Letters to the Editor
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Hijacked
What else to call Glenn's description, and especially when including Eisenhower's historical perspective, but the hijacking by foreign agents of a political process, if not an entire government? Check the signatories to the PNAC documents. Check how many of those signatories are in the Bush administration.
And not only is it now "boilerplate" for all politicians to shamelessly pander to Israel regardless of Israel's hideous behavior, it is now emerging through the same ubiquitous foreign agents, to brand Islam as "evil", "the enemy".
How much longer before that too becomes boilerplate?
Not much when you check out Obama's race speech at about minute 8.
Good job, Glenn. Please continue to shed light on the major problem for a free US with regards to Israel. That no politician can speak other than the Zionist mantra, is quite terrifying for me and should be for all Americans. May the day come when it's normal discourse to decry Israeli state terrorism!
If you'd really like to see a dangerous enemy to the United States then check out Benjamin Netanyahu. Ahmedinejad is a pansy in comparison.
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For some reason I didn't realise tinyurl was absolutely free
I shall definitely use it in future if I want to refer back to previous comments here, because when I tried to refer back to two of them yesterday I produced urls so long that it is a matter of chance whether they appear in full on the page or get truncated by an advertisement or something in the right hand column.
By the way, something that is interesting in itself, irrespective of whether or not you believe that there are aspects of the 9-11 events that are suspicious, is the fact that over the last couple of years, the online world of 9-11 speculative writing has been drastically pruned as a result of a campaign run by a whole phalanx of Electro Robot type assaults, on the one hand, and a vast virtual slum full of people who really do use 9-11 as an anti-Semitic hobby-horse, on the other. The legitimate 9-11 campaigners have become much more focused on hardware issues and much less prepared to even tolerate questions of who, or why. The Jerry Mazza article I mentioned stands out as a rare piece of ad hominem, and here I shall try the tinyurl:
http://tinyurl.com/5pwadj
In New York itself, pickets at 'Ground Zero' have become facing off occasions for small factions of hard nosed campaigners from We Are Change versus provocateurs like Nico Haupt, who are sponsored by the Screw Loose Change group of right wing pro war campaigners:
http://tinyurl.com/6quc6o
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Palm Beach voters
Confusing, because like most US Jewish communities, the Palm Beach Jews to whom Goldberg appeals are "Democrats except when it comes to Israel." If I had previously described them as GOP voters I would have revealed my ignorance, but this type of Jewish voter could be described as DINO in the making, because more and more issues will be perceived by them as "Israel related". Here is an interesting poll observation:
"Counties using electronic voting machines are shown in red. You can see that Broward and Palm Beach counties (which have very large populations and lean strongly Democratic) swung much more toward Bush than was typical for counties where Republicans won less than 47 or 48 percent of the vote in 2000."
http://tinyurl.com/3w6xuy
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Hey, Rowan
Just 'cause we're reading at Salon doesn't mean we know all about use of dialect in Israel. I don't know enough folks who've spent time there.
So what's the interesting bit about the "kishke" comment?
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the confusing political identification of Goldberg's reference group
To an outside observer, all these cultural signals are baffling at first. Not only do these highly significant Palm Beach Jews vote Democrat on domestic issues, but religiously speaking they are largely liberal : In Palm Beach County, the 2005 Jewish Community Study found that 26 percent identified themselves as Reform, and 34 percent as Conservative, leaving, I suppose, only 30 percent identifying themselves as Orthodox. In many ways, they seem 'progressive', they have a 'socialist heritage' even, from 'the old country'. Yet, they will use their tactical voting power to push the USA into a world war, so it behooves you to understand their idiosyncracies.
Another coded reference in Goldberg is "you don’t feel Jewish worry the way a senator from New York would feel it." Charles Schumer, maybe - another DINO when it comes to foreign policy.
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yiddishism versus hebraism in zionist political culture
"Issues and Questions In the Historiography of Pre-State Zionism" by Joachim Martillo
http://tinyurl.com/5amlht
Highly recommended though blisteringly anti-zionist. The relevant part says this:
"Yiddishism developed as a particularly Eastern European populist Ashkenazi response to modernization.[25] Yiddishism developed into several distinct movements that sought Yiddish cultural autonomy in various forms. Yiddishism was an expression of the developing Eastern European Ashkenazi ethnic identity that was distinct from Jewish religious identity and unprecedented in the history of Jewish religion since the 10th century. Zionism was primarily an even later development among a very small group of elitist Central and Eastern European Ashkenazi intellectuals that were estranged both from Jewish religion and from Eastern European Ashkenazi culture. Such Ashkenazi intellectuals are typically called non-Jewish Jews, but they are more correctly identified as non-Jewish Ashkenazim. The animosity between Yiddishists and Zionists was immense in practically every way (viz Figure 5)."
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Curious
Goldberg's phrasing of questions about whether Zionism has justice looked as if it was a trap in which to catch Obama...I agree that Israel gets a free pass in America, at least among politicians...outside of Washington, Americans are less sympathetic, and tired of the endless to and fro between the Palestinians and Israelis that seem as intransigent as the troubles were once in Northern Ireland.
Obama walks a difficult line here...if he looks too sympathetic to Palestinians, and seems to get an endorsement from Hamas, he loses the support of most mainstream Jews in US. If he is too pro-Israel, his more radical base claim he is doing what Greenwald says is so bad for most US politicians.
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Good point
vowing absolute allegiance
Has there ever been another country besides Israel to which American politicians are required to vow absolute allegiance?
Well, until relatively recently there was Ireland, but that was specific to Boston politicians.
-- bearpaw1
...and in NY...also in NY, the issue of Israel gets multiplied...the local news always reports when Jews are injured or killed in any Mideast conflict, but leave out any mention of what Palestinians are going through.