How I Got Fired by Phil Geraldi

  Philip-giraldi

"When all is said and done the punishment that has been meted out to me and Valerie Plame proves my point. The friends of Israel rule by coercion, intimidation and through fear. If we suffer through a catastrophic war with Iran fought to placate Benjamin Netanyahu many people might begin to ask “Why?” But identifying the real cause would involve criticism of what some American Jews have been doing, which is not only fraught with consequences, but is something that also will possibly become illegal thanks to Congressional attempts to criminalize such activity. We Americans will stand by mutely as we begin to wonder what has happened to our country. And some who are more perceptive will even begin to ask why a tiny client state has been allowed to manipulate and bring ruin on the world’s only super power. Unfortunately, at that point, it will be too late to do anything about it."  Phil Geraldi

—————–

No comment is needed.  pl

http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/how-i-got-fired/

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94 Responses to How I Got Fired by Phil Geraldi

  1. Willybilly says:

    Fully and completely agree with Phil Giraldi, no caveats, ifs or buts……..

  2. JJackson says:

    Sticking your head above the parapet, let alone going over top, is severely injurious to the health. Is their no Murrow with the courage and clout to defeat the current McCarthyism?

  3. richard sale says:

    Phil is dead right.
    Richard Sale

  4. Huckleberry says:

    It is distasteful, but the surest method of combating this is to call out all Jews in America, as such.
    We need to remember what Machiavelli said about exiles.

  5. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Are any Protestant Christians involved in any of this? Given their (largely unrequited) love for all things Old Testament?

  6. ISL says:

    Phil was careful to note “where there is a conflict of interest.” Basic ethics and honor requires recusal. Little honor remains in todays society, though.
    As Jain said to Mal (firefly), “the money wasn’t good enough.”
    End stage of empire, though, I think the money is always good enough.

  7. The Beaver says:

    Now will J street, or the ;obby go after Stephen Walt:
    http://forward.com/opinion/383901/that-israel-lobby-controversy-history-has-proved-us-right/
    There is little question the lobby remains a potent political force today. The “special relationship” is firmly intact: An increasingly prosperous Israel continues to receive billions of dollars in U.S. assistance, and it is still largely immune from criticism by top U.S. officials, members of Congress or contenders for public office.

  8. Harry says:

    Phil Giraldi

  9. Harry says:

    Plenty of American Jews are against the pernicious influence of the likudnik lobby

  10. Walker says:

    I very strongly agree that, in general, the motives and acts of Jewish supporters of Israel (particularly those in politics, government and the media) have been given incredible unwarranted cover. This has done great damage.
    However, Giraldi went too far. He should know that a flat reference to “America’s Jews” in the title is overly broad. Not all American Jews are supporters of Israel. In addition, our perpetual war policy has many supporters who are not Jewish.
    Of course, if you go too far in a different direction you’re not as likely to get fired. I take his point on that.

  11. Will2.71828 says:

    Maybe i missed it. Read phil’s article, but didn’t see that Valerie Plame Wilson later folded. Recanted under pressure. from her twitter feed:
    “Replying to @ValeriePlame
    Apologies all. There is so much there that’s problematic AF and I should have recognized it sooner. Thank you for pushing me to look again.
    326 replies 168 retweets 935 likes
    Reply 326 Retweet 168 Like 935 Direct message
    Valerie Plame Wilson‏Verified account @ValeriePlame Sep 21
    More
    Replying to @ValeriePlame
    I missed gross undercurrents to this article & didn’t do my homework on the platform this piece came from. Now that I see it, it’s obvious.
    394 replies 112 retweets 620 likes
    Reply 394 Retweet 112 Like 620 Direct message
    Valerie Plame Wilson‏Verified account @ValeriePlame Sep 21
    More
    OK folks, look, I messed up. I skimmed this piece, zeroed in on the neocon criticism, and shared it without seeing and considering the rest.”

  12. JJackson says:

    Harry I don’t doubt the courage – and he is not alone Sy Hersh and our host – have all tried to counter the Borg narrative but the juggernaut carries on having crushed them. Is there anyone the public trust anymore in the media, or anywhere else, who could call the Borg out and survive the experience?

  13. Col. Lang, you constantly surprise me. The breadth, expertise, and gravitas of the posts in your blog are the reason I urge friends (from a wide swath of the left/right political spectrum) to bookmark and read it regularly.

  14. Nancy K says:

    Fundamentalist Christians are as pro-Israel as many American Jews.
    The Republican party invited Netanyahu to speak to Congress and gave him many more standing ovations than they ever did Obama. The Democrats weren’t much better. I think AIPAC and the NRA are most powerful lobbies in the US.

  15. Nancy K says:

    My husband is one of them and he served with the IDF during 6 day war and in 73. Many American Jews have never been to Israel and they believe all the hype they hear. The ones that visit have gone on tours, as Christians do and are shown just what Israel wants them to see.

  16. turcopolier says:

    nancyK Having been given the BS treatment by the Israelis many times I agree that they are good at perception management. pl

  17. turcopolier says:

    mahatma
    I suppose that is a compliment. I try to be a credit to my people – soldiers. BTW, don’t post things twice. pl

  18. turcopolier says:

    JJackson
    “The juggernaut carries on having crushed them.” I didn’t know I was crushed. should I continue with SST or is it just pointless. pl

  19. Keith Harbaugh says:

    Your statement is a generalization about “Fundamentalist Christians”, but when it comes to American Jews, you refer only to “many American Jews”.
    Your bigotry and ignorance is made manifest through your own words.

  20. It most assuredly was a compliment. Sorry about the double post.

  21. JJackson says:

    pl – not what I meant at all, but I suspect you know that. Cronkite and Murrow could reach a vast audience who had been swallowing the party line and knew no other. SST, the LRB, Die Welt and The Unz review are all doing us a great service but can not effect change in the way CBS could. You, Hearsh and now Giraldi have all documented the difficulties experienced airing unpopular views in these threads.

  22. Keith Harbaugh says:

    Most sadly, we can add Philip Giraldi to the list of those who have had their careers, in the government, academia, or the media,
    set back by speaking out about the influence of Jews in America:
    Patrick J. Buchanan
    Norman Finkelstein
    Charles W. Freeman, Jr.
    Philip Giraldi
    Chuck Hagel
    John Mearsheimer
    Michael Scheuer
    Helen Thomas
    Stephen M. Walt
    And on the way Valerie Plame was handled by the Washington Post,
    note the way each photograph of her in its article
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/22/why-people-care-about-valerie-plame-and-her-anti-semitic-tweet/
    is, in the internet edition, quite large and emphasizes her blue eyes.
    I recall that when WaPo‘s Dana Milbank wrote a column criticizing Merasheimer and Walt, he made a point of describing them as “blue-eyed”.
    BTW, concerning power and intelligence,
    is there documentation on which of the managers, editors, and reporters of the Washington Post are Jewish?
    If its motto is “Democracy Dies in Darkness”,
    should they not be happy to reveal this self-information?

  23. J says:

    Phil, Colonel, TTG,
    While they play the shell game on our nation’s foreign policy, it appears that it is highly probable that the NEOCON/Globalist cabal in the past two administrations skated out the door with over $21 Trillion dollars of our hard earned tax dollars. More than enough to help fund recovery efforts for our Texas neighbors, give a few years relief to individual taxpayers where they won’t have to pay individual personal income tax.
    IMO the FBI needs to get off the stick and look hard into the hostile Espionage by the NEOCONS/Globalists, and the ‘missing’ over $21 Trillion.
    People need to be going to prison for this stuff.
    DOD and HUD Missing Money: Supporting Documentation for $21 Trillion of Undocumentable Adjustments
    https://solari.com/blog/dod-and-hud-missing-money-supporting-documentation/

  24. DianaLC says:

    I am an avowed Protestant Christian. I was baptized and confirmed in my family church. Our immigrant families fled Europe for Russia and freedom of religion under Catherine the Great and Alexander I. We were eventually known as Kuaks by the Bolsheviks. Luckily my parents’ families got out of Russia at the end of Czar Nicholas’ reign and just before their farms were converted to factory and then communal farms by the communitsts.
    Our form of Protestantism started in Europe as Huguenots-in the Pietist vein. In Russia they lived as Lutherans, and some as Baptists.
    None in our Evangelical form of Congregationalism here took political views. But, of course we learned our Old Testament. We know the heritage of Christ, from Abraham to Joseph’s family from the “root of Jesse, the son of Ruth.”
    Naturally we feel closer to the Jewish faith than to the Muslim faith or any other. But we also all know what the Pharisees did.
    I read as much as I can outside of mainstream television news. I followed the case of Valerie Plame as it played out. I understood that the Republicans at the time were probably at fault for “unmasking” her (I think that is the term.) And I think that was wrong.
    But I just really don’t understand the current news about how this has become again an issue. I certainly like the Persian people I’ve met–the not so religious ones–more than I do the descendants of Ishmael,so to speak. Though that is not to say that I like the leaders of Iran at all.
    I am just confused. But, you are absolutely right to be afraid of a conflict with Iran, just as I am in fear of this horrid situation with North Korea.
    I write just to give ONE Evangelical Christian’s point of view. In the churches I have attended, we never hear anything political from the pulpit. So, please don’t paint all Christians alike.

  25. Lemur says:

    “I refer to them as “Jews” rather than neoconservatives or Zionists as some of them don’t identify by those political labels while to blame developments on Zios or neocons is a bit of an evasion in any event. Writing “neoconservatives” suggests some kind of fringe or marginal group, but we are actually talking about nearly all major Jewish organizations and many community leaders.” – Giraldi
    The real objection the mainstream has to his article is not that he didn’t differentiate between factions of Jewry in America; its that he is a gentile proceeding from the premise ethnic organization of Jews as Jews is empirically identifiable and can negatively impact politics and society.

  26. Oilman2 says:

    Isn’t the word everyone is dancing around “Zionism”? This term would include non-Jews whereas Judaism includes only Jews, and Israel includes only Israelis.
    I do think ending dual citizenship would have many benefits wrt Zionism or many other political -isms. One citizenship at a time; what’s wrong with that? It would be difficult for me to fathom taking the oath for military service if I possessed dual citizenship, as that would make divided loyalty an automatic assumption. So why is it so easy for public officials taking their oaths to possess obviously divided loyalties?

  27. eakens says:

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/oct/03/amber-rudd-viewers-of-online-terrorist-material-face-15-years-in-jail
    ….watching a video of Hezbollah fighting an Israeli will probably soon be considered illegal.

  28. Jack says:

    The zionists may seem to have a lock on the US political establishment, the media and the political appointees at the highest echelons of government. They have developed this penetration over decades. Look how investigations into the USS Liberty were obfuscated. That goes some decades back. This has been going on for a long time. Clearly some, maybe many, among American Jews have supported or acquiesced to the zionist fifth column that have put the perceived interests of the likudniks ahead of American interests. While today they may seem invincible with their ability to smear and destroy the careers of anyone of prominence who calls them out, they are walking a slippery slope. David Habakkuk has written many cogent posts on the risks of a backlash that could be indiscriminate and target all jews.

  29. Colonel,
    NOT pointless! That the foreign policy of a great nation is at the mercy of a coterie of insiders is surely something that cannot be ignored.

  30. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Thank you.
    Actually, Islam is closer to Judaism than Christianity is.
    The Iranians you have met are refugees from religion, they are not representatives of the Iranian people.

  31. turcopolier says:

    richardstevenhack
    If that is the case I should stop. I am not interested in doing this much work for the purpose of providing you with a playground. pl

  32. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Well, I should think what I assert to be largely True and certainly not pointless.
    And I do not think we know much about the course of history – any moment now and that course can be terminated through a global thermonuclear war.
    In such as case, I should hope that my own assertions regarding Seljuk Civilization, Islam, and Iran on this forum would be recovered by some alien exo-archaeologist in some future time; who would proceed to exclaim:
    “Had they listened to Babak, their civilization would not have been destroyed.”

  33. LeaNder says:

    I wish, I was as optimist as Stephen Walt, although yes, I followed signs that the times are changing and correspondingly both alarm and weaker or stronger attempts to stem the tide. …
    Stephen wrote an highly interesting article in 1997 in which he defended Huntington against the easy use of Huntington as a blueprint for foreign policy, pdf link:
    http://users.metu.edu.tr/utuba/Walt%20Bogeymen.pdf
    BUILDING UP NEW BOGEYMEN: THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS AND THE REMAKING OF WORLD ORDER
    By: Walt, Stephen M., Foreign Policy, Spring 97, Issue 106
    ******
    “Don’t look back”, isn’t it too late now?
    ******
    Ignoring Iran for a while, did Russia hire Harris media to support the extreme right over here in German elections, or the Gatestone Institute to spread ‘fake news’ helping out extreme right (AfD) in recent German elections? Be sure to click this link and watch who surfaces first:
    https://www.harrismediallc.com/
    By now the AfD can offer candidates. One of those candidates is of the opinion there cannot be a freedom of religion for Muslim in Germany.

  34. Nancy K says:

    I was not generalizing. I did not say all Fundamentalist Christians. I meant no offence if you read anything into my statement. I very well may be ignorant, but I’m pretty sure I’m not bigoted towards either Christians or Jews.

  35. Castellio says:

    That’s exactly right.

  36. Sam Peralta says:

    Col. Lang
    Contrary to what Richardstevenhack says, you and others who speak the truth without fear in public fora are having a huge impact. What are considered taboo thoughts are becoming more widely understood and accepted. All one needs to do is to see the comments by ordinary citizens on articles and stories pushing the memes promoted by the captured establishment – derision.
    Change is coming as the people’s trust in government and the media are waning rapidly as more and more people seek those with tangible experience and knowledge to cut through the propaganda fog. You are playing a big role and please don’t let those who would prefer to silence you get the better of you.
    Respectfully, Sam.

  37. Jack,
    From what I can see, there are already signs that an – eminently justified – backlash against the kind of people Giraldi is targeting is becoming less discriminate than it should be, on both sides of the Atlantic.
    But this really is partly a result of such people, as it were, ‘shooting themselves in the foot.’
    There has been an extraordinarily dangerous, and perverse, collusion between influential Jews, and even more influential ‘goyim’, to suggest that the very definition of a Jew is someone belonging to a ‘community’, or ‘people’, which, explicitly or implicitly, is defined by a commitment to Zionism. Implicitly, they pretend to be determined to root out ‘antisemitism’, while endorsing a classic ‘antisemitic’ belief.
    A particularly aggravating feature of this is the complete disregard for the complexities of the historical record by such people. Some observations by and about the ineffable Jeffrey Goldberg may illustrate this.
    The problem is implicit in the very title of an article he published in the ‘Atlantic’ – which he now edits – back in April 2015: ‘Is It Time for the Jews to Leave Europe?’
    (See https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/is-it-time-for-the-jews-to-leave-europe/386279/ .)
    The surreal nature of the piece is heralded by the picture of a man with a whispy white beard and tall black hat at the top of the article. Almost equally surreal are the remarks which David Cameron apparently made to Goldberg:
    ‘“The Jewish community in Britain has been there for centuries and has made an extraordinary contribution to our country,” he said. “I would be heartbroken if I ever thought that people in the Jewish community thought that Britain was no longer a safe place for them.”’
    This is piffle. Certainly, there has been an extraordinary contribution by Jews to this country. But by far the most significant part of this has come from refugees from the disasters of European history and their offspring – and precisely what made their contribution so fertile was that they did not belong to any kind of cohesive ‘community.’
    At the end of the article Goldberg explains that his grandfather grew up in a ‘pogrom-afflicted village’, not far from Kishinev – which, as he notes, was the site of a very notable pogrom in 1903, at which time it was the capital of the Bessarabia Governate of the Russian Empire. And he concludes by saying that
    ‘I am predisposed to believe that there is no great future for the Jews in Europe, because evidence to support this belief is accumulating so quickly. But I am also predisposed to think this because I am an American Jew – which is to say, a person who exists because his ancestors made a run for it when they could.’
    As a wet-behind-the-ears scholarship boy from a Welsh grammar school to Cambridge in the ‘Thirties, my father listened to the lectures of another Jew from Bessarabia – the economic historian Sir Michael Postan, who grew up in Bender, just down the road from Kishinev.
    Actually he had left not because of pogroms, but because of the 1917 Revolution. But – as nobody else was doing in Cambridge at the time – he expounded, and criticised, the work of great continental scholars, including Karl Marx, as well as Max Weber, Werner Sombart, and Marc Bloch.
    During the war, Postan was in charge of Russia at the Ministry of Economic Warfare. As so often, our spooks and diplomats had little understanding of Russian policy. Although passionately anti-communist, he attempted to explain that Stalin’s policy was driven by fear of Germany – which was correct.
    Only weeks before Hitler attacked mainstream British analysis was still convinced that all he had in mind was coercive diplomacy – Postan was one of the few who both thought this was wrong, and had the guts to say so.
    Reverting to Goldberg. In a profile back in 2003, entitled ‘Jeffrey Goldberg, Washington’s Most Pugnacious Journalist’, Paul Starobin wrote the following:
    ‘Goldberg is perhaps best understood as a “never again” journalist. IS IT POSSIBLE TO THINK TOO MUCH ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST?, a Goldblog headline asked. His reply: “No, the answer is no—it is not possible to think about the Holocaust too much.”’
    (See https://www.washingtonian.com/2013/01/29/jeffrey-goldberg-washingtons-most-pugnacious-journalist/ .)
    But as the ‘Is It Time for the Jews to Leave Europe?’ piece, and much else of his writing, rather conclusively demonstrate, Goldberg has never ‘thought’ about the Holocaust in any meaningful sense at all. Instead, what he has attempted to do is shoehorn the available evidence into a Zionist myth of exile-and-return.
    As it happens, I know something about three Jewish refugees, all from Prague, who did think about the Holocaust – and their careers illustrate the vacuity of the notion of a ‘Jewish community.’
    A particular bizarre figure was Franz Baermann Steiner, who was a major influence on Oxford anthropology – and also a very fine poet. The neglect of his work is unfortunate, but perhaps unsurprising, as he was a theocratic Zionist who wrote in German.
    But then, his career illustrates some of the paradoxes of the Jewish refugee life in England. At the time he died of a heart attack, Steiner was planning to marry, not an appropriate Jewish girl, but a ‘shiksa’ – Iris Murdoch, of Irish Presbyterian background. So, had they had children, they would not have been Jewish.
    The strongest cultural allegiances of another notable anthropologist, Ernest Gellner, also a philosopher, were emphatically not Jewish, but Czech. A particular bugbear of his was his fellow philosopher Isaiah Berlin, born in Riga, who was a Zionist, whom he described as a ‘Court Jew’ and ‘the C.I.A’s J.S. Mill.’
    With yet another philosopher, Sir Karl Popper, a refugee from Vienna, Popper shared a strong commitment to Enlightenment rationalism. But a great deal of Gellner’s work was devoted to showing that nationalism could not be regarded – as Popper did – as simply an atavistic collapse back into tribalism, but was an integral feature of ‘modernity.’
    What Gellner also argued was that it necessarily had completely different implications in societies like France, where a single high culture could be imposed on a defined territorial space, and in the Hapsburg and Romanov empires, where it tended to be an agent of chaos, which one could only manage as well as one might. His work has rather obvious relevance to contemporary political dilemmas.
    A notable study called ‘Hitler: The Führer and the People’ was the work of a friend of Gellner’s, the Germanist J.P. Stern. But he was not a secularist – as was not uncommon among ‘Hapsburg Jews’, he had been brought up a Roman Catholic – and remained a kind of Jewish Christian to the end of his life.
    However, like Gellner he had a strong Czech identity – he served as ‘tail-end Charlie’ 311 Squadron, the Czech bomber squadron in the R.A.F, and had one of the more remarkable lucky escapes when shot down hunting U-boats.
    This rather long explanation is intended to bring out several points:
    1. Multiple identities, and multiply loyalties, are not inherently problematic. Indeed, precisely the value of the contribution of the figures I have described to British culture – and I could name many more – was related to the fact that they did not belong to some kind of cohesive ‘community.’ Precisely because of this, such figures could bring together continental and British intellectual traditions.
    2. As Stern remarks in his study, a critical point about European Jews, prior to the Holocaust, was that they did not constitute any kind of ‘community’ or ‘people.’ In particular, very many Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian Jews had come a very long way from a world where men wore black hats – and, unlike Goldberg and his like, did not suffer from any kind of sneaking nostalgia for the ghetto.
    The notion of some coherent Jewish identity was the product of the opposed, but oddly complementary, myth-making efforts of Herzl and Hitler.
    3. A critical part of the basis of what Babak Makkinejad quite fairly calls the ‘secular cult of the Shoah’, for people like my father and myself, related to precisely this. Identity is a complicated matter, into which all kinds of different factors – ethnicity, culture, religion – enter. But it is also, critically, related to the commitments people make, the work they are prepared to put into them and the sacrifices they are prepared to make for them.
    My father in his generation, and I in mine, knew well people who had regarded themselves as German, whose fathers had fought in the German Army in the First World War, and were only here because the possession of Jewish blood was supposedly a reason for persecuting them. It seemed both a moral abomination, and sheerly ludicrous.
    4. Now however, we see people like Goldberg and his British equivalents producing a ‘narrative’ which in essence runs as follows:
    ‘We know that you “goyim” in your heart of hearts nurture a deep-seated desire to massacre us. Accordingly, we need to return to our “homeland”. However, many of us are not planning to return, in part because we do not really like it there, but also because we know that the “homeland” could not survive without your support. Instead, we intend to use moral blackmail to ensure that you “goyim” fight one catastrophic war after another to destroy the enemies of that “homeland.” And if you do not like the consequences, then “hard bananas” – it simply proves you want to massacre us, just as we said.’
    If anyone really cannot see why might be a reasonably sure way of reviving anti-Semitism, it seems to me that they are, to be blunt, plain thick.
    5. Another point relates to trauma. Of the figures I have listed, I do not know whether Postan or Gellner lost relatives in the Holocaust. Both Steiner’s parents died in the camps – one of his notable poems is an elegy for his father. So also did Stern’s grandparents, while his mother, aunt and uncle committed suicide. But however great the trauma was, it would never have occurred to me to regard this as calling radically into question the objectivity and sanity of Stern’s writings on literature and history.
    6. The way that Goldberg and his like write, however, is – quite properly – raising in people’s minds the possibility that the empowerment of Jews in the United States has been a total disaster. Moreover, it may turn out to have been a disaster, not simply for others, but for Jews themselves.
    The empowerment of people like Sir Michael Postan was, quite patently, of enormous value for Britain. There are obvious analogues in the United States – Stephen F. Cohen has been talking sense about both Soviet and post-Soviet Russia for decades. If however such people are effectively marginalised, as Cohen has been, and the Jews who actually influence matters see the world through a lens distorted by trauma, as Goldberg patently does, it is a very different story.
    In that case, an appropriate response might not be to get angry and incensed – but simply to suggest that people like Jeffrey Goldberg, and Paul Wolfowitz and Dennis Ross, and perhaps also Richard C. Haas should be provided with the very best of medical help. But they should be removed from positions where they can influence American foreign policy asap.
    And the same goes for their British analogues.

  38. Colonel Lang,
    On this point ‘richardstevenhack’ is talking completely nonsense – is simply out of date.
    The economist John Maynard Keynes was a complex figure, with good and bad sides.
    What however he said at the end of his famous 1936 ‘General Theory’ study remains very much to the point:
    ‘“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”’
    Likewise, intelligent economists who have actually read both Keynes and his opponents carefully – notably the former Bank of International Settlements Economic Adviser William White – have repeatedly pointed out that social systems are, to use the jargon, ‘non-linear’.
    If one wants analogies with physical systems, one should look at metereology – where small causes can have very large effects.
    Obviously, this is also true of military matters – part of the greatness of Clausewitz was his clear appreciation of this.
    Putting the different points together, one ends up with a centrally important conclusion.
    Much of the time, bad ideas triumph. Whether or not they do, however, is not preordained. As in battles, what appear to be strong positions may, if attacked intelligently, collapse rapidly.
    I remember a time when to get any of the people who later became central to ‘New Labour’ to say anything unpleasant about a trade union one had virtually to have a stand-up row. Also, when it appeared that the Soviet Union was a place where Marxist-Leninist dogma was uncontestable.
    In both cases, what appeared to be a strong position ended up collapsing, almost overnight.
    As the Victorian poet A.H. Clough put it ‘Say not the struggle naught availeth.’
    One often does not know whether one’s efforts are doomed to failure, or might, unexpectedly succeed.
    One simply has, as it were, to go on fighting, and tell defeatists to – jump in the lake.

  39. Babak Makkinejad says:

    In case you had not seen this when posted months ago:
    http://mondoweiss.net/2017/02/jews-iran-travelogue/
    The author is an Eastern European Jew.

  40. Nonsense. If all thought like that no one would get out of bed in the morning.
    There are a couple of problems with Prog world. The obvious one is that they are insulated from reality by the beliefs they’ve got themselves tangled up in. Cult followers are notoriously difficult to free, as so many desperate parents have found. The other more practical problem is that the more articulate Progs come from the wealthier end of society and are more likely to have safe jobs. So those more articulate ones tend to be insulated from the economic chill as well.
    Results? On the rare occasions a Prog does stick his or her head out the window and catches a glimpse of what’s coming down the road it’s a real shock. Can lead to defeatism.
    No need for it. Either you have a go at rolling back the dysfunction – yes, an uphill task at present – or you preserve an oasis of sanity until the cult has run its course. Or you could try both.

  41. DianaLC says:

    Yes, I do know about Islam’s use of many of the same stories as are in the Old Testament–including others. And many of the Muslim people I have met are nice, so I shouldn’t have lumped so many people together. Some of the Muslim men I have met try to convince me that I should consider their religion because they revere Mary more than Christianity does–at least Protestant Christianity.
    I do know the history of the beginning of Islam during the time that the Christian cities were fighting terrible wars over the exact nature of Christ, before they settled on the Nicene Creed. Perhaps I read a rather prejudicial text against Islam, but it seemed to me that the rise of Mohammed and Islam was propelled by politics and power at that time than more than by religion and that Mohammed himself was just an imitator. I admit that somehow his “religion” has survived and grown.
    I enjoyed G.E. Lessing’s 18th Century play “Nathan the Wise” in which Lessing does a very Enlightenment take on the three religions: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim and tells us just to think “our ring” is the original ring passed from the Father.
    And that is something each religious person from those groups should do. But for a true believer one must not “just think” the “ring” he/ahe possesses is the real ring. He/She must know it is in the depths of his very soul.
    I do know that the Iranians I have met are not religious and did flee the government of the ridiculous Shia leaders. I’ve enjoyed learning about the Persian Now Ruz celebration. I guess that is why I like them. It’s a nice celebration with a long history. I’ve read Persepolis and enjoyed it as a reminder of the revolution that meant they were placed under Shia rulers. I have rooted each time for the efforts to start a Green Revolution there.
    Maybe what I dislike about many of the Muslim students I have had are the men and their attitudes. I have met some who are not so bad, and I have met a few of the female students, though not many attend our schools where I have taught.
    I did have one Muslim male talk with me for a long time, as he was surprised I knew the difference between Shia and Sunni and some of the different subgroups. We had a long conversation about the Christian Reformation because he was so confused about the many different Christian denominations.
    But I have never met many Jewish people who are as fanatical as some of the Muslim men. Maybe it’s because I do not live on the East Coast and the Jewish people here — at least the ones I have met– while being religious and practicing their faith, aren’t as annoying about trying to change my faith.

  42. fanto says:

    Keith,
    easily many more names can be added,
    Sen Fulbright
    Sen Piercy
    Rep Findley
    Rep McKinney

  43. bluetonga says:

    Colonel Lang
    First of all thank you for relaying this paper from Phil Geraldi. The fact that theses issues are deemed such a taboo within the press or the blogs speaks volumes about the hazards they potentially present for their authors.
    Second, Giraldi writes that : “And some who are more perceptive will even begin to ask why a tiny client state has been allowed to manipulate and bring ruin on the world’s only super power”.
    Maybe a more relevant question would not relate to why but to how a tiny client state has been able to manipulate and bring ruin on the world’s only superpower.
    And the answer would be : through lobbying of course, that is, buying support and influences within the American governing circles. Without such institutionalized leniency towards mere corruption, none of this could happen.

  44. Will.2718 says:

    Don’t get the blue eyed stuff. Valerie as well as Paul Newman are of the Tribe. That’s what made her tweet powerful until she folded and recanted.

  45. Babak Makkinejad says:

    The Green Movement was confined to Tehran alone, other cities were not affected. In my opinion, the ideals of Islamic Rule and its realities have been a constant source of intellectual and religious challenge to Iranian people. It could be more decades before doctrinaire approaches are discarded; for many tens of millions of people, those approaches are the very core of Islam.

  46. Babak Makkinejad says:

    I think Byzantium would not have died if so many Churchmen were so intensely and emotionally not been vested in their theoretical disputes. Arabs brought a religion to the Levant that was close to Levantines. And in that religion, they interposed no intermediary between Man and God. They were like Protestants.

  47. Babak Makkinejad says:

    No Ruz, an ancient feast of the dead, was approporiated by both Islam and Din Behi. It shows the antiquity of religious phenomena on the Iranian plateau and its enduring relevance. Modern Iran is a country that exist due to Shia religion. Without it, she will disintegrate. And without Islam, there could be no Civilization or Culture from Atlas mountains to Java.

  48. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Rumi has a parable of the blind men, the elephant, and yhe dark room. The point, however, is not to be satisfied with partial and incomplete knowledge but rather to try to reconstruct the image of the elephant based on such incomplete understandings. That, to my knowledge, has never been attempted.

  49. Bandolero says:

    Huckleberry
    What you prescribe as medicine, calling out all Jews in America, is not only unjust, but it is also a self-harming strategy. Israel and the Israel lobby flourish from anti-semitism, because it’s the only justification they have for what they do.
    A much more just and promising strategy is to link up with jews who share the same view on Israel, the lobby and justice. A good example has Jonathan Cook just described from what happened in Britain. There, the Israel lobby is angry with Jeremy Corbyn, because he defies them on Palestine and, of course, namecalling him an anti-semite for that is a favorite method of the lobby.
    But then, there appeared now a group Jewish Voice for Labour – backing Corbyn.
    http://mondoweiss.net/2017/10/challenges-undermine-continues/
    Of course, Corbyn is left wing, while the US has a right wing government. But a similar strategy may also work on the right wing. I could bet many American jews agree that America first and crushing the stranglehold of the corrupt Israel lobby on American foreign politics is the right thing to do. Would there be now a group like “Jewish Patriots for America First” supporting Philip Giraldi I think it could make a difference in public debate.
    So, instead of “calling out” all American jews, a much more promising strategy would be to link up with those jews who share your political opinion about patriotism, Israel and the lobby.

  50. Babak Makkinejad says:

    It is not just the stories, the Cow chapter recapitulates the Torah and the Hagaddah. The portrait of Jesus in the Quran is close to Gnostic Christianity. There are also characters in the Quran that do not exist in the Old Testament, such as Hood and Khizr, the story of whose encounter with Moses has been widely interpreted.

  51. Jack says:

    David,
    Relating to non-linearity, Rudi Dornbusch, a German macroeconomist who was at MIT from the mid-70s to early 2000s, with whom I had many conversations, famously said, “In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.” Rudi had studied currency crises and the related social impacts and what he noted was that governments and monetary authorities always enacted expedient but adverse policies. In the short term the defectiveness of the policy does not show. Instead it invariably provided a boost like a jolt of caffeine. What he observed is that this led to more of it due to its expedience. And since deleterious effects did nit show up right away they would convince themselves this could continue to eternity and then a spark of loss of confidence and the edifice collapses. Like the final snowflake that triggers an avalanche.
    When you consider that the Swiss National Bank, conjures francs up with a keyboard stroke, converts it into dollars and now owns $80 billion of US publicly traded companies like Apple it is astounding, especially when you look at the size of its balance sheet relative to the size of Switzerland’s economy. Even more astounding is that the Bank of Japan will soon own all the bonds issued by the Japanese government. They already are a Top 10 holder of equity in all the companies in the Nikkei 100. At this rate the BoJ soon will essentially “nationalize” the most capitalized Japanese corporations. All ostensibly to increase the keynesian “aggregate demand” and generate inflation. Of course they have achieved neither but that only means to double down. I know Rudi would have his face in his hands. Ironically, it is the generation of his MIT students like Bernanke, Rogoff and Krugman who have architected these policies.

  52. Christian Chuba says:

    DianaLC (and Babak), as an American who attends an Evangelical Protestant Church, I have often marvelled at how the members of this group that go into politics embrace U.S. Exceptionalism. As a generalization, all of the fundamentalist Protestants believe in the fallen nature of man and how this nature plagues believers as well as non-believers. I’d even go as far to say that this was behind the schism between the Catholic Church and Lutheranism. To keep it simple the Catholics believe in Apostolic succession where God preserves the leadership of the Church. The Protestants believe in Sola Scriptura, that God only preserves the Bible and that individuals must check what they hear against what they read. The point is that Protestants, by nature, should be highly suspicious of concentrations of power and favor decentralization.
    Ah … but when it comes to foreign affairs the Protestants are more authoritarian than the Medieval Catholic Church. The U.S. causes the sun to rise and set, we alone know what is right and wrong, our absence from any location creates a vacuum because no one else is capable of self-governance. We are indispensable. That we Protestants, who mistrust our own govt, mercilessly inflicts them on the rest of the world, without even considering the possibility that local countries might have a better understanding of their own situation appalls me. How do people who mistrust human nature suddenly believe in their own infallibility?
    One of the reasons that I like to quote John Quincy Adams is because I believe people of that era were more in tune with this understanding of being suspicious, not just of other people, but of ourselves. He had the following insight before the U.S. was a world power (and was not yet driven mad by it). Putin is another person who understands this.

    JQC – “But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy…She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication…The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force…. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit”

    Sorry if I rambled, this has been a source of irritation for me. I don’t get why so many of my peers (if they are political) are so bloodthirsty, it’s unbecoming. Love the Catholic Church, they’ve been a force for peace and consistently argue for restraint.

  53. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Thank you.

  54. Fred says:

    Babak,
    Remind me of why Mehmet II came to Constantinople? Peaceful prozletization with 50,000 true believers?

  55. DH says:

    Absofrigginglutely.
    Sometimes, when I’m having an especially bad clothes day, I think, ‘somewhere in the universe, on some distant planet, what I am wearing is all the rage.’
    Rage against the dying of the light!

  56. DH says:

    SST is a piece of the puzzle that will hopefully lead the way out. It’s a battle for the control of tech (hacking) and communications (e.g., You Tube) from here on out. Whistle blowers and groups like Anonymous may be our only hope for breaking down nefarious governments controlled by true sociopaths.
    The question is can the effects of Mass Culture be undone. The masses have pretty much checked out.

  57. Babak Makkinejad says:

    And may I remind you of the Huns who destroyed the Classical Civilization in the Danube Basin, and the Venetians that broke the back of the Eastern Roman Empire?

  58. Printed it off. I could wish you had included in your all too brief summary a consideration of the emigre Jews who returned later to Germany. I’m not too impressed with how Adorno behaved, for example, either when he was in the States or when he returned. Perhaps that colours my view on the little I know of Adorno’s work. One gets the feeling though that German academia and German intellectual life generally never recovered its former pre-eminence.
    You mention of the emigres who came here – “Precisely because of this, such figures could bring together continental and British intellectual traditions.” I sensed this as a young man. I knew one or two such emigre Jews who’d stayed here. Not famous or even known about, but the sheer range of their scholarship was extraordinary.
    70 years of mea culpa has had in my view a disastrous effect on German politics. I can think of no other country that has focused so unremittingly and so exclusively on atrocities committed in its past. There is no other country that looks at its current politics through such a lens. I find that dangerous in that moderate politics doesn’t get a look in. Plenty of sensible moderates around but there’s no home for them in current German politics. If it stays like that then either the German people will disappear from history chanting Kumbaya as it goes. Or the spring will snap back too far the other way and it will return to Blut und Boden politics with a vengeance. We see ample evidence of both tendencies at present but so far no evidence of anything useful in between.

  59. Keith Harbaugh says:

    In case anyone is wondering, the column by Milbank was
    Pronouncing Blame on the Israel Lobby
    By Dana Milbank, 2006-08-29
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2006/08/29/pronouncing-blame-on-the-israel-lobby/34fd7807-dc31-4beb-b1f4-7186c7f8b949/
    in which Milbank wrote:

    This line of argument could be considered a precarious one for
    two blue-eyed men with Germanic surnames.

    My thought:
    Oh really?
    Is there something special about “blue-eyed men with Germanic surnames”?
    In an expression I learned in my WASPy childhood,
    “What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”
    So how about identifying the Jews at WaPo?
    So we can see the extent to which various arguments which disproportionately favor Jews
    are being propounded by, yes, Jews.
    After all, “Democracy dies in Darkness”, right, WaPo?

  60. DianaLC says:

    The problem I have with your comment is not that I disagree with you. Instead it’s that Evangelical churches should and can’t be lumped together as one group that thinks the same about these issues. In many Evangelical congregations, there are indeed Democrats as well as Republicans.
    In my own church background, as I mentioned, there ran a strong petist tone and a strong passivist tendency.
    I do agree that the Evangelicals we hear speaking the loudest are the ones whose churches I would not feel comfortable for me. However, I still see in them the same fervor that sent many Northern Protestants marching to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
    I stand firm, however, in believing churches should have no interest in politicas, Catholic or Protestant. The current Pope, in my opinion, has come close to showing socialistic tendencies. I know that is because of the poverty he witnessed in the country and part of the world where he lived before becoming Pope.

  61. DianaLC says:

    I understand your point about Islam’s similarities with Judaism.
    I am sure my original point was made based on the book, The Jesus Wars” It paints a picture of Mohammed as someone who found a way to ingratiate himself with Christians who were caught in the middle of some very brutal fighting between the different centers of Christianity as they fought over the nature of Christ: God in man, man and god, etc. (I know I am simplifying.) He gave these Christians refuge from the fighting and then slowly began to demand allegiance to him. (Again, I am writing from memory of something I read years ago.) Mohammed’s ascension seems an imitation, not a reality. And there you see my Christian prejudice.

  62. DianaLC says:

    Your description of Now Ruz is so different from the one my best Iranian friend provided me. She is, of course, and Iranian whose husband was for some reason forced to flee Iran and take asylum on this continent. She misses the country where she grew up very much. But I believe you are giving a Muslim view of Iran. I know the history a bit, and remember clearly the overthrow of the Shah. The Iranians here seem to be highly educated and from the wealthier families. So, I do understand you point about modern Iran and the Shia religion. But I don’t see the shia religion evident in my friends’ celebration of Now Ruz.

  63. DianaLC says:

    Protestants, as you imply, also do not have an intermediary between man and God. But the idea that the Catholics do not also feel that they can approach God without an intermediary is wrong. The Churchmen you speak of then and now are, in my mind, more like the Pharisees.
    Some of my favorite readings were the writings of what might be called Christian mystics: Julian of Norwich, Terese of Avila, Theresa of Lisieux, “Hildegard of Bingen. I would almost be tempted to add Simone Weil, who I know was Jewish but whose writings on Christ are beautiful.
    I have mentioned only female “mystics,” though I’ve read also many of the writings of the famous male “mystics.”
    The idea of an individual relationship with Christ is central, I believe, to Christianity. I know what you are implying is that the priests, cardinals, Pope, etc., seem to feel they are intermediaries and must be so.
    Do you not feel that Islam has not also put in hierarchies?

  64. Babak Makkinejad says:

    All the Saints that you mentioned were devout Catholics and not Protestants. Both Muslims and Jews learnt their mysticism from the Orthodox Christians.
    Islam has no hierarchy but we are living in truly historical times as a pseudo-Vatican is emerging among the Shia Muslims.
    It is not my place to comment on the rightfulness of the idea of Personal Relationship with God among Protestants; Octavio Paz traced the cavalier way in which North Americans walk all over foreigners without any regards for them precisely to this: “North American is absorbed in his conversation with God and does not hear others.” The entire essay is in “The Labyrinth of Solitude”.
    In Iran, those who argued that that one did not need either Tradition or Reason to understand the Quran were Mujahedin Khalq Iran; which were destroyed.
    I could not agree, in principle, with the position of Wahabis and Mujahedeen, since the Quran is a very dense text and cannot be understood by simple or feeble minds. Often, the meaning of the verse depends on how one interprets a single word. That interpretation, in turn, depends on one’s knowledge of history, philology, metaphysics, and sciences as well as one’s disposition (expansive soul vs a mean one).
    In regards to the Catholic Church, the priests, as far as I can tell, not only administer the rites of that religion but also forgive sins on behalf of Christ.

  65. Babak Makkinejad says:

    That is because they are largely an ignorant lot, they are not educated in humanities and do not know the history of their own country and culture.
    The original religion of all mankind was ancestor worship; 6 of the items on the No Ruz table are similar to the one setup for ancestor worship in the Far East. Muslims put the Quran there, Zoroastrians put Avesta etc. The festival predates Islam or Zoroastrian religion.
    The anti-religious people replace the Quran with the collected poems of Hafiz; another ridiculous pose by an ill-educated lot; for his poetry is suffused with Islamic learning and world view.
    The Azeris in Iran have a culture that has more in common with that of Turkic Central Asians than with Persians. Yet they are more committed to the idea of Iran than anyone else is. Because they are all fierce Shia Muslims. That is why they stay in Iran.
    Conversely, 85% of the population of Bukhara and 80% of population of Samarqand are Persian speakers. But they are Sunni Muslims that have no affinity for Iran. Likewise in much of Afghanistan.

  66. Babak Makkinejad says:

    The Prophet must mentioned in the Quran, after the Prophet of Islam, is Moses. You can see the influence of Judaic legalism in its Laws as well. The Gnostic Christianity is the next element in the Quran. Quran, as it stands, is more expansive than either Judaism or Christianity in as much as it accepts a few other religions as People of the Book.

  67. Don’t forget the two CNN reporters, one who criticized the Israelis and the other who showed compassion in reporting the death of a Lebanese Shiite cleric, and were put on the next train out of CNN land.

  68. Pat Lang,
    To the main point of Phi Giraldi’s column I’d add that most of the “springbutts” and “jacks in the Box” who leaped to their feet during Netanyahu’s speech at the joint session of congress were not doing so from a love of him and of Israel. Rather, they are all well aware of the score-keeping that records participation, applause, and facial expressions. In other words, a lot of the enthusiasm was out of fear.
    WPFIII

  69. mike says:

    WPFIII –
    Fear? The ‘springbutts’ I have known were bootlickers and arse-kissers. I expect the ones who leaped to their feet praising NuttyYahoo were looking for a pat on the head and maybe a larger donation next time.

  70. EO,
    You raise a lot of relevant issues.
    As to Jews who returned, one I knew personally – who returned towards the end of his career, if only briefly – is interesting.
    In 2011, two German scholars, Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer, published a study entitled ‘Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying, the Secret Second World War Tapes of German POWs.’ It is based upon the transcripts of the bugging operations carried out by the British at Trent Park and elsewhere, and the equivalent American facilities.
    Unfortunately I have only had time to dip into it. However, I can see that the materials are fascinating, because they provide an extended recorded of those involved both in the fighting – and also atrocities against civilians – talking among themselves, together with what looks like some very thought-provoking analysis.
    A crucial role in the bugging operations was played by young Jewish refugees. It is was described by a lady called Helen Fry, in a book published in 2012 entitled ‘The M Room: Secret Listeners Who Bugged the Nazis.’
    In it she writes: ‘Within the confines of the basement of Trent Park in the M Room, listener Peter Ganz heard the admissions of guilt by the Generals and details of war crimes against the Jewish people.’
    As it happens, I know that this is not how Peter Ganz thought, as he was the father of a schoolfriend of mine.
    Both I and another friend who knew the family quite well recall him saying, in moments of frustration with academic life – he became a scholar of medieval German – that he wished he had been a general.
    We didn’t, at the time, know the background. We did know that he had been in Buchenwald for six weeks after Kristallnacht, had subsequently made it over here by a stroke of luck, and had then been interned on the Isle of Man. As to the rest of the war, we understood he had spent it digging in the Pioneer Corps.
    Only after his death did I learn that he had been less than candid – and also some relevant history. His home city of Mainz, together with the other Middle Rhine cities of Worms and Speyer, housed what are among the earliest documented Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe, and, from the tenth century on, played an important role in shaping ‘Ashkenazi’ culture.
    But then, his family had taken advantage of the possibilities of assimilation opened up by the German Enlightenment. So Peter was not only an agnostic: He had been brought up as a Lutheran, his grandfather – who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944 – having converted. His father had served with distinction in the Imperial Germany Army in the First World War.
    In the early part of its successor, people like him ended up wanting to fight in the forces of their country’s erstwhile enemies. But it was judged that German refugees – the group now sometimes referred to as ‘the King’s Most Loyal Enemy Aliens’ – could possibly be used as a cover for infiltrating spies: hence the internment in the Isle of Man, and the initial restriction to service in the Pioneer Corps.
    In some ways however this turned out to be fortunate. Those involved in the bugging operations required complete fluency in German – necessary if one was to be able to master the slangs used by soldiers, sailors and airmen – and to have a supply of such people available in the Pioneer Corps was a help. Moreover, they really were ‘loyal’ – even more than with Bletchley Park, those involved kept silent for decades.
    My schoolfriend’s young brother wrote a radio play, which he called ‘Listening to the Generals’, based on his father’s experiences at Trent Park, and using key sections of the transcripts. This was followed by another, ‘Nuclear Reactions’, dealing with the bugging of the German nuclear scientists at Farm Hall, which was going at the time when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in which Peter Ganz was also involved.
    In the first, if my memory serves me right, the character based on his Peter is telling his English girlfriend, who may have been modelled on his wife Rosemary, about arriving at Buchenwald.
    The utter ludicrousness of the situation lay in the fact that the Jews who were being imprisoned there had nothing in common other than some mysterious ‘blood.’ Precisely what they did not constitute was some kind of ‘people’ or ‘community’, with whom loyalties to fellow Jews were the be-all-and-end-all. Had they done so, the ‘Shoah’ would still have been unutterably atrocious – but not the simple exercise in senselessness that it was.
    At the end of his career, Peter Ganz went back to Germany, as Resident Fellow at the Herzog August Library at Wolfenbüttel in Lower Saxony, a massive and very famous collection of medieval and early modern texts, which is also a major centre of interdisciplinary scholarly research.
    With regard to the Holocaust, as is very evident from the Neitzel and Welzer study, Peter Ganz was in the odd position of having heard a great deal about it, before almost anybody else in Britain – but of course, not being able to talk about what he had heard. That said, as the study brings out, there is an enormous amount in the transcripts relating to violence against all kinds of people.
    There is also a very great deal about the very wide range of attitudes to Hitler among senior German officers – which included the most complete and utter contempt.
    Perhaps if dolts like Jeffrey Goldberg read some of the material dealing with the treatment of Soviet soldiers, and civilians, in the study by Neitzel and Welzer, they might have a little more understanding of the complexities of Ukraine. Indeed, it might be helpful if General Dunford read the book.
    A sentence in the conclusion to the ‘Soldaten’ study is I think to the point: ‘Modernity’s faith in its own distance from violence is illusionary.’
    This bears upon the question you raised about the absence of a middle ground – which applies not only in Germany, but elsewhere. A revival of ‘blut und Boden’ politics, rather obviously, seems to me fraught with unpleasant potentialities – (mild irony alert.)
    But the notion that one can simply regard all the elements that went into Nazism as irretrievably compromised by the association also seems to me plain dangerous – partly for the reasons you give. And the possibility of processes of polarisation developing an unstoppable momentum is hardly restricted to Germany.
    Whether the fact that Peter Ganz edited the lectures ‘On the Study of History’ by Jacob Burckhardt has any relation to the history I have sketched out I cannot say. However, from the little I know of that thinker, whom I have never read, the combination of the strong sense of the value of the best things in Western civilisation, combined with an unhysterical scepticism about ‘progressive’ optimism, is much to the point.
    (Perhaps Francis Fukuyama needs a ‘crash course’ – it might help emancipate him from the influence of that dubiously reconstructed erstwhile fascist, Leo Strauss, who is not worthy to lick the boots of Peter Ganz, let alone Burckhardt.)
    But one of the things I learnt from Peter Ganz was that the notion that the Shoah is somehow a necessary and natural culmination of German, or Western, history is nonsense. And so also is the notion of some kind of cohesive Jewish ‘community’ or ‘people.’
    In the piece by Paul Starobin from which I quoted, the following remarks about the attitude of Leon Wieseltier to Goldberg appear:
    ‘He sees Goldberg not as gatekeeper to the pro-Israel tent but as a would-be, journalistic equivalent of the mashgiah. That’s the Hebrew word for the supervisor – a rabbi or someone else of impeccable credentials – who makes sure everything going out of the kitchen at a kosher restaurant is truly kosher. “Goldberg is a little bit in the business of deciding who is kosher and who is not,” Wieseltier says. The problem, he explains, is that Goldberg fails to qualify for the role: “He’s a blogger. He’s not an analyst, he’s not a scholar.”’
    The more serious problem is quite different. If Jews whose heart is in the ghetto attempt use the Shoah as a source of moral blackmail, both against the ‘goyim’ and also against other Jews who do not want to be part of a ghetto, this could end very badly.

  71. Bandolero,
    A follow-up by Jonathan Cook to the piece to which you linked has been posted on the ‘Mondoweiss’ site.
    (See http://mondoweiss.net/2017/10/continues-asserting-semitism/ .)
    It is I think an open question whether the kind of non-Zionist Jewish identity capable of making an organisation like Jewish Voice for Labour effective is powerful enough to do so.
    Some time back, I was talking to old friends – the husband a gentile, the wife Jewish, with a grandfather and father who did good service to this country – about Michael Oren’s attempt to persuade David Rothkopf that all Jews shared a common ‘destiny’, and had a common ‘story.’
    To anyone who has known Jewish refugees to Britain and their descendants, this is patent piffle – both because they came from radically different locations, geographically, socially, ideologically – and because people from the same location often went in radically different directions.
    However, there has been a strong tendency for the most interesting Jews to ‘marry out.’ In part this is because they were assimilated, or assimilating, in their own societies – a German Jew who, but for 1933, would very likely have married a pure-blooded ‘Aryan’ but managed to make it over here quite naturally marries an English girl.
    There are many other elements – among them, the fact that people have tended to marry partners they meet at work. A predictable consequence, however, is that one ends up with diverse groups of Jews, or part Jews, who are not in any sense simply ‘tribal’, and whose complexities do not lend themselves to political activism – and a Jewish ‘community’, which is tribal, and extremely activist.
    A distinct story has been the increasing tendencies, in American and British élites, towards what might be called ‘narcissistic meritocracy’ and ‘imbecile clerisy’. Unsurprisingly, like their ‘goy’ counterparts, the Jews who exercise influence tend to be ‘narcissistic meritocrats’ and ‘imbecile clerics.’
    Utopian tendencies common among this group have found a natural expression in the ‘invade the world, invite the world’ agenda. The ‘secular cult of the Shoah’ has been central to it.
    Predictably, a backlash has been building, which the ‘narcissistic meritocrats’ and ‘imbecile clerics’ could not see coming – and cannot understand, now it has come. One manifestation of this is the attempt to blame Trump’s victory, and a lot else on Russian interference. Another is the attempt by ‘New Labour’ to exploit the taboo against antisemitism against Corbyn.
    To equate opposition to Zionism with antisemitism, however, is to encourage the latter. If the assertion is supposed to mean that, generally, people who oppose Zionism do so because they dislike Jews, it is, as a general statement, quite patently empirically false.
    If however it is supposed to mean that the definition of a Jew is as belonging to a ‘people’ whose ‘homeland’ is Israel, then it is necessarily to raise questions about the loyalty of Jews to other countries. Such questions are containable, so long as the interests of Israel as perceived by its leadership and the interests of those other countries are not seen as being in conflict.
    The description given by NancyK accurately reflects the situation here. In my generation – very loosely, that of the children of refugees from Germany and Czechoslovakia, and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those from the former Russian Empire – there are many who are caught in a peculiarly painful tension.
    An identification with Israel and the fate of fellow Jews which is hard to surrender is in tension with repugnance for what that country has become. With that situation I find it very easy to sympathise.
    As to kind of people who are trying to use the antisemitism taboo against Corbyn – who incidentally is not an enthusiasm of mine – they are a danger to others, and also themselves. Frankly, many of the people who write for the ‘Jewish Chronicle’ now seem to like the ‘enemy within’ – Jonathan Freedland of the ‘Guardian’, who features prominently in the second Jonathan Cook piece, being a case in point.
    There are many reasons why what was once a great liberal paper now operates as part of a kind of ‘Ministry of Truth’. One should not exaggerate the influence of people like Freedland. But, as with the ‘Financial Times’ and the BBC, it is part of the story.
    As to the younger generations, however, what I think is happening is that people who do not want to accept the kind of definition of Jewish identity put forward by Freedland and his like commonly, rather than attempting to defend an alternative version of Jewish identity, simply distance themselves.

  72. Jack,
    I very strongly agree with all of that.
    There is a lot more to be said here.
    One small point. In relation to central banking, I think there are complicated problems about the proper role of academics.
    A central banker should be able to be an effective ‘consumer’ of academic research.
    What should never happen is that an academic whose career has been built on a specific interpretation of crucial issues to do with the effects of monetary policy in the past is appointed to a key central banking role.
    Particularly as ‘counterfactual’ issues are commonly imponderable, such interpretations may provide a questionable basis for policy.
    But someone whose career has been built on a specific interpretation will find it difficult to rethink, because that would call the value of everything they have done into question.
    We end up with Bernanke putting forward absurd versions of ‘trickledown’ theories.
    As a way of destabilising social systems, monetary policies whose actual effect is massively to increase the wealth of the heavily ‘asset-rich’, while failing to stimulate aggregate demand, seem extremely promising.
    This is all the more so as people who have a limited stock of assets, on which they are dependent for their retirement, are going to be extremely afraid that Bernanke-style monetary policy simply means that, if they join in the party, it will end as it did on the two previous occasions.
    A further problem is that, although hardly anybody will say it publicly, very many people are conscious that not only Bernanke but a lot of other economists involved are Jewish.

  73. Babak Makkinejad,
    Thanks for that reference, which I read with great interest. As it is the end of a long day, I cannot immediately respond properly.
    However, I was interested to see that the first commenter was Stephen Shenfield. You might be interested to Google the name – he is an extremely interesting figure.

  74. DianaLC says:

    I believe you are getting too involved in your understanding of English terms. In the third article of the Nicene (Apostolic) Creed, we pronounce the sentence:”I believe in the Holy Spirit, the One Holy Universal Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection of the dead.”
    The pilgrims, and the Puritans (I believe) often used the word “saint” simply to describe a true believer.
    Have you not heard of the Ecumenical movement which recently occurred in the Christian church?
    Often, people who are Christian choose the churches they attend based on the service in the church–whether it “speaks” to them the best. Most Catholics are Catholic because of their family traditions and the fact that the Catholic service and rules, so to speak, are familiar to them and have played a large part in how they have individually learned to approach worship.
    The same is true fro me and my Protestant background. I am not happy in the more modern “praise worship” services with the happy standing and singing of modern songs. I think these are churches that are descendants of the Methodist tradition.
    My church comes from the Calvinist tradition. I was raised in it ,, and its style is what brought me to God as a child, so I like it best.
    It does not matter to me that the people/mystics who writings I’ve read are Catholic.
    The Reformation happened a long time ago and was bloody and horrid, just like the fighting now between the Shia and the Sunni forms of Islam. You are behind the times, I think.
    But, if you do want to understand why so many American young men answer the call to war, please read the lyrics (there are several versions) of “The Battle Hymn of the REpublic.” The song called many young Christian men to war because they were truly fighting in many cases for Christ.
    The Christians who defend so vehemently our Constitution and the mentions of God in that feel that God is central to our nation. Most will also fight for people of other religions to worship the way they have come to understand God.
    As a Christian, I know only one God Whom I come to in three paths, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost/Spirit. I am not going to quibble about how any other religion pictures God.
    But if a religion seems to say that young men must behead people, rape people, commit suicide for their God, I will say that I don’t really believe that they have truly understood who God is.

  75. DianaLC says:

    Thank you for the explanation. Al I can say is my very limited experience in regard to Iran. I very much liked the way my friend described Now Ruz as she understands it.
    In some reagard, because of the time of year in which it is celebrated, it reminded me of the Easter traditions and celebrations we have for the resurrection of Christ.

  76. DianaLC says:

    You do know that the Gnostic Tradition (Manichean) is considered by most Christians as a heresy?

  77. DianaLC says:

    I sympathize with your feelings. I, too, am more inclined to ask that our politicians think ten times before sending our young men to war. I am from the Vietnam generation. My brother, several cousins, many, many of my classmates were caught up in that conflict. Many, whose parents weren’t wealthy enough to send them to college to avoid the draft, enlisted in an attempt to “choose” the branch of the service and the likelihood of being able to avoid the worst of it. Some were drafted and sent to the worst parts of it.
    Lately, the fight of against communism is not the main impetus for going to war, as it was in Vietnam. (My grandparents and great-grandparents fled the Bolsheviks, so I do know why some in my family chose to go.) Now it seems the fight against radical Islam has taken central stage. The attack on 9/ll brought back I think much of the same fervor for fighting that was evident in the thousands upon thousands of Christians (mostly Protestant) who died in the Civil War.
    Go to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and study it’s verses. It often seems to me there is something of a religious bent to these modern wars.
    On the other hand, the cynic in me–an ex-public school teacher–sometimes makes me think that these young men raised up on sports every season of the year, listening to coaches who can seem “bloodthirsty” in their rhetoric, and learning to like the adulation when they “win” their games just can’t give up the fighting for a chance to “win.”
    Mostly, though, I like young American men who are raised in the churches. I would prefer to believe they are signing up to fight for what they believe is “right.” And perhaps that is what the Protestant leaders feel also.
    I just guess at these things. I am more baffled by the people in those places where our young men go to fight and die. Why can’t they find a way to join the modern world? I would prefer they fight for a better life for themselves. I know that they face enormous obstacles for doing that.
    As you can tell, I don’t have real answers either.

  78. Babak Makkinejad says:

    “The Battle Hymn of Republic” was an expression of the religious fervor of Puritans in the North who then proceeded to destroy the Confederacy.
    So, what I am hearing from you, is that Puritans are alive and well in contemporary America.
    Which jibes with I have heard of others – they are also evidently behind all those kitschy “Prayer Breakfasts”.
    The fighting between Shia and Sunni has been going for centuries, it gave birth to modern Iran. And as the old Kindergarten saying goes: “They started it.”
    I think that is how many of the Orthodox view the Catholics and that Church.
    I have heard of the ecumenical movement, there is a form of it in Islam as well. The best one can expect from such movements is to be able to cynically discuss this or that religious topic without getting angry or upset. But even that requires an enormous amount of self-confidence.
    I think, in as far as your statement to me: “…God is central to our nation” goes, you and your nation are a new comer to all of this; before Christianity existed, or the United States, the Great King had invoked God in his inscriptions. You guys do not have a monopoly on this.
    I think the idea of defending US Constitution, by Christians or others, is just fine and dandy; but why do you guys have to defend it by bombing other countries? Say Libya? Did not Jesus state that he has no enemies?
    Your last paragraph, I suppose, means that you and Calvinist know God. Rather funny, coming from you whose religion contains the parable of the child, the Ocean, and the vase.
    It is like the man who claims that he knows women…just as much worthy of credit.

  79. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Easter was modeled after No Ruz, like so many other elements of the Din Behi that were incorporated into Christianity.

  80. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Of course I know that.
    I also know that the Catholic Church, the only religion on Earth in which Religious Serenity obtains, considers all of Protestants to be outside of Church and in Schism.
    My view, as a good cynic and a practical man, is to leave the adjudication of all such issues to God.

  81. Babak Makkinejad says:

    You wrote:
    “I am more baffled by the people in those places where our young men go to fight and die. Why can’t they find a way to join the modern world?”
    It reminds me of what this American Professor wrote – going into Iraq with the conquering armies –
    “I am a neocon that got mugged by Reality.”
    Like I wrote to the German commentator called LeaNder; you do not need to have any interactions whatsoever with Muslims of any kind. Or, like my dead German friend said, accept Muslims the way they are or leave them alone.
    You are not going to gain anything on your current course, just more war and more bloodshed.

  82. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Castellio:
    Are you paying attention to the conversation between the Puritan and the Partisan of Ali on this thread?
    That is why we are in a religious war.

  83. Jack says:

    David,
    Another important MIT academic is Stanley Fisher. He was born in now Zambia, and did his initial studies at the London School of Economics and then went to MIT fir his Ph.D, where he was a professor from the mid-70s to the mid-80s. In my personal opinion, a staunch zionist. He co-authored with Rudi Dornbusch a textbook on macroeconomics. Bernanke,Olivier Blanchard, Greg Mankiw, Fred Mishkin, and Dave Romer were his doctoral students. Fisher has been at the top echelons of “government sponsored” financial institutions as the chief economist of the World Bank, a managing director of the IMF and the Governor of the Bank of Israel before being nominated as the Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve by Obama. Please note also the MIT cohort of Bernanke include Mario Draghi. When Bob Rubin and Larry Summers worked with Bill Clinton and the Republicans in Congress to repeal Glass-Steagall and essentially get the public to underwrite Wall St speculation, Fisher provided the theoretical justifications. He was rewarded when he became Vice Chairman of Citi. Bob Rubin, Clinton’s Treasury Secretary was also jewish. He resigned after the repeal Glass-Sreagall to join the board of Citi. Previously he was the CEO of Goldman Sachs. I can go on, particularly how Brooksley Born was ridiculed by Rubin, Summers and Greenspan when her hair was on fire as derivatives were made completely opaque by Clinton & Congress. The point I’m making is the connections between the economic and financial elite and the resulting groupthink as well as the nexus with big speculative pools of capital, where they had a personal financial interest. Note who these people are and note their zionist sympathies.
    What I find fascinating is how both the left and the right for their own ideological reasons believe in more government intervention, while those chartered with the management of the governmental and related financial institutions are this narrow coterie, where personal conflict of interest is at the center of policy.

  84. Sam Peralta says:

    David & Jack
    A very interesting conversation. I’d like to chime in a little bit. I work at a macro fund and macro-economic trends including monetary & government fiscal policies inform our investment strategy. I can say with no hesitation that the experimental monetary policies of the major central banks (Fed, ECB, BoE, BoJ, PBoC) over the past 8 years have been nothing short of extraordinary. Average citizens just cannot grasp how extraordinary this monetary experiment is. Take a look at this chart.
    https://mishgea.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/eurozone-junk-bonds.png
    European junk bonds are trading at a yield below US Treasuries! This is how crazy it has become.
    Ireland issued yesterday €4 billion of 5 year notes, at a yield below zero, down from the 17% yield their 5 year paper sold at 6 years ago without QE. This placement was 2.5x oversubscribed! I can assure you negative yielding Irish 5 year paper is not bought to hold. It’s bought to mark up and resell to the ECB, the one and only buyer.
    Just the ECB and the BoJ are creating out of thin air Euro & Yen, and then purchasing financial assets to the tune of $200 billion a month!!
    In macroeconomic financial terms we are living in unprecedented times.

  85. Jack and Sam,
    I came across what seems to me a lucid formulation in an interview given in February last year by the former BIS chief economist, William White, who I think has featured in discussions of these matters on SST previously.
    ‘In a way, I think the economists have made what the philosophers would call a profound ontological error. They have assumed that the economy is understandable and they have therefore assumed that if they can understand it they can control it.
    ‘And I guess the point is – and this is the ontological error – what you can understand about a system depends upon its nature and the nature of the economy … and all the interactions between the real and the financial side are in constant change … constant evolution. Systems like that cannot be completely understood and they certainly can’t be completely controlled so this is a fundamental mistake that I think the economists and modelers have made.’
    (See https://www.financialsense.com/contributors/william-white-oecd/debt-worse-2007 .)
    I think different versions of this mistake have appeared in a range of different contexts since the end of the Cold War.
    Another salient example is Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ nonsense – and the concomitant assumption that it was possible to reconstruct the economic, social and political systems of a whole range of countries on the model of contemporary United States and Western Europe.
    This involved two assumptions which, if one thinks of it, are remarkable: that the kind of stability which had been achieved in the post-war West can be replicated in very different social situations, and that it is necessary durable in the West.
    An underlying recurrent feature is hubris.
    One result is that, starting off from a propensity grossly to underestimate the extent to which economic and social systems can break down, people have been driven into a bizarre situation where the expedients to which they end up resorting have aggravated sources of instability.
    A bitterly ironic result is that they may have ended up with good reasons, as well as bad ones, for refusing to own up to how unstable the system is. If indeed ‘average citizens’ grasped quite how ludicrous the current situation with negative interest rates has become, they might panic – so triggering systemic collapse.
    The way it is still assumed that the taboo against antisemitism can be used to ‘control the narrative’ in Western countries, in the face of challenges like that in Giraldi’s article, may also be a case of hubris run amuck.
    In relation to the role of influential Jews in the recent catastrophic errors in Western economic policy, as well as foreign policy, a lot of people I think actually ‘note who these people are and note their zionist sympathies’ – but simply say nothing in public; and may indeed repress their thoughts in their own minds.
    Unarticulated, however, I think a process is happening in the minds of other people here, which is certainly happening in mine, which I think needs to be brought out into the open.
    Perhaps this is best done by an attempt at humour. It is as though one heard the voice of an elderly relative from many years ago – sounding somewhat plaintive, with a hint of petulance:
    ‘But David, I always told you that the primary loyalty of Jews was to other Jews. And you wouldn’t listen. You thought I was an antediluvian old bigot – I know you were too polite to say so, and jollied me along, but I could read it in your face.
    ‘But look – they say it themselves. The two most influential Jewish journalists in the United States, they tell us, are Jeffrey Goldberg and Peter Beinart. OK, Beinart isn’t as bad as Goldberg. But do you seriously think any “goy” should trust him? Are you out of your mind? Have you read what he writes?’
    (See http://mondoweiss.net/2016/11/goldberg-important-journalist/ ; http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/criticize-israel-beinart/ .)
    As it happens, it remains the case that, as a general claim, the case that ‘tribalism’ is a feature of all Jews remains BS. The difficulty is that there is clearly a very significant body of Jews, and those among the whom influential, in whom it patently is a problem.
    Such people, moreover, clearly characteristically think that their power position is sufficient to marginalise challenges from people like Giraldi with the familiar smear tactics.
    It may be that this is not a case of ‘hubris.’ However, I think it would be in the interest of Jews, as well as the rest of us, if a lot of people were more aware of alternative possibilities than Goldberg and Beinart – not to speak of Dennis Ross – appear to be.
    The pattern common characteristic in ‘non-linear’ systems, whereby an apparent stability lasts a long time, while pressures are building up which can then produce very rapid change, which Rudiger Dornbusch so aptly characterises, can apply to systems of belief, as well as economic systems.
    People should have learnt more from the collapse of the Soviet system.

  86. DianaLC says:

    We “guys” were, in many ways horrified by what happened in Libya. You might recall that Hillary Clinton, the then SOS, was largely responsible for that. And it was an operation that supported by the CIA because it included gun running–from the not-so-secret CIA Annex.
    The activities of the CIA are often not supported by the Constitution. It’s a common problem that arises. And the American people are often quite upset by that fact. There is a difference between being upset with the CIA’s activities and being supportive of our individual CIA operatives who are serving their country.
    We “guys” have many different points of view about our foreign involvement in many places. I personally was horrified by the Iraq War. I was young in college during the Vietnam War, another controversial war. I thought it was wrong, but I had classmates, cousins, and a brother who were serving in various branches of the military during a time when there was a draft. So, naturally, I supported my friends, cousins, and brother. I was not particularly happy with the young men in college whose parents could afford to sent hem there so they could avoid the draft, though they were not very interested in studying in many cases. I have often hoped that all the ones who ran to Canada to avoid the draft are still there being cowards for Canada.
    Do you not also see that the American public often is divided in opinion about these foreign involvements?
    All I am saying about the young men and women who now volunteer to join the military and go to serve in these foreign entanglements is that they are doing it because they do believe it is the right thing to do. They like our freedoms, and they would prefer that other people could also have our freedoms: e.g., the freedom of young girls to attend school, the freedom of the Coptic Christians to exist, as well as the Yazidis. Those are just a very few examples.
    The Union Army did prevent the Confederate states from leaving the country, mostly because of the slavery issue. Then years later the country had to correct the segregationist laws, the Jim Crow laws. The country had grown to the point that it had to address the idea of slavery. And the idea now is as it should have been from the beginning that no man or woman should ever be a slave. And I should remind you that Muslims were involved in the slave trade also. I do not now believe that very many Southerners would want to leave the U.S. Only the idiot progressive socialistic nit wits in places like California do. I, myself, would leave if the country did become a socialist country or a country ruled by a fascist leader, religious or otherwise.
    Our democracy is flawed because we are human and by definition flawed. But socialism and communism is not defensible to us, just as autocratic rule by religious leaders or fascist leaders is not.
    Instead, I remember being the lay reader one Sunday long ago in my church. I stood at the pulpit and was about to read my assigned passage. From that pulpit I had a wonderful view of our two gigantic stained glass windows which were depictions of Christ as the Good Shepherd and Christ as the Light of the World. The people in the pews would have to turn around to see them.
    I had just read a news article about how our soldiers who were there then during the first Gulf War (Desert Storm) had to close themselves up in a hot tent and not let the “locals” see them at worship, how the women had to hide their hair,etc. It had bothered me that they had to hide their beliefs.
    So before I read my passage, I asked the congregation to please remember our soldiers in their prayers.
    The sense is often that Christ’s admonition to His followers at the end of the opening Beatitudes passage of the Sermon on the Mount that they should be the “Salt of the earth” and the “Light of the world” is why many join. In that first Gulf War it seemed to me that the actions of a Muslim nation against another Muslim nation was unfair and wrong. Perhaps it was not our job to correct that. And it definitely was also because of our earlier dealing with Hussein because he was an enemy of Iran that we felt guilty in some regard.
    I just think that we try hard to do what is right for the PEOPLE. Our corrupt leaders may be making corrupt decisions, but I do not blame the soldiers themselves. In most cases they are the men and women who come back and who do act as the salt of our earth and the light of their local part of the world.
    I would really appreciate it if “the guys” in the Muslim countries could finally find some way to quit causing problems also.
    I am, myself, more inclined to be libertarian in regard to foreign entanglements–meaning I would in most cases stay out of them. It’s often those in high government positions who might be more concerned about financial entanglements and such that we get involved.
    The “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the lyrics of which are totally religious and which really refer to Christ’s presence with the soldiers, was an inspiration for many young men fighting to free slaves, and that is a good cause, just as it is to free young women from total male dominance and young boys from the possibility that their parents will set them up to be suicide bombers (perhaps to get the “reward” for doing so). That was my point for referring to that song as a possible explanation of why our young men and women join the military, especially those raised in an Evangelical tradition.
    Constantly repeating “Death to America” is not a way to earn my sympathy for the religious leaders of Iran or for the people who also repeat it.
    Maybe the Muslim world feels that the Jews should not have been given a nation after the Holocaust, but it was done and Israel as a nation now does exist. Perhaps there are people in the ME who need to get over it also and adjust their attitudes about forcing their religious practices on the rest of the world.

  87. DianaLC says:

    Well, I don’t see it at all your wasy about our Easter celebrations. Mine memories are all of the symbol of the “empty” cross, the cross of Christ resurrected. The day was centered around church and family gatherings, and included the Eucharist, of course.
    The spring foods and the greetings from friends and family and gifts of food and flowers are things that can , of course, seem to harken back to pagan celebrations at that time of year. The Palm Sunday before was the Sunday our young people were confirmed in the church. My confirmation was and is special to me. It was a religious event for me.
    I’ve studied in depth classical mythology and other religions. Yes, of course one can find similarities in all those practices to current religions.
    This conversation between you and I was started to let you know that Evangelicals are indeed religious people, not just war mongers as you seem to think of them.

  88. DianaLC says:

    That does seem to be the way of Mohammed from the very beginning.
    By always leaving them alone, however, it might be a dangerous as leaving alone an approaching mass of army ants or a swarm of locusts or killer bees, etc.
    The Muslims seem to want to have traffic with us “infidels.” Maybe they should leave US alone, too.

  89. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Well, that is acceptable. In fact, that is what Ayatollah Khomeini once said: “What kind of relationship can there be between us (lamb) and US (wolfe)?”
    At any rate, it is the Christian armies there in In the Middle East and not Muslim Armies in North America.

  90. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Thank you and regrettably I have now been confirmed in the opinion that you have imputed to me.

  91. Babak Makkinejad says:

    This is a fine apologia with which, however, I cannot agree. Bu

  92. Keith Harbaugh says:

    There is a book which provides context for the Giraldi situation, both the substance of his argument that was so controversial and the overwrought response to that argument.
    That book is
    Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History
    Wikipedia, Amazon
    by Norman G. Finkelstein.
    I cannot recommend it highly enough.
    It addresses just about all the topics relevant to Giraldi’s situation:
    the history of Israel’s relations to the Palestinians,
    the history of the efforts of American Jews to get America to engage in acts beneficial to Israel but harmful to the U.S.,
    and the efforts of American Jews to prevent anyone from pointing out the last point.
    In particular, Alan Dershowitz, no less, threatened a lawsuit to attempt to prevent this book from being published.
    Could there be a stronger recommendation for the book?
    From the Wikipedia description is:

    In this book he analyses “The Not-So-New “New Anti-Semitism”” from published sources.
    Finkelstein argues that the spectre of a “new anti-semitism”
    has been invented by supporters of Israel
    to brand any serious criticisms of Israel’s human rights abuses as anti-semitism.
    The aim, Finkelstein contends, is
    to silence criticisms of Israeli policies and
    to provide a cover for that country’s expansionistic and illegal policies in the Palestinian territories.

    Sound familiar?

  93. I missed your reply earlier and have just seen it now. Have again printed it off. It’ll remind me how much I don’t know and prompt me to get to know more.
    ” Moreover, they really were ‘loyal’ – even more than with Bletchley Park, those involved kept silent for decades.”
    I had a relative who spent part of WW2 in Bletchley Park. Kept silent for it must have been the best part of half a century. Didn’t tell any of us, didn’t even tell her husband. She said a little when the books started to come out, but even then little more than the fact she’d been there.
    Very sensible. If you don’t know what’s got out best to shut up about the lot of it. But our tradition of omerta means a lot of oral history is being lost. The anti-Wilson efforts. NI. Hope they’re keeping at least some of it on file.
    The “complexities of the Ukraine” have by now, I think, become apparent even to the non-specialist. The similar complexities of the Crimea not so much. I’ve only picked up on that recently. Stalin seems to be getting a make-over at present and the hagiographers are bringing the facts out if only by excusing them.
    33-45 is pretty much a closed subject to the outsider. It won’t get its Solzhenitsyn for decades. When the competition to paint black blacker is so fierce shades of grey won’t get a look in for a while.

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