Letters to the Editor
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Good job, Bucky,
Glenn Greenwald.... To Blubberee
Blubberee.... All roads lead to Zionism
There are plenty of American warmongers who couldn't care less about "Zionism." Ever heard of Dick Cheney?
And there are plenty of "Zionists" who aren't warmongers and racists.
The centrality of Israel is, without question, a key motivating factor for some of the people you describe -- as I just wrote about yesterday. But to say "All roads lead to Zionism" is to exude exactly the type of simplistic, overly-generalized hostility you purport to criticize.
Blubberee,
Kalle Lasn of adbusters probably is an anti-semite. Estonia, he's Estonian, is the most anti-semitic of the Baltic states.
http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2006/baltic.htm
You don't have the intelligence to comprehend Norman Finkelstein or Mearsheimer and Walt, and how do you know they are not Zionists, i.e., that they believe in the right of Jews to have a homeland? You are part of the problem in the ME, as Glenn, and others have suggested. And one of the reasons why people on the right can now make legitimate claims of anti-semitism coming from the left.
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bad job lwm
Wanker wrote:
What can one say; you are the worst poster here. Including all sock-puppets you out post everyone who ever commented at UT. Even Celery. And he makes much more sense.
Just the way it is.
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Note on Sands
I bought Philippe Sands' book at an event at NYU Law School a week or so ago on the night before he appeared before the House Judiciary Committee.
The event was hosted by Scott Horton, the Columbia law professor and columnist for Harper's.
Considering this thread, with its focus on "actual journalists," Horton paid Sands a high compliment, calling him an "investigative journalist."
I got the impression that Sands, a London-based barrister and well-known human rights lawyer, more or less stumbled into the role of hardball reporter (of course he might have been pushed a bit). At one point during the NYU event he related how terrified he was about the vetting for his Vanity Fair piece, "Green Light," which ran ahead of the release of "Torture Team."
The point is: thus far there appear to be no public challenges to what he has written, either in VF or in "Torture Team."
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Finkelstein is certainly a zionist.
Finkelstein is too straight for most people to be able to understand, in the sense that his thought proceeds in absolutely straight lines, whereas for most of us, thought is curved, like light in relativity theory.
It is rather a trivial question to ask, whether Walt and Mearsheimer are zionists. They aren't Jewish, and they certainly aren't Christian zionists either. They are 'zionists' in the weak theoretical sense, of accepting the legitimacy of the idea of a Jewish state. But I wouldn't call that zionism in the proper sense, because to me 'zionism in the proper sense' is a roaring passion, as are most practical nationalisms when in crisis, as zionism perpetually is.
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Zionism/racism
Personally, I don't see Zionism as necessarily racist, any more than Americans' oblivious Americanism. All it is is a nationalism under perpetual assault, as Rowan notes.
And when nationalism is said to be, or believed to be, under assault, the line between it and genocidal racism can blur and break. And otherwise normal people, who simply believe Jews have a right and duty to live in Israel as Jews, can get sucked into the nightmares envisioned and rhetorically deployed by the racists---how the Arabs will out-breed them, and steal their water, and subvert their democracy, and only understand force, etc.
But it takes a peculiar kind of person to feed off those nightmares---to justify Israel's atrocities and denounce the Palestinians'; to decry Jewish suffering and deny the Arabs'.
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nationalism isn't racism
it is possible to develop conventional nationalism in the direction of any one of a number of racisms, for instance, by positing a 'core race' or 'hegemonic race' within the existing nation and proposing to enslave or expel the supposedly 'subaltern races'. Alternatively, and more sophisticatedly, it is possible to accept that the existing nation is a mere melange of 'races' but to argue that a sufficiently robust nationalism will allow the eventual merging through intermarriage of these 'races' to produce a new 'race'.
It is probably wiser not to think in terms of 'races' in the first place though, don't you think? there is an unhealthy materialist mysticism involved in the whole notion.
The problem with zionism, as I see it, is that via the mystification of religion it has been harnessed to a white supremacist form of racist evangelical christian american imperialism. In addition, Jews trying to expose this have been stigmatised as 'leftists.' However, they, or we, or whatever it is, are beginning to get our, or their, shit together and speak more clearly, as the imminent catastrophe itself becomes more and more obvious:
http://www.counterpunch.org/weitzel05142008.html
is pretty clear - and incidentally, since it discusses the Council for National Policy, I want to mention again that one of its leading members is also a luminary of the Lew Rockwell stable - Gary North.
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i don't want to be accused of exaggerating
Gary North isn't a "leading member" is any obvious sense, but he is the only systematic theologian I know of in the CNP, and his position is a very clever and subtle one, in that he isn't a Dispensationalist, and can afford to write erudite articles making fun of the Rapturists. You will find a lot of people who try to keep track of the theocratic movement in the USA are confused by this, as I was for a while. Just bear in mind, he has never had any problem sitting with the Dispensationalists in the CNP. The difference between pre- and post-millennialism doesn't prevent them from collaborating very closely on one and the same theocratic agenda. The difference lies in whether they believe, or profess to believe, that Jews as Jews have a future in the millennium. Pre-mils say yes, post-mils say no. At least, that is my impression, but I'm just a voyeur.
I'm outta here, g'night
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Which will happen?
I've wondered the same thing myself. Optimistically, Obama will come in (he is the president presumptive) with Edwards in tow (vice president presumptive)and they will superheroically, super-methodically set about to undo every single signing statement, purge and disinfect everything Cheney et al touched, repeal every ridiculous law, essentially fix what got broke. All in the first 180 days. All with a choir of angels singing in the background.
Or
They will come in, embrace those laws which serve them, undo those which do not. Continue with more of the same, just classier. And more articulate (oh how I look forward to presidential soundbites, versus the synapse pileup that is W's thought process.)
If wishes were lollipops . . .