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Emet m'Tsiyon

Saturday, November 14, 2009

The Muslim Militants of the Organization of the Islamic Conference Initiated the "Goldstone Report"

UPDATING links added 11-17 & 11-27-2009 at bottom

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

The secretary-general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference boasts that his body started off the whole process of the Judeophobic Goldstone Report:
"Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu: Let me first start by completing the story of the history of the Goldstone report. What I would like to put on record is that the OIC was the initiator of this process." [see here]
On January 3, during the attacks on Gaza, we convened the executive committee of the OIC on a ministerial level. It was decided that the OIC group in Geneva should ask the Human Rights Council to convene and consider the possibility of sending a fact-finding mission to Gaza. [here]

The OIC was instrumental in getting through this resolution and thanks to the good offices of Ms Pilay, the UN high commissioner [for "human rights"], that she formed this fact-finding mission headed by Judge Goldstone.
In other words, it was not a body of disinterested humanitarians and zealots for peace and international law who initiated the Goldstone Report. It was a Muslim body, a very interested, party, a partisan body on the side of Muslim interests that initiated the whole process of the Goldstone Report. Note that the UN "Human Rights" Council works hand in glove with the Organization of the Islamic Conference [OIC] that basically supports the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights which aims to vitiate the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Cairo Declaration has been analyzed by David Littman [here] and by Carlo Panella [in his book, Il "Complotto Ebraico", L'Antisemitismo Islamico da Maometto a Bin Laden (Torino: Lindau 2005)]

Let us quote from Article 1b of the Cairo Declaration in order to see how subtle and smooth these Islamists can be in affirming Muslim superiority and the Muslim right to supremacy.
All human beings are subject to God and the most beloved by Him are those who are most useful to the rest of His subjects, and no one has superiority over the others except on the basis of piety and good actions. [Article 1 b, Panella, p 247]
Now, just who are "the most beloved. . . who are most useful to the rest"? In any event, some are superior to others "on the basis of piety and good actions." Now, who are truly pious if not Muslims --and only Muslims-- in the view of the OIC? Whose actions are truly good and what are those "good actions"? Could establishing Islamic law, shari`ah, throughout the world and making Muslims superior to all others be a "good action"? Could fighting a jihad be a "good action" as Muslim law affirms?

So those who deny universal human rights and universal human equality guide the actions ["good actions"?] of the UN "human rights" council!

On the corruption of the UN human rights council's predecessor, the human rights commission, consider how Christian Rocca put it, in an article for Il Foglio April 27, 2005.
At the UN, the Torturers Watch over Human Rights

China, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Libya have three things in common: they are ferocious dictatorships, they reject the concept of human rights, and they are enthusiastic members of the UN Human Rights Commission. In 2003, Libya even presided over its work... The regimes that torture and repress and keep their own subjects in chains are never missing from the Commission. Indeed, they are the ones that seek most tenaciously to get a seat at Geneva.... Even Kofi Annan's wise men have recognized that some countries go into the Commission "not to reinforce human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize other countries."
Note that Sudan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Libya are all members of the OIC which endorses the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights, meant to vitiate the original 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We plan to post on torture in Libya in the case of the Bulgarian nurses falsely charged with injecting AIDS virus into Libyan children as scapegoats for Libyan medical failure. A Palestinian Arab doctor was also charged along with the Bulgarian nurses and he too was jailed for eight years.

The OIC also overlooks any Jewish heritage, any Jewish holy places in Jerusalem, essentially it disregards any Jewish history in Jerusalem. It recognizes only Arab rights and Muslim and Christian holy places which, of course, would not have had any meaning in Jerusalem were it not for the prior Jewish history and Jewish holy places there.
About two weeks ago at Unesco's general assembly in Paris, I [Ihsanoglu] called on the UN and Unesco to declare East Jerusalem, the historical city of Jerusalem, as a world historical site - untouchable. That way it would preserve the Muslim and Christian monuments.

We hope that the political will of the 57 member states of the OIC will be able to levy international pressure - through various channels - on Israel to stop threatening the al-Aqsa Mosque. [here]
Of course, no mention is made of the Temple Mount as a Jewish holy site which was the original direction of prayer of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Nor are Jewish rights on and to the Temple Mount recognized.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Our previous post on the Moral Incompetence of the UNHRC [here]
La Dichiarazione del Cairo sui diritti umani nel Islam [qui]. Commenti da Carlo Panella [qui]
Moshe Sharon [Hebrew U prof] on Islam as a conquering, imperialist religion [see excerpts here]
Hugh Fitzgerald on UN corruption in general, and pro-Arab Judeophobic corruption in particular [here]
For a more comprehensive view of the UNHRC'S "fact-finding commission report," see the Understanding the Goldstone Report blog [here]

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Using Hated or Loved Personal Names as a Device for Emotional Manipulation

David Solway explains the use of personal names of hated or loved persons or things as a device to arouse emotions, manipulate behavior and sympathies and have the audience skip over thinking. I do not necessarily agree with all of Solway's political judgments, but he explains the phenomenon very well.

Bush Is a Liar, Obama Is a Savior: The Rhetoric of Propaganda

by David Solway, on November 10, 2009 @ 12:35 am, Column2 02, | 29 Comments

Lecturing in a poetry class a few years back, I had occasion to mention the rhetorical device called antonomasia. I was astonished afterward to learn that one of my students had assumed I was referring to a royal personage [1] executed by the Bolsheviks. Now Anastasia is a charming name with loads of popular appeal but its proper sphere of application is chronicle or romance. I patiently explained that, despite the reminiscent ring, antonomasia is not the name of a Romanov princess or, for that matter, of a famousinternational dating service [2], specializing in mail-order brides (“the fastest way to reach thousands of Russian ladies”). It is a persuasive rhetorical trope which can be manipulated in a number of different ways, most pertinently as the use of a personal name to indicate a common noun or express a general idea. Typical examples are “Solon” for “wise legislator” (or “wisdom”) and “Hitler” for “evil despot” (or “pure evil” itself).

True, Cervantes gave the name “Antonomasia” to a fictional princess in Don Quixote [3]. But in fact he intended the word in its literal acceptation, applying “Antonomasia” antonomastically to stand for the nature of contemporary poetry — something the confused sophomore might have cited to rescue his dignity. In any event, this rather pixilated episode got me to wondering about the influence of antonomasia in everyday verbal transactions and especially in political discourse, since the latter is where it is used most cogently. Its effect can be so subtle that, if we are not alert to the force of enchantment it exerts, it can prevent us from thinking clearly. It can, when all is said and done, seduce no less compellingly than a blond Russian girl.

A little attention should reveal that when it comes to the discussion of current political issues, there is a kind of robotic reaction at work among many intelligent and well-meaning people, as if it were based in the autonomic nervous system or the solar plexus and not in the centers of thought. It hinges not on reasoning but on desire. To take a resonant example, the name “Bush” was (and is) met by a chain of verbal and emotional equivalents: “liar,” “moron,” “oil baron,” “imperialist,” swathed in a penumbra of knowing contempt. Each term of abuse triggered by the name is then made to stand for the United States itself.

The corollary was that if Bush were only chased from office, the antonomastic link would be broken and the United States would no longer be the country that it was, or was understood to be. The fact that President Clinton’s inactivity and not President Bush’s putative warmongering did much to bring the present conflictual situation upon us is conveniently dismissed from consideration. And the possibility that the United States under Bush was at least to some extent justified in its chosen course of action is, obviously, a complete non-starter.

The reverse operation is equally effective. Utter the name “Obama” and a host of surrogate terms leap to mind — “savior,” “new man,” “peacemaker,” “The One,” or, in the words of Newsweek editor Evan Thomas, no less than a “sort of god [4]” — which are immediately reified as undoubted facts. Despite Obama’s recent, self-inflicted troubles and the crisis of confidence in which he is increasingly embroiled, he is still regarded by the MSM, the liberal-left, the Oslo peaceniks, and approximately half the American electorate as sacrosanct, as “good,” “honest,” “reliable,” “noble.” Like spellbound children following the Pied Piper, the epithets cling to the name. They are then associated in swift antonomastic transfer with a newborn, a “different,” America.

There is no awareness among the true believers — and especially among the myrmidons of the left — that they have been deluded by nomenclature, by the semiotic condensation of amorphous ideas and obscure but powerful feelings. As in the first case where a process of reevaluation is all but proscribed, so in the second skepticism is ruled out of court by all but the unconverted. In the current jargon, one could say that antonomasia, whether deployed negatively or positively, runs the signifier into the signified, rendering them indistinguishable from one another. Alternatively, the appellative word and the denominated thing have merged in a passion of similitudes.

In the same way, prior to his disengagement policy and his medical collapse, all one had to do was mention the name of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the automated analogies instantly crowded the emotional field on which the debate was pursued: “political dinosaur,” “Likud [5] hawk,” “war criminal.” Each term of abuse stood for Israel itself, supplemented by others like “Zionist entity” or “military occupier” springing from the inboard thesaurus of ideologically motivated synonyms.

The corollary was that if Sharon were only cashiered or even assassinated and his place taken by a Labor [6] dove, Israel might be welcomed or at least tolerated in the family of nations. The very real likelihood that previous Labor governments, by their tactic of appeasement and their naive belief in the credibility and good faith of the Palestinian negotiators, merely exacerbated the current situation in the Middle East is an inadmissible argument.

Of course, positive antonomasia comes harder for Israel than for the U.S. The problem here may have something to do with the plausible assumption that, in the words [7] of Jonathan Rosenblum, “Israel is the only country the majority of whose citizens are determined to confront evil rather than appease it.” This does not endear it to the West. We recall, too, that the pacifying names “Olmert [8]” and “Livni[9]” did little to redeem Israel in the eyes of the world. And with the recent election of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister, the negative personification tactic is in full swing again: “hard right-winger,” “expansionist,” “aggressor.” There is no recognition of the fact that Netanyahu signed the Wye Agreement [10] ceding land to the Palestinians; returned 80% of Hebron, the Jewish City of the Patriarchs, to the authority of Yasser Arafat; allowed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, to establish himself in Gaza; and has endorsed the original “two-state” road map. Such facts cannot break the magic circle of incantatory substitutions and have no bearing on the judgments of a barratrous symposium. For bad Bibi [11] is Israel.

What really happened in both the American and Israeli instances is that rational inquiry and responsible thought were (and still are) short-circuited, and that otherwise intelligent people surrendered their mental faculties to an involuntary and reflex-dominated organ of response whose instrumental mode of function is analogous to the operations of libidinal appetite. When a match is arranged between a term that seeks its conceptual mate and an idea that already awaits its verbal suitor, what is becomes what you want it to be. Such transactions smack of conjugal provisions where distance is abolished by a predetermined intimacy, as in arranged marriages — not the best recipe for genuine understanding.

As a result, disinterested analysis and the free exchange of ideas are no longer even remotely conceivable in an intellectual forum governed by antonomastic rigidities, which is only a kind of psychic concupiscence, a pressing need to satisfy the lust for instant correlations and spare us the burden of thinking. So to have said one is voting for “Bush” or approved of the pre-disengagement policies of “Sharon” inevitably exposed one to either incredulity or derision for neglecting self-evident “truths.” Similarly, to critique Obama or his policies leads to one being dismissed [12] as a clown, a madman, a racist, a purveyor of smears, along with a batch of similar expletives, for, as we have seen, positive antonomasia has identified the current president as an exalted figure who can do no wrong.

That these “truths” are the product of a set of irrational concomitants, a frozen nexus of words and beliefs, escapes our notice. A tight coil of terminological equivalents rooted in thymos, in the diaphragm — or, as I have suggested, even lower down — supplants the flexible and temporal process of ongoing query, research, and communication. What’s more, items marshaled in argument are often generated by the rumor mill and are therefore products of invention or fabrication. Or they are frequently presented not only out of frame but locked inside an end-stopped context, with no awareness of the developing skein of events or the entourage of attendant facts.

Thus, a European poll found Vladimir Putin, a dictator in all but name, whose policies involve selling arms to the genocidal Sudanese government, offering diplomatic support and materiel to a nuclearizing Iran, and siphoning off billions of dollars in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal, to be more trustworthy than Dubya. Similarly, a “gentler” Ariel Sharon pursuing disengagement did poorly when compared to his Palestinian negotiating partner, President Mahmoud Abbas, despite the latter’s dismal record in the past, his doctoral thesis denying the Holocaust, his forty years as Arafat’s loyal deputy, and — using the word irhaab (terror) in his Arabic speeches to refer only to Israeli actions — his conciliation of his own terrorist outriders.

More to the point, the fact that (pre-Obama) America was and (post-Olmert) Israel is in the forefront of the fight against international terrorism is a matter of no account and cannot break the machine code of single-minded reprehension, above all among the constituency of the left. And so we are no longer in the historical continuum but lodged in the synchronic realm of absolute and eternal verities which are either “made up” or shaped to convenience, bowdlerized, truncated, and fixed by antonomastic language.

It is high time, as Robert Conquest argues in The Dragons of Expectation [13], taking his cue from George Orwell, that we begin “harpooning some word-whales” and proceed to “demystify key words used in political speech.” But the attempt at demystification runs up against the formidable sticking-power of antonomastic discourse which substitutes a name for a concept, obscuring the fissure between the two and thus allowing the concept to escape scrutiny. Used as such, antonomasia re-valences the particular, then swaps the particular for the general, and in the process turns off the brain. The reactions it elicits are almost glandular in their immediacy, provoking a sort of lexical prurience that is difficult to resist.

Put to political purpose, antonomasia works. It is the easy, mechanical way to consolidate a set of reciprocal designations, demonizing the innocent and angelizing the culpable. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of infatuation. Said differently, antonomasia is the semantic variant of the mail-order bride, ready for service. And it is the fastest way to reach millions. - - - - - - - - -end of David Solway's article - originally on Pajamas Media - - - - - -

Of course, I am much more critical of Pres George Bush II than Prof Solway is. Nevertheless, he provides an insight into one of the insidious psychological warfare tricks commonly used today. And, we stress, used by those who claim to support "peace," "justice," "human rights," and all the rest of that shopping list of supermarket goodies approved by all the right people.

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Sunday, November 08, 2009

Goldstone's Henchman, Colonel Travers, Is another Piece of Work

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

Many lies resembling truth, Hesiod, Theogony

The moral flimsiness of the Goldstone Commission, also called the UNHRC Fact Finding [fact-finding, no less] Mission on the Gaza Conflict, shows up not only in the matrix from which it emerged, the UN human rights council, a corrupt body with an Orwellian name. It also shows up in its personnel, Richard Goldstone himself, Hina Jilani, Christine Chinkin, and Desmond Travers.

Goldstone's conduct as chief prosecutor of the ICTY [Yugoslav criminal tribunal] was meant to besmirch and incriminate Serbs as much as possible, going easy on the Croats and the Bosnian Muslims, while making sure that the major Western powers that had played a decisive role in instigating the Yugoslav conflict were not tarnished in the least. That's Goldstone.

Then there is Ms Professor Christine Chinkin who had notoriously made up her mind as to the identity of the guilty party before being appointed to the "fact-finding commission."

Then there is Ms Hina Jilani, a prominent supreme court lawyer in Pakistan. Her country, Pakistan, is an active and leading member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which initiated the whole project of a UNHRC investigating commission on the Gaza war, according to its secretary-general, Mr Ihsanoglu of Turkey. Pakistan and the OIC support the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam which vitiates the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, since it goes by Islamic law, shari`ah, which places non-Muslims in an inferior position to Muslims in which any rights that non-Muslims have are subject to the whim of the Muslims.

It is curious that both Jilani and Goldstone have complained about the abuse of human rights by Sudan in Darfur, but the people there are Muslim, although not Arab or Arabic-speaking like the rulers of Sudan in Khartoum. Further, although she and Goldstone both objected to Sudan's Darfur policy, the UNHRC which sent them off to investigate Israel's acts of self-defense denied any Sudanese wrongdoing, as did the Arab League and the Palestinian Authority. The Hamas is not a member of the Arab League but is closely allied with the Sudanese regime of Omar al-Bashir, which shares with Hamas the extremist Islamist ideology of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Does accepting a mission from a body that denied Sudanese genocidal practices in Darfur, a mission which turned out to be in moral defense of the genocidal Hamas, which also supports the genocidal Sudanese regime, indicate that either Jilani or Goldstone is truly committed to opposing genocide and mass murder in Sudan?

Be that as it may, we are left with Colonel Desmond Travers,
" a retired Colonel of the Irish Army. His last appointment was as Commandant of its Military College. In a career spanning over forty years, he served in various field command, staff and instructional appointments. He was a founder of two of the Armys' teaching and training institutions. He also served in command of troops and in key operational appointments with various UN and EU peace support missions. These were in the Middle-East (Cyprus, Lebanon) and in the Former Yugoslavia (Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina)." [here][emphasis added by Eliyahu]
Travers filled the slot of supposed military expert for the "fact-finding commission." Apparently, he also thinks that he is a qualified agronomist, hydrologist, or geologist. Consider his stated opinions in an interview with Harper's Magazine:
Col Travers continued by saying: "There are a number of other post-conflict issues in Gaza that need to be addressed. The land is dying. There are toxic deposits from all the munitions that have been dropped. There are serious issues with water-its depletion and its contamination. There is a high instance of nitrates in the soil that is especially dangerous to children. If these issues are not addressed, Gaza may not even be habitable by World Health Organization norms.". . . . [Harper's comments] another note here is the reference to toxic deposits from munitions.
Even if he is not a specialist in soil sciences, he certainly knows how to turn a purple phrase: "The land is dying" -- Here Travers shows or pretends to show his professional expertise in the scientific fields mentioned above. He must be either an agronomist or geologist or hydrologist. Otherwise he has no business pontificating in the areas that he touches on in this paragraph. Or is he just expressing prejudice against Israel, as one would expect of the ordinary UN official? Or is it careerist opportunism? Or both?

Travers mentions "toxic deposits" but --according to his words-- these are only from munitions "dropped", that is, by Israel. He says nothing about the large stores of Hamas munitions there, much of which were destroyed by Israel in the war and conceivably left toxic deposits in their destroyed state, although there have been a number of accidents which have occurred over the years to Hamas, Fatah, and Islamic Jihad personnel who were working with explosives, making bombs and rockets, laying mines, etc. As to water, most drinking water in Gaza is supplied by Israel through pipes. So the state of the ground water is separate from the quality of the water supplied by Israel. Likewise the quantity of potable water does not depend on the local ground water which is likely too salty for drinking and cooking due to Gaza's proximity to the sea, which is not Israel's fault. It is not likely that the soil is highly mixed with nitrates in most of the Gaza Strip but only where either too much fertilizer was used or where nitrate-based explosives or ammunition was used, but does this affect most of the land area of the Gaza Strip?? Can Travers prove that? Some of Travers' claims might be defended by saying that they are "mere hyperbole." But hyperbole is precisely one of the things that must be avoided by a fact-finding commission. Travers' claims sound plausible and professional but are not. Rather, analysis of the
claims indicates that he is being propagandistic, deceitful, and mendacious, as you would expect from a veteran of UN expeditions. Travers was a good partner for Goldstone.

- - - - - - - - - -
The secretary-general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference boasts that his body started off the whole process of the Judeophobic Goldstone Report:
"Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu: Let me first start by completing the story of the history of the Goldstone report. What I would like to put on record is that the OIC was the initiator of this process." [see here]
On the corruption of the UN human rights council's predecessor, the human rights commission, consider how Christian Rocca put it, in an article for Il Foglio April 27, 2005.
At the UN, the Torturers Watch over Human Rights

China, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Libya have three things in common: they are ferocious dictatorships, they reject the concept of human rights, and they are enthusiastic members of the UN Human Rights Commission. In 2003, Libya even presided over its work... The regimes that torture and repress and keep their own subjects in chains are never missing from the Commission. Indeed, they are the ones that seek most tenaciously to get a seat at Geneva.... Even Kofi Annan's wise men have recognized that some countries go into the Commission "not to reinforce human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize other countries."

Our previous post on the Moral Incompetence of the UNHRC [here]
For a more comprehensive view of the UNHRC'S "fact-finding commission report," see the Understanding the Goldstone Report blog [here]

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Hamas Goes along with Corruption in Noah's Time and Now

Hamas goes along with corruption both in today's world and in the Biblical story of Noah and the Flood, read last sabbath in synagogues around the world. How so?

Hamas is a Hebrew word meaning brutality, thuggery, violence and the like. It appears in Genesis 6:11.
And the Earth became corrupt before God and the earth was full of hamas.

[ ותשחת הארץ לפני האלקים ותמלא הארץ חמס [בראשית ו, יא

Isn't that true today? The earth is corrupt and full of violence, thuggery, brutality. Who can deny it? And an Arab/Muslim terrorist organization, named Hamas, is a major perpetrator of brutality and thuggery against Jews and against its own people. Yet, major governments, Western govts, that pose as defenders of civilization, the United Kingdom & United States and others, not to mention the European Union, court the Hamas. Some want to bring it into "the political process" for the sake of making peace with Israel, supposedly. Yet Hamas's charter distinctly states the aim of destroying Israel, indeed, the charter expresses the aspiration to genocide of Jews. This is done by quoting a medieval Muslim hadith tradition in Article 7. To summarize: At Judgment Day the Muslims will kill Jews. The Jews will hide behind rocks and trees. The rocks and trees will address the Muslims, saying: A Jew is hiding behind me. Come kill him.

Those who cannot recognize that that is a call to genocide are corrupt. I don't say that they are stupid, for even a moron can understand what it means. Yet Tony Blair and his minion in British intelligence, the aptly named Alistair Crooke, have been dealing with Hamas for years, trying to bring them into the "political process" or "peace process." Condoleeza Rice, Prez Bush II's secretary of state, insisted that Hamas had to be allowed to take part in Palestinian Authority elections, for the sake of democracy. Other than the fact that Hamas is not truly democratic --unless democracy merely means majority rule, even if minority rights are not respected-- the Oslo Accords of 1993 banned any party from Palestinian Authority elections that did not accept the Accords and the so-called "peace process." Hamas does not accept those accords and openly declares the aim of destroying Israel and killing the Jews. Nevertheless, Ms Rice demanded Hamas participation in PA elections against the disagreement of both Israel and Abu Mazen's Palestinian Authority. It was all for the sake of democracy. Ms Rice just loves democracy.

Humorists describe Hamas' commitment to democracy as: One man one vote one time. In other words, once they get in power, they will never give it up willingly.

The corruption in Washington is not limited to Rice. All sorts of think-tank half-wits, "policy wonks," are calling for contact with Hamas and its elder sister, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which is the main source of Hamas ideology. These calls for an opening to Hamas and the MB are made in the name of "peace" and "democracy." Well, maybe it is all a matter of definition. I have no doubt that James Jones, the US national insecurity advisor is licking his chops at the thought of the bloodthirsty Hamas being elevated higher than it already is. Here the corrupt in Western govts embrace the party of lies and brutality, the Hamas.

Another blatant case of corruption is the United Nations, which was founded as an instrument -- the naive believed-- of attaining world peace. Within the UN, perhaps the most corrupt body is the UN "human rights commission," now renamed "human rights council." The body remains corrupt and a corruptor of the UN's original high ideals in a very Orwellian manner. Christian Rocca put it this way, in an article for Il Foglio April 27, 2005.
At the UN, the Torturers Watch over Human Rights

China, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Libya have three things in common: they are ferocious dictatorships, they reject the concept of human rights, and they are enthusiastic members of the UN Human Rights Commission. In 2003, Libya even presided over its work... The regimes that torture and repress and keep their own subjects in chains are never missing from the Commission. Indeed, they are the ones that seek most tenaciously to get a seat at Geneva.... Even Kofi Annan's wise men have recognized that some countries go into the Commission "not to reinforce human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize other countries."
Here's Rocca's original:
Cina, Cuba, Sudan, Siria, Arabia Saudita e Libia hanno in comune tre cose: sono feroci dittature, rifiutano il concetto di diritti umani e sono stati membri entusiasti della commissione dell’Onu sui diritti umani. La Libia nel 2003 ha addirittura presieduto i lavori, mentre nel 2002, cioè subito dopo l’11/9, gli Stati Uniti sono stati esclusi dalla commissione per effetto della strana alleanza tra le dittature e quei paesi europei contrari alla politica di Bush. I regimi che torturano e reprimono e tengono in catene i propri sudditi non mancano mai dentro la commissione, anzi sono quelli che cercano più tenacemente di ottenere uno scranno a Ginevra. La metà di quei regimi che il rapporto annuale di Freedom House definisce “the worst of the worst”, “il peggio del peggio”, vuole entrare, ed entra, nella commissione. Il motivo è semplice: dall’interno è più facile evitare le critiche per non aver rispettato i diritti umani. Anche i saggi di Kofi Annan hanno riconosciuto che alcuni paesi entrano nella commissione “non per rafforzare i diritti umani, ma per proteggere se stessi contro le critiche oppure per criticare altri paesi”.
So "human rights" are used to promote political interests of states against other states and, no doubt, against their own peoples. Meanwhile, the UN "human rights council" with its Orwellian name is working to whitewash Hamas through the ill-begotten Goldstone Report. Corrupt?

Then we have the new JStreet gang in Washington that pretends to be pro-Israel and pro-"peace." Like Condi Rice, JStreet looks with favor on Hamas, viewing it as a needed part of the "peace process." By having James Jones, the Obama White House's national insecurity advisor, as the main speaker at its Washington conclave JStreet demonstrates once again that it was created with George Soros' money to support the State Department's long-standing anti-Israel policy. Various reports in the media indicate that JStreet sees encouraging State Dept and White House pressure on Israel to make concessions to Arab mass murderers as a main part of its mission.

The last case of corruption that we will now take up [but not necessarily the least] is the censorship by Yale University of a book published by the Yale Univ Press on the Muhammad Cartoons affair. A book about this affair ought to contain the cartoons too, so that readers know what is being talked about, right? Well, not at Yale or its Yale Univ Press. Martin Kramer suggests that Yale is trying to establish monetary relationships with Saudi Arabia and the oil rich Persian Gulf states. One potential Saudi contributor to Yale is Prince al-Waleed. We wouldn't want to insult our benefactors by publishing the cartoons that they didn't like, would we? So at Yale, academic standards go out the window, while money-grubbing comes in through the front door as Yale awaits its prince charming.

Of course, quite a few other American universities have already taken big bucks from rich Arabs to set up Muslim study centers and Islamic institutes and Middle Eastern studies centers and so forth, while allowing their Islamic benefactors/paymasters to set the terms for conduct and for research limits at these centers. The American university is already corrupt. Yale is not the first.
Nor the last.

And the Earth became corrupt and full of Hamas.

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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Rebranding Judeophobia, Israelophobia from Right to Left & the Absurdity of the Left-Right Spectrum

UPDATING 10-29-2009

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

One bizarre sign of "leftist" convergence with "rightists" is the Obama administration. Obama's national insecurity advisor, Jim Jones, is supposed to give the major address to a konclave of the George Soros-funded pro-Arab, pro-Muslim jihadist, pro-PLO lobbying group called J Street. This group was not created by the grass roots of Jews in America, although it does have a following. It was created by Soros' money [collaborating with the Fenton PR firm] in order to supply public opinion support to Obama's anti-Israel, pro-Arab, pro-Muslim policies, necessarily undermining AIPAC in the process. This is because AIPAC is seen as an obstacle to Obama's racist policies against Israel, such as preventing Jews from living in Judea-Samaria.

Jones was a big general, and advocates using American military power throughout the world.
Marine Gen. James L. Jones (Ret.), the former head of NATO and U.S. forces in Europe and former commandant of the Marine Corps.
He was born into a Marine family [here].
Jones has called for sending more troops to Afghanistan to avert defeat there. [see Washington Post at this link biographical information]. Jones exemplifies the outlook of the national security/national defense establishment in the United States.

He is now promoting an anti-Israel policy that was earlier promoted by Republicans, by Prez George Bush I in the early 1990s and by John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles in the 1950s.

Since the Dulles brothers' time, Israelophobia has successfully rebranded itself as it were, making it a "leftist" cause and a mystique of support for an allegedly ancient people, the "palestinians" previously unknown to history. Most of today's "left" serves the foreign policy establishment as a cheerleader for what were long ago Republican policies. I could go on and on about the fakery of what today's Left claims to be.

Those informed about psychological warfare techniques, which much overlap with advertising, may be aware [see Vance Packard's Hidden Persuaders] of how successful such rebranding and reimaging campaigns can be. I remember one of my girl cousins back in the late 1940s, early 1950s, smoking Marlboro cigarettes. The Marlboro package had the name Marlboro written esthetically in a red line of handwriting on a white background, apparently meant to appeal to women who considered themselves elegant if not glamorous, as my cousin saw herself. Then a few years later --Vance Packard describes the process-- Marlboro had a new package with the name in straight bold, angular printed capital letters, not the elegant feminine curves in red of a few years before. The smoker of Marlboro was now a real man, a he man, a cowboy riding a horse with cowboy boots on, etc. Marlboro was now a man's cigarette. That's probably how most people today think of Marlboro. And they remember that cowboy riding his horse. I'm sure that few remember, as I do, that it was once meant to be an elegant woman's cigarette.

So if a consumer product can change not just its image but its very sex, then the mindbenders must think that they can do anything. Israelophobia and a pro-Arab policy are no longer the province of hardboiled Republican friends of Big Oil --as were the Dulles brothers-- today it is softboiled and kindhearted. It is "leftist" and is Good for the "Third World." Even members of the foreign policy establishment and the national security establishment, like walt, mearsheimer, and General jim jones, can be considered friends of the Third World, enemies of Israeli aggression, etc. My feelings aren't hurt. Nowadays, higher oil prices too are depicted as Good for the Third World, Good for the world's poor, etc.

It should also be borne in mind that the invention of the "palestinian people" too, by British psychological warfare experts, was a necessary ingredient in this process of transformation of image.

The lion may not yet lie down with the lamb but the uncouth mob of "leftist" Israelophobes can break bread with the old school exponents of Realist, frankly immoral or amoral foreign policy, which the "leftists" too support de facto, and maybe de jure too. And all this is demonstrated by the upcoming J Street konclave and the identity of its invited and disinvited guests, entertainers, "poets", and speakers.
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UPDATING 10-29-09 "After he retired from the Marine Corps, Gen. Jones served as president and CEO of the Institute for 21st Century Energy — an industry-funded lobby and PR organization; and in 2008 he joined the Board of Directors of the Chevron Corporation, which has large operations in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. He was appointed “security coordinator” for the Bush Administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts [sic!], and in 2008 issued a report which was not released, but which purportedly made “Israel look very bad”. He also proposed that security should be guaranteed by NATO troops after an Israeli pullout from Judea and Samaria"-- from Fresno Zionism [here]. Where do oil industry and Arab influences on Jones end & where does his concern for the American people's security begin, if at all??

"Leftist" speaker at semi-official JStreet bloggers conference supports Obama on Israel, supports Obama's racist policy against Jews living in Judea-Samaria [here], also says walt-mearsheimer provided necessary cover for J Street to exist, "I personally think they provided cover for J Street to be able to exist."
Former official of Pres. George Bush II's national insecurity council & State Dept tells J Street that Iranian regime has real "security concerns" & that calling A-jad a liar is "racist" [here].
Jennifer Rubin says that Obama's "administration seems awfully fond of it [= J Street]. Is it the Iranian excuse-mongering or the unhelpful platitudes. . ."? She asks. [see here]
Pro-Obama, pro-fascist "leftist" Nation magazine journalist wants to strip Israel of ancestral Jewish territory also needed for defense: "a final deal between Israel and Palestine will indeed require US security guarantees for Israel. Nearly everyone agrees on that" [here]

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Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Goldstone Played Fast & Loose with Evidence and Due Process of Law in His Yugoslav Adventure

UPDATING/REVISION 10-16-2009 & 10-27-09 see at bottom

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools


In their effort to provide credibility for Richard Goldstone and his deeply prejudicial and simplistic "report" on Gaza warfare, his defenders cite his supposed sterling international reputation, as --among other things-- the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [ICTY] at the Hague. However, Goldstone is not universally admired for his exertions as prosecutor of that war crimes tribunal. We will show here some of the criticisms of his doings there and will review, or fisk, a report by an investigating committee of the ICTY prosecutor's office [OTP] which was ostensibly meant to inquire whether NATO should be prosecuted before the Tribunal for killing civilians and for attacking civilian sites in Serbia. The committee recommended NOT prosecuting NATO [Surprise, surprise!!] for war crimes during that 1999 war. Goldstone, as might be expected, defended the decision not to prosecute NATO --or even to investigate it more extensively.

To be sure, Goldstone's critics in regard to Bosnia, Yugoslavia, and Kossovo are likely to be partisans. But then the Western governments in NATO and the Western media were partisan over Yugoslavia. They were not mere impartial observers. Be that as it may, it is curious how some of the same faults on Goldstone's part that were noticed in regard to his doings in Bosnia, et al., are now noted in regard to the report of his decided-in-advance "fact-finding mission" to Gaza.

Here is a critique of Goldstone's Bosnian/Yugoslav endeavors by Prof. Kosta Cavoski posted on the Emperor's Clothes blog on November 8, 2000, nine years ago, so it was obviously not written in response to the 2009 Goldstone Report on Gaza. The critique concerns the indictment of two high Bosnian Serb officers captured by Bosnian Muslim forces. Bear in mind that all three parties to the civil war in Bosnia committed massacres and extra-judicial executions. However, the Bosnian Muslim side enjoyed the support of Western govts and media against the Serbs.
Due to the critique's length, we will reproduce only critical mentions of Goldstone which are quoted here below [links to this critique are found above and below].
The Prosecutor's Gullibility and Rashness
. . . international actors in Bosnia were biased towards one side if not indifferent. What was surprising, however, was the tendency of the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague, and especially its prosecutor Richard Goldstone, to incorrectly apply and breach the very rules that it had instituted. From November 1993 when eleven judges were appointed and the Tribunal began to work, up to 30 January 1996 (two years and two months later), the Prosecutor's office carefully collected all available data related to war crimes on the territory of former Yugoslavia, in particular in Bosnia and Herzegovina. During this time absolutely no-one marked General Djordje Djukic and Colonel Aleksa Krsmanovic as suspected war criminals, even though all sides, including the Muslim authorities in Sarajevo assisted in the collection of data and the compilation of a list of suspects. This fact should have prescribed at the very least restraint and great caution on the part of Prosecutor Richard Goldstone . . . the ambitious Richard Goldstone decided on 7 February to instigate proceedings against General Djordje Djukic and Colonel Aleksa Krsmanovic, thereby validating the lawlessness of the Muslims and their alleged suspicion of the two for being war criminals. He then sent his experts to Sarajevo to investigate this long awaited case.

During talks with CSCE representatives in Vienna, Goldstone clearly stated that proof against Djukic and Krsmanovic "was serious enough to call for an investigation"(1). Hence Christian Chartier, spokesman of The Hague Tribunal announced that Goldstone "had concluded that there were adequate grounds to take the Bosnian charges seriously and carry out an investigation into the possible guilt of the suspects for acts under the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal"(2).

. . . at the request of Prosecutor Richard Goldstone, General Djordje Djukic and Colonel Aleksa Krsmanovic were transferred to the International Tribunal prison in The Hague as suspects. This implied that in accordance with Rule 2 of the Tribunal "the Prosecutor possesses reliable information which tends to show that they may have committed a crime over which the Tribunal has jurisdiction". It is hardly necessary to say that the most important component of this sentence is the reliability of the information regarding alleged crimes committed by the suspects.

The Prosecutor's Violation of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence
To his great regret, Richard Goldstone very quickly realized that the information he had received from Sarajevo was not at all reliable, and that the thirty or so officials sent to The Hague by the US Ministry of Justice at its own expense had not discovered anything of importance in the meantime. Only then did he realize that at the very beginning of the case he had made an unforgivable mistake and seriously violated the Tribunal's Rules of Procedure and Evidence.
--end of quotes from Cavoski -read more at link--
Prof. Cavoski goes on to make further criticisms of Goldstone's performance but we will not bring them in here for the sake of brevity. Those interested can go to Cavoski's critique at the link.

Now, in a related Yugoslav matter, after Goldstone was succeeded as chief prosecutor of the ICTY by Louise Arbour, an official report was issued by a committee of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, a UN affiliate. The Tribunal [ICTY] set up a committee that was supposed to investigate the NATO attack on Serbia for killings of Kossovo Albanians, killings that actually began only after the start of the NATO attack. The report is called Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The Prosecutor refers to the prosecutor of the Tribunal. Here is how the legal issues involved in the NATO attack on the Serbian TV & Radio station are described. No rush to judgment here about war crimes or deliberate killing of civilians. Goldstone too defended the recommendations of this committee.

iii) The Bombing of the RTS (Serbian TV and Radio Station) in Belgrade on 23/4/99

71. On 23 April 1999, at 0220, NATO intentionally bombed the central studio of the RTS (state-owned) broadcasting corporation at 1 Aberdareva Street in the centre of Belgrade. The missiles hit the entrance area, which caved in at the place where the Aberdareva Street building was connected to the Takovska Street building. While there is some doubt over exact casualty figures, between 10 and 17 people are estimated to have been killed.

72. The bombing of the TV studio was part of a planned attack aimed at disrupting and degrading the C3 (Command, Control and Communications) network. In co-ordinated attacks, on the same night, radio relay buildings and towers were hit along with electrical power transformer stations. At a press conference on 27 April 1999, NATO officials justified this attack in terms of the dual military and civilian use to which the FRY [= Federal Republic of Yugoslavia] communication system was routinely put, describing this as a

"very hardened and redundant command and control communications system [which …] uses commercial telephone, […] military cable, […] fibre optic cable, […] high frequency radio communication, […] microwave communication and everything can be interconnected. There are literally dozens, more than 100 radio relay sites around the country, and […] everything is wired in through dual use. Most of the commercial system serves the military and the military system can be put to use for the commercial system […]."

Accordingly, NATO stressed the dual-use to which such communications systems were put, describing civilian television as "heavily dependent on the military command and control system and military traffic is also routed through the civilian system" (press conference of 27 April, ibid).

73. At an earlier press conference on 23 April 1999, NATO officials reported that the TV building also housed a large multi-purpose communications satellite antenna dish, and that "radio relay control buildings and towers were targeted in the ongoing campaign to degrade the FRY’s command, control and communications network". In a communication of 17 April 1999 to Amnesty International, NATO claimed that the RTS facilities were being used "as radio relay stations and transmitters to support the activities of the FRY military and special police forces, and therefore they represent legitimate military targets" (Amnesty International Report, NATO/Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Violations of the Laws of War by NATO during Operation Allied Force, June 2000, p. 42). [see the Final Report . . . here]

Note the attention and space given in the above report to NATO justifications for bombing the Serbian Radio/TV station in Belgrade. On the other hand, Goldstone and his report belittled and denied without serious consideration Israel's reasons for hitting targets such as mosques known to be storage places for weapons and explosives. In the end the investigating committee recommended against prosecuting NATO and its officers for war crimes, violations of international humanitarian law, and the like. The Committee declared that it
has tended to assume that the NATO and NATO countries’ press statements are generally reliable and that explanations have been honestly given. . .
Here we note that NATO is assumed to have been truthful by the investigating committee. Israel was denied that credibility.
there is simply no evidence of the necessary crime base for charges of genocide or crimes against humanity [on the part of NATO or its officials] . . .
So the committee found no basis for charging "genocide or crimes against humanity" on NATO's part. Conversely, Goldstone and his gang were eager to find Israel guilty of such crimes.
NATO has admitted that mistakes did occur during the bombing campaign; errors of judgment may also have occurred. . .
This last statement accepts NATO's claim to have been acting in good faith, although "mistakes did occur." Again, Goldstone did not give Israel such benefit of the doubt. But the investigating essentially exonerated NATO and its officials.
. . . the committee is of the opinion that neither an in-depth investigation related to the bombing campaign as a whole nor investigations related to specific incidents are justified. . . On the basis of information available, the committee recommends that no investigation be commenced by the OTP [= Office of the Prosecutor] in relation to the NATO bombing campaign or incidents occurring during the campaign. [see Final Report here]
Goldstone was in a debate over the Kossovo war against Serbia some time after the war and he defended the failure to prosecute NATO officials. He said that:
"there was not sufficient evidence against individuals to warrant further investigation" [see Herman & Peterson quoted below]
We see that regarding Yugoslavia, Goldstone takes a whole different attitude. He is deferential toward NATO officials, whereas he is dismissive and contemptuous towards Israelis. But NATO was paying his salary, directly or indirectly. Here Goldstone is put into the Yugoslav war crimes picture although he was at that time the previous prosecutor of the Tribunal. Louis Arbour was his successor as head of the OTP, Office of the Prosecutor:
In the indictment of Milosevic, Arbour used evidence about events that took place only six weeks earlier from a war zone, provided by an interested party (NATO), unverified by Tribunal personnel, and in conflict with her claim that she would never proceed on the basis of “uncorroborated” evidence. But neither she nor Del Ponte [Arbour's successor] could even "open an investigation" into NATO’s conduct during the war, after a year, with overwhelming evidence in the public domain pertaining to NATO actions that had killed many more than the numbers presented in the initial indictment of Milosevic (May 22, 1999). That indictment and the charge of "crimes against humanity" were based on an alleged 385 killings for which Milosevic is said to have borne “command responsibility;” but the OTP Report found that the 500 deaths attributable to NATO’s actions were too few to rate--"there is simply no evidence of the necessary crime base for charges of genocide or crimes against humanity." (49) (It should also be noted that the first chief prosecutor of the ICTY, the sainted Richard Goldstone, vigorously defended the Tribunal’s handling of the NATO charges in a debate with John Laughland, saying that the Tribunal simply “held that there was not sufficient evidence against individuals to warrant further investigation,” when as we have indicated there was no serious initial investigation and the 500 deaths conceded by the OTP exceeded the total charged to Milosevic.) (50) [links both here & here]
[Prof Edward Herman, emeritus, University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, & David Peterson. Herman is a notorious "leftist."]
A picture of petty louche people, demi-mondains, assigned to deal with very big issues. Not a pretty picture but one of hypocrisy, immorality hiding behind lofty statements and ideals, and moral corruption. Don't forget that in Bosnia and Kossovo the noble victims featured by the Western media were Muslims. Likewise in Gaza. Meanwhile, the designated villains were non-Muslims, Serbs in Bosnia and Kossovo and Jews/Israelis in Gaza.
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See comparison of Goldstone's forgiving attitude toward NATO forces with his animosity to Israel [here].
Our previous post on the Goldstone Report is here.
More on Goldstone in Yugoslavia here.
See the all important "Goldstone Report" website [here]
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UPDATING 10-27-2009
Amnesty International, the British-guided sister of the American agency "Human Rights Watch," has implicitly rejected Goldstone's position on war crimes committed by NATO when it attacked civilian targets in Serbia during the 1999 Kossovo War.
Associated Press, 23 April 2009

An international human rights group demanded Thursday that NATO be held accountable for civilian casualties in the bombing of Serbia's state television headquarters a decade ago, calling the attack a "war crime."Sixteen civilians were killed and 16 others injured during the attack on April 23, 1999, on the headquarters and studios of Radio Television Serbia in central Belgrade.

Amnesty International called on NATO and its member states to ensure independent investigations, full accountability and redress for victims and their families.

A NATO official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with standing regulations, said the U.N.'s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia had already assessed those allegations and found the alliance had no case to answer. [This official is referring to the report --quoted above-- of the ICTY investigating committee that Goldstone endorsed.].

. . . .

"The bombing of the headquarters of Serbian state radio and television was a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime," Sian Jones, Amnesty International's Balkans expert, said in a statement. "Even if NATO genuinely believed RTS was a legitimate target, the attack was disproportionate and hence a war crime," Jones said. [ABC News 4-23-2009; Jerusalem Post (paper edition), 4-24-2009 -- source was AP].
Amnesty was not criticizing any ICTY or NATO official by name. Surely today they would not criticize Goldstone for denying NATO war crimes in Serbia, since they support his dishonest Goldstone Report on Gaza. Since Amnesty is British-guided, it most likely did not seriously seek to prosecute any British officials in NATO. This statement may have been meant as a cover to give some credibility to their earlier denunciations of Israel for alleged attacks on civilian sites in Gaza. They had issued an attack on Israel about a month before the April statement quoted by the AP. This earlier attack on Israel over Gaza had been signed by, among others -- Richard Goldstone, as they proudly declared.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the UN human rights council, security council or general assembly to take up the issue of NATO war crimes in Serbia. If they cross NATO, who is going to pay the UN's bills??

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Sunday, October 11, 2009

Zbig Brzezinski Wants to Protect the Iranian Bomb Project

Zbig and Jimmy Carter helped Ayatollah Khomeini take over Iran in early 1979, unceremoniously pushing out the Shah, an American ally. By aiding --even sponsoring-- Khomeini's takeover, the Carter administration opened the road for Ahmadinejad, the current Iranian president, who is presiding over a project to develop nuclear bombs in violation of Iran's commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Neither Pres. Obama nor Pres. Bush before him is showing any real determination to stop this very dangerous eventuality from coming to fruition. Zbig Brzezinski must feel that he did not do enough damage when Carter was president. He now urges the Obama administration to protect the Iranian Nuclear Bomb project from Israel, although Israel has grounds under international law and the UN charter to attack Iran and destroy its bomb-making efforts, since Iran under A-jad has already threatened to destroy Israel. Here is Zbig at his best or his worst [about the same]:
The national security adviser for former President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, gave an interview to The Daily Beast in which he suggested President Obama should make it clear to Israel that if they attempt to attack Iran's nuclear weapons sites the U.S. Air Force will stop them.

"We are not exactly impotent little babies," Brzezinski said. "They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch? ... We have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a 'Liberty' in reverse."

The USS Liberty was a U.S. Navy technical research ship that the Israeli Air Force mistakenly attacked during the Six Day War in 1967.

Brzezinski endorsed then-Sen. Obama's presidential campaign in August 2007, which at the time was portrayed in the media as a boost to Obama's foreign policy cred. The Washington Post reported: "Barack Obama, combating the perception that he is too young and inexperienced to handle a dangerous world, got a boost yesterday from a paragon of foreign policy eminence, Zbigniew Brzezinski."

Brzezinski was never an official campaign adviser, but Republicans jumped on the endorsement to push the meme that Obama wouldn't be a friend to Israel, as Brzezinski's views of Israel attracted criticism from some quarters in the American Jewish community.

“Brzezinski is not an adviser to the campaign,” former Ambassador Dennis Ross, then a senior adviser on Middle East affairs to the Obama campaign, said at the time. “There is a lot of disinformation that is being pushed, but he is not an adviser to the campaign. Brzezinski came out and supported Obama early because of the war in Iraq. A year or so ago they talked a couple of times. That’s the extent of it, and Sen. Obama has made it clear that on other Middle Eastern issues, Brzezinski is not who he looks to. They don’t have the same views.”

Brzezinski plays no role in the Obama administration; the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. [ABCNews 20 Sept 2009]

--end--
Note Zbig's contempt for Iraqi sovereignty. He describes Iraqi airspace as "our airspace," that is, United States airspace. However, allowing Iran to get the Bomb is not healthy for the American people --or for the rest of the world for that matter.
Also note that Zbig's hostility to Israel is palpable in the quotes above. He surely hates Israel more than the current Iranian regime, if he is opposed to them at all in any way.
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Earlier posts on Zbig on Emet m'Tsiyon [here & here]

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