[Peace-discuss] [OccupyCU] [Peace] News from Neptune for 14 March 2014

[C. G. Estabrook]

There is an actual issue here, obscured as it is by David's amusing hysterics.

It's the difference between Mearsheimer and Walt on the one hand and Chomsky on the other. The editors of Counterpunch incline to the former, I to the latter.

Roughly put, M-W see the Israeli government dominating US policy, against "American interests." (Their 2007 book, "The Isreal Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," even contends that the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with control of energy resources but only to do with "Israeli interests" - which seems to me obviously false.) 

"But recognizing that M-W took a courageous stand, which merits praise, we still have to ask how convincing their thesis is. Not very, in my opinion. I've reviewed elsewhere what the record (historical and documentary) seems to me to show about the main sources of US ME policy, in books and articles for the past 40 years, and can't try to repeat here. M-W make as good a case as one can, I suppose, for the power of the Lobby, but I don't think it provides any reason to modify what has always seemed to me a more plausible interpretation. Notice incidentally that what is at stake is a rather subtle matter: weighing the impact of several factors which (all agree) interact in determining state policy: in particular, (A) strategic-economic interests of concentrations of domestic power in the tight state-corporate linkage, and (B) the Lobby." {Chomsky at <http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20060328.htm>].

Jeffrey Blankfort (a friend of the late Cockburn's, whom CP continues to publish) has an extreme form of the former view; perhaps Norman Finkelstein can be said to have an extreme form of the latter. 

In an interview in September 2010, Chomsky said - accurately, I think - 

'There is an interesting mythology that I have opposed the BDS movement. In reality, as explained over and over, I not only support it but was actively involved long before the "movement" took shape. BDS is, of course, a tactic. That should be understood. Norman Finkelstein warned recently that it sometimes appears to be taking on cult-like features. That should be carefully avoided. Like all tactics, particular implementations have to be judged on their own merits. Here there is room for legitimate disagreement. I have been opposed to certain implementations, particularly those that are very likely to harm the victims, as unfortunately has happened.

'...It is convenient, particularly for Westerners, to regard it as an "anti-Israel movement." There are obvious temptations to blaming someone else, but the fact of the matter is that Israel can commit crimes to the extent that they are given decisive support by the US, and less directly, its allies. BDS actions are both principled and most effective when they are directed at our crucial contribution to these crimes, without which they would end; for example, boycott of western firms contributing to the occupation, working to end military aid to Israel, etc.'

That's the point that should direct our own political work - "Israel can commit crimes to the extent that they are given decisive support by the US." Our job is to inform Americans about what is being done in their name by the US government. "It is not simply that most people don’t know what’s going on, but they don’t even know that they don’t know." Cockburn and Counterpunch have done yeoman service in changing that.

 --CGE

On Mar 15, 2014, at 10:11 AM, David Gehrig <david-cu at nukulele.org> wrote:

> Estabrook's admiration for "Counterpunch" goes a long way toward
> explaining how a neo-neo-Nazi like Steve Francis could dribble him so
> humiliatingly up and down the court like a basketball, with Carl
> insisting "I'm in perfect control of the situation" at each bounce.
> 
> When you're Counterpunchdrunk, even *considering* the possibility that
> a critic of Israel is also an antisemite is absolute and complete
> capitulation to Bibi, must never never never be done, and everything
> possible must be done to shout down anyone who tries to point it out,
> even when it's flashing in neon letters like Francis's was all along. 
> 
> The Counterpunch coin has only one side: be as antisemitic as you
> want, use what antisemitic memes you want, expound what antisemitic
> conspiracies you want, but as long as you've mentioned the word
> "zionist" somewhere in there at least once, then the antisemitism is
> all magically lifted away, and Carl Estabrook is your bestest bestest
> friend.
> 
> People like Francis know this, too. They know that they can trust on
> the Carls of the world to fall right in line. They know the last thing
> they have to fear is critical examination of their antisemitism from
> the Carls of the world.
> 
> And that's how you end up looking the way Carl did, having to pretend
> at every turn that the criticism of Francis's obvious and blatant
> antisemitism was all a dodge and a fake - right up until Francis
> started waving Die Fahne Hoch, when Carl suddenly went vewwy vewwy
> quiet, never quite getting around to uttering "ooops."
> 
> But, you know, that really was the best poor Carl could do, given that
> his trustiest periscope into the issue, Cockburn, is so cracked.
> 
> @%<
> 
> On Mar 14, 2014, at 11:20 PM, "ya'aQov" <yaaqovz at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Rabbi B. Rosen's advocacy for BDS was uninformed, fake leftist posturing, as D. Green's is. Rosen had an epiphany during Operation Cast Lead; that didn't improve his accuracy and analytical prowess.
>> 
>> Possibly the best analyses of BDS is N. Chomsky's and N. Finkelstein's
>> 
>> Again and again, people pretending to speak on behalf of Palestinian people have NOT spoken with Palestinian people, and fail on representing them.  Neither are they representing Israel's opposition to their government's policies, nor are they attempting to collaborate with Israelis opposing the occupation.  Rabbi Rosen qas a good example for that: he mentioned friends in the Israeli opposition to he occupation, yet he never attempted to align his Jewish Voice for Peace with them.
>> 
>> Protesting and bringing an end to the military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza will not be accomplished by uninformed, fake posturing, and fake representations.  
>> 
>> 
>> On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 8:25 PM, C. G. Estabrook <carl at newsfromneptune.com> wrote:
>> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6MQiZk3CI0>.
>> 
>> A "Counterpuncher" edition
>> Produced and directed by Caleb Seripinas
>> on Urbana Public Television
>> 
>> The new number o the New Left Review (January February 2014) contains an article by its quondam editor Perry Anderson on the life and career of the late Alexander Cockburn, simply best political journalist in America in the era of the coming of neoliberalism (and a major influence on our program). An excerpt:
>> 
>> From the start, long before Clinton was elected, Alexander foresaw what the governor of Arkansas, mired in state-level malfeasance and connexions to the Contra programme, would mean as a ruler of the country: Walmart jobs for the many and Marc Rich pardons for the few. Within five months of the new Presidency he was writing: ‘The Clinton administration is over. Oh, it will drag on in a thickening twilight of new beginnings and fresh tomorrows’, under a ruler whose language bespoke his vision: ‘Clinton’s sloppy, tired phrases limp through the reality of America like an obese Sunday jogger waddling down the road.’ Of his claim to diplomatic fame, Alexander, abandoning mockery, wrote in words that are no less implacably actual today:
>> 
>> "It would take the pen of Swift to evoke the nauseating scenes of hypocrisy, bad faith and self-delusion on the White House lawn today [13 September 1993], crammed as it was with people who for long years were complicit in the butchery and torture of Palestinians and the denial of their rights, now applauding the ‘symbolic handshake’ that in fact ratified further negation of those same rights. In the shadow of an American President with the poise and verbiage of the manager of a McDonald’s franchise, Arafat produced oratory so meagre it made Rabin sound like Cicero.
>> 
>> "Right now, Palestinians get the right to manage the world’s largest prison, the Gaza Strip, plus one cow town. It’s as though the Irish in 1921 got Tralee plus a few acres in West Cork, with the British holding the entire eastern half, Belfast, Dublin, Waterford, plus all the resources, with its army free to roam at will across the Irish enclaves, themselves fragmented by British highways and drained of water. There will be no Palestinian sovereignty and an economy completely subordinated to Israel’s."
>> 
>> ###
>>