NOVANEWS
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Happy New Year
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Ron Paul challenges liberals on love of ‘big finance’ and ‘big-ass wars’
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Memories of Gaza: when the victim is called the terrorist
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Poolside, New Year’s Eve
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Another mainstream voice challenges idea of war on Iran
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‘People who promoted the Iraq war ought to be so discredited that no one listens to them any more’
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‘Settlements in Palestine’ reports U.S. charities violate tax laws
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Kampeas: Jewish neocons are more than 2 degrees removed from Bush’s decision to invade Iraq
Happy New Year
Dec 31, 2011
Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz
h/t The Awl’s 15 Most Delightful Internet Films of 2011 post for the videos. Here are some more:
Ron Paul challenges liberals on love of ‘big finance’ and ‘big-ass wars’
Dec 31, 2011
Philip Weiss
Matt Stoller
Matt Stoller, now at the Roosevelt Institute, a former aide to former Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida, poses the question, “Why Ron Paul Challenges Liberals,” at naked capitalism. The piece is getting a ton of attention. Thinking about this piece this morning, I reflected: Ron Paul supporters came to Occupy Wall Street. They wanted a part of that radical movement. Is there nothing the left can learn from them? Stoller has jumped to that challenge. Sizeable excerpt. There is more theorizing about libertarianism’s history in the full piece.
as I’ve drilled into Paul’s ideas, his ideas forced me to acknowledge some deep contradictions in American liberalism (pointed out years ago by Christopher Lasch) and what is a long-standing, disturbing, and unacknowledged affinity liberals have with centralized war financing. So while I have my views of Ron Paul, I believe that the anger he inspires comes not from his positions, but from the tensions that modern American liberals bear within their own worldview.
My perspective of Paul comes from working with his staff in 2009-2010 on issues of war and the Federal Reserve. Paul was one of my then-boss Alan Grayson’s key allies in Congress on these issues, though on most issues of course he and Paul were diametrically opposed. How Paul operated his office was different than most Republicans, and Democrats. An old Congressional hand once told me, and then drilled into my head, that every Congressional office is motivated by three overlapping forces – policy, politics, and procedure. And this is true as far as it goes….
Paul’s office was dedicated, first and foremost, to his political principles, and his work with his grassroots base reflects that. Politics and procedure simply didn’t matter to him. My main contact in Paul’s office even had his voicemail set up with special instructions for those calling about HR 1207, which was the number of the House bill to audit the Federal Reserve. But it wasn’t just the Fed audit – any competent liberal Democratic staffer in Congress can tell you that Paul will work with anyone who seeks his ends of rolling back American Empire and its reach into foreign countries, auditing the Federal Reserve, and stopping the drug war.
Paul is deeply conservative, of course, and there are reasons he believes in those end goals that have nothing to do with creating a more socially just and equitable society. But then, when considering questions about Ron Paul, you have to ask yourself whether you prefer a libertarian who will tell you upfront about his opposition to civil rights statutes, or authoritarian Democratic leaders who will expand healthcare to children and then aggressively enforce a racist war on drugs and shield multi-trillion dollar transactions from public scrutiny. I can see merits in both approaches, and of course, neither is ideal. Perhaps it’s worthy to argue that lives saved by presumed expanded health care coverage in 2013 are worth the lives lost in the drug war. It is potentially a tough calculation (depending on whether you think coverage will in fact expand in 2013). When I worked with Paul’s staff, they pursued our joint end goals with vigor and principle, and because of their work, we got to force central banking practices into a more public and democratic light.
But this obscures the real question, of why Paul disdains the Fed (and implicitly, why liberals do not), and the relationship between the Federal Reserve and American empire. If you go back and look at some of libertarian allies, like Fox News’s Judge Napolitano, they will answer that question for you. Napolitano hates, absolutely hates, Abraham Lincoln. He sometimes slyly refers to Lincoln as America’s first dictator. Libertarians also detest Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
What connects all three of these Presidents is one thing – big ass wars, and specifically,war financing. If you think today’s deficits are bad, well, Abraham Lincoln financed the Civil War pretty much entirely by money printing and debt creation, taking America off the gold standard….
Modern liberalism is a mixture of two elements. One is a support of Federal power – what came out of the late 1930s, World War II, and the civil rights era where a social safety net and warfare were financed by Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and the RFC, and human rights were enforced by a Federal government, unions, and a cadre of corporate, journalistic and technocratic experts (and cheap oil made the whole system run.) America mobilized militarily for national priorities, be they war-like or social in nature. And two, it originates from the anti-war sentiment of the Vietnam era, with its distrust of centralized authority mobilizing national resources for what were perceived to be immoral priorities. When you throw in the recent financial crisis, the corruption of big finance, the increasing militarization of society, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the collapse of the moral authority of the technocrats, you have a big problem. Liberalism doesn’t really exist much within the Democratic Party so much anymore, but it also has a profound challenge insofar as the rudiments of liberalism going back to the 1930s don’t work.
This is why Ron Paul can critique the Federal Reserve and American empire, and why liberals have essentially no answer to his ideas, arguing instead over Paul having character defects. Ron Paul’s stance should be seen as a challenge to better create a coherent structural critique of the American political order. It’s quite obvious that there isn’t one coming from the left, otherwise the figure challenging the war on drugs and American empire wouldn’t be in the Republican primary as the libertarian candidate. To get there, liberals must grapple with big finance and war, two topics that are difficult to handle in any but a glib manner that separates us from our actual traditional and problematic affinity for both. War financing has a specific tradition in American culture, but there is no guarantee war financing must continue the way it has. And there’s no reason to assume that centralized power will act in a more just manner these days, that we will see continuity with the historical experience of the New Deal and Civil Rights Era. The liberal alliance with the mechanics of mass mobilizing warfare, which should be pretty obvious when seen in this light, is deep-rooted.
What we’re seeing on the left is this conflict played out, whether it is big slow centralized unions supporting problematic policies, protest movements that cannot be institutionalized in any useful structure, or a completely hollow liberal intellectual apparatus arguing for increasing the power of corporations through the Federal government to enact their agenda. Now of course, Ron Paul pandered to racists, and there is no doubt that this is a legitimate political issue in the Presidential race. But the intellectual challenge that Ron Paul presents ultimately has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with contradictions within modern liberalism.
Memories of Gaza: when the victim is called the terrorist
Dec 31, 2011
Sarah Ali
A girl in Gaza
I am a terrorist. At least that is what they call me. I grew up hearing the same word being repeated all the time that I thought terrorists were the good guys for a second. They are apparently not. Of the many saddening times I went through, the 2008-2009 offensive that Israel launched on the Gaza Strip is the worst and probably the most painful. I was “lucky” enough to survive and have the chance to speak for those who lost their lives although I am quite sure their death can speak well for them.
It was December the 27th, 2008 when the Israeli warplanes started dropping bombs on every place in Gaza, killing anything or anybody getting—or not getting in their way.
The war left lots of people dead. More than 1450 Palestinians were killed, 5600 injured. There were people dying everyday.
Then there was Anwar…
Just when we began to hear the news of Israel’s intentions to end the war, Anwar Shehada was killed. Anwar was a 13 year old neighbor of mine who lived a few meters away from where I live. It was the last day of the war when Anwar told her younger sister she was going up to get the laundry from the roof. Her sister asked her not to go; Anwar told her sister not to worry because the war was almost ‘over’. Before her parents could see her going up to the roof, Anwar was already gone. She probably thought that Israel would not kill a beautiful 13 year old girl. Israel proved her wrong. The explosion that killed Anwar was the loudest one I ever heard. I thought it was our house being shelled. The floor was literally shaking. We waited for death. In seconds, we saw the smoke coming out of the neighbor’s house. They said Anwar’s blood was all over the roof. Her head was found in the street.
And then, there was Haneen…
Haneen was actually killed before Anwar, but we knew about her death a week after the end of the war. Haneen was my 5 year old friend who I first met in a mosque to which we both used to go. All I remember about her is the way she liked to tease me. She used to make that sound of ‘meow’ because she knew I hated cats. The ‘meow’ was actually the way she said ‘hi’ each time we saw each other. During the war, Haneen’s family decided to go stay with their relatives in Tal Elhawa, assuming that the area would be less dangerous. Haneen left her house, only to be killed in the house that was thought to be safe.
I cannot imagine the pain Haneen felt when the bomb penetrated her little heart tearing it apart. I do not know what it feels like to lose a child, and I have no idea how tremendous the suffering of Anwar and Haneen’s parents is. I cannot imagine the shock Haneen felt when she saw the ceiling of the bedroom falling down and getting closer to her face. I cannot imagine how a soldier looked right from his plane at that little girl and decided to end her life. I cannot imagine the kind of hatred that soldier had towards Palestinians that made him believe murdering a child is okay. I cannot imagine the denial that soldier lived in that made him think what he did was ‘self-defense’. I cannot imagine how this very same soldier can now eat, drink, sleep, and simply go on with his life. And I cannot understand how stupid Israel has to be to think that I will not fight back for my little friends.
I kept thinking of Haneen for a year after she got killed, but now I do not think too much of her. It is just when I see her mother in the street that I remember how cute Haneen was. In fact, I have become selfish enough to avoid saying hi to Haneen’s mom whenever we meet. Each time I see her, I would hide my face hoping she will not see me. When Haneen was alive, her mother and I used to chat about how smart Haneen was and how bright her future would be. Now I just have nothing to say to her. I cannot make things better. I cannot look her mother in the eye and ask her ‘how are things?’ because each time she replies with, ‘things are good’, I am sure that they are not.
I am living in a world whose concepts are no longer clear to me. A world where the criminal walks free and the victim is called a terrorist. A world where killing a 5 year old kid is permissible. A world that once left me baffled about what is right and what is wrong. I have always thought that we could figure out who the terrorist is simply by looking at who dies on whose side. I was wrong. Israel has the ability to kill Palestinians at night and call them terrorists the next morning.
Now on a second thought, I think I am a terrorist. I mean I want the Israelis out of the refugees’ lands, and I call the IDF a group of coldhearted murderers all the time. This obviously makes me a terrorist. Haneen did not know what a coldhearted blood is! Haneen was a little kid whose life was snuffed out because an Israeli soldier felt like killing somebody, and she just happened to be that somebody. Haneen was an unfortunate human being who was born Palestinian and accordingly guilty. She did nothing wrong to Israel. She was a 5 year old girl who was split into little pieces while in bed. Haneen was too young to die. Who cares about Haneen’s death anyway? She was a terrorist, too.
(Sarah Ali, 20, is a student of English literature at the Islamic University, Gaza. She blogs at Here We Are)
Poolside, New Year’s Eve
Dec 31, 2011
Philip Weiss
A friend who is in Central America for New Year’s sent me the following charming note:
So I finally read the article in Harper’s [by Ben Ehrenreich] about Israel’s water war with Palestine today by the pool and was a bit distressed by it. Not long after a guy from Chicago started talking to a woman from around there and Israel came up. The guy couldn’t stop talking about how much he loved it, he goes all the time, it’s the best, you feel so “good” when you’re there…. Imagine me laying on a chair pretending not to hear this. The woman’s daughter wants to go on birthright next year, blah blah blah. Nothing overtly political was said and the subject changed to other things. Before the guy moved to another end of the pool he mentioned something about certain activities offered by the hotel and seemed somewhat skeptical about what he had heard. His last words about that were:
“I believe half of what I see and none of what I hear.”
I mumbled to myself, but audibly, “Apply that principle to your trips to Israel.”
Oh: click on the link below to see the flag of Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica
Another mainstream voice challenges idea of war on Iran
Dec 31, 2011
Philip Weiss
Andrew Exum
This is significant if you care about mainstream discourse, and I do. You may have noticed that Leon Panetta got whipsawed by the neocons for the mistake of suggesting on December 2 that we should not go to war over Iran. Now he is saying war is a perfectly good idea. (His Dec. 2 comments are reproduced below). Well, here is Andrew Exum, the counterterrorism guy who is wired in the establishment, issuing a challenge to the Iran war drumbeat:
If Iran gets the bomb, I have heard all kinds of worries about what would then happen in terms of regional security. But in conversations with leaders around the region, I have heard very few specifics. Why, exactly, would a nuclear Iran be so much worse than a non-nuclear Iran? Bear with me here: Let’s say Iran gets a nuclear weapon. What happens next? Would other states bandwagon? What would that bandwagoning behavior look like in real terms? (For the record, I have never heard any compelling answer to this question in travels around the region.)
Would other states seek nuclear weapons? How, exactly? Let’s pick one example: Saudi Arabia. Why, first off, has Saudi Arabia not already begun a nuclear energy program? (And don’t say “oil,” because there is an opportunity cost to Gulf states using oil for their own energy rather than selling it on the open market for $100 a barrel.) Does Saudi Arabia have the technical expertise to start a nuclear program? If so, how long would it take them? Would Saudi Arabia instead buy a bomb? From where? From Pakistan, perhaps? Why would the Pakistanis sell one to them? Why might the Pakistanis not sell one to them? You can see where I am going here: once you start trying examine the second and third order effects and their various branches, it’s tough to explain how, exactly, a nuclear Iran would be that much more dangerous than a non-nuclear Iran. I am not saying it would not be more dangerous — I am saying it is very hard to explain how, exactly, a nuclear Iran would be more dangerous. And I think those arguing for war with Iran have an obligation to sketch out those specifics to both policy makers and to the public.
On the flip side of the equation, what might be the adverse second and third order effects of a U.S. strike on Iran? I agree with Matt [Kroenig]’s critics that he gives us the best-case scenario. But how does the situation look if we work through the effects of a U.S. strike on Iran country-by-country? How might another war affect U.S. security and economic interests elsewhere in the region? How might such a war affect U.S. interests outside the region? How might Iran respond?
Panetta’s December 2 comments that he has had to walk back:
Frankly, some of those targets are very difficult to get at.
That kind of, that kind of shot would only, I think, ultimately not destroy their ability to produce an atomic weapon, but simply delay it – number one. Of greater concern to me are the unintended consequences, which would be that ultimately it would have a backlash and the regime that is weak now, a regime that is isolated would suddenly be able to reestablish itself, suddenly be able to get support in the region, and suddenly instead of being isolated would get the greater support in a region that right now views it as a pariah.
Thirdly, the United States would obviously be blamed and we could possibly be the target of retaliation from Iran, striking our ships, striking our military bases. Fourthly – there are economic consequences to that attack – severe economic consequences that could impact a very fragile economy in Europe and a fragile economy here in the United States.
And lastly I think that the consequence could be that we would have an escalation that would take place that would not only involve many lives, but I think could consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret.
So we have to be careful about the unintended consequences of that kind of an attack.
‘People who promoted the Iraq war ought to be so discredited that no one listens to them any more’
Dec 31, 2011
Philip Weiss
Paul Pillar at the National Interest on “Never Forget the Iraq War”:
And related to that was the larger pattern of how many Americans allowed themselves to be duped by the war makers. That’s right: allowed themselves to be duped. There have been many complaints by people who supported the war about how they were misled, and indeed Americans were misled. But they were able to be misled because they got themselves swept up in a political mood that was stoked and exploited by the administration. Even a halfway careful examination of the prowar sales campaign could have seen through it, including such things as a phantasmagorical alliance between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda.
Finally there are the prime promoters of the war. The lesson to be drawn about them is how atrocious the war showed their judgment to be. They ought to be so discredited by now that no one listens to them any more. But here’s the scary part: people do still listen to them. As Christopher Preble observes, “Most of the president’s Republican challengers are reluctant to cross the neoconservative cheerleaders for the war who, inexplicably, still have great sway over aspiring chief executives.” Many of those cheerleaders are still prominent members of the policy-influencing Washington elite and still writing and talking about the very sorts of things on which they showed such terrible judgment in the case of Iraq. Some of them are even cheering for yet another war, against another Middle Eastern country with a four-letter name starting with I, and with their cheering featuring familiar old themes about weapons of mass destruction, links with terrorism and the like. Those people ought to be reminded at every turn about the Iraq War and their role in promoting it, and asked repeatedly why anyone should believe a word of what they are saying now.
Kristol
Kerry
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Thomas Friedman
Jeffrey Goldberg
Remnick
Ehud Barak
Robert Wexler
Robert Kagan
Condi Rice
Bernard Henri-Levy
Mortimer Zuckerman
Clinton
Christopher Hitchens
Ken Pollack
‘Settlements in Palestine’ reports U.S. charities violate tax laws
Dec 31, 2011
Allison Deger
Shiloh settlement in the West Bank. (Photo: Sameer Bazbaz)
Settlements in Palestine, a research and advocacy settlement watchdog, published a Report on Financial Support of the Israeli Settlement Enterprise By United States Non-Profit Foundations and Organizations During 2009, exposing tax fraud committed by U.S. foundations and U.S. tax-exempt charities, through grants made to settler organizations. The report reveals a total of $274 million was funneled from U.S. organizations to settlements from 2002-2009, compared to $600 million dollars the Israeli government spends each year in supporting the settlements:
From 2002 through 2009 (the last year complete returns are available), 183 non-profit organizations (129 private foundations, 54 corporations) in the United States raised and spent approximately $274,000,000 in direct support of the Israeli settlement enterprise.
Tax-fraud committed by U.S. tax-exempt charities is not news. Mondoweiss has been following the story for years. Activist groups such as Adalah NY have called into question groups such as the Hebron Fund, citing U.S. tax law, and international law. And, in June 2010, the New York Times (co-authored by Ethan Bronner) highlighted U.S. tax-exempt charities donating to settlements, where the NYT, wrote:
A New York Times examination of public records in the United States and Israel identified at least 40 American groups that have collected more than $200 million in tax-deductible gifts for Jewish settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem over the last decade. The money goes mostly to schools, synagogues, recreation centers and the like, legitimate expenditures under the tax law. But it has also paid for more legally questionable commodities: housing as well as guard dogs, bulletproof vests, rifle scopes and vehicles to secure outposts deep in occupied areas.
Settlements in Palestine’s report uncovers a more extensive list of U.S. foundations and charities that violate tax code, and uncovers six for-profit organizations that received approximately $400,000 in 2009. These organizations — American Friends of Bet El, American Friends of the College of Judea and Samaria, American Friends of Yeshiva Shavei Hebron, American Friends of Shiloh, American Friends of Ulpana Ofra, and American Friends of Yeshivat Hesder Shiloh — either had their IRS tax exempt status revoked, or never filed for it in the first place, yet still receive grants that are only for 501c3s. In one example, American Friends of Shiloh never filed for IRS tax-exempt status, received $1,080 in funds from the L & L Foundation, in Lawrence, NY.
The report also investigates funding allocated through American charities to radical right-wing organizations:
As an example, Yeshivat Nir Kiryat Arba, headed by Rabbi Dov Lior, who promotes killing non-Jews, has received an average of over $370,000 each year since 2001 through the American Friends of Yeshiva High School of Kiryat Arba and the Friends of Yeshivat Nir Kiryat Arba. In prior years, the Amy and James Haber Foundation and the Irving Moskowitz Foundation were among the funders of the yeshiva, but neither foundation listed the two non- profit organizations supporting the yeshiva as a recipient in 2009.
Investigating specific foundations’ IRS 990s, the report noted the Irving Moskowitz foundation had substantial errors in their tax filings, which indicated the charity launders money to settlements through practices such as property purchases.
The report concludes funding from these tax-exempt, or for-profit charities, provides material support to the “matrix of Israeli legislation, government financial assistance, and administrative procedures that is altering Jerusalem’s ethnic composition and separating Palestinians in Jerusalem from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory, and Palestinians in the rest of the West Bank from their cultural and business center in Jerusalem.” With total U.S. charity gifts per year ranging from $20 to $50 million from 2002-2009, U.S. funds provide a substantial portion of the maintenance and continuation the development of settlements in the West Bank.
Kampeas: Jewish neocons are more than 2 degrees removed from Bush’s decision to invade Iraq
Dec 31, 2011
Philip Weiss
Ron Kampeas
Yesterday I posted a question that I’d sent to Ron Kampeas of JTA: why is it that the Walt and Mearsheimer thesis, that the Israel lobby played a crucial role in pushing the Iraq war, has become more and more mainstream in recent months/years?
Kampeas sent me an answer on Facebook yesterday and then posted his response at JTA. Here it is:
Short answer, no, it has not become acceptable in mainstream discourse because it is still not true, and yes, it at least flirts with anti-Semitism. Long answer after the jump, with a couple of small modifications to the Facebook message I sent him.
A) Do I think the Walt-Mearsheimer position, specifically on the centrality of pro-Israel feelings by Jews spurring the Iraq War, has prevailed?
No, especially because Stephen Walt himself has dialed it back. See here.
You also mischaracterize M.S. of the Economist (I’m told his name is Matt Steinglass) — he does not quite say “the Iraq war was fostered by neoconservatives concerned with Israel’s security;” he says, “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.”
So there’s an “among the important causes” there — and even that refers to the holistic role of the neoconservatives and not just their Israel sympathies. So Jewish neoconservatives and their Jewishness are two degrees removed from being the cause, according to his formulation. But even he is wrong.
The Bush administration was determined to invade Iraq. It pitched the invasion to a number of constituencies it saw as important to making the case; like any good salesman, it didn’t use the same pitch twice, it tailored the sale to the target.
So Democrats, always seeking national security credibility, got the terrorism argument. The media, always seeking the next mortal threat, got that. Liberals who have embraced intervention as a means of preventing slaughter, got the Kurdish argument. And pro-Israel groups and Jews and Israel got the threat to Israel.
None of these arguments stood up, and to lesser and greater degrees each of these constituencies paid a price for being duped. Among Democrats, Joe Lieberman is leaving office and Hillary Clinton is not president. Among journalists, Judith Miller and Howell Raines are not at the New York Times and Bill Keller is apologizing. Among liberal hawks, Peter Beinart is shreying gevalt, and Jeffrey Goldberg is still engaged in protracted defenses, and Tom Friedman more or less admits he was duped. And in the Jewish world, the pro-Israel movement is now dealing with J Street — an outcome explainable in part, I think, by distrust in the Jewish establishment engendered by its Iraq War support. (I should note that the manifestation of that support varied widely depending upon the group, from deeply qualified to enthusiastic.)
So yes, there has been a consequence for Jewish officialdom for being talked into backing the war — but you’re mistaking that as a consequence for the pro-Israel movement being central to advancing the war. There is no such consequence because its premise is simply not true.
The Bush administration invaded Iraq principally because it was attached to a policy of maintaining U.S. preeminence in a vitally important region. This policy was cut from the same cloth as GOP/neoconservative clamoring for a tougher posture vis-a-vis Putin, the same cloth as the championing of Taiwan, the same cloth as the decades old isolation of Cuba.
B) Anti-Semitism can be defined as toxic myths attached to Jews. There are two at work in your thesis here:
1) Jews act only to advance their own interests. They do and they don’t — it’s wildly complicated — but not more than any other special interest in an American polity that is highly susceptible to special interest pressure.
2) Jews send others to die in fruitless wars. Maybe the Iraq war was fruitless — we’ll see — but its motor was not the Jews, it was not Israel. It was a specifically American self-perception of this nation’s preeminence in the world, for better or worse, identifiable as early as Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, if not as early as the Barbary Coast. Both historical identifiers, you’ll note, predate Israel’s existence.