Hi. It turns out Aaron McGruder is on a six month leave for activities including a cable-tv show. My rant at the LA Times was logical but untrue. Thanks to the truthsayers among you.
Today's essays both concern silence, selectively used and misused, but relate to what we know, think we know and how that 'knowledge' sustains the controllers in acting in their own interests, now ours. This isn't news, but should be remembered. Ed "The note of panic in some of the attacks on Mearsheimer and Walt contrasts with the fact that what they say is no secret in American foreign policy circles. People have for years taken for granted the informal censorship, or self-censorship, exercised in the government and the press on this issue." "in the case of The Washington Post, two of them, both featuring the news that the totally insignificant David Duke, a former head of the Klu Klux Klan, applauds the Merscheimer-Walt paper. Duke is not a figure whose views are ordinarily treated as of national interest by The Washington Post, and the newspaper's linking of him to the Merscheimer-Wall document was an act of character assassination by association just like those which won Senator Joseph McCarthy infamy in the 1950s." http://www.williampfaff.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=115 William Pfaff is the author of eight books on American foreign policy, international relations, and contemporary history, including books on utopian thought, romanticism and violence, nationalism, and the impact of the West on the non-Western world. His newspaper column, featured in The International Herald Tribune for more than a quarter-century, and his globally syndicated articles, have given him the widest international readership of any American commentator The Mearsheimer-Walt Paper on America's Israeli Lobby on 2006/4/5 11:20:00 (215 reads) By Willeam Pfaff Paris, April 4, 2006 - London's Financial Times performed an American public service in its weekend edition, calling editorially for open and honest discussion of the influence of Israel on American foreign policy. The call came amidst the resounding silence in "responsible" American circles concerning the paper recently issued by two highly-regarded political scholars, Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, discussing the "Israel lobby" in Washington and its effect on American foreign relations. So far as one can make out from the internet, in the mainstream American press, only United Press International, The International Herald Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post have carried articles on the paper. The Herald Tribune's was an opinion piece by Daniel Levy, a former advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, calling for open discussion of the lobby. The UPI and the Monitor provided professionally detached news reports. The other two papers carried attacks -- in the case of The Washington Post, two of them, both featuring the news that the totally insignificant David Duke, a former head of the Klu Klux Klan, applauds the Merscheimer-Walt paper. Duke is not a figure whose views are ordinarily treated as of national interest by The Washington Post, and the newspaper's linking of him to the Merscheimer-Wall document was an act of character assassination by association just like those which won Senator Joseph McCarthy infamy in the 1950s. The document has not otherwise lacked attention. The blogosphere is full of it, with both attacks on it and defenses and praise. The authors themselves predicted that the mainstream media would ignore or attack their argument, which is essentially that the influence of Israel on American policy has distorted it to Israel's advantage, and sometimes to American disadvantage. They say that Israel's friends in the United States have succeeded in convincing Americans that Israeli and American national interests are inseparable, which they are not, and have tried and often succeeded in suppressing or punishing critical discussion of the relationship. What are very striking are the virulence as well as the volume of the attacks being made on the authors. The Klu Klux Klan smear has been the least of it. Their paper has been compared to Nazi propaganda of the 1930s and to the czarist-era forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (which still circulates in the Arab world). In fact, Mearsheimer and Walt are recognized and respected political scholars in the so-called realist tradition, which regards the defense and promotion of the national interest of states as the chief purpose of foreign policy. Their paper is a responsible document of public importance. The venom in the attacks made on it risks the opposite of its intended effect by tending to validate the claim that intense pressures are exercised on publishers, editors, writers, and on American universities to block criticism, intimidate critics, and prevent serious discussion of the American-Israeli relationship. In Israel itself there has for many years been frank, cool and reasoned discussion of the subject. Leading figures, including retired officers and intelligence officials as well as peace activists, have in the past warned that the actions of Israel's friends in America could eventually rebound against Israel itself, with harm to Jews elsewhere. Some also have noted that the leading U.S. lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is farther to the right in its views than Israeli public opinion, and has interfered in Israeli politics through support for the Likud party and by undermining Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The note of panic in some of the attacks on Mearsheimer and Walt contrasts with the fact that what they say is no secret in American foreign policy circles. People have for years taken for granted the informal censorship, or self-censorship, exercised in the government and the press on this issue. It is a fact of democratic life in the United States that determined interest groups annex their own spheres of federal policy. Energy policy is run by the oil companies, and trade policy by manufacturers, exporters and importers, with an input from Wall Street. U.S. Cuba policy is decided by the Cuban lobby in Florida, and policy on Armenia by Americans of Armenian descent. The Middle East, or at least its part of it, belongs to Israel. However in the Israeli case the lobbying effort is linked to a foreign government, even if the lobbyists sometimes take a policy line not that of the government. Moreover, the lobbying involves war and peace issues. President George W. Bush said a few days ago that in connection with the supposed threat of Iran, his concern is to protect Israel. Critics ask why Israel should not protect itself. The same has been asked about Iraq. In this respect the controversy over the Israeli lobby is potentially explosive. This is why denials, secrecy, and efforts at intimidation are dangerous. Daniel Levy is right when he says that Israel itself would be served "if the open and critical debate that takes place over here [in Israel] were exported over there," meaning the United States. [The full Mearsheimer-Walt paper is available on the Harvard John F. Kennedy School website, and a shortened version, published in March in the London Review of Books, is easily found on the internet.] Copyright 2006 by Tribune Media Services. All Rights Reserved. *** http://select.nytimes.com/2006/04/08/opinion/08dowd.html?th&emc=th Divine Right of Bushes by Maureen Dowd NY Times Op-Ed: April 08, 2006 So the aide turns out to have been loyally following his leader's dictates, rather than going around the boss's back to peddle secret information. Scooter is a "good Judas," as it turns out, just as Judas himself was, according to a 1,700-year-old Christian manuscript found in the Egyptian desert that asserts that Jesus wanted Judas to betray him, so he entrusted his disciple with special intelligence. "You can see how early Christians could say, if Jesus' death was all part of God's plan, then Judas's betrayal was part of God's plan," Dr. Karen King, a professor of the history of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, told The Times. Since President Bush seems to see his mission in Iraq as part of God's plan, he must have assumed that getting Scooter Libby to leak parts of a classified document on Iraq to rebut Joe Wilson's charge about a juiced-up casus belli was part of God's plan. When other officials leak top-secret stuff - even in cases where the whistle-blowers feel they are illuminating unlawful acts - they are portrayed by the White House as traitors who should be investigated and fired. After The Times broke the story about the president allowing unauthorized snooping in America, W. was outraged. The F.B.I. and Justice Department were sicced on the leakers. "Revealing classified information," W. huffed, "is illegal, alerts our enemies and endangers our country." Really, W. should fire himself. He swore to look high and low for the scurrilous leaker and, lo and behold, he has himself in custody. Since the Bush administration is basically a monarchy, he should pass the crown to Jenna. She couldn't do worse than this bunch of airheads and bullies. Patrick Fitzgerald filed court papers indicating that Scooter testified that in 2003, when the White House was getting rattled by the failure to find W.M.D. and by criticism from a former diplomat on the margins of the war scheme, the president authorized Dick Cheney to authorize Scooter to make a one-sided dump of classified information about Saddam's arsenal to The Times's Judy Miller. Scooter was so concerned about the propriety of the deal that he checked with the vice president's lawyer, David Addington, before he spilled. Addington, whose politics are to the right of Louis XVI, said, go right ahead. Now Black Adder has Scooter's job. Coincidence? The Bushies once more showed incompetence by creating this elaborate daisy-chain leak and giving it to the one person in journalism who had been roped off from writing about the prewar intelligence, while her editors sorted out problems with her past W.M.D. coverage. Judy never authored an article about what Scooter gave her, either that intelligence or the identity of the woman whom she wrote down in her notebook as "Valerie Flame." (Stripper or spy?) W. subscribes to the Nixonian theory that when a president does it, it's not illegal - or maybe it's the divine right of kings. God has been pretty active in Republican politics lately: Tom DeLay said God told him to drop out of his re-election race. If the administration were seriously trying to declassify something in the national interest, wouldn't it have President Bush explain his decision or have his Scottish terrier yip it out from the podium, rather than having Scooter whisper it in Judy's ear? Instead, sounding very Lewis Carroll, the White House claims that when the president leaks something secret, it's not secret anymore. It's the Immaculate Declassification: intelligence is declassified by passing it on to a friendly reporter. "The president believes the leaking of classified information is a very serious matter," Scott McClellan said. "And I think that's why it's important to draw a distinction here. Declassifying information and providing it to the public, when it is in the public interest, is one thing. But leaking classified information that could compromise our national security is something that is very serious. And there is a distinction." And thank goodness we have a White House that gets that distinction. Democrats who don't, he sniffed, are guilty of "crass politics." If W. wants the information out, it's good for the country to make it public. If W. doesn't want the information out, it's bad for the country to make it public. L'état, c'est moi. That's how we got mired in the Iraq war in the first place. The administration ruthlessly held back classified information that contradicted its bogus case for war, and leaked classified information that supported it. The Bushies keep trying to manipulate reality, but reality bites back. That's not only crass politics. It's lethal politics. L'état, c'est mess. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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