NOVANEWS
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When will US State Dep’t demand release of 70-year-old Palestinian intellectual in failing health?
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NBC discovers ‘Rosa Parks’ in story about Israel’s long struggle for freedom
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Israeli construction in E1 is slap in the face to US
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Three years later, IDF happy with ‘Cast Lead’, wants to have another go
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‘Economist:’ analysis of Iraq war that leaves out neocons’ Jewishness is ‘deficient’
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Israel attacks international observers on monitoring boat in Gaza waters, injures Palestinian
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‘Haaretz’ columnist says 2-state solution is dead–and global community must help us toward equal rights
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Nada, zilch, finito– the media snowjob of mass proportions
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Israel prepares to transfer 70,000 Jerusalem Palestinians to West Bank i.d.’s
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Ron Paul and the left
When will US State Dep’t demand release of 70-year-old Palestinian intellectual in failing health?
Dec 28, 2011
Philip Weiss
Dr Yousef Abdul Haq
We’ve written before about Dr. Yousef Abdul Haq, 70, a leading Nablus intellectual who has been in an Israeli prison for 16 days.
Ma’an says he was transferred to a prison hospital due to failing health (per translation by Saed Abu-Hijleh, Abdul Haq’s friend)
Palestinian Cultural Enlightenment Forum has now issued the following statement:
The lawyer Yousef Abdul Haq (Abu Shaddad), professor at the An Najah National University, and coordinator, former President of the Governing Council of the Tanweer Forum, was arrested Wednesday 7/12/2011 at three o’clock in the morning.
We in the Palestinian Cultural Enlightenment Forum consider the continued detention of our colleague Dr. Youssef a war crime against international law, and we demand his immediate release especially because he was suffering from physical illness and takes medication continuously, in addition to the difficult prison health conditions. The occupation government holds responsibility for any negative results reflected on his health. We call upon all academic institutions, both cultural and scientific to demand his release.
We call on all parties and civil society groups and national figures, trade unions and the lawyers’ bar to form a committee to address the human rights of colleagues in the legal tribunals of the world to require the occupation to stop the indiscriminate arrest of the Palestinian people.
We also appeal to all people of conscience in Nablus, Palestine and the Arab nation and the world as a whole to stand firm against political and administrative detention. And, with the will of one united and of one voice we cry out to release all prisoners of freedom from Israel’s occupation prisons, including Dr. Yousef Abdul Haq.
Here is a link from the Palestinian Enlightenment Cultural Center (Tanweer) about Dr Abdel Haq and his cultural activities (in Arabic with some pics).
NBC discovers ‘Rosa Parks’ in story about Israel’s long struggle for freedom
Dec 28, 2011
Philip Weiss
Two nights ago, NBC Nightly News aired one of those “struggle for the soul of Israel” stories, focusing on religious-secular tensions. Reporter Martin Fletcher explored the case of Tanya Rosenblitt, who insisted on taking a seat at the front of an orthodox bus. Titled, “In Israel a woman takes a front seat and a stand,” the story repeatedly likened Rosenblitt to Rosa Parks of Montgomery, Alabama, fame.
By the way, I am fairly certain that NBC never covered the six Palestinians who were arrestedin November for stirred memories of Rosa Parks by trying to board an Israelis-only bus in the West Bank. Rosenblitt is brave; but her treatment has been very different from theirs. For instance, she was welcomed to the Knesset and embraced by Tzipi Livni.
Some notes on Fletcher’s feel-good story. Emphases mine:
Fletcher: “big storm brewing in Israel… Tanya Rosenblitt, Israel’s new poster child for women’s rights…. Israel’s Rosa Parks moment.”
Tzipi Livni: “It’s not only about women, it’s about the face and the nature of Israeli society….”
Fletcher, doing the Arab Spring parallel:
“All this began with one woman’s comment on her facebook page. Tanya Rosenblitt had no idea what she started… All of Israel heard… Another page in Israel’s longrunning struggle in what kind of country it will be.”
Rosenblitt: “We have a beautiful country. There are extremists here who try to make it something that it’s not…”
Orthodox woman: “We don’t care about the law of Israel.”
Fletcher: “The fight goes all the way to Parliament, where Tanya Rosenblitt finds herself the star, calling for equal rights everywhere.”
Again, Rosenblitt is seen with Tzipi Livni.
Noam Sheizaf has described such stories as good Israel versus bad Israel stories. Annie Robbins says they are meant to show, Look, we’re going after the nuts!
Israeli construction in E1 is slap in the face to US
Dec 28, 2011
Alex Kane
Map: Ir Amim
The big news that Mondoweiss recently highlighted (here by Allison Deger and here by Annie Robbins) is that construction in the controversial “E1” area in Jerusalem has restarted again, according to a Haaretz report. Completion of illegal settlement infrastructure and homes in the area would bisect the West Bank.
But what the move also represents is a big, giant slap in the face to the United States. As Nir Hasson explains in Haaretz , it was “American pressure” from the Bush administration that “forced all work in the area halted in 2007.” And according to this document from the “Palestine Papers,” President Barack Obama “said he got Israel to commit to stop construction in E1” early on in his term. The US knows that no Palestinian official could accept an agreement that allows Israel to bisect the West Bank, though completion of construction in E1 would be only the most egregious example in a line of Israeli obstacles that has already carved up the West Bank.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going ahead with E1 construction because he knows Israel can get away with it, especially in a US election year. And because of the Israeli government’s move, the next president (Obama or someone else) may wake up and realize there’s no way to shove this Palestinian bantustan down the PA’s throat.
Three years later, IDF happy with ‘Cast Lead’, wants to have another go
Dec 28, 2011
Paul Mutter
From Haaretz:
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz marked the three-year anniversary of Operation Cast Lead on Tuesday by hailing it “an excellent operation that achieved deterrence for Israel vis-a-vis Hamas.” However, he warned, cracks have emerged in that deterrence over time, and a second round of fighting in the Gaza Strip is not a matter of choice for Israel.
Such a round must be initiated by Israel and must be “swift and painful,” he said, adding, “I do not advise Hamas to test our mettle.” [emphasis mine]
Since becoming Chief of Staff, Gantz has argued that Israel must respond to any rocket attacks with extreme force. He has also hinted that future Israeli actions will not be confined to airstrikes: “we shall in the end need to move to broader, more aggressive action in the Gaza Strip” he told Knesset members recently.
“The harder you hit them, the longer they stay quiet,” as a tsarist general one said. It’s hard to tell if Gantz is merely trying to cow Hamas, or if he is really intent on launching Cast Lead II in the near future.
Contrary to my expectations this summer, Israel did not use the Eilat attacks as an excuse to undertake a full-scale operation in Gaza, even though there were calls for regime change there among Israeli politicians and former military leaders. Ynet reported in November 2011 that that the IDF has been training its combat engineers for a possible resumption of hostilities in Gaza. Israel’s latest consigment of American-made bunker busters – ostensibly for a strike against Iran – could also be used against targets in Gaza, such as the smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt that, according to the IDF, are a serving as conduits for a stream of stolen Libyan arms. And as war warning signs, neither the trainings nor the bunker busters raise new alarms.
For now, I think Gantz is saber-rattling. Israel is hoping to scare or wrongfoot Hamas as it scores political successes through the prisoner exchanges, the electoral success of Egypt’s Islamist bloc, entry to the PLO and new unity talks with Fatah. A more conciliatory Hamas is not what Likud wants to deal with. The best way to undermine Hamas’s nonviolent political successes would be to put Hamas in awkward position over the actions of Islamic Jihad (which Israel struck just this week) or another militant organization. Hamas’s leadership would be an awkward position of having to manage feelings of militant nationalism that it has cultivated in order to secure potentially ephemeral political concessions. Its legitimacy would be at stake, but should it respond with violence, its survival would be in jeopardy.
Hamas will likely avoid the temptation to return to fighting. The Middle East is too politically fluid at the moment. But given the hawkishness of the “liberal” alternatives to Likud, as Dimi Reider points out, I am still convinced that the timing of Cast Lead II will be a question of when, not if. Israel would be more likely to use massive force against Gaza than Iran if it came down to an eleventh-hour choice for Defense Minister Barak. Israel’s leadership has no doubt been encouraged by SecDef Leon Panetta and President Obama’s public backpedalling on their reluctance to attack Iran. The U.S. could deal with Iran (an “October surprise,” as some have suggested), leaving Israel a stronger hand to play against Hamas. The timing for any of these possible actions will greatly depend on how the 2012 U.S. presidential election progresses.
As for how the IDF will react to Hamas’s announced new focus on popular demonstrations, Gantz’s past comments about the Arab Spring offer some insight:
There is a focal player in the Middle East – the street – and it is clear to us that in the coming months we can find ourselves in broad popular demonstrations, which gain public resonance. The IDF is preparing for these demonstrations.
[snip]For this reason, we will act with great fire power and full force at the very beginning of the confrontation. Anything the camera can stand or could stand in the first three days of fighting – it will not be prepared to put up with thereafter.
‘Economist:’ analysis of Iraq war that leaves out neocons’ Jewishness is ‘deficient’
Dec 28, 2011
Philip Weiss
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
Another sign that Walt and Mearsheimer’s analysis of the causes of the Iraq war published 6 years ago is being mainstreamed. An Economist blogger with handle “MS” has jumped into the controversy over allegations of anti-Semitism levelled at writers who had the temerity to point out that Jewish neoconservatives played a central role in the Iraq war planning.
There are, in fact, a lot of Jewish neocons… Those neocons did, in fact, press for the United States to invade Iraq in 2003. The Israeli government also generally supported the American invasion of Iraq, though it was more concerned about Iran and had misgivings about a prolonged American occupation.
Yes, it would be ridiculous, and anti-semitic, to cast the Iraq war as a conspiracy monocausally driven by a cabal of Jewish neocons and the Israeli government. But it’s entirely accurate to count neoconservative policy analyses as among the important causes of the war, to point out that the pro-Israeli sympathies of Jewish neoconservatives played a role in these analyses, and to note the support of the Israeli government and public for the invasion. In fact any analysis of the war’s causes that didn’t take these into account would be deficient.
Claims that the Jews caused the world wars through their financial conspiracies and so forth are pure fantasies with no factual base, motivated by religious bigotry and paranoid worldviews. The claim that Jewish neocons “colluded” with Israel to “cause” the Iraq war is an exaggerated way of making the point that Jewish neocons, and to a much lesser extent the Israeli government, supported the Iraq war and played a substantial role in precipitating it. The words “collude” and “cause” are over the top, but I’m not sure who exactly has used them, outside of this press release. If bloggers refer to the existence of Jewish neocons, their close ties to the Israeli government, and the consequential roles they played in causing the Iraq war, it’s preposterous to accuse them of retailing a modern version of old blood libels.
The writer says that this type of analysis has become more acceptable given the growing diversity within Jewish opinion toward Israel; that is to say, the neocons are on one side of a split.
Israel attacks international observers on monitoring boat in Gaza waters, injures Palestinian
Dec 28, 2011
Civil Peace Service Gaza
(Photo: Rosa Schiano, Civil Peace Service Gaza)
At 10:55 am, an Israeli naval warship attacked the international observers and Palestinian captain of the Civil Peace Service Gaza (CPSGAZA) boat Oliva, injuring its captain in an apparent attempt to capsize it.
“The Israeli navy passed near us and the fishermen, and started to go around us, creating waves,” said Rosa Schiano, one of the international observers. “The fishermen escaped, but we couldn’t because of a problem with our engine. We couldn’t move, and they went around us very quickly. The Israelis saw that we couldn’t move, and that the captain was trying to fix the engine, but they didn’t stop. We told them, ‘Please stop! Please stop!’ But they didn’t.”
When the warship was two meters away from the Oliva, one of the waves it had created nearly capsized the small boat, filling it with water and causing the Palestinian captain to fall out, injuring his left leg.
“Their intentions were to do something very bad,” said international observer Daniela Riva. “Coming so close to us was very dangerous, and they obviously knew that.”
After more than twenty minutes, the warship retreated, and the Oliva was rescued by a small Palestinian fishing boat, or hasaka, which threw it a line and towed it toward the shore.
Background
Restrictions on the fishing zone are of considerable significance to Palestinian livelihood. Initially 20 nautical miles, it is presently often enforced between 1.5 – 2 nautical miles (PCHR: 2010). The marine ‘buffer zone’ restricts Gazan fishermen from accessing 85% of Gaza’s fishing waters agreed to by Oslo.
During the Oslo Accords, specifically under the Gaza-Jericho Agreement of 1994, representatives of Palestine agreed to 20 nautical miles for fishing access. In 2002 the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan empowered Catherine Bertini to negotiate with Israel on key issues regarding the humanitarian crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and a 12 nautical mile fishing limit was agreed upon. In June 2006, following the capture of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit near the crossing of Kerem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom), the navy imposed a complete sea blockade for several months. When the complete blockade was finally lifted, Palestinian fishermen found that a 6 nautical mile limit was being enforced. When Hamas gained political control of the Gaza Strip, the limit was reduced to 3 nautical miles. During the massive assault on the Strip in 2008-2009, a complete blockade was again declared. After Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli army began imposing a 1.5 – 2 nautical miles (PCHR: 2010).
The fishing community is often similarly targeted as the farmers in the ‘buffer zone’ and the fishing limit is enforced with comparable aggression, with boats shot at or rammed as near as 2nm to the Gazan coast by Israeli gunboats.
The fishermen have been devastated, directly affecting an estimated 65,000 people and reducing the catch by 90%. The coastal areas are now grossly over-fished and 2/3 of fishermen have left the industry since 2000 (PCHR: 2009). Recent statistics of the General Union of Fishing Workers indicate that the direct losses since the second Intifada in September 2000 were estimated at a million dollars and the indirect losses were estimated at 13.25 million dollars during the same period. The 2009 fishing catch amounted to a total of 1,525 metric tones, only 53 percent of the amount during 2008 (2,845 metric tones) and 41 percent of the amount in 1999 (3,650 metric tones), when the fishermen of Gaza could still fish up to ten nautical miles from the coast. Current figures indicate that during 2010 the decline in the fishing catch continues. This has caused an absurd arrangement to become standard practice. The fisherman sail out not to fish, but to buy fish off of Egyptian boats and then sell this fish in Gaza. According to the Fishermen’s Union, a monthly average of 105 tons of fish has been entering Gaza through the tunnels since the beginning of 2010 (PCHR 2009).
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). “The Buffer Zone in the Gaza Strip.” Oct. 2010.
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. “A report on: Israeli Attacks on Palestinian Fishers in the Gaza Strip.” August 2009.
‘Haaretz’ columnist says 2-state solution is dead–and global community must help us toward equal rights
Dec 28, 2011
Philip Weiss
Carlo Strenger
Excellent piece by Carlo Strenger in Haaretz, “2011 is the year the two-state solution died.” Catching up to truth offered to us by Ali Abunimah and John Mearsheimer and others, Strenger acknowledges the reality and says that apartheid must be crushed; and Israel is here to stay. The wisdom here is the awareness that his society can only be saved and its good parts redeemed through an international multicultural community Strenger has come to rely on via the internet, one that believes all people are created equal. This is the community that will defeat Zionism. This is the community that can help a reactionary society stumble forward into the modern age… And yes, Strenger is locked inside the fear-ridden Israeli head in this piece, but he knows that American Jews have had enough, and so has Europe. The thrust of this piece is an awareness borne by social media: Israel must join the Arab spring, or there will be cataclysm far worse.
If they [the Palestinians] will, as they say, stick to peaceful resistance, they will need a lot of stamina indeed. In the short run, I am afraid, they will, as Sari Nousseibeh predicts, live without full political rights. I say this with shame. But this is the truth
Our long-term task is to develop new models of dealing with the emerging reality. I wish I could say something clear and constructive, but for the time being I can’t. I have not yet seen realistic models other than the two state solution.
The one state solution, at this point, is an empty concept, so is that of an Israeli-Palestinian confederation. For neither case can I imagine how the parliament of the greater Israel-Palestine would function, or how equality of all citizens with respect to security could be achieved: I agree with Sari Nousseibeh that Jewish history from the Pogroms through the Holocaust, from the 1948 war to that of 1973, is too traumatic for Israelis to relinquish control of security for a long time to come.
Yet any solution that looks like apartheid is unacceptable.
Although the two state solution was far from perfect: at least it gave answers to these basic questions of governance and civic rights. But Israel’s citizens and its government have decided: It will not be.
For the “Free World” the end of the two state solution has a number of implications. The charade of trying to get Netanyahu to negotiate with Palestinians can be ended: there is nothing to talk about with Netanyahu, and he is likely to win Israel’s next elections as well. To some extent, this may come as a relief: after all, trying to set up negotiations was a waste of time and energy….
I would like to end this rather somber eulogy for the two state solution on a personal note. Looking back on the entries in ‘Strenger than Fiction’ of 2011, I see how difficult this year was politically. In many ways my motivation to analyze and reflect upon the many negative developments of this year; of trying to maintain hope, and sticking to principles of decency was fuelled by the support of many friends and readers, in Israel and abroad.
This community of like-minded people is varied. It is composed of Jews and Gentiles; of people who clearly belong to the left, and others who are more centrist in their positions; it spreads from Jerusalem through Europe to the U.S. and South America with occasional interesting comments from India and Korea.
It is held together by a set of common beliefs: that all humans are created equal; that we must strive to create societies that protect human rights, and allow individuals and cultures to flourish; and that the task of humanity is to gradually overcome our tribal past and strive towards a world order that reflects out dependence upon each other. I am grateful for this community that is keeping our hopes alive, even in difficult times.
Nada, zilch, finito– the media snowjob of mass proportions
Dec 28, 2011
Annie Robbins
Prop her up and grab the smelling salts, ethnic cleansing and #hasbaraFAIL
Israel and US media are thumping the Ultra Orthodox flurry in Israel to hide the division of the West Bank, and it is happening right under our noses, right before our eyes, right now, and we are sleeping. I know this in my bones. Listen:
Sometimes I go all roundabout getting where I am supposed to go on these excruciating efforts of journalism, so I’m going to try to cut to the chase, please hear me out. I knew, like any news hound knows, something was gonna come down this week. I was ‘holiday preoccupied’ for much of the last weekend, which was why I woke up at 4 am on Monday morning and started scouring the blogs, MSM and Twitter.
Although I can’t recall how I first stumbled upon the story of 8-year-old Naama (background– open that link!) but as soon as I saw the source (LATimes, no slouch) and video I realized it was old news and thought to myself, WTF and why now? I knew it was a distraction.
How does some anonymous blogger calling herself Mother in Israel happen to add subtitles to a TV show that aired Friday night in Israel and have that video land in the LA Times by Monday morning? And then the news just happens to spread like wildfire by Tuesday? Connections, that’s how. And maybe huge (pdf) intention.
I read this:
Linah Alsaafin
LinahAlsaafin Linah Alsaafin
On-going Judaizaton of Jerusalem, leading to division of the west bank itselfhaaretz.com/print-edition/… #previoustweet
26 Dec Favorite Retweet Reply
I caught Joseph Dana‘s tweets (and hat-tipped him). “bait & switch tactic used by the ‘liberals’ of the society”. The Haredi thing was the bait & switch. The big news is this:
Haaretz
Both the Americans and the Palestinians claim that building in E1 would in effect cut the West Bank into two sections and make it impossible to establish a Palestinian statewith any kind of reasonable territorial contiguity.
The big tamale. (Allison hits this angle in her post today on 70,000 Jerusalemites denied residency in the blink of an eye). This is what Norm Finkelstein was talking about (1:41:00 watch it!) when he said you can’t have a Palestinian state if you cut off East Jerusalem from the West Bank. Referencing the annexing of ‘settlement blocs’ (note the distinction between settlements and settlement blocs) and Ma’ale Adumim. He says once Israel sets its mind on annexing certain ‘settlement blocs’ there is no chance for a Palestinian State. He’s very clear:
There is no East Jerusalem unless it’s organically connected with the rest of the West Bank. And there is just no possibility of a Palestinian State with this settlement bloc. It’s not a matter of being stubborn or unreasonable, it’s simply ..an objective fact…..if you don’t have East Jerusalem as an organic part of the Palestinian state there is NO economy. There is no state.
There’s no way our State Department doesn’t understand this. No way. (read Alex Kane!).
The Haredi thing? That was so happening last fall. There were several videos available from the fall and I posted a sampling below. Plus, remember the parking lot fiasco? Huge riots every week on the street and nada zilch finito in the MSM here. Remember the woman who starved her child and the baby was taken to the hospital by the state!?!..Huge riots in Israel, nada zilch nothing here…Remember the school issue when the state stepped in and made them (aghast) integrate (w/another segment of religious..not ARABS or anything that radical!) nada zilch in the msm here.
So, for our holiday diversion pleasure while the US is being inundated with smelling salts overHaredi violence is damaging Israel’s image, Israel is ethnically cleansing and NOTHING is being spoken shhhh here.
Here’s the old news hauled out this week: Sep 8, 2011 Sep 6, 2011 Sep 25, 2011
There’s a lot more at those YouTube pages on the sidelines.
Did the US msm even care until the week between Christmas and New Year’s? NO, not one itty bitty iota. Why do they care now? To distract you! WAKE UP!
Israel prepares to transfer 70,000 Jerusalem Palestinians to West Bank i.d.’s
Dec 28, 2011
Allison Deger
Silwan residents, now facing transfer to the West Bank,
protest home evictions in 2009 (Photo: Oren Ziv/Active Stills)
This week Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat announced plans to strip IDs from 70,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem , and transfer them to the West Bank civil administration. Though not a physical transfer, this stripping of IDs will mark the largest en masse stripping of citizenship rights, since 1967, the Palestinian naksa, or “setback.” Palestinians who were forced into exile as refugees, or were traveling abroad in 1967 were stripped of their Palestinians IDdocuments.
The Palestinians from East Jerusalem neighborhoods such as Silwan, whose status will be revoked, are already geographically annexed to a “greater Jerusalem” by the security wall. The route of the wall cuts Silwan from other Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem that are east of the wall, and west of the Ma’ale Adumim settlement.
Haaretz’s Nir Hassan reported on December 23, the stripping of Jerusalem IDs coincides with the opening of a massive new checkpoint in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat, and the re-emergence of construction on a settler road connecting Jerusalem to Ma’ale Adumim. Finishing the construction, combined with the new checkpoint, would all but cut the West Bank in half– and complete the physical annexation of East Jerusalem.
Hassan writes:
Put the pieces together, and you get a picture of Israel erecting, at enormous expense, a major system of roads and checkpoints that would allow for the total separation of Palestinians and Israelis while also enabling the construction of Mevasseret Adumim, a neighborhood that would connect Ma’aleh Adumim to Jerusalem.
E1 plan. A Jerusalem settlement bloc which would bifurcate the West Bank (Map: Ir Amim)
Mevasseret Adumim, located in what is called EI, currently has, “roads, electricity lines, traffic circles and lots for development,” according to Hassan. The transfer of 70,000 Palestinians, the new checkpoint, and the road construction all indicate that though development of Mevasseret Adumim stopped in 2007, plans to construct this settlement (which will break territorial continuity in the West Bank ) are back.
Ron Paul and the left
Dec 28, 2011
Lizzy Ratner
Ron Paul posing with Don Black, founder of white supremacist Stormfront.org
Dear Phil,
I am distressed, I am. You’re a smart man and a thoughtful one. But you went surprisingly light in your recent post titled “The Ron Paul Moment: bad and good,“ minimizing the Ron Paul Newsletter scandal as a possible Neocon “smear” while letting the good doc off with scarcely a pinky waggle.
Don’t get me wrong: I applaud – no, thrill to – Ron Paul’s antiwar righteousness as much as you do. On occupation, military bases, civil liberties, and the useless, murderous immorality of war and interventionism he is saying all the right things, a breath of bracing, anti-imperial honesty. But to take Paul’s antiwar declarations without scorching, or at least seriously interrogating, some of the other parts of his platform is not just intellectually sloppy but morally lazy, a big, politically reckless spit glob in the face of African Americans, gay folks, women, poor people, and just about every other marginalized person in this country and beyond.
Let’s start (start, but not finish) with the contents of the Ron Paul newsletter, that lucrative experiment in conspiracy-laced wingnuttery that burns with such virulent bigotry that I practically singed my face just reading excerpts. I found these excerpts courtesy of the website “Et tu, Mr. Destructo,” which recently unearthed and released a 50-page cache of greatest Newsletter hits. It’s worth mentioning that Et tu, Mr. Destructo is a deliciously acid voice of lefty irreverence – proudly anti-war, pro-union, Israel critical – hardly part of the neoconservative cabal that Andrew Sullivan so quiveringly accuses of trying to smear Doc Paul. In fact, plenty of the media outlets that have been so gleefully sifting through the contents of the “Ron Paul Newsletter” colostomy bag are “respectably” mainstream operations (I know, there’s no such thing) if not staunchly progressive ones – which is appropriate given that the man is running for President of the United States. Getting frisked by the media is part of the job application.
In any case, since the newsletters are now effortlessly accessible – thanks again to aforementioned “Et tu, Mr. Destructo,” among others – I would hope that you would have taken a few minutes to examine them. However, just in case, I’ve selected a sample.
Let’s roll the fiche…
Ron Paul Newsletter—December 1990
[King] was also a Comsymp, if not an actual party member, and the man who replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration. King, the FBI files show, was not only a world-class adulterer, he also seduced underage girls and boys…. And we are supposed to honor this ‘Christian minister’ and lying socialist satyr…?
Ron Paul Newsletter—February, 1990
Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for that pro-communist philanderer, Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day. Listen to a black radio talk show in any major city. The racial hatred makes a KKK rally look tame.
Ron Paul Newsletter—January, 1991
St. Martin was a world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours (‘non-violence’ didn’t apply in all spheres, I guess).
Ron Paul Newsletter—June, 1990
President Bush invited the heads of homosexual lobbying groups to the White House for the ceremony. As Congressman Bill Dannemeyer (R-CA) noted, ‘It’s a tragic message that is being sent,’ that normality and deviance are equal. I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities. They could also not be as promiscuous. Is it any coincidence that the AIDS epidemic developed after they came ‘out of the closet’ and started hyper-promiscuous sodomy? I don’t believe so, medically or morally.
Ron Paul Newsletter—October, 1990
A mob of black protestors, led by the ‘Rev.’ Al Sharpton, occupied and closed the Statue of Liberty recently, demanding that New York be renamed Martin Luther King City ‘to reclaim it for our people.’ Hmmm. I hate to agree with the Rev. Al, but maybe a name change is in order. Welfaria? Zooville? Rapetown? Dirtburg? Lazyopolis? But Al, the Statue of Liberty? Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.
Ron Paul Political Report—July 1992
Perot cannot fix the welfare state any more than Gorbachev could fix Soviet socialism. To achieve even a semblance of success, Perot may resort to authoritarian means. Maintaining order may be the number one priority, especially as the race riots grow…. Just after a basketball game ended on June 14, blacks poured into the streets of Chicago in celebration. How to celebrate? How else? They broke the windows of stores to loot, even breaking through protective steel shutters with crowbars to steal everything in sight…. (Is this why Hollywood tells us White Men Can’t Jump?).
Ron Paul Survival Report—January, 1994
They [gay men] enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick. Put it all together, and you’ve got another wave of AIDS infections, that you, dear taxpayer, will be asked to pay for.
Ron Paul Survival Report—November, 1994
If you belong to one of these groups [i.e., a right-wing militia], be careful not to let down your guard too easily if at all…. Big government is forever, says the Beltway elite. But don’t believe it. If people form their own communities of internal protection, the central state becomes an even more obvious parasite. It is an encouraging sign that the end of government as we know it may be near.
Had enough yet?
As you know, Paul’s response thus far has been about as flimsy as the paper his Newsletter was printed on. “I didn’t write them. I didn’t read them at the time and I disavow them,” he told CNN’s Gloria Borger in a near-parodic replay of James Murdoch’s hacking scandal defense.
Now it’s certainly possible that Paul didn’t write the newsletters, as he claims. In fact, despite draping his name across the top of all of them and John Hancocking the bottom of some of them, it’s pretty well-suggested that Lew Rockwell, Paul’s former right-hand, penned the missives. But the claim that he didn’t read them? Come on. The man spent 30 years publishing these tracts, raking in more than $1 million in the process — and he’s saying he had no clue about the contents? He certainly seemed pretty well briefed on the details in this 1995 video.
All of which reflects pretty poorly on Dr. Paul.
As Et tu, Mr. Destructo writes:
Paul supporters face three losing propositions:
• [Ron Paul] lacks the competency to control content published under his own name for over a decade, and is thus unfit to lead a country.
• He doesn’t believe these things but considers them a useful political tool to motivate racist whites, which makes him fit to be a GOP candidate, but too obvious about it to win.
• He’s actually a racist, which makes him unfit to be a human being.