"The official with access to the transcripts said someone seeking help for the employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, (AIPAC) a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, was recorded asking Ms. Harman, a longtime supporter of its efforts, to intervene with the Justice Department. She responded, the official recounted, by saying she would have more influence with a White House official she did not identify.

In return, the caller promised her that a wealthy California donor — the media mogul Haim Saban — would threaten to withhold campaign contributions to Representative Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who was expected to become House speaker after the 2006 election, if she did not select Ms. Harman for the intelligence post."  NY Times

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Well, god bless the NY Times.  I guess they remember the era of Judy Miller and Michael Gordon after all.

"someone?"  This NY Times story makes it clear that the NY Times believes that Haim Saban was not the caller with whom Representative Harman discussed a scheme to threaten the House Minority Leader with a withholding of campaign donations if Pelosi did not appoint Harman to the chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI).  The Times states that Saban was merely the chosen instrument that the caller (someone) would launch at Pelosi to insure the desired appointment to this extremely sensitive US national security position.

Saban, himself is interesting as a person thought by (someone) to be available for such an errand.  An Israeli/American, he is prominent in Hollywood film production circles and has lots of money.  If I am not mistaken he is the benefactor of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution.  The Saban Center employs, if memory serves me, both Martin Indyk and Kenneth Pollack as scholars.

The question remains - Who was "someone?"  It sounds to me as thought there is a good chance that "someone" was an official at the Israeli embassy in Washington.  Could he have been one of the officials at the embassy who left the United States when faced with FBI investigative pressure over the case of the AIPAC men and Larry Franklin?  One of those Israelis is now back in government as Natanyahu's national security adviser.  Alternatively, was "someone" connected with AIPAC?

If "someone" was a foreign diplomat, then the notion of a conversation like the one discussed is significant.  pl

CQ Politics:

"Rep. Jane Harman, the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.

In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections."  Jeff Stein

—————————————————

Life is just not fair.  Rod Blagojevich was impeached for corruption, is under massive indictment for the same and was pilloried for seeking to bargain with people (various) over President Obama's vacated senate seat.

Jane Harman (according to CQ and Jeff Stein) bargained with a suspected foreign espionage and covert action agent (Israeli) on an open telephone line in a discussion as to whether or not she would attempt to have espionage charges reduced in the case of two men who are still awaiting trial for illegally handing over US secrets to the Israeili embassy.  In return the suspected Israeli operative (not an American) offered to go to Nancy Pelosi to influence her to appoint Harman chair of the House Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), a position in which she would have been able to do a lot for Israel (or anyone else).

Firstly, consider the fact that this spook was comfortable enough with Harman to make her an offer like that…  Harman and her husband, Sidney, are major figures in the world of political think-tankery, charity, etc.  BENS, WINEP, AIPAC, JINSA, etc.  They get around.  She has had to "settle" for a lesser committee chairmanship.  As I said, life is not fair.

Then there is the fact that this spook said that he, a foreigner, would go to the minority leader of the House of Representatives (Pelosi) with some prospect of success to ask for Harman to be made chairman of the HPSCI.  Chutzpah indeed!  There must have been a good case that he knew Pelosi well enough for Harman to think that plausible.  I guess if enough people go to enough dinner parties, eventually everyone knows everyone?

Who was this person, the mysterious voice on the phone?  Did he flee the country at some point?  Is he now likely to visit Washington soon as a member of a new government?  Will there be a dinner party?  pl

PS.  There is some thought that the "Israeli operative" may be a naturalized dual Israeli/American national.  This is unclear, but not very important.

In the meantime, here are a few photographs of Secretary Clinton in Jerusalem:

Secretary Clinton lays a wreath in memory of the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust. This memorial took place at the Yad Vashem Memorial Hall of Remembrances.

Secretary Clinton signs the Guest Book.

Chairman of Yad Vashem Memorial Rabbi Israel Meir Lau and Secretary Clinton viewing “Wall Painting Under Duress” by Jewish artist Bruno Schultz who was shot afterward by the SS.

I have hope that if anyone can make headway in pursuit of peace in this region, Hillary Clinton can, and I pray she does.

And now, for the puppy update: the puppies and Lucy went to the vet today for their first visit. Everyone was healthy, according to the vet. And, all of the vet techs oohed and ahhed over them all. Several want to adopt puppies and another client there fell in love with one of the puppies. That’s what I want for these puppies - people who take good care of their animals, and use good veterinarians (my vet clinic is an AAHA - American Animal Hospital Association - clinic). Here are the puppies after their first big outing (their mom was outside for a moment):

Aren’t they just break-our-heart cute?? They weigh about one pound each right now. Still not sure who the baby daddy was, but hopefully NOT a St. Bernard as someone suggested! Everyone is doing well. Thank heavens.

Anyone (like Barack Obama) entertaining ideas of western democracies establishing friendly relations with the radicals of the Islamic world should watch this video.

While watching the inflammatory rhetoric of the speaker, remember that this is not a jahidist from Iran but a professor from Kuwait - a country with every reason to be grateful to the USA for liberating it from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein’s invasion.

Qatar, the country from which it was broadcast, is also supposed to be one of the Middle East countries more friendly to the USA than others in the region.

Together with increasing criticism from supposedly friendly Iraqis about America’s operations in the region, it suggests that America is fighting a losing battle in its attempts to win friends in the region, and that a final showdown with Islamic extremism is inevitable, since there is no room for compromise with people who believe as this Kuwaiti professor does.

"A think tank founded recently by The Jewish Agency.

The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute was established in 2002 by the Jewish Agency for Israel to be an independent professional policy planning think tank entrusted with the mission of promoting the identity, culture, prosperity, and continuity of the Jewish People. Every year, leaders of the Jewish world including such distinguished personalities as Dennis Ross, Shimon Peres, Natan Sharansky, Malcolm Hoenlein, Tzipi Livni, participate in JPPPI’s conferences and meetings that forecast the Jewish condition. The Institute conducts meetings, publishes reports and position papers, and produce contingency plans that help shape the future course of the global Jewish community.  Wiki

—————————————–

This is undoubtedly a laudable institution, but is it an institution that should be the "day job" of the US presidential envoy to and for Iran?  Should we be surprised if Muslims do not think Dennis Ross an unbiased American negotiator?

Dennis Ross is the Chairman of the Board of this group and a former head and present counselor of the "Washington Institute for Near East Policy."  (WINEP)  For those who know not, WINEP is one of a galaxy of Washington groups that exist within the orbit of AIPAC, the Zionist lobby.  There are others;  the "Jewish Institute for National Security," (JINSA), "Business Executives for National Security" (BENS), etc.

Ross served as a presidential envoy in the Clinton Administration negotiations with the Palestinians.  His role in the catastrophic failure of the Camp David 2 talks has yet to be fully appreciated by the general public.  In essence, he brought together Ehud Barak (Israeli PM) and Yasser Arafat (PLO chief) in an isolated location for the purpose of "pressure cooker" negotiations with the Palestinians to forge a final, end state solution for the Palestine problem.  This process failed when the Palestinians could not or would not carry the negotiations into areas for which they felt that they had no prior agreement among the various Arab governments that had met at Rabat on the subject.  What Ross did not comprehend or accept before Camp David 2 was that the Palestinian delegation did not have a "blank check" to negotiate outside the Arab consensus and that the enforced isolation at Camp David kept them from the possibility of achieving a new consensus while the talks were underway.  Failure inevitably ensued and the situation has continued to deteriorate ever since.

As I have written before, the assumption that Iran is an implacable enemy of the United States, and a country that is not accessible by reason on the basis of its national interest is a self fulfilling policy position.

If Dennis Ross is made the US special envoy to Iran there is every reason to believe from his prior statements and actions that he will proceed on the basis of that flawed assumption.  pl

…………………………….

Ed. Note: As Larry Johnson wrote about Pat Lang’s other recent post on “Israel’s Gaza Misadventure,” “Pat Lang is a dear friend and a brilliant scholar. He established the Arabic program at West Point, he headed up the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Middle East Division in the 1989-1991 timeframe, and he fought in combat in Vietnam. He is steeped in both politics and military strategies and tactics. When he writes (or speaks) one ought to listen.” Pat’s thought-provoking blog is Sic Semper Tyrannis, and includes his biography.

First, there was this article in the Chicago Sun Times, Vandals Deface Three Local Synagogues:

Vandals spray-painted the words “Death to Israel’’ on two synagogues and a Jewish school early Saturday in three separate incidents police say could be linked and are being investigated as hate crimes.

In each case, the vandals — at times donning masks — used orange-colored paint, also shattering glass windows with bricks and rocks at two of the buildings.

A witness and security cameras identified the perpetrators as two men.

Moshe Perlstein, rabbi at Lubavitch Mesivta of Chicago, said cameras captured video of the men damaging his rabbinical school at 2756 W. Morse starting at around 4:40 a.m. The footage shows one man spray-painting the side of the building while the other ran around to the front and threw rocks at the front door, breaking a glass window, he said. The video has been turned over to police.

That was not the end of it. There was more:

Similar graffiti was found at Anshe Motele Congregation, 6526 N. California, rabbi Alan Abramson said.

Lincolnwood police said vandals also scrawled “Death to Israel’’ and “Free Palestine’’ on the outside walls of Lincolnwood Jewish Congregation, 7117 N. Crawford. Mitchell Sandler, past president of the congregation, said they threw at least two bricks at the front doors, damaging four windows.

Lincolnwood Police Lt. Mark Brines said police were notified at 6:10 a.m. that a caretaker in the building heard a brick crash through a window at the temple. The caretaker saw “two unknown males running from the scene,’’ Brines said.

Because all three buildings were used by orthodox Jews, Sandler said it appeared the men were targeting more devout Jews.

“This was a cowardly act in the middle of the night,’’ Sandler said. “Obviously there is dismay because of what’s been happening in the Middle East.’’

Local Jewish leaders were alarmed by what they see as a “rash’’ of incidents targeting Jews.

“It’s disturbing,’’ said Jay Tcath, senior vice president of the Chicago Jewish Federation.

Disturbing, indeed. Whenever a group is targeted, when a hate crime occurs, it is disturbing. And there is yet more:

The incidents come a little more than a week after Ida Crown Jewish Academy, at 2828 W. Pratt, received a mailed bomb threat that also made reference to other Chicago-area Jewish institutions and day schools, said Jay Tcath, senior vice president of the Chicago Jewish Federation.

And police said they are investigating as a hate crime a Dec. 29 incident in which a man hurled a Molotov cocktail at Temple Sholom of Chicago, 3480 N. Lake Shore Dr., after making “derogatory comments’’ to a passerby.

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force has been notified, police said.

No arrests have been made.

Next, Jewish Odysseus had this disturbing story via Mugata: German “Police” Join Jew-Hating Muslim Mob:

1:16 AM Received from Muqata Blog Reader in Germany, Sebastian M.

Today, 10.000 people demonstrated against Israel here in my hometown Duisburg (Germany) and to express their solidarity with Hamas. So, my girlfriend and me put two Israel flags out of the windows of our flat in the 3rd floor. During the demonstration which went through our street the police broke into our flat and removed the flag of Israel. The statement of the police was to de-escalate the situation, because many youth demonstrators were on the brink of breaking into our apartment house. Before this they threw snowballs, knifes and stones against our windows and the complete building. We both were standing on the other side of the street and were shocked by seeing a police officer standing in our bedroom and opening the window to get the flag. The picture illustrate this situation. The police acquiesced in the demands of the mob.

That’s a police officer removing the flag of Israel, just in case you couldn’t tell.

I understand that many people are angry and frustrated with Israel right now. I really do. Larry Johnson had a great piece on this very issue at No Quarter (”This Will Sicken You“). They are not innocent bystanders in this current conflict with Gaza, as they move into deeply populated areas clearly indicates.

That being said, I don’t think it is a stretch to say that for something like this to happen in Germany, for police officers to join in with an anti-Jew mob, raises a pretty ugly specter. We HAVE seen this before, and none of us can allow that to stand. Despite Israel’s incursions into Gaza, we cannot allow the pendulum to swing that far back again. Not in Germany. Not in Israel. Not in Gaza. Not in Bosnia. Not in Serbia. Not in Rwanda. We must be vigilant that this kind of atrocity does not happen again, that groups are not slaughtered for their ethnicity, their religious beliefs, or their political beliefs. We must be brokers for peace.

There is a group who does just that, for Israel and Palestine. For any place where there is war or injustice. Women in Blackis a collective of peace activists who realize that women have a different perspective of war. When I lived in Cambridge, Arabic and Jewish women would hold vigils - together - to call for an end to the violence between Israel and Palestine. They represented the mothers, sisters, daughters of people who had been, or were being killed. They represented the ones who brought forth those who were being killed, or tended to the wounded. Yes, they had a different perspective, indeed. Some of them had seen firsthand the devastation in the Middle East. From their website:

Who are Women in Black?

Women in Black… is a world-wide network of women committed to peace with justice and actively opposed to injustice, war, militarism and other forms of violence. As women experiencing these things in different ways in different regions of the world, we support each other’s movements. An important focus is challenging the militarist policies of our own governments. We are not an organisation, but a means of communicating and a formula for action.

It is a start to end the violence, not just in Israel and Gaza, but around the world. Mothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, granddaughters and nieces, working to end injustice in the world, and violence, whether on a whole scale like war, or on the home front, like domestic violence. These women unite for that - peace. And that would be a cause well worth “fighting” for, wouldn’t it?

“Hamas’ charter calls for the destruction of the State of Israel and its replacement with a Palestinian Islamic state in the area that is now Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.”

Israel is right to attack Hamas in Gaza. The Palestinians are wrong to have elected Hamas as their leaders. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, Gaza is being lead by an illegitimate terrorist organization bent on the destruction of Israel. This “government,” put in place by Palestinians, has repeatedly attacked Israel with hundreds of rockets, suicide bombers, and decades of unthinkable bloodshed and fear.

Israel is not trying to win a popularity contest on the world stage, and nightly news showing civilian causalities is heartbreaking and does nothing to endear the world to the Jewish state. But Israel is following the American model of toppling the Taliban: if you support and harbor terrorists, you are a terrorist. Hamas is aware of anti-Israel sentiment and they have a history of fabricating “atrocities” to inflame the world against Israel.

The American Left distrusts power, the military, and the use of force. As the bumper sticker says, they’re “already against the next war.” But I’ve noticed another disturbing trend: left wing anti-Semitism.

Before I point this out I want to make two points. First, I am not Jewish; my ancestry is English and Christian. Secondly, I understand that most people who oppose Israel’s current actions are not anti-Semitic.

However, there is a virulent strain of antisemitism on the American Left. I believe that the moral equivalence argument and analogy between the State of Israel and the Nazi regime is anti-Semitic. The atrocities committed by the Nazi clique, mass murder on an industrial scale (some camps murdering 20,000 souls per day), was an evil so grotesque and nearly beyond comprehension that special care must be taken when speaking about an event which cost so many innocents their lives.

Israel is a secular, multi-ethnic democracy who is defending herself against a terrorist organization. Hamas like Al-Qaeda, is an off-shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. “Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan, and the United States, and is banned in Jordan, Australia, and the United Kingdom.”

The allegedly intelligent blogger, Joseph Cannon, has posted an image based on Nazi propaganda. The soldier’s Swastika has been replaced with a Star of David. As if this wasn’t bad enough, Cannon then uses select quotes from the Bible’s books Deuteronomy and Joshua to attack the secular Jewish State. This selective quoting of religious texts to attack a people is a familiar form of religious bigotry perpetrated on Muslims and Christians today and, historically, on Jews, as if Jews today have to answer for every word of a 5,000 year old religion. Cannon is engaged in Jew-baiting, and it’s despicable.

Additionally, Cannon uses the canard that Israel possess “stolen” land. He writes: “keep in mind that this story is about land theft, pure and simple. The Lord is here the ultimate fall guy, the original Nuremburg excuse: ‘Hey, we didn’t want to commit genocide; we were only following orders.’”

It’s unfortunate that Cannon uses the Nazi tribunals and religious text as a comparison to a secular democracy defending itself from terrorists’ attacks.

Cannon’s writing then veers close to Der Stürmer, the anti-Semitic rag of Nazism:

Too many Jews learned the wrong lesson from World War II. The victims of persecution came to equate strength with a willingness to persecute others. Like many other peoples in many other times and places, a large number of Jews were seduced into the false belief that the hardest heart beats longest.

But history teaches a very different lesson. Hitler’s Germany did not last. The Third Reich was destroyed for its evil. Germany was divided like an earthworm. Yet it recovered. Who can deny that — in the long run — the best thing ever to happen to Germany was the eradication of its government and its (temporary) loss of national sovereignty at the end of World War II?

~snip~

Israel must be destroyed, just as Hitler’s Germany was destroyed. All Jews throughout the world must forevermore rid themselves of the lunatic, racist dream of “Jewish state.” Jews living in Israel will either agree to live in a single multi-ethnic democracy in which everyone ruled (directly or indirectly) by the government has an equal vote — or they will die in their madness.

The madness of Cannon’s thesis is his shameful omission of Hamas’ terrorism, the numerous murders, suicide bombers, rockets launched at innocent Israeli citizens, and kidnapping of IDF soldiers. He deplores the establishment of a Jewish state, but ignores the goal of Hamas to establish an Islamic state. Nor does he mention that Israel does have non-Jewish citizens, including Muslims, Druze, and Christians. His rage is directed at the idea that a people can establish a homeland, but clearly he is uneducated at the plight of Jews in pre-World War Two Europe. He claims that “too many Jews learned the wrong lesson in World War Two,” but he fails to note that the assimilated Jews of Europe were nearly all murdered exactly because they had no where to turn when anti-Semitism reared its ugly head.

Cannon then goes on to say that the “Old Testament,” is evil:

In my explorations, I have never found any other “sacred” text dripping with the inexcusable bloodlust and hate one can find in the Old Testament. My sympathies now lie with the Gnostics, who considered much of that book evil

Cannon is referring to the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. His ignorance is profound. The Jewish Torah (as it’s called in Judaism) and the Old Testament are not identical. This shows his utter ignorance and bigotry. But of course Cannon is not alone.

In a similar vein, a commentator named Alibe on American Girl in Italy’s recent post writes:

The current war between Hamas and Israel is not war. This is the equivalent of The Germans clearing out the Warsaw Ghetto. Gaza has been a ghetto. Israel has treated the people of gaza as less than human. They have tried to control every aspect of life in Gaza. Just as the Nazis tried to control the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, the Israelis have morphed into the Nazis and now use the same thinking the Nazis did.

Besides the author’s ahistorical understanding of the Holocaust, the analogy also falls apart when you point out that the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto were not launching rockets at the civilian population of Poland nor did they have it as their charter to destroy the nation of Germany — although Germany’s anti-Semitic propaganda claimed they did.

As I wrote on the same post:

Land was not “taken away” from Palestinians. Jewish holocaust survivors [and others] fought the British who controlled a colony the British called Palestine, which was never a Palestinian state. In fact, there has never been a country called Palestine. There’s a democracy in that region, called Israel, which continues to be attacked by a terrorist government, called Hamas. Israel is now dismantling this terrorist organization, an organization — by the way — whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and who has killed thousands of Israelis.

Israel is open to criticism. And friends of Israel, like Larry Johnson, have been critical of this military action against Hamas in Gaza.

Liberal antisemitism is hateful and ubiquitous. A Daily Kos diarist, Susan Jumper, wrote that she’d like to “gas” the Jewish Sen. Joseph Lieberman, and others on her post compared Sen. Lieberman to a dog that should be killed.

Similarly, during an anti-Israel demonstration in Florida, protesters shouted:

“Did Israel take notes during the Holocaust? Happy Hanukkah.”

And:

To the dozen or so supporters of Israel gathered across the street, one demonstrator shouted: “Murderers! Go back to the ovens! You need a big oven.”

While it’s inflammatory to call someone a Nazi, I believe it’s anti-Semitic to call Israelis Nazis. Just as it’s correctly verboten for whites to use the N-word, it’s equally offensive to engage in this not so subtle form of Jew-baiting. Barely disguised anti-Semitism (or the outright murderous fantasies of Daily Kos’ Susan Jumper, Joseph Cannon, and the protesters in Florida) have become très chic in Europe and the United States. We can argue over matters of policy, but false comparisons, attacks based on religious texts, and code words have no place in our discourse. It’s important to point out that words have implications, and it’s clear that anti-Semitism is being implied.

As Israelis say about the Holocaust, Never Again. Never again.

Wow, the memories this story brings back! Do any of the rest of you remember the utterly insane General Tony McPeak who Obama, straight-faced, introduced as his chief military adviser? (Which made us all gasp with genuine fear?)

I wonder where Gen. McPeak is these days? Have any of you seen him anywhere recently? Is he maybe 7,000 miles away under that bus in American-Samoa along with Howard Dean?

[See: "Notable Absence of Howard Dean, January 9, 2009."]

Gen. Tony McPeak, Obama’s top military adviser, was interviewed by a newspaper about the Israeli/Palestinian peace process:

The interviewer asked McPeak: “So where’s the problem? State? White House?”

McPeak replied: “New York City. Miami. We have a large vote — vote, here in favor of Israel. And no politician wants to run against it.”

Translation (as if it’s needed): Jews — who put Israel over every American interest — control America’s policy on the Middle East. And McPeak has the audacity to accuse Bill Clinton of McCarthyism.

For more on Gen. McPeak, read Larry Johnson’s post, “Senator Obama, Have You No Decency?” [The photo above comes from Saturday's rally in Medford, Oregon. Larry quotes from their speeches at that rally.]

Below, “Obama church published Hamas terror manifesto: Compares charter calling for murder of Jews to Declaration of Independence,” along with the PDF of the actual Obama church bulletin:

More:

Sen. Barack Obama’s Chicago church reprinted a manifesto by Hamas that defended terrorism as legitimate resistance, refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist and compared the terror group’s official charter – which calls for the murder of Jews – to America’s Declaration of Independence.

Yet more:

The revelation follows a recent WND article quoting Israeli security officials who expressed “concern” about Robert Malley, an adviser to Obama who has advocated negotiations with Hamas and providing international assistance to the terrorist group.

In his July 22, 2007, church bulletin, Wright reprinted an article by Mousa Abu Marzook, identified in the newsletter as a “deputy of the political bureau of Hamas.” A photo image of the newsletter was captured and posted today by the business blog BizzyBlog. The Hamas piece was first published by the Los Angeles Times, garnering the newspaper much criticism.

According to senior Israeli security officials, Marzook, who resides in Syria alongside Hamas chieftain Khaled Meshaal, is considered the “brains” behind Hamas, designing much of the terror group’s policies and ideology. Israel possesses what it says is a large volume of specific evidence that Marzook has been directly involved in calling for or planning scores of Hamas terrorist offensives, including deadly suicide bombings. He was also accused of attempting to set up a Hamas network in the U.S. …

He tried to set up a Hamas network in the U.S. Yet, Obama’s pastor for 20 years thinks so highly of him that he posts his writings in the CHURCH BULLETIN? I hardly know what to say.

NOTE: I have uploaded the actual church bulletin: tuccbulletin_july22.pdf

The “Pastor’s Page” (Jeremiah Wright’s page) features this: “A FRESH VIEW OF THE PALESTINIAN STRUGGLE,” written by Mousa Abu Marzook.

ALSO: Someone used multiple usernames, fake e-mail addresses, and multiple IP numbers to spam this comment area. I wanted to write an e-mail to have a calm discussion with the person, but that's not possible because I can't write to fake e-mail addresses. If you wish to undo your suspension, you have to e-mail me at susanunpc at gmail dot com, and we will discuss this rationally. No one is permitted to use fake e-mail addresses if for no other reason than we need, sometimes, to be able to e-mail you! We ALWAYS prefer a resolution to suspension, but you have to make yourself available by using a legitimate e-mail address (which NO ONE ELSE sees except Larry and me).]

Is puma the new jew - a people persecuted for their beliefs, and eventually for their failure to fall in line, and follow the chosen one?

Now, I am not saying that PUMAS have been subjected to the horrors of the holocaust, or the years and years of persecution, but I thought it was a snappy intro that might grab your attention.

I started this post with the intent of trying to better understand the current Israel/Hamas conflict, by creating *what if’s*. I thought if I brought the concepts *home* I might be able to better understand the anger and outrage coming from both sides. The process, and research led me to thinking about the hate directed towards one group for holding beliefs different than the majority, which brings me to the comment, *is puma the new jew*.

For example, following 9/11, do I think the US had a right to launch a nuclear attack on Al Qaeda territory? The attack on 9/11 was massive, devastating, and had lasting effects, and still does. Would I have approved of a massive attack, including dropping a nuclear bomb in the heart of Afghanistan, or Pakistan, or wherever they were hiding? Honestly, for about 30 seconds, I probably would have ok’d it. But, too many innocent lives would have been lost, and as much damage 9/11 did, I would never want to inflict that kind of damage on innocent civilians.

Or, another example. Take Iraq. Thousands, hundreds of thousands?, of Iraqi civilians have died because of the US decision to invade and drive Saddam from power. There has been massive devastation to the infrastructure and massive amounts of casualties. Do the Iraqi people have a justification to drop a nuclear bomb in the US? They have been living in a war zone for 6 years. Now, I know that a lot of the fighting has been coming from al Qaeda and Iraqi resistance but I also see on TV a lot of Iraqis who view the US as occupiers. Would they be justified in a massively disproportionate response like a nuclear bomb? (My answer would be no, btw.)

Or how about, as Wright said, the idea that on 9/11 our *chickens came home to roost*. The US, however you feel about our foreign policy, is viewed as having done a lot of good, and a lot of bad, around the world. Al Qaeda, who believe the US has done a lot of bad in the world flew planes into the Twin Towers, Pentagon, and attempted into the White house or Capital, killing thousands of civilians. Should that be viewed as a proportional or non-proportional attack on the US? Sure seemed non-proportional to me! We are told that Al Qaeda attacked us for our continued influence in Muslim countries, and the US support of Israel. Apparently, after years of (perceived?) intrusive behavior from the US, they launched a massive assault on the US. Osama Bin laden said he was first inspired to attack the United States by the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon in which towers and buildings in Beirut were destroyed in the siege of the capital. (Personally, I don’t think it is possible to provide rational thought to religious extremists.)

Anyway, these are scenarios I kicked around in my brain, trying to come to an understanding of the Israeli/Hamas conflict. As I was pondering these scenarios, my mind wandered to why Hamas, and all Muslim countries want to eliminate Israel’s existence. Why do Muslims hate Jews? Is it just based on their religious beliefs? I ask because Jews have been persecuted throughout history, long before the UN decision in ‘47. Or is it because the UN established the Partition Plan for Palestine (which I don’t think they were too happy about)? Or more so because Israel fought, and expanded their borders beyond the Partition Plan? Or has Israel done things to Muslim countries? (I’m asking.)

I don’t understand, and am trying to, the reasons at the heart of the attacks on Israel, and the passionate defense of either side, on this web site, and around the world. Is Israel 100% without fault, and innocent, suffering at the hands of terrorist attacks, and within their right to respond as they are, on Gaza? (I’m asking.) Is their any validity in the attacks by Hamas, and Muslim countries as to their hatred of Israel? (I’m asking.) Heck, should the Partition Plan even have happened, and was it *legal*? And if so, I would assume that Israel does have the right to exist, and they are being terrorized. Is there anything that will resolve this situation? Will redrawing the borders back to the 1947 Plan work? What??

Anyway, from there, I started thinking about Jewish people in Israel, and how they live in such a small country surrounded by countries that hate them. And I was, as I said above, trying to figure out the reasons why. I know it has been written about, blogged about, talked about, to death, but I like to simplify things so I understand them.

I was reading around in the blogosphere, and reading a lot of other blogs, especially ones attacking Larry for his comments about the disproportionate response by Israel (which labeled him anti-Semitic and got rather ugly and nasty) I found myself reading lots of hateful posts about PUMAS. Honestly, I was shocked. Now, having lived through the past year or two, blogging and commenting about my support for Hillary, and initial like, but growing dislike for all things Obama, I knew there was lots of anger towards Hillary supporters.

I have written many times before, that from the day I eagerly logged on, put my fingers to the keys, and proudly wrote, *I support Hillary.* I was attacked, called a racist, and worse. (And, I even liked Obama in the beginning. Didn’t know anything about him, but thought he looked interesting, and wanted to get to know more. It was when I began to learn more, that I fell out of favor.)

The divide in the Dem party grew and grew, with Hillary supporters frustration and anger growing as the primary went on, and the hatred spewing from the Obama supporters worsening. Hillary supporters (and yes, not all are perfect. There were some racist comments made by a small group of people, and yes, some even got nasty, but I think as a whole, people just believed that Hillary was the best candidate - and there were some who were for Edwards in the beginning, and when he dropped out, they preferred Hillary over Obama) were, dare I say, victimized because they weren’t buying into the One. We became disenchanted with our party, outraged at the tactics used, the racist cards thrown, the death threats, etc. And personally, the way the media behaved, woke me from my liberal media bubble and made me re-evaluate the way I saw the Right, and the past eight years. I didn’t become *an angry puma* until I was subjected over and over again to attacks for my support of my candidate, and watched the primary unfold, and the attacks on my candidate.

Now, as I peruse the blogosphere, I am appalled at so many attacks on PUMAS. I don’t even want to say PUMAS, but Hillary supporters. There were so many different PUMA factions, and different *leaders* and groups, and blogs, that it never really became a well-oiled organization. It was just a whole lot of pissed off voters, who didn’t like what they saw happening, and tried to take a stand, and make their voices heard, as quickly as possible. Some more so than others, some till the day they die. Honestly, even though I called myself a PUMA, I never really followed any of the groups, I just rejected Obama, and the Democrat party, and found others, like me.

Now, this brings me all the way back to my beginning, *is puma the new jew*. A people persecuted for their beliefs, and eventually for their failure to fall in line, and follow the chosen one.

To bring Judaism into modern times, the last 2000 years, Jews rejected Jesus as the son of God, which was a major turning point in western history. Jesus was a major game changer in our history. The acceptance of Jesus changed things politically and religiously.

Personally, I see this more so in a political arena, than a religious one, of the Jewish elders reluctance to Jesus as the son of God. I think they saw him as gaining a huge following, and gaining strength as a leader. Perhaps they just didn’t believe him, or what he claimed, or perhaps they were afraid of losing power. But Jesus arrived at a time ripe for change. He had garnered a huge following. Some people chose to believe he was *The Chosen One*, the Savior, the Holy One, and others didn’t. Jesus was a Jew, so he wasn’t some stranger from a strange land. He was one of them. But he divided the *party*. Those who followed him, and those who didn’t, whatever the reasons.

But, whatever the reason, they did not accept that Jesus was the savior. They didn’t believe or accept that he was The Chosen One, or sent down from God, as his son, and they have paid for their beliefs ever since.

But wasn’t that their right? To reject an idea or belief of someone else? To reject someone who claims to be the *chosen one* the *one we have been waiting for*? If you don’t believe that this one, is the one, is that not your right?

If you find fault in someone, or try to bring to light something you see as false, isn’t that your right? If you believe, with all of your being, that something is not right, and that what someone is selling is not worthy of buying, isn’t it your right to reject it, to speak out about it?

Why must we hate those who disagree, and speak out for what they believe?

I wrote an email to some friends yesterday about how we have been divided, and I feel lost in the middle somewhere, attacked or offended from both sides, sometimes. I am no longer a Democrat, or Republican, but independent. I read many conservative sites now, but still feel a bit offended every so often, when I read an attack on climate change, or on Hillary or Bill, or on gay marriage, etc. And I can’t enjoy liberal sites anymore, they are too biased towards Obama, or were too vicious during the primary for me to return, or continue to attack Hillary supporters. And I don’t trust them anymore. So, what to do? I am not going to just roll over and give in and start drinking the kool-aid…. especially when the Obama supporters are (slowly) starting to see the light! But if you take a spin in the liberal blogo-zone, you will get the point I am trying to make about all the nasty hate being lobbed our way.

So, for all the haters who will want to jump on me, and say that I am comparing/putting on a level playing field, the hatred towards pumas to the persecution of Jews, calm down. I’m not.

But, I did garner a bit of understanding into what it must feel like, as a Jewish person (and I am talking about Jewish people as individuals, not as a country, and discussing their politics), to be a relative minority, that chose a belief different than the majority, and to be hated for that choice. And not just hated, but to be attacked, and to be wished extinct. Just for believing in something different.

It sucks. And it’s sad.

Richard Cohen’s sister is canceling her inauguration party because of President-elect Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to bless Mr. Obama’s taking the office of the Presidency of the United State.

According to her brother’s column in the Washington Post, what made her do this is the way in which Mr. Obama’s choice to pick this pastor for this occasion serves as a special sort of condoning of Mr. Warren’s views about gays and lesbians.

I agree with Richard Cohen, and apparently his sister, that these views should be regarded as totally unacceptable by anybody who has any sense of the importance of civil rights and indeed of human rights. I also agree with Richard Cohen’s view that as a somebody running for the office of President and who was at the time a U.S. Senator, Mr. Obama had a particular responsibility for denouncing his then-pastor’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ, for giving the anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan a special award during the primary season.

I find it troubling that neither Mr. Cohen nor apparently his sister have not been, as far as I can tell, overly concerned by President-Elect Obama’s equally eloquent silence and inaction regarding the sexism and misogyny directed at Senator Clinton and her supporters, particularly the sophomoric expression of these attitudes by Jon Favreau, the man writing President-elect Obama’s inaugural address. (I shudder to think what the reaction of the Cohen family would have been if Favreau had been found on YouTube horsing around calling somebody a “homo” - maybe then Richard Cohen’s sister would join us in our demand that the President-Elect fire this sophomoric bigot as his chief speech-writer. Whether a bigot is slick (Warren) or juvenile (Favreau), he is still a bigot.)

It is tempting to forget in this sort of dynamic who the real problem is. As is clear from what I have written so far, I wish Richard Cohen and his sister would be, respectively, writing about and canceling inauguration parties as much over Mr. Obama’s inaction in the face of sexism and misogyny as they are in the face of anti-Semitism and gay-bashing. And yes, I wish that Richard Cohen’s sister had paid attention to and given greater weight to the fact that she had the option to work to elect somebody who, both as a Senator and as a Presidential candidate, repeatedly marched in Pride parades and met with editors of gay newspapers across the country rather than working for somebody who would not even have his photograph taken with Gavin Newsome.

But I am not falling into the trap that lies that way. Just because people got it wrong before does not mean they cannot help matters now. People can learn. So despite the bit of complaining above, I am not going to point a finger at Richard Cohen’s sister (or, for that matter, at Katha Pollitt for decrying the misogyny involved in the Warren choice when Pollitt, like Richard Cohen’s sister, opted to support Mr. Obama for the presidency when it was already obvious that he was complacent, to say the least, about sexism and misogyny). I am just pleased that they are starting to pay attention now and apparently coming to understand better who they voted for. To quote Richard Cohen: “The real problem has nothing to do with ministers and everything to do with Obama’s inability or unwillingness to be a moral leader. Sooner or later, he just might have to stand for something.”

Aye, there’s the rub. During the primary season and the general election a friend of mine who spent some considerable amount of time listening to me lament the Democratic Party’s poor judgment in making then-Senator Obama their poster-child, kept saying to me that the real problem with Mr. Obama is that he is an “empty suit”.

That term seemed to me too tepid back then. But I have come to see it as the essential problem behind the problem of Mr. Obama’s inability or unwillingness to be a moral leader, and possibly any kind of leader. To be a moral leader, to stand for something means that you have to fill out your suit, your office, your position. To be an “empty suit” is to be a person who cannot draw a line in the sand, precisely because you do not have an arm and hand within that suit to use to reach out and draw that line. To be an “empty suit” is to be devoid of the weightiness that real leadership requires, including the gravitas to admit to a mistake and change one’s position (drop the bigoted minister and lose the bigoted speechwriter; say you have been wrong to dig in your heels rather than listen to the concerns of so many of the people who worked so hard to elect you). To be an “empty suit” is to be a moral vacuum.

I refused to vote for John McCain for a number of reasons but among them was the fact that while I knew he had the capacity for moral leadership, I did not care for the directions toward which his moral commitments would lead my country. I refused to vote for Barack Obama because I knew he came up empty on the capacity for moral leadership.

In some ways, moral emptiness, especially in a President, is worse than moral wrong-headedness. The morally wrong-headed leader takes a stand, e.g. George W. Bush’s legitimization of torture, and one can rally people against the stand she or he takes. The morally empty leader takes no stand. Under these circumstances, her or his silences often allow people to forget that the blank that exists in lieu of a leader is the appropriate target of criticism. After all, it seems easier to go after people who actually do take stands (Rick Warren, for example) rather than the person who silently enables wrong-headed person to gain in stature. But this is sleight of hand. The real problem is the enabler, the person who allows the sophomoric sexist to put words in his mouth, the person who lets bigoted clerics and their churches affiliate with him.

So, to Richard Cohen’s sister and to Katha Pollitt, I say welcome to my party - the one that got lost in 2008, the one that expected moral leadership of a certain kind from a Democratic president. Now that you are here, I hope you can help me figure out what we are going to do with the empty suit about to occupy the Oval Office. If that empty suit thinks he can pick up sufficient evangelical money and votes in 2012, he is not going to listen to bloggers and op-ed columnists whose votes and followers he thinks he can replace with the support of the evangelicals, regardless of the detestable content of many of their views and some of their conduct. Personally, I do not think we can give the empty suit the sort of backbone necessary to resist the lure of that support. If we cannot give this empty suit some backbone, we need, as I have written before, to start figuring out how we can have a better candidate on offer in 2012. So to the people who are canceling their celebrations, may I suggest that they use the time and effort saved to start solving that problem. We need to coalesce now around somebody who can fight for a nomination by a major Party - probably the the Party formerly recognizable as the Democratic one - who is what Obama’s supporters hoped he would be and what I fear he is not.

UPDATE: The Chicago Tribune (understandably busy with the Blagojevich blow-up) has the “first ever” newspaper interview with the official PEBO. As we said several days ago, PEBO has stated he wants to make a major speech from a muslim capital. Fine.

Barack Obama says his presidency is an opportunity for the U.S. to renovate its relations with the Muslim world, starting the day of his inauguration and continuing with a speech he plans to deliver in an Islamic capital.

And when he takes the oath of office Jan. 20, he plans to be sworn in like every other president, using his full name: Barack Hussein Obama.

Read the rest ->

“I think we’ve got a unique opportunity to reboot America’s image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular,” Obama said Tuesday, promising an “unrelenting” desire to “create a relationship of mutual respect and partnership in countries and with peoples of good will who want their citizens and ours to prosper together.”

The world, he said, “is ready for that message.”

BO seems to think the world is breathlessly anticipating his speech on the matter. Somehow I doubt it will have THAT big an impact, but it’s worth a try. Meanwhile, the UN is planning an “anti-racism” conference in February, 2009. Earlier this month, Forbes magazine did some research on the 2009 conference and the 2001 that spawned it.

From the original NQ post:

Forbes has an interesting article about a new UN “anti-racism” conference. This new conference will be held in Geneva, April 2009, hard on the heels of the last “anti-racism” conference, held in 2001.

The writer says she studied the now notorious 2001 conference while doing background on the upcoming one.

. . . a notoriously anti-Semitic United Nations conference held in 2001 in Durban, South Africa. Billed as an effort to fight racism, that Durban conclave focused instead on vilifying Israel–whipping up hatred to such an extreme that then- Secretary of State Colin Powell ordered the U.S. delegation to walk out.

The new “anti-racism” conference, called Durban Review Conference, is being organized by some people with serious anti-racism chops. Or not.

The 20-member preparatory committee, operating out of Geneva, is chaired by a Libyan ambassador, Najat Al-Hajjaji. Back in 2003, she chaired the U.N.’s former Human Rights Commission, which discredited itself not only by picking Al-Hajjaji, envoy of Libya’s despotic regime, to run the show, but also by slamming Israel 27 times from 2001 to 2006. As the State Department anti-Semitism report notes, this was more than twice the number of UNHRC criticisms leveled during that same period at North Korea, Burma and Sudan combined.

In 2006, as part of a package of U.N. “reforms,” that farce of a Human Rights Commission was dissolved. It was replaced by the current sham of a Human Rights Council, which in its first 16 months spent most of its time issuing 15 criticisms of Israel, and then singled out Israel to become a permanent item on its agenda.

This same Human Rights Council is now providing the official umbrella and support staff for the Durban Review Conference. Among the vice-chairs of the preparatory committee are emissaries of such unfree countries as Iran, Russia, Pakistan and Cameroon (which, according to New York-based Freedom House, still tolerates slavery in its northern reaches). Cuba–where wholesale repression includes the additional frill of job discrimination against Afro-Cubans–fills two seats at this Durban II table, which features both a Cuban vice-chair and Cuba as Rapporteur.

——————-

As for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, he was quick to express horror over the hate that fueled the terrorist assault on Mumbai. But he has done nothing to defuse the ticking bomb of Durban II. Instead, Ban’s office has been dutifully processing the multi-million dollar funding requests of the Durban organizers. The U.S., which contributes an out-sized 22% to Ban’s budget, is planning to withhold a small portion of that money in hope of pressuring the U.N. into better behavior. Good luck. The U.N. dodge has been to re-frame the total conference tab, now estimated at about $5.1 million, as coming mainly from resources already available, plus donations. China has committed $20,000, Russia $600,000 and a number of as-yet-unnamed member states are expected to pony up.

All of which begs the larger point, that U.S. taxpayers are the chief sugar daddies for the entire U.N. system, which–with its logo, premises and diplomatic perquisites–will give this conference a world stage and stamp of authority it would not otherwise enjoy.

The author ends with this.

Among the U.N.’s 192 member states, only two have had the backbone to announce that they will boycott the Durban Review: Canada, and for obvious reasons, Israel. In the U.S., President Bush has deferred any final decision to the next administration. President-elect Obama, what will you do about Durban II?

She asks a veeerrrrryyy interesting question. What will Obama do? He spent lots of campaign time race-baiting and allowed campaign operatives to use sexism and gender attacks. The LGBT and Hispanic communities are now finding BO’s implied anti-discrimination promise somewhat underwhelming. (Not that this should have come as any surprise to anyone paying the smallest amount of attention to the campaign, but I digress.)

Here’s the thing though. Early in his administration, BO will have to contend with organized anti-Semitism from an institution funded largely by the US. He’ll have to take a stand on racism - something he says is deeply important in his life. The idea of racism is so important to Obama he wrote books about it, centered his religious life around it, selected his home community because of it and built his Presidential campaign around it. Now he’ll have to take a stand when the issue does not directly address only himself or AAs. Given the players in this conference, I don’t see how BO can “finesse” this situation. He will either be against what Forbes called “a mob move against Israel,” or he will permit it. He may try to say the issues are complicated and complex, but the last “anti-racism” conference and the players in this one don’t deserve such hair-splitting from the “post-racial” US President who is, after all, supposed to heal the world.

Making this a little more interesting is the fact that Obama has already said as US President he wants to make a major speech from an Islamic country. The NYT thinks BO will go to Egypt.

President-elect Barack Obama’s aides say he is considering making a major foreign policy speech from an Islamic capital during his first 100 days in office.
————
It’s got to be Cairo. Egypt is perfect. It’s certainly Muslim enough, populous enough and relevant enough. It’s an American ally, but there are enough tensions in the relationship that the choice will feel bold. The country has plenty of democracy problems, so Mr. Obama can speak directly to the need for a better democratic model there. It has got the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organization that has been embraced by a wide spectrum of the Islamic world, including the disenfranchised and the disaffected.

Politico seems to think it will be Jakarta.

The Obama donor, Los Angeles real estate executive Ted Leary, recalled that Obama spoke of his plan to donors at a February 20, 2007 breakfast fundraiser at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, soon after announcing his run for president.

“Obama told the 20 or so of us at breakfast that ‘his first trip as President would be to Indonesia - the world’s most populous Muslim country,’” Leary recalled.

Commentary weighed in, not with a pick for the site, but with a comment on the potential speech itself.

The global problems generating from within the Muslim world today are so odious and so obviously self-inflicted that any honest speech on the matter would offend and enrage Muslims the world over. At the same time, because of these very problems, a softball speech about Islam’s current role in global affairs would look like cowardly capitulation. If Obama splits the difference and mixes lukewarm praise with lukewarm condemnation, the stunt will be seen rightly as meaningless.

Obama clearly wants closer ties to Islamic countries, for both foreign policy reasons and personal ones. But how will he handle further Islamic extremism? Does he think once he’s sworn in and speechifies from a carefully chosen Muslim capital that all will be sweetness and light? What, exactly, will it accomplish? But then, what will he do about the rampant anti-Semitism so clearly visible and so acceptable that the UN will sponsor another “notorious” anti-racism event like Durban? This isn’t “genteel” racism, done in code words or through suggestion. This is the real deal, where people regularly say in “polite society” that others do not have a right to live and are the source of all a region’s ills.

What will this post-racial President do? According to the writer at Forbes, another AA had a few words about this. Maybe he should lead the way.

When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism. –The Rev. Martin Luther King, 1968

The latest, it seems they sent out invitations to a White House Hanukkah party using a Christmas Card.

That wagon is not carting in the Hanukkah Bush! You can’t see it in the small print here, but the wagon says White House Christmas Tree 2008

The New York Post has the story here

At least the Jewish people are known for their sense of humor.

“It’s absolutely bizarre to receive an invite to the White House for Hanukkah in a Christmas format,” said one person who was invited. “They should have consulted with their chief of protocol before sending this out. This belongs right in the ‘Weird But True’ column.”

Jewish community leader Isaac Abraham of Brooklyn had a simpler explanation.

“It’s obvious what’s going on here: The Christmas tree is being taken out of the White House and the menorah is being brought in the back,” he quipped.

You couldn’t make this stuff up. And with the Bush Administration we have never had to.

To everyone here at No Quarter and all of our readers, have a great Thanksgiving.

Rob

While the President-elect eventually won over most of the American Jewish community by throwing a few folks under the speeding bus and speaking in centrist tones, there have always been concerns by some Israel supporters about his close associations to fervent Palestinians like Rashid Khalidi and anti-Israel advisors like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Andrew Malley.

Caroline Glick does an excellent job of listing those concerns in the Jerusalem Post. You can read that here

If Glick is right and the United States is ready to change its stance towards Israel, this policy will need to be sold to an Israeli government that always puts the safety of its nation first (in other words, we’ll blow up Iranian nukes whether the U.S. likes it or not) and the American People. If he tries to sell that, the only person who could sell it is Hillary Clinton.

While we have had numerous posts on the political implications of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, we haven’t had much discussion about what her presence would mean to Obama administration policy around the world.

While the world is excited about Barack Obama’s election, he has no credibility on the world stage and has not yet earned the trust of our allies. Through her own work and the goodwill former President Clinton has abroad, Senator Clinton has that trust and credibility. Whatever President Obama wants to sell, he may just need Hillary to sell it.

The concern is, would he use her to try and sell this:

As for direct talks with Iran itself, the question immediately arises, what could Obama offer Teheran in exchange for an end to its nuclear program that Bush hasn’t already offered?

What it can offer is Israel.

Over the past few years, Obama’s top nuclear nonproliferation adviser, Joe Cirincione, has repeatedly advocated placing Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the negotiating table and offering it up in exchange for an Iranian pledge to end its nuclear program. Defense Secretary Robert Gates - whom Obama is considering retaining - insinuated in his 2006 confirmation hearings that Iran is only building nuclear weapons to defend itself against Israel. Gates, it should be recalled, has been instrumental in convincing Bush not only not to attack Iran’s nuclear installations, but not to support an Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear installations.

What is profoundly distressing about statements by men like Cirincione and Gates is what they tell us about the strategic reasoning informing the incoming Obama administration.

Again, I have no idea if this is what an Obama administration will do. Would Senator Clinton as Secretary of State even go along with this kind of policy? What I do know is this, if the new President really wants to change our foreign policy approach radically, John Kerry or Bill Richardson won’t be able to do the job. They can’t walk into a room with other world leaders and say trust me. Hillary Clinton can. That may be why she really is being considered for the job.

Riffing off of the Newsweek editors’ quesiness over the cult of personality surrounding Barack, let me just add that I too think the worshipful descriptions of Barack as a new kind of Messiah is creepy. Guys feeling a tingle up their leg when he talks, swooning women, and fawning reporters is not a healthy situation in a democracy. I was watching the BBC earlier today with the sound off. They played a clip of the former Korean dictator, Kim Il Sung, walking among his people, who cheered and wept at his very appearance. Now, I’m not saying Barack is a Korean dictator, but the mindless praise is eerily similar.

I am amused by the innocent, naive belief by many “Progressives” that their messiah has come and the new era of progressive politics is upon us. One of my Progressive friends sent me the following analysis from Think Progress claiming it is a myth that America is Center-Right:

My friend, who lives in California, was earnest and sincere in sending this along. I sent back a respons–”You have got to be shitting me?” Why? The first piece of evidence is Proposition 8. California, the so-called land of moderate progressives, passed Proposition 8 last Tuesday banning homosexual marriage. Now if that happens in California, what do you think would happen in Kentucky, Kansas or Iowa? At least on the matter of personal sexual conduct when it comes to homosexuality America is very, very conservative.

Personally, I don’t understand why conservatives want to have government regulating conduct between consenting adults. I guess I am a libertarian conservative. I believe that sexual relations between consenting adults is not the business of any government. Worrying about erecting barriers to prevent homosexual men and women from getting married is a silly distraction in a world where we have real problems before us. I am betting that Barack Obama and his team are not going to get out in front of this issue. They will follow the popular will. Rather than try to use the bully pulpit of the White House to make the case that homosexual adults are entitled to the same rights as heterosexual adults, I am betting team Obama will be silent. I think there is some more disillusion coming for the Gay/Lesbian community on this issue.

Looking for a quick withdrawal from Iraq? I don’t think that is going to happen either. In fact, look for team Obama to start making the case that the situation has changed on the ground and that the Iraqi government wants us as a partner to help rebuild their society and infrastructure. Truth is the actual substance of U.S. policy in Iraq is not likely to change. At the same time look for the boost in U.S. combat forces going to Afghanistan and continued covert cross-border raids into Pakistan.

As I noted in an earlier piece, Rahm Emanuel is no pacifist. To the contrary. He was an uber-hawk on Iraq. We are witnesses to a fascinating split in the American Jewish community. The Jewish community is no different than the Christian community. It really is not a community and represents diametrically opposed points of view. Barack Obama and Emanuel have both been backed financially by very wealthy Chicago jewish families–the Crowns and the Pritzkers. They are not in sync with the more conservative neo-cons embodied by the likes of William Kristol. They are pro-Israel but anti-likud. Prospects of war with Iran are probably reduced with this crowd.

Last year I participated in a war game looking at the future of the Middle East. The assembled experts agreed at the end of the game that the one policy move that could put Iran on the defensive would be an agreement between Syria and Israel over the Golan Heights. Up to now the Bush Administration has opposed such a move. If the Obama team goes in that direction they might get a breakthrough in the Middle East that has seemed so elusive. That would be good news and might help Obama calm the fears of his Palestinian supporters who see him stacking his Administration with prominent Jewish Americans who carry pro-Israel credentials.

What about ignoring FISA (i.e., the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act)? Now that this power is in the hands of Democrats will they relinquish it? I don’t think so. I would like to see a full restoration of FISA and a requirement that no serveillance is undertaken without having judicial review. Someone other than the Executive Branch needs to have a say in this matter.

Finally, there will be the economic policy front. Will Barack and company embark on a massive public employment program or seek to invest in the private sector and promote jobs thru some form of capitalism? If it is the former the Progressive will rejoice. But, if it is the later, Progressives will chalk up another example of a politician promising them one thing but delivering the opposite. It does look that Barack and his team recognize America is Center Right and are going to play to the element. For a guy who hung with Tony Rezko and dissed Hillary (bonehead moves in my book) Barack could establish himself as a very smart pol. We’ll see.

Important new groups like The New Agenda have raised significant concerns about the Obama administration potentially selecting economist Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard as Secretary of Treasury. Summers resigned from Harvard in the wake of a controversy in which he suggested that women received promotion at a lesser rate in the sciences because they were less qualified. Lynette Long has started a cabinet watch to encourage Obama to appoint women to 50 percent of the positions.

Wouldn’t that be a great thing and real change?

All of this is good and necessary work. I am grateful that others are doing it because I am just not there yet. I will get there again I am sure but I am not there now.

After months of working to promote Hillary Clinton and fair and open elections, after months of examining the issues and making a conscientious and principled decision to move over to McCain, after months of traveling the country, I am not there yet.

I am exhausted and it is an exhaustion that goes far beyond the physical. It is an exhaustion that permeates my emotional and psychic core. For me, as well as many others, it is tied to the death of a dream.

The dream that we would have a woman president in my life time.

The dream that Hillary Clinton might break from the party, demand justice and a free election and that she would be heard.

The dream that women would act in their best interests.

The dream that men would support women.

The dream that people become journalists because of an aptitude and desire for investigative reporting and passionate commitment to truth.

The dream that the American people would not be seduced by mass media.

The dream that deep friendships would endure over differences of opinion.

The dream that a concern with sexism would share equal space with a concern with racism.

The dream that people would keep their word and that patriotism and honor would prevail.

The dream that if we just worked hard enough, even if we were outspent seven to one and out staffed by far more than that, we would win because we were right.

My dreams have been shattered.

Perhaps they were naïve. But they were real to me and shared by many, many others. Hopefully, some of those dreams can come true in the future. As we can see, there are people and groups who are already working to realize them and they welcome others to join them in these significant efforts.

But I am not there yet. Because with the loss of my dreams, of our dreams, is a kind of death.

And when death comes, one must mourn.

In the Jewish tradition, when there has been a death of the family, one sits Shiva for seven days. The mirrors are draped in black to avoid consideration of appearances and business is suspended. Neighbors, friends and family stop by with trays of food and to talk about the departed loved one because there is no more important business than acknowledging the death of that person, and what was lost as well as what remains.

And so it is with us. Maybe we won’t drill, baby, drill. But we can cry, baby, cry and acknowledge the gut wrenching pain of what it means to have our dreams shattered. And especially how it feels to not be able to openly, joyfully celebrate this breakthrough historic presidency as well as the much anticipated end of the Bush administration because it was not come by honestly.

Ironically, the same technology that helped drive the election for Obama has also been our friend throughout this election season as we write and become allies through our exchanges with people we may never have met.

I encourage people to reach out, to talk and share their feelings in whatever ways they can. Across the blogs and airwaves. On the phone and in person. I encourage them to not skip past this crucial stage of grieving for the loss of our dreams.

For many of us, it is only through going to the rock bottom of our pain that we can make space to empty out and thus, reenergize for our shared battles to come.

Cry, baby, cry.

Prairie Fire, published in 1974, is described as Ayers’ communist manifesto.

Dedicating a book to Sirhan Sirhan isn’t radical chic or a youthful indulgence. Dedicating a book to Sirhan Sirhan is tantamount to denying the Holocaust, embracing the screeds of the Aryan Brotherhood, and joining the ranks of those whose celebrated the attacks against America on 9/11.

Equating Sirhan Sirhan with Harriet Tubman and John Brown is stupidity. Bobby Kennedy worked on behalf of the poor and the unrepresented; Sirhan is a killer.

Sirhan Sirhan is a Palestinian sympathizer who murdered Bobby Kennedy because of Kennedy’s pro-Israel position. On the 40th anniversary of the assassination, ABC News reported:

Sirhan claimed he killed Kennedy because he was angry over Kennedy’s support for Israel. Sirhan was born in Jerusalem to Arab Christian parents who had moved to America when Sirhan was 12. The assassination occurred on the first anniversary of the Six Day War in which Israel had humiliated the combined armies of its Arab neighbors.

Yet another red flag about Obama, and this one should send alarms to the Jewish supporters of Obama.

Obama and Ayers, friends and collaborators; Obama endorsed Ayers’ book, Ayers dedicated his book to Sirhan Sirhan, an anti-Israeli terrorist and murderer of Bobby Kennedy.

Rashid Khalidi: Obama’s friend, anti-Israeli pro-PLO activist. The LA Times allegedly has a video of a dinner party in which Obama is toasting Khalidi, with Bill Ayers in attendance.

Sirhan Sirhan, Bill Ayers, Rashid Khalidi, Barack Obama

Obama has surrounded himself with violent and hateful anti-American activists, and he lies about that fact. Obama knows Ayers is a liability, but he also knows that he can’t alienate the anti-American Left. Larry Johnson writes:

As we have noted repeatedly at NoQuarter, Barack Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers probably started when Barack was at Columbia University in the late 1980s. That’s why Bill Ayers then turns to Barack Obama and gets him named to head the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Ayers established. That’s why Barack felt so comfortable kicking off his political campaign for the State legislature in Bill Ayers’ living room.

Obama’s friend dedicated his book to the murderer of Bobby Kennedy, his preacher claimed 9/11 was God’s retribution, Obama told Rick Warren that the U.S. could be evil, Ayers bombed the Pentagon, Pfleger said that Hillary Clinton believed she had “white entitlement,” Obama called his ailing grandmother a “typical white person,” and Wright said the U.S had manufactured AIDS to kill African Americans.

The Democratic Party has been infected by an alliance of radical demagogues, the corrupt Chicago machine and the anti-American Left.

Bobby Kennedy:

After funeral services in New York, RFK’s funeral train carried his body to Washington where he was to be buried near his brother. Along the way, on both sides of tracks, Americans of every color and background saluted this great man who brought the disenfranchised together.

See also American Girl in Italy’s post

Medusa contributed to this post.

It’s clear to many Democrats that a radical clique has taken control of the Party. Democratic ideals once held to be sacrosanct, including freedom of speech, one person one vote, and an intolerance of sexism have been violently pushed aside for the benefit of Obama. The media drumbeat for Obama is incessant; the media has even stopped pretending to be neutral. We’re seeing the country through Alice’s Looking Glass now and everything is upside-down and backwards. In an effort to save our Party and country, many Democrats are actively working to defeat Obama.

In 1980, the last Japanese soldier of World War Two, Captain Fumio Nakahira, was discovered on Mt. Halcon, Mindoro Island, Philippines. During the previous 35 years, Captain Nakahira had survived alone, serving his Emperor and believing that the War had not yet ended. (This was 15 years after the Gilligan’s Island episode).

Captain Nakahira comes to mind when I think about the thousands of disaffected and disillusioned Democrats across the country who will not be voting for Obama. If Obama is elected despite our efforts to defeat him, it will codify for a generation the Chicago corruption, race-baiting, and misogyny practiced by Obama and his minions; tactics which caused many of to leave the Party. And Obama’s race-baiting, misogynistic thugs will say: Good riddance!

Camping out on our own private Mt. Halcons, many thousands of men and women will remain committed to the causes which brought us to the Democratic Party in the first place. We won’t stop being concerned about sexism, race relations, economic opportunity, and national security.

It’s now dawning on Republicans and independents that a creeping totalitarianism is sweeping the country. Obama’s Truth Squads use the power of the state to stifle free expression, McCain supporters are jeered in public, and Obama’s shock troops — in a form of hate speech so ugly that it can only be described as a pogrom against women — wear clothing which declares that the Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, is a “cunt.” Sexual terrorism is the new form of Left-wing Kristallnacht.

Where did this come from?

The ecstatic mania of Obama’s supporters comes from many places, and I don’t pretend to understand all of the sources. Many who support Obama are low-information liberals, do-good progressives, proud African Americans, and fed-up independents. I can’t blame these groups; the Bush Administration has been a disaster. There is, however, a core group of Obama supporters who believe that the Senator from Illinois will bring revolutionary change. And their desire for the revolution is all-consuming and any tactic is considered fair game: caucus fraud, sexism, race-baiting, voter intimidation, online smear campaigns, sexual terrorism, and voter fraud. Anything to win.

I hold Obama accountable for the tone of this campaign and the actions of his supporters. From “hoodwink and bamboozled” to his “lipstick on a pig,” Obama’s sexist double-speak and race-baiting innuendos have unleashed something very ugly into the ether. Obama has given his supporters the tacit encouragement to cross lines of acceptable discourse in order to destroy his political opponents. In the Obama world, Bill Clinton is a racist, Hillary is a bitch, Sarah Palin is a cunt, and John McCain is erratic and senile. I fully expect that an Obama Administration, like all recent Administrations, will continue in campaign mode and I expect these tactics to continue. This was the reason, to borrow a phrase, that we sought to fumigate our Party.

Like many of you, I won’t have anything to do with Obama or his party. Obama’s tactics go against the reason I was a Democrat and no pleas and no threats will force me to give up my principles. Above my computer I have postcards with the images of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy; my Hillary poster is in the corner and remains unframed.

According to Taheri, Jackson said Obama:

. . . promised “fundamental changes” in US foreign policy - saying America must “heal wounds” it has caused to other nations, revive its alliances and apologize for the “arrogance of the Bush administration.”

The most important change would occur in the Middle East, where “decades of putting Israel’s interests first” would end.

Jackson believes that, although “Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades” remain strong, they’ll lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House.

Read the rest ->

Wow. I guess, for Jackson, “hymietown” is back. Didn’t Obama already get into trouble earlier this election season over remarks about Jerusalem? How about anti-Jewish material on his website? Regardless, such sweeping statements about Isreal, even using “Zionist” is telling about Jackson’s view of Jews. I bet he thinks all Jews are bankers who caused the mortgage meltdown (woooooo - I am being snarky, but would it really surprise anyone if this were the case?) And, just for the record, who is going to do all this “apologizing” Jackson talks about?

Buuuuuutt, you say, how can Jesse speak for Obama? Well, that’s also very interesting, and Jackson, of course, has a non-answer.

Jackson warns that he isn’t an Obama confidant or adviser, “just a supporter.” But he adds that Obama has been “a neighbor or, better still, a member of the family.” Jackson’s son has been a close friend of Obama for years, and Jackson’s daughter went to school with Obama’s wife Michelle.

“We helped him start his career,” says Jackson. “And then we were always there to help him move ahead. He is the continuation of our struggle for justice not only for the black people but also for all those who have been wronged.”

Look at that second paragraph again. Jackson sounds as if he not only feels Obama owes him but he also appropriates Obama himself into Jackson’s civil rights work. Looks like Jackson thinks he’s Obama’s daddy. Seriously, Jackson is trying to take credit for Obama’s political existence. Fair? I have no idea, but that statement reveals a real lack of finesse. Or maybe finesse isn’t the point.

Don’t forget, Jackson, the de facto “Black American leader,” also has Chicago roots; and his son JJ Jr, is an Obama campaign manager. While Jackson may be a loose cannon, I just can’t see him deliberately placing his son in a precarious position.

And for those of you who might think electing Obama will go a long way to healing the racial wounds of America, think again.

Will Obama’s election close the chapter of black grievances linked to memories of slavery? The reverend takes a deep breath and waits a long time before responding.

“No, that chapter won’t be closed,” he says. “However, Obama’s victory will be a huge step in the direction we have wanted America to take for decades.”

An Obama election will be a “huge step” but not enough. Never enough. Shelby Steele, a notable AA writer and thinker on “Black America” would say that Jackson is signaling that “white America” will never be off the hook. I read it the same way. That’s, well, astounding because Obama’s campaign has touted his ability to be “trans-racial” and “bring people together,” not letting the past rule the present kind of thing. And here is Jackson, promising otherwise. Hmmmmmm.

Jackson was asked about Obama’s potential policies on a variety of issues, and he carefully started with the “I’m only a supporter, not a policy maker” hedge. But his remarks sound more precise than vague wishes on Jackson’s part.

What does Jackson want an Obama economic program to include?

On the economic front, he hopes for “major changes in our trading policy.”

“We cannot continue with the open-door policy,” he says. “We need to protect our manufacturing industry against unfair competition that destroys American jobs and creates ill-paid jobs abroad.”

“Open door?” Is that relating to trade or immigration as it affects trade, or both?
And how is Jackson channeling Obama with regard to the Iraq war?

Taheri says:

His most surprising position concerns Iraq. He passionately denounces the toppling of Saddam Hussein as “an illegal and unjust act.” But he’s now sure that the United States “will have to remain in Iraq for a very long time.”

What of Obama’s promise to withdraw by 2010? Jackson believes that position will have to evolve, reflecting “realities on the ground.”

“We should work with our allies in Iraq to consolidate democratic institutions there,” he says. “We must help the people of Iraq decide and shape their future in accordance with their own culture and faith.”

And on Iran - what does his non-connection with Obama tell him about that?

On Iran, he strongly supports Obama’s idea of opening a direct dialogue with the leadership in Tehran. “We’ve got to talk to tell them what we want and hear what they want,” Jackson says. “Nothing is gained by not talking to others.”

Would that mean ignoring the four UN Security Council resolutions that demand an end to Iran’s uranium-enrichment program? Jackson says direct talks wouldn’t start without preparations.

“Barack wants an aggressive and dynamic diplomacy,” he says. “He also wants adequate preparatory work. We must enter the talks after the ground has been prepared,” he says.

Interestingly enough, Jackson doesn’t say WHO prepares the ground. Iran, for its part, thinks the US should abide by some preconditions. Newsbusters notes:

Vice President for Media Affairs Mehdi Kalhor said on Saturday that Iran has set two preconditions for holding talks with the United States of America.

In an exclusive interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency, he said as long as U.S. forces have not left the Middle East region and continues its support for the Zionist regime, talks between Iran and U.S. is off the agenda.
——————————-
On Saturday, Kalhor said Tehran would accept ‘repentance’ on behalf of the US government toward the Iranian people.

“Negotiations would be rational if the US moves out of the Middle East and the US government gives up its widespread support for the Zionist regime,” he said.

Apologies? Zionists? Well, remember what Jackson said:

. . . promised “fundamental changes” in US foreign policy - saying America must “heal wounds” it has caused to other nations, revive its alliances and apologize for the “arrogance of the Bush administration.”

The most important change would occur in the Middle East, where “decades of putting Israel’s interests first” would end.

Jackson believes that, although “Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades” remain strong, they’ll lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House

Is this a response to Obama’s statement about meeting Iran without preconditions? And Obama’s vision for Israel, via Jackson?

“Bush was so afraid of a snafu and of upsetting Israel that he gave the whole thing a miss,” Jackson says. “Barack will change that,” because, as long as the Palestinians haven’t seen justice, the Middle East will “remain a source of danger to us all.”

“Barack is determined to repair our relations with the world of Islam and Muslims,” Jackson says. “Thanks to his background and ecumenical approach, he knows how Muslims feel while remaining committed to his own faith.”

Thanks to his BACKGROUND? Obama swears he’s not a muslim, so this must mean his years in Indonesia, right? Ecumenical approach? BLT is ecumenical? Since when? BLT at least excoriates whites, Jews and many other AAs. How ecumenical is that? Or is ecumenical a euphemism for humping the pulpit? (Want to see Rev Wright “riding dirty” again?)

Now, all this is verrrrrrry interesting. Is Jackson acting as a surrogate? His son, an Obama campaign manager, famously said the campaign had to figure out how to attack a white woman (Hillary) in a “post OJ world.” Jackson supposedly went off the reservation sometime later with his “cutting” remarks, accidentally or not, caught on camera and has remained relatively quiet since then. So why is he talking now?

If Jackson IS a surrogate of the easily denied variety, his remarks are worthy of comment although the campaign will surely disavow. The tone of his remarks as well as the substance are likely to offend many Americans. But since campaigns constantly toss out “trial balloons” via the easily denied surrogate, Jackson’s remarks will definitely present just such an opportunity, regardless.

But what if Jackson is lobbing spitballs? If his earlier remark about Obama’s dangles more accurately reflects the reality of the relationship, is this interview his “scissors?” Is Jackson trying to assert authority? Or is he trying to steer Obama’s choices by making public what he feels Obama cannot get away with and enable him to thus get “half a loaf?” And why THIS reporter and THIS paper?

The author, Amir Taheri, is the columnist who broke the story about Obama telling Iraqi leaders to “wait for the next administration.” Presumably, Taheri is no particular friend of the Obama campaign. Odd that Jackson would have consented to an interview with this particular journalist - even more so when you remember Jackson never met a microphone or podium he didn’t want to preen for. He could have talked to anyone. He talked to Taheri.

“Obama is about change,” Jackson told me in a wide-ranging conversation. “And the change that Obama promises is not limited to what we do in America itself. It is a change of the way America looks at the world and its place in it.”

Is the NYPost the only paper covering the World Policy Forum? You know how Marshall McLuhan famously said “the medium IS the message?” In this case, I think it is as important to ask why Jackson chose this venue as it is to parse his words.

Of course, maybe the Post is the only paper covering this hugely important gathering on the French seaside.

Still, Jackson’s remarks are incendiary in terms of foreign policy and current US relationships. I doubt they’ll play well here at home - so why make them? Is it all a smoke screen? Or is it dead on? Either way, I don’t like the feelings these remarks give me.

There’s much not to like. Jackson’s vague status with Obama makes it difficult to infer from these remarks Obama’s positions. That’s on purpose. The remarks themselves signal some potentially huge shifts in US policy. I’m also not at all comfortable with the idea that such a shift could actually be signaled by Jackson before the US electorate votes.

And I don’t like the tone. The notable thing about his tone is Jackson is both accusatory and promising apologies. Jackson accuses his own country of gross misconduct and promises some form of repentance. Think Jackson will be the one Obama sends over to apologize? It would serve him right, but Jackson has always felt more sinned against than sinning and his remarks reflect that. Jackson may feel his country needs to apologize, but he probably feels he should be on the receiving end of that apology. Forever.

The recent, reluctantly released papers from Obama’s time as head at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) and his time on the board of the Woods Fund sheds new light on his relationship with Bill Ayers and the seamy milieu of Farrakhan’s Chicago.

The CAC and Woods Fund money paved the way for Obama’s political career:

the monies doled out through the Woods Fund to these groups, including [Bill] Ayers own Annenberg Challenge, helped cement Obama’s political relationships and bond with key players in Chicago.

Stanley Kurtz said that CAC money did not go directly to schools:

“Instead of giving money directly to schools, they gave to what they called external partners, and these external partners were often pretty radical community organizer groups.”

And Steve Diamond writes that Ayers was focused on what:

Ayers calls “social justice” approaches to teaching and “small schools” as well as race-based approaches to curriculum in the public schools.

Ayers and Obama funneled money intended for education to race-based curriculum. Matthew Weaver reports:

let’s also not forget organizations that received funding from Barack and Bill [Ayers], such as:

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) Arab American Action Network (AAAN) founded by husband and wife Rashid and Mona Khalidi. Maoist Mike Klonsky, another terrorist member of the Weatherman Children and Family Justice Center, Bernardine’s organization. Trinity Unity Church and Rev. Wright.

Ayers is an important part of the Chicago racial Left, a loosely affiliated group of churches, academics, and activists who include Jeremiah Wright, Pfleger, Farrakhan, the group ACORN, and many others. The racial Left is not committed to fighting racism — a noble cause — but instead looking at the world through a racial lens. This means that issues of class — which affects whites, women, gays, etc. — is frequently dismissed. Instead, there are disquisitions on “white privilege,” without discussing the fact that poverty knows no color. The racial Left, of course, is a class struggle between those who have and those who do not, and many of it’s proponents have attended the best schools and hold the highest positions in the academy and in government. It’s no accident that Bill Ayers, the scion of a wealthy family, is a primary member of the racial Left. And it’s no accident that Obama, surrounded by millionaires in San Francisco, pointed out that his difficulties in Pennsylvania were due to skin color (identifying those resistant to him as white) and then ridiculing them as religious, intolerant of immigrants, and as the owners of guns, all cultural indicators to the racial Left of the despised lower-income whites. He could just have easily said those who are bitter cling to Jeff Foxworthy, shop at Wal-Mart, and hump their sister, or any other stereotype used against low-income whites.

The racial Left is about protecting status:

Not only is Ayers using Obama’s rapid ascent to celebrity in order to capitalize on his own unquenchable thirst for fame by having his memoir Fugitive Days reissued in January 2009, he is also working with Hollywood to have his memoir turned into a movie. As if that’s not enough, he and his wife, Bernardine Dorhn, have authored a book, soon to be released, entitled Race Course Against White Supremacy.

Belying it’s title, this book is NOT about white supremacists, such as the Aryan Brotherhood, but instead states that “white supremacy is the dominant political system” in American’. From Amazon’s Product Description:

Arguing that white supremacy has been the dominant political system in the United States since its earliest days—and that it is still very much with us—the discussion points to unexamined bigotry in the criminal justice system, election processes, war policy, and education. The book draws upon the authors’ own confrontations with authorities during the Vietnam era, reasserts their belief that racism and war are interwoven issues, and offers personal stories about their lives today as parents, teachers, and reformers.

Stanley Kurtz has uncovered that Obama attended Farrakhan’s Million Man March, and Obama’s close friend, Michael Pfleger, is close to Farrakhan:

Although it’s been discussed before (because it confirms that Obama attended Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March), a 1995 background piece on Obama from the Chicago Reader has received far too little attention. Careful consideration of this important profile makes it clear that Obama’s long-standing ties to Chicago’s most rabidly radical preachers call into question far more than Obama’s judgment and character (although they certainly do that, as well). Obama’s two-decades at Trinity open a critically important window onto his radical-left political leanings. No mere change of church membership can erase that truth.

As Matthew Weaver posted, Rev. Farrakhan just pronounced Obama the Messiah (watch the video here):

“You are the instruments that God is going to use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth. And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn’t care anything about. That’s a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking.” - Louis Farrakhan

In addition to being the leader of NOI, Farrakhan is first and foremost a politician, and one of the most powerful in Chicago. And Obama has at least one NOI member on his payroll.

In a June article from Reuters entitled “BREAKING NEWS: Nation of Islam Activists on Obama Camp Payroll” states that

“Sen. Barack Obama employed and continues to employ senior staffers who belong to the Nation of Islam, and the presidential candidate has some “worrying” ties to the controversial group headed by Louis Farrakhan, a former key Obama insider told AARON KLEIN… The former insider confirmed Obama is directly aware of the Nation of Islam members on his staff.”

“A key constituency for Obama was Hyde Park, where Farrakhan lives. To be successful politically in that area, you need to be involved with Farrakhan, since he’s a strong power in the district,” said the former insider.”

“The former insider identified former Obama worker Shakir Muhammad as a Nation of Islam activist. Muhammad was paid by Obama’s office as a photographer…According to a black supremacist source tied to Farrakhan, Muhammad previously worked as a bodyguard for the Nation of Islam chief.”

In fact, according to the article, Cynthia K. Miller, a known Nation of Islam activist who served Obama in his early state Senate days and was treasurer for his U.S. senatorial campaign, and a paid consultant in 2003 and 2004, was the beneficiary of help from Obama by another one of his Chicago friends, Tony Rezko.

“The former insider said Obama asked indicted Chicago businessman and Obama financier Tony Rezko to get his treasurer, Miller, a state government job with
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.”

While researching the source of Michelle Obama’s alleged “whitey” rant, we discovered direct connections between the Nation of Islam (NOI), Stokely Carmichael, Jeremiah Wright’s Black Liberation Theology and, most prominently, Louis Farrakhan.

According to Larry Johnson’s sources, the Michelle Obama tape captures her in sordid company:

The sources who have seen the tape report that Michelle says
disparaging things about “whites” and that Louis Farrakhan is visible.
There is no identifying information on the segment they have seen to
identify the location or time when this was recorded. [emphasis added]

Those who are following this matter will recall that Michelle Obama, when asked about these allegations, is reported to have said that “whitey” is not a word used by African Americans today. However, we documented that Mrs. Obama’s primary text for her Princeton thesis was Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton’s 1967 book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, and we showed how Carmichael used the term “whitey” repeatedly, thereby establishing an epistemological connection between Carmichael and Mrs. Obama. In other words, Michelle Obama is the intellectual offspring of Stokely Carmichael.

Before going further, it should be noted that Reverend Jeremiah Wright was once a member of the Nation of Islam, though it’s not clear when he was involved with NOI. Ryan Lizza of the New Republic first reported that:

Wright was a former Muslim and black nationalist who had
studied at Howard and Chicago, and Trinity’s guiding principles–what the church calls the “Black Value System”[Emphasis added]

But back to Stokely Carmichael. Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Bureau of Investigations has released hundreds of pages from their files on Stokely Carmichael. It’s a treasure trove for those interested in the history of the civil rights movement. What we found most interesting, however, were the large number of documents connecting Carmichael with the NOI. For instance, the document below is an Airtel sent to Director Hoover on July 29, 1966, from Chicago. The subject is Stokely Carmichael and it concerns NOI leader Elijah Muhammed’s “CALL FOR SUMMIT MEETING, MAJOR CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS.”

There are three areas of interest for us: first, the Airtel came from the city of Chicago; second, the year 1966 (more on that later), and third, that the Nation of Islam — in the manner of the infamous mob meeting in Apalachin in 1957 — was organizing all of the major civil rights groups.

It has been widely reported, and documented here, that Carmichael was an “Honorary Prime Minister” of the Black Panther Party, and that he was the leader of the innocuous sounding Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The following document, however, shows that Carmichael was open to violence as a political tool–see the highlighted sentence below–”This nonviolence bit is just a philanthropic hang-up,” and that he was indeed a founder of the Black Panther Party:

In the following document we initially noticed Carmichael’s willingness to use violence. He is paraphrased as saying that “in his opinion, the black man is justified in using any means at his command to obtain what he believes is due him,” indicating an acceptance of violence as seen through a racial frame. What’s more interesting, however, is the next paragraph. “Louis Walcott, Minister of the New York City Muslim Mosque, Nation of Islam, also participated in this conference.” See the second paragraph below:

The name Louis, of course, was glaring. Could it be he? A quick Google search linked to a 1996 Morning Edition transcription of a Bob Edwards piece on Farrakhan:

The early life of Louis Farrakhan, who grew up as Louis Eugene Walcott, was heavily influenced by his loving but demanding mother and his poor but safe neighborhood of Roxbury, Boston, in the late 1940s.

Over the last decade, Louis Farrakhan has emerged as one of the most visible and formidable black political leaders in America

Let’s add up what we have so far: Stokely Carmichael, Michelle Obama’s primary source and intellectual ancestor, shared the stage with Louis Farrakhan, the same man who she allegedly shared a stage with when she said “whitey.”

Carmichael and Farrakhan may have shared more than a stage. The document below indicates but doesn’t conclude that Carmichael may have been a Muslim himself. Although heavily redacted, the FBI’s source said that “Stokely Carmichael, [redacted] as ‘one of us’ which this source interpreted as meaning a member of the Muslims.”

Whether or not Carmichael was a Muslim is unclear. What is clear is that at sometime in the summer of 1966 there was a meeting of the minds between some civil rights groups, black radicals, and the Nation of Islam. These groups organized into a force promoting and preaching a racist form of black nationalism. The document below describes a meeting that clearly shows this union of forces: Carmichael and Minister Louis “made it clear they wanted to unite with all Negro groups regardless of philosophy.” Note the date of August 18, 1966:

This takes us back to Jeremiah Wright and the question of when Wright was a Muslim. According to Wright’s Wikipedia entry:

In 1963, after two years of service, Wright joined the United States Navy and entered the Corpsman School at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. Wright was then trained as a cardiopulmonary technician at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

“In 1966, as a U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman,” the Wikipeida entry continues, Wright assisted with the care of President Johnson. Extrapolating from these dates, it appears that Wright was in Maryland between 1964 and 1966, and this may have been the time when he was a member of NOI. Wright didn’t start at Trinity until 1972, and evidently received spiritual training after receiving a master’s degree in English in 1969.

Also in Maryland in 1964 was Stokely Carmichael, where he was arrested “as a result of demonstrations in that city.” This doesn’t mean that Wright knew Carmichael, but surely Wright was cognizant of Carmichael’s work and of NOI as well. This is likely the time when he was a “Muslim and black nationalist.”

However Wright was radicalized, it is clear that he consciously appropriated the language and tenor of the Nation of Islam.

Wright’s statement that 9/11 was deserved retribution (“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans…America’s chickens are coming home to roost”) is a perfect echo of Malcolm X’s statement that “The assassination of Kennedy is a result of that way of life and thinking. The chickens came home to roost.”

Although it appears that Wright began his focus on Black Liberation Theology sometime after 1966, his racial attitudes and rhetoric have imitated that of NOI since at least 1970. Wright’s blaming the United States for creating AIDS to kill minorities is but just one example of his thinking being in lockstep with NOI.

Black Liberation Theology was first formed in 1966. According to NPR:

Black liberation theology originated on July 31, 1966, when 51 black pastors bought a full page ad in the New York Times and demanded a more aggressive approach to eradicating racism. They echoed the demands of the black power movement, but the new crusade found its source of inspiration in the Bible.

Keep in mind that NOI’s Elijah Mohammad called for a summit of black leaders on July 11, 1966, only 20 days prior to the official formation of Black Liberation Theology. If the dates don’t convince you of a synergy between NOI and Black Liberation Theology, please note Wright’s mentor — and Black Liberation Theology founder — James Cone’s words about NOI’s Malcolm X:

Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man ‘the devil.’ The false Christianity of the white-devil oppressor must be replaced by an authentic Christianity fully identified with the poor and oppressed.

The black intellectual’s goal, says Cone, is to “aid in the destruction of America as he knows it.”

Couple these words with Wright’s own view that:

There will be no peace in America until whites begin to hate their whiteness, asking from the depths of their being: ‘How can we become black?’

In 1998, Louis A. De-Caro, Jr. published a book titled Malcolm and the Cross: The Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, and Christianity. De-Caro’s book underscores the racial nature and revolutionary intent of the NOI’s promotion of a black “Christianity”:

Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam based their religious orthodoxy more on the Bible than on the Qur’an. In part, this was because they sought to convert black Christians. More- over, Elijah Muhammad taught that the Bible, actually the story of “dark people,” had been distorted by the white man in order to enslave and oppress black people in the United States.

The Nation of Islam and Black Liberation Theology are two doors to the same room. Black Liberation Theology is a “palatable” form of “Christian” black nationalism. The fiery anti-American, race-baiting words of Wright, Ayers, Meeks, Pfleger, and Moss are from the same philosophical cauldron as the Nation of Islam. It’s obvious now why Wright’s Trumpet Magazine featured Farrakhan on the cover:

Some have said that Michelle Obama’s thesis proves nothing because it was written more than 20 years ago. We suggest that it was no accident that the Obamas sought out Wright a mere 2-3 years after she wrote her thesis and stayed with him for nearly 20 years, even while he preached the vilest and most hateful sermons that our nation has been forced to hear. TexasDarlin writes:

It’s no wonder that the Obamas joined Trinity United, grew close to Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger, and actively defended the church. And there is no doubt in this alert reader’s mind that Michelle Obama clung to Trinity as long as possible politically and, unfortunately for her husband, perhaps many years too long for most voters’ palates.

But the Obamas’ connections to the Nation of Islam go deeper than Rev. Wright. Louis Farrakhan’s political connections extend to the Obamas directly through Chicago politics and Tony Rezko. Larry Johnson writes that:

Before Barack came on the scene, THE MAN in his political district was Louis Farrakhan. No one could take Alice Palmer’s seat without Farrakhan’s blessing. No one. I do not fault Barack Obama for seeking out the blessing of Farrakhan, but the story of what was done behind the scenes to get rid of Barack’s predecessor—Alice Palmer—has not been told. A knowledgeable source tells me that Tony Rezko played a direct role in this feat. And Rezko has been tight with Farrakhan.

At some point, probably between 1964-66, Jeremiah Wright was a member of the Nation of Islam and was indoctrinated into its odious brand of racist theology. And make no mistake, Wright’s race-baiting is not indicative of the vast majority of black churches. A pastor at LivePrayer writes:

Please hear me very clear. Black liberation theology is a perverse view of the Scriptures and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a radical view held by a very small minority of black pastors. This is NOT representative of the black church or the overwhelming majority of black pastors who preach and teach the true Gospel of Jesus Christ without looking at it thru the lens of color. Every black pastor I know condemns Dr. Wright and this perverse racist theology.

In 1966, a group of “Christian” ministers, at the behest of Elijah Mohammad, began to preach the same teachings as NOI. Stokely Carmichael and Louis Farrakhan actively worked to bridge the gap between these two groups, and Carmichael would soon publish a book espousing much the same separatist ideas. Carmichael’s book “guided” Michelle Obama’s thesis and soon she and Barack would join Trinity United Church of Christ.

The continuity of the teachings of Carmichael, Farrakhan, Cone, Pfleger, Wright, and Ayers is incontrovertible; it’s all about skin color.

Christopher Hitchens asks:

how is it that the loathsome Wright married him, baptized his children, and received donations from him? Could it possibly have anything, I wonder, to do with Mrs. Obama?

Obama’s targeted use of Malcolm X’s super-charged racial code words (”hoodwink, bamboozled”), and his followers’ continuous charges of racism against Obama’s opponents as a political tool has been well documented. It shows that Obama has a studied understanding of the racial radicalism of Malcolm X, Farrakhan, Wright, Pfleger, and Ayers coupled with the cold-blooded instincts of a heartless politician. The Obama campaign has already smeared as racists vast swaths of the Democratic Party, people who were drawn to the Party for its commitment to civil rights. Now he employs the same tactics against John McCain, a champion of immigrants who has never had a hint of racism associated with his name.

Sinclair Lewis is frequently quoted as saying: “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

In today’s upside down world, racism has come to America embodied in a multi-racial politician and carrying the banner of the Democratic Party.

From Wikipedia:

In 1988, the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives took up the case, and Hastings was impeached for bribery and perjury by a vote of 413-3. Voters to impeach included Democratic Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, John Conyers and Charles Rangel. He was then convicted in 1989 by the United States Senate, becoming the sixth federal judge in the history of the United States to be removed from office by the Senate.

Well, a couple days ago, Hastings was speaking to a group of Jewish Democrats and exhorted them to vote for Obama because Palin is dangerous.

OK, he didn’t say “dangerous.” I paraphrased. This is what he said according to CNN:

“If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention,” Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida said at a panel about the shared agenda of Jewish and African-American Democrats Wednesday. Hastings, who is African-American, was explaining what he intended to tell his Jewish constituents about the presidential race. “Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through,” Hastings added as the room erupted in laughter and applause.

Hastings clearly was speaking to a sympathetic audience and thought he could “let his [completely metaphoric] hair down.” I guess this is why:

The support of Jewish voters is shaping up to be a highly sought after prize in the general election match-up between Sen. Obama and Sen. John McCain. Jews have historically favored Democrats by wide margins in recent presidential races. But, the McCain campaign is making a concerted effort to go after the loyal Democratic constituency and Obama has been plagued by false Internet rumors that he is Muslim which have had particular salience in the Jewish community.

So, is it just Alaskans in general or only Sarah Palin who couldn’t care less about Jews and blacks? I guess Alcee forgot that old saying that when you point one finger at someone else, 3 point back at you.