of course, being a real journalist, was objective toward the Palestinians and thus had earned the enmity of the Israel Lobby.
Once Bob was rapidly declining with prostate cancer, neoconservatives engineered the takeover of the editorial page. Today the once proud Wall Street Journal editorial page is a leading apologist for Israeli/American war crimes and police states.
To return to the nonentity, James Taranto, who wants to throw Helen Thomas down the memory hole: Helen Thomas’ opinion that Israelis should stop stealing the villages, homes, and lands of Palestinians, while confining Palestinians to the equivalent of the Warsaw Ghetto, is equated by Taranto to the advocacy of “ethnic cleansing” by Helen.
Of course, it is the Israelis who are doing the ethnic cleansing. Many Jews have documented Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, such as Uri Avnery, a former member of the Israeli terrorist organization, Irgun, Ilan Pappe, Israel’s most distinguished historian and author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, and the Israeli peace group, ICHAD, who have been my house guests. The Israeli newspaper, Haaratz, is far more critical of Israeli policy than Helen Thomas, and so is MIT professor Noam Chomsky, the distinguished British journalist and film maker John Pilger, and the distinguished scholar, Norman Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors.
But Taranto prefers an 89-year old adversary.
Israel is an unnatural state. It was created by terror that was accommodated by craven British and US “diplomacy.” Israel exists for one reason only: the US government provides the money, weapons, and diplomatic protection. Any other government that murdered thousands of civilians in other countries, as Israel does routinely in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank, would have its entire government and military on trial before the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague. Israelis have no worst enemy than their own government.
Every time the rest of the world tries to hold the Israeli government accountable for its crimes, the US vetoes the UN resolution. America has become the enabler of the Zionist-hijacked Israeli government. And the Israeli government knows it. Israeli government leaders have publicly bragged for decades about their control over the US government. US Admiral Tom Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after whom the F-14 “Tomcat” jet fighter was named, declared publicly: “No American President can stand up to Israel.” Apparently no American journalist can either.
I am a critic of Israel’s heartless policy toward the Palestinians, but I do not want Israel destroyed. I want it moved or reformed. Bring the small number of Israelis to America before there is a nuclear war over the fact that they are where they should not be. To try to claim a land and dispossess its people on the basis of a spurious two thousand year year old deed is an audacious act of conquest and dispossession.
My proposal to relocate Israelis in the US is rhetorical, but why not insist that the Israelis, who are heavily dependent on US largess, reform? Why should Americans support an apartheid racist state that denies citizenship to the rightful inhabitants? What kind of morality, if any, does the Wall Street Journal editorial page represent when it defends Israelis who force Palestinians into ever-shrinking ghettos, deprived of water, food, medical care and schools? Why must Palestinians live in dread of Israeli bulldozers arriving to flatten their homes in order to create space for Zionist “settlers.”
Allegedly, the US is a superpower, but in fact it is a puppet state of the Israeli government. Witness, for example (the examples are numerous), the fate of the Goldstone Report on Israeli war crimes committed in Israel’s assault on Gaza during December 2008-January 2009. Goldstone is a Zionist Jew and a distinguished judge. He was given the task by the United Nations to investigate the Israeli attack on Gaza. Being an honest person, he provided evidence of Israeli war crimes.
What was the result? The bought-and-paid-for US Congress voted, on the instructions of their master, the Israel Lobby, to deep-six the Goldstone Report by a vote of 344 to 36.
Amazing, isn’t it, there were only 36 US Representatives who were not owned by the Israel Lobby.
Of course, James Taranto serves the Israel Lobby. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, not even a shadow of its former self, when it speaks, speaks for Israel and for the Bush/Cheney militarist police state.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page has fallen into the low ranks of Brownshirt propaganda. The fact that management tolerates the continuation of totally nonobjective journalism shows why print newspapers are failing everywhere.
The hubris of Taranto, a mere propagandist who will never come close to the league in which Helen Thomas resides, causes him to think that he is fit to pass judgment on a real journalist. Taranto epitomizes the hubris of the neoconservatives. Not a single one of them has the smallest accomplishment. Yet, blinded with arrogance, they remain in ignorant bliss of their status as prostitutes.
Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
The propagandists for the Israel Lobby, who occupy the Wall Street Journal editorial page while pretending to be journalists, are determined to remove Helen Thomas from the annals of journalism. In case you have already forgotten, a few days ago the distinguished career of Helen Thomas, the 89-year-old doyen of the White House Press Corps, was ended by the Israel Lobby, which made an issue about her opinion that immigrant Jews should leave Palestine and go back to their home countries.
The White House Correspondents’ Association fell in line with the demands of the Israel Lobby, and the cowardly president of the organization added the association’s disapprobation to that of the neoconservative cabal.
Having removed Helen Thomas from the journalism scene, the Israel Lobby is now working with its agents on the Wall Street Journal editorial page to eliminate the Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Society of Professional Journalists.
A nonentity in the world of journalism, James Taranto, apparently is associated with the Wall Street Journal editorial page, although Wikipedia reports that he was incapable of graduating from journalism school at California State University, Northridge. On a Wall Street Journal web site, Taranto writes: “We’ve been calling Thomas ‘American journalism’s crazy old aunt in the attic’ for years,” and he asks who would now accept the Helen Thomas award after Ms. Thomas revealed she really was crazy by criticizing Israel.
I would for one. Of course the Society of Professional Journalists would never give the award, assuming the distinguished award survives the assault of the Israel Lobby’s assassins, to a critic of Israel. Helen excepted, American journalists are cowards. With the concentrated ownership of the corporate media today, no independently-minded journalist can have a career in print or TV media. You defend the Washington/Tel Aviv line, or you are out of work.
The absence of independently-minded journalists on the Wall Street Journal editorial page is an extraordinary change from my days as Associate Editor of that page. The editorial page editor, Robert Bartley was ambitious and forced himself to tolerate talented colleagues. Mere opinion was not our task. Often we scooped the reporters on the news side of the paper. Our editorials reported new developments and provided factual analysis.
I was hired as Jude Wanniski’s replacement. Jude, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, was fired, allegedly because the journal’s brass caught him handing out election campaign literature on a train platform, but if you believe American journalism was ever that pure, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale.
Jude was fired, because the neoconservatives got rid of him by telling Bartley that Wanniski was over-shadowing him. That was too much for Bob’s ego. Jude, of course, being a real journalist, was objective toward the Palestinians and thus had earned the enmity of the Israel Lobby.
Once Bob was rapidly declining with prostate cancer, neoconservatives engineered the takeover of the editorial page. Today the once proud Wall Street Journal editorial page is a leading apologist for Israeli/American war crimes and police states.
To return to the nonentity, James Taranto, who wants to throw Helen Thomas down the memory hole: Helen Thomas’ opinion that Israelis should stop stealing the villages, homes, and lands of Palestinians, while confining Palestinians to the equivalent of the Warsaw Ghetto, is equated by Taranto to the advocacy of “ethnic cleansing” by Helen.
Of course, it is the Israelis who are doing the ethnic cleansing. Many Jews have documented Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, such as Uri Avnery, a former member of the Israeli terrorist organization, Irgun, Ilan Pappe, Israel’s most distinguished historian and author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, and the Israeli peace group, ICHAD, who have been my house guests. The Israeli newspaper, Haaratz, is far more critical of Israeli policy than Helen Thomas, and so is MIT professor Noam Chomsky, the distinguished British journalist and film maker John Pilger, and the distinguished scholar, Norman Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors.
But Taranto prefers an 89-year old adversary.
Israel is an unnatural state. It was created by terror that was accommodated by craven British and US “diplomacy.” Israel exists for one reason only: the US government provides the money, weapons, and diplomatic protection. Any other government that murdered thousands of civilians in other countries, as Israel does routinely in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank, would have its entire government and military on trial before the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague. Israelis have no worst enemy than their own government.
Every time the rest of the world tries to hold the Israeli government accountable for its crimes, the US vetoes the UN resolution. America has become the enabler of the Zionist-hijacked Israeli government. And the Israeli government knows it. Israeli government leaders have publicly bragged for decades about their control over the US government. US Admiral Tom Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after whom the F-14 “Tomcat” jet fighter was named, declared publicly: “No American President can stand up to Israel.” Apparently no American journalist can either.
I am a critic of Israel’s heartless policy toward the Palestinians, but I do not want Israel destroyed. I want it moved or reformed. Bring the small number of Israelis to America before there is a nuclear war over the fact that they are where they should not be. To try to claim a land and dispossess its people on the basis of a spurious two thousand year year old deed is an audacious act of conquest and dispossession.
My proposal to relocate Israelis in the US is rhetorical, but why not insist that the Israelis, who are heavily dependent on US largess, reform? Why should Americans support an apartheid racist state that denies citizenship to the rightful inhabitants? What kind of morality, if any, does the Wall Street Journal editorial page represent when it defends Israelis who force Palestinians into ever-shrinking ghettos, deprived of water, food, medical care and schools? Why must Palestinians live in dread of Israeli bulldozers arriving to flatten their homes in order to create space for Zionist “settlers.”
Allegedly, the US is a superpower, but in fact it is a puppet state of the Israeli government. Witness, for example (the examples are numerous), the fate of the Goldstone Report on Israeli war crimes committed in Israel’s assault on Gaza during December 2008-January 2009. Goldstone is a Zionist Jew and a distinguished judge. He was given the task by the United Nations to investigate the Israeli attack on Gaza. Being an honest person, he provided evidence of Israeli war crimes.
What was the result? The bought-and-paid-for US Congress voted, on the instructions of their master, the Israel Lobby, to deep-six the Goldstone Report by a vote of 344 to 36.
Amazing, isn’t it, there were only 36 US Representatives who were not owned by the Israel Lobby.
Of course, James Taranto serves the Israel Lobby. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, not even a shadow of its former self, when it speaks, speaks for Israel and for the Bush/Cheney militarist police state.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page has fallen into the low ranks of Brownshirt propaganda. The fact that management tolerates the continuation of totally nonobjective journalism shows why print newspapers are failing everywhere.
The hubris of Taranto, a mere propagandist who will never come close to the league in which Helen Thomas resides, causes him to think that he is fit to pass judgment on a real journalist. Taranto epitomizes the hubris of the neoconservatives. Not a single one of them has the smallest accomplishment. Yet, blinded with arrogance, they remain in ignorant bliss of their status as prostitutes.
Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
AIPAC Spy Witness Asked To "Fake Suicide"
Two people asked a Pentagon official cooperating with prosecutors in an investigation into the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to fake his own death to avoid testifying against two pro-Israel lobbyists charged in the case, according to the Justice Department.
Pentagon analyst Lawrence Franklin pled guilty in October 2005 to participating in a conspiracy with AIPAC officials Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman to obtain and distribute classified information. The Justice Department dropped the case against Rosen and Weissman last month as a trial approached.
"Just prior to the entry of his guilty plea, Franklin was approached by two individuals who made a pitch to Franklin about faking his death by suicide and disappearing, thus thwarting any cooperation in the case against Rosen and Weissman," prosecutors wrote in a brief filed in connection with a motion to reduce the 12-year prison term Franklin was originally sentenced to.
"In January 2006, Franklin conducted five consensually recorded telephone conversations with one of these individuals, in support of an obstruction of justice/witness tampering investigation; however, the FBI was unable to obtain the requisite incriminating evidence to support a criminal investigation," the Justice Department brief said.
Lawyers for Franklin also cited his report of the apparent tampering effort as part of their arguments for reducing Franklin's sentence. The government recommended lowering Franklin's sentence to about nine years imprisonment. Franklin's team asked for probation. Judge T.S. Ellis, who imposed the first 12-year prison term several years ago, re-sentenced Franklin to probation and 10 months home confinement. (The Pentagon official never started his original sentence; he had been free pending Rosen and Weissman's trial.)
The alleged witness tampering was first reported by POLITICO following Franklin's re-sentencing earlier this month.
A lawyer for Weissman, Baruch Weiss, said today he knew nothing about the alleged incident.
"If there was any witness tampering it wasn't by us. We had zero contact with Larry Franklin through all of this. That's true for us, our lawyers and anybody acting on our behalf. It’s totally surprising to me," Rosen said.
An AIPAC spokesman also denied knowledge of or involvement in the alleged approach to Franklin.
Pentagon analyst Lawrence Franklin pled guilty in October 2005 to participating in a conspiracy with AIPAC officials Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman to obtain and distribute classified information. The Justice Department dropped the case against Rosen and Weissman last month as a trial approached.
"Just prior to the entry of his guilty plea, Franklin was approached by two individuals who made a pitch to Franklin about faking his death by suicide and disappearing, thus thwarting any cooperation in the case against Rosen and Weissman," prosecutors wrote in a brief filed in connection with a motion to reduce the 12-year prison term Franklin was originally sentenced to.
"In January 2006, Franklin conducted five consensually recorded telephone conversations with one of these individuals, in support of an obstruction of justice/witness tampering investigation; however, the FBI was unable to obtain the requisite incriminating evidence to support a criminal investigation," the Justice Department brief said.
Lawyers for Franklin also cited his report of the apparent tampering effort as part of their arguments for reducing Franklin's sentence. The government recommended lowering Franklin's sentence to about nine years imprisonment. Franklin's team asked for probation. Judge T.S. Ellis, who imposed the first 12-year prison term several years ago, re-sentenced Franklin to probation and 10 months home confinement. (The Pentagon official never started his original sentence; he had been free pending Rosen and Weissman's trial.)
The alleged witness tampering was first reported by POLITICO following Franklin's re-sentencing earlier this month.
A lawyer for Weissman, Baruch Weiss, said today he knew nothing about the alleged incident.
"If there was any witness tampering it wasn't by us. We had zero contact with Larry Franklin through all of this. That's true for us, our lawyers and anybody acting on our behalf. It’s totally surprising to me," Rosen said.
An AIPAC spokesman also denied knowledge of or involvement in the alleged approach to Franklin.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Bankrupt US Floods Israel With Money
While some of the wealthiest people on the planet are Jews, they still would rather steal directly from the American people who have nothing to gain from lending kikestan money, well other than blowback in the form of hatred of the US around the globe.
By David R. Francis, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor / December 9, 2002
Since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. If divided by today's population, that is more than $5,700 per person.
This is an estimate by Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington. For decades, his analyses of the Middle East scene have made him a frequent thorn in the side of the Israel lobby.
For the first time in many years, Mr. Stauffer has tallied the total cost to the US of its backing of Israel in its drawn-out, violent dispute with the Palestinians. So far, he figures, the bill adds up to more than twice the cost of the Vietnam War.
And now Israel wants more. In a meeting at the White House late last month, Israeli officials made a pitch for $4 billion in additional military aid to defray the rising costs of dealing with the intifada and suicide bombings. They also asked for more than $8 billion in loan guarantees to help the country's recession-bound economy.
Considering Israel's deep economic troubles, Stauffer doubts the Israel bonds covered by the loan guarantees will ever be repaid. The bonds are likely to be structured so they don't pay interest until they reach maturity. If Stauffer is right, the US would end up paying both principal and interest, perhaps 10 years out.
Israel's request could be part of a supplemental spending bill that's likely to be passed early next year, perhaps wrapped in with the cost of a war with Iraq.
Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. It is already due to get $2.04 billion in military assistance and $720 million in economic aid in fiscal 2003. It has been getting $3 billion a year for years.
Adjusting the official aid to 2001 dollars in purchasing power, Israel has been given $240 billion since 1973, Stauffer reckons. In addition, the US has given Egypt $117 billion and Jordan $22 billion in foreign aid in return for signing peace treaties with Israel.
"Consequently, politically, if not administratively, those outlays are part of the total package of support for Israel," argues Stauffer in a lecture on the total costs of US Middle East policy, commissioned by the US Army War College, for a recent conference at the University of Maine.
These foreign-aid costs are well known. Many Americans would probably say it is money well spent to support a beleagured democracy of some strategic interest. But Stauffer wonders if Americans are aware of the full bill for supporting Israel since some costs, if not hidden, are little known.
One huge cost is not secret. It is the higher cost of oil and other economic damage to the US after Israel-Arab wars.
In 1973, for instance, Arab nations attacked Israel in an attempt to win back territories Israel had conquered in the 1967 war. President Nixon resupplied Israel with US arms, triggering the Arab oil embargo against the US.
That shortfall in oil deliveries kicked off a deep recession. The US lost $420 billion (in 2001 dollars) of output as a result, Stauffer calculates. And a boost in oil prices cost another $450 billion.
Afraid that Arab nations might use their oil clout again, the US set up a Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That has since cost, conservatively, $134 billion, Stauffer reckons.
Other US help includes:
• US Jewish charities and organizations have remitted grants or bought Israel bonds worth $50 billion to $60 billion. Though private in origin, the money is "a net drain" on the United States economy, says Stauffer.
• The US has already guaranteed $10 billion in commercial loans to Israel, and $600 million in "housing loans." (See editor's note below.) Stauffer expects the US Treasury to cover these.
• The US has given $2.5 billion to support Israel's Lavi fighter and Arrow missile projects.
• Israel buys discounted, serviceable "excess" US military equipment. Stauffer says these discounts amount to "several billion dollars" over recent years.
• Israel uses roughly 40 percent of its $1.8 billion per year in military aid, ostensibly earmarked for purchase of US weapons, to buy Israeli-made hardware. It also has won the right to require the Defense Department or US defense contractors to buy Israeli-made equipment or subsystems, paying 50 to 60 cents on every defense dollar the US gives to Israel.
US help, financial and technical, has enabled Israel to become a major weapons supplier. Weapons make up almost half of Israel's manufactured exports. US defense contractors often resent the buy-Israel requirements and the extra competition subsidized by US taxpayers.
• US policy and trade sanctions reduce US exports to the Middle East about $5 billion a year, costing 70,000 or so American jobs, Stauffer estimates. Not requiring Israel to use its US aid to buy American goods, as is usual in foreign aid, costs another 125,000 jobs.
• Israel has blocked some major US arms sales, such as F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia in the mid-1980s. That cost $40 billion over 10 years, says Stauffer.
Stauffer's list will be controversial. He's been assisted in this research by a number of mostly retired military or diplomatic officials who do not go public for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic if they criticize America's policies toward Israel.
By David R. Francis, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor / December 9, 2002
Since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. If divided by today's population, that is more than $5,700 per person.
This is an estimate by Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington. For decades, his analyses of the Middle East scene have made him a frequent thorn in the side of the Israel lobby.
For the first time in many years, Mr. Stauffer has tallied the total cost to the US of its backing of Israel in its drawn-out, violent dispute with the Palestinians. So far, he figures, the bill adds up to more than twice the cost of the Vietnam War.
And now Israel wants more. In a meeting at the White House late last month, Israeli officials made a pitch for $4 billion in additional military aid to defray the rising costs of dealing with the intifada and suicide bombings. They also asked for more than $8 billion in loan guarantees to help the country's recession-bound economy.
Considering Israel's deep economic troubles, Stauffer doubts the Israel bonds covered by the loan guarantees will ever be repaid. The bonds are likely to be structured so they don't pay interest until they reach maturity. If Stauffer is right, the US would end up paying both principal and interest, perhaps 10 years out.
Israel's request could be part of a supplemental spending bill that's likely to be passed early next year, perhaps wrapped in with the cost of a war with Iraq.
Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. It is already due to get $2.04 billion in military assistance and $720 million in economic aid in fiscal 2003. It has been getting $3 billion a year for years.
Adjusting the official aid to 2001 dollars in purchasing power, Israel has been given $240 billion since 1973, Stauffer reckons. In addition, the US has given Egypt $117 billion and Jordan $22 billion in foreign aid in return for signing peace treaties with Israel.
"Consequently, politically, if not administratively, those outlays are part of the total package of support for Israel," argues Stauffer in a lecture on the total costs of US Middle East policy, commissioned by the US Army War College, for a recent conference at the University of Maine.
These foreign-aid costs are well known. Many Americans would probably say it is money well spent to support a beleagured democracy of some strategic interest. But Stauffer wonders if Americans are aware of the full bill for supporting Israel since some costs, if not hidden, are little known.
One huge cost is not secret. It is the higher cost of oil and other economic damage to the US after Israel-Arab wars.
In 1973, for instance, Arab nations attacked Israel in an attempt to win back territories Israel had conquered in the 1967 war. President Nixon resupplied Israel with US arms, triggering the Arab oil embargo against the US.
That shortfall in oil deliveries kicked off a deep recession. The US lost $420 billion (in 2001 dollars) of output as a result, Stauffer calculates. And a boost in oil prices cost another $450 billion.
Afraid that Arab nations might use their oil clout again, the US set up a Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That has since cost, conservatively, $134 billion, Stauffer reckons.
Other US help includes:
• US Jewish charities and organizations have remitted grants or bought Israel bonds worth $50 billion to $60 billion. Though private in origin, the money is "a net drain" on the United States economy, says Stauffer.
• The US has already guaranteed $10 billion in commercial loans to Israel, and $600 million in "housing loans." (See editor's note below.) Stauffer expects the US Treasury to cover these.
• The US has given $2.5 billion to support Israel's Lavi fighter and Arrow missile projects.
• Israel buys discounted, serviceable "excess" US military equipment. Stauffer says these discounts amount to "several billion dollars" over recent years.
• Israel uses roughly 40 percent of its $1.8 billion per year in military aid, ostensibly earmarked for purchase of US weapons, to buy Israeli-made hardware. It also has won the right to require the Defense Department or US defense contractors to buy Israeli-made equipment or subsystems, paying 50 to 60 cents on every defense dollar the US gives to Israel.
US help, financial and technical, has enabled Israel to become a major weapons supplier. Weapons make up almost half of Israel's manufactured exports. US defense contractors often resent the buy-Israel requirements and the extra competition subsidized by US taxpayers.
• US policy and trade sanctions reduce US exports to the Middle East about $5 billion a year, costing 70,000 or so American jobs, Stauffer estimates. Not requiring Israel to use its US aid to buy American goods, as is usual in foreign aid, costs another 125,000 jobs.
• Israel has blocked some major US arms sales, such as F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia in the mid-1980s. That cost $40 billion over 10 years, says Stauffer.
Stauffer's list will be controversial. He's been assisted in this research by a number of mostly retired military or diplomatic officials who do not go public for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic if they criticize America's policies toward Israel.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Helen Thomas On Her One Question for Obama
By Real News
DC's most experienced journalist says Obama lost credibility when he dodged question on Israeli nukes
In part one of his interview with Helen Thomas, longest-serving member of the White House Press Corps, Paul Jay asks her about her first question for President Obama. The question, asking President Obama to name all the countries in the Middle-East that have nuclear weapons, was avoided by the President, who claimed to not want to "speculate". Thomas claims that knowledge of Israeli nukes is very public in DC and Obama's answer shows a lack of credibility. She explains the importance of this question for U.S. policy in the region. Finally, she confides that she has not been called on by the President since that day, but that if she does, she will ask him whether or not he has found any more information about nukes in the Middle-East since their last encounter.
Helen Thomas is an American news reporter, member of the White House Press Corps and author She was the first female officer of the National Press Club and the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents Association. Her latest book, co-authored with Craig Crawford is Listen Up, Mr President: Everything you Always Wanted Your President To Know and Do.
DC's most experienced journalist says Obama lost credibility when he dodged question on Israeli nukes
In part one of his interview with Helen Thomas, longest-serving member of the White House Press Corps, Paul Jay asks her about her first question for President Obama. The question, asking President Obama to name all the countries in the Middle-East that have nuclear weapons, was avoided by the President, who claimed to not want to "speculate". Thomas claims that knowledge of Israeli nukes is very public in DC and Obama's answer shows a lack of credibility. She explains the importance of this question for U.S. policy in the region. Finally, she confides that she has not been called on by the President since that day, but that if she does, she will ask him whether or not he has found any more information about nukes in the Middle-East since their last encounter.
Helen Thomas is an American news reporter, member of the White House Press Corps and author She was the first female officer of the National Press Club and the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents Association. Her latest book, co-authored with Craig Crawford is Listen Up, Mr President: Everything you Always Wanted Your President To Know and Do.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Former Obama Aide Now Head Of AIPAC
Just when you thought the thieves couldn't get any thicker.
(IsraelNN.com) Lee “Rosy” Rosenberg, a jazz recording industry veteran capitalist who accompanied U.S. President Barack Obama on his campaign trip to Israel two years ago, takes over on Sunday as the new president of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Rosenberg also served on the president’s national campaign finance committee.
The new AIPAC president hails from Chicago, the home state of President Obama, and also is on first-name terms with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, President Obama’s senior advisor.
Steve Rosen, a former 23-year, high-ranking AIPAC official, told the Chicago Tribune, “I don't think AIPAC has made any secret of the reality that his friendship with the president played a role in Rosy's rise. He's a guy who works very hard at fundraising [and] in the political arena. It was not as if he was plucked out of nowhere. He paid his dues. But I'm sure nobody was blind to the fact that he's from Chicago.“
Rosenberg is known as an expert in bringing in big money from powerful people who generally are not outwardly committed to Israel.
Full Story Here
(IsraelNN.com) Lee “Rosy” Rosenberg, a jazz recording industry veteran capitalist who accompanied U.S. President Barack Obama on his campaign trip to Israel two years ago, takes over on Sunday as the new president of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Rosenberg also served on the president’s national campaign finance committee.
The new AIPAC president hails from Chicago, the home state of President Obama, and also is on first-name terms with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, President Obama’s senior advisor.
Steve Rosen, a former 23-year, high-ranking AIPAC official, told the Chicago Tribune, “I don't think AIPAC has made any secret of the reality that his friendship with the president played a role in Rosy's rise. He's a guy who works very hard at fundraising [and] in the political arena. It was not as if he was plucked out of nowhere. He paid his dues. But I'm sure nobody was blind to the fact that he's from Chicago.“
Rosenberg is known as an expert in bringing in big money from powerful people who generally are not outwardly committed to Israel.
Full Story Here
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Scott Brown A Typical Israel First Neo-Con
Big surprise.
Latest internet ad.
Scott Brown took a half hour to talk to the local Jewish newspaper: Brown takes hard line for Israel
The Senate race
By Kenneth H. Kaplan Special to the Advocate
Nearing the end of a brief Senate campaign focused almost exclusively on domestic issues, State Sen. Scott Brown, the Republican candidate, sought to sharply distinguish himself from his Democratic opponent in the areas of security and Mideast policies. Brown called Attorney General Martha Coakley wrong on both Iran and Afghanistan and portrayed himself as a longtime friend of Israel who would be one of its leading advocates in Washington.
Brown, a lieutenant colonel in the National Guard who cited more than once his "training in the issues of war and peace,'' said Coakley is "out of touch on military issues." He said she is making a mistake by extending constitutional rights to terror suspects "at taxpayers' expense," insisting that they instead be treated as enemy combatants.
Brown spoke last weekend by phone from his home in Wrentham in advance of the Jan. 19 special election. At times both laid back and feisty in the half-hour interview, he wondered aloud whether young American Jews fully understand Israel's security needs. He criticized President Obama for pressing Israel to freeze all settlement activity, but praised his plan to send more troops to Afghanistan. On the campaign itself, he said, "If I could have the Jewish community come out, a bloc [Coakley] thinks she's getting, I'll win this thing by 5 to 8 percent."
The following are excerpts from the interview:
Q: Israel enjoyed extremely close ties with the United States under the Bush administration. Critics say despite that, no real progress was made toward achieving peace, leading them to conclude that the US should put more pressure on Israel. Do you subscribe to that view?
I understand it, but I don't agree with it. ... President Bush was one of the most pro-Israel presidents in our lifetime, and first of all, it takes two or three entities to get down to the bargaining table and come up with peace. But when you have groups who will not adhere to the treaties of yesteryear and want to have a whole new set of treaties, one of the first things you need to do is have these entities recognize the agreements and honor them, and obviously recognize the right for Israel to actually survive.
Q: Speaking of existing agreements, Israel previously agreed to stop building more settlements. The Obama administration pressed Israel to halt any more settlement activity. Are settlements an obstacle to achieving a two-state solution?
Well certainly, but Israel also has the right to live in its lands without having another country dictate terms before you get to the bargaining table. Whether it's close settlements or not build, you can't be giving away cards before you get to the bargaining table. ... I find it offensive that [Obama is] setting the terms before even sitting down at the table. ... I think that Israel had done more than enough in terms of extending the olive branch to get people to the bargaining table.
Q: Israel's security barrier in the West Bank and its incursion into the Gaza Strip both achieved their aims, measured by the reduction in suicide bombings inside Israel and rocket fire from Gaza. Yet both have been condemned as violating Palestinians' rights. Are Israel's methods excessive?
A: Well, when it comes to your survival, I don't know, what's excessive? When you have people lobbing missiles into your bedrooms, you need to establish security measures to protect your kids, your families. ... And don't forget. when you have Hamas lobbing missiles from hospitals and schools, you're at an unfair disadvantage. Israel and the United States, we follow the Geneva Conventions and the protocols and the laws of war.
Q: The United States was fortunate to have been spared in the attempted attack aboard a Detroit-bound plane. How should the US tighten air security? Is there anything that should or should not be borrowed from Israel's methods, which, while effective, have been criticized for involving profiling?
A: Let me just backtrack and add another wrinkle to that. I do not believe that these people should be treated as ordinary criminals. They should be treated as enemy combatants. We're in a war. Clearly there was a tie to Al Qaeda. [The Detroit suspect] should never have been lawyered up at taxpayer expense. He should immediately be treated as an enemy combatant and transferred down to Gitmo or some other facility, and interrogated under the laws of the United States and the Geneva Convention and all the laws of war, first of all. So there's a mistake that Martha Coakley is making by providing constitutional rights to enemy combatants and opening up a whole new level of rights that they're not entitled to at taxpayer expense. ... I would rather spend more time keeping our people safe and then maybe infringing on our liberties a little bit at a time when in fact there are some very serious threats upon us.
Q: How concerned are you that Iran is close to acquiring a nuclear weapon? Do you believe economic sanctions can halt the Iranian program? If not, should other measures be considered, or should the world, and Israel, find a way to coexist with a nuclear Iran?
That's scary. Well, first of all there's a couple of things happening. Ahmadinejad ... Martha Coakley wants to have one-on-one negotiations with him. She would go there. That's ridiculous. You don't want to legitimize his regime and give it a propaganda tool. She'd be the only one who wants to do that. Not even President Obama wants to do that. Low-level negotiations are great, but they're obviously playing the cat and mouse game. ...
They're at 28 percent unemployment. Their cash reserves are almost gone. So if there is any type of economic threat right now, that can work ... it would shut their industry down cold. ...
Everyone knows that Israel has the right to protect itself. The option to attack Iran is always there. You don't even need to mention it.
Q: Martha Coakley recently voiced opposition to Obama's plan to send more troops to Afghanistan. What do you think should be the American commitment?
First of all, she's wrong. It shows how out of touch she is with military issues. ... By having the amount of troops we have there now, they're spread so thin that they're vulnerable. So ... I do support the president. Especially his 180 on this very issue. He took the time to figure out what the problem was. I commend him for that, publicly. ... He's looking to provide the tools and resources to our men and women to finish the job. And the job is very clear. It's to make sure the Taliban and Al Qaeda do not reestablish bases, reestablish control.
Latest internet ad.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Israel Rules
By Paul Craig Roberts
December 29, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- On Christmas eve when Christians were celebrating the Prince of Peace, the New York Times delivered forth a call for war. “There’s only one way to stop Iran,” declared Alan J. Kuperman, and that is “military air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.”
Kuperman is described as the “director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin,” but his Christmas eve call to war relies on disinformation and contradiction, not on objective scholarly analysis.
For example, Kuperman contradicts the unanimous report of America’s 16 intelligence agencies, the reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Russian intelligence with his claim that Iran has a nuclear weapon program. Astonishingly, it does not occur to Kuperman that readers might wonder how an academic bureaucrat in Austin, Texas, has better information than these authorities.
Kuperman is so determined to damn President Obama’s plan to have other countries enrich Iran’s uranium for Iran’s nuclear energy program and medical isotopes that Kuperman commits astounding blunders. After claiming that Iran has a “bomb program,” Kuperman claims that “Iran’s uranium contains impurities” and that Ahmadinejad’s threat “to enrich uranium domestically to the 20 percent level . . . is a bluff, because even if Iran could further enrich its impure uranium, it lacks the capacity to fabricate the uranium into fuel elements.”
What was the New York Times op ed editor thinking when he approved Kuperman’s article? Iran, Kuperman writes, needs “90 percent enriched uranium” to have weapons-grade material, but cannot reach 20 percent or even make fuel elements for its nuclear energy. So, how is Iran going to produce a bomb? Yet, Kuperman writes that “we have reached the point where air strikes are the only plausible option with any prospect of preventing Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. The sooner the United States takes action, the better.”
It could not be made any clearer that, as with the US invasion of Iraq, a military attack on Iran has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. An “Iranian nuke” is just another canard behind which hides an undeclared agenda.
One wonders about Kuperman’s non-proliferation credentials. How does a wanton military attack on a country encourage non-proliferation? Aren’t America’s bullying, threats and acts of war more likely to encourage countries to seek nuclear weapons?
At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the United States has wars ongoing in Iraq where the ancient Chaldean Christian community was destroyed--not by Saddam Hussein but by the neoconservatives’ illegal invasion of Iraq--in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yeman, and Sudan. The US initiated a war, which it lost, between its puppet ruler in the former Soviet province of Georgia and Russia.
The US, the world’s greatest supporter of terrorism, is the main financier of terrorist groups that stage attacks within Iran, and US money succeeded in financing protests against President Ahmadinejad’s re-election and in dividing the ruling Islamic clerics. It was American money, weapons, and diplomatic cover that enabled the Israeli war crimes against the Lebanese people during 2006 and against Palestinian civilians in Gaza during 2008-2009, crimes documented in the Goldstone Report.
Iran has never interfered in US internal affairs, but the US has a long record of interfering in Iranian affairs. In 1953 the US overthrew Iran’s popular prime minister, Mohammed Mosaddeq and installed a puppet who tortured Iranians who desired political independence.
Despite this and other American offenses against Iran, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly expressed Iran’s interest to be on friendly terms with the United States, only to be repeatedly rebuffed. The US wants war with Iran in order to expand US world hegemony.
One might expect a non-proliferation expert to take history into account, but Kuperman fails to do so. Kuperman also has nothing to say about Israel’s, India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Unlike Iran, none of these countries are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel, India, and Pakistan all developed their nuclear weapons in secret, and many experts believe Israel had American help, an act of treason. All three countries have been rewarded by Washington despite their perfidy. Why is Kuperman concerned about Iran, which submits to the IAEA inspections, but is unconcerned with Israel, a country that has never permitted a single inspection?
The answer is that the Israel Lobby, the US military-security complex, and the “Christian” Zionists have succeeded in demonizing Iran. Every real expert knows that an Iranian nuclear weapon would have no function other than deterring an attack on Iran. Ever since the US lost its monopoly on nuclear weapons, after using them offensively and pointlessly against a defeated Japan, nuclear weapons have served no purpose other than deterrence.
The US has no conflicting economic interests with Iran. Iran is simply a supplier of oil, an important one. A US attack on Iran, such as the one advocated by Kuperman, would most likely shut down oil flows to the West through the Strait of Hormuz. This might benefit refiners, who sell gasoline to the West and could charge enormous prices, but no one else would benefit.
Adding to the war cry are congregations of fake Christians. A great number of them, organized by someone’s money under the banner, “Christian Leaders for a Nuclear-free Iran,” has written to Congress demanding sanctions against Iran that amount to an act of war. The roll call http://www.clnfi.org/ includes the “Christian” Zionist John Hagee, who, according to reports, denigrates Jesus Christ and preaches to his illiterate congregation that it is God’s will for Americans to fight and die for Israel, the oppressor of the Palestinian people.
Among the signatories of the “Christians” demanding an act of war against Iran, are Dr. Pat Robertson, president of Christian Broadcasting Network, Nixon-era criminal Chuck Colson, and Richard Land, president of Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Southern Baptist Convention. Obviously, for southern baptists ethics means murdering Islamists, and religious liberty excludes everyone but “Christian” Zionists.
It is a simple matter for an educated person to make fools of these morons who profess to be Christians. However, these morons have vast constituencies numbering in the tens of millions of Americans. There are, in fact, more of them than there are intelligent, informed, moral, and real Christian Americans.
The votes of the morons will prevail.
In the second decade of the 21st century, America’s Zionist wars against Islam will expand. America’s wars in behalf of Israel’s territorial expansion will complete the bankruptcy of America. The Treasury’s bonds to finance the US government’s enormous deficits will lack for buyers. Therefore, the bonds will be monetized by the Federal Reserve. The result will be rising rates of inflation. The inflation will destroy the dollar as world reserve currency, and the US will no longer be able to pay for its imports. Shortages will appear, including food and gasoline, and “Superpower America” will find itself pressed to the wall as a third world country unable to pay its debts.
America has been brought low, both morally and economically, by its obeisance to the Israel Lobby. Even Jimmy Carter, a former President of the United States and Governor of Georgia recently had to apologize to the Israel Lobby for his honest criticisms of Israel’s inhumane treatment of the occupied Palestinians in order for his grandson to be able to run for a seat in the Georgia state senate. http://www.counterpunch.org/amiri12252009.html
This should tell the macho super-power American tough guys who really runs “their” country.
December 29, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- On Christmas eve when Christians were celebrating the Prince of Peace, the New York Times delivered forth a call for war. “There’s only one way to stop Iran,” declared Alan J. Kuperman, and that is “military air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.”
Kuperman is described as the “director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin,” but his Christmas eve call to war relies on disinformation and contradiction, not on objective scholarly analysis.
For example, Kuperman contradicts the unanimous report of America’s 16 intelligence agencies, the reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Russian intelligence with his claim that Iran has a nuclear weapon program. Astonishingly, it does not occur to Kuperman that readers might wonder how an academic bureaucrat in Austin, Texas, has better information than these authorities.
Kuperman is so determined to damn President Obama’s plan to have other countries enrich Iran’s uranium for Iran’s nuclear energy program and medical isotopes that Kuperman commits astounding blunders. After claiming that Iran has a “bomb program,” Kuperman claims that “Iran’s uranium contains impurities” and that Ahmadinejad’s threat “to enrich uranium domestically to the 20 percent level . . . is a bluff, because even if Iran could further enrich its impure uranium, it lacks the capacity to fabricate the uranium into fuel elements.”
What was the New York Times op ed editor thinking when he approved Kuperman’s article? Iran, Kuperman writes, needs “90 percent enriched uranium” to have weapons-grade material, but cannot reach 20 percent or even make fuel elements for its nuclear energy. So, how is Iran going to produce a bomb? Yet, Kuperman writes that “we have reached the point where air strikes are the only plausible option with any prospect of preventing Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. The sooner the United States takes action, the better.”
It could not be made any clearer that, as with the US invasion of Iraq, a military attack on Iran has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. An “Iranian nuke” is just another canard behind which hides an undeclared agenda.
One wonders about Kuperman’s non-proliferation credentials. How does a wanton military attack on a country encourage non-proliferation? Aren’t America’s bullying, threats and acts of war more likely to encourage countries to seek nuclear weapons?
At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the United States has wars ongoing in Iraq where the ancient Chaldean Christian community was destroyed--not by Saddam Hussein but by the neoconservatives’ illegal invasion of Iraq--in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yeman, and Sudan. The US initiated a war, which it lost, between its puppet ruler in the former Soviet province of Georgia and Russia.
The US, the world’s greatest supporter of terrorism, is the main financier of terrorist groups that stage attacks within Iran, and US money succeeded in financing protests against President Ahmadinejad’s re-election and in dividing the ruling Islamic clerics. It was American money, weapons, and diplomatic cover that enabled the Israeli war crimes against the Lebanese people during 2006 and against Palestinian civilians in Gaza during 2008-2009, crimes documented in the Goldstone Report.
Iran has never interfered in US internal affairs, but the US has a long record of interfering in Iranian affairs. In 1953 the US overthrew Iran’s popular prime minister, Mohammed Mosaddeq and installed a puppet who tortured Iranians who desired political independence.
Despite this and other American offenses against Iran, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly expressed Iran’s interest to be on friendly terms with the United States, only to be repeatedly rebuffed. The US wants war with Iran in order to expand US world hegemony.
One might expect a non-proliferation expert to take history into account, but Kuperman fails to do so. Kuperman also has nothing to say about Israel’s, India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Unlike Iran, none of these countries are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel, India, and Pakistan all developed their nuclear weapons in secret, and many experts believe Israel had American help, an act of treason. All three countries have been rewarded by Washington despite their perfidy. Why is Kuperman concerned about Iran, which submits to the IAEA inspections, but is unconcerned with Israel, a country that has never permitted a single inspection?
The answer is that the Israel Lobby, the US military-security complex, and the “Christian” Zionists have succeeded in demonizing Iran. Every real expert knows that an Iranian nuclear weapon would have no function other than deterring an attack on Iran. Ever since the US lost its monopoly on nuclear weapons, after using them offensively and pointlessly against a defeated Japan, nuclear weapons have served no purpose other than deterrence.
The US has no conflicting economic interests with Iran. Iran is simply a supplier of oil, an important one. A US attack on Iran, such as the one advocated by Kuperman, would most likely shut down oil flows to the West through the Strait of Hormuz. This might benefit refiners, who sell gasoline to the West and could charge enormous prices, but no one else would benefit.
Adding to the war cry are congregations of fake Christians. A great number of them, organized by someone’s money under the banner, “Christian Leaders for a Nuclear-free Iran,” has written to Congress demanding sanctions against Iran that amount to an act of war. The roll call http://www.clnfi.org/ includes the “Christian” Zionist John Hagee, who, according to reports, denigrates Jesus Christ and preaches to his illiterate congregation that it is God’s will for Americans to fight and die for Israel, the oppressor of the Palestinian people.
Among the signatories of the “Christians” demanding an act of war against Iran, are Dr. Pat Robertson, president of Christian Broadcasting Network, Nixon-era criminal Chuck Colson, and Richard Land, president of Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Southern Baptist Convention. Obviously, for southern baptists ethics means murdering Islamists, and religious liberty excludes everyone but “Christian” Zionists.
It is a simple matter for an educated person to make fools of these morons who profess to be Christians. However, these morons have vast constituencies numbering in the tens of millions of Americans. There are, in fact, more of them than there are intelligent, informed, moral, and real Christian Americans.
The votes of the morons will prevail.
In the second decade of the 21st century, America’s Zionist wars against Islam will expand. America’s wars in behalf of Israel’s territorial expansion will complete the bankruptcy of America. The Treasury’s bonds to finance the US government’s enormous deficits will lack for buyers. Therefore, the bonds will be monetized by the Federal Reserve. The result will be rising rates of inflation. The inflation will destroy the dollar as world reserve currency, and the US will no longer be able to pay for its imports. Shortages will appear, including food and gasoline, and “Superpower America” will find itself pressed to the wall as a third world country unable to pay its debts.
America has been brought low, both morally and economically, by its obeisance to the Israel Lobby. Even Jimmy Carter, a former President of the United States and Governor of Georgia recently had to apologize to the Israel Lobby for his honest criticisms of Israel’s inhumane treatment of the occupied Palestinians in order for his grandson to be able to run for a seat in the Georgia state senate. http://www.counterpunch.org/amiri12252009.html
This should tell the macho super-power American tough guys who really runs “their” country.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Low Morale In Afghanistan
Maybe these men are tired of watching their brothers die in wars with no defined objectives. Maybe they are at the end of the rope because they see our Constitution, which they swear an oath to protect, being completely disregarded by nearly every politician on every level. Maybe because our borders are wide open but Iraq's borders are secured. Or maybe it is because it is becoming increasingly clear that we are in the mideast in order to protect Israel.
"EVERY TIME WE DO SOMETHING, YOU TELL ME AMERICANS WILL DO THIS AND WILL DO THAT. I WANT TO TELL YOU SOMETHING VERY CLEAR: DON'T WORRY ABOUT AMERICAN PRESSURE ON ISRAEL; WE, THE JEWISH PEOPLE, CONTROL AMERICA. AND THE AMERICANS KNOW IT."
-- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
October 3, 2001
(IAP News)
"The Israelis control the policy in the congress and the senate."
-- Senator Fullbright, Chair of Senate Foreign Relations Committee: 10/07/1973 on CBS' "Face the Nation".
"I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a foreign policy [in the Middle East] not approved by the Jews..... terrific control the Jews have over the news media and the barrage the Jews have built up on congressmen .... I am very much concerned over the fact that the Jewish influence here is completely dominating the scene and making it almost impossible to get congress to do anything they don't approve of. The Israeli embassy is practically dictating to the congress through influential Jewish people in the country"
-----Sec. of State John Foster Dulles quoted on p.99 of Fallen Pillars by Donald Neff
Source: AP
Morale has fallen among soldiers in Afghanistan, where troops are seeing record violence in the 8-year-old war, while those in Iraq show much improved mental health amid much lower violence, the Army said Friday.
Soldier suicides in Iraq did not increase for the first time since 2004, according to a new study.
Though findings of two new battlefield surveys are similar in several ways to the last ones taken in 2007, they come at a time of intense scrutiny on Afghanistan as President Barack Obama struggles to come up with a new war strategy and planned troop buildup. There is also perhaps equal new attention focused on the mental health of the force since a shooting rampage at Fort Hood last week in which an Army psychiatrist is charged.
Both surveys showed that soldiers on their third or fourth tours of duty had lower morale and more mental health problems than those with fewer deployments and an ever-increasing number of troops are having problems with their marriages.
The new survey on Afghanistan found instances of depression, anxiety and other psychological problems are about the same as they were in 2007. But it also said there is a shortage of mental health workers to help soldiers who need it, partly because of the buildup Obama already started this year with the dispatch of more than 20,000 extra troops.
Efforts already under way to get more health workers to the Afghan war could be hampered somewhat by last week's shooting. The psychiatrist charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder was slated to go to Afghanistan. Some of the dead and wounded also were to deploy there to bolster psychological services for soldiers.
The new Afghanistan survey found that individual soldier morale was about the same as previous studies, but that "unit morale rates ... were significantly lower than in 2005 or 2007," said an executive summary of the report that was to be explained in a news conference Friday. The units referred to were mostly platoons of roughly a couple dozen people each.
In Iraq, some 2,400 soldiers in randomly selected platoons filled out surveys from December 2008 through March 2009 and a mental health assessment team went to the warfront for a month starting in late February to analyze the results and hold interviews and focus groups.
In Afghanistan, more than 1,500 troops in more than 50 platoons filled out the surveys from April to June, and the assessment team when through the same process from May through June.
Mental health providers also were interviewed in each country.
It's the sixth such survey, a program that was groundbreaking when started in 2003 in that it was the biggest effort ever made to measure the health of troops — and the services they receive — right at the warfront.
The survey was different from previous ones in that it sampled two types of platoons. Some were maneuver units that warfighting groups engaged in combat-related tasks and others were support units such as aviation, engineering and medical elements less likely to have as much direct exposure to violence.
Other findings of the Afghanistan survey included:
_Junior enlisted soldiers reported significantly more marital problems than noncommissioned officers, stating they intended to get a divorce or that they suspected their spouses back home of infidelity.
_Exposure to combat, long recognized as a strong factor in mental health problems, was significantly higher this year than rates in 2005 and similar to rates in 2007 for the combat units.
_Combat units reported significantly lower unit morale in the last six months of their tours of duty, more evidence of the wearing affect of long deployments.
_Troops in their third or fourth deployment reported significantly more acute stress and other psychological problems, and among those married, reported significantly more marital problems compared to soldiers on their first or second deployment.
_Soldiers on their third or fourth deployment reported using medications for psychological or combat stress problems at a significantly higher rate than those on their first deployment.
_It was significantly harder to get behavioral health care this year than in 2005, a finding that may be owing to the fact that troops are spread out at hundreds of posts around the rugged terrain of Afghanistan.
_Troops who spent two to four hours daily playing video games or surfing the Internet as a way to cope helped lower their psychological problems, but spending time beyond that — three to four hours — had the opposite effect. Those who exercised or did other physical training decreased their mental problems, regardless of the time spent.
_Troops reported more and better training in suicide prevention and other mental health programs the Army has been increasing over recent years in an unprecedented effort to focus on the force's mental health.
_The mental health care system in Afghanistan is understaffed based on the Army doctrine of one mental health worker for every 700 troops.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Monday, June 9, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)