I don't know if you are a fan of the old British show, Yes, Minister, which is about the battles and maneuverings between a British MP and a civil servant, but they have a hilarious discussion of Serious Things. The episode begins with a problem regarding Euro sausages and ends with the Minister becoming Prime Minister, and in the middle there is this:

Jim Hacker: "Yes, well this is serious."

Chief Whip: "Very serious."

Sir Humphrey: "Very serious."

Jim Hacker: "What could happen if either of them became PM?"

Sir Humphrey: "Something very serious indeed."

Chief Whip: "Very serious."

Jim Hacker: "I see...."

Chief Whip: "Serious repercussions."

Sir Humphrey: "Serious repercussions."

Chief Whip: "Of the utmost seriousness."

Jim Hacker: "Yes, that is serious."

Sir Humphrey: "In fact, I would go so far as to say, that it could hardly be more serious."

Jim Hacker: "Well, I think we all agree then: this is serious."

I can think of any number of MSM and politician names to replace the speakers with.

You can hear it here: http://www.yes-minister.com/ymseas4.htm

I am very late to this thread, but it is important to address this issue of the Rapture. As Ms. Jeanne Garofalo has stated, it is important to wear comfortable, loose-fitting clothing in anticipation of that day. And of course, wear sensible shoes.

I am a Jew who has had the opportunity to live and work in Israel.

God, I hope that the people who read Lieberman's garbage do not think it represents the thinking of any but the most minute fringe in Israel.

I never met anybody in Israel who believed this sort of junk.

Lieberman is a sick, perverted man with no sense of honor or decency. When he says things like this, he speaks neither for the Israeli government nor for the Israeli people.

@SomeNYGuy

If you're still reading this thread, I'm curious to know what Mr. Pagano wrote that caused you to brand him a "neocon troll."

-- Gator90

I didn't need to read his blog. His overpowering sense of his own importance and "seriousness" set off alarm bells for me. He just lacks gravitas -- and being able to distinguish shit from shinola wouldn't hurt him.

Carl in LA,

We know. Lieberman is not representative.

It is my understanding that Biblical inerrancy is one of the tenets of the faith-based folks who think a Rapture is inevitable and will shortly occur. If this is the case, how on earth are we to explain how the Bible, which never predicted Mohammed or the Muslim religion, and as a result, says absolutely nothing about Islam, is opposed to Arabs on the grounds that they are Islamic?

I had been under the impression that Biblical injunctions were against worshippers of Moloch and others who have passed from the scene. Or is this one of the mysteries we must learn to intuit, such as the idea that the Bible rarely mentions homosexuality, yet is implacably against its manifestation in all cases?

What happens to the poor schmucks who can't figure out that the Bible inerrantly says abortion is evil without once mentioning the word? Do they have some sort of separate purgatory that they have to go through? Perhaps where they listen to recycled Billy Graham sermons for centuries on end? Does the silliness of this sort of thing never cross anyone's mind?

>> Glenn, parts of your post could be construed as being anti-Israel,

> How?

As it is always been done, by taking your sidenote on Israel and its prominence in Washington [and London, and Berlin] thinking out of context:

'Could we [...] all agree that it is long past time to dispense with the outrageous taboo which prohibits a discussion of the allegiance to Israel [...]'

From this statement any polemicists worth his salt should be able to accuse you of anti-Semitism; dispensing with the 'dicussion' part of the quotation makes your use of 'outrageous' even more assailable as it would then clearly qualify 'allegiance' instead of 'discussion'. Obviously being critical of the politics of some Isreali politicians is not ant-Semitism, thus the polemicist uses it as a moral cudgeon, a killer argument. Which, it seems to me, is Mr Lieberman's subtle defense.

Mind, I am not reading and interpreting you like this [should be obvious from my past letters, especially the first one in this thread]; I am just saying it can be done. And believe, it is done in Germany often enough, attenuated by the fact that many actual anti-Semites here find our allegiance to Israel 'outrageous'.

So I don't think you can convincingly make the argument he is an anti-semite. Polemicists and propagandists do make those arguments about Jews (self-hating Jews) but I find them unconvincing nonsense. So Glenn is not a Zionist and has no bias in favoor of Israel or against Palestine. His only obvious bias is what is in his opinion best for his homeland, America.

Anti-Semitism In The Zionist Movement

To anyone familiar with the history of the US elites the efforts of American historiography to hide the racism of anti-Soviet and pro-US forces should not be surprising. But that the Zionist movement itself has historically been as anti-Semitic, in essential ways, as any fascist will shock many, so well has this fact been concealed by "scholarship."

I recall the sense of amazement I felt when I learned of the involvement of the Zionist movement in helping SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann ship 500,000 Hungarian Jews to the death camps. Despite universal condemnation in the "respectable" press of Ben Hecht's book Perfidy, and later, of Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, the truth could not be entirely squelched. Recently even The Jerusalem Post publicized the fact that Yitzhak Shamir, successor to Begin as Israeli prime minister, was involved in seeking "an alliance with the official representatives of Nazi Germany during World War II and the Holocaust" (Int. ed., Sept. 18-24, 1983). Liberal representatives of Zionism are increasingly concerned with what Professor Y. Leibovitz, editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica, last year called "Judeo-Nazism"; witness the publicity given to Amos Oz's recently published book, In the Land of Israel.

But that mainstream Zionism has historically promoted views of Jews identical to those of the most vicious anti-Semites -- this will be met with shocked disbelief in most quarters. Yet a book published this year documents it with convincing thoroughness.

Lenni Brenner, author of Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (Lawrence Hill, 1983) is apparently a Trotskyist of some kind. His own analysis of the evidence is often faulty. But the evidence itself is damning. Some of his citations from the Zionist press:

It used to be fashionable for Zionist speakers (including the writer) to declare from the platform that 'To be a good Zionist one must be somewhat of an anti-Semite ...' (Chaim Greenberg, editor of the labor Zionist Jewish Frontier, 1942)

The Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both physically and spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and throws off the harness of social obligations, knows nor order nor discipline. (Hashomer Hatzair, journal of a Zionist youth group, December 1936)

The fact is undeniable that the Jews collectively are unhealthy and neurotic. ( Jewish Call, 1935) [link to citation]

29

Brenner cites more briefly many other statements by Zionist leaders and writers. An example:

"For Micah Yosef Berdichevsky the Jews were "not a nation, not a people, not human." To Yosef Chaim Brenner they were nothing more than "Gypsies, filthy dogs, inhuman, wounded, dogs." To A.D. Gordon his people were no better than "parasites, people fundamentally useless." (Brenner. p. 23)

Such statements are as racist from the pen of Jewish writers as they would be from non-Jews.

These and many other citations in Brenner's remarkable book show that the roots of "Judeo-Nazism" and Zionist anti-Semitism go back to the beginnings of the Zionist movement. Amos Oz's book examines the resentment of Sephardic Jews against the racist treatment afforded them by the Israeli elite, overwhelmingly of European origin.

The lesson is clear. The elite groups in American society "attack" anti-Semitism not wherever it appears. but only where it suits cold-war strategies. Thus Soviet anti-Semitism is loudly denounced. while that of the Hungarian, Polish, and Zionist forces is hushed up because they are useful allies in the cold war against the Soviets.

Does the publicity given to Brenner's book, or Oz's, or David Irving's recent work, denote an increased dedication on the part of elite publishing houses and journals to exposing anti-Semitism where it has hitherto been all but hidden? I fear the opposite is true. It rather coincides with increasing tensions between the Israeli ruling elite and that of the United States. These tensions can only increase, leading to a sharp break between Israel and the U.S. in the future.

At that time (and, in preparation for it. well before then) anti- Semitism will again be openly promoted to “justify” the turn of U.S. foreign policy towards the (equally racist) Arab states. As in the Iranian hostage crisis the U.S. elite will use racism to crush opposition, this time from Jewish groups to the shift in foreign policy. Those who, for whatever reason, belittle, ignore, or apologize for the racism of the U.S. or Zionist elites are unwittingly helping to set the stage for a renewed anti-Semitic program. Only unyielding, multiracial opposition to all forms of racism and the business, governmental, and intellectual elites who benefit from it constitutes genuine opposition to racism.

http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/furrlethal84.pdf