Thursday, November 6, 2008

Jewish Power Grows in US Congress


While Barack Obama's choice of Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago-born son of Israeli Jews, as the White House Chief of Staff has made news in the United States, the bigger news of the growing Jewish strength in US Congress has not received much attention.

Jews make up only about 2% of the US population. However their representation in the US executive, legislatures, the Supreme Court is at least five times at about 10 percent plus. The exclusive club of Nobel laureates is dominated by its Jewish members, a testament to Jewish culture of hard work, commitment and achievement. Their numbers and power in the world of business, finance, media and entertainment, Washington think tanks, academia and top professions of accounting, law and medicine are even greater.

Jerusalem Post reports that the next session of Congress will include 45 Jewish lawmakers, a new record, after Democrats Alan Grayson of Florida and John Adler of New Jersey took two House seats from the Republican column.

Jared Polis, also a Democrat, was widely expected to win his Colorado House seat to match the previous record, set in the 2006 elections.

The House will have 32 Jewish members. Only the class of 1990 had more Jewish members - 34 - but there were fewer Jewish senators at the time.

The next Senate will have 13 Jewish members, the same as the previous session, despite a toss-up race in Minnesota, where both Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and his Democratic challenger, comedian Al Franken, are Jewish.

I admire the Jewish people for their culture of hard work and achievement. We should all emulate that. I also make a distinction between Israel lobby that pushed for Iraq war and the Jewish citizens in America, most of whom opposed the Iraq war. Vast majority of Jewish Congressmen and Senators are elected with AIPAC money and support, making them beholden to the Israel lobby.

I see this excessive power of Israel lobby or any other pressure group whether Muslim, Jewish, Christian, NRA or corporations as a threat to US democracy. The corrosive effect of money and influence peddling in politics is adversely affecting our executive, legislature, even judiciary. The powerful have gotten away with a lot lately, on both Wall Street and Main street. Iraq war was ignited by the neo-conservatives, most of whom were supported by the Likud-leaning Israel lobby, people such as Wolfowitz and other PNAC (Project for the New American Century) proponents. The Iraq war, described as the three-trillion dollar war by Nobel laureate economist Joe Stiglitz, has now radicalized the Muslim world, reduced US influence in the world, sunk the Republican party and almost bankrupted the US.

Obama's mandate to negotiate with Iran in the face of the Israeli opposition is likely to be the tested soon. Given the past experience of other US presidents' inability to stand up to the growing power of the Israeli supporters in the US, I am not too sanguine that Obama will succeed.

The recent election results, including Obama's historic win, will probably not change much as far the US Middle East policy is concerned. If anything, these results will likely make it extremely difficult for the US to act independently and play the role of an honest broker in any international issues involving Israeli interests. As the Iraq war has shown, the outcome of potentially aggressive and unilateral US foreign policy dictated by the Israel lobby will not be in the best interest of Israel, Arabs and the rest of the world. Those of us who care for Israel must understand this fact, if they share the goal of moving toward a more peaceful and prosperous world.

Here is a video clip of Obama addressing AIPAC, the powerful Israel lobby in US:



Related Links:

The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy

The Rise of Jewish Power-Nothing Short of Astounding

Jewish Tribal review

Jewish Domination of Mass Media

19 comments:

libertarian said...

Riaz, you see the same data as I do. You react with trepidation. Mine is wonder. Don't know if the word "prejudice" is too strong here.

Why not focus on their culture of excellence and try and replicate that? Why not analyze how they do what they do and imitate? This obsession with Palestine in the Muslim world clouds clear-thinking. That the Arabs make noises of solidarity (and they are just noises) is one thing. But subcontinental hearts bleeding for Palestinians just boggle this mind. Besides that tenuous religious link, there is absolutely nothing in common. And we have no shortage of "internally displaced persons" of our own.

Riaz Haq said...

I admire the Jewish people for their culture of hard work and achievement. We should all emulate that. I also make a distinction between Israel lobby that pushed for Iraq war and the Jewish citizens in America, most of whom opposed the Iraq war.

I see this excessive power of Israel lobby or any other pressure group whether Muslim or Jewish or NRA or corporate as a threat to US democracy. The corrosive effect of money and influence peddling is adversely affecting our executive, legislature, even judiciary. The powerful have gotten away with a lot lately, on both Wall Street and Main street. Iraq war was ignited by the necons, most of whom were supported by Israel lobby, people such as Wolfowitz and other PNAC proponents. The Iraq war has now radicalized the Muslim world, sunk the Republican party and bankrupted the US.

Anonymous said...

"In an interview with Ma'ariv, Emanuel's father, Dr. Benjamin Emanuel, said he was convinced that his son's appointment would be good for Israel. "Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel," he was quoted as saying. "Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House." The Ma'ariv article also quoted Dr. Emanuel as saying that his son spends most summers visiting in Tel Aviv, and that he speaks Hebrew, but not fluently."
Libertarian - the above quote will help you distinguish between Jewish thinking and Zionist thinking.

Anonymous said...

America is a immigration country, so its free for all with equal opportunity. Indians have been fascinated for long by scale achievements of Jewish people and their intelligence, they have a Midas touch in business and engineering genius. Hope we could emulate them in a small way at least. Anyway we cant beat their racial superiority.As for Arabs, they will kill each others unto death if there was no Jewish state in their midst. Palestinian suffering is artificial in the sense that Arab and Muslim states send millions of dollars to them for fighting Israel and but never address their infrastructural and basic problems lest they loose interest in jihad. The reported pathetic conditions in Palestinian refugee camps in neighboring states of Palestine is telling.

Riaz Haq said...

In a recent book titled "Capitalism and the Jews", author Muller argues that it was Chrisitians' distaste and dis like of usury that left wide open the business of lending and capitalism to Jews in Europe:

"The unique historical relationship between capitalism and the Jews is crucial to understanding modern European and Jewish history. But the subject has been addressed less often by mainstream historians than by anti-Semites or apologists. In this book Jerry Muller, a leading historian of capitalism, separates myth from reality to explain why the Jewish experience with capitalism has been so important and complex--and so ambivalent.

Drawing on economic, social, political, and intellectual history from medieval Europe through contemporary America and Israel, Capitalism and the Jews examines the ways in which thinking about capitalism and thinking about the Jews have gone hand in hand in European thought, and why anticapitalism and anti-Semitism have frequently been linked. The book explains why Jews have tended to be disproportionately successful in capitalist societies, but also why Jews have numbered among the fiercest anticapitalists and Communists. The book shows how the ancient idea that money was unproductive led from the stigmatization of usury and the Jews to the stigmatization of finance and, ultimately, in Marxism, the stigmatization of capitalism itself. Finally, the book traces how the traditional status of the Jews as a diasporic merchant minority both encouraged their economic success and made them particularly vulnerable to the ethnic nationalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Providing a fresh look at an important but frequently misunderstood subject, Capitalism and the Jews will interest anyone who wants to understand the Jewish role in the development of capitalism, the role of capitalism in the modern fate of the Jews, or the ways in which the story of capitalism and the Jews has affected the history of Europe and beyond, from the medieval period to our own."

Riaz Haq said...

President Obama has nominated Ms. Elena Kagan, a woman from New York, to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the US Supreme Court. In addition to being a liberal, she shares her Jewish faith with two serving liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Briar.

She has never been a judge before.

But, with her Princeton undergrad and Harvard law school education and Supreme Court clerkship for Justice Thurgood Marshall, she appears to have strong legal qualifications and background to serve on the apex court.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an excerpt from a story in the Guardian about growing wealth gap between whites and blacks in America:

"A huge wealth gap has opened up between black and white people in the US over the past quarter of a century – a difference sufficient to put two children through university – because of racial discrimination and economic policies that favour the affluent.

A typical white family is now five times richer than its African-American counterpart of the same class, according to a report released today by Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

White families typically have assets worth $100,000 (£69,000), up from $22,000 in the mid-1980s. African-American families' assets stand at just $5,000, up from around $2,000.

A quarter of black families have no assets at all. The study monitored more than 2,000 families since 1984.

"We walk that through essentially a generation and what we see is that the racial wealth gap has galloped, it's escalated to $95,000," said Tom Shapiro, one of the authors of the report by the university's Institute on Assets and Social Policy.

"That's primarily because the whites in the sample were able to accumulate financial assets from their $22,000 all the way to $100,000 and the African-Americans' wealth essentially flatlined."

The survey does not include housing equity, because it is not readily accessible and is rarely realised as cash. But if property were included it would further widen the wealth divide.

Shapiro says the gap remains wide even between blacks and whites of similar classes and with similar jobs and incomes.

"How do we explain the wealth gap among equally-achieving African-American and white families? The same ratio holds up even among low income groups. Finding ways to accumulate financial resources for all low and moderate income families in the United States has been a huge challenge and that challenge keeps getting steeper and steeper.

"But there are greater opportunities and less challenges for low and moderate income families if they're white in comparison to if they're African-American or Hispanic," he said.

America has long lived with vast inequality, although 40 years ago the disparity was lower than in Britain.

Today, the richest 1% of the US population owns close to 40% of its wealth. The top 25% of US households own 87%.

The rest is divided up among middle and low income Americans. In that competition white people come out far ahead.

Only one in 10 African-Americans owns any shares. A third do not have a pension plan, and among those who do the value is on average a fifth of plans held by whites.

The report shows that a typical white middle income family, earning
about $30,000 a year, has accumulated $74,000 in assets, five times that of a black family in the same class which has only about $14,000
in wealth.

The gap is even wider when it comes to families with an income above $50,000 a year."

Riaz Haq said...

Is AIPAC a WikiLeaks Op? asks Prof Juan Cole on his blog:

In 2003 Larry Franklin, the ‘go-to man on Iran’ at the Pentagon under undersecretary of defense for planning Douglas Feith, carried a draft confidential finding on Iran out of the building and gave it to Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman of AIPAC’s Middle East Bureau. They not only were happy to receive the classified document, but they ran with it right over to the Israeli Embassy and delivered it to Naor Gilon, the embassy official with the Iran portfolio.

Rosen and Weissman, and probably AIPAC in general, were under FBI surveillance on suspicion of espionage, and that is how they were caught. The FBI field officers were astonished when Franklin came into the picture unexpectedly. Less astonished, I suspect, when Naor Gilon did.

Franklin confessed to wrongdoing, and spent some years in jail was sentenced to the 10 months he spent under house arrest; he may still work for the Pentagon! But Rosen and Weissman maintained they had done nothing illegal, since under US law for someone who is not a government employee to receive classified documents from a third party is not illegal, nor is sharing them with others once they have been received. AIPAC fired them, so they had to fight their own legal battles. The prosecution was ultimately dropped. The Neoconservatives say that the case should never have been brought, since it just criminalized the routine horse-trading in information typical of Washington.

Rosen has now launched a $20 million wrongful termination suit against AIPAC. He maintains that his action of delivering the classified document to the Israeli embassy was standard operating procedure in AIPAC, and that he did nothing out of the ordinary, and that he should not have been fired. He is also threatening to name details of this routine spying.

Rosen, ironically, was hired by Daniel Pipes’ so-called ‘Middle East Forum.’ Pipes runs Campus Watch, which is a neo-McCarthyite attempt to intimidate US college professors into toeing the Likud Party line whenever they talk about Israel and Palestine. So it is only natural that an indicted spy for Israel, Rosen, should be on staff and energetically using dirty tricks to smear the reputations of patriotic Americans.

What Steven Rosen is alleging is that AIPAC, which arranges for millions to go to the campaigns of American politicians, is in essence a Wikileaks operation, only instead of posting the ferreted-out classified material to the Web, they channel it to the Israeli government. (Of course, the Israeli government sometimes acts as a Wikileaks as well; Seymour Hersh was told by US intelligence officials that Israel shared with the Soviets some of the intel it got from spy Jonathan Pollard.)

Whether the allegations about AIPAC routine spying are true or not, Rosen and Weissman certainly did exactly the same thing Julian Assange did, and yet they are free men.

Rep. Pete King (R-NY), who wants Eric Holder to prosecute Julian Assange of Wikileaks, hasn’t objected to the cases against Rosen and Weissman being dropped, and hasn’t asked for an investigation of AIPAC. One of the problems congressmen like this will have in crafting anti-Wikileaks legislation is that they may well be driving a nail into AIPAC’s coffin, as well. King, who keeps accusing Americans of being terrorists, is also known as a long-time supporter of the Irish Republican Army.

You have to love hypocrisy when it is taken to this Himalyan scale. It has a kind of putrid beauty.

Riaz Haq said...

New congress will remain Israel ally, according to Jersusalem Post:

WASHINGTON – The Congress that will be installed Wednesday might be losing four of its Jewish members, but Republicans and several pro-Israel advocates insist it will remain as supportive as ever of the Jewish state.

“The members who are taking over will be at least as strong in their pro-Israel inclinations as the people they’re replacing,” maintained Noah Silverman of the Republic Jewish Coalition, adding that “the leadership is stalwart on Israel.”

Though the Democrats’ shellacking in the November election reduced the numbers of Jewish members from 43 to 39 – though a new Democrat Jewish representative and senator will be among them – Silverman pointed out that the sole Jewish Republican, incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor, will be the highest-ranking Jewish member ever.

Silverman predicted that the most visible change on Israel will be the extent to which Congress now challenges the Obama administration over its handling of the Middle East.

“The biggest difference we expect is how bold and how tough an approach we expect to see in Congressional oversight,” he said. The members are “going to be skeptical and ask questions and conduct vigorous oversight of government policies.”

The non-partisan American Israel Public Affairs Committee described the 112th Congress as “expected to be the most pro-Israel Congress ever” in its Near East Report on the incoming legislative class produced after the elections.

“Many of Israel’s strongest supporters were reelected,” according to the AIPAC report. “AIPAC lay leaders and staff have established relationships with every new senator” already and received position papers in which “the new members of Congress express their support for a strong US-Israel relationship.”

But others, particularly Democrats, are concerned about what the new Congress will bring on Israel, especially since many of the freshmen are Tea Party candidates without a long history of involvement in international issues and bent on cutting the budget.

“My greatest concern is two-fold: one is the unknown [members] and second is the ramifications of the deep fiscal conservatism and what that means for foreign aid and America’s involvement in the world,” said David Harris, president and CEO of the National Jewish Democratic Council.

Already, incoming Republicans are calling for $100 billion in budget cuts, and many have criticized foreign aid expenditures.

Silverman said, though, that Israel funding is an exception since Republicans are looking to cut foreign expenditures that haven’t been used properly and effectively.

“I’m sure that Israel’s [aid] will pass with flying colors,” he said, adding that in his conversations with new members – both Tea Party backers and others – he has heard resounding support for a strong US-Israel relationship.

“Anytime you’ve got new people, certain people don’t know the issues well,” noted Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, who heads The Israel Project. “The people I’ve spoken with so far, their instincts, their hearts are in the right place, and they’re eager to learn.”

She referred to a long history of bi-partisan support for Israel that she expects to continue, and said that while key Jewish Democratic supports of Israel will no longer be in their leadership roles, she expects strong replacements, pointing to Ileana Ros-Lehtinen taking over from Howard Berman as chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Silverman also said that the new Middle East subcommittee chairman Steve Chabot, who takes over from Gary Ackerman, would “hit the ground running” and that Kay Granger, who will replace Nita Lowey as chair of appropriations’ foreign operations subcommittee, was well-versed in Israel issues from several trips there.

Riaz Haq said...

Here is an excerpt from an Op Ed by Rabbi Michael Lerner on the shooting of "Jewish Congresswoman Gifford". It's titled "Shooting of Jewish Congresswoman Giffords Is Not Just a "Tragedy"":

When right-wingers create a climate of hate against liberal government, and then individuals act on that hate as they did in blowing up a Federal Building in Oklahoma City and now this premeditated murder of several people (we are still praying for the survival of Congresswoman Giffords) in hate-filled Arizona (where she had been attacked viciously but not physically for her support of health care reform), the state whose racism has made it famous around the world for profiling Mexican immigrants, there is no call to investigate and protect ourselves from these right-wing hate mongers. Similarly, when Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by right wing Jews, the right-wing ultra-nationalist community in Israel's West Bank settlers never faced any serious investigation of their role in creating the hateful climate that helped produce the murderer.

And don't underplay the anti-Semitic elements either. According to Ha'aretz newspaper, the killer's website had Hitler's hate book Mein Kampf listed as one of his favorite books! When Jews are targeted, it's rarely "by chance." Right-wing haters particularly hate Jews, since Jews were the most consistent non-African American constituency for the Democratic Party , in 2010 voting 70% for Democrats. If the rest of the country voted like Jews we'd have a liberal Democratic Congress. And this is not lost on the right-wingers. Just listen to the tapes of Nixon and you see how extreme the hatred of Jews is revealed to be by the "moderate" Nixon, and now we have the more extreme elements of the Right coming to power. Jews are, in the minds of these haters, the same as liberals or progressives--maybe even the worst of them. And then, the sexism of the right manifests dramatically in attempting to kill a woman--the perfect symbol of uppity feminists who dare to take power away from the male chauvinists who thought that "their" country was about white male Christian power. You won't hear the media dealing with these dimensions of the reality--but they are central.

http://www.truth-out.org/shooting-jewish-congresswoman-giffords-not-just-a-tragedy66685

Riaz Haq said...

A number of writers and analysts, including Michael Lewis author of Boomerang, believe that Goldman Sachs is responsible for the Greek crisis which could lead a collapse in the Euro Zone. Here's a NY Times story related to it:

Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts.

As worries over Greece rattle world markets, records and interviews show that with Wall Street’s help, the nation engaged in a decade-long effort to skirt European debt limits. One deal created by Goldman Sachs helped obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers in Brussels.

Even as the crisis was nearing the flashpoint, banks were searching for ways to help Greece forestall the day of reckoning. In early November — three months before Athens became the epicenter of global financial anxiety — a team from Goldman Sachs arrived in the ancient city with a very modern proposition for a government struggling to pay its bills, according to two people who were briefed on the meeting.

The bankers, led by Goldman’s president, Gary D. Cohn, held out a financing instrument that would have pushed debt from Greece’s health care system far into the future, much as when strapped homeowners take out second mortgages to pay off their credit cards.

It had worked before. In 2001, just after Greece was admitted to Europe’s monetary union, Goldman helped the government quietly borrow billions, people familiar with the transaction said. That deal, hidden from public view because it was treated as a currency trade rather than a loan, helped Athens to meet Europe’s deficit rules while continuing to spend beyond its means.

Athens did not pursue the latest Goldman proposal, but with Greece groaning under the weight of its debts and with its richer neighbors vowing to come to its aid, the deals over the last decade are raising questions about Wall Street’s role in the world’s latest financial drama.

As in the American subprime crisis and the implosion of the American International Group, financial derivatives played a role in the run-up of Greek debt. Instruments developed by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and a wide range of other banks enabled politicians to mask additional borrowing in Greece, Italy and possibly elsewhere.

In dozens of deals across the Continent, banks provided cash upfront in return for government payments in the future, with those liabilities then left off the books. Greece, for example, traded away the rights to airport fees and lottery proceeds in years to come.

Critics say that such deals, because they are not recorded as loans, mislead investors and regulators about the depth of a country’s liabilities.

Some of the Greek deals were named after figures in Greek mythology. One of them, for instance, was called Aeolos, after the god of the winds.

The crisis in Greece poses the most significant challenge yet to Europe’s common currency, the euro, and the Continent’s goal of economic unity. The country is, in the argot of banking, too big to be allowed to fail. Greece owes the world $300 billion, and major banks are on the hook for much of that debt. A default would reverberate around the globe.

A spokeswoman for the Greek finance ministry said the government had met with many banks in recent months and had not committed to any bank’s offers. All debt financings “are conducted in an effort of transparency,” she said. Goldman and JPMorgan declined to comment.

While Wall Street’s handiwork in Europe has received little attention on this side of the Atlantic, it has been sharply criticized in Greece and in magazines like Der Spiegel in Germany.....


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/global/14debt.html

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an excerpt from a piece by Steve Sailor of VDare:

Lynn digs up 32 IQ studies of American Jews and seven of British Jews. He concludes that Ashkenazi Jews (ones with Yiddish-speaking ancestors) average about ten points higher than non-Hispanic white gentiles, or 110 on a scale where white Americans and Brits average 100. That would put the median Ashkenazi Jew at about the 75th percentile among whites.

IQ testing in Israel suggests that the other Jewish communities trail the Ashkenazi. Lynn estimates that Sephardim score about two points less than white gentiles, or 98. The Mizrahim (Jews from the Arab world) average around 91.

That ten-point gap between Ashkenazi and gentile whites is substantial, but not enormous. The proportion of individuals with IQs of 115 or above is about twice as great among Jews as among white gentiles. But the absolute number of gentiles is much larger.

Jews are, per capita, twice as common relative to American gentile whites over the 115 IQ level that Lynn sees as the bottom threshold for the professions, but are about 5 times more common per capita among doctors and lawyers. And in many other developed countries, these ratios are even higher.

Lynn significant (and subtle) conclusion: superior Jewish IQ isn't everything. He writes:

"This suggests that the success of the Ashkenazim is attributable to more than just their high IQs and that they also possess strong motivational and work-ethic qualities."

This profound subject has only just begun to be explored.


http://www.vdare.com/articles/lynn-on-the-jews-yes-it-s-intelligence-but-there-s-something-else-too

Riaz Haq said...

Here's Paul Krugman's Op Ed in NY Times on 10th anniversary of Iraq war:

So did our political elite and our news media learn from this experience? It sure doesn’t look like it.

The really striking thing, during the run-up to the war, was the illusion of consensus. To this day, pundits who got it wrong excuse themselves on the grounds that “everyone” thought that there was a solid case for war. Of course, they acknowledge, there were war opponents — but they were out of the mainstream.

The trouble with this argument is that it was and is circular: support for the war became part of the definition of what it meant to hold a mainstream opinion. Anyone who dissented, no matter how qualified, was ipso facto labeled as unworthy of consideration. This was true in political circles; it was equally true of much of the press, which effectively took sides and joined the war party.

CNN’s Howard Kurtz, who was at The Washington Post at the time, recently wrote about how this process worked, how skeptical reporting, no matter how solid, was discouraged and rejected. “Pieces questioning the evidence or rationale for war,” he wrote, “were frequently buried, minimized or spiked.”

Closely associated with this taking of sides was an exaggerated and inappropriate reverence for authority. Only people in positions of power were considered worthy of respect. Mr. Kurtz tells us, for example, that The Post killed a piece on war doubts by its own senior defense reporter on the grounds that it relied on retired military officials and outside experts — “in other words, those with sufficient independence to question the rationale for war.”

All in all, it was an object lesson in the dangers of groupthink, a demonstration of how important it is to listen to skeptical voices and separate reporting from advocacy. But as I said, it’s a lesson that doesn’t seem to have been learned. Consider, as evidence, the deficit obsession that has dominated our political scene for the past three years.

Now, I don’t want to push the analogy too far. Bad economic policy isn’t the moral equivalent of a war fought on false pretenses, and while the predictions of deficit scolds have been wrong time and again, there hasn’t been any development either as decisive or as shocking as the complete failure to find weapons of mass destruction. Best of all, these days dissenters don’t operate in the atmosphere of menace, the sense that raising doubts could have devastating personal and career consequences, that was so pervasive in 2002 and 2003. (Remember the hate campaign against the Dixie Chicks?)

But now as then we have the illusion of consensus, an illusion based on a process in which anyone questioning the preferred narrative is immediately marginalized, no matter how strong his or her credentials. And now as then the press often seems to have taken sides. It has been especially striking how often questionable assertions are reported as fact. How many times, for example, have you seen news articles simply asserting that the United States has a “debt crisis,” even though many economists would argue that it faces no such thing?

In fact, in some ways the line between news and opinion has been even more blurred on fiscal issues than it was in the march to war. As The Post’s Ezra Klein noted last month, it seems that “the rules of reportorial neutrality don’t apply when it comes to the deficit.”

What we should have learned from the Iraq debacle was that you should always be skeptical and that you should never rely on supposed authority. If you hear that “everyone” supports a policy, whether it’s a war of choice or fiscal austerity, you should ask whether “everyone” has been defined to exclude anyone expressing a different opinion. ...


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/opinion/krugman-marches-of-folly.html?_r=0

Riaz Haq said...

From Newsweek:

Israel was singled out in 2007 as a top espionage threat against the U.S. government, including its intelligence services, in a newly published National Security Agency (NSA) document obtained by fugitive leaker Edward Snowden, according to a news report Monday.

The document also identified Israel, along with North Korea, Cuba and India, as a “leading threat” to the infrastructure of U.S. financial and banking institutions.

The threats were listed in the NSA’s 2007 Strategic Mission List, according to the document obtained by journalist/activist Glenn Greenwald, a founding editor of The Intercept, an online magazine that has a close relationship with Snowden, a former NSA and CIA contractor who fled the U.S. with thousands of top-secret documents last year.

Newsweek Magazine is Back In Print

In this new document, Israel was identified by the NSA as a security threat in several areas, including “the threat of development of weapons of mass destruction” and “delivery methods (particularly ballistic and nuclear-capable cruise missiles).” The NSA also flagged Israel’s “WMD and missile proliferation activities” and “cruise missiles” as threats.

In a section of the document headed “Foreign Intelligence, Counterintelligence; Denial & Deception Activities: Countering Foreign Intelligence Threats,” Israel was listed as a leading perpetrator of “espionage/intelligence collection operations and manipulation/influence operations…against U.S. government, military, science & technology and Intelligence Community” organs.

The term “manipulation/influence operations” refers to covert attempts by Israel to sway U.S. public opinion in its favor. In this, Israel has dubious company, according to the NSA: Other leading threats were listed as China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, France, Venezuela and South Korea.

Israel has similar company in threats against U.S. infrastructure, according to the NSA document. Under a section headed “Mastering Cyberspace and Preventing an Attack on U.S. Critical Information Systems,” Israel, India, North Korea and Cuba are identified as “FIS [financial/banking system] threats.” Israel also appears on the list of countries believed by the NSA to be “enabling” electronic warfare “producers/proliferators.”

http://www.newsweek.com/israel-flagged-top-spy-threat-us-new-snowdennsa-document-262991

Riaz Haq said...

''The Hollywood Jews created a powerful cluster of images and ideas - so powerful that, in a sense, they colonized the American imagination.'' Neil Gabler "An Empire of Their Own"
The 2014 Hollywood Diversity Report released this week by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA suggests that the media and entertainment industry is dominated by white men.

The UCLA report finds that only 16.7 percent of film leads, 17.8 percent of film directors, and 11.8 percent of movie writers between 2011 and 2013 were people of color. What the report fails to mention is the obvious fact that most white men dominating Hollywood are Jews.

http://www.riazhaq.com/2015/02/politically-correct-ucla-hollywood.html

Riaz Haq said...

I'm sorry: #UK Ex PM #Blair takes blame for #Iraq War, Creation of #ISIS. #BlairWarCriminal http://dailym.ai/1LULZMT via @MailOnline

Former PM makes the confession after 12 years of refusing to apologise
Blair says he is sorry for his conduct which has now led to 'hell' in Iraq
Says there is an element of truth that the war caused the rise of ISIS
Comes after Lord Blunkett revealed he had challenged Blair about the war

Tony Blair has finally said sorry for the Iraq War – and admitted he could be partly to blame for the rise of Islamic State.
The extraordinary confession by the former Prime Minister comes after 12 years in which he refused to apologise for the conflict.
Blair makes his dramatic ‘mea culpa’ during a TV interview about the ‘hell’ caused by his and George Bush’s decision to oust Saddam Hussein.

Riaz Haq said...

Donors vs Voters


http://archive.jsonline.com/news/opinion/election-donors-vs-voters-g675tj0-175510321.html/


It's both comical and depressing at the same time. One commercial says Mitt Romney will raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000 followed immediately by an ad claiming President Barack Obama's plan will raise taxes on the same people by $5,000. The next ad tells us that Romney wants to throw Grandma out in the cold by dismantling Medicare. Two minutes later, an earnest voice informs us that Obama has "stolen" $700 billion from Medicare to pay for Obamacare and its government death panels.

After almost two years of nonstop recall elections, we in Wisconsin have grown so inured to political advertising that it amounts to little more than irritating background noise. But to someone from the 41 non-battleground states, the incessant politicking must be pretty astonishing.

Maybe people from California or Texas might feel as though they are being taken for granted when they see the amounts being spent in Wisconsin. Perhaps they're jealous at all the special attention being lavished on Wisconsin by the next president. But what does all that spending really amount to?

Yes, it is easy to tune out the ads and to roll your eyes when one comes on every 15 minutes, but there is something very disturbing going on beneath all this that isn't so amusing. Because today's politicians rely so heavily on television advertising and believe that they absolutely have to have it to win their elections, raising money has become their primary mission.

It's why Gov. Scott Walker spent so much time out of state at big-ticket fundraisers before his recall election, all the while claiming the recall effort was being driven by out-of-state interests. It didn't matter how hypocritical it looked; money was what he needed to win the recall election.

It's why Romney spent so little time campaigning even as his campaign was faltering after the Republican National Convention; he apparently believed fundraising was more important than campaign rallies in front of actual voters.

It's why Obama still attends as many Wall Street-sponsored fundraisers as he can, even as he simultaneously campaigns on the evils of the unregulated greed of the big banks. It's all money all the time.

What gets lost in this sea of campaign cash is the average voter's voice. If Romney thinks he absolutely has to win Wisconsin to get elected, he should be practically living here, telling us what he is going to do to make our lives better. Instead, he's in Texas, which he will carry by 15 points because that's where the big campaign donors live.

So the next time you hear an ad telling you that Obama has destroyed the country or that Romney's only purpose in life is to make the lives of the super-rich even cushier, remember what you aren't hearing is what the candidate is going to do for us here in Wisconsin.

Remember that the commercial cost a lot of money to produce and put on the air. Remember that the candidate got that money from someone who has his own agenda and it probably isn't the same as yours. Remember the candidate's loyalty that may have been bought by the donor.

Then remember how a democracy is supposed to work, and let's all try to figure out a way to get back to that.

Riaz Haq said...

Ex #CIA officer Valerie Plame blames #Jews for #America's wars on behalf of #Israel, then backtracks. #Iran #Iraq

http://www.jpost.com/International/Former-CIA-officer-blames-Jews-for-Americas-wars-505676

Valerie Plame Wilson, a former covert CIA operative, caused a controversy on Thursday when she tweeted several antisemitic messages to her nearly 50,000 followers.

''American Jews are driving America's Wars,'' the rampage began. The tweet linked to an article from UNZ.com, a site that claims "a collection of interesting, important, and controversial perspectives largely excluded from the American Mainstream Media.''


The article, written by Philip Giraldi - whose author page on the site reveals a plethora of articles focusing on Israel and Jewish leaders like former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz - suggested that Jews working in foreign policy-making positions should 'recuse themselves when dealing with the Middle East.''

Twitter users were quick to criticize Plame Wilson, who then charged that her retweet was ''not an endorsement'' before sharing that she is ''of Jewish descent.'' She then told Twitter users to ''put aside [their] biases and think clearly.''

In what could be construed as a contradiction, the pinned tweet at the top of Plame Wilson's page links to a GoFundMe petition that aims to ban President Donald Trump from Twitter for his use of the platform to encourage what she labeled 'violence and hate.'

With Twitter users lambasting her for her comments, Plame Wilson sent out several apologetic tweets two hours after her original controversial one. She tweeted that she "messed up'' having only skimmed the article, and that the whole situation was ''a doozy.'' She then replaced the pinned tweet about Trump with her apology.

"There is so much there that's problematic,'' the tweets continued. "Thank you for pushing me to look again.''

Plame Wilson was the center of a political scandal in the early 2000s after her identity as a covert officer in the CIA was leaked by a journalist. Plame Wilson had penned a memo to senior officials in which she recommended her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for a diplomatic mission to investigate claims by the then-president that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had purchased uranium from different African countries.

After her husband published several op-eds about the mission and publicly disputed the president's claims, a journalist named Robert Novak "outed" Plame Wilson as an "agency operative on weapons of mass destruction.''

The scandal and subsequent court cases led to Plame Wilson's resignation from the agency in 2005. Since then, she has stayed largely out of the media - aside from selling the rights to her story to Warner Bros. for a film than was highly criticized for its inaccuracies - after moving to New Mexico to work as a consultant.

Riaz Haq said...

Barbara Walters, Celebrated Jewish TV Persona, Dies at 93 - World News - Haaretz.com

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/2022-12-31/ty-article/barbara-walters-celebrated-jewish-tv-persona-dies-at-93/00000185-68b6-d819-a995-fcb7044b0000


Walters made history for women and Jewish anchors on mainstream television and was known for 'inventing intimacy on television'