BUFFY

IN TRIBUTE


BUFFY


Always loving, gentle, patient, brave, enduring.

If his soul were the human soul, we would live in paradise.

Darth Dershowitz Returns

I just learned when I looked at the blog Filasteen that Alan Dershowitz, the fanatically pro-Israel Zionist activist operating out of Harvard, has been outrageously intervening to prevent Professor Norman Finkelstein from successfully obtaining tenure at De Paul University.

Dershowitz has no connection with De Paul, just as he had no connection with Brandeis University when he undertook to sabotage former President Jimmy Carters’ scheduled speech there. Dershowitz’s motivation in both cases was the same: Prof. Finkelstein and Carter wrote books criticizing Israel. (Please click on "Finkelstein" and "Dershowitz" in this blog's Labels to see all that I've already written on Dershowitz.)

If you are interested in academic freedom and freedom of speech generally, please look at this story and support Prof. Finkelstein in any way you can. I can say from reading both Dershowitz and Finkelstein that Finkelstein is far more honest and scholarly than Dershowitz. Indeed the words "honest" and "scholarly" do not apply to Dershowitz at all. The libelous things which Dershowitz has been saying about Finkelstein in his campaign to prevent the professor's tenure make me smile because they are all applicable to Dershowitz himself!

Unfortunately, although the whole acadamic world (except Zionists) seems to be expressing support for Finkelstein and disgust with Dershowitz, my impression is that the only person at De Paul University who is opposed to the tenure is one of the two individuals who can prevent it. The decision may already have been made. Let's hope that it is a favorable one.

Here is a >link to a relevant portion of Prof. Finkelstein’s website. There’s also a link to his webpage on my blogroll.

A Solidarity Campaign” “in favor of Professor Finkelstein is online with links to a lot of information.

Another informative article

More Missing from the News

Jolly Paul Wolfowitz


For me the biggest news in recent days was the death of Kurt Vonnegut, but for U.S. television's prime time news and commentary shows, the big news was the firing of a particularly repulsive “talk show host”, Don Imus, because of his insulting racial comments about a women’s basketball team. Imus deserved to be fired and exiled to an especially small, cold island in the Atlantic, but did his idiocy deserve more than half of hour-long news programs for several nights?

The rest of the evening TV “news” centered on the stale tale of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who oversaw the mass firing of U.S. Attorneys seen as unsupportive of the Bush-Republican political machine.

A more important story about a more important person was never mentioned at all. There was not a hint that Paul Wolfowitz, “the architect of the Iraq war” who was kicked upstairs by Bush to the presidency of the World Bank when criticism of the war became hot, was in trouble for having engineered the transfer of his girlfriend from the World Bank to the U.S. State Department with a huge salary rise to a bloated salary of almost $200,000 a year. There was no justification for the pay raise. Wolfowitz tried to cover his tracks and at first denied the charges, but recently “apologized” for poor judgment.

World Bank personnel are literally shouting for Wolfowitz to resign. Last Thursday, World Bank staffers heckled Wolfowitz by shouting "resign" as he spoke about the issue. Wolfowitz has “declined to address any details of the controversy.” He has been very unpopular at the World Bank not only for his rude manner but for trying to engineer special privileges for himself.

President Bush, of course, of course, “has confidence” in Wolfowitz. The U.S. Secretary of the Treasury has made public expressions of support.

The “New York Times” wire service mentioned the Wolfowitz scandal online a few days ago, and later I found the story on Google news. Today the wire service headlines are to the effect that Wolfowitz intends to “weather the storm” and remain president of the World Bank in spite of demands for his resignation.

My point, of course, is that the U.S. news media are protecting Wolfowitz by not featuring his story – and generally not mentioning it at all on television -- for the same reason that the media screamed for I. Lewis Libby to be pardoned after his conviction for perjury. ”Let’s Hear it for Libby, Folks!”


In the case of Wolfowitz’ s misdeeds, still being debated, silence is the best protection while support is being organized (and paid for) behind the scenes. In Libby’s case, the object is to keep him out of jail after he was convicted, and so the best course was a loud public outcry about “injustice”.

Those two men are being supported and protected in one way or another because they are Jewish. (The publicly whipped Alberto Gonzales, by the way, is Catholic.) I’ve discussed this phenomenon and will discuss it in future posts. Again and again we’ve seen Jews receiving news media support in situations where gentiles have not. In financial scandals and frauds where several guilty parties are involved, it is mostly the non-Jewish miscreants whose names appear in the headlines, while the Jewish participants are hardly mentioned even if they had the leading roles. At the least, the volume is turned down when Jews are mentioned. There is a history in financial and corporate crime of gentile “front men” going down amid loud publicity while the Jewish co-criminals somehow fade away with no or little punishment.

Wolfowitz earned notoriety and condemnation long before he committed misdeeds as head of the World Bank. He is more responsible than any other single individual for engineering the invasion of Iraq. It was he who jumped in front of a camera shortly after 9/11 and said that it would be necessary to "end states that support terrorism." I was shocked at the ominous words “end states”, which were soon translated into, “Attack Iraq.” Wolfowitz and his fellow “neocons” such as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, and Lewis Libby did everything possible to boost arguments and manufacture false evidence to justify a United States war on Iraq. Of course Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were also involved. Interesting, is it not, that Rumsfeld was forced to resign in disgrace, while Wolfowitz – who bears much more responsibility for the Iraq debacle than Rumsfeld – escaped to a plush job as head of the World Bank.

The Perfect Solution

The following news item suggests the perfect solution for Bush’s Iraq war. Not only is it the perfect solution, but probably the only scheme that would resemble a solution more than a debacle.

G.W. Bush needs merely to supplement his delusional assertions that all is going well in Iraq with the kind of substitute satellite imagery described in the article below.

The U.S. government and Google need only replace current images of Iraq with images of Iraq before the American invasion. Instead of piles of dead bodies, screaming children, weeping men and women, smoldering U.S. vehicles, bomb craters in streets, and buildings in ruins, the replacement imagery would show bustling outdoor markets, tidy neighborhoods, green parks, gleaming palaces, well maintained streets, well fed people, and smiling Iraqis relaxing at streetside cafes. Best of all, there would be no American troops in the images – allowing Bush to say that because he has turned Iraq into a paradise the U.S. no longer needs to “support our troops” by keeping them in Iraq where they can be killed every day.


By CAIN BURDEAU March 31, 2007
‘NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Google's replacement of post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery on its map portal with images of the region before the storm does a "great injustice" to the storm's victims, a congressional subcommittee said.
‘The House Committee on Science and Technology's subcommittee on investigations and oversight on Friday asked Google Inc. (GOOG) Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt to explain why his company is using the outdated imagery.
‘"Google's use of old imagery appears to be doing the victims of Hurricane Katrina a great injustice by airbrushing history," subcommittee chairman Brad Miller, D-N.C., wrote in a letter to Schmidt.
‘Swapping the post-Katrina images and the ruin they revealed for others showing an idyllic city dumbfounded many locals and even sparked suspicions that the company and civic leaders were conspiring to portray the area's recovery progressing better than it is.’

Before



After


Voila!

"ISRAELI GI"?

MSNBC and Associated Press share the credit for this online abomination of a headline,

“CAPTORS OF ISRAELI GI ISSUE LATEST DEMANDS.”

What the heck is an “Israeli GI”? This may be the first time “GI” has been applied to anything but an American soldier. Gee, could there be a subtle message intended?

Part of the AP/MSNBC “Israeli GI” article:

‘RAMALLAH, West Bank - After months of deadlock, the captors of an Israeli soldier handed over the names of Palestinian prisoners they want freed in exchange for the hostage, a senior Palestinian official said Saturday.
‘The release of Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit is seen as a precondition for any possible progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. A swap could also help the new Palestinian unity government, a coalition of the Islamic militant Hamas and the moderate Fatah movement, in its quest for international acceptance.’


Questions:

1. Why is the “Israeli GI” a “hostage” rather than a “prisoner” like all the Arabs Israel has kidnapped and held?

2. Why is the release of one Israeli soldier a precondition for “peace efforts”, rather than Israeli release of its thousands of Palestinian prisoners?

This illustrates Joice's comment on "Futile Gesture?" that she has the impression that the Democratic and Republican Parties are actually just one party. (That must be Joice on the left.)


Tweedledum and Tweedledee, from "Through the Looking Glass"

Futile Gesture?

Here is the text of an email I've sent to Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. People from other countries have asked me why we Americans don't do something about our government's policies and bring about a real change. Well, we U.S. citizens are told we can control our government by voting, but that isn't true, as this letter complains. We're also told that writing to politicians will make a difference, but that's not true either. I predict that my email to Nancy Pelosi, if it isn't automatically deleted, will be classified by a 17 year old staff member as "Favorable" or "Unfavorable" in some category which may come in handy for planning lies for the next election as that time approaches. Most likely I'll receive an automated reply which tells what a wonderful job the Democrats are doing, a reply which will have little to do with the subject of my email or with reality. The reply may even thank me for my encouragement. I worked in Washington for 8 years, ghost-wrote an autobiography for a congressman, and I've seen from the inside how the machinery works. Additionally, I've had the experience of sending many letters of protest and warning to politicians before the invasion of Iraq . . . letters which all received the kinds of inattention I've just described.



Dear Speaker of the House Pelosi,

I and everyone I know personally who voted for Democrats in November because we wanted a swift end to the war in Iraq and a strong barrier against an attack on Iran are more disappointed than polite words can express.

We have seen the Democrats as incredibly weak, waffling, and preoccupied with fear that someone will accuse them of "not supporting the troops" or of not sufficiently supporting Israel come November 2008. We are so sick of hearing "support the troops" as a euphemism for "continue war funding" that we actually boo Democrats on the television screen.

A malleable provision to "begin withdrawal" or to "withdraw" from Iraq by sometime in 2008 is not why we voted you into office. You have failed us by passing a bill fully funding the war! You are not ending Bush's illegal and futile war by giving him everything he wants.

Some people I know think that even worse than your funding the war is your cowardly removal of the legislative provision which would have required the president to get congressional approval for any attack on Iran. Your quick capitulation to the Israel Lobby is the equivalent of giving Bush a congressional green light to attack Israel's target and removing any political obstacle to a new war. An attack on innocent Iran could make the Iraq war look like a warmup exercise. If there is a attack on Iran the Democrats haven't even left themselves whining room. You have clearly opened the gate and invited the next war just as most of you did for the Iraq war. . . with the difference that this time you don't have the transparently false excuse, "But we thought there were weapons of mass destruction."

On various blogs I've seen people from all over the world ask, "Why don't you Americans do something? What's happened to the American spirit? How can you let your government do these things to you?" I answer that U.S. citizens are told we can influence events at the ballot box, but that is untrue, as the Democrats have proved in three embarrassing months. One can only conclude that you Democrats, along with the Republicans, are much more interested in holding your jobs in future elections than in rescuing this country from Iraq or preventing a war on Iran.

Sincerely,

Fleming Lee
Florida