Thanks Justin,
Of course you are accustomed to the venues outside republican conventions. Remember when Dole told the Brigades to meet somewhere else ? When McCain said they should take Greyhounds out ot the party ? They may wish they had those couple million votes this time. What a “conservative” party that says yes, to Little Joe Lieberman and No to the pitch fork brigades.

The Netanyahu quote isn’t all that interesting. He says that Israel benefited because 9/11 swung American opinion in a direction that pleased him—that is, it made Americans think that all Muslims and all Arabs were terrorists, and made Americans more sympathetic to Israel. The statement is accurate and obvious, so I don’t see why you’re jumping on it. He isn’t saying, “I’m glad 3000 Americans died because Israel benefited,” he’s warning Israelis that without 9/11 Americans might not be so supportive of the Israeli cause. The implication is that Israel shouldn’t take such support for granted.

“but not the only real Republican in the race.”

Is Ron Paul a “real” Republican anymore, or is it a situation of “I didn’t leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.”
Seems to me George Bush and John McCain are today’s archetype Republicans: big government statist, unprincipled, greedy, warmongering, sadistic, hypocritical, open borders, free trade US market plundering extremists…
It’s like this: the Democrats are now hustling average citified women and people of color, the GOP is now hustling average suburbanites and white men, and decades of accumulated civilizational detritus rules Washington.

Gary Hart said it was a great opportunity, Netanyahu said it was very good, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz said they really needed a Pearl Harbor event. Most good natured people I know said it was not a good thing. Forgive me for thinking all fo the former guys are assholes.

was it good for the USA?  How about Canada, Indonesia, South Africa, Japan, Brazil - nope, guess not, just good for Israel, apparently the only country it was good for.

The palestinians threw candy when the buildings fell. But these guys were happy about it too apparently.
“Of particular interest is the coverage by The Forward, the oldest newspaper of the Jewish community in North America. They reported on one key aspect of the Israeli-9/11 connection: the story of the five employees of a moving van company apprehended hours after the twin towers were struck. They had been observed in Liberty State Park, New Jersey, overlooking the Hudson, with a clear view of the burning towers. A woman had seen them from the window of her apartment building overlooking the parking lot: they came out of a white van, and they were jumping up and down, high-fiving each other with obvious glee. Their mood, it could be said, was celebratory. They were also filming the towers as they burned, and taking still photos.

The woman called the cops, who put out a “be on the lookout” alert. I’ll let Christopher Ketcham, author of a blockbuster new report appearing in Counterpunch, tell the rest of the story:

“At 3:56 p.m., twenty-five minutes after the issuance of the FBI BOLO, officers with the East Rutherford Police Department stopped the commercial moving van through a trace on the plates. According to the police report, Officer Scott DeCarlo and Sgt. Dennis Rivelli approached the stopped van, demanding that the driver exit the vehicle. The driver, 23-year-old Sivan Kurzberg, refused and ‘was asked several more times [but] appeared to be fumbling with a black leather fanny pouch type of bag’. With guns drawn, the police then ‘physically removed’ Kurzberg, while four other men – two more men had apparently joined the group since the morning – were also removed from the van, handcuffed, placed on the grass median and read their Miranda rights. They had not been told the reasons for their arrest. Yet, according to DeCarlo’s report, ‘this officer was told without question by the driver [Sivan Kurzberg], ‘We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.’ Another of the five Israelis, again without prompting, told Officer DeCarlo – falsely – that ‘we were on the West Side Highway in New York City during the incident.’”

This is, I believe, the most detailed account yet published of what actually happened that fateful day, and Ketcham clearly shows that the Israelis were certainly aware of why they had been stopped. The cops practically had to drag them out of the van at gunpoint, and it is surely suspicious that they immediately starting denying any role in “the incident.” How did they know they weren’t being stopped for a traffic violation? No wonder they were held for 71 days, mostly in solitary confinement, and interrogated. Some repeatedly failed polygraph tests when questioned about possible surveillance activities. The FBI agents who interrogated them reportedly called them “the high-fivers,” because of their odd behavior at Liberty State Park.

We are getting right there. You just need to skim again through the papers in the past two years
to realize that war against Iran is in the offing. Newspapers never get it wrong when it comes to sniffing
shit. Ever since the election of Iranian president Ahmadinejad in 2005, the media have been pushing to
give him a good democratic licking. Same for Iraq: from 11 september 2001 to 20 march 2005, tension
increased until Bush pressed on the button. In the case of Iran, where the issues are so different, the
process is the same. It is the conditioned response of democracies and their media wallowing in their
obvious failures: to give a belting to whomever is in the position of the big bad wolf.
Journalists and politicians are hypocrits when they swear they are doing all they can to avoid
war, but each of their warnings is a call in disguise for general mobilization. It was obvious in Kouchner’s
“faux-pas”, when he spontaneously declared that one ha to prepare for the worst. “Meaning war, sir”.
False general uproar. Sarkozy corrects the stance but purely for form’s sake, and when a president has
been able to suggest the catastrophic choice “the iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran” one can start
packing the kit.
Kouchner was only expressing out loud the desire of millions of tense westerners. If it was a
freudian slip, it was revelatory for everyone, including himself. And his backtracking was just a way of
preparing the next step “I told you so”. One forgets too quickly that Doctor Kouchner was one of the
most enthusiastic Saddam Hussein bashers. “Easy to be against war” he clamoured, several weeks
before the offensive, with bloodthirsty pals, Goupil, Glucksmann, and Bruckner. Do we need to to read
again, already yellowed (or rather red in the blood of 650000 Iraqis who have died since), the revolting
columns of that gang of irresponsible neurotics, always ready to send as many people as possible to get
slaughtered in Muhammad’s lands?
The general atmosphere is full of the most unjustified war-mongering and the French who have
nothing better to do but to go on strike for social justice!… Sarko is preparing every day public opin-
ion to the struggle against barbarianism and resistance against all forms ot totalitarianism… How can
the compulsory reading of the letters of a young man shot by the Germans in 1941 serve as an exam-
ple for today? All very simple: you have to get them used to the idea of dying fo a grand ideal. I.e. to
prevent Teheran from getting the atomic bomb. Guy Môquet is the first casualty of the next war.
Sarkozy forgets to mention that the Right (his camp) had done everything in the past to help a
country, so vilified nowadays, to master nuclear energy. Tricastin, Eurodif, apparently nobody remem-
bers these names… Enrichment in so many ways! Incoherent France! A country whic continues to do
the same, like when Sarkozy did not hesitate to promise to Kadhafi the means to produce a bomb,
exchange for the liberation of the Bulgarian nurses.
Behind the scenes, assholes are preparing Lebel rifles and the puttees for the young men who
are going to fight the Persians. Time to stop the Iranian and his uranium! The skeptics will be accused
of being appeasers, the inspectors of weapons of mass destruction will propose their services (already
that useless Mohammad el Baradei has reappeared with his snotty muzzle), huge worldwide demonstra-
tions will not come to anything, ultimatums will follow resolutions, the UN will be scared to death,
Europe will eventually stick it with the US and Whaouum!
Same as usual, I tell you! One slight difference however: this time, in order to attack Iran, the
motive is officially admitted: the goal is to protect Israel. “I will never compromise with the security of
Israel” Sarkozy has decided, in place of the whole if France which elected him and which has begun to
understand that he is not only a conservative. He is also a staunch advocate of a country of which he has
said that he could not but “admire the democratic tradition and the economic performances”. Enough!
At least the war-mongerers do not hide their motivation behind more or less moral pretexts
such as bringing democracy to Arab countries or debunking a muslim dictator. They show their cards,
or rather their card: it is really only a question of maps. The intellectual fraud consists in saying that
on the one hand Ahmadinejad wants the bomb and that on the other he wishes to wipe Israel off the
map. Hence: he wishes to wipe Israel off the map thanks to the bomb. A very useful simplification in
order to rally the crowds. As apparently noone has so far got down to it, I respond to this obvious
sophism tailored by the dishonests for the consumption of the paranoid and the gullible.
First of all, Ahmadinejad has not declared he wanted to wipe Isreal off the map. This has been
repeated everywhere by parrot-like journalists. The “scandalous” phrase was taken from a speech pro-
nounced in Tehran on the 26th of october 2005 the title of which was “the World without Zionism”. One
could see Ahmadinejad in front of an allegorical poster representing the earth as a giant sandglass in which
America, represented by a broken eggshell at the bottom of the sandglass, has already been unloaded, and
in which another egg, on which is drawn a star of David, is also falling, and which will soon break.
Those who were scandalized were careful not to say that the “nazi” Ahmadinejad (for an Ira-
nian, “Aryan” was sufficient) was describing an utopia, which is for the time being impossible to attain:
that of a world without Zionism, i.e. without an international policy of colonization of Palestine, accom-
panied by a general effort to indict the rest of humanity. A world which would be suddenly relieved of
that concrete slab of collective responsibility which has been suffocating it for the past sixty years in
order to preserve the memory of a Shoah which does not concern more than a quarter of the world
population, and which endeavours to keep on poisoning the consciences of the younger generations.
Ahmadinejad is fed up with this collective “sin”, imposed by blackmailers, and thanks to which a crim-
inal State lives on. The only sin which should be universally felt is to let Israel destroy the Palestine
without anybody reacting for fear of being accused of antisemitism.
Ahmadinejad is not afraid and repeats (while nobody tries to listen) that he is not against the
Jews, he is against the Zionists, and his questions are perfectly legitimate: “Why should Palestine pay
for an European Holocaust?” “If one considers that Isreal’s occupation of Palestine is legitimate, why
wasn’t Hitler’s occupation of France?” “Why doesn’t the UN inquire into how Israel has obtained the
atomic bomb?”
Already last year, during the “World day for Jerusalem” (established by Ayatollah Khomeiny),
Ahmadinejad had pronounced an important speech during which he asked Europe “to abandon Israel”.
The day when the Europeans, then the Americans (and that day will come) halt their unconditional
support of the criminals of Tel-Aviv, the world will be a better place to live in, in every area. This is an
obvious fact, and Ahamdenijad is the utpteenth lucid mind to expose it. There is therefore nothing real-
ly surprising to the fact that the enemies of freedom give truncated versions of his pronouncements.
After having explained that the Zionist state was the “tumor of the Middle East” , the Iranian president
cited Ayatollah Khomeniy, but the deceivers have suppressed the words “as the Imam said” and left
only the “project” fo wiping Israel off the map. The problem is that neither the word map, nor the verb
wipe off, nor even Israel, were used by Ahmadinejad. First of all because the Hebrew State does not figure
on maps produced in worthwhile Moslem states. (Look at a map of Lebanon, you can see a big void in
the south). And also because Ahmadinejad made no allusion to the country, or the territory, but to
what he precisely calls the “regime which has usurped Qods”.
Let’s have another look at the quotation in Persian:  Imam goft in rezhim-e ishglagar -e qods
bayad az safeh-ye ruzgar mahv shaved. The exact translation is: “The Imam has said that the regime
occupying Jerusalem must disappear from the page of time”, which is much more poetic, but poetry,
especially when it is political, is not the cup of iced tea of the scum which controls world opinion.
This spectacular doctoring of quotations is the weapon of the pathetic individuals who regularly swin-
dle the ignorants. Look at his sentence concerning the fags at the University of Columbia. Ahmadine-
jad did not say only: “We do not have any homosexuals in Iran”. He added “of the type one finds in
your country”. That changes everything. It means that the ultraconservative islamist was not stupid
enought to deny the very existance of homos, but that there wasn’t in Iran homosexuals like those in
American and the West, i.e. grouped in networks, associations, getting together for demonstrations,
Gay Prides etc…
Secondly, Ahmadinejad does not want the Bomb! That also, he does not cease to claim it every-
where and nobody listens. “The time of the bomb is over!” For him the bomb is tacky and inefficient.”
“If it was that useful, the Russians would have made use of it”. Chirac (there he goes again!) had
already said what that an Iranian bomb was not that dangerous as it could not be deployed.
“Irangaffe” wrote Liberation. After Chirak, Chiran? Chiraz rather! The “atomic bomb” is an old fan-
tasy of those who were traumatized by the Second World War. Some talk of an “Iranian menace” but
what I see is more a permanent threat of the riparian countries towards Iran, as if the famous bomb
was already hanging over the head of Ahmadinejad! Inspite of the mess in Iraq, we are going to see
franco-American-Israeli planes bombing the nuclear sites of Arak, Natanz, or Ispahan (the Turquoise
city!), just like when the areoplanes of Tsahal destroyed Osirak in 1981. Is a raid on Osiran imminent?
Of course! It is the last gift to humanity by Bush before bowing out. Iran has no intention to release
its bomb on Israel, but if ever the pro-zionists of America or elsewhere really want to, Ahmadinejad
may cede to the collective fantasy… However he does not want to give in for now to pressure to renounce
his civilian nuclear programme while Pakistan, India and Israel have the atomic bombe and have note
deemed it necessary to sign the non-Proliferation Treaty.
“Nuclear energy is our inalienable right” explains the Oriental, who is suspected of covert ura-
nium enrichment. “Beware, sanctions!” answer the gendarmes of the West.What will the sanctions look
like? A knock on Ahmadinejad’s head? Aspanking on his shiite arse?… All the bad pretexts are used in
order to punish him. At the time of his election, the Americans tried to describe him as one of the
hostage-takers at the US embassy in 1979. Tough luck! It wasn’t Ahmadinejad! In the eyes all the wops
look the same.
Leave him alone! How can anyone accept that a people without History like the Americans or
without geography like the Israelis dare treat Iran like a child? O, to see the tomb of Cyrus at Passar-
gade! The tomb of Darius at Persepolis! Eternal Iran, so profound and mystical! Immense planet which
fired the imagination of people as intelligent as Henry Corbin, Louis Massignon, and Michel Foucault,
to mention French names only (France, let us not forget, the country which, by affording him a safe
haven, allowed Ayatollah Khomeiny to overthrow the hideous Shah)!
In october 1978, Foucault, in spite of being Foucault, was forced to write his pro-iranian articles
in the Italian press because the French did not want them. He saw in Khomeiny’s revolution “the thing
we have forgotten was possible, ever since the Renaissance and the great crises of christianity: a politi-
cal spirituality. I can already hear the French laughing but I know they are wrong.“Yes! And thirty years
later, they are still laughing… at a president they see as the incarnation of the Devil, an utterly serious
monster, when he is just being provocative. Just look at that skinny guy with his miserable beard and
his cheap grey suit! He looks like the cartoonist Buzzelli! Mahmoud even has something in common
with Prince Muychkine, ingenuous and innocent, concentrated on his visions. Maybe the only “Idiot”
of our time. That’s why the real morons in the media laught him. A chap like Ariel Wizman has the
nerve to find him “ridiculous”! One can add that the lesson giver dandy had already called Che Guevara
the week before a “son of a bitch”.
But Ahmadinejad loves to have some fun.When he suggests to Bush a worldwide poll to de-
cide which of the two should be thrown off the international stage, he has more sense of humour
than all the “Beurs” and “Blacks” in their standup shows. Immediately after the godsend victory
of Hezbollah over Israel in Lebanon in August 2006, the President launched a worldwide contest
for cartoons on the Holocaust as an answer to the Western hypocrits who said they were outraged
when some Muslims declared they were shocked by the caricatures of the Prophet which had surfaced
in Denmark! Cornering western so-called freedom of speech should be considered as in the best
humour. Let Charlie Hebdo, that antiarab rag, learn from experience! “Drawings which are based on the
principle that the Holocaust has existed are accepted!” mentioned the entry form. Thousands of draw-
ings, in general strongly revisionist, flooded in from all over the world and Ahmadinejad was very
happy to organize an exhibition: Holocust… At last a fun vernissage! A French woman cartoonist won
the third prize!
Even more funny: in April 2007, the scorpion from Aradan ordered the kidnapping of 15 jolly
English sailors of the Royal Navy because they had penetrated into Iranian waters at the entry of the
Chott al Arab river. After having exhibited the repentant captives, who were obliged to publicly con-
fess and pleaded forgiveness, the President freed them. Magnanimous Ahmadinejad! He decorated the
soldiers who caught them, then played with the hostages, dressing the men up in brand new suits, and
the only womand with a palestinian keffieh… Ahmadinejad then let them go, arms full of all kinds of
trinkets and souvenirs, said it was a gift to England to pardon such outlaws and asked Blair not to pun-
ish them on their arrival back home!
But his greatest gag took place at New York. Ahmadinejad was received as if he was a hooligan.
Welcomed in the streets of Manhattan by placards with the words “Iranian Hitler” and the drawing by
Hachfeld showing him as a swastika, the pacifist from Tehran was not given the permission to visit
Ground Zero and was introduced at Columbia as a “crual and petty dictator”. Ever polite, he replied to
the questions of the ignorant students. It was only at the UN that he was able to pronounce a magnifi-
cent speech, full of spirituality, which was much better received than was usually reported in spite of
some teeth gnashing in the audience. Happily, a certain category of New Yorkers did not reject him at
all (on the contrary!), the antizionist rabbi.
The “Neturei Karta” are even more radical than the rejected Iranian; to them, Judaism must not
be depraved into zionism and, as religious Jews opposed to the State of Israel, they donated to Ahma-
dinejad as a mark of recognition for his “gentleness towards humanity and especially towards the Jews”
a silver bowl worthy of the Roland Garros finals! Then they all started embracing each other in nev-
erending accolades which relegated surrealism to the tricks shop. The beards of the rabbis dripped with
gratefulness and Ahmadinejad was in tears, so touched was he to be so perfectly understood, which is,
after all, the only good reason to cry nowadays.

Amish

What are you trying to say?

Along with the decision to giv eup Hebron, this ranks as a reason why Bibi should never be PM.

9/11 has been a disaster for Israel. Since then, the US has come out for a “Palestinian State” and has helped spread the Muslim Brotherhood (Sunni) and Iranian power via our idiot democracy initiative and the Iraq war.

Bibi isn’t just an idiot, he is a pompous one.

amish, leave a link next time.. your post was abusive.

Amish. Your post was excellent. It should have been an article
rather than a post. Stick around. Thanks to you and not the Media
we learned about Ahmadinejad and his meeting with real Jews.

amish- your people don’t have or want internet access

People should read up on the Neturei Karta. They have a different view of Jewish history and what their religion means.There are a number of webbsites which explain their views, just google.

NK are not “real Jews” in the sense of authenticity anymore than Fred Phelps cult are representative of normative Christianity.

Most Orthodox Jews are Zionists. (Seriously, come to a “Salute to Israel Parade” in NYC. You will find 200,000 Orthodox Jews celebrating and 200 fringe morons.)

Even among anti-Zionists Neutre Kuerta are disdained as traitors for getting money from the PLO and Iran. They were literally one vote from being declared non-Jews by a Jewish Religious court.

The Iraq-Haifa pipeline is actually an old one. It was cut because of the ARab-Israeli wars. Prior to some final peace, restoring the pipeline is not only a waste of time, but inflammatory.
Run the pipeline to Aqaba and to Beiruit.

RonL the Neturei Karta are authentic religious Jews, unlike the zionist heretics who are mostly communists, socialists, and atheists. They are also peace loving people who want to get along with everyone including Palistinians and Isranians. Google them and read their webbsites.

Jack,

You have no evidence of who and who is not authentically Jewish.
20 years before Herzl “invented” Zionism, the Religious Zionist movement was born.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Zionist_Movement

The debate is a real one within Orthodox Jewry and and the divisions are
1) Religious Zionist
2) Those who see Israel as just another secular state, but support it because it has the largest JEwish population.
3) The anti-Zionist minority, of which NK is a despised fringe.

Using NK as cover just proves your ignorance.

RonL with all due respect, all I said was read the Neturei Karta Webbsites. They look and sound like very sane and sensible Jews to me, not the racist lunatics that run the state of Israel.

“RonL with all due respect, all I said was read the Neturei Karta Webbsites. They look and sound like very sane and sensible Jews to me, not the racist lunatics that run the state of Israel.”

Do you oppose all ethno-nationalist states, or just Israel?
What claim made against Israel could not find an analogy with American actions in hte last 200 years?

RonL-
Certainly there are some parallels between the US and Israel in attaining land unlawfully. But so what? That’s a reducto ad absurdum argument. What did Ted Bundy do that American soldiers didn’t do in WW2? What did Bill Clinton do with an intern that JFK didn’t do 500 times with the White House secretarial pool? It’s such a stupid argument I’m kind of amazed that anyone would make it. But just to keep things very simple, a much better (but still too mild) analogy for the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is South Africa. Not the US. Start your moral arguments there. It’s more intellectually honest :)

It’s fairly clear to everyone that thinks about it that a Jewish state should exist in some form, but imposing it on the local population of an area that had entirely reasonable claim to the land in question and nothing to do with the atrocities of Hitler is quite insane, or at least quite unfair. The shock of that unfairness has not exactly faded in collective consciousness of said local population. What is strangest about it, is that this group of people--Palestinian Arabs--finds themselves in this rather awful fix because of some lines in a superstitious old book that anoints their oppressors as a “chosen” race—a book whose content is largely idiocy and nonsense (some wonderful stories, bits of poetry and wisdom aside). Any rational mind would be aghast.

Mr. Dean,

“Certainly there are some parallels between the US and Israel in attaining land unlawfully. But so what? That’s a reducto ad absurdum argument. What did Ted Bundy do that American soldiers didn’t do in WW2? What did Bill Clinton do with an intern that JFK didn’t do 500 times with the White House secretarial pool? It’s such a stupid argument I’m kind of amazed that anyone would make it. But just to keep things very simple, a much better (but still too mild) analogy for the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is South Africa. Not the US. Start your moral arguments there. It’s more intellectually honest :)”

Actually, conquest is conquest. Either the right of conquest exists or it doesn’t. Therefore comparing the Us and Israel is not the same as comparing mass murder and warfare, unless you believe that war is murder.

regarding Israel and South Africa, I don’t rmemeber old South Africa creating affirmative action of South African blacks or having a situation where blacks owend more private land than whites.
I don’t recall Zulu being a national language.

I agree taht the treatmetn of the Arabs in the disputed territories is deplorable, but this is due to the Intefadas. However, old scale ethnic relocation would have fixed things. I’m sure you don’t support that , unless it is Jews being ethnically cleansed from Judea and Samaria.

“t’s fairly clear to everyone that thinks about it that a Jewish state should exist in some form, but imposing it on the local population of an area that had entirely reasonable claim to the land in question and nothing to do with the atrocities of Hitler is quite insane, or at least quite unfair.”

You don’t know your history. Arabs prevented Jewish immigration, which would have saved millions of lives. The “Palestinians” were led by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Jaj Amin Al-Husseni, a friend and ally of the Nazis. Joining the Muslim brotherhood, Husseini tried to facilitate of the conquest of the Middle East by Nazi Germany. Failing that, he fled to German territory and started to recruit Muslims from around the world to join the SS, specifically to murder Jews.

After World War 2, many Nazis fled to the Arab states, where some trained the PLO, while others worked on new anti-Semitic propoganda using Israel as an excuse.

Finally, most “Palestinians” are less native than the Jews. Between 1890 and 1944, more Arabs and other Muslims (notably Albanians, Bosnians, and Circassians) than Jews migrated to Palestine.

RonL. of course Israel should not exist, but it does and has 500 atomic weapons so we have to live with it . The european Jews might of had a claim to East Prussia or Pomerania but they certainly had no claim to Palistine. First you stole the place and killed and raped a lot of people to drive them out. Then you took more and for over 40 years you stll abuse them and keep trying to steal more property and ethnicly cleanse them. When they resist legally as they have every right to do under International Law you threw them in prison and have gotten worse over the years. I don’t believe in suicide bombing or any acts of violence but you give these people no hope.