Kremlin cracks down on journalists, dissidents and minorities in Crimea

Since taking over, the "anti-fascist" Russian government in Crimea has proven it is the truly fascist regime, by jailing and intimidating journalists, allowing pro-Putin brownshirts ("self-defense militias") to act freely without legal accountability, persecuting minorities such as Crimean Tatars and Jews, and discouraging the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar languages.

Indeed, the non-existent "threat" from Praviy Sektor in Crimea has passed without incident, Putin has seized his Crimean pearl... and yet these pro-Russian thugs still strut around, enjoying carte blanche. Obviously they serve a useful purpose for Putin; they do the dirty work that law enforcement or regular troops shouldn't do -- like bullying journalists and kidnapping and torturing troublemakers.  

In Russian-ruled Crimea, a crackdown on journalists and activists who don't toe Kremlin line

May 30, 2014 | Kyiv Post

The entrance to the Simferopol Trade Union building, which stands opposite the Cabinet of Ministers on Lenin Square, has been obstructed daily by members of so-called Crimean self-defense militias since March.

These men, dressed in camouflage and armed with police batons and sometimes guns, wander into the building freely, where their frequent destination is the office of the Center for Investigative Journalism. “We’ve all come across them,” says journalist Tatiana Kurmanova wearily. “They make no concrete demands. They just have the effect of scaring us – imagine the first time when they came in here with pistols, looking at everything.”

The center, financed through grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development and other foreign donors, was one of the first media organizations to receive such unwanted attention in Russia-controlled Crimea. If Russian President Vladimir Putin remains in control of Ukraine's peninsula and follows the same policy for Crimea that he does with the rest of the Russian Federation, then foreign-funded projects -- in particular those with USAID funding - will be targets for shutdown. 

The Crimean self-defense members marched into the journalism center's office on March 1, two days after soldiers without insignia appeared throughout the peninsula and set in motion the Russian invasion and occupation or – as Russian law would have it - annexation of Crimea. The self-defense militias, ungoverned by any law, have since become a permanent fixture of daily life in Crimea, patrolling streets, guarding transport hubs and government buildings, demanding to see the documents of passersby – and harassing journalists.     

While attacks on media have abated somewhat since March, when the Center for Investigative Journalism recorded 85 incidents, Crimea has by no means become a safe place for journalists. 

In the last six weeks, Andrey Krisko, who heads the Crimean Human Rights Field Mission, has registered nine serious incidents of harassment of journalists, involving personal harm, damage to equipment and illegal detention for more than three hours. He experienced one such incident himself, when he was physically prevented from taking pictures of a journalist arguing with self-defense forces on May 17. Later, he found out the journalist had been followed and detained. 

Most cases, Krisko said, concern not single but groups of journalists, and all cases involve the self-defense militias. Some cases have been widely publicized, like that of journalist Osman Pashayev on May 18. Pashayev was filming the Crimean Tatar meeting commemorating 70 years of their deportation, and the hundreds of riot police guarding Simferopol city center, when self-defense forces detained both him and his Turkish cameraman. They were held for 10 hours, had all their equipment taken away, and were denied access to lawyers until a threatened appeal to the prosecutors office. 

Kurmanova thinks there are probably many more such incidents involving the self-defense and Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB under its Russian acronym, but journalists working for Crimean government media do not want to publicize them. Most of the journalists who have spoken publicly, like Pashayev, left Crimea afterwards as soon as they could.

Meanwhile several Crimean civil activists who supported the EuroMaidan Revolution that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22 and protested against Russian occupation are currently detained by the FSB. 

The FSB said on May 30 that film director Oleg Sentsov, Alexandr Kolchenko, Oleksiy Chyrniy and Hennadiy Afanasyev are under arrest charged with being members of Ukraine's ultra-nationalistic Right Sector and suspected of plotting to stage acts of sabotage and terrorist attacks in several cities of the peninsula. 

Kateryna Serhatskova, a journalist and coordinator of an initiative group to help Sentsov, says Sentsov, Kolchenko, Chyrniy and Afanasyev have never been members of Right Sector.

"For those who have doubts: these guys have never been members of the Right Sector and prepared no terrorist attacks, these are absolutely peaceful people, who maintained the integrity of Ukraine. Now confessions are being forced out of them, and probably one of them will admit his guilt all in all. It's outrageous nonsense. No comment," Serhatskova wrote on her Facebook page on May 30, according to Interfax-Ukraine news service. 

The whereabouts of two more activists, Timur Shaimardanov and Leonid Korzh, reported missing by the Ukrainian organisation Ukrainian House on May 28, are unknown. 

The effect of this intimidation has been to effectively silence critical or opposition media to the Russian annexation within Crimea. TV channel ATR and the website 15 Minutes, both owned by Crimean Tatar businessman Lenur Islyamov, have greatly cut down on their live programming and news coverage since March.

The only other independent agencies left, the Center for Investigative Journalism and the Radio Liberty-supported project Crimean Reality, both have regular problems with the self-defense militias.

“This situation when there are these groups that don’t answer to anyone, that aren’t controlled by any law, means it’s impossible to say journalists can work professionally here,” says Krisko. “The risk of damage to equipment or personal attacks, as well as fear of censorship, means that those who want to give objective information simply can’t.”

In methods reminiscent of Soviet tactics, smear campaigns, censorship and simple exclusion by news sources are also silencing journalists who might want to show a less one-sided, pro-Russian view of current affairs in Crimea. Kurmanova and her colleagues regularly receive online threats and hate mail since the beginning of March. 

Meanwhile two journalists from the Yevpatoria council-funded newspaper Yevpatoria Health Resort, who had been less than enthusiastic about Russian occupation, became subject to an attempted witch hunt in May when rival journalists sent a letter accusing them of being spies and provocateurs to the city council.

"We don’t demand the exile of these people from their town and their profession," according to the letter. "But we Yevpatorians do not need these masked ‘fifth columnists’ in our hometown, and paid from the town budget!"

It concludes by saying that if the town council does not remove them from the paper, "we will appeal to the FSB demanding they protect us Russian citizens from journalists openly conducting subversive activities." 

[ People writing donos on their enemies and professional rivals -- this is behavior straight out of the USSR!  Alas, how quickly, under Russian rule, some Crimeans have fallen back into their bad old Soviet ways!.... -- J ]

The two journalists have so far held on to their jobs, and did not want to comment further on the incident. Since the end of February, when a new Crimean parliament was announced, journalists from the Center for Investigative Journalism have not been able to get parliamentary accreditation. Lawmakers refuse to speak to them, or call them "American spies." The Crimean Cabinet of Ministers’ press service does not answer their calls. They are not informed of meetings and press conferences, or are denied entry.

“There’s a very clear difference between journalists from Russian media who can get into the offices of officials and anywhere else with no problem, and journalists from Ukrainian media who might ask awkward questions,” says Kurmanova. “We’re like white crows; no one wants to talk to us. Before it was all organised, we could write a request for information, or set up filming. Now we get our information in bits and pieces, grabbing officials outside buildings, if they agree to speak.”

Shevket Ganiyev, editor-in-chief of Crimean Tatar programming at the Crimean state broadcasting company TRK, was excluded from news coverage through a different method: He and his director were simply sent home for a month’s holiday. 

Ganiyev’s small amount of allotted live broadcasting had already been taken off air with no warning in March, before a hastily-organised referendum on joining Crimea to Russia. Ganiyev and his colleagues, who like most Crimean Tatars openly opposed the referendum, then agreed with TRK management (which openly supported it) that his department would boycott working at TRK until after the referendum.  When his team came back on air, they were subject to much closer control. 

On April 24, they were told they could not make any mention at all of Crimean Tatar governing body the Mejlis, or of Crimean Tatar leaders Mustafa Jemilev and Refat Chubarov in their programming. This has meant the editorial has had to ignore events widely covered in the international media – including Russian.

“If there’s news in Russian media and we are not allowed to talk about it, how can any journalist accept this as normal?” asks Ganiyev. “We’re not just banned from talking about the Mejlis as good or bad. We are not even allowed to cover facts.” 

The same day as the ban, Ganiyev and the editorial director were asked by TRK management to take a month’s leave.

“Of course they didn’t say so, but I think they had to send us on holiday because then our collective would be easier to control,” says Ganiyev. “May was a worrying time for them [the Russian authorities - J] because of the 70th anniversary of the [Crimean Tatar] deportation and events connected with that. I think they were scared and tried to protect themselves.” 

Ganiyev was back at work from May 28, but he and his team have no idea what the future will bring amid the general upheaval at TRK, which was formerly funded by the Ukrainian government but is now is a state of stasis. For the Crimean Tatar editorial, this is yet another set-back in their fight for more airtime in their own language. Their live airtime was reduced over a year ago to 13 minutes news a day, and their recorded programming is exclusively about cultural and social matters.

We’re hostages in this situation,” says Ganiyev. “For us, the most important things are to preserve our work places and editorial so that we can broadcast in Crimean Tatar language. If tomorrow they kick us out and bring in new journalists who are convenient for them and who speak in incorrect Crimean Tatar they’ll be pleased, because it will start the assimilation of our language.” 

Under the Ukrainian license still being used at TRK, Crimean Tatar language is allotted seven percent of overall airtime. Ukrainian language programming before March was even more limited. Since March, one of just three weekly Ukrainian language programmes has switched to Russian. Svetlana Datsenko, editor of one of the two remaining Ukrainian programmes, said she had also been asked to switch to Russian. “If there are three equal state languages in Crimea then there should be proportional coverage, 33 percent for each language,” Ganiyev points out. But neither he nor Datsenko have much expectation of that happening. 

The new head of TRK, Boris Nemets, is from Crimean government head Sergei Aksyonov’s Russian Unity party, as is the new Crimean minister for information. The party’s key campaigning platform is Russian language rights.

As Crimea moves rapidly towards adopting Russian legislation, the situation for a free media is only set to get worse.

On top of harassment and exclusion, staff of the Center for Investigative Journalism have a whole array of logistical problems to deal with. Their salaries, paid from foreign donors, are frozen as the Crimean banking system has collapsed. 

They have been told to vacate their rented offices by the end of July. Russian legislation, which comes into force in Crimea in January, requires that their organisation register as a foreign agent, and completely bans their main donor, USAID. Increasingly repressive Russian laws can shut down opposition websites, and impose prison sentences on anyone questioning Russian territorial integrity (which would include Crimea) in the media.

Meanwhile a law legalizing the self-defense militias has already passed its first reading in the Crimean parliament. According to Kurmanova, it grants the militias a wide range of powers to stop, search, confiscate and detain, with minimum responsibilities. As state media in Crimea produces a soothing stream of information about a bright Russian future, ignoring the economic and social problems since annexation and downplaying or disregarding non-Russian ethnic groups, it is little surprise that Kurmanova and Datsenko from TRK both plan to leave Crimea for mainland Ukraine by the end of the summer.

“We had strict editorial standards and I suppose that’s why it's hardest of all for us, because now no one here needs such editorial standards,’ says Kurmanova. “It’s easier just not to ask questions and to keep quiet.”

Ukraine's Maidan activists are not 'fascists'

Disturbingly, some of the Western left wing and even some of the media have adopted the Russian propaganda meme that protesters and activists centered on Ukraine's Maidan are "nationalists" and "fascists."  

It is strange then that Ukraine's power structures and military have given themselves over so willingly, bloodlessly, to a group of fascists. Does that make Ukraine's military leadership fascistic?  Were they not fascist a month ago under President Yanukovych?  Absurd premises lead to absurd conclusions.

Only in Ukraine is it "nationalistic" to insist that in the one country on earth where people speak Ukrainian that Ukrainian should be the official state language, and receive other forms of protection.  Only in Ukraine is it "nationalistic," not patriotic, to proclaim, "Glory to Ukraine," (I myself was witness to an incident when these words provoked a fistfight), or to sing the national anthem.  

If Western liberals were to judge France by the same standard as they do Ukraine, then they must label them a bunch of "French nationalists" whose borders don't deserve sovereign protection.  Likewise, that makes American Republicans who rail against "press 2 for Spanish" or sing "The Star Spangled Banner" at ballgames a bunch of fascist nationalists.

And yet even those comparisons are not quite apt, since native French and English are spoken in other countries and on other continents. Not so with Ukrainian. If Ukrainian dies in Ukraine, it dies in the world. And with it would be lost the richness of Ukrainian culture. Ukrainian is worth fighting for, worth protecting.  Yet any casual visitor to Ukraine would get the impression that Russian, not Ukrainian, gets preferential treatment.  Most television shows, newspapers, magazines and books are in Russian only. Most films are shown in Russian, albeit with Ukrainian subtitles -- a modest victory for Ukrainian "nationalists." 

Indeed, outside Ukraine, the "great and powerful" Russian language has a huge country of 142 million people to protect it: Russia. Therefore, Russia doesn't need Ukraine for the Russian language to flourish. Anyhow, nobody from any Ukrainian political party has ever proposed legislating what language people speak in their everyday lives -- and yet the lumpen on the streets of the South and East of Ukraine firmly believe this lie.  In this lie, nurtured cynically by Russia, lies much of ethnic Russians' support for Russia's annexation of Crimea....

Next, there is the "nationalist" Svoboda (Freedom) party in Ukraine, whose leaders said that Jews in league with Russia have sought to keep Ukraine down. Granted, this was several years ago, but still it's cause for the West to be deeply concerned, right?  Well, not so much. Svoboda is still a small party and it doesn't stand a chance of winning many seats in Parliament or in the Cabinet of Ministers.  

Moreover, Jews were activists on Maidan.  Indeed, there was a Jewish brigade on Maidan including "four Israelis with combat experience."  I've heard of "self-hating Jews," but this would be a new extreme, if indeed Israeli Jews came to Ukraine to support anti-Semitic fascists!  

And Israel's Haaretz newspaper recently examined the level and anti-Semitism among pro-Maidan forces and concluded: no big deal.  Jews were among the pro-Maidan activists and at least four Jewish protesters were killed by Berkut special police.

So what other "evidence" does Putin's Russia and the deluded Western left offer of Ukrainian fascism? The fact that many Maidan activists revere Ukrainian nationalist freedom fighter Stepan Bandera. He is a controversial historical figure, to say the least. I won't go into the entire history of it now. It suffices to say the mere mention of his name is enough to cause spontaneous brawls in both Ukraine and Russia. You can make up your own mind about Bandera. 

Let me offer this: there are many times more statues of Lenin in Ukraine than of Bandera.  "Anti-Maidan" and "pro-Russian" activists in Ukraine have banded together to protect Maidan protesters from tearing down statues of Lenin as they did in Kyiv and other cities. Lenin is a symbol of Russian oppression and terror -- including two Soviet-imposed famines on Ukraine when millions died of hunger. It is now acknowledged by the U.S. and the West as genocide. (Russia, as the protector of the Soviet legacy, not surprisingly, disagrees). Thus reasonable people would cast suspicion on anybody, or any group, defending the legacy of Lenin. And yet it is not so.  And yet Bandera is called a "mass murderer" by many ethnic Russians in Ukraine. For them Bandera, not Lenin, is the bogeyman of Ukrainian history. Go figure.

(An epitaph on Bandera: two of his brothers died in the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz; his father was executed by the Soviets; and three of his sisters were sent to Soviet gulags in Siberia.)

But all the above-mentioned is academic. Anybody who bothered to go to Maidan could see that it was not decorated with swastikas, hidden fascist symbols, or echoing with anti-Semetic rhetoric. These were normal people. Scratch that -- better than normal. These were, and are, the most liberal, progressive people in Ukraine: doctors, teachers, artists, entrepreneurs, musicians, lawyers, journalists, students, and human rights activists. These are the dynamic people who make Ukraine go. And as the country's most honest and honorable, they were the most likely to suffer under President Yanukovych's corrupt and lawless regime.

Therefore it's painfully unfair of the West to dismiss Ukrainians' struggle -- which was peaceful and orderly until President Yanukovich tried to evict unarmed people with deadly force from Independence Square -- with terms like "fascist," "neo-Nazi," or "nationalist."  In our ignorance and haste to judgement, we should not throw out such loaded terms willy-nilly. 

I challenge anybody to find a report from a Western journalist on the ground on Maidan who corroborated Russia's fascist or nationalistic narrative of events there. It was perhaps the most well-covered revolution in history; beyond the Western media like BBC, it was YouTubed, Facebooked and Tweeted by thousands of people. If there were rampant fascist sentiments there -- not just a few neo-Nazi malcontents -- then we surely would have seen their faces and heard their voices. 

And finally, regarding neo-Nazis, Putin had best remove the beam from his own eye before remarking on the speck in Ukraine's (Matthew 7:5).  Putin tolerates an active and violent neo-Nazi movement within Russia. He finds them useful to conduct planned attacks and pogroms on gays and national minorities, mostly from the Caucasus. (For many graphic examples, go to YouTube and search "skinheads Russia.")

Putin should send his Black Sea Fleet out of Crimea to fight Russian fascists at home!

UPDATE 1 (05.03.2014):  My friend TK wanted to add something about Stepan Bandera. I haven't fact-checked it, only cleaned up the grammar & spelling:

Just FYI: about Nazi collaborators among Ukrainian nationalists. Many tend to forget during WWII only 14,689 Ukrainians collaborated with Hitler, but 1,150,000 Russians collaborated with Hitler and almost all European countries either collaborated as a whole or had their own collaborators with Hitler. Bandera spent one year in Berlin prison, received proposal to diversify (?) the rear of Red Army, refused to collaborate and then was confined for three years in a [Nazi] concentration camp Sachsenhausen. Bandera announced Ukraine was an independent country in 1941 when Hitler occupied Ukraine and he never collaborated with Hitler. The second person after Bandera was Lev Rebet, who spent three years in Auschwitz concentration camp (he was liberated in 1945), so all those insinuations about anti-Semitic Bandera are just Soviet propaganda. Both were killed by the same KGB officer.

There has been so much Russian propaganda on each and every possible social media, including many in English. What Russia is definitely great at is propaganda and plotting diversions internally and externally. But it is a devastating loss to the Ukrainian nation (as to any other as a matter of fact) not to know its own history. Seventy years of Soviet propaganda and 20 years of not paying attention to education, even worse the last four years of returning back to the distorted Soviet version of history led to absolute ignorance of own country and own identity that we observe now in the east-south and Crimea. Even if you ask people there who is Bandera and what he did, the only answer you will get is he is a fascist, but nothing else. Even more, most people in the rest of Ukraine will not be able to tell you much either with an exception they would not call him fascist. I strongly believe that making the population un-educated, illiterate and uninformed is the way for corruption, destruction and dictatorship. If you have sheep, not a nation, it is very easy to rule them. That relates to any country, but Russian rulers have mastered this tactic.

UPDATE 2 (05.03.2014):  This should ease the fears in the East and South of Ukraine that the new government is fascist: it's talking seriously about federalism, something the ousted Party of Regions never achieved (because they didn't want to). Reported Reuters today [emphasis mine]:

[Prime Minister] Yatseniuk has been gradually unveiling the outlines of the new government's plans for bringing the former Soviet republic's economy back from what he says is the edge of an abyss.

Earlier this week he announced plans to trim government spending by up to about 16 percent and said the government would meet any conditions set by the IMF to secure a new loan package. 

On Wednesday he said it was vital to give more authority to the regions, hungry for financial and, in some cases, for more political independence.

"One of the main things the new Ukrainian government must do is dismantle the centralized power created in the last four years," Yatseniuk said, referring to Yanukovich's rule.

Although this is part of a long-running debate and applies to all regions, it can be seen partly as a gesture to Russian speakers in the east at odds with the central government.  

UPDATE 3 (06.03.2014):  Here is yet more evidence that fascism and anti-Semitism aren't an issue on Maidan or Ukraine's new government: an "Open letter of Ukrainian Jews to Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin," dated March 4, 2014. 

Ted Cruz and his dad on the death penalty

Since Texas Senator Ted Cruz is a "good" conservative and a good son, we can be sure the apple didn't fall far from the tree.

If you want to know what this Canadian conservative nutjob really believes, just listen to his preacher dad Rafael Cruz.

BTW, if you have a problem with the concept of social justice, then you have a BIG problem with the Catholic Church. And liberation theology may be making a comeback in the Catholic Church... even though it never went away in Latin America, one of the last strongholds of the Roman Catholic Church.

Similarly with the death penalty: the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Methodist Church, the National Council of Churches (representing 35 Protestant and Orthodox churches), the U.S Episcopal Bishops, the U.S Presbyterian General Assemblies, the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., the Unitarians, and the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jewish movements all oppose capital punishment on religious-moral grounds. [HT: Pew Research.]

The Southern Baptist Convention is just about the only mainstream church that still advocates the death penalty.  

So if you call yourself a believer, a Christian or a person of faith, then think twice about Ted Cruz, his dad, and the Republican Party. And if you're so-called "pro-life" and pro-death penalty, then you'd better think twice then twice again.  Are you choosing your religious beliefs a la carte, as it suits your politics? Are you putting politics before your religion?

P.S. -- Some of my conservative friends have misunderstood my conservative logic when I said that, "Ted Cruz is a 'good' conservative and a good son, [so] we can be sure the apple didn't fall far from the tree." Like a good Christian, I forgive them for their misunderstanding.

You see, Obama and the far Right taught us that one's beliefs are determined by one's associates. Share a ZIP code with Bill Ayers? You're left-wing, bomb-throwing radical. Go to Rev. Wright's church? You hate whitey.  Belief by association is even stronger when it comes to one's parents, like Obama's biological socialist dad. Therefore, conservative logic teaches us that, with absolute certainty, Ted Cruz shares his dad's beliefs. It simply couldn't be otherwise. I mean, he doesn't even try to renounce his father's beliefs. So we can rest assured that Ted Cruz is an Evangelical Dominonist just like his dad.

Ted Cruz's Dad Declares God Is Pro Death Penalty

By Shadee Ashtari

November 7, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/1bbeHpZ

Jews now a minority in Israel

I know, I know, most American's eyes glaze over when somebody mentions the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But this is worth a look.

It reminds me of what Gary Brecher always says about war: "birthrate wins."  So Israeli Jews are now officially a minority in their own "democratic Jewish" state.  Now, Israel cannot even justify its apartheid state on the basis of a Jewish racial majority. 

Non-Jewish majority: The beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?

Security has been a "primary justification" for Zionist policies of land expropriation and removal of Palestinians.

By Mark LeVine

October 25, 2012 | Al Jazeera

URL: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/2012102371318854170.html

Knesset ex-speaker: U.S. Jews must save Israel from itself

This declining Israel, this country without a constitution, this state in transition to theocracy, the "Middle East's only democracy" that opposed democratic elections in Egypt, is the same Israel that U.S. Republicans and Democrats alike must court and seek favor with if they are to be perceived as "serious" on foreign policy, not to mention to secure the American Jewish vote?

No way.

Former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg implores U.S. Jews not to unquestioningly support Israel's decline, but rather to save Israel from itself.  

Meanwhile, U.S. politicians should not have to act as if Israel is the same country it was even 10 years ago.  Israel, an American client-state, has become politically deformed as a result of unconditional U.S. support in the face of increasing diplomatic isolation and declining comity with its neighbors.

Israel's Fading Democracy

By Avraham Burg

August 4, 2012 | New York Times

URL:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/israels-fading-democracy.html?pagewanted=1&ref=general&src=me

Israel to ban Nazi/Holocaust analogies?

Israeli Jews are only about 4 years behind me, when I first supported banning Nazi/Hitler comparisons (as well as Stalin/Lenin/Communist comparisons) in our democratic polity.

Such comparisons are like a very big and clumsy but powerful gun that nobody knows when to use or how to aim properly, so we'd be better off just leaving it.

Israel Nazi Comparisons Bill Proposed

By Eline Gordts

January 12, 2012 | Huffington Post

JERUSALEM -- A proposed bill would make it a crime in Israel to criticize people by comparing them to Nazis.

The draft legislation would impose penalties of up to six months in jail and a $25,000 fine for using the word "Nazi" or Holocaust symbols for purposes other than teaching, documentation or research.

The draft legislation passed its first hurdle Monday when Cabinet ministers approved it. It now goes to the full parliament for a vote.

The bill was proposed after ultra-Orthodox demonstrators set off a furor by dressing young boys as Nazi concentration camp inmates during a protest against what they said was incitement against their community. Protesters have also called police "Nazis."

The bill has been criticized by civil rights groups that see it as infringing on freedom of expression.

American Conservative: Helen Thomas a victim of PC

BTW, have you noticed how Americans are nervous about using the word "Jew," instead they usually say "Jewish"? (Jews excepted.) There's nothing wrong with either J-word. Because you could be Jewish without being a Jew, if you're a convert. And I suppose you could be a Jew who isn't Jewish, if you're not religious. I'm just sayin'.... But hey, don't take this the wrong way, I don't want to lose my job!

Helen Thomas and the Media's Double Standard

By Jack Hunter

June 15, 2010 | The American Conservative

Even among Israel's harshest critics, I'm not aware of anyone serious who believes or espouses what veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas said recently—that Israeli Jews should return to their nations of origin in Poland, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe, where they or their ancestors resided prior to World War II. Such a statement grossly ignores the almost unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust and Thomas should be ashamed and embarrassed for even making it.

But if we are to be honest, Thomas's sin had more to do with who she dared to criticize than what she actually said. For instance, what if Thomas had suggested white Australians should return to where they came from, out of respect for the occupied Aborigines? Or perhaps white Americans should vacate parts of the Southwest United States that once belonged to Mexico, or even go back to Europe altogether, giving the Chicora and the Cherokee back their rightful land? Of course, these suggestions are as silly as what Thomas said, but it's hard to imagine anyone being forced to resign over them. It's also not hard to imagine some pundits on the Left, or perhaps leaders for Hispanic-advocate groups, making such statements about the U.S. in particular, with little or no repercussions.

Writing for the LA Times, UCLA professor Saree Makdisi notices a blatant double standard concerning the Thomas controversy, "(If) it is unacceptable to say that Israeli Jews don't belong in Palestine, it is also unacceptable to say that the Palestinians don't belong on their own land… Yet that is said all the time in the United States, without sparking the kind of moral outrage generated by Thomas's remark." Makdisi notes that when Israel was created in 1948 "Europeans and Americans were, at the time, willing to ignore or simply dismiss the injustice inflicted on the Palestinians, who, by being forced from their land, were made to pay the price for a crime they did not commit." Makdisi then goes on to outline many instances of well-respected pundits and politicians making the same sort of harsh and unreasonable—and outright racist—comments Thomas did, only with the criticism directed at the Palestinians, concluding, "An endless deluge of statements of support for the actual, calculated, methodical dehumanization of Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular goes without comment; whereas a single offhand comment by an 89-year-old journalist, whose long and distinguished record of principled commitment and challenges to state power entitles her to respect — and the benefit of the doubt — causes her to be publicly pilloried."

My purpose here is not to defend Thomas, or even Israel or Palestine, but free speech. Being politically incorrect should mean more than a politician's willingness to oppose some liberal policy or some shock jock's eagerness to make a crude remark. Political correctness implies many things, but perhaps the best definition is that some subjects are so beyond reproach that to even "go there" means the inquisitor should be immediately discredited, read out of polite society, or as in Thomas' case, forced to end their career. Challenging the status quo—the alleged role of the press—necessarily requires questioning the very premise upon which our conventional wisdom rests. How can anyone possibly challenge the status quo without occasionally saying, thinking or writing things that sometimes stray outside the limits of respectable opinion? The very notion seems impossible.

While I don't condone her controversial comments I also don't condone the overreaction to them, and I'd rather have an army of Helen Thomas's speaking their minds and saying plenty of stupid things, than a press so constricted by fear that it never challenges convention. Liberal columnists at the New York Times and elsewhere have made sport out of saying horrible and nasty things about white Southerners—people like me and my family—and pundits on the Right have been known to say horrible and nasty things about blacks and gays and others. Yet, it's hard to recall a reporter of Thomas' stature being taken down for one admittedly dumb comment, which leads me to believe her greatest sin was "going there," or going too far, on a subject that is widely considered no-go. This is unacceptable and like white Southerners, blacks, gays, and all the rest, Israel too, should not be beyond reproach.

Defending the importance of having a free press if not Thomas, "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart recently asked, "When does America's unwavering defense of Israel begin to compromise our unwavering defense of free speech?" Answer: with the forced resignation of Helen Thomas.

Chomsky: Obama no better than W. on Israel

You know, after 9/11 I was called names by some people when I suggested that those attacks were at least partly "chickens coming home to roost" because of America's unquestioning support of Israel. Now that Obama has had the audacity to claim that the Israel-Palestine conflict harms U.S. national security, (which is patently true), he's been called out by the Washington establishment, the Anti-Defamation League (which Jews did Obama defame, anyway?), and of course the Likud conservative wing in Israel.

Not that his policy differs from Bush's, and is in fact even worse. Oh, but the U.S. media and Israel lobby will slam you even if you speak out of turn, policies aside.

Chomsky: Obama's No Human Rights Crusader -- Just Look at How He Aids Israel's Atrocities

By Noam Chomsky

April 27, 2010 | TomDispatch.com

The fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world's conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement. In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders -- with "minor and mutual modifications," to adopt official U.S. terminology before Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970s.

The basic principles have been accepted by virtually the entire world, including the Arab states (who go on to call for full normalization of relations), the Organization of Islamic States (including Iran), and relevant non-state actors (including Hamas). A settlement along these lines was first proposed at the U.N. Security Council in January 1976 by the major Arab states. Israel refused to attend the session. The U.S. vetoed the resolution, and did so again in 1980. The record at the General Assembly since is similar.

There was one important and revealing break in U.S.-Israeli rejectionism. After the failed Camp David agreements in 2000, President Clinton recognized that the terms he and Israel had proposed were unacceptable to any Palestinians. That December, he proposed his "parameters": imprecise, but more forthcoming. He then stated that both sides had accepted the parameters, while expressing reservations.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met in Taba, Egypt, in January 2001 to resolve the differences and were making considerable progress. In their final press conference, they reported that, with a little more time, they could probably have reached full agreement. Israel called off the negotiations prematurely, however, and official progress then terminated, though informal discussions at a high level continued leading to the Geneva Accord, rejected by Israel and ignored by the U.S.

A good deal has happened since, but a settlement along those lines is still not out of reach -- if, of course, Washington is once again willing to accept it. Unfortunately, there is little sign of that.

Substantial mythology has been created about the entire record, but the basic facts are clear enough and quite well documented.

The U.S. and Israel have been acting in tandem to extend and deepen the occupation. In 2005, recognizing that it was pointless to subsidize a few thousand Israeli settlers in Gaza, who were appropriating substantial resources and protected by a large part of the Israeli army, the government of Ariel Sharon decided to move them to the much more valuable West Bank and Golan Heights.

Instead of carrying out the operation straightforwardly, as would have been easy enough, the government decided to stage a "national trauma," which virtually duplicated the farce accompanying the withdrawal from the Sinai desert after the Camp David agreements of 1978-79. In each case, the withdrawal permitted the cry of "Never Again," which meant in practice: we cannot abandon an inch of the Palestinian territories that we want to take in violation of international law. This farce played very well in the West, though it was ridiculed by more astute Israeli commentators, among them that country's prominent sociologist the late Baruch Kimmerling.

After its formal withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Israel never actually relinquished its total control over the territory, often described realistically as "the world's largest prison." In January 2006, a few months after the withdrawal, Palestine had an election that was recognized as free and fair by international observers. Palestinians, however, voted "the wrong way," electing Hamas. Instantly, the U.S. and Israel intensified their assault against Gazans as punishment for this misdeed. The facts and the reasoning were not concealed; rather, they were openly published alongside reverential commentary on Washington's sincere dedication to democracy. The U.S.-backed Israeli assault against the Gazans has only been intensified since, thanks to violence and economic strangulation, increasingly savage.

Meanwhile in the West Bank, always with firm U.S. backing, Israel has been carrying forward longstanding programs to take the valuable land and resources of the Palestinians and leave them in unviable cantons, mostly out of sight. Israeli commentators frankly refer to these goals as "neocolonial." Ariel Sharon, the main architect of the settlement programs, called these cantons "Bantustans," though the term is misleading: South Africa needed the majority black work force, while Israel would be happy if the Palestinians disappeared, and its policies are directed to that end.

Blockading Gaza by Land and Sea

One step towards cantonization and the undermining of hopes for Palestinian national survival is the separation of Gaza from the West Bank. These hopes have been almost entirely consigned to oblivion, an atrocity to which we should not contribute by tacit consent. Israeli journalist Amira Hass, one of the leading specialists on Gaza, writes that

"the restrictions on Palestinian movement that Israel introduced in January 1991 reversed a process that had been initiated in June 1967. Back then, and for the first time since 1948, a large portion of the Palestinian people again lived in the open territory of a single country -- to be sure, one that was occupied, but was nevertheless whole.… The total separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank is one of the greatest achievements of Israeli politics, whose overarching objective is to prevent a solution based on international decisions and understandings and instead dictate an arrangement based on Israel's military superiority.…

"Since January 1991, Israel has bureaucratically and logistically merely perfected the split and the separation: not only between Palestinians in the occupied territories and their brothers in Israel, but also between the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and those in the rest of the territories and between Gazans and West Bankers/Jerusalemites. Jews live in this same piece of land within a superior and separate system of privileges, laws, services, physical infrastructure and freedom of movement."

The leading academic specialist on Gaza, Harvard scholar Sara Roy, adds:

"Gaza is an example of a society that has been deliberately reduced to a state of abject destitution, its once productive population transformed into one of aid-dependent paupers.… Gaza's subjection began long before Israel's recent war against it [December 2008]. The Israeli occupation — now largely forgotten or denied by the international community — has devastated Gaza's economy and people, especially since 2006…. After Israel's December [2008] assault, Gaza's already compromised conditions have become virtually unlivable. Livelihoods, homes, and public infrastructure have been damaged or destroyed on a scale that even the Israel Defense Forces admitted was indefensible.

"In Gaza today, there is no private sector to speak of and no industry. 80 percent of Gaza's agricultural crops were destroyed and Israel continues to snipe at farmers attempting to plant and tend fields near the well-fenced and patrolled border. Most productive activity has been extinguished.… Today, 96 percent of Gaza's population of 1.4 million is dependent on humanitarian aid for basic needs. According to the World Food Programme, the Gaza Strip requires a minimum of 400 trucks of food every day just to meet the basic nutritional needs of the population. Yet, despite a March [22, 2009] decision by the Israeli cabinet to lift all restrictions on foodstuffs entering Gaza, only 653 trucks of food and other supplies were allowed entry during the week of May 10, at best meeting 23 percent of required need. Israel now allows only 30 to 40 commercial items to enter Gaza compared to 4,000 approved products prior to June 2006."

[Well, obviously the Palestinians in Gaza have forgotten how to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. - J]

It cannot be too often stressed that Israel had no credible pretext for its 2008–9 attack on Gaza, with full U.S. support and illegally using U.S. weapons. Near-universal opinion asserts the contrary, claiming that Israel was acting in self-defense. That is utterly unsustainable, in light of Israel's flat rejection of peaceful means that were readily available, as Israel and its U.S. partner in crime knew very well. That aside, Israel's siege of Gaza is itself an act of war, as Israel of all countries certainly recognizes, having repeatedly justified launching major wars on grounds of partial restrictions on its access to the outside world, though nothing remotely like what it has long imposed on Gaza.

One crucial element of Israel's criminal siege, little reported, is the naval blockade. Peter Beaumont reports from Gaza that, "on its coastal littoral, Gaza's limitations are marked by a different fence where the bars are Israeli gunboats with their huge wakes, scurrying beyond the Palestinian fishing boats and preventing them from going outside a zone imposed by the warships." According to reports from the scene, the naval siege has been tightened steadily since 2000. Fishing boats have been driven steadily out of Gaza's territorial waters and toward the shore by Israeli gunboats, often violently without warning and with many casualties. As a result of these naval actions, Gaza's fishing industry has virtually collapsed; fishing is impossible near shore because of the contamination caused by Israel's regular attacks, including the destruction of power plants and sewage facilities.

These Israeli naval attacks began shortly after the discovery by the BG (British Gas) Group of what appear to be quite sizeable natural gas fields in Gaza's territorial waters. Industry journals report that Israel is already appropriating these Gazan resources for its own use, part of its commitment to shift its economy to natural gas. The standard industry source reports:

"Israel's finance ministry has given the Israel Electric Corp. (IEC) approval to purchase larger quantities of natural gas from BG than originally agreed upon, according to Israeli government sources [which] said the state-owned utility would be able to negotiate for as much as 1.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas from the Marine field located off the Mediterranean coast of the Palestinian controlled Gaza Strip.

"Last year the Israeli government approved the purchase of 800 million cubic meters of gas from the field by the IEC…. Recently the Israeli government changed its policy and decided the state-owned utility could buy the entire quantity of gas from the Gaza Marine field. Previously the government had said the IEC could buy half the total amount and the remainder would be bought by private power producers."

The pillage of what could become a major source of income for Gaza is surely known to U.S. authorities. It is only reasonable to suppose that the intention to appropriate these limited resources, either by Israel alone or together with the collaborationist Palestinian Authority, is the motive for preventing Gazan fishing boats from entering Gaza's territorial waters.

There are some instructive precedents. In 1989, Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans signed a treaty with his Indonesian counterpart Ali Alatas granting Australia rights to the substantial oil reserves in "the Indonesian Province of East Timor." The Indonesia-Australia Timor Gap Treaty, which offered not a crumb to the people whose oil was being stolen, "is the only legal agreement anywhere in the world that effectively recognises Indonesia's right to rule East Timor," the Australian press reported.

Asked about his willingness to recognize the Indonesian conquest and to rob the sole resource of the conquered territory, which had been subjected to near-genocidal slaughter by the Indonesian invader with the strong support of Australia (along with the U.S., the U.K., and some others), Evans explained that "there is no binding legal obligation not to recognise the acquisition of territory that was acquired by force," adding that "the world is a pretty unfair place, littered with examples of acquisition by force."

It should, then, be unproblematic for Israel to follow suit in Gaza.

A few years later, Evans became the leading figure in the campaign to introduce the concept "responsibility to protect" -- known as R2P -- into international law. R2P is intended to establish an international obligation to protect populations from grave crimes. Evans is the author of a major book on the subject and was co-chair of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which issued what is considered the basic document on R2P.

In an article devoted to this "idealistic effort to establish a new humanitarian principle," the London Economist featured Evans and his "bold but passionate claim on behalf of a three-word expression which (in quite large part thanks to his efforts) now belongs to the language of diplomacy: the 'responsibility to protect.'" The article is accompanied by a picture of Evans with the caption "Evans: a lifelong passion to protect." His hand is pressed to his forehead in despair over the difficulties faced by his idealistic effort. The journal chose not to run a different photo that circulates in Australia, depicting Evans and Alatas exuberantly clasping their hands together as they toast the Timor Gap Treaty that they had just signed.

Though a "protected population" under international law, Gazans do not fall under the jurisdiction of the "responsibility to protect," joining other unfortunates, in accord with the maxim of Thucydides -- that the strong do as they wish, and the weak suffer as they must -- which holds with its customary precision.

Obama and the Settlements

The kinds of restrictions on movement used to destroy Gaza have long been in force in the West Bank as well, less cruelly but with grim effects on life and the economy. The World Bank reports that Israel has established "a complex closure regime that restricts Palestinian access to large areas of the West Bank… The Palestinian economy has remained stagnant, largely because of the sharp downturn in Gaza and Israel's continued restrictions on Palestinian trade and movement in the West Bank."

The World Bank "cited Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints hindering trade and travel, as well as restrictions on Palestinian building in the West Bank, where the Western-backed government of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas holds sway." Israel does permit -- indeed encourage -- a privileged existence for elites in Ramallah and sometimes elsewhere, largely relying on European funding, a traditional feature of colonial and neocolonial practice.

All of this constitutes what Israeli activist Jeff Halper calls a "matrix of control" to subdue the colonized population. These systematic programs over more than 40 years aim to establish Defense Minister Moshe Dayan's recommendation to his colleagues shortly after Israel's 1967 conquests that we must tell the Palestinians in the territories: "We have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads."

Turning to the second bone of contention, settlements, there is indeed a confrontation, but it is rather less dramatic than portrayed. Washington's position was presented most strongly in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's much-quoted statement rejecting "natural growth exceptions" to the policy opposing new settlements. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with President Shimon Peres and, in fact, virtually the whole Israeli political spectrum, insists on permitting "natural growth" within the areas that Israel intends to annex, complaining that the United States is backing down on George W. Bush's authorization of such expansion within his "vision" of a Palestinian state.

Senior Netanyahu cabinet members have gone further. Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz announced that "the current Israeli government will not accept in any way the freezing of legal settlement activity in Judea and Samaria." The term "legal" in U.S.-Israeli parlance means "illegal, but authorized by the government of Israel with a wink from Washington." In this usage, unauthorized outposts are termed "illegal," though apart from the dictates of the powerful, they are no more illegal than the settlements granted to Israel under Bush's "vision" and Obama's scrupulous omission.

The Obama-Clinton "hardball" formulation is not new. It repeats the wording of the Bush administration draft of the 2003 Road Map, which stipulates that in Phase I, "Israel freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)." All sides formally accept the Road Map (modified to drop the phrase "natural growth") -- consistently overlooking the fact that Israel, with U.S. support, at once added 14 "reservations" that render it inoperable.

If Obama were at all serious about opposing settlement expansion, he could easily proceed with concrete measures by, for example, reducing U.S. aid by the amount devoted to this purpose. That would hardly be a radical or courageous move. The Bush I administration did so (reducing loan guarantees), but after the Oslo accord in 1993, President Clinton left calculations to the government of Israel. Unsurprisingly, there was "no change in the expenditures flowing to the settlements," the Israeli press reported. "[Prime Minister] Rabin will continue not to dry out the settlements," the report concludes. "And the Americans? They will understand."

Obama administration officials informed the press that the Bush I measures are "not under discussion," and that pressures will be "largely symbolic." In short, Obama understands, just as Clinton and Bush II did.

American Visionaries

At best, settlement expansion is a side issue, rather like the issue of "illegal outposts" -- namely those that the government of Israel has not authorized. Concentration on these issues diverts attention from the fact that there are no "legal outposts" and that it is the existing settlements that are the primary problem to be faced.

The U.S. press reports that "a partial freeze has been in place for several years, but settlers have found ways around the strictures… [C]onstruction in the settlements has slowed but never stopped, continuing at an annual rate of about 1,500 to 2,000 units over the past three years. If building continues at the 2008 rate, the 46,500 units already approved will be completed in about 20 years.… If Israel built all the housing units already approved in the nation's overall master plan for settlements, it would almost double the number of settler homes in the West Bank." Peace Now, which monitors settlement activities, estimates further that the two largest settlements would double in size: Ariel and Ma'aleh Adumim, built mainly during the Oslo years in the salients that subdivide the West Bank into cantons.

"Natural population growth" is largely a myth, Israel's leading diplomatic correspondent, Akiva Eldar, points out, citing demographic studies by Colonel (res.) Shaul Arieli, deputy military secretary to former prime minister and incumbent defense minister Ehud Barak. Settlement growth consists largely of Israeli immigrants in violation of the Geneva Conventions, assisted with generous subsidies. Much of it is in direct violation of formal government decisions, but carried out with the authorization of the government, specifically Barak, considered a dove in the Israeli spectrum.

Correspondent Jackson Diehl derides the "long-dormant Palestinian fantasy," revived by President Abbas, "that the United States will simply force Israel to make critical concessions, whether or not its democratic government agrees." He does not explain why refusal to participate in Israel's illegal expansion -- which, if serious, would "force Israel to make critical concessions" -- would be improper interference in Israel's democracy.

Returning to reality, all of these discussions about settlement expansion evade the most crucial issue about settlements: what the United States and Israel have already established in the West Bank. The evasion tacitly concedes that the illegal settlement programs already in place are somehow acceptable (putting aside the Golan Heights, annexed in violation of Security Council orders) -- though the Bush "vision," apparently accepted by Obama, moves from tacit to explicit support for these violations of law. What is in place already suffices to ensure that there can be no viable Palestinian self-determination. Hence, there is every indication that even on the unlikely assumption that "natural growth" will be ended, U.S.-Israeli rejectionism will persist, blocking the international consensus as before.

Subsequently, Prime Minister Netanyahu declared a 10-month suspension of new construction, with many exemptions, and entirely excluding Greater Jerusalem, where expropriation in Arab areas and construction for Jewish settlers continues at a rapid pace. Hillary Clinton praised these "unprecedented" concessions on (illegal) construction, eliciting anger and ridicule in much of the world.

It might be different if a legitimate "land swap" were under consideration, a solution approached at Taba and spelled out more fully in the Geneva Accord reached in informal high-level Israel-Palestine negotiations. The accord was presented in Geneva in October 2003, welcomed by much of the world, rejected by Israel, and ignored by the United States.

Washington's "Evenhandedness"

Barack Obama's June 4, 2009, Cairo address to the Muslim world kept pretty much to his well-honed "blank slate" style -- with little of substance, but presented in a personable manner that allows listeners to write on the slate what they want to hear. CNN captured its spirit in headlining a report "Obama Looks to Reach the Soul of the Muslim World." Obama had announced the goals of his address in an interview with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. "'We have a joke around the White House,' the president said. 'We're just going to keep on telling the truth until it stops working and nowhere is truth-telling more important than the Middle East.'" The White House commitment is most welcome, but it is useful to see how it translates into practice.

Obama admonished his audience that it is easy to "point fingers… but if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: the only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security."

Turning from Obama-Friedman Truth to truth, there is a third side, with a decisive role throughout: the United States. But that participant in the conflict Obama omitted. The omission is understood to be normal and appropriate, hence unmentioned: Friedman's column is headlined "Obama Speech Aimed at Both Arabs and Israelis." The front-page Wall Street Journal report on Obama's speech appears under the heading "Obama Chides Israel, Arabs in His Overture to Muslims." Other reports are the same.

The convention is understandable on the doctrinal principle that though the U.S. government sometimes makes mistakes, its intentions are by definition benign, even noble. In the world of attractive imagery, Washington has always sought desperately to be an honest broker, yearning to advance peace and justice. The doctrine trumps truth, of which there is little hint in the speech or the mainstream coverage of it.

Obama once again echoed Bush's "vision" of two states, without saying what he meant by the phrase "Palestinian state." His intentions were clarified not only by the crucial omissions already discussed, but also by his one explicit criticism of Israel: "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop." That is, Israel should live up to Phase I of the 2003 Road Map, rejected at once by Israel with tacit U.S. support, as noted -- though the truth is that Obama has ruled out even steps of the Bush I variety to withdraw from participation in these crimes.

The operative words are "legitimacy" and "continued." By omission, Obama indicates that he accepts Bush's vision: the vast existing settlement and infrastructure projects are "legitimate," thus ensuring that the phrase "Palestinian state" means "fried chicken."

Always even-handed, Obama also had an admonition for the Arab states: they "must recognize that the Arab Peace Initiative was an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities." Plainly, however, it cannot be a meaningful "beginning" if Obama continues to reject its core principles: implementation of the international consensus. To do so, however, is evidently not Washington's "responsibility" in Obama's vision; no explanation given, no notice taken.

On democracy, Obama said that "we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election" -- as in January 2006, when Washington picked the outcome with a vengeance, turning at once to severe punishment of the Palestinians because it did not like the outcome of a peaceful election, all with Obama's apparent approval judging by his words before, and actions since, taking office.

Obama politely refrained from comment about his host, President Mubarak, one of the most brutal dictators in the region, though he has had some illuminating words about him. As he was about to board a plane to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the two "moderate" Arab states, "Mr. Obama signaled that while he would mention American concerns about human rights in Egypt, he would not challenge Mr. Mubarak too sharply, because he is a 'force for stability and good' in the Middle East… Mr. Obama said he did not regard Mr. Mubarak as an authoritarian leader. 'No, I tend not to use labels for folks,' Mr. Obama said. The president noted that there had been criticism 'of the manner in which politics operates in Egypt,' but he also said that Mr. Mubarak had been 'a stalwart ally, in many respects, to the United States.'"

When a politician uses the word "folks," we should brace ourselves for the deceit, or worse, that is coming. Outside of this context, there are "people," or often "villains," and using labels for them is highly meritorious. Obama is right, however, not to have used the word "authoritarian," which is far too mild a label for his friend.

Just as in the past, support for democracy, and for human rights as well, keeps to the pattern that scholarship has repeatedly discovered, correlating closely with strategic and economic objectives. There should be little difficulty in understanding why those whose eyes are not closed tight shut by rigid doctrine dismiss Obama's yearning for human rights and democracy as a joke in bad taste.

U.S. raised $33 M for illegal Israeli settlements

And we wonder what many in the Arab-Muslim world have against America: 28 US charitable groups have made a total of $33.4m in tax-exempt contributions to Israeli settlements and related organisations from 2004-2007.

Surely, the illegal Israeli settlements are one of the most contentious issues in the Mideast, and a sticking point in peace negotiations. If the shoe were on the other foot, with American Muslims funding Palestinian groups, we might call this funding terrorism.

So whether we know it or not, we are involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and not just at the negotiating table between Israelis and Palestinians as an "honest broker."

(This is not to mention the almost $3 billion in military aid that we give every year to poor, broke Israel, which can't afford to buy its own guns, war planes, and attack helicopters with which to menace and murder Palestinian civilians.)

The US cash behind extremist settlers

The Hebron Fund is raising vast sums for Israeli settlements that violate the Geneva convention, with little scrutiny

By Andrew Kadi and Aaron Levitt

December 8, 2009 | Guardian.co.uk

URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/dec/08/us-settlers-hebron-fund-israeli

GOP will lose for embracing teabaggers, not moderates

Is the Tea Party Gang Turning GOP Into a Party of Hate?

By David Corn

November 6, 2009 | Politicsdaily.com

When John Boehner, the Republican leader of the House, appeared at the Tea Party rally at the Capitol on Thursday afternoon, it was a dramatic signal: The wing-nuts have taken over the GOP.

Think I'm being harsh? The angry folks at the protest -- which attracted several thousand conservatives -- held up signs with messages of hate: "Get the Red Out of the White House," "Waterboard Congress," "Ken-ya Trust Obama?" One called the president a "Traitor to the U.S. Constitution." Another sign showed pictures of dead bodies at the Dachau concentration camp and compared health care reform to the Holocaust. A different placard depicted Obama as Sambo. Yes, Sambo. Another read, "Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds" -- a reference to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory holding that one evil Jewish family has manipulated events around the globe for decades.

All of this extremism was on display -- proudly -- at an event that was officially sponsored by the House Republicans. After Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) invited tea partiers to the Capitol to rail against the emerging health care bill, the GOP leadership -- somewhat blindsided by Bachmann -- jumped on board, providing speakers and logistical support for the event. Certainly, the crowd was not made up entirely of bigots; I'm not smearing all the protesters who oppose Obama's health care reform effort. But it cannot be denied: Racism and anti-Semitism were part of an official Republican action.

Extremism was also flowing from the podium, where Republican House members were eager for microphone time. Boehner, for one, declared that the health care bill is the "greatest threat to freedom that I have seen." That's some statement. A greater threat than Hitler's Nazism or Soviet communism? About the same time he was speaking, Obama was making a surprise appearance at the White House daily press briefing to tout the fact that the American Medical Association and AARP, the powerful seniors lobby, have each endorsed the health care reform bill. Here's a question for Boehner: Are these two groups opposed to freedom? And at one point during the rally -- call it a Bachmannalia -- when John Ratzenberger, a.k.a Cliff Clavin from "Cheers," claimed that the Democrats were turning the United States into a land of European socialism, the audience shouted, "Nazis, Nazis." No Republican legislator left the stage in protest. Boehner and his fellow GOP leaders should be asked how they feel about mounting a rally that attracted intense hate-mongering.

With their overheated rhetoric, Boehner and Bachmann (who called this rally "the Super Bowl of freedom") are placing the GOP into a corner -- just at a time when external circumstances are shifting in the party's favor. If the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia showed anything, they indicated that moderate Republicans (real or faux) can fare well against Democrats during a time of high unemployment. These two elections also suggested that independents are skittish about the status quo, open to Republican importuning, and perhaps yearning to send incumbents a message -- and most incumbents nowadays are Democrats. The one place where conservatives made a conservative stand was the 23rd congressional district of New York. In that high-profile contest, the Tea Party movement, which had swung behind conservative third-party candidate Doug Hoffman, was defeated by Democrat Bill Owens.

The lesson of all this for GOPers might well be: Don't go crazy; instead, court dissatisfied independents and be a reasonable alternative to the people in power. By embracing the Tea Party mob, Boehner and company are doing none of that. They are partnering with an extremist band that many indies won't identify with. And that may end up giving Democrats a better chance to hold on.

A recent poll found that only 25 percent of Americans have a positive opinion of the Republican Party (compared to 42 percent for the Democrats). Hanging out with "Nazi"-shouters who wave racist and hateful signs is not likely to boost the popular appeal of congressional Republicans. Boehner and company are not merely playing to the base; they're saddling up with the worst elements of the right. It won't be a pretty ride.

******
You want more evidence the Tea Party activists are not reality-based? A bunch of them have been promoting the theories of a crackpot Russian academic who predicts that ethnic and racial conflicts will cause the United States to disintegrate within in the next year or so into several different countries. It would be hard to make this stuff up. Check it out here.