ISSUES: Bowhunting (1)

Editor’s Note: The Greanville Post.com is completely opposed to so-called recreational hunting in all its forms, regarding it as a depraved and anachronistic activity without any social or moral justification. The contradictions surrounding hunting are legion. Ironically, many people who enjoy hunting see themselves as devout Christians (or whatever) and never stop to think for an elemental moment that taking a life for the sheer fun of it is a degenerate and cowardly act.  The churches, as usual, remains officially silent. Bowhunting–the subject of the controversy below–is a particularly heinous variety of this “pastime”. In a majority of cases it guarantees a slow and painful death. Such considerations, of course, rarely enter the chidishly selfish mindscape of bowhunters, or the vast network of media, politicians, and public officials that supports them. The item below —a local Pennsylvania paper piece (11/2002) cheerfully trumpeting a bowhunter’s narrow escape—provoked a reply from animal activist Judy Brock. The paper chose not to publish her letter (typical of the whorish media and one of the many reasons we need to replace it with a new non-commercial system).

 

My friend Natalie Jarnstedt reminded me of this case, and I thought TGP readers might be interested in reading about it for what it says about the state of affairs in this small corner of this enormously fucked up society.—P. Greanville

—Natalie Jarnstedt*

 

Long fall, longer crawl to safety  [print_link]

Hunter escapes woods with broken back, ankle

Wednesday, November 13, 2002

By Johnna A. Pro, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Merrily shooting animals for fun.

Bowhunters Vince & Cathy Grgas: merrily shooting animals for fun.

Were she not lying flat with a broken back and a broken ankle in a trauma unit at Allegheny General Hospital, Athena Scanlon could be the poster girl for the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

She loves everything about hunting with a bow and arrow: the woods, the wildlife, the wind whistling through the trees.

Injured, alone and unable to attract help, Scanlon crawled 75 yards through the woods to her car, pulled herself inside, and drove a mile to Route 422, where a passerby finally stopped to help her.

As Scanlon made her way up the tree ladder, she checked each rung, including the top one, before proceeding. All were sturdy.

But when Scanlon put all her weight on the top rung and prepared to hoist herself into the stand, the step gave way.

For a few minutes, Scanlon lay on the ground on her back calling for help, to no avail.

As she made her way to the car, Scanlon remembered that her keys could activate the car alarm. She managed to get them out of her pocket.

Apparently she was successful. A teenager on an all-terrain vehicle drove by twice and Scanlon thought he was going to get help. But he never came back.

A plane flew overhead. It was getting darker and colder. Scanlon knew she had to get to the car. Once again, she started to crawl.

At the car, Scanlon managed to pull herself inside, but with her right leg broken, she was unable to push the gas pedal even as she got the car started.

Instead, as she partially lay across the seat in pain, she used her hand to push her right leg down, putting enough pressure on it to move the gas pedal.

With all the strength she could muster, Scanlon steered the car a mile out of the woods to Route 422 and pulled over, figuring she had a better shot of getting help on the highway.

She flashed her lights and blew her horn trying to attract attention.

Cathy Grgas with dead squirrel.  Draw your own conclusions.
Having lotsa fun. Cathy Grgas with dead squirrel. Draw your own conclusions.

“It was 5:38 p.m. when someone finally stopped,” she said. “It was 4 p.m. when I fell.”

Scanlon was flown by medical helicopter to Allegheny General Hospital, where she will undergo surgery today to repair the fractured joint in her right ankle.

She also fractured a vertebra in her lower back, but that most likely will heal without surgery. Doctors expect that she will wear a brace for 12 weeks but the prognosis is good.

jpro@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1574

LETTER TO EDITOR RESPONSE

Editor John G. Craig, Jr.


Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

34 Blvd of the Allies

Pittsburgh, PA   15222

I am writing about the article:  Long fall, longer crawl to safety, featured on November 13th.  This story was about a bow hunter, Athena Scanlon, falling from her tree stand while deer hunting.  She broke her back and ankle and had to crawl to her car to safety.  I only wish I could interview her about this incident.  I would ask her about the experience she had with pain and fear.  I would carefully point out that what she felt is only the beginning of what the deer experience when they are wounded by arrows, how they run away bleeding to death, with fear, crawl to their death, feel the pain and die slow deaths.  I would mention how it is difficult for me to understand how anyone could “love” doing this to an innocent, docile animal for the purpose of recreation and classify it as “wonderful” and “addicting”.  Yes, hunting activists say it is “wonderful” and “addicting”, but I fail to understand, especially since bow hunting causes a 50% wounding rate.  Translated this means: for every deer shot with an arrow, 50% of them are wounded; not killed quickly.  They suffer and die slow deaths:  bleeding to death, infection from the wound, etc.  Yes, deer feel pain and fear, just like this bow hunter did.

Thank you,

Judy Brock

*Natalie Jarnstedt is a well-known animal defense activist based in Connecticut.




A world awash in professional deception

http://www.spinwatch.org.uk/-articles-by-category-mainmenu-8/74-terror-spin/5325-realite-eu-front-group-for-the-washington-based-israel-project

Réalité-EU: Front group for the Washington-based Israel Project?

Tom Mills and David Miller, 30 October 2009 [print_link]

Spinwatch has uncovered evidence that an apparently London based organisation offering expertise on Iran to journalists and politicians is a covert propaganda operation run by a pro-Israel organisation in the United States.Har_Hatzofim

The organisation, which is called Réalité-EU, has direct connections to The Israel Project, a hard-line pro-Israel organisation based in Washington DC. Both Réalité-EU and The Israel Project also appear to be connected to a Jewish organisation – B’nai B’rith International, which is also active in pro-Israel campaigning.

Réalité-EU was at one time linked to the former Shadow Security Minister Patrick Mercer, raising further concerns about the Conservative MP’s links to individuals and groups involved in exaggerating and even fabricating domestic and international threats for personal and political ends. These activities have previously been reported by Spinwatch as well as other sources.

Réalité-EU has claimed to be based at offices in London, but e-mails received from the organisation were sent from a mail server registered to the Washington offices of B’nai B’rith International.[1] An expert from Réalité-EU who spoke to Spinwatch denied ‘any connection whatsoever’ with B’nai B’rith.

Asked whether Réalité-EU receives any funding or direct support from the pro-Israel pressure group, the expert replied, ‘Definitely not,’ but added, ‘I’m not at all involved in any development [i.e. funding] questions so I really don’t know exactly who the individuals are and where they come from.’[2]

Spinwatch’s questions about the backers of Réalité-EU were then referred to the group’s Communication Associate Gerlinde Gerber. She subsequently sent an e-mail stating that Réalité-EU receives funds from ‘different individuals from all over the world,’ who ‘are especially concerned about the growing threat of extremism in Europe and the Middle East.’[3]

When Ms Gerber was confronted with evidence directly linking Réalité-EU with B’nai B’rith she said that her organisation rents ‘services and space on their server for cost saving reasons,’ but that it had no ‘ideological or other connection to B’nai B’rith’. She also stated that the expert Spinwatch had spoken had no knowledge of this arrangement.[4]

Spinwatch then discovered that the London phone number for Réalité-EU redirected to a voicemail at the offices of The Israel Project in Washington, an organisation that also uses the B’nai B’rith mail server. Ms Gerber did not reply to further questions about Réalité-EU’s relationship with The Israel Project or to a query as to where Réalité-EU is registered given that there is no trace of the organisation in the UK at Companies House or the Charity Commission.

B’nai B’rith International and The Israel Project were also asked to comment on whether they have any relationship with Réalité-EU but failed to respond.

History

B’nai B’rith International is one of a number of well-funded organisations which lobby in support of Israel.[5] It was not originally a Zionist organisation and in its early years was officially neutral on the issue. It was set up in New York over a hundred years before the establishment of the State of Israel and was originally focused on providing welfare to newly arriving Jewish immigrants.

In 1913 it founded the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith[6] to record incidents of anti-Semitism and campaign for greater protection for Jewish people. The League subsequently became independent of its parent organisation and, now known simply as the Anti-Defamation League or ADL, it has become notorious for its campaigns of harassment against critics of Israel. Amongst its targets was Noam Chomsky, who has noted ‘They try to label any criticism as anti-Semitic… in the last 40 years it’s become a Stalinist-style organization dedicated to supporting anything Israel does and to destroying all opposition to Israeli policies.’[7]

In addition ADL has been repeatedly accused of broadening its activities from defending against what it claims is ‘anti-Semitism’ to actually spying on the left, including allegedly working with the South African apartheid regime, spying on anti-apartheid groups, a wide range of left and human rights organisations and even on HIV/AIDS activsts.[8]

ADL and The Israel Project are ideologically aligned but are also linked by personnel. For example Laura Kam, a ‘senior adviser’ for The Israel Project worked for seventeen years as co-director of ADL’s Israel office.[9] Hamodie Abu Nadda, an ‘Arabic associate’ at The Israel Project, also worked for ADL. The Israel Project also works with ADL, for example, as members of the Israel on Campus Coalition.[10]

Like the ADL, B’nai B’rith has also become a passionate advocate for Israel. Its website boasts of an ‘unrivalled record of service and commitment to the Jewish state.’ [11] This record has included using its presence at the UN and other international bodies to lobby against criticism of Israel, as well as the provision of material assistance to the Israel Defence Forces.[12]

During Israel’s latest attack on Gaza – described by one Israeli commentator as ‘a massive and unfettered assault, with no proportion to the amount of casualties’[13] – B’nai B’rith’s President visited Israel as part of a ‘solidarity mission’.[14] When Israel subsequently came under intense criticism for violations of human rights and international humanitarian law during its assault, B’nai B’rith, despite its history as a humanitarian organisation, jumped to Israel’s defence.

A UN Fact Finding Mission recently released a report criticising Israel for human rights violations and war crimes (as well as criticising Hamas for indiscriminate rocket fire into Israel). B’nai B’rith dismissed the report as ‘one-sided’ complaining that it paid ‘scant attention to Hamas’ cynical use of human shields and placement of munitions among the civilian population’.[15]

In fact an entire chapter of the report addressed allegations such as these, but the mission had found no evidence to support the claims. They did however uncover evidence that the IDF had used Palestinian civilians as human shields during its assault.[16]

B’nai B’rith has branches all over the world including in Britain, but its head offices are based at 2020 K Street in Washington D.C.[17] K Street is famous for housing some of the world’s most powerful lobby groups and think-tanks. Other organisations based at number 2020 K Street include the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, the NCSJ (formerly the National Conference on Soviet Jewry) and The Israel Project, which is located on the seventh floor along with B’nai B’rith. The Israel Project was founded in 2002, the same year B’nai B’rith International moved into its K Street office and also shares a mail server with B’nai B’rith.[18]

The Israel Project

As its name suggests, The Israel Project also shares B’nai B’rith’s unwavering ‘commitment to the Jewish state’. Whilst B’nai B’rith still supports religious and social programmes, The Israel Project is exclusively committed to political advocacy. In its 2004/05 tax returns it reported spending $787,038 on polling research and over $1.3 million on public relations; the stated goal of which was to ‘improve US understanding of the vital nature of a strong relationship between Israel and other counties around the world, primarily the US’.[19] A year later its accounts start to report the use of ‘Strategic Communications’.[20]

Originally a term used by the military, Strategic Communications refers to carefully researched and selectively targeted propaganda. The Israel Project states in its accounts that its Strategic Communications involves using ‘sophisticated public opinion research to identify messages, themes and visuals that will bring support to key [Israeli] policies,’ and that it, ‘has trained thousands of influential policy leaders, opinion elites and spokespeople to help strengthen Israel’s image in international media.’[21]

Over the course of the following three years, The Israel Project spent over $2.7 million on ‘Strategic Communications’ and a further $9.8 million on ‘public relations’.[22] It has retained a number of political communications and media companies that conduct telephone polling, run focus groups, and design and place television adverts. Its three main communications consultants are Greeberg Quinlan Rosner Research, Public Opinion Strategies and Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research.

Greeberg Quinlan Rosner calls itself ‘the world’s premium research and strategic consulting firm’. Its political clients are mostly Democrats and other centrist parties around the world, and the firm worked for the Labour Party on its three general elections under Tony Blair.[23] Its clients also include some of the world’s most powerful corporations such as Boeing, BP, Coca-Cola and General Motors.[24]

Public Opinion Strategies on the other hand is a Republican polling firm.[25] It also represents corporate lobby groups like the United States Chamber of Commerce and The National Association of Manufacturers.[26]

Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research, perhaps the most significant of the three in terms of devising propaganda, offers clients ‘game-changing messaging solutions’ which it claims are able to ‘generate powerful results in the corporate world’.[27] Its clients also include Boeing, Coca-Cola and General Motors, along with a host of others including American Express, Bear Sterns, Disney, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, McDonalds and Merrill Lynch.

Assisted by these communications companies, The Israel Project produces documents advising lobbyists and campaigners on their use of language and their framing of arguments. One such document, leaked to the pro-Palestinian group Electronic Intifada in 2003, described in detail how advocates could ‘integrate and leverage history and communication for the benefit of Israel’.[28]

The group’s political advocacy is unabashedly partisan and militaristic. Despite its claim to be working for ‘security and peace,’ Rightweb notes that it, ‘Advocates a number of positions similar to other hard-line and neoconservative groups. It supports the controversial wall along the West Bank, advocates a hard line against Iran, and actively promotes the work of hawkish think tanks and writers.’[29]

In recent years The Israel Project’s carefully crafted multi-million dollar propaganda operation has focused heavily on Iran. In November 2007, it commissioned a focus group to assess public perceptions of the country. According to one participant: ‘The whole basis of the whole thing was, “we’re going to go into Iran and what do we have to do to get you guys to along with it?”’[30]

As the focus group apparently showed, the public were sceptical of the need for more war. This finding has been confirmed more recently in The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary which noted that to the ‘American Left and Center-left’ and to Europeans in general, ‘Warnings about Iran sound uncomfortably too much like President Bush and his call for pre-emption in Iraq.’[31]

The numerous references in that document to European opinion suggest how Réalité-EU might fit into a broader propaganda strategy. Winning over important sections of European opinion is not only useful in itself; it also helps to win over America opinion. Liberals in the US will be more likely to support aggression if it receives some degree of international support, particularly from America’s close allies.

As The Israel Project notes in its 2009 Global Language Dictionary: ‘with the advent of the new administration, Americans and the world are weary of unilateral, America-will-go-it-alone approaches. They are eager to be on the same team as other democratic nations again.’ This pressing need for international legitimacy explains what groups like B’nai B’rith and The Israel Project have to gain from backing an organisation like Réalité-EU.

Similar media strategies

Réalité-EU is directly linked to The Israel Project in that its London phone number redirects to a voicemail number in Washington previously publicly listed as belonging to the Israel Project and both organisations have used the B’nai B’rith mail server. Both their websites offer what they call ‘Backgrounders’ and ‘Expert Sources’ and they seem to be the only two websites that use both terms.

The Israel Project’s European Affairs Web Specialist states that part of her job is identifying European experts on Iran.[32] However, none of The Israel Project’s experts appear to be Europeans or to be based in Europe. Réalité-EU on the other hand directs journalists to eight ‘Expert Sources’, all of whom are European; and apparently independent. Another notable feature is that The Israel Project’s European Affairs Associate states that he organises press events in Berlin, Vienna, Paris, London and Brussels,[33] all cities where Réalité-EU experts have been based.[34]

Whether the eight Réalité-EU experts are themselves aware of Réalité-EU’s connection with The Israel Project and/or B’nai B’rith is not clear, but even if ignorant of it they could probably be relied upon to deliver the right message.

One of the ‘experts’, a French academic and risk consultant called Frédéric Encel,[35] gave what was described as an ‘intensely emotional’ speech at a fundraising event in March this year in which he made reference to the recent bombing of Gaza. Rather than condemning the massacres, Encel argued that, ‘The Hamas party’s way of making things worse to further their own ends has obliged Israel to use its force.’ He added that the IDF conducting its attacks whilst ‘maintaining a control that is rarely seen in other armies.’[36]

Encel’s political views are typical of neoconservatives and the pro-war liberals. He sees himself as defending a Western liberal tradition against a sinister alliance of Islamists and leftists. He says on his official website that he is in favour of a ‘fierce defence of republican values,’ which he considers to be under attack by what he labels as totalitarianism, fascism, radical Islam and Stalinism.[37]

Another of Réalité-EU’s experts, Matthias Küntzel,[38] is a German author and a political scientist best known for his belief that movements like Hamas, Hezbollah, and of course the Islamic Republic of Iran, are essentially anti-Semitic, fascistic movements comparable with the Third Reich.

Like many neoconservatives, Küntzel claims to have a background on the liberal left – which he now criticises for being unable to provide ‘an even halfway adequate response to the continuing impact of the crimes against the Jews’.[39] Küntzel’s book Jihad and Jew-Hatred was published in English in 2007 and received positive reviews in the neoconservative Weekly Standard and the right-wing Washington Times.[40]

Réalité-EU’s most prominent figure is probably the terrorism expert Claude Moniquet, who is also one of six speakers listed on the ‘Speakers Bureau’ of B’nai B’rith Europe.[41] Moniquet heads a right-wing Brussels based think-tank called the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, an organisation which says it ‘supports the strengthening of the trans-Atlantic ties and the democracies in their struggle against terrorism and other threats.’[42] Moniquet worked for 20 years as a journalist, but sees no shame in admitting that throughout that time he also served as a ‘field operative’ for the French foreign intelligence service.[43]

A shadowy network

Although Réalité-EU is run by Europeans and backed by Americans, its origins at least appear to be British. At the time of its launch, Réalité-EU was closely affiliated with another organisation called International Media Intelligence Analysis (IMIA).[44] IMIA was set up by a British neoconservative called Simon Barrett,[45] who authored the inaugural Réalité-EU press release and was for a time one of its ‘experts’[46] but who has since left the group.[47] At the time of Réalité-EU’s launch an introductory press release written by Barrett stated that Réalité EU would ‘include some of the previous works of IMIA but be greatly expanded.'[48]

Barrett, who is now 34, claims to have worked as an advisor to Patrick Mercer MP when he was the Conservative Party Shadow Homeland Security Minister.[49] Mercer, who now chairs the House of Commons Sub-Committee on Counter-Terrorism, was asked by Spinwatch to confirm Barrett’s advisory role. His office replied that he may have ‘spoken to Simon Barrett’ but he ‘could not be described as an advisor.’[50]

Whatever his exact relationship with Barrett, Mercer has long been associated with the wilder fringes of the anti-terrorism world. It would appear however that his office is now attempting to distance him from his former associates. Another individual who has claimed to have acted as an advisor to Mercer is Dominic Wightman, who, like Barrett, now works with think-tanks on the far right of British politics such as the Centre for Social Cohesion.

Spinwatch recently revealed that either Wightman – or as he alleges, a former colleague who hacked into his email – attempted to fabricate a bogus terrorism plot. An American working in Iraq received an email from Wightman requested that his colleague translate some English text into Arabic and post it on a ‘jihadi noticeboard’.

The text was written as if by someone planning to plant a bomb in an elderly woman’s wheeled-basket and explode it in a supermarket.[51] Wightman is now suspected of involvement in a hate campaign against the blogger Tim Ireland which has including repeated threats of violence and the publishing of his home address on the internet.[52]

Wightman denies any involvement with the campaign, which is led by a group of online vigilantes calling themselves the Cheerleaders, but as the blogger Richard Bartholomew has noted the timing and content of online attack pieces posted by Wightman and the Cheerleaders strongly suggests coordination.[53]

Tim Ireland, the main target of these attacks, had exposed another fake terror threat fabricated by Wightman’s former colleague Glen Jenvey, and Wightman now considers Ireland to a part of an ‘Islamist-Leftist compact’ or ‘Black Red Alliance’.[54]

After weeks of scrutiny by bloggers, Glen Jenvey admitted fabricating a terror threat supposedly targeting Alan Sugar that appeared on the front page of the Sun in January. He too enjoyed a working relationship with Patrick Mercer, which as Tim Ireland has noted, continued for two months after Ireland first produced evidence calling into questioning the Sun’s story.

In March this year one of Mercer’s staff sent an e-mail to a journalist at The People stating: ‘I have been in touch with Mr Jenvey about a number of things but most of all the following, which in my view would combine well to make a very good Sunday story.’[55]

Although there is no evidence that Réalité-EU’s Simon Barrett also fabricated terror plots, early in his career as a terrorism and Middle East expert he commented on similar scare stories in the tabloid press. In one such article the Sunday Express claimed that there was a risk that Muslim women in Europe and North America ‘could be planning to use fake pregnancies’ to hide explosives.

The source for the story was the US based Northeast Intelligence Network, a group of former corporate security figures who have made it their mission to ‘educate’ the American public as to ‘the true nature of the terrorist threats’. The group claimed to have discovered an image of a ‘strap on womb’ on an ‘extremist Islamist website’, but would not reveal where the images were found.[56]

Barrett was quoted by the Sunday Express as saying that ‘terrorists are effectively using our politically correct laws as their cover’. He made a point of linking the scare story to the Palestinians saying: ‘This is unfortunately not in the realms of fantasy as terrorist recruiters within the Palestinian terrorist organisations have exploited young vulnerable women in the past to carry out suicide missions with devastating consequences.[57]

In an earlier article the Sunday Express covered the story of a 19 year old Iraqi man with Down’s syndrome who they alluded had been used unwittingly as a suicide bomber. Patrick Mercer commented that: ‘This shows us exactly the sort of murderous scum with whom we are dealing.’ Barrett added: ‘This is not just happening with Iraqis. Palestinian children have also been educated with hatred to become suicide bombers.’[58] The article referred to Barrett as ‘a spokesman for Terror Aware, a group that monitors the Middle East media’.

Terror Aware was one of a number of alarmist organisations Barrett was involved in prior to launching Réalité-EU. Like one of his other early projects, it appears to be linked to the British record producer Trevor Horn and his wife Jill Sinclair – the owners of SARM Studios. Terror Aware was registered to the address of the SARM Workshop in North-West London. Jill Sinclair, who went into a comma in 2007 after a tragic domestic accident, is described as having been a very vocal supporter of Israel.[59] In 2008 Trevor Horn helped to produce a record called Israel — Home of Hope to coincide with Israel’s 60th anniversary.[60]

Press references to Simon Barrett’s Terror Aware disappeared after a few months, with Barrett instead being referred to as the director of the International Coalition Against Terror. By early 2006 the short-lived International Coalition Against Terror was superseded by International Media Intelligence Analysis (IMIA), which was co owned by Barrett and Jill Sinclair. Like Terror Aware Ltd, IMIA was registered to a business address of SARM Studios, this time at its studio in Notting Hill. There is no evidence to connect Sinclair to Réalité-EU, though in its first year of operations, it gave its contact address as a P.O. Box in the Notting Hill area of London.[61]

IMIA was referred to in some press articles as a London based think-tank, but for the most part it appears to have operated as an e-newsletter service run solely by Barrett. It did however co-host an event in the House of Commons with the Euro-sceptic think-tank Open Europe.[62]

Open Europe has itself received funding from American neoconservatives via the Policy Forum on International Security Affairs, a group headed by Devon Gaffney Cross, a former director of the powerful neoconservative group the Project for the New American Century. Her brother Frank Gaffney was a speaker at an Israel Project press conference in Washington in July 2007 organised to publicise the supposed ‘Iranian threat’.[63]

Open Europe and IMIA’s ‘parliamentary briefing’ that May was billed ‘Iran, Britain and Europe: Post hostage crisis, what can we expect next?’ It was attended by Patrick Mercer and Mark Fitzpatrick of the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies[64] among others.[65] Réalité-EU’s Claude Moniquet also spoke.[66]

Moniquet told the audience that his think-tank had evidence that ‘something is under preparation in Europe,’ and that, ‘Iranian intelligence is working extremely hard to prepare its people and to prepare actions.’ They would he claimed target ‘British citizens on the streets of London, just as they kill British soldiers in the south of Iraq.’[67]

Later that year the United States National Intelligence Estimate concluded that, contrary to the widespread claims, Iran was not developing a nuclear weapons programme. Réalité-EU responded with an Insight entitled, ‘Can U.S. Intelligence be Trusted on Iran?’, which once again conflated the issues of civilian nuclear power and nuclear weapons.[68]

Though Réalité-EU and similar organisations promoting hostility against Iran were apparently unconvinced and undeterred, the National Intelligence Estimate seemed for some time to have abated the march to war. Recently however the frequency and tone of official statements and media reports in Britain and the United States have once again become a cause for grave concern. Those who are unwilling to forget what has happened to the people of Iraq, and the lies and distortions, on which that war was based, cannot help but note worrying parallels with the current political climate.

The UK media critics David Edwards and David Cromwell write: ‘to us it seems like yesterday – the sense of madness is fresh in our minds. When Obama acts the stern father in demanding: “Iran must comply with United Nations resolutions,” he is repeating, with the alteration of but a single letter, the same sentence in the same tone used by George Bush and Tony Blair on Iraq.’[69]

Last month Réalité-EU’s Matthias Küntzel wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled, ‘Iran Has No Right to Nuclear Technology’.[70] Although the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty states that signatories have ‘the inalienable right’ to ‘develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes’, Küntzel argued that this right cannot apply to Iran which although it has signed up to the NPT, ‘can by definition not be considered a bona fide signatory’.

To give Iran the same rights afforded other states under the treaty was according to Küntzel ‘not only politically absurd but also wrong from a purely legal point of view’. This remarkable claim was justified with reference to a comment on world Islamic revolution made by Ayatollah Khomeini around 30 years ago, and to a passage of the Qur’an quoted in Article 151 of Iran’s constitution. Küntzel thus argued that Iran was politically and constitutionally committed to waging war and overturning the international order. That being the case Küntzel conclude: ‘The time for “dialogue as usual” is over’.

NOTES

[2] Phone interview, 10 September 2009

[3] Gerlinde Gerber, Email to Tom Mills, 11 September 2009 16:48

[4] Gerlinde Gerber, Email to Tom Mills, 29 October 2009 14:53

[5] Spinprofiles, Israel Lobby Portal

[6] Spinprofiles, Anti-Defamation League

[7]Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB ‘Scholars condemn attack on academic freedom at UC-Santa Barbara’ 28 April 2009

[9] The Israel Project, Laura Kam, Senior Advisor

[10] Israel on Campus Coalition ‘Members: ADL’

[12] Ibid.

[13] Paul Wood, ‘Analysis: Operation Miscast Lead?’, BBC News Online, 13 March 2009

[15] ‘Goldstone Report Presents One-Sided and Incomplete Information’, Targeted News Service, 15 September 2009

[18] See Robtex record for mail.bnaibrith.org

[19] The Israel Project, Form 990 (2004), p.2

[20] The Israel Project, Form 990 (2005), p.3

[21] Ibid.

[23] Greeberg Quinlan Rosner Research, International Campaigns

[24] Greeberg Quinlan Rosner Research, Corporations

[25] Laura Rozen, ‘Focus Grouping War with Iran’, Mother Jones, 19 November 2007

[26] Public Opinion Strategies, Public Affairs Client List

[27] Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research, What We Do

[28] Wexner Analysis: Israeli Communication Priorities 2003

[29] Rightweb, The Israel Project, 26 July 2007

[30] Laura Rozen, ‘Focus Grouping War with Iran’, Mother Jones, 19 November 2007

[32] The Israel Project, Julie Hazan [Accessed 30 October 2009]

[33] The Israel Project, Christoph Heil, [Accessed 30 October 2009]

[34] Gerlinde Gerber is from Berlin, Diana Gregor lives in Vienna, Frédéric Encel in Paris, Simon Barrett in London and Claude Moniquet in Brussels.

[35] Neocon Europe, Frédéric Encel

[38] Neocon Europe, Matthias Küntzel

[39] Alan Johnson, ‘Islamism, Antisemitism, and the political left. A Democratiya Interview with Matthias Küntzel’, Democratiya no. 13, 25 May 2008

[42] European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, ‘About Us’, accessed 1 October 2009

[43] see contributor’s note in Claude Moniquet, ‘American Intelligence’, Wall Street Journal, 13 December 2007 and Claude Moniquet’s CV on the website of the B’nai B’rith Europe which states that he spent ‘twenty years in journalism,’ and that ‘In the same twenty years, I was under contract for a specialized branch of the French Defense Ministry, working on security issues and counter terrorism.’

[44] Neocon Europe, International Media Intelligence Analysis

[45] Neocon Europe, Simon Barrett

[47] Réalité-EU, email to Tom Mills, 14 July 2009 20:34

[48] Réalité-EU Press Release, ‘Réalité: The real story’

[50] Parliamentary Assistant to Patrick Mercer, email to Tom Mills, 15 September 2009 15:24

[51] Tom Mills and David Miller, ‘The British amateur terror trackers: A case study in dubious politics’, Spinwatch, 26 August 2009

[53] Richard Bartholomew, ‘Tim Ireland Threatened with Violence’, Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, 30 September 2009

[55] Tim Ireland, ‘Patrick Mercer has some explaining to do’, Bloggerheads, 23 September 2009

[56] Julia Hartley-Brewer, ‘ALERT FOR WOMEN BOMBERS WHO FAKE PREGNANCY’, Sunday Express, 28 August 2005

[57] Ibid.

[58] Tim Shipman, ‘Scum! Iraq bombers use Down’s Syndrome victim’, Sunday Express, 6 February 2005

[60] Candice Krieger, ‘Chief joins Trevor Horn for a kosher Live Aid’, Jewish Chronicle, 18 April 2008

[61] see contact details in Rightweb, ‘Réalité EU’, 31 October 2007

[62] Neocon Europe, Open Europe

[63] Rightweb, ‘Réalité EU’, 31 October 2007

[64] Spinprofiles, International Institute for Strategic Studies

[65] Open Europe, Events, accessed 11 September 2009

[66] Open Europe, Events, accessed 11 September 2009

[67] ‘Iran Drawing Up Plans to Strike European Nuclear Sites, Analyst Says’, Associated Press, 22 May 2007

[68] Réalité-EU, Insights: Can U.S. Intelligence be Trusted on Iran?, 24 September 2007

[69] ‘Iran – The War Dance’, Medialens, 1 October 2009

[70] Matthias Küntzel, ‘Iran Has No Right to Nuclear Technology’, Wall Street Journal, 29 September 2009




AARP's Tradition of Betrayal

Dateline: October 23-25, 2009

Cashing In, Selling Out

AARP’s Tradition of Betrayal

AARP agent explaining the company's "products" to seniors.

By STEPHEN LENDMAN   [print_link]

• deliver “value to members through information, advocacy and service;”

• work “tirelessly to fulfill its vision: a society in which everyone ages with dignity and purpose, and in which AARP helps people fulfill their goals and dreams;” and

• speak “with one voice – united by a common motto: ‘To serve, not be served.”

Today it’s branches include:

—AARP Foundation focusing on “education….service, (and) legal advocacy efforts;”

—AARP Services, providing “marketplace access to services that people need and want” related to “health and financial products, travel and leisure offerings, and life event services;”

—AARP Financial, Inc. providing “financial advice and education, and managed AARP-endorsed financial and insurance products,” that include health care and other insurance as well as equity, bond and money market mutual funds sold to members;

—AARP Global Network of “likeminded, nonpartisan, national organizations (in five countries) working to meet the needs of older adults around the world;” and

—NRTA: AARP’s Educator Community (formerly the National Retired Teachers Association) comprised mainly of “educators and school personnel dedicated to educational opportunities, advocacy, and service.”

On March 9, 2009, Roll Call’s Katie Kindelan’s article titled, “Defining a Future at AARP” described the organization as “perhaps the nation’s most powerful and well-funded advocacy” group, both inside and beyond the Beltway, impressively headquartered in a 10-story, 500,000 foot DC building.

Nonprofit in name only, “AARP is the equivalent of a Fortune 500 company, employing a staff of 2,419 employees, (incurring) $1.16 billion in operating expenses and overseeing annual revenues (well above) $1 billion,” around 60% of which comes from so-called Medigap supplemental insurance sales.

According to Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), “Some of these products are total rip-offs,” so bad, in fact, that AARP was forced to withdraw its Essential Health Insurance Plan and Essential Plus Health Insurance Plan, developed by United Health Group and sold to 44,000 of its members.

PNHP calls AARP “part of the problem and not part of the solution. It is nothing but an insurance (and financial) broker disguised as an advocacy group – and they will never take on the health insurance industry. (It) represent(s) the insurance industry (and its own self-interest) rather than (its members and) the public welfare in discussions about health reform.”

As a result, it’s largely profit-driven offering 17 types of insurance reaping hundreds of millions annually in royalties. Millions more from selling drugs; other products and services including mutual funds; plus federal subsidies exceeding $80 million annually; and annual membership dues of $16 per year, $43 for three years, or $63 for five x 40 million members.

It’s also active on Capitol Hill with a 50-person staff and a 2008 $28 million lobbying budget, much like major corporations and for the same purpose – profits at the expense of member interests, unaware how they’re ill-served by an organization claiming to be their advocate.

AARP’s Role in Enacting the Controversial Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act (MMA) of 2003 – the So-Called Part D

Costing tens of billions annually, passage came only after initially being defeated, followed by a three hour all-night suspending of proceedings to exert pressure and offer bribes because passage assured PhRMA big profits at the expense of seniors extorted top dollar for prescription drugs, not the substantial savings government-negotiated prices would have delivered. Yet AARP was one of its staunchest advocates.

In an email later revealed, the organization’s associate executive policy director, Chris Hansen (a former aerospace lobbyist), assured Bush deputy assistant to the president, Barry Jackson, that he was on board with only minor issues to resolve. He said: “We know that there may be details that we will message differently but we are together on the big goal.”

The deal was struck, and in succeeding weeks, AARP leaders worked closely with House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to draft a final bill. On November 22, 2003 the House passed it. The Senate followed three days later, and on December 8, it became law after George Bush signed it as “an important step toward fulfilling a longstanding promise to older and disabled Americans” who later learned they were swindled by the administration, Congress, and their premiere advocate that betrayed them for profits, its ties to PhRMA, and greater political influence in Washington.

At the time, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich explained that AARP’s CEO, Bill Novelli, had “a long history of supporting individual responsibility in health care and doesn’t want seniors dependent on government handouts.” Novelli, in fact, invited Gingrich to join an advisory panel to discuss AARP future strategies, including insurance and other products and services it might sell. He also endorsed Gingrich’s book, “Saving Lives and Saving Money” by writing in its forward: “Gingrich’s (marketplace medicine) ideas are influencing how we at AARP are thinking about our national role” in the health care debate. Whether or not “one agrees (with his) policies, the book has interesting and important ideas about transforming the American health care system” to assure it remains a private for-profit system, not one run by Washington.

Novelli also expressed concern about “how (Medicare) is financed and operated,” the program AARP opposed in the 1960s, after which it supported the major 1988 Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act expansion, aligned with the Republican-controlled Congress in 1995 on health issues, backed the 1997 Medicare Reform Act that let recipients choose between private health insurance plans, and was comfortable with a free-market approach after Novelli became CEO in June 2001.

His background foretold his advocacy. His November Group initiative for Richard Nixon helped devise attack ads against George McGovern in 1972. In the 1980s, his Porter-Novelli PR firm helped the drug industry. When he left in 1990, his clients included Bristol-Myers, Ciba-Geigy, Hoffman-La Roche, SmithKline Beecham, and the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association.

As AARP CEO, Novelli began centralizing control at the top, away from greater grassroots input attuned to local needs and interests. He also hired Republican-leaning staff, including former Boeing executive Chris Hansen as chief lobbyist, who along with Novelli and Mike Naylor (a former John Deere and AlliedSignal executive) orchestrated AARP’s position on Medicare Part D. They then worked closely with Republican leaders to pass it.

According to advocates for universal single-payer coverage and others, passage of the 2003 law potentially marked the beginning of the end for publicly-financed Medicare and clouded the future of employer-provided coverage. AARP played a crucial role, much like today in the debate over health care reform. It’s siding with free-market ideologues destroys its credibility as an advocate for seniors.

AARP’s Support for Obamacare

Its initiative Health Action Now calls “this crucial moment (the) opportunity of a lifetime to fix our broken health care system. President Obama has promised health reform before the end of the year but we need to make sure that Congress follows through.”

It asks individuals to email “decision makers” about the the health care crisis and concludes:

“America needs you to take action to ensure that everyone has a choice of health care they can afford. I urge you to commit to working on a bipartisan basis to pass legislation that will provide all Americans with affordable health care choices and strengthen Medicare and improve long-term care services.”

Based on other public and internal messages, it subtly endorses hundreds of billions of Medicare cuts over the next decade as a first step toward ending Washington’s responsibility entirely by shifting the obligation to states that, in turn, will force their residents to bear the burden through higher taxes, on their own, or for those who can’t afford it, get no coverage when they most need it. That’s Obamacare’s promise, the one AARP endorses with thousands of its members dropping their memberships from an organization mindless of their interests.

On its Health Action Now web site, AARP headlines “Myths vs. Facts (saying) Don’t Let the Myths About Health Care Reform Scare You,” then follows with misinformation and outright distortion of the facts by claiming:

(1) Obamacare won’t ration care;

Fact check:

—proposals call for hundreds of billions in cuts over ten years with near certain greater amounts to follow;

—billions in waste will be eliminated;

Fact check:

—the above cuts will eliminate essential services, thus assuring less care, not more;

—lower drug prices;

Fact check:

—no mandate exists to cut them, just a non-binding promise on existing products and none whatever on new ones;

—”the so-called ‘public plan’ option (will) give American consumers choice if they can’t find affordable, quality coverage in the private insurance market;

Fact check:

—most people won’t qualify for a public option, and the one discussed will provide fig leaf cover for a weak and ineffective plan, not high-quality care for its recipients;

—Obamacare guarantees “all Americans a choice of health care plans they can afford;”

Fact check:

—choices will offer poor options, not quality care;

—reform plans “will NOT give the government the power to make life or death decisions for anyone regardless of their age;”

Fact check:

—hundreds of billions in Medicare cuts and restricted expensive treatments will do it for them;—”Health care reform will help ensure doctors are paid fairly so they will continue to treat Medicare patients;”

Fact check:—doctors already are unpaid and $200 billion in new cuts are proposed;—”None of the health care reform proposals being considered by Congress would cut Medicare benefits or increase your out-of-pocket costs for Medicare services;”

Fact check:—Obamacare assures both;—”Health care reform will reduce costly, preventable hospital readmissions, saving patients and Medicare money;”

Fact check:—less care assures more illness, not less, and higher costs to be borne by recipients;—”Rather than weaken Medicare, health care reform will strengthen the financial status of the Medicare program;”

Fact check:—proposed cuts, along with new ones, will weaken and eventually destroy Medicare as well as other social safety net protections because Washington prioritizes banker bailouts, other corporate subsidies, trillion dollar defense budgets, militarizing America, and servicing growing hundreds of billions in debt obligations;

—”The President and Congress have committed to producing legislation that will be paid for so it won’t saddle our children and grandchildren with debt;”

Fact check:—growing debt obligations place a lifetime burden on future generations to pay for them; and —”If we do nothing to fix health care, families with Medicare or employer-based health coverage will likely see their premiums nearly double in the next seven years;”

Fact check: —private insurers are assured unrestricted freedom to raise rates and will take full advantage as they’ve always done.

Nowhere under “Myths vs. Facts” does AARP suggest the only real reform solution that’s off the table and undiscussed by the administration, Congress, the major media, or by organization officials as a fundamental human right – universal single-payer coverage assuring everyone in, nobody out. Instead, Washington, in cahoots with powerful providers and AARP, hijacked the process for greater future profits by charging more, providing less, making a dysfunctional system worse, and cheating growing millions with promises they know are hollow.

It’s become traditional at AARP, cashing in at members’ expense after advocating to “improve the quality of their lives.” Will more dropouts follow over concerns about its betrayal? Very likely as Washington steamrolls toward an end of year resolution that will erode health care coverage for most Americans and deny it entirely to millions under the mantle of reform and AARP’s endorsement. It’s tradition continues.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.




What Obama Really Needs

Form Letters and Business as Usual

By RALPH NADER  [print_link]

Behold a man who clearly believes his own press.

Behold a man who clearly believes his own press.

I just received a letter from President Obama. Right there on the outside envelope are the words “I need you.” After not answering several letters which I have mailed and faxed to him, I was, for the briefest of moments, curious about this personal plea for help. Then, of course, I realized that it was a form letter from Mr. Obama via the auspices of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).I started reading the two page, single-spaced missive. His words prompt responses. He opens with undeniable declarations, to wit: “There are times in the life of our nation when America’s course can only be set by the concerted effort of citizens determined to pull our country through.  This is one of those times—and your personal involvement in moving America forward is absolutely essential.”

Just what this “personal involvement” is all about is unclear, other than to make a “contribution of $25, $35 or even $50 to the Democratic National Committee” which is somehow supposed to make sure that “America’s families are actively engaged in the critical decisions that lie ahead.”

This money will fund something called “Organizing for America” under the DNC which will unleash “volunteers and activists” to “carry our message…all across this great country of ours.”  The “message” includes “reforms that will bring down the cost of health insurance for families.” But Mr. Obama has taken the one reform—single payer, which he used to support—off the table and replaced it with a bill over a 1000 pages that will do just the opposite—to the delight of the drug and health insurance industries (see singlepayeraction.org).

Continuing into the letter, Mr. Obama emphasizes that “in communities all across America, people are worried about whether they’re going to have a job and paycheck to count on.”  But he has done nothing to support the card check reform to facilitate workers forming unions—an objective he supported during his presidential campaign. Still no push on Congress, no ringing statement of support, as he has uttered numerous times in promoting his various bailouts of Big Business.

One way to help low income workers to pay their bills is to elevate the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour which is what the minimum wage was in 1968, adjusted for inflation. The federal minimum wage is now $7.25. Adding $2.75 per hour would increase consumer demand in our faltering real economy. The Democrats and Republicans, who gave bailouts in the trillions of dollars for the paper economy of the mismanaged, speculating, reckless big banks, big investment firms and insurance giants like AIG, should provide some economic assistance to workers on Main Street and not just Wall Street.

Mr. Obama writes: “Let’s put America’s future in the hands of people who are willing to work hard, willing to take their responsibilities seriously….” Perhaps Mr. Obama should read the short book by one of his Harvard Law School professors, Richard Parker, titled Here the People Rule. Professor Parker makes a strong case that the government has a constitutional duty to facilitate the political and civic energies of the people.

An important pathway toward this objective is to provide facilities whereby the people can easily band together in their nonprofit civic advocacy associations which they would fund themselves. Mr. Obama can start this process now by supporting a provision to establish a financial consumer association (FCA) with the pending legislation to start a consumer financial regulatory agency.

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) supported a Financial Consumer Association in 1985 when he was in the House of Representatives. Remember the savings and loan bailouts?  A similar provision can be included in the pending health insurance legislation. These facilities help to redress the present severe imbalance of power between the unorganized people and the corporate power machines which are often taxpayer subsidized and able to deduct lobbying expenses.

These consumer facilities have some precedents. In Obama’s home state of Illinois thousands of consumers of electric, telephone and gas companies voluntarily pay their membership dues to their private advocacy group: Illinois CUB (see http://www.citizensutilityboard.org).

He asks for our “personal participation.” Well why doesn’t he meet with the leaders of consumer, worker and poverty groups in the White House with the frequency with which he meets with the CEOs of giant corporations in the banking, insurance (Aetna), oil, gas, coal, auto and other commercial interests?

Instead he has turned his back on the very constituencies which gave him most of his votes. These are the people who remember Mr. Obama’s campaign promises and all his intonations of “hope and change,” including moving to reform the privileged tax laws for the rich and corporations and revising the notorious trade agreements.

Since Mr. Obama wants “personal participation,” how about moving for D.C. statehood or at least his expressed desire for voting rights and Congressional representation for the residents of the nation’s capital? As the months drag on with a Democratic Congress and a Democratic White House, people are losing hope for any change in their present state of political servitude.

Ralph Nader is the author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!, a novel.




Dr. J.'s Commentary: Barack Obama, Heaven Sent for GOP, Part II

Dateline Thu, 10/29/2009

Crossposted at http://blog.buzzflash.com/jonas/175

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH  [print_link]

we discussed why President Obama was heaven-sent for the GOP, pre-election. In my view (disagreed with by several commentators who made their cases very well I thought), he was the only prospective Democratic candidate who could have beaten John McCain. This was especially true if the Bush Administration had somehow been able to postpone the bursting forth of the economic crisis for less than two months. As is well known to BuzzFlash readers, it had of course been building for several years under Georgite economic policies. It is likely in retrospect that the “free-market” decision to let Lehman Brothers go bankrupt was, first, in their minds, the way to put things off. For if they had known what was going to happen both to the economy and their election chances, they would have done everything in their power to prevent that occurrence.

"Let me make this perfectly clear...'change' is just a slogan we used to get me elected."

"Let me make this perfectly clear...'change' is just a slogan we used to get me elected." Ahh, if truth was finally heard in the corridors of power.

But anyway they didn’t. The global financial system did partially collapse. Stock market prices around the world dropped dramatically. And Barack Obama did win the election. Just to reprise my argument of last week, if McCain had won, things both domestic and foreign would have been even worse, in many cases much worse, than they are under Obama. After all, McCain would have for the most part following Georgite policy. (Oh, you think that a Democratic Congress would get in the way? Given what they are doing, rather not doing, with a Democratic President in the White House, I doubt it.) But then, just think. All the blame for our current problems caused by Georgite policy that is being tossed at Obama could be laid at the feet of — the Georgites. Ohmygosh. How much fun that would be (for us commentators, that is. Not for the millions, indeed potentially billions around the world who are suffering in many different ways because of them). Which leads us to a discussion of how Barack Obama has been heaven sent for the GOP since his election as President.

It begins with what was in retrospect a major mistake made by his campaign: to make a major feature of “why elect me?” “Looking ahead, with Hope, for Change” and “Changing the Way Washington Does Business.” And it was done without too much attention paid, and for the most part only in general terms, to change from “what” in terms of policy and from “whose” way of doing business. Some of us thought that was a Big Mistake at the time but we were not consulted for the most part, and if any of us were, our advice was not taken. It is so ironic that the biggest indicator that Obama was having nothing to do either with the Rev. Wright or Prof. Ayres was that both of them, had they actually been involved in the Obama campaign, would surely have been pushing him, very strongly, to take on BushCheney head-on. At any rate, his principal advisors obviously came to the conclusion that not to attack the Georgites very much was the way to go.

Whether following that path was the only way to go to win the election — we will never know. But we do know what the adoption of that strategy meant for the content of the election debate and for the projection/protection of Obama’s policies since he became President. It meant that during the campaign “hope” and “change” became highlights. What Bush/Cheney and Georgitism (the highest [or lowest] form of neoconned neoliberal Reaganism, otherwise known as “every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost,” from each individual to the family of nations as a whole) brought to/wreaked upon our nation and the world was not much discussed. For example, how Bush/Cheney military/’security’ policy actually weakened rather than strengthened our defenses and national security by, for example, ignoring the warnings of 9/11 and way overextending our armed forces in Iraq (to say nothing of lying us into that war) was little referred to. How Georgite policy made the financial crisis almost inevitable. How part of the motivation of the massive tax cuts for the rich and the resulting war-driven deficits was, in Grover Norquist’s term, to “starve the beast,” which is how they refer to the Federal government. For the most part, these issues didn’t come up.

Furthermore, the creation of “the negative atmosphere” in Washington was not a bipartisan creation. It was a Republican creation. What they have done since the election, from Limbaugh’s declaration “I want him to fail,” to Jim “No homosexual teachers in the classroom” DeMint’s declaration on “Obama’s Waterloo,” to the McConnell/Boehner Congressional strategy of “we will never say anything but no” is to prove the point.

So why has the President been heaven-sent for the GOP since he has been in office? Two reasons. Because of the way he ran his campaign, he removed from his arsenal all of those weapons he had for laying the blame for all of our current crises at the feet of George Bush.  Sure the Republican Scream Machine would have screaming “blame game.” (That of course is something they never engage in [ho, ho, ho]. If you can stomach it, listen sometime to Giuliani or Gingrich talking politics and just count the seconds until the word “Clinton,” Bill that is, appears. But that is really neither here nor there. Of course Republicans are hypocrites. It seems to be genetic with them.) And so what? That is exactly the game that Obama should be playing.

Who cares what Beckoning Savagely Le-vinitating O’RHannibaugh say? They will never make nice, nor will, for that matter, McConnell/Boehner, to say nothing of Cheney of course. Obama was left a zillion booby traps, major ones that are public, ranging from Afghanistan to (the loss of) Zoological diversity (and perhaps some not public ones, such as possible rogue right-wing cells in the military and the CIA). But he has almost totally prevented himself from talking about them, except on occasion almost in passing.

Finally he was heaven sent for the GOP because until very recently at least (and knows, he may get back to it) he has pursued the Impossible Dream of “bipartisanship” with a Party that simply will never say anything but “no,” not even “no thank you.” There are some elected Democrats, such as Congressmen Alan “the Republicans’ answer for ‘no insurance’ is die” Grayson of Florida and Anthony “Single-Payer” Wiener of Brooklyn, NY, and Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who know which end is up, are ready for battle, and are in fact battling. But the President seems to shy away from doing so, whether by nature or by design it doesn’t matter.

Barack Obama is a very smart man, possibly one of the three smartest (Jefferson and Lincoln being the other two) to ever occupy the White House. But he is now in a position where being a professor of Constitutional Law and a community organizer doesn’t cut the mustard. He is faced by street-fighters, and very good ones. If he is going to be able to abandon his current role as heaven-sent for the GOP, he is going to have to undergo some major changes. If he does not, he stands in serious danger of becoming as I wrote on TPJmagazine.us recently, the next Democratic one-term President, and the country will be the worse for it.

Bush, Cheney and the Georgites planted the wind. Obama is reaping the whirlwind. He may not realize it. If that’s the case, he had better wake up pretty soon. If he does realize it, he really ought to tell the rest of us all about it, beginning with just who planted the wind that as a whirlwind is wreaking such havoc. And oh yes. Labeling Fox “News” as a GOP tool is a start. But it’s just a start.

TPJmagazine; a Featured Writer for Dandelion Salad; a Senior Columnist for The Greanville POST; a Contributor to TheHarderStuff newsletter; a Contributor to The Planetary Movement; and a Contributing Columnist for the Project for the Old American Century, POAC.

SELECT COMMENTS

Bush’s “Job” Was to “Disempower” the People:

Submitted by konopelli on Thu, 10/29/2009 – 12:14pm.

to gut the Constitution, to attack the infrastructures of justice and fairness, and to facilitate the Corporat take-over of the public’s political and economic ‘commons.’

Obama’s job is to make (“white”) people forget how much they hated and distrusted the Busheviks, and to displace those emotions onto himself and the Dims, thereby preparing the way for the next wave of Puke theo-fascism…

Wow friend,

Submitted by Start Loving on Thu, 10/29/2009 – 4:34pm.

I hope you don’t drown in that massive pile of sh*t you’ve just written.  I almost did.  Whew!

When the going gets tough the Left give up….

Submitted by imsloan on Thu, 10/29/2009 – 3:18pm.

God, your argument is so flawed on so many levels, where to begin? Let’s start with your wish that McCain/Palin had won…and that this somehow would be good news for progressives as the Right will be forced to own all the catastrophes that occurred on their watch. What a load of horse pucky! First thing that would happen would be the final marginalization of the Democratic Party… The obvious narrative would be that, given the horrendous job  the Republicans have done in the past eight years, if the Dems can’t, with an intelligent and attractive candidate, beat a half-senile fool and a dingbat whackjob from Alaska, then they will never EVER win the presidency again.

Your second big flaw is in thinking that somehow, the Republicans, given four more year of blithering idiocy will somehow take responsibility for their actions. I would wager that they would push back against culpability with even more ferocity than we’re seeing now.

And as far as your boilerplate disaffection with Obama is concerned, answer me this…would we even be discussing health care reform, the repeal of DOMA, DADT or a drawdown of troops in Iraq, or the fact that FOX is nothing but a propaganda arm of the far-right with McCrazy in the WH?

The point I think you are trying to make, without actually saying it in so many words is that if Obama wasn’t in charge, then our agenda wouldn’t get so criticized by those mean, mean Republicans. I’ve got advice to you and all of the other hand-wringing pie-in-the-sky liberals out there. IT’S TIME TO MAN UP!

Criticism, fair or unfair goes with the territory of governing. I suspect a lot of these people whining about where the hope is simply can’t get over the euphoria we all felt when we kicked the GOP out on their ass.

That was the fun part. This is the hard part. Obama campaigned on change we can believe in, not change that will happen painlessly and in an instant. Obama’s mistake was not to campaign under “You want change? Well change is hard, so roll up your sleeves and go to work and don’t whine that it’s all my fault. This is a DEMOCRACY which means we ALL have a stake in governing. Don’t put all of it one person to answer all your questions and solve all your problems. That’s what Republicans do.”