A.LOWENSTEIN ONLINE NEWSLETTER

• Wikileaks? Nothing to see here, move on please
• Don’t even think about bombing Iran after Wikileaks release
• On the media’s response to Latin America
• Rabid Jew just a product of the Zionist system
• How BDS becomes normalised

Wikileaks? Nothing to see here, move on please  28 Jul 2010 CNN’s Anderson Cooper publishes on his website this almost hilarious spray against Wikileaks by Clint Van Winkle, the author of Soft Spots: A Marine’s Memoir of Combat and Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder: We sent troops to Afghanistan to avenge the 9/11 attacks and few people objected. Now, the Nation is having second thoughts. People want timetables and quick victories, not a prolonged war. Well, it doesn’t always work that way. War isn’t always quick and it is never neat. When you send U.S. troops to fight, they are going to fight. There will be blood. Americans are going to die. Civilians are going to die. Why did anybody need 91,000 pages of documents to figure that out? Because very few have been paying attention to Afghanistan. Before I go any further, I want to make it clear that I don’t agree with the WikiLeaks Intel dump and I’m not here to debate the war in Afghanistan. Furthermore, to call the person who leaked the papers to the site a whistle-blower, as some media outlets have been doing, is absurd. The act was traitorous, especially since early indications suggest a former U.S. soldier is responsible. Still, there are some circles of thought that believe WikiLeaks is helping bring transparency to the war. Apparently, these people live in a world that doesn’t include people who could be affected by sensitive leaks. Thankfully, the information seems rather run-of-the-mill. I’m not the only person who isn’t impressed by the current leak. There seems to be a general consensus that this is much ado about nothing. A plethora of intelligence analysts and people-in-the-know concur. For instance, Tom Ricks only dedicated a handful of words to the matter in his “Underwhelmed by WikiLeaks Leaks” blog post; he also cited/linked to Mother Jones’s and Andrew Exum’s lack of enthusiasm. Perhaps the real issue the WikiLeaks fiasco has brought to light is this: the leaks are revelations to far too many people. It seems too many Americans know, and care, more about the cast of The Jersey Shore than they do about the war in Afghanistan and hold those characters in higher esteem than the men and women who have, and continue to, fight in that war. While it is still too early to gauge the fallout from the leaks or know how it will impact our troops, at least Afghanistan is being talked about again and that is a good thing. We can only hope this conversation continues. This isn’t the last we’ve heard from WikiLeaks and it is only a matter of time before they get their hands on something that will have a greater impact on our national security. You can count on that. In the meantime, it might be a good idea if the U.S. reviewed who has access to certain documents and started improving current practices. For some, the role of journalism is to support imperial wars because “access” is all that matters.

Don’t even think about bombing Iran after Wikileaks release  28 Jul 2010 Another angle of the Wikileaks information dump is the way in which it may be used to justify military action against Tehran. Foreign Policy’s Marc Lynch explains and refutes that bogus comparison (neo-cons and the Zionist lobby, are you listening?) Most of the response to the WikiLeaks Afghanistan document release thus far has focused on the absence of major revelations, with most of the details reinforcing existing analysis rather than undermining official discourse about the war. A similar response is appropriate to a story making the rounds that the documents bolster the case for significant connections between Iran and al-Qaeda. Information in the documents, according to the Wall Street Journal, “appear to give new evidence of direct contacts between Iranian officials and the Taliban’s and al Qaeda’s senior leadership.” What’s more important in these stories than the details found in the documents about Iran’s activities in Afghanistan is the attempt to spin them into a narrative of “Iranian ties to al-Qaeda” to bolster the weak case for an American attack on Iran. There’s no secret about Iran’s role in Afghanistan, of course — this has long been a staple of the debate over Afghan policy, and has also long been pointed out as an area of potential cooperation or conflict between Washington and Tehran. As with much of the rest of the WikiLeaks documents, much of what has been found about Iran’s role in Afghanistan is already generally known, while other information in them is of dubious provenance. It’s not like we didn’t know about Iran and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. These new details do add to the case for taking Iran into account more effectively when designing Afghanistan policy, on both the military and political dimensions. But they don’t add up to some kind of smoking gun demonstrating an Iranian alliance with al-Qaeda.

On the media’s response to Latin America  28 Jul 2010

Rabid Jew just a product of the Zionist system  27 Jul 2010 Of course this man isn’t a terrorist, merely a misguided Jewish man. If he was Muslim, of course… Police released the head rabbi of a prominent yeshiva yesterday hours after arresting him for encouraging to kill non-Jews. Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, head of the Od Yosef Hai Yeshiva and author of “The King’s Torah,” was arrested early yesterday morning at his home in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar. His book describes how it is possible to kill non-Jews according to halakha (Jewish religious law ). Detectives first carried out a search at the yeshiva, where they confiscated 30 copies of the book. The investigation and arrest were carried out on the orders of Deputy State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan. The preface of the book, which was published in November, states that it is forbidden to kill non-Jews – but the book then apparently describes the context in which it is permitted to do so. According to Shapira, it is permissible to kill a non-Jew who threatens Israel even if the person is classified as a Righteous Gentile. His book says that any gentile who supports war against Israel can also be killed. Killing the children of a leader in order to pressure him, the rabbi continues, is also permissible. In general, according to the book, it is okay to kill children if they “stand in the way – children are often doing this.” “They stand in the way of rescue in their presence and they are doing this without wanting to,” he writes. “Nonetheless, killing them is allowed because their presence supports murder. There is justification in harming infants if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us. Under such circumstances the blow can be directed at them and not only by targeting adults.” The daily Maariv’s report on the book was immediately followed by calls for Shapira’s arrest and a petition was filed with the High Court of Justice for a ban on the book’s distribution. The petition was rejected as premature.

How BDS becomes normalised 27 Jul 2010 From the Guardian money blog: Every week a Guardian Money reader submits a question, and it’s up to you to help him or her out – a selection of the best answers will appear in next Saturday’s paper. This week’s question: A friend has been giving me a hard time after seeing Israeli fruit in my home. (She also disapproves of me using supermarkets.) She’s urging me to join a consumer boycott, but I don’t think these work. Leaving aside the issues, do these campaigns really make a difference? What are your thoughts?