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

[David Johnson]

> Don't you love how appologists for the neo-fascist racist / apartheid 
> government of Israel, always want to accuse everyone who questions or 
> criticize the policies of the Israeli government as " anti-semetic ".
> Or in the case of people of Jewish decent ; " self-hating Jews ".
>
> This indicates their lack of credibility and moral arguement on the issues 
> concerning the Middle East.
>
> David Johnson
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "C. G. Estabrook" <carl at newsfromneptune.com>
> To: "David Gehrig" <david-cu at nukulele.org>
> Cc: "ya'aQov" <yaaqovz at gmail.com>; <sftalk at yahoogroups.com>; "occupycu" 
> <occupyCU at lists.chambana.net>; "SJP UIUC" <sjp.uiuc at gmail.com>; "Peace 
> Discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 4:07 PM
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [OccupyCU] [Peace] News from Neptune for 
> 14March 2014
>
>
> I neither know nor care very much whether Steve Francis is an anti-Semite. 
> He may well be.
>
> What's your position on the (much more serious) issue sketched below?
>
> Do you agree with me, or with the editors of CounterPunch?
>
> --CGE
>
> On Mar 15, 2014, at 2:54 PM, David Gehrig <david-cu at nukulele.org> wrote:
>
>> So sez Carl "I Let Holocaust Deniers Play Me Like a Piano, But I'd Rather 
>> Not Discuss It Because That Would Require Admitting It" Estabrook.
>>
>> Carl, here is the direct question all your furious rhetorical aerobatics 
>> have failed to get off your tail. Do you finally accept that I attacked 
>> Steve Francis as an antisemite because he IS an antisemite, one you 
>> passionately defended again and again without quite getting around to the 
>> "oops" once he tipped his hand (forward at arms length at an upward 
>> angle)? Because if that's the case, it's time for a you-a maxima culpa 
>> you've never quite managed to deliver.
>>
>> Quick, Carl, to the Bloviotron! You must make new deflective/distractive 
>> measures!
>>
>> @%<
>>
>>> On Mar 15, 2014, at 11:05 AM, "C. G. Estabrook" 
>>> <carl at newsfromneptune.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> 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."
>>>>>
>>>>> ###
>>>
>
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