As Tony Abbot weighs in to the Climate Change debate with the predictable neocon line, its time to examine why this political philosophy is so dangerous.

The election of Tony Abbot to the leadership of the Liberal Party signals a resurgence of the neocons. The self-flagellation, blame-apportioning and purging have finished, the neocons have regrouped and outflanked the liberals in the party. This is a dangerous time for Australian politics as the agenda which dragged us into the quagmire of the War on Terror and the disaster of Iraq has returned in the form of Tony Abbott. So why are the neocons dangerous? In combination with neoliberal globalisation, it has created a hollowing out of democracy, a swelling of Executive authority and a penchant for ethnic violence.

Neoliberal political rationality represents a business approach to governing. The Emission Trading approach to climate change is one example of this approach, as are privatized child care and skeletal emergency services which cannot cope with emergencies, like the Victorian bushfires in February. The saturation of the state, political culture, and the social with market rationality effectively strips commitments to democracy from governance concerns and political culture.

Abbott’s approach to climate change also prioritises business over reducing carbon emissions. He articulates it as prioritizing ‘the economy’ but all that really means is that we don’t do anything to annoy big business or big agriculture. The position of the National Farmers Federation is that the battle against climate change is lost. We need ‘mitigation’ and ‘adaptation’ strategies.

Neoconservatism is characterised by moralized state power and animated by angst about the crumbling status of morality within the West. It identifies the state, including law, with the task of setting the moral-religious compass for society. Through the political mobilization of religious discourse, neoconservative governance models state authority on church authority, a pastoral relation of the state to its flock requiring submission to truth and to the authority that speaks or wields it. This attribution of moral authority to the state is at odds with liberalism.

There isn’t really a religious-moral aspect to climate change. Not in the way that neocons think about morality: as a good vs evil dichotomy. There is no enemy or humanity as a whole is the enemy. Fundamentalist thinking requires the destruction or punishment of the enemy as in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq for the War on Terror. This type of fundamentalism has led the neocons into the position of climate change denial and brought the world to the brink of climate disaster.

The uncertainty created by climate change creates a feeling of insecurity, adding to the trepidation already faced by people confronted by global economic uncertainty, terrorism, continuous war, and global movements of refugees. Existing networks of social knowledge are eroded by rumour, terror and an everchanging technological environment. One response to social uncertainty is violence which can create a macabre form of security and a means for ensuring suspicion between ‘us’ from ‘them’. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan came as a response to the uncertainty created by the September 11 attacks but also in response to the erosion of social knowledge which has occurred under neoliberal globalisation. The erosion of liberal democratic principles which had formed the social bonds in Western democracies until hollowed out by principles of neoliberalism. Neoconservatism attempts to recreate such social bonds by calling on forms of identity politics at odds with liberal democracy.

Identity politics does not just play out as the demonization of other ethnic identities; it also plays out as rural versus urban identities, ‘climate change denier’ becomes associated with the bush ethic. Neocons in Australia are particularly skilled at mobilizing the bush identity as part of identity politics. Just as ‘stolen generation denier’ and ‘native title denier’ also form a consistent part of the neoconservative philosophy. It plays into an already existing social identity which has existed politically since Australia was colonised. Climate change denier becomes a righteous identity, the expression of a moral (not just a political) position.

This position was illustrated well by the debate between Ian Plimer and George Monbiot on Late Line. Both sides maintained condescending moral positions, both sides accusing the other of fraud, misrepresenting data, lying, etc. These are moral positions, not a rational debate on the merits of climate change science. The climate change debate remains frozen in competing moral positions framed by identity politics and undermined by political maneuvering. Meanwhile the ice caps continue to melt, Greenland sink holes expand…

Neoconservatives draw on identity politics through emphasis on particular moral codes and modes of behaviour. Neoconservatism polices cultural and national borders, the sacred, and the singular through discourses of patriotism, religiosity, and the West. It is clear that neoconservatives oppose the creation of global solutions to climate change and mobilise identity politics to undermine the creation of international agreements. However what is also clear is that, without such agreements, we cannot deal with this problem. If we sit behind our national borders, playing realist politics, reality will soon catch up with us.

In a recent Washington Post article titled “A Good Time to be a Conservative”; Mr. Kristol made a bold assumption, claiming the “center of gravity” within the Republican Party would shift farther to the right, propelled in that direction by a collection of conservative personalities from beyond the Beltway. Indicating a lack of faith in the G.O.P.’s elected leadership, Kristol says: “Even if Republicans pick up the House in 2010, the party’s big ideas and themes for the 2012 presidential race will probably not emanate from Capitol Hill. The center of gravity, I suspect, will instead lie with individuals such as Palin and Huckabee and Gingrich, media personalities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and activists at town halls and tea parties. Some will lament this — but over the past year, as those voices have dominated, conservatism has done pretty well in the body politic, and Republicans have narrowed the gap with Democrats in test ballots.” Kristol’s logic is derived from two polls. First, the Gallup Poll of October 26, 2009 that puts the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as conservatives at 40 percent, and an earlier Rasmussen Poll indicating that the only 2012 Republican presidential prospects polling double digits are Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. When one looks inside the numbers, it would appear that there are more than a few flaws in Mr. Kristol’s math and intuitive reasoning.

The Gallup results show that the net increase in the percentage of people identifying as conservatives had taken place within that subset of the electorate classified as independents. Quoting Gallup: “Changes among political independents appear to be the main reason the percentage of conservatives has increased nationally over the past year: the 35% of independents describing their views as conservative in 2009 is up from 29% in 2008. By contrast, among Republicans and Democrats, the percentage who are “conservative” has increased by one point each.” In spite of the shift in independents identifying as conservatives, the actual percentage of voters who identify with the G.O.P., which is the defacto conservative party, has fallen to historical lows. The latest political identification polling results available on Pollster.com reveals that just 25 percent of those polled identify themselves as Republicans. That percentage improves when registered and likely voters are polled, but the G.O.P. still trails the Democrats here as well. To date, had independents firmly embraced the principles of the conservative movement generally or the G.O.P. in particular, the percentage of voters identifying as Republicans would show a marked increase and so far that is not the case. I would argue that the shift to the right among independent voters is far from solid and is conditional, being subject to a set of factors that will likely change by the time of the 2012 election. In fact an even newer Gallup Poll reveals just how transient independent political attitudes actually are. That poll: “Race for 2010 Remains Close; Democrats Recover Slight Lead”, which came out on December 14 states: “The current generic-ballot results are similar to those Gallup found in July and October of this year, and indicate that the Republican gain observed just after the Nov. 3 elections was not sustained. Shifts in candidate preference for Congress typically occur primarily among independents, whose “unanchored” status makes them much more vulnerable to short-term events in the political environment than are those who claim allegiance to either major party.” I would go beyond the latest Gallup findings to suggest that the number of independents identifying as conservatives will decrease proportionately to the degree to which the G.O.P. moves to the right, especially if the Republican Party finds its public image welded to the personalities of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin or the Tea Party crowd.

In his reliance on the results of the above cited Rasmussen Poll, Mr. Kristol is in effect betting the house on a collection of would be candidates that, in spite of polling in the double digits, leave much to be desired when it actually comes to getting elected. Kristol is one of Sarah Palin’s most passionate cheerleaders, but in suggesting that the future of the conservative movement might lie in the fortunes of Ms. Palin, he seems to be gambling on a horse not worth the wager. Mid-December poll results from both Pollster.com and Polling Report.com show Palin registering an unfavorable rating of 48 percent. An ABC poll of November 15^th showed that 53 percent of respondents would not vote for Palin with 60 percent saying she was not qualified to be president. More damaging still is a CBS poll of November 15, which revealed that 62 percent of those Republicans polled felt that Palin lacked the ability to be an effective president. At the time of Palin’s resignation from elected office, Republican strategist Mike Murphy opined: “If the Sarah Palin we perceive today wins the nomination in 2012, the G.O.P. will lose. Most Americans don’t think Palin is ready to be President. The base loving you is not enough to get you elected.” Conservative columnist Michael Gerson, reflecting on Palin’s resignation said: “She really alienated women and the college educated on both coasts and that is not how you rebuild the Republican Party.” The reality is that the Republican Party cannot hope to win without the support of independent voters, whom Palin clearly alienates and whose ranks are, according to Pew Research, now at a seventy-year high.  Recently, two Republican heavyweights: Haley Barbour, former Chairman of the RNC, and Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) both declined to endorse a 2012 Palin presidential bid when they appeared on MSNBC and Fox News.

In spite of the fact that Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have double-digit support among Republicans, none of them breaks a 40 percent favorability rating among voters generally, except Huckabee. However, Huckabee’s 40 percent approval rating was registered before Maurice Clemmons, an inmate pardoned by Huckabee, gunned down four police officers in late November. That said, we might see a decline in Huckabee’s overall standing in the polls.  Poll numbers aside, in the 2008 Republican primaries, Huckabee was only able to win in the south and thus his viability as a national candidate is questionable. Furthermore, Huckabee’s past equivocation on the topic of evolution works to his detriment when it comes to appealing to that large segment of the population that believes in science as well as religion. Mitt Romney, as a result of his Mormon faith, had problems with the evangelical base of the G.O.P., which plays a crucial role in the early primary states of Iowa and South Carolina. Moreover, Romney may well run into formidable headwinds from the far right as a result of his relatively moderate approach to politics and policy positions. Newt Gingrich, who’s favorable ratings are the lowest, at 14 percent, has a closet full of skeletons of his own which led in 1998 to his stepping down as the Speaker of the House and his departure from Congress altogether.  Needless to say these issues will surely be resurrected and they will be in the forefront of the debate in the event that Gingrich becomes a serious presidential contender.

It is in his rather absurd suggestion that the G.O.P.’s center of gravity might travel further to the right as a function of the influence of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or the Tea Party Movement, that Kristol, having slipped his moorings to reality, has embarked on what can only be considered a voyage of political fantasy. Neither Limbaugh nor Beck are particularly compelling personalities beyond the realm of their audience. Both traffic in the sensational, often blurring the lines between fact and fiction with their primary purpose being incendiary commentary rather than legitimate hard news analysis. The media watchdog, Media Matters for America has compiled fifty-three pages of citations detailing Limbaugh’s distortion of facts or their deliberate misrepresentation for political purposes. For Glenn Beck there are forty-two pages. The latest NBC/WSJ poll (June 2009), which I was able to find on Limbaugh’s popularity, showed that 50 percent of those responding viewed him in a negative light. A similar poll in September showed Glenn Beck registering a positive rating of just 25 percent. In spite of the fact that both Limbaugh and Beck have a committed following, accurately measuring the true size and composition of their respective audiences and the extent to which they actually reflect more than a thin slice of this country’s political spectrum is almost impossible. Paul Farhi of the Washington Post attempted to plumb the length and breadth of Limbaugh’s audience and therefore his influence, in a March 2009 article: “Limbaugh’s Audience Size? It’s Largely Up in the Air.” Relying on interviews with media industry sources, Farhi claims that Limbaugh’s audience fluctuates between 14 to 30 million, depending on the issues of the day. Quoting Michael Harrison of “Talkers Magazine”, Farhi puts Limbaugh’s average audience at 14.25 million listeners per week, which is just under 5 percent of the population. Glenn Beck’s audience is far smaller and his largest audience to date was roughly 3.4 million viewers on September 15, 2009, which amounts to just 1.1 percent of the population. 

When it comes to the Tea Party Movement, it is equally difficult in coming to an agreement as to just how many people are involved here and to what extent they really reflect more than a microcosm of American political life. According to the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, a pro-Tea Party group, just 578,000 people participated in the 2009 April Tax Day Protests. Their website does not display figures for the July 4^th protests nor does FreedomWorks.com or any other pro-Tea Party website that I came across. The largest number I remember seeing is in the neighborhood of 215,000 protestors. Regarding the September 12^th Washington D.C. protest rally, Talking Points Memo described the turnout as follows: “FreedomWorks, the main organizers of the Tea Party event in Washington this past weekend, has dramatically lowered its estimate for the size of the crowd at the event from 1.5 million, a number the group now concedes was a mistake, to between 600,000 and 800,000 people — though this is still substantially more than the tens of thousands that most mainstream media outlets have estimated, and which FreedomWorks wholeheartedly rejects.” Thus if we add up the total attendence at all three Tea Parties, using the higher estimates, we come up with a gross attendence of roughly 1.6 million or just one half of one percent of the population.

What the math reveals is that the actual number of people who either participate in Tea Parties or who listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, presumably many do both, is a rather small percentage of the overall population, even considering that portion that would identify as conservative. That said, its a bit of a strectch to assume that such a statistically insignificant number of people is either enough to move the Republican Party further to the right or that it is likely to do so.

There is one final flaw in Kristol’s analysis and that is his ignoring the rising tide of moderates within the party that are opposing any suggestion that the G.O.P. needs to be purified of any moderate tendencies via litmus tests that even Ronald Reagan would fail, that political orthodoxy should be the face of the G.O.P. or that Republicans can only win elections when they embrace ultra conservative ideas. The now formidable array of moderates seeking to stem any drift to the far right encompasses a spectrum of Republican notables from sitting Senators to strategists and political commentators including: Olympia Snowe, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Bob Inglis, Mickey Edwards,  Christie Todd Whitman, Newt Gingrich, Tom Ridge, Colin Powell, David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, Kathleen Parker and a host of Republican strategists. Gingrich, appearing on Meet the Press (5/24/09) stated that the G.O.P. has to be “broad enough to incorporate divergent views and can’t be purged to the smallest conservative base.” Tom Ridge stated that the G.O.P. “needs to be less shrill and less condeming of those who don’t hew to a far right view.” Following the departure of Arlen Specter from the Republican Party, Olympia Snowe, in a New York Times editorial opined: “There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and contiuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of  governing majorities.” At an April debate over the future of the G.O.P. Lindsey Graham made the following observation: “We are not losing blue states and shrinking as a party because we are not conservative enough. If we pursue a party that has no place for someone who agrees with me 70 percent of the time, that is based on an ideological purity test rather than a coalition test, then we are going to keep losing.” I could go on, but anyone who has been paying any attention to the civil war within the Republican Party knows that there are more than enough voices and intelligent arguments being made to more than call into question the logic and wisdom of people like Bill Kristol and their fanciful notions that the redemption of the G.O.P. lies in the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or the rank and file Tea Party participant. All one has to do is examine the results of the 2009 off-year elections and what is evident is that where Republicans won elections, in the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, they did so by running moderate campaigns that played to the centrist voter. In contrast, the great and financially costly effort by the far right in trying to influence the congressional election in New York’s 23^rd Electoral District resulted in a conservative failure with a Democrat capturing a seat held by the G.O.P. since as far back as the Civil War.

Over the course of his career, William Kristol is a man who has backed more political losers and also-rans than winners and it would be nothing less than disastrous for the Republican Party to heed his advice or put any stock in his predictions. Kristol worked for former Secretary of Education William Bennet, the voice of personal responsibility during the Reagan Administration, who subsequently lost much of his credibility when he admitted to losing over a million dollars in Las Vegas slot machines. He was Vice President Qualye’s Chief of Staff.  Kristol managed the failed Senatorial campaign of Alan Keyes in 1988 and Keyes would go on to fail twice more in seeking a seat in the Senate and then two more times when running for president. Kristol championed the pardon of Scooter Libby and the nomination of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate, a decision that McCain’s staffers would later admit to be his single biggest mistake. But it is in an examination of Kristol’s unabashed cheerleading for the War in Iraq that his predictive abilities are revealed to be so totally lacking. It was Kristol who predicted that the removal of Saddam Hussein from power would unleash a chain reaction of democratic reform across the Middle East that to date has failed to materialize.

Bill Kristol represents that desperate sort of conservative that can’t abide the dynamics of political change wrought by the election of Barack Obama. Likewise, the relatively rapid decline in the influence of Neoconservatives since the 2004 election can’t bring him much joy either. To my mind, Bill Kristol falls into that category within the Conservative Movement that is firmly wedded to the notion that their orthodox ideology is the only one acceptable for America and that anything else is either politically irrelevant or treasonous.  Kristol’s faulty logic gives rise to the notion that he is engaged more in wishful thinking than objective political analysis. His prediction as to future direction of the G.O.P. amounts to nothing more than a political “Hail Mary pass” in hoping beyond hope, that somehow or other the Republican Party can be moved to embrace the orthodoxy of the far right.  In my opinion, having watched him over the past decade and read his articles, he seems to be increasingly assuming the role of a shill for ultra conservative ideas, becoming as a result less objective in his political analysis. Republicans would be well advised to part company with Mr. Kristol, least they find themselves facing a future of continued electoral defeat and a decline in the party’s appeal among that now indispensable factor in American politics, the unaligned independent voter.

Steven J. Gulitti

New York City

12/19/2009

A few of us recently watched a documentary entitled “Standard Operating Procedure: The Scandal was a Cover-Up.” I didn’t expect to learn many new facts from the film as I had spent quite some time reading about the abuses there when it hit the national front page and the “top story” for every news and radio broadcast. The establishment-Left decried the actions, but lost credibility in light of their murmurs being little more than partisan politics as usual. The establishment-Right admitted the actions were wrong, but quickly came up with various justifications for what amounted to horrible abuses, grave injustices, gross oversight and/or diabolical scheming that appeared to have regime-wide reach. Most conservatives, though, side with Rush Limbaugh as chalking this type of sub-human behavior and inhumane treatment of others as soldiers blowing off steam. There were many things we desperately needed, but another round of finger-pointing and passing the buck was in excess surplus.

Much to my surprise, the documentary was much, much, much better than I anticipated. Interviews with low-ranking officers (or lackeys) who ended up taking the heat for high-level treachery, high-ranking members who were misled as to the condition of the prison or the treatment of its prisoners, and civilian investigators who were there throughout the entire duration, dazed and confused as to exactly where and when military intelligence joined the Dark Side. Each with a story to tell, each with pictures to prove it.

Chronicling the events as they are timestamped in the pictures, the viewer watches the downward spiral into depravity become a torrent of mind-numbing madness and perversion. “But we were doing what we were told,” many would say. “At least we didn’t shoot anyone or cut their head off,” another may quip. The old “Officer, I know my reckless driving is almost without rival, but I think the guy in front of me was going 2 mph faster than I was.” The fact that excuses and rationalizations such as these were uttered from the “best and brightest” our the “world’s last superpower and last remaining hope for freedom” is an embarrassment of global proportions.

At one point during the film one of those being interviewed was upset that President Bush was required to apologize to the world for the misdeeds done at Abu Ghraib. But does anyone, for even one second, believe the administration knew nothing of what was going on. With “ghosts” like CIA, FBI, and foreign military and intelligence agencies using the same tactics (though with much less discretion and far fewer consequences) it is hard to believe that it was anything other than standard operating procedures. Most interesting may be the lack of any righteous indignation, no major players let go on account of their incompetent oversight or tyrannical tactics romping around under the guise of military intelligence. In actuality, many of these creeps were given advancement! Rewarding sexual depravity with a passing glance is criminal. Promoting to higher positions of power those guilty of concocting these torture procedures, the rationale for their continued use, and the justification for increased measures as both the soldiers and the cell-mates would become relatively accustomed to the wicked behavior formerly done, seeing no moral end to this site of fiat commands, unexplained memos, and never-seen-again “ghosts” who were “never there” but “always present.”

In the end, top dogs in the White House, Pentagon and military-industrial complex were let off the hook. As for the young and the restless? They had a decent sum of jail time ahead of them. But someone had to make up for the time not served by the rich and the heinous, right?

Standard Operating Procedure is an excellent movie for all who wish to see just how dangerous the US military has become, being unable to recognize an unlawful order from an unlawful order, and playing the “Saddam was worse than this” card at every turn.

If President Obama thought it best to wave an investigation into the Bush regime for crimes against the Constitution, insisting that he wish to look ahead rather than focus on what’s behind, then this video reassured the American public that such an investigation would not be seen as reckless or time-consuming. Start with the truth, and work your way on from there. Sound fair, Imperial America?

Watch trailer here: SOP
Purchase DVD and site: SOP DVD and Site

I said I wasn’t going to post about this but I am interested in what others thought of President Obama’s speech.

The text of the speech can be found here.

My thoughts about it are contained in the comment section of the post below- suffice it to say I thought it was well-crafted but defensive, overly-hawkish and quite condescending. I also thought that spending a majority of the time talking about “just war” when one is receiving a PEACE prize, was a tad ironic. And yeah, I get the whole “the U.S. has fought wars to keep the rest of the world safe from more war” meme. But that in and of itself is a tad arrogant given where he was and who his primary audience was. A little humility goes a long way but methinks humility is not Obama’s strong suit. I personally thought perhaps he should have given that particular speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. Or maybe even included some of it in his West Point speech.

When I was getting ready for work this morning I was not surprised to hear the news anchors say that the speech was greeted enthusiastically by Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and the keyboard generals over at the National Review.

I guess we are all neoconservatives now.
**********
War is peace.

Slavery is Freedom.

Ignorance is Strength.

Adelson

UPDATE/ADDENDUM: December 10 2009 — Noam Sheizaf at Promised Land and Bryan Altinski by e-mail both point out that by supporting this legislation, I’m ultimately undermining the same freedoms I’m trying to defend. Point taken. No end justifies the means. Especially when freedom of speech is at stake. I wrote, “in this atmosphere one is tempted to clutch at straws,” and I have.

On Friday (December 4 2009) we surveyed US casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson’s ongoing intervention in local politics, trading American money for Israeli influence. Engaged for nearly two decades in building a highly effective local network of neo-conservative institutions, Adelson wanted more. In July 2007 he launched Israel Hayom, a blatantly pro-Netanyahu newspaper engaged in highly uncompetitive practices. We quoted Israeli prize laureate Nahum Barnea of Yediot, who, in a recent Globes interview, bluntly warned that Adelson was a clear and present danger to Israeli democracy.

This morning’s (December 9 2009) Maariv reports (full text after jump) that a bi-partisan Knesset bill seeks to bar foreign ownership of Israeli newspapers

A large group of Knesset Members is seeking, through new legislation, to restrict control of the Israeli media by people who live abroad. The bill calls to ban people who are either not citizens or residents of Israel to receive a license to own a newspaper.

Good news.

Lieberman

This has been a terrible year for Israeli democracy. Already fundamentally flawed — more than three million stateless and right-less Palestinians under effective Israeli control for42 years; institutionalized discrimination against an “enfranchised” Arab minority; severe restrictions on religious freedom — what is left is being undermined. The freedom of expression and association of Israeli citizens has driven an extraordinarily open public debate for a country at war. Since the the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000, however, these rights have been constantly questioned by the security establishment and right-wing partisans . The Gaza war accelerated the process exponentially. Dissent was systematically silenced and the domestic media debate was all but monolithic.

The Netanyahu government is poised to deliver coup de grâce. The combination of Lieberman putinism and Shas chauvinism is enough to turn every day into a rearguard action to defend another threatened freedom. But another development presents a much more fundamental threat. In an ironic twist, just as the neoconservatives exited DC, they took office in Jerusalem. The Prime Minister’s Office is staffed by movement ideologues (many of whom are alumni of Adelson’s Shalem Center.) They are working towards a restructuring of the Israeli public sphere and are working closely on this effort with partners formally outside the government — Dore Gold of the JCPA, Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor and Gonen Ginat of Adelson’s Israel Hayom, for example.

One major vector is the Ron Dermer initiated campaign to suppress Israeli human rights NGOs, currently led by Steinberg. Over the past two weeks, with everyone else focused on the settlement freeze, I have bored Coteret readers with daily accounts of a last-ditch defense waged by progressive civil society groups.

Dermer and friends

A border-less Israel has been in a perpetual internal security crisis at least since 1967. It does not have a constitution or a real tradition of pluralistic democracy. Bouncing back may be much more difficult than it was in for post-Bush US.

In this atmosphere, one is tempted to clutch every passing straw and I jumped all over the Maariv story. An extraordinary coalition of MKs, a Likud hardliner hand-in-hand with an Arab nationalist. Does the Israeli Knesset, at the bottom of the ladder in terms of public trust and castrated by the executive branch, still have a collective survival instinct? Probably not. Interests have met, however. For those to the left of Netanyahu, the partisan motivation is clear. Miri Regev is positioning herself as a populist leader of the Likud’s internal opposition to Netanyahu. Israel Hayom has not been kind to her. The Haaretz report on the bill adds something Maariv neglected to mention

Yisrael Hayom’s popularity is seen mainly as a threat to Maariv; Nimrodi has been meeting MKs in recent weeks to discuss the matter. A Nimrodi associate, attorney Ram Caspi, took part in drafting the bill.

Incest is an apt description for the relationship some Israeli MKs have with local captains of industry and financiers.

No matter. Tourniquet comes first, bandages later. In any case, it too early to celebrate. There is a lot of horse-trading ahead before before the bill even makes it to the Knesset floor.  

MKs mobilize for newspapers owned only by Israelis

Arik Bender, Maariv, December 9 2009

A large group of Knesset Members is seeking, through new legislation, to restrict control of the Israeli media by people who live abroad. The bill calls to ban people who are either not citizens or residents of Israel to receive a license to own a newspaper.

The bill provides a clear definition of who may own a media outlet in Israel. The bill reads, in part, “No license shall be granted unless the applicant is a citizen and resident of Israel and/or a corporation registered in Israel, and the ability to direct its activity and at least 51 percent of all means of direct or indirect control over it are in the hands of either Israeli citizens or residents of Israel.”

“The goal of the bill is to set the world of Israeli journalism in order,” said MK Hasson (Kadima). “We want to change the situation in which a person who is not a resident of Israel and the center of whose life is not in Israel can own a newspaper by means of his money and use it as a kind of mouthpiece in order to represent clear interests, while most of the readers either don’t know or don’t realize the hidden interests of the publisher, who often does this for free. Today it’s Sheldon Adelson, a foreign citizen who owns Israel Hayom. Tomorrow, a Saudi businessman will establish a newspaper and wrest control over public discourse here and influence Israel’s public opinion without our knowing a thing about either the interests that he represents or his goals.”

MK Daniel Ben Simon (Labor) said that he has no problem with newspapers being given out for free but, rather, with the identity of the person behind the action. “I don’t know what his motives are, but he’s touching Israeli democracy’s holy of holies—he’s molding the face of Israeli society,” he explained. “Personally, I feel badly that a man who made most of his money in casinos or by means of casinos, who doesn’t know a word of Hebrew and doesn’t live here, should hold such a key.”

MK Eitan Kabel (Labor) joined this position. “The importance of this bill is first and foremost that the need to ensure that the Israeli media should be led by Israelis who have knowledge and awareness of what’s happening in the country,” he said. “The media isn’t just a business.” In addition, MK Miri Regev (Likud), who supports the bill, said that members of all Knesset factions support the bill. “I see it as a fundamental principle, not a personal one,” she said. “It’s intended to preserve pluralistic discourse in the media and in the public.”

The chairman of the United Torah Judaism faction, MK Eliezer Menahem Mozes, said that this is a broad assertion. “Just as I oppose the idea that Israeli citizens should vote abroad or that foreign citizens, even if they’re Jews, should vote in Israel,” he said, “I am against the notion that the foremost element that influences public opinion in Israel, the media, should be under the control of a foreign citizen who will try to dictate our public opinion.”

MK Dov Hanin (Hadash) said that this stems from the media’s influence on Israeli life. “There is a problem with the idea that people who are not part of this society should have the power to affect society’s agenda in a dramatic way,” he said. “The media is a neutral tool, and therefore we think that the owners of the media ought to be Israeli citizens.”

MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List/Arab Movement for Renewal) said that journalism must be preserved, and that its owners should be compelled to be residents. “The relationship between big business and government is problematic,” he said, “particularly if it is motivated by foreign funds and ulterior motives.”

December 8 2009

Prof. Gerald Steinberg

President

NGO Monitor

Prof.  Steinberg,

It was with great disappointment that I read your open letter to the New Israel Fund (NIF), posted on NGO Monitor’s website Monday morning. It demonstrates that you have not learned the lessons of the past two weeks. This is evident from the fact that, as I will outline below,  you continue to misrepresent easily-verifiable facts and evade an honest debate of the issue at hand.

I do not know who your advisers are, but you deserve better. The world of political and policy communications has changed significantly over the past few years. It is no longer possible to launch set-piece campaigns, dependent on full control of sympathetic media. The internet has created a much more egalitarian public debate. Importantly from your perspective, veritable armies of bloggers and internet activists rush to check facts, research power structures and influence the media agenda. Negative campaigns, such as the one you recently launched with the Institute for Zionist Strategies are particularly vulnerable. All it takes is the exposure of a few inconsistencies and misrepresentations for the mainstream media to stay away. Trying to regain momentum can seem like herding cats, as the Republicans learned when they tried to use the “Swift Boat” tactics of 2004 in the campaigns of 2006 and 2008.

Your current campaign could have been designed to demonstrate what not to do in this new reality: (1) a negative agenda; (2) a patently partisan partner, with dubious standards and many skeletons in its closet; (3) close alliance with the executive branch; (4) a message frame — transparency — in which your organization’s performance, and that of its ideological allies, leaves much to be desired. You also failed to address the changing concerns of the Israeli public and its opinion makers. The supposed “threat to sovereignty” posed by a handful of law-abiding organizations does not seem very urgent when the country is facing an open rebellion against the rule of law.

Reading your letter to the NIF, one is astonished to see you repeating the same action, while expecting a different result. The easily verifiable fact is that the organizations your conference targeted did not refuse to debate the issue, they simply refused to do so on your terms. The NIF even went as far as to propose an alternative agenda — comprehensive financial transparency reform for all NGOs. Current events have underscored the pressing need for reform, time and time again. Indeed, you have very recently admitted, albeit only following pressure from readers, that this is a pressing issue across the entire spectrum of Israeli civil society. The serial refusal to even acknowledge these communications reinforces the prevailing notion that you are acting in bad faith.

I am convinced, however, that if you chose, even now, to engage in an honest debate, you would find eager partners.

On a final note, to quote from your letter, which disparages this blog: “In the spirit of pluralism and constructive dialogue, we ask that you post this response on the” NGO Monitor “website.”

Sincerely,

Didi Remez

FIRST “GERALD STEINBERG ESSAY COMPETITION” ANNOUNCEMENT AT BOTTOM

Disappointed with attendance and media coverage of the December 1 2009 Knesset NGO suppression conference, NGO Monitor and its allies have shifted their message.The new line is: “We have been silenced by “McCarthyism.”  Remember, this comes from the leaders of a government-backed campaign targeting a minority. Undoubtedly, these are the rightful heirs of the Dispossessed Cossack of Jewish tradition.

One of NGO Monitor’s specialties is the coining of pseudo-academic terminology. In addition to ”lawfare“,  they have given us the “halo effect” — an aura of virtue that protects NGOs from critical examination of their work. Indeed, Naftali Balanson, NGO Monitor’s Managing Editor (note no bio on the staff roster,) attributes his victimization by vicious, McCarthyite, human rights activists to frustration at the dimming of their ”halo.”

Fortuitously,  a colleague of Balanson’s has provided us with an opportunity to take a crack at NGO Monitor’s very own “halo effect” — the notion that because it is headed by a senior political scientist, Prof. Gerald Steinberg of Bar Ilan University, it recruits only the best researchers and conforms to the most rigorous of academic standards.

As we reported earlier, NGO Monitor’s partner in the latest phase of the campaign to suppress Israeli human rights groups is the Institute for Zionist Strategies (IZS), chaired by Israel Harel, a founder of the fundamentalist Gush Emunim settler movement. Adi Arbel is an IZS staff member and he is the author of a number of publications on the organization’s Hebrew website (this is one example.) On December 3 2009, Arbel gave an interview (Hebrew) to Arutz Sheva, a settler news service, on the Knesset conference and the report acc presented there. Arutz Sheva identified him as a “researcher at IZS.”

Arbel also has a regular column in “Yoman” (diary) the Friday political supplement of Makor Rishon, a right-wing newspaper. Arbel regularly uses the column to bash his perceived ideological adversaries. Much of this Friday’s (December 4 2009) column is devoted to the allegations of the Knesset conference, with a special focus on the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI). Here’s a translation of the first section

The right to be a Jew

Next Friday, the first Israeli ‘human rights march’ will be held in Tel-Aviv. The march is organized by ACRI in cooperation with tens of other organizations. When the agendas of these human rights organizations is examined, one learns that they are guided by a post-Zionist agenda, aimed at undermining the Jewish character of the State of Israel. The chance that these organizations’ voices will be heard on the violation of the human right of Jews (settlers, for example) to realize realize their property rights [sic] (private [property] paid for in full), is similar to the chance that Ahmedinajad will institute observance of Holocaust Day throughout Iran.

NGO Monitor has repeatedly and emphatically argued that the character, political and otherwise, of a researcher should be taken into account when examining the credibility of his organization’s publications. In its critique of Human Rights Watch, for example, a statement made in the 1970’s by one of the organization’s staffers, is cited as evidence for bias. If we wanted to use this argument to trash their latest report, Arbel would have provided us with ample resources. We would not even have to deconstruct the “aimed at undermining the Jewish nature” assertion, because his Iran-Holocaust analogy would no doubt suffice.

We don’t need to stoop to this level of argumentation, however, in order to expose the quality and integrity of the “research” conducted by Steinberg’s operation. A quick look at Arbel’s “examination” of ACRI’s “agenda” will do.

Let’s forgive Arbel for neglecting to note ACRI’s advocacy on behalf of the “human rights of Jews,” including, among many other examples, its fight for free dental care for all Israeli children and its criticism of the Housing Ministry for failures in the provision of housing in the “rocket stricken south.” After all, he probably thinks these “don’t count” because Palestinian citizens of Israel would also benefit from them.

We can then move on to the assertion underpinning Arbel’s entire argument: ACRI’s failure to cry out on behalf of settler property rights. A close observer of the human rights situation in the West Bank might could easily be confused, thinking that Arbel is referring to the systematic theft of private Palestinian land by Israeli settlers. No, Arbel is asking why ACRI has not jumped to defend settler homeowner’s property rights violated by Netanyahu’s new “settlement freeze.”

Many of Arbel’s ideological allies tend to have a cynical and utilitarian view of democracy, remembering its existence only when it serves their interests. Therefore, the ACRI’s record of defending the rights of settlers and extreme right-wing fundamentalists is inconvenient, to say the least. This might explain why Arbel neglects to mention, for example, ACRI’s Skokie-like defense of Kahanists’ right to march in the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm or their advocacy on behalf of due process rights for violent settlers. ACRI’s consistency on these issues provides any reasonable observer with the certainty that if indeed the “freeze,” announced only last week, violates the rights of any human beings, they will speak out against it.

To the few that have been closely following the track-record of Steinberg and his affiliates, this kind of intellectual dishonesty comes as no surprise. What is astonishing is the careless sloppiness of a senior researcher on the team on the very same week that they are fighting to preserve their facade of integrity. This can only be interpreted as hubris, the result of years of operating without any oversight whatsoever.

The times are changing, however. Steinberg’s government-NGO coalition has overplayed its hand. The shift from defamation to outright suppression through legislative measures has galvanized many Israeli citizens into action. Israeli free speech absolutists, like myself, no longer consider this phenomenon just an unpleasant price one has to pay for democracy.

Since the the publication of my November 30 2009 Haaretz op-ed, I have been contacted by Israelis and Jewish-Americans, from all walks of life, asking to volunteer their time. Many have also e-mailed highly revealing documentation, which we will publish here after verification. From now on, every journalist or politician lobbied by the Israeli neoconservative network will have at his disposal the materials necessary to put their reports and policy reccomendations in the appropiate context — that of a partisan suppression operation.

In order to help launch this collaborative research effort, we are happy to announce the first (of many) Gerald Steinberg essay competitions. Readers of Hebrew have at their disposal an archive of columns by Adi Arbel, the IZS researcher who was so helpful with this post. English readers have the entire internet at their disposal.

The author of the best essay exposing instances of intellectual dishonesty or factual omissions by the Israeli neoconservative network, will receive a copy of Max Blumenthal’s new book, Republican Gomorrah.

Submissions (no more than 1500 words in English) should be sent to ngo.monitor.monitor@gmail.com by December 20.

RELATED POST: Exposing Gerald Steinberg and NGO Monitor, ctd. — Dimming the “halo effect”

Gerald Steinberg’s NGO suppression conference at the Knesset on December 1 2009 was quite a sight.

Originally touted as a dignified bi-partisan event, it turned out more like a Teabagger convention. Bi-partisan MK attendance spanned the entire settler spectrum from Uri Ariel of Kfar Edumim to Othniel Schneller of Maale Michmas.

Zeev Elkin

Seated at Steinberg’s side was coalition whip Zeev Elkin, who promised that his new legislative initiative would put all those EU-funded fifth columnists in jail for a year and “then we’ll see what’s next.” Coincidentally, on the same day the whip was busy obstructing his own party leader’s “settlement freeze.” MK Michael Eitan, who has worked hard to position himself as a serious champion of civil rights, looked like he couldn’t wait for the farce to end and used much of his allotted speaking time to read a letter from a coalition of human rights groups blasting the dishonesty behind the conference.

Sound like an exaggeration? I’ll let readers judge. We had a cameraman there throughout the entire three-hour spectacle and I’ll be posting segments over the next few days. No “Macaca” moment, but of plenty other extraordinary scenes, which masochists may find entertaining.

Marc Cogen

Ironically, while the panelists were preaching about the threat Israeli sovereignty posed by a handful of rights groups operating within the law, West Bank settlers groups, many of them funded by Israeli taxpayer money and US tax exemptions, were escalating their rebellion against the rule of law (this morning the IDF was expressing concern that the next step would be attacks on Palestinian civilians.)

Circuses of this type are probably not very good for Professor Steinberg’s academic credentials, especially when he partners with fundamentalists like Israel Harel. The only Israeli academics in attendance were Berachyahu Lifshitz, whose specialty is Jewish law, and
Moshe Koppel, a mathematician. Despite his senior position at Bar Ilan University’s Political Science Department, Steinberg had to import someone with the relevant academic background. This heavyweight was Marc Cogen of Ghent University in Belgium. Prof. Cogen’s credentials include mounting an emphatic defense of Guantanamo and charging at a 2008 neoconservative gabfest, alongside such luminaries as Daniel Pipes, that the Soviet-like management of his university was persecuting him.

Israel has long been a captive market of the worst in American culture, while some of the best is unavailable locally. Thus we are saddled with the neocon Steinberg and his theocon allies but do not have the local equivalent of Jon Stewart to help us put up with them. Therefore, in order to provide some much needed comic relief before Shabbat, I am forced to point to the original: Jon Stewart does Glenn Beck.

Now that you have finally come out and said how you really feel about aspects of the “Right“, I wish some of the people you pointed your finger to would do the same.

These past 8 years, the definition of “Conservatism” got real, real muddied. And you Charles, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, The Jawa Report  and a host of you people became “voices of the Right”. Why? Because  they cheered for War. Oh, and for some reason people started thinking they had some sort of Masters Degree  in Islam because they read a few passages from the Koran. That’s all. And with that, the belief was that War and your hatred for Islam, meant you were a Conservative.  When in fact, there’s nothing Conservative about War. ( I think Islam is a very dangerous religion, just for the record)

What amuses me about the whole “coming out” post is, he really only rips into three people who are the Real Right. Pat Buchanan, Lew Rockwell and Stacy McCain. The rest are a smörgåsbord of tyrants, control freaks, and “Johnny Come Lately’s” to the Conservative Movement.  No wonder people have such a screwed up belief on what it means to be a Conservative. (Thank you George W. Bush)

So, Bravo to you Charles on “coming out”. Now I just wish some of the others would “come out” with ya.

Update: Rick Moran brings up a few good points in his post. And I do find myself in agreement with what hes saying. Especially about the “anti-intellectual” belief that does plague most of the Manufactured Right.  This notion that the elected representatives need to talk like “Joe-Six pack”  and not like someone who graduated from High School needs to stop.

But Rick goes off the rails , when he goes into agreement with Charles on the whole “Anti-Government” lunacy.

This anarcho-conservatism, where some kind of 19th century government is envisioned as the optimal solution to our problems, is a throwback to pre-Buckley days. It is unthinking, illogical, and oblivious to how the world has changed since the heyday of Robert Taft. Ultimately, it is a fearful kind of conservatism that can’t recognize or deal with change and seeks the safety of an idealized past.

Two things here: I don’t think the Manufactured Right wants some sort of “anarcho-conservatism”. That’s nonsense.Most of these people want George W. Bush’s Government back. Not some form of Constitutional Limited Government like they claim.

And I wonder how many people even know who Sen.Robert “Mr.Republican” Taft is today? I can almost guarantee that if you brought up Sen.Taft’s beliefs (I happen to agree with a lot of his stances) most Red Staters would think he was some anti-American liberal.

I have to say, this whole “Conservative Crack Up” is really interesting to watch.

RELATED POSTS: Israel Harel, Zionist Strategist (on NGO Monitor’s fundamentalist allies) | Globes on the hypocrisy of right-wing “democrats” | NGO Monitor to examine US charity supporting sedition in the IDF (not) | Prof. David Newman: Thanks to NGO Monitor, Israel has joined an elite group of states — Syria and Algeria | Exposing Gerald Steinberg and NGO Monitor, ctd. — Dimming the “halo effect”

Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor, and his associates in government, have entered a new phase in their campaign to suppress Israeli human rights NGOs. This morning (November 27 2009) Haaretz’s English edition ran an op-ed by Steinberg. No longer satisfied with de-legitimization, Israeli neoconservatives have begun taking concrete parliamentary action to silence internal dissent. Because of a sense that some of the remaining freedoms of Israeli democracy — expression and association for Israeli citizens – were under dangerous assault I agreed, for the first time in years,  to byline an op-ed addressing Steinberg’s (both op-eds, side-by-side, can be viewed here). Below is an annotated version of the op-ed, with comprehensive links to supporting documentation.

Bring on the transparency

Op-ed, Didi Remez, Haaretz, November 27 2009

The government of Israel is waging an aggressive campaign to suppress internal dissent. Most of its targets have been organizations operating in the occupied territories, and the campaigners would have us believe that they are acting in the interest of “national security.” However, a closer look indicates that they are motivated by a general disrespect for the role of civil society in a democracy. Any NGO in the government’s way seems to have become fair game; indeed, officials have even started calling refugee-aid groups a fifth column.

Civil servants are playing an increasingly active role in this effort. A notable example is Ron Dermer [bio at previous position], chief of policy planning in the Prime Minister’s Office, who led the charge this past summer to suppress any group that dared to advocate on behalf of Palestinian human rights or to question the Israel Defense Forces’ conduct during the Gaza campaign.

Dermer, whose legislative initiative to ban funding of Israeli human rights organizations by allied governments stalled in September, has now passed the ball to a political ally: Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. This organization has now partnered with the Institute for Zionist Strategies, led by Israel Harel, a founder of the Gush Emunim settler movement.

Steinberg is savvier than Dermer. Instead of a ban, he advocates “funding transparency.” Next Tuesday, he is organizing a Knesset conference to “debate” the issue. Israel’s beleaguered human rights activists are bracing for yet another round of demonization and delegitimization.

In formulating a response, some have argued for an appeal to reason. They want to explain to Steinberg and his organization that the suppression campaign is ill-advised and destructive; that it threatens to put Israel in the same camp as Putin’s Russia and other autocracies; and that it may provoke a retaliatory call by a European public, already dangerously hostile, to cut critical funding to Israeli hospitals, universities and R&D projects.

This approach is commendable, but futile. NGO Monitor is not an objective watchdog: It is a partisan operation that suppresses its perceived ideological adversaries through the sophisticated use of McCarthyite techniques – blacklisting, guilt by association and selective filtering of facts.

If Steinberg really cares about “transparency,” why does he not begin in his own backyard? Breaking the Silence, a frequent subject of his organization’s wrath, has financial reports for 2006-2008 posted on its Web site. NGO Monitor’s site lists only one small U.S. charity as its current funder, providing no links for further information. The Institute for Zionist Strategies’ site says nothing about its funding.

Here is another example of NGO Monitor’s intellectual dishonesty: A central theme of its recent critiques has been of NGO “lawfare,” achieving “political” goals through the courts. There are at least three examples of pro-settler Israeli NGOs engaged in “lawfare,” as defined by NGO Monitor: the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, the Israel Law Center and Regavim, but you will not find even an acknowledgment of their existence among the hundreds of documents on its Web site.

We have another option. Steinberg’s and Dermer’s cynicism has created an opportunity to dismantle the power structure that forces Israelis to continue defending Palestinian human rights, 42 years after the “temporary” occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began.

If Israeli neoconservatives really want “transparency,” why not take them at their word? We could propose to NGO Monitor and its allies that we launch a bipartisan campaign to enact legislation mandating high standards of financial transparency for all local NGOs. This would entail listing all donations of, say, NIS 15,000 and above, prominently on the NGO’s Web site and in its publications, including full donor identity details and any tax exemptions that were applied. Israeli government funding would, of course, be listed as well.

Most of NGO Monitor’s Israeli targets already meet these standards. For the few that do not, compliance would be an easy task.

This is certainly not the case for the organizations fueling the settlement enterprise that is destroying our country. They depend on financial opacity for continued operations. Elad, for example, a prime mover of many controversial and provocative settlement adventures in East Jerusalem, has been cited by the Registrar of Associations for refusing to disclose its donor identities.

One can understand their reticence. What would the Israeli public say if the fact that Od Yosef Hai yeshiva, in Yitzhar, is the recipient of generous funding from the Israeli government [primary data here] had to be prominently displayed on the cover of its publications – which include “Baruch Hagever,” an ode to Tomb of the Patriarchs killer Baruch Goldstein, and the “Handbook for the Killing of Gentiles“? How long would the U.S. taxpayer put up with the tax-exempt status of Shuva Israel, a Christian Zionist fund, if they knew that it supports the expansion of settlement outposts, illegal even under Israeli law?

These examples are just the tip of an iceberg. Hundreds of millions of dollars in Israeli taxpayer money and U.S.tax exemptions, mostly hidden from public view, are the driving force of the settlement enterprise. The Steinberg Act would be applauded by progressive Israel and genuine “pro-Israelis” abroad. Transparency is the lifeblood of democracy and our society could use a lot more of it.

From Merriam-Webster: (pick the definition that best fits)

Main Entry: rogue
Pronunciation: \ˈrōg\
Function: noun
Etymology: origin unknown
Date: 1561
1 : vagrant, tramp
2 : a dishonest or worthless person : scoundrel
3 : a mischievous person : scamp
4 : a horse inclined to shirk or misbehave
5 : an individual exhibiting a chance and usually inferior biological variation

Buoyed to the top of best-seller lists by pre-orders from the Neo-Conservative/Christian/Anti-Obama/Teabagger coalition, Sarah Palin is “going rogue” on the American public, and, apparently, on the truth, as well.

The Associated Press obtained advance copies of Palin’s first tome, and, suffice to say, it didn’t pass the truth check:

: : : : : : : : : :

Ignoring substantial parts of her record if not the facts, she depicts herself as a frugal traveler on the taxpayer’s dime, a reformer without ties to powerful interests and a politician roguishly indifferent to high ambition.

All of this begs the question: Why is Sarah Palin branding herself as a “rogue”? If she want to be known as roguish, she is:

Main Entry: rogue
Function: adjective
Date: 1872
1 : resembling or suggesting a rogue elephant especially in being isolated, aberrant, dangerous, or uncontrollable
2 : corrupt, dishonest
3 : of or being a nation whose leaders defy international law or norms of international behavior

Or perhaps Sarah is suggesting the American people rogue her:

Main Entry: rogue
Function: intransitive verb
Inflected Form(s): rogued; rogu·ing or rogue·ing
Date: 1766
: to weed out inferior, diseased, or nontypical individuals from a crop plant or a field

Now, thanks to Sarah Palin and the power-politic machine pushing her on the American people, millions of people think it is cool to “go rogue.” They celebrate flouting the rule of law for the sake of forcing their religious views on the rest of this nation, and then on the rest of the world. Given the chance, they would turn the United States into a rogue country. Indeed, they already have once, under the Bush Administration. To them, those will be remembered as the good old days.

If we become complacent, they will regain power, to the detriment of the rest of the world.

Let Sarah Palin proudly brand herself as a “rogue.” And educate the rest of the country as to what the term means.

ABSTRACT:

15 Awful Things Republicans Would Do If They Had the Chance By Dennis Rahkonen, The Smirking Chimp.

The political instrument of moneyed elites, and a retrograde societal force, the GOP today is more negative than ever. Its agenda, if fully implemented, would prove catastrophic. Here’s what an unfettered Republican Party would do “for” America:

1)  Greatly reduce or entirely eliminate taxes on the rich, forcing working families to make up revenue shortfalls.

2)  Bust labor unions, and prevent collective bargaining for wages and benefits.

3)  Stubbornly deny the climate change while pumping more pollutants into the environment from dirty industries and practices.

4)  Remove regulations on investment banks and credit card companies eroding consumer protections.

5)  Continue to criticize and under fund public education, advocating private schooling instead, to dumb workers down.

6)  Outlaw abortion, under a moral guise, impelling thousands of functioning females to perish because of sexist denials of their basic rights.

7)  Continue to recite a Pledge of Allegiance whose last six words are “with liberty and justice for all,” while harrassing homosexual citizens.

8)  Speak often and loftily of freedom, but engage in neo-McCarthyite witch hunts, Red-baiting name calling, and a host of Patriot Act sins against the U. S. Constitution in the name of “national security.”

9)  Bully the world with US aggressions on foreign soil, kill countless thousands of innocents, waste billions of badly-needed dollars, and make us hated around the planet.

10)  Generally drive down the income levels of America’s working-class majority, as a cost-saving corporate measure, dooming society to economic ruin!

11)  Lie about affordable health care for all, creating a national security threat by fooling some Americans into thinking that public health care is a godless socialist attack on basic American freedoms.

12)  Unleash de facto ethnic cleansing against 12 million immigrant men, women, and children, blaming them for hardships experienced due to capitalist excess.

13)  Shamefully try to lend credence to their avarice and social irresponsibility by revising the Bible to obscure passages that place human need before abject greed as one conservative group is really trying to do!

14)  Support intensely bigoted hatred that has crazed extremists dreaming of literally tearing Barack Obama to pieces and gassing all liberals.

15)  Place the livelihoods and lives of over 300 million Americans in the hands of incompetent ideological “purists” such as Sarah Palin.

While there are certainly Democrats who’ve yet to show spine in furtherance of vital change, let’s be absolutely clear about the unmitigated disaster that would follow if Republicans, in their present ultra-rightist incarnation, ruled our country exactly as they wickedly wished.  READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/story/143917/15_awful_things_republicans_would_do_if_they_had_the_chance

The Top One Reason Religion Is Harmful By Greta Christina, AlterNet.

Religion is uniquely armored against anything that might stop it from spinning into extreme absurdity, extreme denial of reality and extreme, grotesque immorality.

So what is it about religion — exactly — that’s so harmful?

I’ve argued many times that religion is not only mistaken, but does more harm than good. But why do I think that is?

Sure, I can make a list of specific harms religion has done, from here to Texas. I’ve done exactly that. But that’s not enough to make my case. I could make long lists of harms done by plenty of human institutions: medicine, education, democracy. That doesn’t make them inherently malevolent.

Why is religion special — and specially troubling? What makes religion different from any other ideology, community, system of morality, hypothesis about how the world works? And why does that difference make it uniquely prone to cause damage?

The debates about religion usually come in two types: “is religion accurate or mistaken,” and “is religion helpful or harmful.” And ever since I put together my best “mistaken” arguments, my Top Ten Reasons I Don’t Believe in God, I’ve been trying to wrap up my “harmful” arguments in a similar nutshell.

But I’m realizing that I don’t have ten arguments for why religion is harmful. I don’t even have 57,842 arguments.

I have one.

I’m realizing that everything I’ve ever written about religion’s harm boils down to one thing.

It’s this: Religion is ultimately dependent on belief in invisible beings, inaudible voices, intangible entities, undetectable forces, and events and judgments that happen after we die.

It therefore has no reality check.  READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/belief/143912/the_top_one_reason_religion_is_harmful_

FREETHINKERS

Freedom from Religion Foundation

PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS:

Speaking about the Republican “fear” factor, why don’t they cooperate, et al?  Most people don’t understand (or can imagine) the neocon bottom line because it is so outrageous: they really wish the United States to fail.

Background – I was an administrator for the City of Portland, and Multnomah County, Oregon, speaking and dealing with neocon repubs on a national basis for thirty-two years.  Their GOAL is to preserve, protect and defend special privilege from the democratic rule of law and the American nation.   They are NOT afraid; just arrogant.

Thirty years ago, in the early 1980’s, a CTPPD (a Consensus To Preserve Plausible Deniability), including Texas oil millionaires, automotive manufacturers, bankers, big-ticket real estate developers, insurance and medical care providers, investment firms, and wholesale raw materials providers, began a concerted and integrated campaign to discredit, loot and crush the American government. Call it “Stamping on Franklin Roosevelt’s Grave.”

I was told by Congressman Barbur Conable (R I-forget) back in ’73 that compulsory public education was unconstitutional and undemocratic and vouchers and home schooling would be introduced forthwith – it would be “most helpful in educating children with the right understanding for when they become adults.”  The John Birch Society injunction to its members was, “Join your local PTA, and take it over!”

I stood witness to the shenanigans surrounding local government’s share in the Savings and Loan Scandal (watched the Mormons spirit Jake Gaarn, Mormon hero astronaut-senator who led the S&L thieves on the Senate side, away to Salt Lake City and out of the public eye before the “s” hit the fan – I think this was their rehearsal for the Great American Mortgage Collapse – it has the same modus operandi).

Reagan assaulted government itself – “The ten most dreaded words…’I'm from the government…’“ Reagan went after the Air Traffic Controllers and made the first significant breach in federal protection for unions. The list goes on, as if subject to a consistent and integrated general game plan worthy of the best hostile takeover experts.  Clue.

The people’s government is the one force that is able to withstand and force these self-interested robbers to change. Therefore, the people’s representatives had to be bought, or as many as necessary, depending upon the moment’s tactical need, to shill for and protect corporate interests. The Republican Party (as the easiest – smallest, most uniform, least principled – to corrupt and manipulate had to become ascendant for a short time to gain control of the government and “fix” institutional areas that were most intrusive on the corporatist ability to do pretty much as pleased, including “enslave” people (wage-wise), or “waterboard” them (use any pressure or torture to force compliance and contribution to the corporate will).

They then stole the people’s treasury – carried it out under the glad hand of their born-again rich president Geo. W. Bush.  Dick Cheney is not an accident, but a premier product and instrument of a rapacious piratical, and practically pathological, corporate elite.  These are generationally all pretty much the same guys playing the same ugly way, administration after administration.  They are a scary bunch and they are not American patriots.

The neocon corporatist tactic now is to wave the weak hand – the Republican Party – to obfuscate, delay and confuse, while the real work goes on with the Rubin clones surrounding Obama (it is a real mistake to think that we can continue by reconstructing the past – our environmental jeopardy and social crisis require innovations and new directions that cannot include corporate capitalism – but while we must develop lower economic expectations, we don’t have to give up on a compassionate civilization.

The continued private dismantling, bankrupting and removal of America’s manufacturing capabilities to foreign climes is still in hemorrhage. Leading the list of outsourcers are well-known American companies, including the Xerox Corporation, the Oracle Corporation, The Hewlett-Packard Company, Accenture Limited, International Business Machines Corporation and Perot Systems (Recall old Ross warning against GATT that there would be “a great sucking sound as business went south.”

The neocon corporatists are not trying to fix the broken Republican Party – it is in the game plan to eventually destroy the two-party system and run with one party: cheaper, more efficient, less wasteful (ha!). Steele, Limbaugh, Beck, Cantor, Boehner, all the rest, are handy decoys, making a lot of noise all around the edges so that public attention is diverted from the corruption still proceeding at the center.

The Republican circus masks the real working level where the boodle bags are still being packed. They are not working with us, because the neocon corporatists are still using and stealing from us. They don’t expect any retribution or punishment for it; it is the culture. They are so highly placed that they expect to tiptoe through the tulips while the rest of us fry in the ozone hole. They believe the “highest and best use” of any piece of land is how much money you can make off it, not the future it may provide if unmolested for all life, as we know it.

In 1991, an assistant from President Bush Sr.’s office met National Association of Counties (NACo) President Michael Stewart (R – Salt Lake Co.) at a cocktail party at the Annual Conference in Salt Lake City. I overheard them discussing the “best” form of government, ever. They agreed that it was Medieval England. Its benefits?

• The king is the sole authority, secures obedience, neutralizes all possible challengers; gains the monopoly of force; and, maintains law and order.
• Patriotism is focused on the nation, not on the localities that comprise it, transferring identity from the local to the national level, putting it at the disposal of the king.
• The state dominates or controls the religious life of society, or at least allies itself with the representatives of a single authoritarian religion to more easily manage the mob to the king’s totalitarian advantage.
• The state exerts control over economic life to facilitate circulation and exchange of goods, and to grasp as much as possible of the national wealth for the king and his allies.

In the medieval model stability is created through divine hierarchy. The church prays for the soul, the military fights to save the bodies and property of the “community”, and the peasants work to feed everybody. It’s a simple model, which allowed it to last for several hundred incredibly stultifying and repressive years in which the majority of humankind subsisted on the level of cattle, or swine, and wars were fought at personal whim of a vainglorious, and occasionally religiously demented elite. Does this ring bells, or what?

The important men at the 1991 cocktail party didn’t intend to install a king or a single church in America, but in variation, updated and recycled form, they favored state identification and alliance with a majority religion and a CEO working with a board of directors (perhaps preserving a faint hint of representative government – old habits, even bad ones, die hard). Call king and court president and cabinet, or rose and garden, they envisioned a tyrant working with an oligarchy of the privileged elite that they believe is, of course, best suited to govern.  The Bush-Cheney’s cabinet.

They were deadly serious and not amused when I asked if they had ever heard of Robin Hood or the Magna Carta.

Edward Gibbon wrote an apt description of Augustus Caesar that sounds a lot like George W. Bush, the lately deposed thinly veiled champion of the corporatist New Medievalism.  It reveals the shadowy Republican approach to governance, image over substance.  Gibbon writes:

     “He delights in the image of liberty and is pleased with considering himself as the accountable minister of the laws.

     “He claims a tender respect for a free constitution, which he destroys.

     “A cool head, an unfeeling heart, and a cowardly disposition prompt him to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never lays aside.

     “With the same hand, probably with the same temper, he signs death warrants and pardons.

     “According to the various dictates of his interest, he is at first the enemy, and at last the father of the nation.

     “As he frames the artful system of imperial authority, his moderation is inspired by his fears.

     “He wishes to deceive the people by an image of civil liberty, and the army by an image of civil government.

     “Finally, the forms of civil administration are carefully preserved. The ideal restraints of the senate and the laws may serve to display the virtues, but can never correct the vices of  the leader.”

“Americans deserve the government they elect,” my father used to say, but we know we didn’t elect Bush. Is Obama entirely our new free choice? Kings, as I recall, are divinely chosen – in our case, by fat cats and the Supreme Court. Kings represent the elite status quo, which presently resides in Wall Street. Wall Street wants to govern everything by itself, without any interference from the rest of us.  Father knows best.

Our species probably won’t be around long enough to figure out how to change from consumerist overpopulating inattentive polluters into minimalist birth-controlling aware conservationists.  We’ll overgraze our range soon.  One can see our rapidly escalating devastation of the planet.  Bush and his idiot followers accelerated it even more; they “rationalized” their irrational actions with fantastic myths to justify unreasonable behaviors.  There are only a few values in their make-believe world that are any good, and they are, of course, common and obvious to all humankind: love, mercy, truth, honor, and justice – those sorts of universal things, echoed by every other life philosophy ever conceived, that is, invented by man; but hypocritically enshrined by Republican spin meisters.

They have created and are attempting to retain dominance in an amoral, or consciously immoral world of corruption, thievery, and violence, instead of trying to eliminate or improve conditions that would remedy or heal it.  They are in fact, the enemy, and clear-thinking people who treasure compassion and cooperation must vigorously oppose them.  If a thing is contrary to the health and safety of the world, it should be destroyed.

You know what? The world is a dangerous place.  The fact that many choose – even, hysterically – to resist knowledge of its danger, do so at their peril, and endanger the rest of us.  Keeping silent about abuse, perversion, injustice, greed, vandalism, or prejudice is self-defeating, irresponsible, and destructive.  Self-willed ignorance is a socially and spiritually criminal act.  Pericles was right: People who say they have no business with government (democratic Athens, or the U.S.) have no business here at all.

Final words:  Keep on keepin’ on. We, the people, need you, dear reader.  Best regards to all,  j

Conservative supporters of Sarah Palin carrying protest signs.

Once you whip up a mob, can you control it? That may be Sarah Palin’s next problem.

Before the votes were counted Tuesday night, the former Republican vice presidential candidate was already something of a winner. Though her candidate in the special election for a House seat in upstate New York, Doug Hoffman, lost to Democrat Bill Owens — in an area that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the House since the 1800s — Palin, by intervening in the race, had established herself as a successful ideological power broker. At first, Hoffman was merely a third-party conservative candidate in New York’s 23rd congressional district. Yet when Palin backed him over the official Republican in the race, a moderate assemblywoman named Dede Scozzafava, she helped turn this contest into an intra-party clash, which ended with the right wing of her party chasing Scozzafava out of the contest and forcing the GOP establishment to swing behind Hoffman.

On a night when the Republicans won the governor races in New Jersey and Virginia, Hoffman’s defeat was almost anti-climactic. But for Palin, who previously had been in the news mostly for the wrong reasons – that doesn’t count the Levi Johnston soap opera — this episode made her seem relevant and influential.

With their anti-Scozzafava campaign, Palin, Glenn Beck, Dick Armey and other conservative firebrands declared they were not going to accept moderate Republicans as candidates, and they have emboldened grassroots right-wing activists to continue this crusade. That is, the former Alaska governor and the others have unleashed the furies. As has been widely noted, therein lies potential trouble for the party. An ideological civil war probably won’t be good for business for the GOP — though these conservatives clearly believe that right-wing purity is the best path for a Republican return to power. Still, Palin may run into a dilemma of her own.

Revved up by the purge in New York, tea partiers across the nation are now salivating — did you happen to see “Zombieland”? — as they eagerly search for other prey. They already have a list of RINOs (Republicans in name only) to hunt. On their to-get list is Charlie Crist, the Republican governor in Florida, who’s running for the Senate. Marco Rubio, a conservative former state senator, is challenging him for the GOP nomination. Also in the crosshairs for conservatives are Republican Rep. Mark Kirk, who is seeking Obama’s old Senate seat in Illinois, and possibly incumbent Republican Sen. Robert Bennett in Utah. Bennett’s being opposed in the GOP primary by a conservative activist who has Joseph Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, campaigning for her. Die-hard conservatives — their blood lust heightened — seem to be adding names to their execution wish list almost daily.

Though Palin led this merry band in the battle of NY-23, she now might have to worry about these activists, especially if she’s pondering a presidential bid. With the Hoffman quasi-victory — or was it a Pyrrhic victory? — the grassroots conservatives have had their expectations raised. As they rush after other Republicans not deemed ideologically correct, many will look to Palin to continue leading the charge. But going after a no-name assemblywoman is a different matter than targeting sitting governors, senators and House members. Is Palin truly willing to lead pitchfork-waving conservatives against well-established Republicans, such as Crist? Florida, after all, could be an important state in the GOP presidential primary.

Perhaps Palin does intend to keep her position as cannibal-in-chief. If not, she runs the risk of disappointing the true believers she inspired in the fight for NY-23. Alienating her fellow RINO poachers could cause serious difficulties for Palin in a presidential campaign — and leave an opening for other contenders to fill. “This is tricky stuff,” says a senior Republican strategist allied with another possible 2012 GOP presidential candidate. “She could be walking right into a breach.”

Thanks in part to Palin, there are plenty of conservative activists now fired up and ready to go. As they gallop after other Republicans, will Palin stay at the front of the pack? Or might she be trampled by the ideological vigilantes she has helped set loose?

******
Hoffman’s defeat in NY-23 is not the only sign that the Tea Party movement isn’t as strong as its own hype. Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones reports a Tea Party assault on Congress scheduled for this week–and called for by Republican Rep. Michele Bachman–seems to be turning into a dud. As of Tuesday, only 25 “patriots” had signed up for the parallel effort to lobby the House against the emerging health care legislation. Read more about that here.

David Corn
Politics Daily

Try as they will, Conservatives have not really been able to make a good argument that Obama, by moving away from the failed foreign policies of the Bush Administration, has in reality made America less safe. Instead they have responded with a series of knee jerk reactions aimed at the obstruction and rejection of anything and everything that Obama has either done or proposed. Conservatives have fallen back on the now hackneyed idea that they alone are the ones who can keep America safe and that the Democrats in general and liberals in particular will, or deliberately want to, weaken America. In his last book “A Time to Fight” James Webb, decorated Vietnam veteran; former Reagan era SECNAV; Republican turned Democrat; and now Senator from Virginia, devoted an entire chapter to explaining how such an argument by Republicans was no longer tenable or one that they can legitimately promote. Obama has in reality kept in place much of the prior Administration’s policies and procedures that are embodied in the Patriot Act, the wiretapping law and the continued operation of Guantanamo. To date the Obama Administration has recaptured an American merchant ship from Somali Pirates and, in concert with federal and local authorities, uncovered a possible terror ring based in New York and Denver.

Anyone who has followed closely the events surrounding the War in Iraq knows that it is not, and was not, the central front in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Rather, it is the trans Afghanistan-Pakistan border where the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks are and it is here that they continue to operate putting together attacks on London, Madrid, etc. It is from this region that they continue to attack our troops in Afghanistan and beyond that have destabilized large parts of Pakistan. Thus the point has already been proven. The central front in the G.W.O.T. is where the enemy is and not where Bush, Cheney, Coulter, Limbaugh, Malkin, O’Reilly or any other Conservative defines it to be. The ironic thing is that Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan was the only brilliant move of his eight years in office. He then went on to drop the ball by invading Iraq and leaving the enemy alone, allowing Al Qaeda to regroup and become as dangerous as they were on 9/10/01. There have been volumes written to the point that the invasion of Iraq did nothing to make America safer. The conclusion of the 9/11 Commission Report states that Iraq had played no part in the attacks of 9/11 and Bush himself would later admit so publicly and on national television. Seeing as it is generally agreed that Iraq was never a factor in the 9/11 attacks, and that Al Qaeda remains open for business on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, there is not much more to say in disproving Conservative claims that the actions of the present Administration, as currently carried out in Iraq, will necessarily jeopardize American security interests. If America is attacked by a resurgent Al Qaeda would that be the fault of the Obama Administration or a result of George Bush’s failure to consolidate his initial victory in Afghanistan? Had we spent 800 billion dollars in Afghanistan instead of Iraq what threat if any would we now face? While it is true that Obama has taken ownership of the trans AFPAK conflict, its also true that he inherited from the Bush Administration a set of circumstances there, which are fraught with difficult and dangerous choices, none of which are clear-cut or that guarantee American success.

Many Conservatives will go to the grave insisting that invading Iraq was the right thing to do because they fail to see that their ideas as to what makes America either safe or a great nation may not in fact be always and everywhere valid. There are those on the right who continue to try to make the case that we could have eventually won in Vietnam because we never lost a major combat action against the Communists. They will insist on this very narrow historical fact while at the same time being blind to, or ignoring the reality that Communism in Indochina, at that time, was a vehicle for the achievement of nationalist aims. In their myopic focus on combat capabilities they will continue to ignore the fact that successive South Vietnamese governments were too corrupt to act as a foundation for democracy. They will insist that “American Exceptionalism” would triumph over a people that first took up arms against a foreign invader a thousand years before William the Conqueror left Normandy to invade England in 1066.

If America is attacked again, it won’t automatically be the fault of the Barack Obama. What if the attacker was motivated to strike because of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo or the loss of a family member during the occupation of Iraq? What if that attacker was moved to action as a result of the policies of the Bush Administration rather than Barack Obama’s decision to reduce troop levels in Iraq? Would that attack be attributed to the current administration or the last? Conservatives have made a big deal about saying that during the Bush years we were not attacked again, but as Richard Wolfe of Newsweek pointed out, terror attacks skyrocketed worldwide after we invaded Iraq. What about those American service personnel that were killed or wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan at the hands of those motivated to action by the invasion of Iraq, don’t they count as Americans that have been attacked? More to the point, this country was attacked when the Republicans controlled the Presidency, Congress, and the majority of statehouses. As David Sanger points out in his latest book, “The Inheritance”: “The plan for dealing with al Qaeda had been sitting on Condoleezza Rice’s desk on the morning of September 11, waiting for discussion.” In the final analysis it is almost impossible for Conservatives to make the argument that their policies have made us safer seeing as, according to the Center for International and Strategic Studies, the number of people recruited into Islamic terror organizations soared exponentially after the invasion of Iraq thereby dramatically increasing the number of our potential enemies. Conservatives like Ann Coulter would claim that Bush created “a flytrap for Islamic crazies in Iraq”, whereby they could be dispatched with by American forces. It would be more accurate to say that we created a trap of our own within which our troops were needlessly put in harms way for the sake of some misconceived NeoConservative pipe dream. Is it cheaper for a radicalized Muslim to scrape together the cost of a one way ticket to the United States, procure a passport and visa and then forage about this country in search of a terror cell or is it economically and in practical terms more effective to come up with bus fare to Syria and then walk across the border and join in an ongoing insurgency where one could even be paid to carry out attacks against Americans?

 We were susceptible to an attack on 9/11 because, among other things, we never thought this sort of thing could happen. We became infinitely safer just by paying attention to security threats thereafter. If we get hit again it may very well be the case that we did so because we did not take the time and spend the money to “harden” critical strategic components of our infrastructure like rail systems, water and power supplies, ports and most importantly chemical plants. Have the failed policies of the Bush era created an opportunity for someone radicalized and now prone to action as a result of those policies to actually carry out an attack on America? If, in the words of Homeland Security expert Stephen Flynn, had we spent billions on infrastructure defense instead of wasting those resources in the Iraq misadventure, we would be infinitely safer. Who then would we legitimately blame for another attack on America, Barack Obama or George Bush and the NeoConservative claque that led us into the Iraq misadventure in the first place?

Steven J. Gulitti

New York City

10/17/2009