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Jan 11, 2011

Prof Lipstadt is gunning for Glenn Beck

 

From: Fredrick Toben <toben@toben.biz>
Date: Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 6:19 PM
Subject: Prof Lipstadt is gunning for Glenn Beck



Top Jewish Historian: Glenn Beck, Roger Ailes, Anti-Semitic

By M.J. Rosenberg- January 10, 2011, 4:37PM

On Saturday night, CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked someone on the scene in Tucson if anti-Semitism played any role in Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' shooting. His response was "no." It is well known that Giffords is Jewish, but anti-Semitism per se did not seem to be a contributing factor in the shooting of Giffords and 17 other victims in front of a Tucson shopping center.


That seems right, although all weekend I received emails from Jews indicating a special fear that, on some level, anti-Semitism played a part in Saturday's events. This is probably nothing more than the natural response of any minority group to an attack on a very prominent member of the community.


JFK was clearly not killed because he was Roman Catholic, but most Catholics I knew back then believed that there was something particularly unsettling about the murder of the first Catholic president.


Muslims also were particularly unsettled by the Tucson shooting. They are aware that when incidents of this kind occur, they are invariably the first people to come under suspicion. (Remember when terrorism "investigator" Steve Emerson blamed Muslimsfor the Oklahoma bombing within hours of the explosion, before learning it was perpetrated by a right-wing extremist?)


Muslims are also upset that the word "terrorism" is not being used about the Tucson massacre when it certainly would be applied if the "lone" shooter was named Ahmed and not Jared.


Also, Jews and Muslims are both very nervous about the increasing prevalence of religious, racial and ethnic prejudice in this country. For instance, Think Progress reported in Decemberabout efforts by far-right elements in the Texas Republican Party to prevent a Jewish Republican, Joe Straus, from continuing on as speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.


...the Texas Observer's Abby Rapoport reported that she had obtained an email exchange between two members of the Texas State Republican Executive Committee (SREC) — Rebecca Williamson and John Cook. "We elected a house with Christian, conservative values. We now want a true Christian, conservative running it," Cook said in one of the emails.


In the end Joe Straus got the job, but Jewish Texans were shaken up by the effort to make his faith an issue, which seems like a throwback to the days when the KKK was such a potent force in Texas politics.


The anti-Semitism of a few GOP officials in Texas is, of course, small potatoes compared to the creepy anti-Jewish spewing of Fox News' Glenn Beck, whose audience numbers in the many millions on television and radio.


I have written about my concern that the Jewish community was not paying enough attention to Beckbecause he cleverly covers his tracks by professing his "love" for Israel. (Virtually all anti-Semites these days understand that expressing "love" for the Jewish state gives them a relatively free pass to bash Jews and even to use Nazi themes against them.)


But Beck's pass is about to be shredded.


On January 7, Deborah Lipstadt, the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory, wrote a piecein London's Jewish Chronicle calling for British officials to consider the attitudes of Beck and Fox News President Roger Ailes toward Jews before they permit Rupert Murdoch, the president of Fox, to expand his media holdings in the United Kingdom.


Excuse me for printing this long excerpt from Lipstadt but she is uniquely credible on this issue.


Lipstadt is best known because of her 2005 legal victory against Holocaust denier and Hitler apologist David Irving. Irving, a prominent British historian, sued Lipstadt under the libel laws for calling him a Holocaust denier in her book, Holocaust Denial.


Against the advice of lawyers who told her that it was near impossible to defend against a libel suit in the UK, Lipstadt fought back hard. She moved to London, prepared for a trial where she would have to back up every one of her assertions against a prominent historian, stared down neo-fascists who followed her everywhere, and won.


The presiding judge produced a 334-page judgment declaring that nothing Lipstadt said was libelous and, in fact, Irving was a Holocaust denier and a distorter of history. His career went down in flames and, ever since, the Holocaust-denial industry has struggled under the burden laid on by 


Lipstadt and the trial that vindicated her. (Lipstadt's memoir of the trial is here.)


Today, the fearless Lipstadt is a leading expert on what constitutes anti-Semitism and what doesn't. She is also, for the record, staunchly pro-Israel.

Here is Lipstadt on Beckand Fox:


Beck regularly professes his deep love for Israel and has a history of using Holocaust analogies to attack those with whom he disagrees — anyone to the left of him. He accuses his opponents of laying the groundwork for a fascist state. Last summer, Jewish Funds for Justice, a progressive group, criticised Beck's opposition to the campaign for social justice. The head of the organisation, Simon Greer, argued that "to put God first is to put humankind first, and to put humankind first is to put the common good first." Beck responded that this world-view "leads to death camps. 


A Jew, of all people, should know that. This is exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany. Put humankind and the common good first."


But this was surpassed by Beck a few months later when he ran a three-part series on George Soros, entitled The Puppet Master. Complete with images of demonic-looking Jewish stars, Beck attacked Soros for supposedly trying to take over the world. Soros, Beck claimed, "makes predictions, and his loyal followers make sure they come true." Soros's goal, Beck charged, was a "one-world government, the end of America's status as the prevailing world power." He excoriated Soros's efforts to change the governmental systems in Hungary, Georgia, Czechoslovakia and Ukraine, failing to point out that, in each country, Soros was trying to help democratic government gain a foothold.


Many people found Beck's reference to Soros's experiences during the Holocaust particularly egregious. Soros's parents had hidden him with a non-Jew who worked for the Hungarian ministry of agriculture.


On one occasion, the man took Soros with him when he made an inventory of the contents of a home of wealthy Jews who had been deported. Apparently, Soros spent the time riding a horse on the property. This is how Beck described it: "And George Soros used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off. He would help confiscate the stuff. It was frightening...


"Here's a Jewish boy," Beck concluded, "helping send the Jews to the death camps." This charge echoes a classic anti-Semitic motif: Jews will oppress their own if it is to their advantage to do so. J. J. Goldberg of Forward described it as the closest thing he had heard to fascism on mainstream television.


Lipstadt ends her piece by noting that Rupert Murdoch recently made a "stirring pro-Israel speech to the Anti-Defamation League" (and also is generous to "pro-Israel" causes). But, Lipstadt argues, one thing has nothing to do with the other. Before the Brits approve any more Murdoch attempts to buy up media outlets, she wants them to keep Beck's and Ailes' attitudes toward Jews in mind.


The same should apply to anyone who considers advertising on Fox or even watching it. So long as it employs Ailes and Beck, it is not kosher. Period.


---- Message sent via Adam Internet WebMail - http://www.adam.com.au/



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not a chance

 


http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/01/10/2742485/eu-officials-report-urges-eastern-jerusalem-intervention


EU officials' report urges eastern Jerusalem intervention

January 10, 2011

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- A report by European Union officials in Israel proposes that EU officials should intervene in eastern Jerusalem home demolitions and in Palestinian arrests.

The confidential report prepared by 25 EU consuls general to the Palestinian Authority living in eastern Jerusalem and sent to the European Union in Brussels severely criticizes Israel for its actions against Palestinians in the city, the British newspaper The Independent reported Monday.

The document accuses Israel of isolating Palestinian neighborhoods and says it is undermining the Palestinian presence in eastern Jerusalem.

"If current trends are not stopped as a matter of urgency, the prospect of East Jerusalem as the future capital of a Palestinian state becomes increasingly unlikely and unworkable," the document says, according to the newspaper. "This, in turn, seriously endangers the chances of a sustainable peace on the basis of two states, with Jerusalem as their future capital."

The report also discusses the possibility that Jewish settlers from eastern Jerusalem be prohibited from entering EU countries and recommends a boycott of Jewish products and services from eastern Jerusalem, both by diplomats visiting the area and by raising awareness among general consumers in their home countries, Haaretz reported Monday. 
 





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Why kids love Holocaust studies

 



Memo: Can't you see all these kids on a train traveling to Auschwitz, giggling as they prepare to dutifully contemplate the horrors of the Holocaust?

START:


Teacher suspended for excessive Holocaust lessons is reinstated
January 10, 2011

(JTA) -- A high school teacher in France who was suspended for spending too much class time on the Holocaust was reinstated.

Catherine Pederzoli, 58, who teaches history in Nancy, near the German border, was suspended for four months last September after inspectors reported that she spent too much time teaching the Holocaust and organizing school trips to former concentration camps in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Pederzoli, who is Jewish, also was criticized for using the term Shoah instead of genocide.

District authorities requested an inspection into Pederzoli's teaching practices following a protest by her students, who demanded that the number of people allowed to participate in school trips to concentration camps not be reduced as planned by school authorities, according to French reports.

Pederzoli was reinstated last week as a secondary school teacher, although at a different school in Nancy, according to reports.
 




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It's official: ADL says: Giffords wasn't shot because of her Judaism

 

http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/articles/2011/01/11/news/nation_and_world/doc4d2ccfc9b1e6a431204678.txt

Giffords wasn't shot because of her Judaism, ADL says


Published: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 4:47 PM EST
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- An analysis of Internet musings by Jared Lee Loughner dismisses speculation that he may have targeted U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords because she is Jewish.

"In the end, the writings so far revealed seem to indicate no particular leanings about race, and it is difficult to come away from the postings with such a conclusion," according to the analysis published Tuesday by the Anti-Defamation League.

The ADL analysis also said that the writings do not "point to a particular ideology or belief system."

Loughner's "semi-coherent" writings "are indicative of an individual who has been exposed to a number of different ideas, from across the political spectrum, and has sometimes appropriated external concepts -- often seemingly divorced from their original context," the analysis said.

Loughner, 22, waived bail Monday when he appeared in a federal courtroom to face two federal charges of murder and three charges of attempted murder. He is expected to face additional state murder charges.

Also Monday, President Obama spoke with Giffords' rabbi during a series of calls to friends and families of victims of the Jan. 8 shooting at a shopping mall in Tucson.

A White House official said Rabbi Stephanie Aaron of Tucson's Congregation Chaverim was among the Tucson-area officials, victims and families Obama reached in the wake of the attack that left Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, critically injured and six dead.

Giffords turned to Aaron after a visit to Israel in 2001 ignited an interest in her Judaism, and the two were close. Aaron performed the ceremony when Giffords married Cmdr. Mark Kelly, an astronaut, in 2007.

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Michael Santomauro
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Wikileaks Cables are censored, by Israel Shamir

 


Scoop: The Guardian censors and distorts the cables!

http://www.israelshamir.net/English/GuardianAstana.htm

 

The Guardian's Political Censorship of Wikileaks Cables

By Israel Shamir

 

Although the net tightens around Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the contents of the US embassy cables have been doled out to us in spoonfuls. Worse, The Guardian edits and distorts the cables in order to protect their readers from unflattering remarks about how their corporations behave overseas. This is not a conjecture but a fact: The Guardian has deliberately excised portions of published cables to hide evidence of corruption.

 

A year ago, on the 25th of January, 2010, the US Embassy in Astana, Kazakhstan sent out the secret cable ASTANA 000072, entitled KAZAKHSTAN: MONEY AND POWER. The cable chronicled the US Ambassador's private dinner with a senior Kazakh government official named Maksat Idenov. At the time, Idenov headed the Kazakh state oil and gas company and represented the state in its dealings with foreign oil companies, including British Gas and ENI. A redacted version of the cable has been published, and so we have been given the rare privilege of viewing The Guardian's editing process in action. It looks like nothing so much as political self-censorship.

 

Here is the relevant portion of the Astana cable; the words removed by The Guardian are printed in bold:

 

"… market economy means capitalism, which means big money, which means large bribes for the best connected."

 

It does seem like someone at The Guardian wants to save us from becoming disillusioned about free markets. The Guardian is not shy about revealing to their readers that capitalism means "big money", but a discussion of what big money can do to a foreign government is strictly verboten. Idenov is not some discontented outsider; he is a power player in the heart of the machine. He knows of which he speaks. The readers of The Guardian may never get to hear it, but the "big money" of capitalism does in reality result in "large bribes for the best connected".

 

Just before dinner, Idenov was overheard "barking into his cell phone" at British Gas (BG) Country Director Mark Rawlings "who is 'still playing games with Mercator's James Giffin,' the notorious AmCit fixer indicted for large-scale bribery on oil deals in the 1990s, whose case drags on in the Southern District Court of New York. Idenov tells him: 'Mark, stop being an idiot! Stop tempting fate! Stop communicating with an indicted criminal!' "

Again, the bold and very relevant information of the Astana cable has been removed from publication so that British taxpayers might not learn that the regional director of a prominent British company insists on dealing with an indicted grafter. The readers of The Guardian may never know that the case of American citizen ("AmCit") James Giffen (spelled incorrectly in the cable) was dismissed by US District Judge because the bribes he gave to the Kazakh officials were authorized by the CIA. The judge publicly lauded the "notorious fixer" as a Cold War warrior who helped the Jewish cause (always an exonerating feature within the US justice system) and stated for the record that "his business dealings were CIA-authorized operations".

"Mr. Giffen was a significant source of information for the U.S. government and a conduit for secret communications to the Soviet Union and its leadership during the Cold War," the judge said. In Kazakhstan, Giffen was advancing US interests, including corporate interests. "He acted as a conduit for communications on issues vital to America's national interest in the region," the judge said.

"Oil industry middleman James H. Giffen, once accused of funneling $84 million in bribes to the president of Kazakhstan and other officials" walked away a free and rich man. Perhaps our man Rawlings knew a little more about Giffen's CIA connections than did the Ambassador and Mr. Idenov.

The Guardian's final cut takes the proverbial cake. Idenov goes on to say that both BG and Italy's ENI are corrupt, and that bribe-hungry Kazakh officials are itching to work with them. This portion of the cable was excised.

 

The only portion of the cable that The Guardian felt worthy of highlight was that the currently favoured presidential son-in-law was "on the Forbes 500 list of billionaires (as is his wife separately)". Furthermore, the redacted cable was dropped onto the pages of The Guardian without any background information or further comment. Kazakhstan is not next-door, and Guardian readers deserve better. Here is what they left out of the story: Idenov left the state's service in May 2010 and in July he re-emerged as –surprise, surprise - the Senior Vice President for Strategic Planning of ENI. Yes, none other than that selfsame "corrupt" ENI he dealt with from his ministerial desk.

 

The Astana cable is a microcosm of the robbery of the ex-Soviet space by Western corporations. From it we learn that bribes are authorized by the CIA and that the grafters are exonerated by the US courts. We learn that Harvard-trained lawyers like Mr. Idenov take full advantage of the revolving door between positions of state and the Western corporations that rob it. In short, we learn that "capitalism means large bribes for the best connected." The readers of The Guardian, of course, missed out on all this.

 

Idenov concludes his talk with the rationalizations of his fellow sell-outs: "Almost everyone at the top is confused by the corrupt excesses of capitalism. 'If Goldman Sachs executives can make $50 million a year and then run America's economy in Washington, what's so different about what we do?' they ask." Indeed, probably nothing. If the American people are helpless before the rapacity of Goldman Sachs executives, how can we expect the Kazakh people to defend themselves from transnational corporations assisted by the CIA? The full, unedited cable makes it too clear that their only choice is which bribe to take.

 

Although the agreement between Wikileaks and The Guardian permits the newspaper to block out the names of innocent people who might suffer upon disclosure, the Astana cable was clearly redacted for political reasons, in order to protect the image of the kind of predatory capitalism they preach in the East.

 

Perhaps we might review other Guardian news stories for this kind of heavy-handed doctoring of newly available documents. Consider the secret cable TASHKENT 000902, sent May 5­th, 2005. Here is The Guardian's presentation of the cable. It is censored almost completely; only two irrelevant sentences survived the self-serving butchery of Guardian editors. With editors like these, the sword hanging over Private Manning and the noose around the neck of Julian Assange become superfluous.

 

The original Tashkent cable describes the dealings of Uzbekistani "crime boss" and "top mobster" Salim Abduvaliyev (more frequent spelling: Abduvaliev) who, according to the American embassy, controls government jobs and awards government contracts through his connection with Gulnara, the "First Daughter of President Karimov". The primary message-carrier between the arch-criminal and Gulnara is a British citizen of Iranian origin. Why did The Guardian choose to excise the vast majority of the cable? To protect the British go-between? To protect the connection with Chernoy, a prominent Israeli businessman? Is there an Uzbekistani criminal pulling the strings at The Guardian?

 

Another Secret cable, TASHKENT 000465, describes the mobster's family wedding. It is not all that different from the famous description of the Dagestan wedding in another cable, MOSCOW 009533, yet The Guardian decided not to publish this one at all. Isn't it considerate of The Guardian to protect the people of Uzbekistan from learning about the ties of corruption between the Karimov family and leading gangsters? Could it be explained by drift of Karimov's regime away from Moscow and into close cooperation with the Americans as it is indicated in the yet unpublished cable MOSCOW 000337?

 

This sort of political self-censorship explains why The Guardian chose to attack Israel Shamir, an independent journalist working with Wikileaks. In the pages of The Guardian, Nick Cohen claimed that Israel Shamir "may have handed confidential information to Lukashenko", as if Shamir were some sort of secret agent with a bullet-proof briefcase. Shamir also "may have" flown to the moon and back, for that matter.

 

I am still amazed by the sheer naiveté of this baseless claim. Hasn't Nick Cohen heard of email? Even The Guardian publishes confidential information (if not the whole story). Wikileaks provides confidential information to everybody without discrimination and without the need of secret agents. All the secret Belarus-related US embassy cables are about to be published on the biggest independent Belarusian site for everybody to see, including both Lukashenko and Cohen.

 

Nick Cohen starts from where his predecessor, "resident moron" Andrew Brown ended. Brown, in his Guardian attack on Shamir, said that his connection to the Wikileaks "has worrying implications for the security of anyone named in the cables. This is not because the cables themselves are inaccurate, but because they are not."

 

Surprisingly, Brown is right, despite his clumsy triple negation. The people named in the cables – usually veterans of the revolving door between transnational corporations and government service – rest at ease knowing that the embedded mainstream media like The Guardian and The New York Times will sever all connection between their actions and their responsibilities. The very existence of independent journalists and free, independent, web-based media "has worrying implications for their security". Let them worry. While errand-boys have no need to fear, the rich and powerful may trust in us to hold them accountable for their misdeeds. Does The Guardian even understand why they have been given these secret and confidential cables? Wikileaks is trying to shed a little light upon the dark and dirty underworld of international intrigue, and The Guardian is doing everything it can to blot it out again. The battle for truth is just beginning.


Edited by Paul Bennett

Read on the topic: Shamir's response to Andrew Brown of the Guardian

The Secrets of Wikileaks

The secret previously unpublished cables TASHKENT 000465 and TASHKENT 000902

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Thank you and remember: 

Peace is patriotic!

Michael Santomauro
253 W. 72nd Street
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What's the difference? Loughner? White House? Congress?

 



Is Jared Lee Loughner Jewish?

Kevin MacDonald on January 10, 2011  54 Comments

The Jewish Telegraph Agency picked up the Fox memo and ran with it, emphasizing the idea that Loughner targeted Giffords because she was Jewish: "Memo Notes Giffords' Judaism in Motives of Alleged Attacker." American Renaissance is (absurdly) described as "anti-ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government) [and] anti-Semitic."

However, Mother Jones reports that Jared Lee Loughner's best friend claims that Loughner's mother is Jewish. This would seem to be a problem for the anti-Semitism motive.  According to the friend, Loughner disliked Giffords because she didn't answer a his question at a public meeting. The question: "'What is government if words have no meaning?"

In other words, he is a nut case who has trouble with distinguishing real from unreal. From the description provided by the friend, it looks to me like some kind of schizophrenia–for example, believing in an alternate reality where he could fly and where he could dream anything he wanted and make it seem real.

In fact one of his YouTube videos combines the nutcase theme with the Jewish theme. In "My Final Thoughts: Jared Lee Loughner!" he says,  "If B.C.E. years are unable to start then A.D.E years are unable to begin. B.C.E. years are unable to start. Thus, A.D.E years are unable to begin." (See here.) Besides the weirdness of the syllogism, B.C.E. stands for Before Common Era, a way of referring to the year Christ was born without referring to anything Christian that is common among Jewish scholars. Non-Jews don't use it unless they are trying to impress Jews with their respect for Jewish hostility toward Christianity.

But the A.D.E. is not standard usage for anyone. Jewish scholars just write C.E.–Common Era and the rest of us use A.D. So maybe it's just another aspect of his craziness.

http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/01/is-jared-lee-loughner-jewish/

Who knows?

But the reference to his interest in semiotics (as stated in Mother Jones) is interesting. This would necessarily be attached to structuralism and semiotics today: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics

The writers in that canon would be all from the New Left (following after Saussere into Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, and perhaps most importantly Althusser). These books are taught in all humanities programs, or at least their perspectives.

Saussere in the hands of a 22 year-old –who would be reading over his head with no instruction— may have confused him in regards to the relation of words and meaning. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism)

Few in the general public perhaps would connect what he is saying to the New Left and studies in the connections between words and meaning. This can be unsettling for someone who is young, nor schooled in the connections between signs and symbols and meaning (structuralism, the new left, semiotics, semantics, the Prague and Moscow schools).

Perhaps— (crazy though he is) he seems trying to articulate what might be commonplace in semiotics studies while reading the New Left, like in universities, (where signs are simply signs, not connected to things to which they refer, and are studied as such). One non-jew involved (outside Lacan, Derrida, etc.) was Kenneth Burke and this recalls his "A Grammar of Motives" or Language as Symbolic Action. (He was educated in the 20s at Columbia University).

Anyhow— he may have been somehow exposed to some of these New Left materials without instruction or a way to understand (or been exposed to the "filtered down" ideas in these studies.

Obviously, the New Left here is offering ways of thinking about signs, symbols and meaning that are not usually studied by many people, except in colleges.




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Thank you and remember: 

Peace is patriotic!

Michael Santomauro
253 W. 72nd Street
New York, NY 10023

Call anytime: 917-974-6367

E-mail me anything:
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

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