Mr. Obama goes to AIPAC

Last week, the three remaining presidential candidates made the compulsory visit to AIPAC's conference in Washington. Barack Obama was the star attraction, closing in on the inevitable Democratic nomination and eager to boost his "pro-Israel" bona fides as he looks toward beating John McCain in November. From the start, he didn’t disappoint his audience. Having refreshingly called US flag pins a sign of "fake patriotism," Obama had a cute Israeli-US pin on display.

-story continues after video.



Eager to smother the fact that Hamas had said some complimentary things about him, Obama bowed in assent to the list of demands of the Israeli far right. He began by promising to "not forget" the "three Israeli soldiers still held by Hezbollah." No time for any reflection on the circumstances of Israel's attack on Lebanon, cluster munitions, civilian casualties, or the hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinians held without contact or charge by Israel. Time only to make the first of many inaccurate statements, forgetting that Hezbollah hold two IDF soldiers, not three, Hamas holding Gilad Shalit.

Forgetting, or remembering to forget AIPAC's controversial recent history of running spy rings in Washington, Obama said he admired AIPAC for its grassroots organization. Presumably, it is not the Lobby members under current federal indictment, but these humble organizers "on college campuses around the country" who inspire his commitment to pledge an additional "$30 Billion" to Israel along with sharing of military technology, missile defense, up to and beyond the levels of NATO partnerships. Despite fears of prominent academics, security officials and even presidential candidates that this is not in the US national interest, Obama praised US-Israeli military cooperation as "a model."

Forgetting or ignoring the narrowest dimensions of the Gaza ghetto and its child prisoners, Obama remarked on the state of Israel, a wondrous "narrow strip of land" where its children "must summon uncommon courage." Mentioning a Palestinian state, he was sure to confirm that it would be "alongside a Jewish state of Israel." The description passes unnoticed by many but it is code for a guarantee on the second class status of Israeli Arabs and the Apartheid regime in occupied territory.


Believe it or not, Palestinian rights were treated as very important matters. They were crucial to AIPAC's agenda and Barack assured that they would be dealt with. Palestinian elections are to be manipulated, delayed, ignored, and punished. Obama said he had and would oppose any elections "with Hamas on the ballot." The unelected like Abbas's Prime Minister Salam Fayyad were to be elevated and "supported" as the true voices of Palestine. In short, Palestinian rights are to be withheld until, as he put it, "unless and until Hamas recognizes the state of Israel", "renounces terrorism" and "abides by past agreements." The fact that Hamas has done all of these things and Israel has not done any of them is irrelevant. They are not meant to be taken at face value. They are, again, coded references to "recognition" of illegal Jewish settlements, "renoucement" of any resistance, and acceptance of agreements as Israel perceives them.



Obama went on to say that Israel must abide by promises made at Annapolis in 2007 -nothing before. This year, Israel has defied even Bush, and continued expansion beyond Annapolis promises. What are the chances that Obama will attempt to move expansion back to any past level?



That Palestinians (even Abbas) hold East Jerusalem as their capital ( as per "past agreements") is a "right" no more. Obama was happy to dispense with numerous UN resolutions and state that "Jerusalem must remain Israel's capital and it must remain undivided." This position was even backed away by a Bush spokesperson. The UN and its resolutions are a trifling matter it seems. Obama pledged explicitly to place Israel's "right to defend itself" above UN obstructions. Little obstructions forbidding assaults on neighboring states or civilian infrastructure with prohibited weapons. And while a recent Israeli attack on a Syria was an "action that was entirely justified", Syria should shape up and stop its "reckless" opposition to UN resolutions!!!



This backing of pre-emptive strikes and mocking of the international legal frameworks are eerily reminiscent of the Bush administration, not least when it comes to Iran. Despite being the primary anti-Iraq war candidate, Obama was happy to re-package Bush's Iraq war arguments and apply them to Iran. Apparently, he opposed the Iraq war in 2002/03 because he " knew Iran had an elicit nuclear program." Despite the fact that Israel refuses to governed by the NPT and has the region's strongest military, Iran "pursues a nuclear capability" that could spur "an arms race." hasn’t Obama criticized those who "knew" Saddam had or pursued WMDs?



Obama rightly laughs at Bush's Saddam-Al Queda links but is happy to predict that Iran might take its imaginary weapons for a "transfer...to terrorists." After all, he said, hasnt the Iranian president said that Israel needs to be 'wiped off the map' and denied the Holocaust? Well, no is the answer to both. However Barack's threats were more explicit: "the danger from Iran is grave , it is real and my goal is to eliminate the threat." Anyone with any doubts about the word ‘eliminate’ hadn’t long to wait for clarification:


"I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon....everything in my power ....everything.


Clearly, Obama wanted to be doubly and triply sure that the message was received. "Do not be confused," he said, he is committed to keeping military options on the table.




Search Obama - AIPAC on youtube. The video is prominently and proudly hosted by Barack's own youtube page.

Spillane's WMD evidence

Jack Spillane has discovered a real WMD or a Ticking Time Bomb for Obama. Apparently, angry women will not vote for Barack versus John McCain.

Rush Limbuagh too has spent the week predicting that Hillary will not back Obama. And so, because one woman shouts out "McCain in 08" at the recent Dem meet on Fla and Mich, the punditocracy get a new spin: " Clinton backers will vote McCain" or "stay at home."

{Now, let's ask, is that sexist? "stay at home"? Or "angry women"?). Let's remember that Jack has said Barak is sexist for using the term 'periodically' and Clinton in the same sentence. }

Pundits love to predict. It sells. It thrills. Of course, they need no real evidence for their dire predictions. None, beyond linking to a story where another pundit says the same thing. Jack has already proved plenty this way.

That's the "evidence." Pundits need no evidence because they have been paid by someone ( or some news corp) to offer their opinion. Their opinion must have gravitas as a result.

Pundits suuure dont need evidence like Hillary Clinton's thousand strong rally cheering for the election of Obama today:

"I endorse him and throw my full support behind him," Clinton just said that "the way to continue our fight now, to accomplish the goals for which we stand, is to take our energy, our passion and our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama the next president of the United States!"

Robert Spencer is an Anti Semite

The continued replication of old world anti Semitism ( this time focused on Muslims) is the expected outcome of Jihadwatch and the associated propaganda instruments like Front page mag. It is also dangerous to any true campaign against terrorism.

The line that "Muslims are hate machines who hate freedom" and so on is a dangerous misreading of those who want to harm Americans. In any war on terrorism we should look at who they are, who funds them, and what their motivation is. The fact that US policy in the Mideast provokes various reactions is covered up by the lie that Islam inherently produces maniacally virgin obsessed machines who hate pop music and therefore want to attack the US.

Jihadwatch takes every conflict or incident where there is or may be some semblance of Islamic involvement and tries to paint a coherent, global Jihad based solely on religion. In truth, violence in Kashmir is territorial, Mujahadeen in the 80s (Reagan's 'freedom fighters')were resisting occupation, Darfur is about secession - as is Chechnya and Dagestan, the Philippines' Abu Sayaff are pirates and profiteers, Palestine is about occupation and annexation, Kurdish doctors in the UK were clearly reacting to the invasion of Iraq.

In truth the only glue which binds these various groups together is that provided by Bush co who make every conceivable effort to promote Bin Laden corp beyond logic and reality. This is a smokescreen to permit preordained policies like Israeli annexation, Pakistani tyranny, and "friendly" Mid East plutocracies as dictated by elite planners for decades.

Like ordinary Americans, I worry about counter terror, rights, and safety. I refuse to believe that Bush puts my interests over those long running elite interests or puts terrorism over hegemony and power.

After all, he has marshaled our resources to brutally invade and occupy Iraq and Afghanistan and facilitate heinous wars on Lebanon and Palestine : all guaranteed to lead us away from the 9-11 attackers and , in fact, increase the standing and support for the Bin Laden gang.

Jihad Watch and the local radio folks who promote it are pushing a propaganda device to ignore this.

GOP vs Conservatism

The excellent new documentary on Barry Goldwater - the founder of modern conservatism - clearly shows how today's GOP bears little relationship with conservatism. Wealthy and powerful interests are engaged in a radical duplicitous agenda which media conservatives do not have the courage to confront ( David Brooks, Jeff Jacoby, Tucker Carlson, and George Will) and which appeals to a segment of the population as some kind of balm for their perceived political alienation.

As David Stockman wrote twenty years ago about the Reagan team, big government Republicanism does not cut spending, does not level the playing field, it just trades the widespread support mechanisms engineered by democrats ( e.g. Great Society) for targeted privilege.

Today's so called republicans and so called conservatives are mostly ill informed about this reality as they feast on carefully created "values" issues, denounce inconsequential celebrity figures, and ponder economic theories ( free market etc) that have no basis in reality.

Who loves the Saudis??????????

Based on Craig Unger's research, Michael Moore accurately relates in Fahrenheit 9-11 that, in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, the White House approved planes to pick up the Bin Ladens and numerous other Saudis. Furthermore, using a combination of private and commercial flights, over 140 prominent Saudis would depart the US over the next fortnight.

Craig Unger's expose begins with the September 13 flight of several wealthy Saudis from Tampa, Florida, to Lexington, Kentucky, when all private air traffic in the US was still grounded; a flight the FAA denies ever took place. While commercial traffic had slowly restarted on September 13, it was highly unusual for private charted flights to obtain approval. The Saudis were the exception. Over the next few days a number of similar flights took place as the Bin Laden family and other important Saudis were rounded up for what Unger describes as "The Great Escape". Within two weeks, at least two dozen members of the Bin Laden family had been whisked out of the US.

A common rebuttal charges that the departing Saudis had been extensively vetted by the FBI and others before departure, and that counter terror Chief Richard Clarke had approved the flights. However, Clarke's testimony to the 9-11 commission makes clear that any vetting was merely of the formal kind, involving the dictation of statements, and hardly impeding the movements of the terror mastermind's family. By contrast the November 25th, 2001, New York Times was reporting that, at the same time: "More than 1,200 foreigners have been detained as part of the government's investigation into the terror attacks, some spending months in prison." Incidentally, not one of these 1,200 detainees was ever charged in relation to terrorism or the 9-11 attacks.

Moore's critics continually trumpet the fact that commercial traffic had resumed by September 13, as if this erases the abnormality of these events. In fact, the nature of the Saudi's private charted flights and the special deference accorded the Bin Laden family were exceptional, and form a powerful part of Moore's attempts to expose the toxic nature of the U.S.-Saudi relationship. The fact that Hillary or Bill Clinton receive slimy wads of oil soaked cash does not diminish these acts , Im afraid. Afterall, these were real bona fide terror suspects.

In contrast to John Ashcroft's 1,200 "terrorist" detainees, numerous questions have been raised about the prominent Saudis who left in the wake of 9-11. After all, mere weeks before the attacks, many members of the Bin Laden family had gathered, with Osama, in Afghanistan for the wedding of one of his sons. Craig Unger also describes an apparent close relationship between Saudi Prince Ahmed bin Salaman and Al Queda leader Abu Zubaydah, who, with the aid of sodium pentothal, asserted that the Prince "knew beforehand that an attack was scheduled for American soil that day." Many of Moore and Unger's critics may be astounded to note that the FBI questioning of the Prince did not reveal such a link before his speedy departure on September 16.

This is a real 9-11 conspiracy. It illustrates not that the administration are great masterminds who orchestrated the attacks, merely uninterested, unaccountable elites who orchestrated the safety of their friends, with little concern for justice for those incinerated on 9-11 and the interdiction of those who orchestrate and fund terrorist threats. Shame on them and those who reflexively defend them.

It's the oil, stupid

Daniel Yergen and I are well aware that we have an oil based economy, a failed oil man as a failed president, a nation whose leading corp. is Exxon and a political elite that has recognized for 50 years that control over mid east oil is a strategic imperative.

It's rather naive for folks to respond to say that we are not 'taking' the oil. It is not about taking or plunder, it's about control over a resource rich region, regardless of where the barrels go. The elite is using 20 year old Spcs from Iowa and S Carolina to ensure that Iraq's resources are controlled and controllable. It is a conspiracy theory to deny this.

Paul O'Neil, the appointed and ousted Treasury secretary spoke of administration folks poring over Iraqi oilfield maps in 2002, shortly before the Iraq-WMD charade was literally "rolled out." Noam Chomsky wryly observed that were Iraq's primary export to be pickles we would not be there. A key benchmark for Iraq's so called government is the carving up of oil revenues for picking off by Western companies. In so much as most of Congress exists to serve these companies, few have signed on to Kucinich's attempts to block this provision.

According to striking Iraqi oil workers ( i.e. the only people whose opinions count on this) who visited the US, this hands over Iraq's only resource to the same neo Colonial machine for exploitation. Of course, the eeeevil liberal media has covered their visit in copious detail in an attempt to embarrass Bush, right???? Ultra liberal Harry Reid has invited them to Congress, right? No, this is another failure of the media and so called liberal democrats, where any discussion of oil has been careful relegated to random columns six years too late.

One can also comment on the local interpretation of these events. What is really pathetic and tragic is that 1420 WMAR apologists, concerned with only seeming tougher than the liberal straw men they fantasize about continue to allude to Saddam-UBL links, to "finding" WMDs and, when all else fails, to asserting in meandering theological arguments that killing Arabs and invading their nations is really a plus in a titanic "clash of civilizations."

One should conclude that, as Paul O'Neill and so many others have written, the conquest of Iraq was a choice, not a necessity. The reasons are obvious and have nothing to do with terrorism. That is merely an inconvenience to be borne by citizens.

Bush succeeds on immigration

Bush and the Republican party have oft been criticized by the right wing punditocracy for their "inaction" on immigration. In truth, they have pursued a clear and obvious policy. They have shepherded and accelerated a bipartisan policy of hemispheric economic integration that shortchanges workers everywhere ( leading to low wages and immigration) and favors corporations ( high profits for elites).

Failing to address this and rallying ill informed hate is the purview of talk radio. Here, showing sympathy to victims of this economic dislocation is treason. The notion that US workers should show solidarity with other American workers and get together to fix the system is suppressed by the perpetual outrage that some illegals commit crimes (shock!!!). Treating this issue as cheaply and sensationally as any other is a sure fire way to advance in the realm of White Male Angst Radio .

While they are hardly guilt free in this, at least opponents of NAFTA and CAFTA have a home in the Democratic party. At least a wing exists that seeks to prioritize working families over unearned income generation.


This is the message that Ron Paul, Kucinich, and Gravel want to send. In a political race where large corporations effectively select the candidates and disseminate tabloid like propaganda to local outrage radio like WMAR 1420, this is difficult to achieve.

Pittman vs Unger

In an off-election year nationally, now that the folly of the Iraq war has been ascertained, gay marriage resolved and immigration exhausted, south coast pundit watchers and armchair wags can bask in the clash of two local media figures.

For my own part, I think the gulf in quality between print and broadcast media has long been apparent. This gap is amplified on the southcoast where an autonomous, professional, news product generator like the Standard Times can be compared with the local broadcaster whose afternoon commentary exhibits no apparent standards, etiquette or discipline in the manufacture of little more than hot air.

For now, one example will suffice: In his latest entry on his website* Ken Pittman attempts to paint Bob Unger as, of all things, "a leftist". Bob's biases are apparently clear because, in one example, his paper labeled an anti immigration protester "a heckler" and labeled anti marriage amendment folks as "counter demonstrators." **

However, a closer look at two disparate events and two very different types of protester reveals the descriptions are accurate, or at the very least not manufactured of malice and bias. The anti marriage rally was held in public, near City Hall, with police yawning, college kids snapping photos, each side bringing their dogs along for the outing and each side sticking to their side of a street with little malice shown as groups stood a disciplined 8 feet apart.

When immigrant advocates assembled indoors at NBVT HS the sole protestor ( apart from a local KKK type group) repeatedly and specifically yelled at each speaker until she was asked to leave the building by organizers and NBPD - (TV coverage later showed her, sign in hand, chest to chest with NBPD officers, screaming "Where's ICE" in response to their hands-raised request for her to calm down!!!!)***. The Standard times printed her concerns, her status as a Navy Vet, and her pointed criticisms of the Standard Times itself.

While your position on each of the two hot button issues will mean you lend sympathy to one protest over the other, the differences are apparent. Indeed, Pittman's outrage is curious indeed, as he has previously:

+ Expressed indignation when Columbia students ran onstage to disrupt a Minuteman/Jim Gilchrist event.
+ Curiously never asked Gilchirst on air why one of his "security" kicked an off stage student in the temple.
+ Had warned that any "counter protesters" would face arrest at his own anti -immigrant rally****
+ Extensively and fawningly interviewed Ms. Blaha and gay marriage foe Larry Cirignano ( Cirignano himself accused of assaulting a woman at a rally).


Indeed, if there are biases here that warp coverage, it is pretty clear on which media organ this occurs.




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*This latest "column" has been heavily edited since the first version was uploaded Sunday. Most interesting is the completely revised description of Pittman's conversation with Unger outside NECN studios.

**In each case however, it is worth noting that complete coverage of both events allowed any reader to make up his or her own mind (google it). Is this the case with WBSM coverage??

*** One wonders what law and order "conservatives" think of such behavior.

**** This WALL rally received extensive before and after coverage by Unger's STimes.

Pittman: Dont Dare Disagree

1420 WMAR's host and webmaster of his self named website is perpetually heard espousing the virtues of an open and vibrant exchange of ideas. However, reality is a little different, where a radio studio is stacked with several ideological partisans for every caller, the frames of every national news debate are set by verbal cut and pastes from News Max or other far right web sites, and ( even when the terminate button is held in check) the last word or wrap up always goes the triumvirate of spin.

One would expect that the first and last of these tactics would be held in check online. Indeed, I have participated in several discussions on our esteemed host's website; invariably having factual arguments met with usual insults ( anti-America, terrorist etc. etc.)

A nadir was finally reached with the culmination of a discussion with host blogger Bob Grant. In my refuting his claim that "victory" against the gargantuan Muslim enemy can ignore sufferings that motivate many of our enemies and damage our reputation, it turns out that Mr. Grant or the esteemed webmaster himself were compelled to edit and rework my posts in a manner befitting a middle schooler.

Insult was recently added to injury when Mr Grant went on to respond to my post that he himself had reworked!!! If your ears can not tell you what this enterprise is all about, go see it with your own eyes ( the site could use the traffic).