Michael Bloomberg’s Israel connection runs deep
The Democratic Party’s Michael Bloomberg, has strong ties to Israel and apparently no time for justice for Palestinians; his media empire has also pushed a pro-Israel agenda.
Then-Mayor Bloomberg kissing the Western Wall in Jerusalem on a visit to Israel in 2003 (GETTY IMAGES)
By Kathryn Shihadah – If Americans Knew – November 29, 2019
The pool of democratic candidates for president just expanded again with the addition of billionaire and three-term mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg. If Americans Knew has published multiple reports on the candidates’ positions regarding Israel/Palestine (including an in-depth analysis of Joe Biden and a comparison of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders); it’s only fair to have a look at Bloomberg as well.
The newest candidate has close ties to the Jewish state and asserts a commitment to what he calls “Jewish values.” The New York Times quoted Bloomberg:
The values I learned from my parents are probably the same values that, I hope, Christians and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists learned from their parents. They’re all centered around God put us on Earth and said we should take care of each other. We have an obligation not to just talk about it but to actually do it. [Those values are] freedom, justice, service, ambition, innovation.
Michael Bloomberg’s record indicates that, when it comes to Palestinians, his close affiliation with Israel has hampered his ability to act on his values of freedom and justice.
Israel ties
Bloomberg has made many trips to Israel and donated millions to charitable causes in Jerusalem, including in 2003 a Mother and Child Center at the Hadassah University Medical Center dedicated to his mother, and in 2007 a blood bank and massive ambulance station named after his father.
During his time as NYC mayor, Bloomberg initiated a $2 billion high-tech research campus in Manhattan, a joint venture between Cornell University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (Haifa, Israel). He personally donated $100 million to the effort.
In 2014, he talked about his closeness to the Jewish state:
My parents saw in our lives just why Israel had to exist, and why it must always exist, and those lessons were passed on to us. We are as one with this city [Jerusalem], and this country and this people as you can be.
[Jewish history] gives us a special obligation to build a brighter future for everyone, and to always believe that tomorrow can be better than today. For them and for so many Jews who witnessed the horrors of World War II, the creation of Israel embodied that obligation and validated that belief. It was a dream fulfilled.After all, if the dream of Israel can be realized, what dream can’t be?
Bloomberg’s words betray a total disregard for the Palestinian experience: the birth of the state of Israel came at the cost of the indigenous Palestinians’ loss of a homeland. 750,000 became refugees, thousands were massacred, and hundreds of villages were bulldozed – so that Jewish immigrants (and a small number of indigenous Jews) could have a nearly Arab-free state.
Michael Bloomberg was the inaugural recipient of the Genesis Prize, which was created to “inspire Jewish pride” and “strengthen the bond between Israel and the Diaspora.” He turned the $1 million prize into a global competition for ten $100,000 prizes – to be awarded to young entrepreneurs who demonstrated “Jewish values” and innovative ideas.
One of those prizes was awarded to Building with Israelis & Palestinians (BIP), which according to its website, “gives an opportunity for people around the world to partner with; and support Israelis & Palestinians willing to build together.” In 2016, BIP worked in the Palestinian town of Al-Auja to provide a solar facility that would enable farmers to pump more water less expensively.
What is not publicized about this project is the fact that in 1967, after Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, about 30% of Al-Auja’s land was confiscated from its Palestinian owners, some of which became four illegal Israeli settlements. More land was then confiscated in order to build a military base to protect the residents of the settlements. Most of the remaining village land is under total Israeli control.
Israeli skies
In 2009, when Israel was embroiled in an invasion of Gaza and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) downgraded Ben Gurion Airport’s security rating, then-mayor Bloomberg took his private jet to Israel as a show of solidarity. He visited Sderot, an Israeli city close to Gaza and within range of its rockets (rockets that had, as of that time, caused the deaths of 18 Israelis in 8 years).
Significantly, Sderot was built on the site of the demolished Palestinian village of Najd – a village whose history went back at least four centuries.
Bloomberg did not address the reason for the rockets – Israel’s then-two year long illegal siege of Gaza (a siege that still continues, and is designed to keep the Strip on the verge of collapse and its residents on the edge of starvation). Instead, he Bloomberg accused Gaza’s leaders of “trying to destroy [Israel].”
It would appear that the opposite is true: the Israeli invasion killed over 1,400 Gazans (over 900 of them civilians) and 13 Israelis (3 of them civilians).
In July 2014, during another Israeli onslaught, when Ben Gurion Airport was within reach of Gazan rockets, the FAA announced the suspension of all US flights to Israel; in defiance of this decision and solidarity with Israel, Bloomberg again flew to Israel.
Ignoring the facts of the ongoing blockade of Gaza and the humanitarian crisis that it had created, he wrote in an op-ed:
Every country has a right to defend its borders from enemies, and Israel was entirely justified in crossing into Gaza to destroy the tunnels and rockets that threaten its sovereignty. I know what I would want my government to do if the U.S. was attacked by a rocket from above or via a tunnel from below; I think most Americans do, too. Israel has no stronger ally than the U.S.
Michael Brown noted in the Electronic Intifada that Bloomberg’s op-ed failed to contextualize Israel’s onslaught: no reference was made to the occupation of Palestine or the siege of Gaza, and “[h]e says not a word about Palestinian freedom, but speaks only in general terms about ‘bringing peace to the region.’”
In a CBS interview a short time later, Bloomberg declared that Israel was not under obligation to limit itself to “proportional” response to Gaza’s rockets, and “nobody’s attacking schools or hospitals, we’re attacking Hamas.”
And indeed, Israel was unrestrained. Its 2014 assault killed 2,250 Gazans (about 1,600 civilians) and 73 Israelis (6 of whom were civilians).
Israel’s failure to act with proportionality – and Michael Bloomberg’s endorsement of this failure – clashes with international law, which prohibits attacks that would cause “excessive” civilian damage or loss of life in relation to the anticipated military advantage of the attack.
Israel’s military objective in both 2008-9 and 2014 was to end Gaza’s practice of shooting rockets – rockets that were rarely lethal – but Israel’s attacks caused heavy civilian casualties and immense destruction in a region that was already suffering the effects of an illegal blockade. Because of the disproportionate nature of the attacks and other factors, the United Nations determined that Israel committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in both the 2008-9 invasion (read more about it here) and that of 2014 (read more here). The Hamas leadership in Gaza also faced accusations of war crimes.
Through pro-Israel eyes
Other “small” incidents can be added to the above large, conspicuous examples of Michael Bloomberg’s affinity for all things Israeli.
For example, in 2014, he referred to the nonviolent movement known as Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) – modeled after the movement that brought the downfall of apartheid in South Africa – as “an outrage” that is “totally misplaced.” The ACLU has argued in favor of BDS as free speech, but Israel partisans routinely label it anti-Semitic.
As early as 2002, Bloomberg’s mainstream media empire, Bloomberg News, was demanding that its writers sanitize news reporting about Israel/Palestine. Mondoweiss quotes leaked memos:
Avoid referring to Palestine, as in “Israel’s incursion into Palestine,” because there is no such country. Instead, describe the occupied areas by their names, as in the West Bank or Gaza Strip. Palestinian people or Palestine Authority is OK.
A 2010 memo gave a selective history lesson:
Palestine signifies different territory in different contexts. The land historically belonged to the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Palestine represented the area west of the Jordan River that was a British mandate from the 1920s until the creation of modern Israel in 1948.
Significantly, Bloomberg News, usually a stickler for objectivity in reporting, relaxes its standards when it comes to Israel. The above memo – and others circulated in the organization – were understood by Scott Roth, “dissenting Jew” and publisher of Mondoweiss as “an attempt to avoid using the term Palestine in any way that would signify that it ought to be or can be a country on its own.” He also noted that Bloomberg’s directives look:
like something out of an AIPAC primer. The land historically belonged to ancient Israel and Judah? It also belonged to a lot of other people. Plus no reference to partition, ’48, ’67 occupation or millions of human beings living under Israel’s boot that have no vote.
No surprise
The question is whether Michael Bloomberg would be very good for the United States.
Where Comedy ends and Hasbara Begins
By Gilad Atzmon | November 26, 2019
Two days ago at the ADL conference Jewish Zionist comedian Sacha Baron Cohen criticised the internet and social media companies for allowing freedom of speech. This grotesque character who has made a career of marginalising oppressed minorities by depicting stereotypical characters and then ridiculing them is now calling on social media to adopt gag orders and to move us further into an Orwellian realm.
Galvanized by the support it received from the Jewish comedian, the ADL is now demanding that 10 social media accounts “should be removed immediately.”
For one reason or another I am included on the list. I need not mention that I have never been charged with any crime let alone a hate crime. I’ve never once been questioned by a single law enforcement body anywhere in the world. This does not stop the ADL from writing of me: “Gilad Atzmon is an anti-Semitic author and musician who describes himself as an ‘ex-Israeli’ and an ‘ex-Jew.”
I am indeed an ex Israeli and ex Jew and I am also a musician. However, I deny the accusation of anti-Semitism, I have never criticized Jews, or anyone else for the matter, as ‘a people,’ as ‘a race,’ as ‘a biology’ or as ‘an ethnicity.’ In fact, for my entire life I have opposed all forms of racism and this includes Jewish racism. I do criticise Jewish identitarian politics and some aspects of Jewish culture and ideology. I grew up in Israel and as far as I can remember, in the Jewish state, criticism of culture, ideology and politics is considered a perfectly kosher activity.
The ADL says of me that I am an “outspoken promoter of classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.” This is an absurd lie as I have repeatedly argued that there are no Jewish conspiracies since it is all done in the open: from Epstein’s Lolita Express, to Israeli war crimes, to advocacy of Zioncon global conflicts and plans for an ‘New American Century.’ The UK chief rabbi’s call for Brits to turn their backs on their opposition party is not exactly a conspiratorial clandestine move, it is actually mainstream news in Britain this morning. There are no Jewish conspiracies, what happens takes place in front of our eyes but we cannot discuss it because Jewish power, as I define it, is the power to suppress criticism of Jewish power.
From then on, what the ADL says about me is somewhat accurate. He is “a fierce critic of Jewish identity.” I am.
“He has written that ‘Jewish ideological, political, and cultural discourse is… foreign to universalism and ideas of true equality.’ My exact words can be found here. What I say is “We must find a way to admit to ourselves that the Jewish ideological, political and cultural discourse is a tribal discourse: it is foreign to universalism and ideas of true equality.” Here the ADL is engaged in a rather obvious attempt to deceive. In my original text, being ‘foreign to universalism and true equality’ elucidates the notion of tribal discourse. You may wonder why the ADL acts in a duplicitous manner.
The ADL complains that “although Atzmon frequently attacks Zionism, he has also argued that Zionism itself was originally a ‘universalist and humanist’ movement which was ‘hijacked by Judaism.’ In fact, this is exactly what I argue and I wonder, where exactly is the ‘crime?’ The battle between ‘the Israeli’ and ‘the Jew’ was at the centre of the Israeli political debate in the last election. Am I guilty of identifying the core of Israel’s identity crisis a decade before anyone else?
Finally the ADL complains that I say of Israel that it is a “tyranny inspired by a deep Talmudic intolerance.” I am afraid that the Israeli National Bill is the materialisation of the above. I think I remember that the ADL’s Abe Foxman also wasn’t pleased with Israel’s National Bill for pretty much the same reasons. Is the ADL going to ask to delete his twitter account?
Sooner or later we will have to examine the question whether the relentless attack by Jewish institutions on freedom of speech, 1st amendments and the core Western ethos has been ‘good for the Jews.’
The Jewish Progressive Agenda according to Bernie Sanders
By Gilad Atzmon | November 14, 2019
In the 2016 Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders presented himself as an American who happened to be Jewish. Now, in a radical shift, Sanders identifies as “a proud Jewish American.” The progressive politician went from speaking in a universalist voice to defining himself as a 3rd category Jew, i.e., a person who identifies politically as a Jew (as opposed to identifying religiously:1st category, or ancestrally: 2nd category). In his new capacity as a proud Jew, Sanders has declared all out war on Anti Semitism on behalf of his people and in the name of what he describes as ‘multicultural progressive values’.
In his recent extended article titled How to Fight Antisemitism, published by the purportedly ‘Left’ Jewish Currents, Sanders takes up the same line you’d expect from an ADL spokesman, ticking every Hasbara box from the Jewish right of ‘self determination ‘to the primacy of Jewish suffering.
It is hard to miss the echo of Zionist propaganda in Sanders’ drivel. Understandably, Sanders doesn’t like Anti-Semitism. In that he isn’t alone. I would venture that no one, including antisemites, likes anti-Semitism. However, fighting anti Semitism is pretty simple. All it takes is self-reflection. This is exactly what early Zionists did and it was pretty effective. Early Zionism promised to introduce a new Hebrew: civilized, proletarian, universalist and ethical. Some of the worst anti-Semites were impressed with the idea, for a while even Hitler supported that Jewish nationalist project. At the time, Zionists were so popular that they were largely forgiven their 1948 racist ethnic cleansing crimes. Their introspective project was perceived as genuine.
Now, Sanders informs us, “antisemitism is rising in this country. According to the FBI, hate crimes against Jews rose by more than a third in 2017 and accounted for 58% of all religion-based hate crimes in America.” Does the ‘progressive’ presidential wannabe bother to ask himself why an ethnic group that comprises only 2% of the American population is subject to the vast majority of religion based hate crimes?
Sanders doesn’t advocate that Jews reflect on whether there is something they do that provokes such crimes, he prefers to blame everyone else and White identitarians in particular. He argues that antisemites such as the Pittsburgh Synagogue murderer “acted on a twisted belief that Jews were part of a nefarious plot to undermine white America. This wave of violence is the result of a dangerous political ideology that targets Jews and anyone who does not fit a narrow vision of a whites-only America.”
Although I am a harsh critic all forms of identitarianism, Sanders seems to want it both ways, he identifies himself as a “proud Jewish American” and yet he is hostile to those who identify as White and to their political and identitarian agenda. In reading Sanders’ piece, one can’t miss the fact that the so-called ‘progressive’ seems to support all forms of identitarianism except the White one. “This wave of violence” he writes, “is the result of a dangerous political ideology that targets Jews and anyone who does not fit a narrow vision of a whites-only America.”
Politicians who explore ideas in a manner that is ignorant, uneducated and clumsy are now a universal Western symptom. However, Sanders manages to form a category of his own. “The antisemites who marched in Charlottesville don’t just hate Jews. They hate the idea of multiracial democracy.”
What is multiracial democracy? Are we supposed to know or should we guess? Are there any voices that should be excluded from this type of diverse democracy?
“They [presumably, the White Identitarians] hate the idea of political equality.”
Is this true? Perhaps ‘they,’ rightly or wrongly, just see themselves as among the oppressed and want their plight addressed?
“They hate immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ people, women, and anyone else who stands in the way of a whites-only America.”
Does Sanders understand that ‘hating people’ (women, migrants, people of color, LGBTQ etc,) is not the same as opposing the identity politics that divides nations into a manifold of discrete identities?
Sanders accuses the anti-Semites of being conspiratorial. “this is the conspiracy theory that drove the Pittsburgh murderer—that Jews are conspiring to bring immigrants into the country to “replace” Americans.”
I feel obliged to remind Mr. Sanders it is hardly conspiratorial to acknowledge the fact that Jewish politics in the West and in America in particular, is pro-immigration. It is well documented and is actually rational. As opposed to the Jewish State that performs some of the most brutal anti immigration policies, Diaspora Jews tend to prefer to live in a society that is made of an amalgam of many groups and ethnicities. Sanders who identifies himself as a ‘proud Jew’ should ask himself why he supports ‘multicultural democracy’ and what he means by that. Sanders ought to look into the work of HIAS and decide for himself how well it reflects his own political sentiments.
Bernie Sanders sees anti-Semitism as “a conspiracy theory that a secretly powerful (Jewish) minority exercises control over society.”
Someone should ask Sanders to explain the peculiar phenomenon at work when Israeli PM Netanyahu received 29 standing ovations during his hard line speech in Congress. Mr. Sanders, who believes that pointing at Jewish power arises from ‘conspiratorial’ inclinations may want to ask himself what drove him to declare war against anti Semitism instead of joining battle against all racism. Does Sanders plan to speak at AIPAC or J-Street as part of his presidential campaign or does he intend to deny himself the support of the most influential political lobbies in Washington?
Sanders writes that “like other forms of bigotry—racism, sexism, homophobia—antisemitism is used by the right to divide people from one another and prevent us from fighting together for a shared future of equality, peace, prosperity, and environmental justice.” But if Sanders is genuine here and his objective is ‘unity,’ why does he single out White identitarians? Shouldn’t he invite the Whites to join his phantasmic identitarian ‘unity’ as equal partners? And more to the point, if “like other forms of bigotry—racism, sexism, homophobia—antisemitism is used by the right to divide people” why not simply oppose all racism and bigotry in a universal manner?
According to the “proud Jewish American” who wants to be the next president, “opposing antisemitism is a core value of progressivism.” Is it? I would have thought that progressivism is about opposing all forms of racism in the largest and least discriminatory manner.
To illustrate his alliance with what is currently the most racist state on the planet, Sanders delves into nostalgic memories of his Zionist youth. “I have a connection to Israel going back many years. In 1963, I lived on a kibbutz near Haifa. It was there that I saw and experienced for myself many of the progressive values upon which Israel was founded.”
Mr Sanders forgets to mention that Sha’ar Haamakim, the Kibbutz he briefly dwelled in, was founded on the land of a Palestinian village; Al Zubaidat that had been the home of 60 Palestinian families. In 1925 a Zionist organisation purchased the village land from a rich Beiruti family and beginning in 1931, the Jewish Agency struggled to evict the Palestinians of El Zubeidat. A few years later, in 1935, Kibbutz Sha’ar HaAmakim was founded by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. In short, the place Sanders describes as embodying ‘progressive values’ was in fact, part of the vile racially driven, Zionist ethnic cleansing project.
The intellectually compromised Sanders goes on to describe a criminal state with a very odd use of the term ‘progressive.’ “I think it is very important for everyone, but particularly for progressives, to acknowledge the enormous achievement of establishing a democratic homeland for the Jewish people after centuries of displacement and persecution.” I find this confusing. Unless the words ‘progressive’ and ‘Jewish’ have morphed into synonyms, I do not understand what is ‘progressive’ about the process of violent racist ethnic cleansing.
I guess even Sanders must realise that his pro Israeli screed is easily ridiculed. “We must also be honest about this: The founding of Israel is understood by another people in the land of Palestine as the cause of their painful displacement.”
According to Sanders the Palestinian plight is simply a matter of a subjective perception, that it was merely ‘understood’ by the Palestinians that the founding of Israel resulted in their own painful displacement. Sanders dismisses reality, ignoring the chain of massacres of Palestinians in 1948, and the clear agenda of the Israeli military to cleanse the indigenous people of Palestine from their land. I can’t think of anything more disgusting and duplicitous than Sanders’ fake humanism.
Sanders finds that “some criticism of Israel can cross the line into antisemitism, especially when it denies the right of self-determination to Jews…” I allow myself to assert that no one out there denies Jews or anyone else’s right of self-determination but self determination becomes a serious problem when executed at the expense of others, whether this takes place in Palestine, in North America or anywhere else.
Bernie Sanders, a declared non universalist ‘progressive,’ uses a Jewish outlet to vow to his people “I will direct the Justice Department to prioritize the fight against white nationalist violence. I will not wait two years to appoint a Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, as Trump did; I will appoint one immediately.”
If America intends, as it should, to fight racism and to heal its wounds it could be that Bernie Sanders is the worst possible candidate as he clearly expresses that what he cares about is the hatred of the one group that happens to be his own. Maybe president of the ADL is the more fitting post for the pretentious self confessed “proud Jewish American.” Leading the American people and the world should be left to a proper universalist and a genuine ethical character assuming that such a person is available and willing to commit.
‘Reverse Pol Pot’: Berkeley philosophy lecturer slammed after saying rural Americans made ‘bad life decisions’ & should be SHAMED
RT | November 9, 2019
A Harvard-educated UC Berkeley philosophy lecturer is catching flak for bashing rural Americans as parasites on more “efficient” city-dwellers. He has since apologized for the tone of the original tweets, but not their substance.
Disdain for “flyover country” by the coastal elites is a trope of American politics and culture wars at this point, but Jackson Kernion apparently sought to embody it with a series of tweets this week, declaring that Americans living in the countryside should not be “subsidized by those who choose a more efficient way of life.”
“Rural healthcare should be expensive! And that expense should be borne by those who choose rural America!” Kernion argued in now-deleted posts. “Same goes for rural broadband. And gas taxes.”
“It should be uncomfortable to live in rural America. It should be uncomfortable to not move.”
Another user screenshotted several more now-deleted tweets, which include statements such as “I unironically embrace the bashing of rural Americans. They, as a group, are bad people who have made bad life decisions,” and “We should shame people who aren’t pro-city.”
While some people online did agree with Kernion, his tweets mostly drew an avalanche of disapproval and bewilderment. He was dubbed “philosophy bro,” and one user even called him a “reverse Pol Pot,” referring to the notorious Cambodian dictator blamed for over a million deaths due to his campaign of forcing people from cities into the countryside.
The most common response was people pointing out that rural America is where all the food for the cities is grown. “Is this satire?” and “How is this person a real person?” were other frequent reactions.
The answers to those questions appear to be no and yes, respectively. Kernion’s Twitter feed is filled with praises of Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren and her “wealth tax” proposal, as well as the “Great Awokening,” so-called “woke capitalism,” and “LIBERAL SOCIETY.”
In his official biography, Kernion says he graduated from Harvard in 2012 with a degree in philosophy and is currently earning his PhD at Berkeley while teaching as an assistant. Following the backlash, he offered an apology of sorts for the tweets, saying that “my tone is way crasser and meaner than I like to think I am.” He did not appear to disavow their content, however.
Kernion is hardly the first to express disdain for Americans living in the US countryside, dubbed “flyover country” by the coastal elitists. The enmity has taken on political overtones in recent years, however, as Democrats who dominate in urban environments have lashed out at rural Americans who have overwhelmingly supported President Donald Trump.
Why Interventionists Won’t Help the Kurds
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | October 16, 2019
An interesting aspect of the controversy over Syria is the reaction of interventionists to what they call President Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds. They’re saying that Trump should have kept those 50 U.S. troops serving as a tripwire between Turkish military forces and the Kurds. Removing the tripwire, they say, enabled Turkey to attack the Kurds.
Why is that interesting?
Because, as far as I know, not one single interventionist has traveled to Syria to join up with the Kurds to help them fight the Turkish forces attacking them!
What’s up with that?
After all, let’s keep in mind that it’s really not that difficult for an interventionist to travel to Syria. Just buy a plane ticket, pack your bags, grab your passport, and head on out. No one is going to stop you. Once you get into the Middle East, there will be plenty of people to direct you on how you get to the Kurds.
Then, once you reach the Kurds, just volunteer your services to them. Tell them that you would like to help them. You can be a shooter, or a cook, or a medic. Older interventionists can volunteer to be suicide bombers. What’s important is that you interventionists will be living your principles. You will be helping out people who you ardently believe need help.
As far as I know, not one single interventionist has done that. Instead, they’ve just been filling the newspapers and television talk shows about how important it is that “we” help the Kurds.
Here’s my prediction: Not one single American interventionist is going to travel to Syria to join up with the Kurds and help them out.
Why not?
The reason is simple: Interventionists place a higher value on their everyday lives here in the United States than they do on helping the Kurds. They have jobs. They like going home to their families. They like going on vacation. They like going to sporting events and concerts. They enjoy television. They have hobbies.
All of those things are more important to interventionists than going to Syria to help the people that they say “we” need to help.
Vicarious bravery
There’s that pronoun again — “we.” Interventionists love to use it, they don’t really mean “we” because that pronoun would include them, and they would rather stay here at home than go to Syria to take up arms against the Turks.
By “we,” the interventionists are always referring to U.S. soldiers. Interventionists feel like they are showing how brave and courageous they are by boisterously exclaiming how “we” need to help the Kurds.
What type of “help” are interventionists referring to? Why, military help, of course. They want U.S. soldiers to be killing and dying to help the Kurds, while the interventionists remain here at home going to work, spending time with their families, going on vacation, and attending sporting events and concerts.
Equally interesting, interventionists are willing to sacrifice whatever number of U.S. troops are necessary to keep the Kurds from being killed by the Turks. After all, don’t forget: the purpose of using those 50 U.S. troops as a tripwire is to guarantee that more U.S. soldiers will be committed to battle if the tripwire is triggered. In the mind of the interventionist, if that means thousands or even tens of thousands of U.S. troops losing their lives or limbs in the defense of the Kurds, well, that’s just the way it is.
Maybe U.S. soldiers ought to keep all this in mind the next time an interventionist thanks them for their service. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
Pinning an ‘Antisemite’ Label on President Trump
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | October 9, 2019
In a Friday The Intercept editorial, Mehdi Hasan wrote that President Donald Trump “and his acolytes” have been “banging their anti-Semitic drum in plain sight” since United States House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s September 24 announcement of an impeachment inquiry in regard to Trump. But, Hasan then offers no substantial evidence to back this bold claim.
The first pittance Hasan presents as supposed backing for his claim is a September 28 Twitter post from Trump. In the tweet, Trump complains about the treatment of Trump by “Do Nothing Democrat Savages, people like Nadler, Schiff, AOC Plus 3.” The people referenced are all House members: Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Adam Schiff (D-CA), as well as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) (“AOC”) and three other freshman House members who are seen by Trump and many other people as forming a group with Ocasio-Cortez based on common interests — Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
Hasan notes that Schiff and Nadler are Jewish. Hasan also mentions that Ocasio-Cortez is a “woman of color.” Plus, observes Hasan, Trump only chose to mention these House members from among the more than 200 House members who “have signed onto an impeachment inquiry.”
From this information, Hasan presents the following rhetorical question as if he has proven something: “How is such rhetoric not racist?”
How, indeed? A negative comment does not become a racist comment just because the individuals about which the comment is made are of particular races, ethnicities, or religions.
Of course, Trump has a long and well-known record of harshly criticizing people of various races, ethnicities, and religions. The fact that his presidential primary and general election opponents were not mostly Jewish people or “women of color” did not prevent Trump from leveling at many of them verbal and written attacks similar in strength to the attack found in the tweet Hasan references.
Further, there is good reason, other than racism, that Trump would single out the House members he did for criticism. Nadler and Schiff, as Hasan notes in his editorial, are chairmen, respectively, of the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees. In those roles the two men have been devoting much time and effort to developing and promoting the case for Congress removing Trump from the presidency. While “AOC Plus 3” lack committee chairmanships, they have been very harsh in their criticism of the president. Trump’s inclusion of these four additional Congress members in the tweet also makes sense as part of his ongoing trading of barbs with them.
So, in answer to Hasan’s question, there is plenty of reason not to interpret Trump’s tweet as racist or antisemitic.
Next up, Hasan makes this claim:
On October 2, Trump escalated his brazenly anti-Semitic attack on Schiff. ‘We don’t call him “Shifty Schiff” for nothing,’ the president told reporters in the Oval Office. ‘He’s a shifty, dishonest guy.’
Hold on. Why is this a “brazenly anti-Semitic attack”? It just sounds like Trump being Trump. He frequently attacks people verbally and in writing, often doing so by calling them names. Wikipedia even provides a long list of nicknames, many of them negative, that Trump has used for people. Among the listed nicknames are multiple negative nicknames for people including Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer (most of whom are not Jewish), along with Schiff.
But, insists Hasan: “The stereotype of Jews as ‘shifty,’ the suggestion that they are sneaky and manipulative, has a long and ignominious history.” Whatever. There is a long history of people calling non-Jewish people shifty too.
An obvious reason Trump would choose to use the insulting nickname “Shifty Schiff” is because the nickname is made up of two words that share a first syllable. That helps make the nickname catchy. Indeed, looking at the Wikipedia list, you can see Trump has applied similar types of nicknames playing on the sound of people’s names before — “Lamb the Sham” for House Member Conor Lamb (D-PA) and “Wacky Jacky” for Senate Member Jacky Rosen (D-NV), for example.
That’s it for Hasan’s argument that Trump is saying antisemitic things since Pelosi announced an impeachment inquiry regarding Trump. Talk about underwhelming.
Just as underwhelming is how Hasan then proceeds to argue in support of his assertion that Trump’s “acolytes” are doing the same thing. To support the claim, Hasan points to two October 2 Twitter posts from Trump’s son Donald Trump, Jr.
Before dealing with those tweets it should be noted that it is absurd to have trump’s son stand in for all Trump’s “acolytes.” Even if Donald Trump, Jr. wrote something antisemitic that does not mean that all supporters of President Trump, or even a substantial portion of them, agree with it.
Hasan points to Donald Trump, Jr. saying in two October 2 tweets that Schiff is a “radical liberal” who “has been hand picked and supported by George Soros” and is “a George Soros *puppet.*” Hasan apparently has a problem with these tweets because Soros is Jewish. Hasan writes:
Radical liberal. Handpicked by George Soros. A Soros puppet.
Don Jr.’s tweets provoked a rare response from Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, who referred to his invocation of Soros, a left-leaning Jewish billionaire, as an ‘anti-Semitic trope’ and a ‘dangerous’ insinuation.
Alleging politicians are taking actions and making public stands because of pressure from wealthy individuals, or from businesses or interest groups, is common practice in American political debate. Soros comes up in some of those allegations, but so also do many other individuals, groups, and organizations — Charles Koch, the military-industrial complex, and the National Rifle Association, for example — that are not generally seen as connected to Jewish ethnicity or religion.
The truth is that Soros directs much effort to influence political action in America and across the world. Saying that people should refrain from noting and criticizing such effort because Soros is Jewish is saying that some major players in political influence should have a free pass from recognition and criticism. That is not a call for suppressing antisemitism. Rather, that is a call for suppressing debate.
After presenting his milk-toast evidence, Hasan asks the following question:
So why isn’t there more outrage over Trump’s blatant and dangerous anti-Semitism, in the specific context of this impeachment inquiry?
All that “blatant and dangerous anti-Semitism” is in Hasan’s head, not in reality. Hopefully Hasan, and other people offering the spurious arguments in Hasan’s editorial, will find little success in their effort to recruit people to believe their fantasy assertions of Trump’s expressions of antisemitism.
Copyright © 2019 by RonPaul Institute
Extinction Rebellion is a carnival for middle classes who love to dress up as activists
By Professor Frank Furedi | RT | October 7, 2019
I know a protest when I see one. Walking around in London today it is evident that the tens of thousands of adults playing at being children are not so much protesting but putting on a performance of protest.
Unlike normal protest the men and women wearing uniforms in London today, are not there to police but to be helpful and assist this very noisy and very colorful performance.
For their part the chanters of apocalyptic slogans and the boisterous participants declaring that they know what’s best for everyone, have rehearsed their role for this mass expensive street theatre. Queuing up to get arrested is all part of this drama. There are even celebrities lurking about to provide a sense of the occasion.
When I encounter a group of middle aged distinguished-looking activists tucking into their lunch, while sitting on the pavement by the Embankment, I am reminded of the kind of street parties that occurred during the Queen’s Jubilee. Talking to these chaps and chapettes, it becomes evident that not only are they having the time of their life, they are also under the impression that their picnic contributes to the saving of the planet. When I put to them my view that ‘this is a self-indulgent carnival of reaction’, they don’t argue back. One of them tells me to go to hell. An elderly lady sneers at me and simply states that ‘I will not have a bad word said against these young people’. As far as she and her companions are concerned, Extinction Rebellion now possesses the kind of moral authority previously associated with the Church and the institutions of the state.
The ease with which Extinction Rebellion has succeeded in occupying the moral high ground has little to do with the quality of their arguments and the strength of their case. In all but name, the political establishments of the western world have given up the attempt to exercise moral authority. The elite no longer upholds the values of their ancestors and is all too aware of its loss of legitimacy. It no longer believes in itself and is evidently prepared to be flagellated by its environmentalist critics. In turn Extinction Rebellion knows that when it instructs its posh friends to jump, their answer is likely to be ‘How High’!
A lot of people on the streets of London and elsewhere are of course really miffed and angry about the way this carnival of reaction has disrupted to their life. In private conversations they murmur and swear at ‘these wastrels’. But as long as the performers enjoy backing of the media, the cultural elites, a significant section of the political establishment, and of course the all-important celebrities, their voice can be safely ignored by the protesters.
Until now participating in a Climate Extinction performance has been a risk-free activity. Unlike real protests which always incur serious risks, this week’s performance is unlikely to cost the performers very much. The cost will be borne by an increasingly fed-up public who was never asked whether or not they wanted their life to be turned upside-down.
Professor Frank Furedi is a sociologist and author. His, ‘How Fear Works: The Culture Of Fear In The Twentieth Century’ is published by Bloomsbury.
Risking Women’s Health, While Widening the Door to Techno-Eugenics
By Tina Stevens and Stuart A. Newman | CounterPunch | September 26, 2019
In September, California’s legislature passed AB 922, a bill legalizing the payment to women for their eggs for research purposes. Additionally, next year, the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is expected to return to the voters to secure passage of an initiative that will supply billions of dollars to fund entrepreneurial bioresearch. If Governor Newsom does not veto AB 922, CIRM will have a green light to fund research that will not only jeopardize women’s health through egg extraction but will enable the controversial genetic manipulation of human embryos. (Already, there are bioentrepreneurs who have created genetically engineered human embryos for implantation.)
This human genetic engineering would be massively amplified by vastly expanding the market in women’s eggs, the raw material necessary for the industrialization of human production. (see Stuart A. Newman: “Our Assembly-Line Future? CounterPunch, July 28, 2018 ). AB 922 and the expected repeat funding of CIRM constitute the leading edge of a juggernaut roaring down the road to techno-eugenics.
When instituted in 2004, CIRM was specifically prohibited from funding research that paid women for eggs. Only reimbursement for expenses directly associated with donation was allowed. Federal guidelines similarly reflected caution and continue to do so. According to the National Academy of Sciences 2010, “no payments, cash or in kind, should be provided for donating oocytes [i.e., egg cells] for research purposes.” AB 922 constitutes an end-run around these well-justified provisions.
The Center for Genetics and Society (CGS), Friends of the Earth, Alliance for Humane Biotechnology, many women’s advocacy groups, including Our Bodies Ourselves, and reproductive justice groups, including Black Women for Wellness and California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, came out in opposition to AB 922. But this bill is only the most recent attempt of bio-entrepreneurial interests and well-funded lobbying over the course of more than a decade, to expand access to women’s eggs. The physically invasive egg retrieval process has resulted in serious complications for many women who have donated eggs and its short-term and long-term health risks have not been adequately studied. Moreover, these risks are shouldered inequitably. As a CGS and Pro-Choice Alliance for Responsible Research fact sheet on the bill underscores:
“Paying women for their eggs for research creates an “undue incentive” for women of limited financial means to participate in a procedure that has not been shown to be safe. Since low-income women are disproportionately women of color and immigrants, they are likely to be the most affected. They may also have limited access to medical care should they experience adverse health effects beyond the current standard of care for egg providers, and less likely to benefit from any scientific advances that may result from the research.”
Finally, the push to commercialize eggs has been accompanied by claims that research in human reparative medicine will be thwarted without it. But such claims should not be accepted uncritically. While ethical considerations may see some lines of investigation foreclosed, the historical record shows that scientists resourcefully find other avenues to reach desired goals. Consider, for example, the once prevailing scientific imperative that brought CIRM into existence in 2004: that human embryos, not funded as research materials by the Federal government, were the only source of stem cells that could turn into a wide variety of reparative cell types. But just two years later Dr. Shinya Yamanaka introduced the scientific community to induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. These cells have much the same properties as embryonic stem cells but were made from mature tissues. Importantly, they do not require the harvesting of women’s eggs. Yamanaka won the Nobel Prize for his work in 2012. Virtually all stem cell biologists now use iPS cells instead of the embryonic ones. This includes recipients of CIRM funds as well, notwithstanding the fact that the raison d’etre of CIRM, the fact that the federal government would not fund research on the most versatile stem cells (at the time those derived from embryos), no longer exists in the era of iPCs. Why then, is the demand for women’s eggs for bioresearch growing?
One highly controversial reason is to fund research seeking to create gene edited embryos. This is something that CIRM has considered, as recounted in Biotech Juggernaut: Hope, Hype, and Hidden Agendas of Entrepreneurial BioScience. Surely the public, which pays for CIRM funded research, has the right to steer it away from techno-eugenicist uses. Blocking AB 922 would be a start.
Time is running out. The governor has until October 13 to veto or sign bills. It is not known when he might get to AB 922. Please contact Governor Newsom’s office to call for a veto of AB 922.
Visit: https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov40mail/ or tweet @GavinNewsom to veto AB 922.
For more information about AB 922, visit:
https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article/california-shouldnt-expand-market-womens-eggs
For more information about the risks and consequences of egg harvesting, visit:
http://www.humanebiotech.org/egg-donors-project
Tina Stevens and Stuart Newman are the authors of Biotech Juggernaut: Hope, Hype, and Hidden Agendas of Entrepreneurial BioScience (Routledge, 2019.)
The Bigotry of Environmental Pessimism
By Michael Shellenberger | Quilette | August 15, 2019
Democratic Presidential candidates and the New York Times rightly condemned the use of inflammatory words like “invasion” by President Donald Trump and Fox News hosts to describe the desperate people coming from Latin America to seek a better life in the U.S. Such language is irresponsible and may very well have contributed to the motivation of a man suspected to have killed 13 Americans, eight Mexicans, and one German in El Paso last week. In a manifesto he posted online before the attack, the suspect also used the word “invasion.”
While they are at it, they should condemn the inflammatory rhetoric used by environmentalists, which also may have contributed to the motivations of the El Paso shooting suspect. The suspect justified his mass shooting of people in a Walmart by arguing that “our lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country.” The suspect writes, “y’all are just too stubborn to change your lifestyle. So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.”
For over 50 years, environmentalists have argued that a significant down-sizing of American living standards is required to prevent environmental catastrophe. They have been attacking the American lifestyle since the 1960s, and Walmart since the 1990s. The El Paso shooting suspect named his manifesto “The Inconvenient Truth,” a title nearly identical to the 2006 documentary about Al Gore’s slideshow on global warming. In it, Gore says: “The truth about the climate crisis is an inconvenient one that means we are going to have to change the way we live our lives.”
Many Democrats and New York Times readers will object that we cannot attribute the El Paso shooting subject’s actions to Gore or to the language he uses. But if that’s true, then we can’t attribute them to Trump and Fox News, either. We can’t have it both ways.
After I made this point on Twitter, some people replied that while the suspect may have had environmental concerns, he acted on his anti-immigrant beliefs. Others said that had he acted on his environmental concerns, he would have shot up ExxonMobil. But such claims demonstrate ignorance of what the shooting suspect wrote, his worldview, and the ways in which it “echoes,” to use the Times’ word, the long history of anti-immigrant, Malthusian environmentalism.
The suspect clearly states that his decision to kill immigrants was, in significant measure, because of their impact on the natural environment. “Of course these migrants and their children have contributed to the problem, but are not the sole cause of it,” he writes. “The American lifestyle affords our citizens an incredible quality of life.”
The El Paso suspect said he was partly inspired by the suspected shooter of Muslim immigrants in New Zealand in March, who also made clear in a manifesto that environmental concerns motivated his anti-immigrant ones. “Why focus on immigration and birth rates when climate change is such a huge issue?” the New Zealand shooting suspect asks. “Because they are the same issue, the environment is being destroyed by overpopulation, we Europeans are one of the groups that are not overpopulating the world.”
It is not surprising that the two manifestos echoed environmentalist ideas. For two centuries, prominent scientists, conservationists, and journalists, have blamed immigrants, the poor, and non-whites for their degradation of the natural environment. Much of what we call “environmentalism” is simply a repackaging of the ideas of 19th-century economist Thomas Malthus. He believed overpopulation of the poor would deplete resources, and that the ethical thing to do was let the poor die of hunger and disease to prevent more hunger and disease in the future. “Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits,” he wrote, “and court the return of the plague.” The British government and media used Malthus’ ideas to justify the policies that led to mass starvation in Ireland from 1845 to 1849.
After the Second World War, leading conservationists embraced Malthus’ view that overpopulation would result in resource depletion. Their concerns were directed at poor non-whites in other countries, particularly India, even though North Americans and Europeans consumed and produced an order of magnitude more resources and pollution. Anti-humanist environmentalism came full bloom in Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 Sierra Club book, The Population Bomb, which used dehumanizing language similar to that used by today’s anti-immigrant activists. In the opening pages of his book, Ehrlich depicted poor people in India as animals, “screaming… begging… defecating and urinating.”
More recently, environmentalists and scientists concerned about overpopulation tried to get the Sierra Club to oppose immigration from Mexico and other Latin American countries, expressing the concern that, by adopting an American lifestyle, immigrants will use up supposedly scarce natural resources—the same argument used by the El Paso shooting subject—and increase pollution.
Both the El Paso and New Zealand suspects echo the exaggerated rhetoric of environmentalists. “Nothing is conserved,” wrote the New Zealand shooting suspect. “The natural environment is industrialized, pulverized and commoditized.” The El Paso suspect blames “consumer culture” for plastic and electronic waste, and “urban sprawl” for environmental degradation.
The El Paso suspect says environmental destruction was “brilliantly portrayed in the decades old classic The Lorax,” which is a children’s book about a greedy entrepreneur who shortsightedly chops down all of the trees. “Corporations are heading the destruction of our environment by shamelessly overharvesting resources,” he writes. The New Zealand shooting suspect agrees. “Not a thing has been conserved other than corporate profits and the ever increasing wealth of the 1% that exploit the people for their own benefit.”
Both men’s views are highly simplistic. Happily, Malthusian environmentalists, including the two shooting subjects, are wrong about the environment, and have been since Malthus wrongly predicted that too many people would result in famines and resource scarcity. Technology has outpaced increases in population and consumption, so that today humankind faces the prospects of reducing the total amount of our usage of natural resources, including land.
It is simply not the case that “nothing is conserved,” nor that “urban sprawl” is a major problem in comparison to other uses of land. Humans use about half of the ice-free surface of the earth, with just one to three percent of it used for cities. In fact, by increasing the size of cities through industrialization, we have been able to return more of the countryside to nature. Urbanization and industrialization have mostly been good, not bad, for the natural environment. When people move to cities and grow more food on less land, forests grow back and wildlife returns. This has been happening in developed nations for over 100 years, a process that could begin in most poor and developing nations before mid-century. If we encourage the process of ecological modernization, it will happen faster. That means humanistic environmentalists should help poor countries move up the energy ladder, from wood to hydroelectricity and coal to natural gas to uranium[?].
The “Lorax” view of environmental problems as a consequence of greed has always been wrong and depressing. Environmental problems, from climate change to plastic waste to species extinctions, mostly result from people trying to improve their lives, not from a few greedy corporate fat cats. Around the world, where important natural grasslands and forests are vulnerable, they are usually threatened by people seeking to expand agriculture to produce the food that people need, not to build suburban Walmart stores.
Anti-humanist environmentalists have long exaggerated high birth rates in poor nations, even while condemning the most effective ways to lower them. The New Zealand shooting suspect opens his manifesto by repeating “it’s the birth rates” three times. He later writes, “There is no Green future with never ending population growth, the ideal green world cannot exist in a World of 100 billion 50 billion or even 10 billion people.”
But technology is a far bigger factor in determining humankind’s environmental impacts than fertility rates. Modern agriculture reduces by half the amount of land we need to produce the same amount of food. Nuclear plants require less than one percent of the land that solar and wind farms need to produce the same amount of electricity. With abundant clean[?] nuclear energy, we will never run out of food, because it can be used to desalinate water, produce fertilizers, and even power indoor farms.
Birth rates among wealthier, more industrialized populations are a product of choice, driven mostly through a reduced need of children for farming. Unsurprisingly, the New Zealand suspect cites China as a model. For decades it enforced a draconian “one child” policy when birth rates would have fallen on their own.
Why do the shooting suspects and other pessimists get the environment so wrong? Perhaps because doing so makes them feel better about themselves and their place in society. Environmentalist concern over birth rates has always been disproportionately focused on immigrants, non-whites, and people in poor countries. The sad reality is that many weak and desperate humans—the kind who gun down innocent people—feel more powerful by seeking to hurt others and keep them down.
While it’s easy to dismiss the Christchurch and El Paso shooting suspects as insane, it’s also dangerous. Their manifestos, like the one written by the “Unabomber” before, suggest that the problem isn’t just psychological but also ideological—a consequence of believing people are inherently greedy, the environment is in decline, and the future is dark. As such, both anti-human and anti-immigrant influences may be having a larger influence on recent shootings than either side in the culture war wants to admit.
Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” and president of Environmental Progress. Follow him on Twitter @ShellenbergerMD.
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Why the ‘Left’ is Dead in the Water
By Gilad Atzmon | February 28, 2019
It seems that there is not much left of the Left and what remains has nothing to do with ‘Left.’
Contemporary ‘Left’ politics is detached from its natural constituency, working people. The so called ‘Left’ is basically a symbolic identifier for ‘Guardian readers’ a critical expression attributed to middle class people who, for some reason, claim to know what is good for the working class. How did this happen to the Left? Why was it derailed and by whom? … continue
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Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA
By Aletho News | January 9, 2012
This article will examine some of the connections between the US and UK National Security apparatus and the appearance of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory beginning after the accident at Three Mile Island. … continue
~
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