Leaked Emails From Pro-Clinton Group Reveal Censorship of Staff on Israel, AIPAC Pandering, Warped Militarism
The Center for American Progress censored its own writers to placate anger from AIPAC and embraced some shockingly extreme policies of militarism.
(updated below)
LEAKED INTERNAL EMAILS from the powerful Democratic think tank Center for American Progress (CAP) shed light on several public controversies involving the organization, particularly in regard to its positioning on Israel. They reveal the lengths to which the group has gone in order to placate AIPAC and long-time Clinton operative and Israel activist Ann Lewis — including censoring its own writers on the topic of Israel.
The emails also provide crucial context for understanding CAP’s controversial decision to host an event next week for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That event, billed by CAP as “A Conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” will feature CAP President Neera Tanden and Netanyahu together in a Q&A session as they explore “ways to strengthen the partnership between Israel and the United States.” That a group whose core mission is loyalty to the White House and the Democratic Party would roll out the red carpet for a hostile Obama nemesis is bizarre, for reasons the Huffington Post laid out when it reported on the controversy provoked by CAP’s invitation.
Neera Tanden, president of Center for American Progress, Nov. 10, 2014.
Photo: Mel Evans/AP
For years, CAP has exerted massive influence in Washington through its ties to the Democratic Party and its founder, John Podesta, one of Washington’s most powerful political operatives. The group is likely to become even more influential due to its deep and countless ties to the Clintons. As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent put it earlier this year: CAP “is poised to exert outsized influence over the 2016 president race and — should Hillary Clinton win it — the policies and agenda of the 45th President of the United States. CAP founder John Podesta is set to run Clinton’s presidential campaign, and current CAP president Neera Tanden is a longtime Clinton confidante and adviser.”
The recent CAP announcement of the Netanyahu event has generated substantial confusion and even anger among Democratic partisans. Netanyahu “sacrificed much of his popularity with the Democratic Party by crusading against the Iran nuclear deal,” the Huffington Post noted. Netanyahu has repeatedly treated the Obama White House as a political enemy. Indeed, just today, Netanyahu appointed “as his new chief of public diplomacy a conservative academic who suggested President Obama was anti-Semitic and compared Secretary of State John Kerry’s ‘mental age’ to that of a preteen.”
A core objective of Netanyahu’s trip to Washington is to re-establish credibility among progressives in the post-Obama era. For that reason, the Huffington Post reported, “the Israeli government pushed hard for an invite to” CAP and “was joined by [AIPAC], which also applied pressure to CAP to allow Netanyahu to speak.”
The article quoted several former CAP staffers angered by the group’s capitulation to the demands of the Israeli government and AIPAC; said one: Netanyahu is “looking for that progressive validation, and they’re basically validating a guy who race-baited during his election and has disavowed the two-state solution, which is CAP’s own prior work.” Matt Duss, a former foreign policy analyst at CAP, said “the idea that CAP would agree to give him bipartisan cover is really disappointing” since “this is someone who is an enemy of the progressive agenda, who has targeted Israeli human rights organizations throughout his term, and was re-elected on the back of blatant anti-Arab race-baiting.” Yet another former CAP staffer, Ali Gharib, published an article in The Nation noting that Netanyahu has all but formally aligned himself with the GOP, writing: “That a liberal institution feels the need to kowtow to AIPAC in a climate like this speaks volumes about either how out of touch or how craven it can be.”
BUT NONE OF THIS should be surprising. The Nation previously investigated CAP’s once-secret list of corporate donors, documenting how the group will abandon Democratic Party orthodoxy whenever that orthodoxy conflicts with the interests of its funders. That article noted that “Tanden ratcheted up the efforts to openly court donors, which has impacted CAP’s work. Staffers were very clearly instructed to check with the think tank’s development team before writing anything that might upset contributors.”
Since that article, CAP, to its credit, has provided some greater transparency about its funding sources. As the Washington Post’s Sargent reported earlier this year, “CAP’s top donors include Walmart and Citigroup,” and also “include the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which represents leading biotech and bio-pharma firms, and Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.” Other large CAP donors include Goldman Sachs, the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates, Bank of America, Google and Time Warner.
Still, many of its largest donors remain concealed. That is disturbing because of persistent reports that CAP manipulates and suppresses its own writers’ opinions to suit the interests of its donors. One former CAP staffer described to The Intercept the not-so-subtle ways they were pressured to abandon positions that offended CAP’s donors; the staffer was directed to meet with corporate lobbyists who argued against his progressive position on a widely debated political controversy, and was told by CAP officials that his views were “bad” and “unhelpful.”
But on Israel, CAP’s efforts to manipulate the content of its publications are even more aggressive and overt. Under Tanden, the group has repeatedly demonstrated it will go to almost any length to keep AIPAC and its pro-Israel donors happy, regardless of how such behavior subverts its pretense of independent advocacy.
In 2012, a former AIPAC spokesman, Josh Block, launched a campaign to brand several young, liberal writers at CAP’s blog, ThinkProgress, as anti-Semites due to their writings on Israel, Palestine and Iran. CAP and its writers were widely vilified for what Ben Smith, then of Politico, called deviations from “the bipartisan consensus on Israel,” and for voicing “a heretical and often critical stance on Israel heretofore confined to the political margins.” Among other crimes, these CAP writers stood accused of failing to sufficiently praise the Netanyahu government: “Warm words for Israel can be hard to find on [CAP’s] blogs,” Smith noted.
Rather than stand behind its writers, top CAP officials, led by Tanden, applied constant coercion to stifle content upsetting to AIPAC. As Gharib, one of the vilified CAP writers, recounted last week, “CAP’s positions moving forward from the attacks — including but not limited to virtually banishing criticisms of Israel and Netanyahu from our writings and, in at least one case, needlessly censoring a piece after publication — were guided by how to return to AIPAC’s good graces, often in coordination with AIPAC itself.” Most of the CAP writers accused of Israel heresy were gone from the organization within a short time thereafter, and several have publicly revealed that they had been censored on matters pertaining to Israel.
THESE NEWLY PUBLISHED EMAILS reveal AIPAC-pleasing efforts far more heavy-handed than previously known. On January 20, 2012 — at the height of the controversy over ThinkProgress’ publications on Israel — Tanden wrote an email to CAP founder John Podesta and several of her top aides, including ThinkProgress editor Judd Legum. In that email, Tanden recounted an angry call she received from Ann Lewis who, among other D.C. roles, served as the representative of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign on Jewish matters and is also a board member of Block’s hard-line group The Israel Project. The email reflects the censorship demands being imposed on CAP over Israel and how seriously Tanden was taking those demands:
That phone call was preceded by a rambling, detailed email from Lewis to Tanden, describing the audit she conducted of ThinkProgress’ output over several weeks about Israel and identifying all of the offending material. “Ambassador Michael Oren was called a liar in two posts,” complained Lewis, and “there are regular criticisms of the Israeli government” but “no mention of rocket attacks from Gaza.” (All of the leaked CAP emails referenced in this article can be read here.)
Four days after Lewis’ angry phone call, two ThinkProgress writers, Gharib and Eli Clifton, published an investigation that exposed the funding sources behind a controversial anti-Muslim film called “The Third Jihad,” which had been used as training material by the NYPD. The film was produced by a shadowy group calling itself The Clarion Fund, about which almost nothing was known. Through outstanding shoe-leather reporting, Gharib and Clifton revealed numerous ties between that group and various Israeli settlers and other extremists.
Because it dared to discuss Israeli activists, publication of this exposé provoked serious consternation from Tanden, as this email exchange demonstrates. It begins with an email from long-time Democratic Party operative Howard Wolfson, formerly a top aide to Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, which provides a link to the piece with one simple message: “For the love of god!” Tanden’s reply expressed concern about whether Israel should have been included in the reporting:
Soon after their article was published, it was severely censored. Virtually every reference to Israelis was simply deleted. The neocon magazine Weekly Standard first noticed the censorship and reveled in the success of the campaign to force CAP to suppress Israel criticisms. “Somebody at the Center for American Progress’ ThinkProgress realized that what had been published was completely inappropriate. Within what seems to have been a few hours, the post was scrubbed,” it noted. “The good news is that there seems to be at least one grown up at the Center for American Progress,” it proclaimed.
One of the article’s authors, Gharib, told The Intercept that Tanden implemented a policy requiring that any material about Israel was to receive special review from a designated editor before being published. Gharib and Clifton did not submit this particular article for special review in advance of publication because it concerned only individual Israeli funders, not Israel itself. That editor, however, went into the article hours after it was published and deleted the references to Israelis. When asked, CAP’s senior national security fellow and then-chief-of-staff, Ken Gude, said he “does not recall this specific incident.”
The website Mondoweiss, which had trumpeted the importance of this Clarion Group report when it was first published, detailed the following day that “the piece originally contained four explicit references to Israel. Now it contains only one, at the end, an aside about Gingrich.” As Mondoweiss put it, “This is a shocking effort to remove any description of the Israel lobby from a major ideological and political undertaking.”
Shocking indeed. But it was all part of a larger CAP effort to assure AIPAC and the likes of Ann Lewis that it would not allow any meaningful criticisms of Israel to be voiced. In a Washington Post article on the Josh Block-created campaign against CAP, Gude groveled, reciting this loyalty pledge: “The clear and overwhelming record of the literally hundreds of articles and policy papers from the Center for American Progress and ThinkProgress demonstrates our longstanding support both for Israel and the two-state solution to the Middle East peace process as being in the moral and national security interests of the United States.”
CAP also denounced the language used by its writers as “inappropriate” and boasted to the Post that they deleted some of the tweets that were deemed offensive. And after his article was censored, Gharib was told by a CAP editor that he was to avoid criticizing American Jewish groups, such as AIPAC, under any circumstances. When he asked whether this was a temporary ban in light of the controversy or a permanent one — i.e., when he could once again write about such groups — the editor told him: “For AIPAC? Probably never.”
Less than two weeks after CAP criticized its own writers to the Washington Post, the group’s top officials celebrated that their censorship efforts and public groveling seemed to be restoring them to AIPAC’s good graces. On February 1, 2012 — exactly one week after publication of the heavily censored post — Gude wrote an excited email to top CAP officials, including Tanden. The subject was Gude’s meeting with AIPAC’s deputy director of policy and government affairs, Jeff Colman, which Gude gushed was “very positive.”
In light of “the steps we have taken” — the public apologies, the censorship, the denouncing of CAP’s own writers — AIPAC, said Gude, deemed that CAP “now was moving in the right direction.” The AIPAC official singled out several CAP staffers for praise, saying AIPAC now believes “CAP/AF is in good hands.” Gude celebrated the rewards CAP was likely to receive for its good behavior: “I bet we get a lot of invitations to attend” an upcoming AIPAC event, Gude predicted. “And it’s very likely that I’m going to Israel on one of their upcoming trips.”
That is who AIPAC demanded shape CAP’s positions, and that is exactly what AIPAC got: people literally paid by the permanent corporate war faction in Washington to promote its agenda and serve its interests.
Gude claims that when citing all the “steps” that convinced AIPAC that CAP was “moving in the right direction,” he was referring to only one incident, namely: “We were responding to a controversy that originated from a young staffer’s use of his personal social media account. We instituted a social media policy for the organization that asked staff to make clear that their personal social media accounts represented their own views and a reminder that even in that context, their social media messages reflect on the organization.”
Notably, Tanden’s effort to suppress Israel reporting began well before the anti-CAP public campaign was launched. As one former CAP staffer recounted to The Intercept, Tanden, almost immediately upon her return to CAP from the Obama White House in late 2010, summoned senior staff to a meeting at which she demanded to know why CAP was covering “Israel/Palestine.” She said she understood that Israel was one of three issues — along with “trade and guns” — that were “off the table” for CAP, and did not understand why ThinkProgress was devoting coverage to it. In response to questions for this article, CAP’s Ken Gude denied that these topics were “off limits,” and cited numerous posts published and events hosted by the group on those topics from 2012-2015 (after the reported conversation with Tanden took place).
When told that the CAP blog had hired several writers such as Matt Duss who specialized in that area, and that CAP’s work was consistent with the Obama White House’s intention to confront Israel on settlements, Tanden re-iterated her view that it was not “constructive” for CAP to work on Israel, particularly in such a critical manner. The subsequent public controversy aimed at CAP, and the resulting censoring of its own writers, had its genesis in Tanden’s pre-existing belief that Israel should be avoided.
GIVEN ALL THIS, it is anything but surprising that ever since it rid itself of its troublesome Israel heretics, CAP’s foreign policy positions have been hawkish in the extreme. One remarkable email exchange in particular reveals the critical role played by Tanden in that positioning. In October 2011, a CAP national security writer, Benjamin Armbruster, circulated a discussion on CNN about whether Libya should be forced to turn over its oil revenue to the U.S. as compensation and gratitude for the U.S. having “liberated” Libya.
After one CAP official, Faiz Shakir, noted how perverse it is to first bomb a poor country and then make it turn over its revenues to you for doing so, Tanden argued that this made a great deal of sense:
Tanden’s argument is quite similar to Donald Trump’s long-time stance about Iraqi oil: “I say we should take it and pay ourselves back.” But Tanden’s twist on the argument — that Americans will continue to support foreign wars only if they see the invaded countries forced to turn over assets that the U.S. can use to fund its own programs — is singularly perverse, as it turns the U.S. military into some sort of explicit for-profit imperial force. As Shakir put it in a subsequent email, that suggestion would “make people start to think that our military is just for-hire to carry out the agendas of other people.”
At first glance, CAP’s devotion to AIPAC and Netanyahu may seem strange given that it is so plainly at odds with the Obama White House’s interests. But CAP — like so many leading D.C. think tanks with pretenses to objective “scholarship” — has repeatedly proven that it prioritizes servitude to its donors’ interests even over its partisan loyalties.
In the case of Israel and Netanyahu, there is an even more significant factor at play: Tanden is far more of a Clinton loyalist than an Obama loyalist, and a core strategy of the Clinton campaign is to depict Hillary as supremely devoted to Israel. Just last night, Clinton published an op-ed in The Forward on Israel that is so extreme it has to be read to be believed. Its core purpose is clear from its headline and photo: to implicitly criticize Obama for being too adversarial to Israel and Netanyahu, while vowing that she, as president, will be the most stalwart Israel loyalist imaginable:
Clinton’s op-ed reads like the ultimate loyalty oath: “I have stood with Israel my entire career. … As president, I will continue this fight.” Moreover, she writes, “Netanyahu’s visit to Washington on November 9 is an opportunity to reaffirm the unbreakable bonds of friendship and unity between the people and governments of the United States and Israel.” She vows: “I will do everything I can to enhance our strategic partnership and strengthen America’s security commitment to Israel, ensuring that it always has the qualitative military edge to defend itself. That includes immediately dispatching a delegation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to meet with senior Israeli commanders. I would also invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House in my first month in office.”
There is not a peep of criticism about the Israeli occupation or the violence it has used against Palestinians, though the op-ed does harshly scold the occupied people: “Israelis have to look over their shoulders during everyday tasks, like carrying groceries and waiting for the bus. … This violence must not be allowed to continue. It needs to stop immediately. … Many of us have seen the video of a cleric encouraging worshippers to stab Jews as he waves a knife in the air. This incitement needs to end, period,” etc. etc.
In that context, CAP’s servitude to AIPAC and pandering to Netanyahu makes all the sense in the world. It may conflict with the Obama White House’s preferences, but it very clearly serves its new primary goal: advancement of the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Though Gude insists CAP did not communicate with the Clinton campaign about the Netanyahu invitation, he acknowledges that “the CAP board was informed and [Clinton campaign head] John Podesta and [campaign official] Jose Villarreal are members of the CAP board. They did not have a role in making the decision to do the event.” Whatever else is true, as Clinton’s op-ed last night makes clear, she has clearly adopted a strategy of siding with Netanyahu and Israel over the Obama White House, and CAP, with its characteristic subservience, is fully on board.
UPDATE: Tanden’s office originally indicated she was traveling today and thus was unable to respond to The Intercept’s inquiries, but shortly after publication of this article, CAP’s Daniella Leger provided this comment about our questions about Tanden’s views on Libyan oil revenues: “We’re a think tank, and we have internal discussions and dialogues all the time on a variety of issues. We encourage throwing out ideas to spur conversation and spark debate. We did not take a position on this, but ThinkProgress covered it. The posts certainly did not endorse the idea.”
Ironically, one of those ThinkProgress posts she cited mockingly describes Michele Bachmann’s views, which are strikingly similar to the ones expressed by Tanden: “At last night’s GOP presidential debate, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said Iraq and Libya should repay the U.S. for its war efforts in those two countries.” The other link described how even Rick Santorum condemned this oil-seizure idea — the one advocated by Tanden and Bachmann — as immoral and counterproductive: “I think that would send every possible wrong signal that America went to war for oil,” said the right-wing former GOP senator.
Don’t Hill and BeBe look good together? Why, they’re practically a couple. Anyway, Clinton didn’t bother to go into detail about just how she was going to strengthen the immutable bond between Israel and America, possibly because it involves the shedding of American blood.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Clinton would commit U.S. troops to fight alongside Israeli soldiers, shooting together at Palestinians. There is also no doubt in my mind that Hillary can’t wait to drop under BeBe’s desk for a little payback for Billy Boy. I’ll bet I’m not the only one with those suspicions.
That old Hill got me goin good this mornin’ with her joke about her all worryin’ about Ruskies and Iranian firecrackers getting inta the wrong hands. Gotta love a woman with a sense of humor.
I got a kick out of that, too, Old Dog. Yea, as if she’s unaware that America is the world’s largest arms supplier. America has more weapons by far in circulation than any other country. We’ll sell virtually anything to anybody. After all, war is a business today, and it’s not cheap.
I read recently a comment the former British cabinet member Jack Straw made visa vie, Scotter Libby, the powerful Neo-Con. HE said one could not figure out at times whether he was working for the Americans or the Israelis during the Iraq fiasco. The more I learn the more i was becoming disheartened about the course of international politics, until I remembered a book by a courageous Cambodian refugee girl, called ” When broken glass floats, and it reminds me of a attribute of God that transcends – that God is Holy . She recounts a Cambodian saying that when sheets of broken glass and a gourd are thrown into a river, the sharp glass ( representing bad) seems to win the day and floats on top for a time, however and more lasting the gourd eventually rises to the surface and takes the top position. IT is for us to be steadfast and patient.
Be not fooled–scratch Neera Tanden or Bobby Jindal and you’ll find ultra Hindu nationalist under the skin.
Perhaps this is just one side of Tanden and CAP’s cultivation of the India-Israel alliance? https://www.americanprogress.org/tag/india-2020/view/
ThinkProgress describes itself: “ThinkProgress, an editorially independent news site affiliated with the Center for American Progress…”
… “editorially independent” – how can they even pretend to be?!
All alleged American politicians who work for Israel need to be removed from office. Israel doesn’t care about Americans. They care about controlling American politics from their ME vantage point for their Me-Me-Me priorities.
Israel bashing is NOT a liberal position.
What, and neither was Apartheid South Africa bashing? I’ll thank you to let real liberals decide what liberal positions are. Not phonies who endorse ethnic cleansing.
fyi Ann Lewis is BArney Frank’s sister…just saying…
And just as Reagan supported Apartheid South Africa, these so-called liberals keep on supporting an Apartheid Israel. A country that was illegally given to them by the United Kingdom.
Time for the US citizens to wake up and realize only them can really free themselves from these Plutocratic spineless puppets pretending to be their representatives.
“Other emails show Tanden arguing that Libyans should be forced to turn over large portions of their oil revenues to repay the U.S. for the costs incurred in bombing Libya, on the grounds that Americans will support future wars only if they see that the countries attacked by the U.S. pay for the invasions.”
What the actual fuck? Sounds just as fucking crazy as dickhead Trump wanting to build a wall between Mexico and the US but then wants to force them to pay for it. Fascist fucking arseholes.
U?rael Uber ALLE?, ?ieg Hitlery!
U?rael Uber ALLE?, ?ieg Hitlery!
Any American politician that has connections with israhell or jews needs to be arrested as a traitor to the American people.
Do you belong to the n @ z i party?
Many thanks for this enlightening article.
I cannot think of a more amoral political family than Clinton, Inc.
As others, like Mike Taibbi and David Sirota have documented, their corrupting influence on this country staggers the mind.
It is a wonder how anyone who truly cares about the future of this fractured nation can even think of allowing Clinton, Inc. back
into the White House.
Particularly in light of the devastation wrought by the Clinton Administration’s assaults on black families, such as the 1994 Crime Bill, the so-called Welfare Reform Bill, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and etcetera.
Now we have Clinton, Inc. pandering to war-mongering bigot, Netanyahu, by inviting him to the ironically titled CAP.
tHe Israeli Government’s propaganda machine is in overdrive currently: in addition to trying to upset the last presidential election in favor of a republican; supporting apologists, like Senator Feinstein, is attempting to censure constitutionally-guarenteed free speech at pubic universities in California (as well as other attempts across the nation by other AIPAC-aligned groups), among other high crimes and misdemeanors.
In the end, I’ll just repeat the title of an article published earlier this year in Harper’s Magazine : Stop Hillary
I wouldn’t go so far as to call CAP a very powerful institution. Much like the Heritage Institution is for the right, CAP is the green room for political lightweights while their party is out of power. I’ve attended several events organized by both think tanks and they’re basically like undergraduate social studies classes. Brookings and CSIS are where the heavy-weights play.
Everything about that shitty little country is drenched in lies, violence, and coercion.
It is difficult to understand how any intellectually honest, self-respecting principled liberal could continue to support anything connected to the Clintons. CAP isn’t scholarly. It’s a propaganda machine.
While all sides of controversial issues should be heard, Benjamin Netanyahu pretty much lost his right to intrude into American political affairs when he barged into the U.S. Congress a few months ago to undermine the Obama administration’s negotiations and demonstrate his own political clout in the U.S. CAP should not be welcoming this obnoxious boor to speak to them. He has plenty of other avenues of communication.
It is clear by now that the Netanyahu government is not interested in a 2-state solution or in good-faith negotiations with appropriate Palestinians. Throughout prior negotiations they continued to expand settlements and introduced a new poison pill into the discussion, namely acceptance of Israel as a “Jewish state.” His administration has done everything it could to undermine U.S. efforts at arriving at a negotiated agreement.
The Palestinians are not without fault in all this, especially in the area of human rights. The fact remains that they have been punished as no other people has for a crime they did not commit — that is, the Holocaust. There is only one road to peace in this area, and that is for each side to acknowledge the other’s legitimate needs and to share and/or split this region in an equitable manner.
Israel will never willingly walk down that road with the Palestinians. You are staring straight into the abyss created by religious belief. All of the weapons in the history of the world have been poured into that giant crack in man’s inability to understand compassion! Much more in the way of death and destruction is waxing.
Looks like nationalism to me,the religious aspect is window dressing,especially as the Israelis act irreligiously,and the Palestinians aren’t all Muslims.
And compassion is a founding tenet of Islam,they are very compassionate,but I don’t see it from the Israelis,other than a few alleged self hating(by their compatriots) Jews.
Well, wouldn’t it be nice if all the violent people in the world got together and killed each other so the rest of us could live in peace? The problem is that these psychopaths persist in killing children instead of one another. I love me some Jewish folk, and every one I know personally is a flaming liberal. Like me, they are appalled at the murder of the Palestinian children. What is it going to take before someone insists that the US and our allies follow the Geneva Convention? It hasn’t helped that the Palestinian leadership continually shoots itself in the foot, but that does not justify the murder of children. Nothing can justify the murder of children.
FMS it is telling that you cite satanyahoos barging into congress as the point at which he lost the right to intrude on US politics…never mind that he is responsible for the murders of 2200 people, mostly civilians from protective edge in Gaza.
Palestine’s conflict is not fought between to equal sides or armies…
Whats worse – the apartheid state or occupation? Flip a coin
CAP should bill their event with a snappier title, like, “Goose-steppin’ with Bibi”. They could rework ‘The Producers’ theme song and introduce the old terrorist with a rendition of “Springtime for Bibi and Zion Land”. He’d appreciate that.
“A day after assuming office as secretary of state, Clinton signed a Sensitive Compartmented Information Nondisclosure Agreement that laid out criminal penalties for “any unauthorized disclosure” of classified information.”-Lachlan Markay, freebeacon.com Nov. 6 2015 9:00 AM
“I understand that it is my responsibility to consult with appropriate management authorities in the Department … in order to ensure that I know whether information or material within my knowledge or control that I have reason to believe might be SCI,” the agreement says.-Lachlan Markay, freebeacon.com Nov. 6 2015 9:00 AM
Sensitive Compartmented Information Nondisclosure Agreement ( SCI )
In addition to her SCI agreement, Clinton signed a separate NDA for all other classified information. It contains similar language, including prohibiting “negligent handling of classified information,” requiring her to ascertain whether information is classified and laying out criminal penalties.
It adds, “I will never divulge classified information to anyone unless: (a) I have officially verified that the recipient has been properly authorized to receive it; or (b) I have been given prior written notice of authorization” from the proper authorizes.-Lachlan Markay, freebeacon.com Nov. 6 2015 9:00 AM
Why did Hillary, and still does, completely disregard any of her criminal acts as criminal acts? Why and what is her get out jail card? Most importantly, she doesn’t support Snowden?
She is a nasty untrustworthy black widow bitch!
Nobody should trust this woman, not one person. I can see why Bill went to Monica. Monica appears to be a woman Hillary could never be?
Poor Monica was connected with right wing Zionists;Blackmail.
Another example of the power and insidious nature of the supremacist state of Zion.
Good oogly-boogly! Can we leave the sexist rants out of this discussion? We have women present here, mothers and grandmothers and maybe even a teen or two.
There is enough to criticize Hillary about without using sexist insults, or hauling Monica L. into it. None of this makes you look smart, and it has nothing to do with the reasons why Hillary Clinton should not be president.
Hillary is the one who introduced sexism. At the Dem. debate, her big claim to being different from Obama was “first woman president”.
Hillary should not because she is a warmonger. Knowingly voted for the 2002 Iraq war resolution. Former IAEA head weapons inspector in Iraq during the Clinton administration Scott Ritter wrote extensively about the Clintons knowing there were no WMD’s in Iraq. Senator Dick Durbin who was on the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time (may have been the chair) voted against the resolution. A clearmessage to Hillary and others.
Before, during and after the 2008 campaign Hillary endlessly repeated the neocons unsubstantiated claims about Iran. She did this on many MSM outlets.
Hillary pushed for military interventions in Libya and Syria.
Hillary is a very serious warmonger!
You can sign a petition here — http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/disinvite-netanyahu-from/?source=search — urging CAP to disinvite Netanyahu. As Gharib notes, the petition is unlikely to succeed, but it would perhaps be useful to show some pushback to the powers that be at CAP.
GG, please consider giving the petition a bump in some way–sigs are currently at 1600+ and could use some help to get the numbers up.
1) Rename Bibi “Nosferatu”. Has a nice ring to it.
2) Work into every article, USS Liberty, 34 dead, 102 wounded, and “With allies like Israel, we don’t need any more enemies at all, at all.
3) Don’t know yet, of course, what actual role Israel (or the Zionistas) played in 9/11 and the continuing cover-up, but Zionists and Zio-symps were at every gate and runcible spoon-in-the-road–that includes fork in the road, knife in the road, and spoon in the road. And caltrops littering every “sidewalk.”
Unfortunately, in American politics, from the extreme right to the extrem left, and anyone in between, they are all manipulated, controlled by AIPAC and the zionists. They can disagree on anything,taxes, defence, healthcare, climate change…etc, even the existence of God, can be debated, but criticism of Israel and zionists is off limit to any american politician or media person.
Thats partly because there us no ‘left’ nevermind extreme left…99.9% are right or off the chart right
What utter baloney! That’s just what they want you to believe. Apparently you have no faith in people. That’s understandable considering an encounter with one jerk can negate one’s appreciation for the many good people encountered during that same day. It is just how our mind works. Yet I want you to know that there is absolutely no evidence for your assertion.
In fact, studies show that there is a bell curve, not only for academic potential (aka I.Q) but for almost anything you care to study. Extrapolating from that data we can best assume that 20% of the people are really flippin’ stupid, another 20% are fairly stupid, and 20% are not particularly stupid, but not particularly smart. The remaining 40% are quite smart and really flippin’ smart. The same probably applies to the political spectrum, which is not the same thing as intelligence, but the two things are related.
In addition, you and many others who post their thoughts on this subject on the internet seem to think that there is some kind of designation, or club, or some sort of monolithic thing that makes a person “right” or “left” but for the life of me, I’m not sure what it might be. We can’t even study this notion to determine if the bell curve applies because “right” and “left” are not monolithic positions that can be easily defined. Most of us who do possess political awareness are likely to be some combination of the two positions if we were to sit down and define them.
I guess I’m trying to tell you to cheer up, things aren’t really as bad as you make them out to be, and we must not defeat ourselves by believing the enemy’s propaganda.
When Clinton wrote that “All parties and the international community should condemn any political and religious leader who stokes tensions with irresponsible rhetoric,” did that include Netanyahu literally running his election campaign based off of race-baiting, mass bombing whitewashing, and inflammatory rhetoric?
The machinations of Madame Mayhem and her minions
Change the name from CAP to CIP and it will be honest …
@tombrowns’ schooleddaze
Fear is the mother of all the “dark princes”. When we act out of psychosomatic fear, the outcome is usually out of balance with the natural processes of life.
I am not talking about the primordial fear of physical injury which is a natural reflex of every living creature, here I am talking about the psychological fear born out of past experience projected into a future that may or may not take place. Right there is where conflict lives and is ready to pounce and strike.
Action(s) born out of fear lead to untold misery and suffering, not only for humanity, but all life on this beautiful bountiful planet.
Until we realize that humanity is on the wrong path, and take stock of that fact, we will remain a destructive force on this earth. Patching problems here and there ain’t going cut it anymore.
There must be a deep, holistic and honest individual and collective introspection into our situation. Once we truly see the facts on the ground, then action naturally takes place, action that is in harmony with life.
As a survivor of childhood ritual sexual abuse I have suffered chronic severe anxiety, depression and PTSD for over 40 years.
Being brave is not about not feeling fear but feeling it and doing what is required anyway.
The point I take from you is not to let that fear drive you and I could not agree more.
I live in fear but that fear is not me.
Cheers.
jimmy.
Must be hard being a liberal Democrat think tank flunky. Not only do you have to be on the “right side” of various politicians, but now you must vet every word uttered about Israel thru a designated censor.
Do these behaviors remind anyone else of good ole Joe Stalin and crew? They set the standard for enforcing the Party Line amongst the useful idiot fronts.
Ironically there is far more open criticism of Israeli policies in Israel itself than there is in US political circles. Here, no deviation from Netanyahu worship is tolerated.
All of these heavy handed machinations are just fodder for real anti-Semites who find Zionist hands behind every event. Sometimes even the creeps might be on to something.
The Sad truth is that Netanyahu and his Neo-Nazies have been demolishing Palestinian’s homes and markets for decades, replacing them with Hi-Rise Jews only housing, and limiting Palestinian’s access to water, employment and movement. That is a KNOWN FACT!
Furthermore, Israel is smothering Palestinians in their Warsaw stye Ghetto, GAZA, and stealing Palestinian’s land in the West Bank.
The ENTIRE world acknowledges these Facts EXCEPT the USA. That is because some of our Senators and Representatives are MORE loyal to Israel than to the United States. And, the Jewish Lobby AIPAC is as powerful as the NRA, and 80 % of the Worlds Jews reside in Israel and the USA.
A LARGE number of American and other Jews are working vigorously to get rid of the Neo-Nazis and we should give them our support 100% instead of supporting Little Adolph 100% !!!
An Outstanding example of the Jewish movement for human rights and Peace:
T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights
Project Hayei Sarah
Partners for Progressive Israel
Americans for Peace Now
J Street, The Political Home for Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace Americans
Why include zionists like J street in this list? Why have u left out the likes of jewish voice for peace and mondoweiss for example?
Zionism is definct as any kind o viable solution to anything
Well now, it seems like now all the American people are totally working toe the “special interests” of the world. This gem of an article seals the deal, there really aren’t too many citizen’s advocates left. Just ways to fund organizations with the explicit means to make ungodly amounts of money. Well the US was a good idea while it lasted and will take time to evolve into a global conglomerate but it now seems inevitable.
None of this is a real surprise, but it’s definitely nice to have it all down in black and white.
For those who still hold out hope for some kind of equitable resolution to the I-P conflict, this is bad news. But for those who see the demise of the state of Israel as the only solution to Palestinian oppression and, by extension, the liberation and full recognition of the state of Palestine, the content of this article merely paves a few more miles in the story and points in the direction of the only real solution.
This shows you who is the tail, and who is the dog. America doesn’t reduce military aid to Israel, to pressure, say, a peace settlement, no, Israel suspends their negotiations over what weapons America gets the privilege to donate to Israel with American tax money, in protest over an Iran peace deal.
Universal healthcare, single payer, even “a public option” is “unrealistic”, ruled out, but Obama can give money to weapons companies in return for them giving war aircraft to Israel.
Meanwhile, Lego refuses to allow Ai Weiwei to use their products for what they consider is political speech. Mmmmkay.
The point being: it’s an upside down world.. just as your last sentence illustrates
With regard to the last sentence, thats why he was installed.
This is funny, and remember, even with Abbas and the Palestinian Authority doing things like this to aid the Israelis in their occupation, Israel still “has no partner for peace”.
So many “exceptional” nationalists
and yet,
the same foul odor.
Israelis are BACKSTABBING TRAITORS.
Google: Israel did 9/11 to check the evidence. Do the research.
Don’t let the lying Israeli owned media TRICK you any longer.
It’s so difficult to have meaningful discussion when racist, fantastical BS gets posted. Yes, I’m referring to your post. The all caps crowd is at it again.
Racist?There was anti Israeli rhetoric,but no racism.His 9-11 accusation has many many supporters,despite hasbara ,but his Israeli traitor remark was a little off,as Israelis can’t be traitors,only dual citizens can,of which there are a multitude,Israelis can only be spies and moles.
And yes the MSM is predominately Jewish Zionist controlled,as are many internet sites.
So his discussion was quite meaningful,as I hope mine is,but ignorance(yours) is bliss.
This lying murderous wrongheaded creep woman Shillary Clinton is detestable.
You need to give your brain an enema…
…In other news, prosecuting torturers, prosecuting Wall Street fraudsters, universal healthcare, closing Guantanamo, bringing troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq, also “unrealistic” and ruled out, says Obama.
Boom. Another instant classic. Those emails are just hilarious/infuriating to read. Everything I presumed about these idiots turns out to be true.
Keep exposing these suck-up liars. That’s what journalism should be.
You also seem to be avoiding “incredibly.” That, too, fills me with joy. :) Just teasing; we all have our tics.
Rock on!
So the people who own the Democratic party, and the Israeli government, want to burnish their image with the people who consider themselves progressive, yet who, for some reason, vote Democrat in US federal elections.
How will they continue to get progressive votes? End the occupation? End the wars for oil? No, I’ve got it! A Q and A with Netanyahu!!!
This is hilarious, from the Brookings institute (another “progressive” think tank), advice for Obama and Hillary, the US should make a distinction between “benign” and non benign Israeli settlement blocks. In return for the US officially abandoning the international negotiating consensus that the peace process is based on ’67 borders, Israel will (for some reason) stop building “non benign” settlements (even though they were supposed to stop building at the beginning of the Oslo peace process years ago, but never did). And supposedly the Palestinians will be happy about America moving the Green Line goal posts in return for, a promise that Israel will not to move them again (for some reason).
So, some settlements, built by an Israeli government that has explicitly come out against “the two state solution” should be endorsed by the US government. For some reason, an Israeli government that doesn’t want a Palestinian state, will, in return, for some reason, stop building in areas that the US says are not “benign”. Additionally even though the continuing building of settlements makes a two state settlement harder to achieve, if it isn’t impossible already, the Palestinian leadership will supposedly welcome this US recognition of settlements because the Palestinians, for some reason, aren’t really concerned about the areas of the West Bank that the US labels “benign” places for Israelis to settle.
Fittingly, Sachs calls this tangled ball of nonsense “anti-solutionism”.
Organizations like the Brookings Institute examine some tried and tested strategies such as:
The camel’s nose
The foot in the door
The slippery slope
The boiling frog
They then dress them up to provide an intellectual patina, and pitch them to politicians. It’s a good system.
It shows a profound lack of humanity when anyone talks so casually about unprovoked wars of aggression. Countries destroyed and societies shattered, yet some people focus on the financial cost.
Neera Tanden reaffirms this famous quote:
“War is a racket.” – Gen. Smedley Butler, USMC Ret.
http://www.ivaw.org
.
Nah,more like the banality of evil.
“Other emails show Tanden arguing that Libyans should be forced to turn over large portions of their oil revenues to repay the U.S. for the costs incurred in bombing Libya..”
I just had the scene from some movie where the ‘poor minority fellow’ walks up to a benz at a stop light, smashes an egg on the windshield, cleans the windshield, then, with menacing face, proceeds to ask or demand payment. White rich guy in benz is pissing his pants.
Greed, a creature of fear, begets corruption which inevitably leads to conflict and violence!
Not to be in any way a conspiracist, doesn’t this seem to be an ever unfolding story about people, organizations, societies ,and above all, humanity and its doings on this planet?
We are basically so entrenched in our own greed mindset and delusions of grandeur, that we are willing to commit acts of unspeakable violence against one another to feed that greed. I have no objection to humanity exterminating itself, but I object to the fact that we are committing crimes against life on this planet and that we must be stopped!
Greed manifests itself in Many guises, and is caused by fear; the fear of losing one’s material possessions or other imagined psychological artifact; the fear of less-ness. Turn the TV on, go on social media or any other medium , and look at what’s happening around the world, and in your community.
Fear and greed permeate all those mediums, and the violent conflicts that inevitably ensue are just the logical conclusion or the continuation of that cycle ad-nauseam.
We must look at ourselves in the mirror and realize how deeply corrupt we have become and how dangerous we have become to ourselves and life on this planet. Only when we truly see how monstrous we have become, can we then truly act.
The time for patch jobs here and there has been and is a failure. We need a new paradigm shift !
Matthew 6:24
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
But Mammon (greed) is only one of the seven dark princes.
Pride, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth each have a prince.
Turning CAP into CAP (Center Against Progress) must be politically motivated, and that means it must be a net positive in number of votes for HRC in the coming general election. Frankly, it is not a matter of the Jewish vote; there are not that many and they already will vote for her. Surely she cannot be courting the evangelical vote?
There is simply no humility from liberals on Israel. No shame, and no humility. They’re like George W. Bush. Israel is the Axis of Evil, and you’re either with them or against them, no matter what actually happened in the news that day. On the left, there is no sense that maybe, just maybe, liberals could be right about climate change and unions and gay rights and women’s rights and so many other issues, but simply wrong about Israel. The arrogance on this issue is stunning to experience. That those writers really were biased, and needed to be reigned in, is never even considered. No, it has to be a conspiracy of dirty Jew money corrupting the institution, every time, all the time. And if someone disagrees with a liberal on Israel, they are branded as bought and paid for by AIPAC, 100% of the time. Shoot, just by typing this, I’ll be labeled “hasbara” by some “non-anti-Semite”.
It was a nice try, but your authoritarian side did leak through a little with the sentence I quoted, but nice job trying to co-opt the criticism.
How is it that only when someone is biased against Isral they must be “reigned in” and not on any other issue? Biased against Russia? No problem. Iran? Who cares.
The very expression “reign in” should never find its place in the context of journalism. Otherwise, you can’t have any pretense of being for free speech.
“Do The Zionism”
Woo..
I’m ahead, I’m a man
I’m the first Adam to wear pants, yeah
I’m at peace with my lust
I can kill ’cause in God I trust, yeah
It’s Zionism, baby
I’m at peace, I’m the man
Buying stocks on the day of the crash
On the loose, I’m a truck
All the rolling hills, I’ll flatten ’em out, yeah
It’s herd behavior, uh huh
It’s Zionism, baby
Admire me, admire my Israel
Admire my son, he’s my clone
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
This land is mine, this land is free
I’ll do what I want but irresponsibly
It’s Zionism, baby
I’m a thief, I’m a liar
There’s my temple, I sing in the choir:
(hallelujah, hallelujah)
Admire me, admire my Israel
Admire my son, admire my clones
‘Cause we know, appetite for a nightly feast
Those ignorant Palestinians got nothin’ on me
Nothin’, why?
Because… it’s Zionism, baby!
I am ahead, I am advanced
I am the first Adam to make plans, yeah
I crawled the earth, but now I’m higher
2016, watch it go to fire
It’s Zionism, baby
Do the Zionism
Come on, come on, come on
…………
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDaOgu2CQtI
Do the evolution Pearl Jam
Lol I was just trying to imagine this was apartheid-era South Africa and your comment was about that.
You sound stupid. Just stop it. This eternal-victim complex some supporters of Israel have is absolutely fucking tiresome. There are mountains and mountains of evidence – videos, documentation, etc. – that lay out Israel’s crime thoroughly. Anyone who’s studied this issue even a little knows what’s really going on & what HAS been going on. Zionism was always a racist, colonialist (Herzel in his writings literally called Zionism a “colonialist movement” that needed to get rid of all Palestinians whom he said were like the “red Indians”). Read the memoirs and diaries of Ben Gurion, Begem, Sharon and other criminals. These guys didn’t mince words in their writings – almost like they didn’t think anyone would ever read them. They flat-out admit to their crimes and to lying about threats from Palestinians and their neighbors to have an excuse to invade or destroy their armies/ take out their defenses. Here’s a very long but informative article that documents a lot of this: http://www.wideasleepinamerica.com/2010/09/thin-green-line-its-not-just.html
Sharon, Begin, Rabin, Mattityahu Peled (who was the army general at the time) have all admitted that the ’67 ‘war’ was an attack by Israel and that Israel wasn’t faced with any real threat. In their own words, they’ve said that Israel just wanted an excuse to take out the armies of their neighbors and weaken them – which would make it easier for Israel to continue its crimes.
Here’s another article that outlines a lot of this…there are plenty of other books, articles, etc (including by Israeli Jewish historians and former army personnel) that attest to this: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/06/understanding-still-matters
Your comment is a clear indication that you haven’t the slightest clue about the horrors that Palestinians have endured since even before 1948 at the hands of Zionists. Are you familiar with the countless massacres/rapes/thefts of Palestinians villages by Zionist groups? With the writings of every prominent Zionist who blatantly admits that Paleatinaisn posed no threat except a demographic one? That they “had to” commit their crimes against these people if they wanted a Jewish-majority state? Again, read the words of those responsible – they don’t hold back.
Today, like the case has been for decades, Palestinians are murdered with impunity by Israeli Occupation Forces and extremist settlers. The IOF literally just stand and watche as illegal Jewish settlers attack Palestinians and set fire to their homes, farms, olive groves, punch holes in their water tanks and poison their limited water supply (as Israel steals Palestinian water), etc (there are plenty of videos of this on B’tselem and other human rights websites…in one of them, an old Palestinian farmer asks an IOF thug why he isn’t stopping the settlers and the IOF thug responds “why the fuck should I protect a Palestinian?” and proceeds to hit him. And this is the rule, not the exception). They attack and beat Palestinian women and children, who almost never see the assailants punished (97% of reported attacks on Palestinians by illegal settlers are completely ignored by Israeli police and the ones that are investigated very rarely bring the assailants to justice. Meanwhile, 99% of Palestinians who are brought to court on absurd and often falsified charges are convicted. IOF thugs constantly harras and detain Palestinian children as young as five years old. About half of Palestinian children arrested by the IOF are sexually abused while detained & almost all are tortured.
The Israeli government absolves the criminal illegal settlers and IOF of all of it…they’ve made sure their murderous, fascist laws basically make it legal to abuse and murder Palestinians.
And you don’t know the half of it. You have no fucking clue what Palestinians have been and are going through at the hands of the truly psychopathic Israeli government, IOF, and extremist illegal settlers. On top of the threats to their physical safety that Palestinians face every day, Israel continues to illegally expand nit just in Palestinian territory but in the territory of neighboring countries (Netanyahu just announced Israel will settle 200,000 illegals in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights – which would be a blatant violation of international law and even Ken Roth came out to say that it was “a move that dared the ICC to act”). Not to mention the daily illegal evictions, home demolitions, and land theft in Palestinian territory (East Jerusalem and the West Bank).
So enough with the absurd and laughable “poor Israel” routine. A country like Israel – with the most technologically advanced army in the ME that is diplomatically shielded no matter what heinous crimes it commits, with billions of dollars in aid that goes to WMDs that they test on Palestinians and massacre them with in Gaza and the West Bank and then make billions selling those “tested” weapons to other countries, with its continued ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and theft of their land -does not get to play the victim card. And neither do its delusional, immoral supporters.
Excellent Alana!
Thanks for posting that article
Notably matti peled eventually realised the generals’ wrong doings and repented, becoming a peace activist.
His son Miko Peled now carries on the anti zionist peace activism fight…worth looking up on youtube
“…needed to be reigned [reined] in”
Interesting spelling choice.
Good catch!
YOU are the only person who says things like “dirty Jew” in these threads. “dirty Jew, dirty Joos, Dirty JEWS!” I think it’s some paranoid soundtrack that plays on a continual loop in your mind, all the time. You see the world through antisemites-are-everywhere-and-they-all-think-I’m-a-dirty-Jew colored glasses.
Have you ever considered taking off those glasses? Maybe your headache will go away!
“that those writers were really biased…” why don’t you read what they wrote and decide for yourself? Instead of just assuming they were biased. And WHY do you do that? Why do you always make assumptions like that?
“The arrogance on this issue is stunning to experience.” Projection. You are projecting!
I sent this speech by David Foster Wallace off to someone the other day, because I thought he might get something out of it. But now as I reflect, I should give it to you as well, because I know you could get something out of it. It’s about ten pages long, but every word is worth it to read and reflect on.
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf
Liberals are as wrong on climate change and social issues as they are on everything else.
Anyone who can defend the treatment of the Palestinians by Israel since 1948,continuing and more brutal by the day,needs their moral head examined.
“Capital Hillary”
Climbing up on Capital Hill
She could see the beacon light
War was flowing, law stood still
Eagle flew out of the night
Bibi was something to observe
Came in close, she heard his voice
Standing stretching every nerve
Had to listen had no choice
She did so believe the information
(She) did so trust his imagination
Her heart going boom boom boom
“Hill” Bibi said “Grab your things,
I’ve come to take you home.”
To keep her position she resigned
Her friends would think she was a nut
Turning justice into crime
Open doors would soon be shut
So she went from day to day
Tho’ her life was in a rut
“Till she thought of what she’d say
Which connections she should cut
She wasn’t feeling part of the scenery
She walked right out of the machinery
Her heart going boom boom boom
“Hey” Bibi said “Grab your things
I’ve come to take you home.”
(Back home.)
When Hillary spins her net
She’s always where she wants to be
And liberty she pirouette
When we think that we are free
Watched by empty silhouettes
Who close their eyes but still can see
No one taught them etiquette
She will show another me
Today she don’t need a replacement
She’ll tell them what the smile on her face meant
Her heart going boom boom boom
“Hey” Bibi said “If you keep my things,
then I’ve come to take you home.”
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/petergabriel/solsburyhill.html
Saw Peter perform this in a small-ish 3000 or so seat auditorium at San Jose State University in ’81, I believe. The sound was perfect and he repeatedly sang from out in the audience with his new (then) wireless mic. Wasn’t attending school there, just lived and worked in Silicon Valley. The only concert I’ve ever seen where the audience stomped, clapped and yelled for half an hour straight for the artist to perform a “fifth” encore – and received it. My hands were swollen the next day from that clapping. Once in a lifetime, man…
Thank you for reminding me of that.
A vary rare Peter Gabriel backing vocal (no one does the low end like Peter)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q26zl7x_EFE
Johnny Warman – Screaming Jets
Greed begets corruption which leads to conflict!
Nothing up at the USA Today of websites Huffington Post about this. Arianna does not want to hurt Hillary. …
The Dem debate is tonight/Friday. Over at The Rachel Maddow Show fachisebook page you can scroll down where Rachel and team state that they are taking questions for the debate. We can be sure Rachel has all ready lined up her softball questions for Hillary. However I posted a question about the influence of Israel and the I lobby on U.S. foreign policy and on freedom of the press to discuss and report about this issue based on facts. I brought up Glenn’s piece about Ann Lewis and CAP.
Never hurts for the peasants to pile on. Hope you go over and ask Rachel to ask the candidates question about this important news
The Dem debate is tonight/Friday.
I’m glad you’re posting your question for consideration, but the next dem debate is on November 14th in Des Moines, Iowa and CBS is the sponsor, so I’m not sure how Maddow will ask her questions in that format.
Perhaps she will be hosting HRC on an upcoming show? At any rate, I certainly agree with this,
Never hurts for the peasants to pile on.
The bigger the pile the more likely we are to see concessions, however small and ineffectual they mat actually turn out to be. :-s
Mea culpa, kathleen. It’s not an official “debate” but there is some sort of candidates forum, whatever that means. Anywhoo, I hope your question makes it in.
Kazakhstan dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev and the various resource extraction interests he favors have made quite a sordid trail through the Clintons post-White house life. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
So, basically AIPAC is to America what the Communist party used to be to Russia, something that the people have no opportunity to vote against, that every politician has to be approved by, and that every media outlet knows they have to fall in line with. Rather funny how having all those guns in the population’s hands has not been able to prevent that situation from developing, when the folks trying to keep the American population from protecting itself from guns always trots out the line that those guns are the only thing standing between me American public and the situation that has developed.
This is not just about PAC and AIPAC. Read Orwell’s essay on ‘Politics & the English Language’ to get an idea of what’s really going on here in this latest Emailgate fiasco. It’s also about how Israel prioritizes national security and how that security is best achieved. This is a divisive issue within Israel and best exemplified by the difference between David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett.
What’s more troubling for Americans is that AIPAC appears to have been provided with open arms, the opportunity to both abuse and make a mockery of the US Constitution which provides for US citizens’ rights to free speech.
In this case, AIPAC are not motivated by the liberal and democratic values which the US allegedly attains to, but nevertheless, have found a willing compliant in CAP. That CAP appears dependent upon the support of AIPAC, and defers to AIPAC who are using blatant coercion here, is proof enough of private (foreign) interests not only manipulating, but policing the US…….
If Clinton is as Presidential & appropriately experienced as we’re so often told, she will ensure the appropriate checks and constraints are in place to avoid additional violations of the US system and its’ institutions by such an entity.
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCR92UGtZd8
“Tanden’s office originally indicated she was traveling today and thus was unable to respond to The Intercept’s inquiries…”
I’m so tired of politicians dodging questions by instructing their minions to tell reporters that they’re traveling and unable to respond. In this age of cell phones, Internet, texting and e-mail, this is pure s***t. It might have been plausible in the past but not now. It’s a lame ploy and the media deserve ridicule for reporting it.
This is not going to go away. Guess she is developing her talking points
Good Article. I went to ThinkProgess and searched for Israel and Palestine. I got an identical response:
Search Error
There was an unknown error with your request. Please run this search on google
They really don’t want to discuss Israel any more… punting to Google?
Don’t be mad at CAP.
Trust me on this. Most CAP people dislike israel. It’s politics.
Clinton would never get my vote. she would be stupid enough to invade iran because israel says we should.
“Mad” at CAP? I’m not mad at it. It’s craven and repugnant.
CAP more concerned about funding than facts and free speech. Well guess they fall in line with MSNBC etc…. Ouch
Today she pledged allegiance to Israel once again with not even a mention of the occupation. Hillary is a warmonger
Speaking of “crucial context,” consider this:
https://www.americanprogress.org/about/c3-our-supporters/
From Wal-Mart to the Ford Foundation to the United Arab Emirates, the group has been bought out by the antithesis of progress in the United States
This incestuous group of power-grabbers clearly has a lockhold on the important economic, political and military levers of power in our nation, leaving the rest of us out. I don’t think you can even call it a democracy any more, as there is so little accountability to the preferences and interests of most of our population. It’s mighty discouraging. The one ray of hope is fearless speakers of truth to power like those at The Intercept. Much thanks from this Evangelical Christian.
Hillary Clinton openly praised Walter Cronkite when he received a Lifetime Achievement Award as a lifelong member of the Federalist Society – a group set on creating a One World Government.
Interesting and odd, is that Walter Cronkite’s life long affiliation with the Federalist Society is not mentioned at all in his wikipedia listing?
Sadly these people cannot hide the truth from people like me, who were gifted identifying the truth, and seeing lies as plain as daylight.
Hey Victor – I think you, that’s you personally, can amend that Wikipedia entry to include that fact.
While you’re at it, maybe you can do something about the fact that the Mondoweiss Wikipedia entry, includes the fact that David Bernstein referred to it as a “hate site” on his blog. Surely the only reason that factoid is in there is because David Bernstein planted it there himself. That really pisses me off!
Glenn: Outstanding article! My first vote was for LBJ, but I will definitely sit this one out. I was going to hold my nose and vote for her, but this settles it. I told my young bride that I didn’t want to move to her family’s home in Cape Town or to her most recent residence in Dublin. At this point, either of those locations is looking better and better to me. My fucking country is going down the tubes faster than I can follow it. Charging the oil countries for war makes me think that the governor of Texas will now start billing the families of the executed for the price of the lethal injections, including the ones who were obviously innocent.
De Israel nil nisi bonum…otherwise you’re the enemy. Fuck them, and especially fuck Netanyahu.
Bernie Vs. Hillary over the years
about 25 mins, but some great scenes, specially hillary’s position on Gay marriage. It’s unbelievable, what a typical politician she is, compared to Bernie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpm4rjejFgQ
I like Bernie best so far, but I can’t share your enthusiasm. I mean, I did for a little while, I used to, and then I felt it draining out of me, slowly, like, drop by drop. Bernie is “PEP” or “Progressive except Palestine.” Really though I think everyone that gets into that office is corrupted by it and turned into something else. I see Bernie doesn’t take any AIPAC money. Is that because as a Jewish candidate he has to be especially sensitive to the charge of “dual loyalty?” I suppose Hillary doesn’t have to worry about that, as a Shabbos goy. But that doesn’t mean Sanders doesn’t have dual loyalty, just that he has to be very, very careful of expressing it publicly.
Did you see Ash Carter recently talking about how there are valuable things we get out of our relationship with Israel, wrt to (if I remember correctly) military technologies… It seems like, since the forces of reason won out on the Iran deal, everyone now is bending over to placate the losers… Why? Why?
How do you think Bernie would feel about Israel’s request for its foreign aid to be upped to $5 billion a year? He’d probably sign off on that in a flash, don’t you think?
What happened to this country? When did America turn into Israel’s Little Bitch? Our founding fathers are rolling in their graves.
I don’t mean to rain on your parade. Your optimism must be a pleasant feeling for you to experience. There’s nothing like hope to keep you going. I wish I could share it. But that probably won’t happen, at least until GG runs for president. I mean, if Ben Carson could do it, Jesus Christ.
Ok, so let me reinvigorate your support for Bernie.
1. The biggest reason you should vote for Bernie is that Debbie Wasserman Schultz (who in my opinion is a crazy zionist) is dead set against him. At some level that indicates to me that he cannot be controlled. And a man like that is better than any “regular” politician.
2. I feel that Bernie may have sympathies with Israel, a lot of people do, but he has no animus towards Palestinians. Nor is he indifferent to their plight. I believe that Hillary, like Obama, would have a politician’s indifference to Palestinians.
3. Hillary, would be a continuation of Obama’s “less taxes for the rich,” “more bailouts for the banks” policies. Nothing would change for the middle class.
4. Yes, I absolutely believe that Bernie would not up Israeli military aid. Because he doesn’t seem to have a military adventurism bone in his body.
5. The other important reason to blindly support him, is that the MSM avoids him if they can get away with it. To me, that’s good enough.
Does Bernie have issues with his views? Sure. I’ll even grant you that he’s probably biased towards Israel when it comes to Palestine. But that’s not something that cannot be remedied. Unlike Hillary, he’s not going to invite Netanyahu to the White House in his first month. The man may be ethnically Jewish, he’s basically an atheist, and to be precise a liberal democrat American politician. In my opinion, he’s more American than Hillary. Hillary is just a politician who wants to be president. Bernie is an activist for the citizens. There’s no comparison.
Give him another chance Dabs :)
The problem is that Bernie seems so resistant to talking about foreign policy at all. I know MoveOn had a petition to get him to answer the questions most of us have, but not a peep out of Bernie. During Protective Edge he thoroughly condemned Gaza and voted for more arms and money to Israel. I like him but I need to know where he stands on Israel/Palestine and not just some vague comment that he sees both sides.
Great points…
Thanks AIC, I needed that.
“Because he doesn’t seem to have a military adventurism bone in his body.”
He’s voted to fund everybody else’s adventurism every time it came ’round,
Clinton, Bush, Obama…
How is that?
He voted for Afghanistan War. Even I would have. He voted against Iraq war.
You can check out his voting record on defense here:
https://votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/27110/bernie-sanders/22/defense
I’d say his record is pretty good.
ok Bernie is not any better on some middle east issues. However the Senator voted against the 2002 Iraq war resolution, took and early stand on support for the Iran deal. Bernie is not taking Pac funds, promises to after the banks. We will not get any of that out of Hillary. She is playing with the warmongers and big money. All we have is Bernie !
Agree kathleen. And at least Bernie seems willing to discuss the (I/P) issues. HRC does not seem willing to entertain any other views other than hard right Likudnik positions.
Exactly
CAP’s motto should be, “When it comes to Israel, Censorship Always Pays”.
CAP = Corrupt Analysis Perfected.
You nailed it
Hey Glenn. This was an absolutely electric piece. It really read brilliantly. So nice work indeed. It was my favorite piece of entertainment all day.
a few points:
– Even as a pretty avid consumer of news, I had absolutely no idea that ThinkProgress was a CAP blog. That information floored me, as I was not so favorably inclined to CAP
– So they cannot discuss Israel/Palestine, Guns and Trade…. I mean…. Is everything a front??? who are we supposed to believe? How does a busy citizen with obligations and limited time know what journalists to follow and how to discriminate between information? Because this is ridiculous.
– I CANNOT believe this woman’s argument with Shakir??? How is this person the head of ThinkProgress blog, and/or a democrat/progressive?
But seriously, great, great, GREAT job on the piece.
Neera Tanden explains:
Or, more concisely:
Conservative = War
Progressive = War + Diplomacy
Haha!!
I’ve been convinced for some time now, that you sir, are related to Vizzini. Any other scenario would be inconceivable.
Thanks for this. It shows, beyond everything else, the superficial cretin that she is. Small wonder that US policy is so demented.
Hegelian dialectic?
MAN this is dumb. The Republicans invite Netanyahu, an Israeli Republican, to give a campaign speech on the eve of the election to help get him re-elected. So the Democrats… go cozy up to the same Israeli Republican. Say what???
I dunno, I’m not Israeli, I’m not Jewish, I don’t even know the country, but I can go to Wikipedia and look up “Knesset” and see there’s a Zionist Union party that wants negotiation with the Palestinians and an end to settlements. Invite this guy Isaac Herzog to give a talk – GUARANTEE no American has ever heard of him, they’ll probably be tickled pink to learn that Israel has political parties! Democrats, go find Israeli Democrats to meet with. Why do I have to TELL you this?
I follow Israeli media and I had hopes for Herzog and Livni. Lately, though, Herzog seems to have folded his tent and surrendered. He’s onboard with the BDS is anti-semitism and everyone hates us crowd. Very disappointing. I recommend following Jerusalem Post and Times of Israel. You get a good view of what Israelis realy think and believe.
Unlike Republicans (of whichever country) I don’t expect Israeli liberals to be anti-Israeli – of course the guy isn’t going to support BDS! Ideally he’ll round up some liberals in the next election and put BDS out of business for good by fixing some of the things BDS complains about.
Is there a “think tank” that isn’t corrupt?
Lord, but I do not like these women; Hillary Clinton nor Neera Tanden. There’s nothing else Glenn could write that would put me off Clinton, specifically, and the Democrats, more generally, than he has already written. To me, he’s just “preaching to the choir.” I figure I just have to wait until more genuinely democratic Democrats catch up.
That said… RE: [Tanden] said she understood that Israel was one of three issues – along with “trade and guns” – that were “off the table” for CAP… Jeeze. Someone might want to bring her up to date. In my inbox via DKos (once in a great while they have a petition I’m willing to sign):
Do I believe for even a minute that Hillary Pander Clinton is willing to take on the NRA? Uh, no. I don’t.
Doug Henwood, Please call your office.
[Tanden] said she understood that Israel was one of three issues – along with “trade and guns” – that were “off the table” for CAP…
I think the applicable portion of that statement is that bit I bolded at the tail end. CAP is defining the boundaries of their own cowardice and/or accommodationist aspirations here.
The controversy surrounding Henwood’s book’s cover has been…instructive. Once the usual suspects – Joan Walsh, Amanda Marcotte etc – spewed their automatic bile about leftist male Clinton haters it must have come as quite the surprise to find out the illustration was created by a lesbian admirer and supporter of Clinton.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2015/11/hillary_clinton_superfan_has_painting_on_cover_of_anti_hillary_book.html
I saw some of that. What did these wimmin decide after this was made known? Was the cover by some alchemy transformed via use by *Mr.* Henwood?
Natalie Wood photo was who and what the artist modeled her painting of Clinton from. I don’t think that worked out very well because Natalie Wood is a hard act to follow.
I happen to be the spitting image of Natalie Wood.
Ok, in my mind I am the spitting image of Natalie Wood. I’m dark brunette.
Bullying smaller countries and taking their oil is a wonderful progressive idea, but I’m concerned about the numerous countries without oil who would similarly like to express their appreciation to the US. What about Afghanistan, with so much to repay, but so little oil to do so?
Since most of the world’s financial transactions get processed in the United States, why not implement a global tax on those transactions, with the proceeds directed to the US treasury? The US has long served as an inspiration to the world; this scheme would allow the world to demonstrate its gratitude.
This egalitarian proposal, with all countries contributing to US coffers in proportion to their financial strength, should be embraced by progressives.
No need to worry .Afghanistan has ” rare earth ” minerals to exploit.
And don’t forget Africa and the next Global War on Terrorism theater. Africa has lots very productive farm land and many free flowing rivers that will soon to be turned over to AFRICOM to serve the Clinton Foundation, hedge funds and corporate colonialist. http://www.farmlandgrab.org/
Hillary is not a progressive. She’s a neocon in a pant suit and threatened any nation with sanctions that supports the israeli BDS movement.
I believe the Chinese are already there for the Afghan rare earth stuff… The US did not even do the exploitation right. They came in, broke the door, and left it open for the Chinese, who are… of course, evil, and communist, and red, and don’t deserve the rare earth.
The Global War on Terrorism is a big misnomer necessary to foment hatred toward the Muslim community. The proper name is The War on Diminishing Oil and precious Resources needed to fuel the informtionage and ensure that ALL Americans can afford to drive their ego driven obscene bulked up pickup trucks and SUV’s. Simple as that.
Most importantly opium=heroine= money. Afghanistan now supplies 90-95% of the world’s heroine thanks to Washington. Big players in congress, the Pentagram, CIA and elsewhere. Heroine airlifted out of U.S. Air Base in Kazakistan. Now sold on America’s streets so old Joe Leiberman can retire rich.
That is where the money is and that is what so many Americans dare not talk about: Washington’s narco adventurism.
They may not have any oil, but they have children, who could be ground up to make cattle feed. A proposition that would meed with approval in the midwest. The challenge would be to adjust the rate of consumption to a sustainable level. Ground up children are clearly not worth as much per pound as crude oil, so the program would have to be continued for quite some time. I am quite sure that Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs would be eager to make a market.
Pretty sure Afghanistan is already repaying us in heroin.
Ooh, I think this is my new favorite expression. It was from PM Netanyahu re: his new chief of “public diplomacy” (hahahahahah)–Mr. Baratz:
Think of the political possibilities.
Hillary Clinton:
Me:
Well I find that to be an “unworthy expression”.
Hillary Clinton:
Me:
Well I find that an “unworthy expression” and re: “Israel as a democratic Jewish state” not only an unworthy expression but an arguably self-contradicting one.
Hillary Clinton:
Me:
I find that an “unworthy expression”. A “Jewish state” sounds an awful lot like a theocracy to me and only marginally more ‘democratic’ than Saudi Arabia. And it is an unworthy expression for any American government official to attempt to block any American’s legitimate right to BDS Israel or any other business entity or government as a function of free speech and free association (rights guaranteed to us by the US Constitution).
Hillary Clinton:
Me:
I find that an “unworthy expression” because “your personal commitment” or anybody else’s with Israel isn’t what should guide the foreign policy of a nation of 300 + million people, a majority of whom have no relationships (personal or otherwise) with Israel or Israelis. In fact I’ll quote a worthy expression by George Washington:
This great article by Greenwald certainly gives a peek into what a Hillary presidency would look like: mindless subservience to corrupt special interests, corporate power, lies to the liberal voter base, the embracing of foreign wars and militarism of the least defensible sort.
You are correct. A Clinton presidency would be no different than the last 16 years under Bush and Obama. I would rather see a Trump white house.
Great work Glenn. Putting together the pieces of the story that need to reach the general public.
“Other emails show Tanden arguing that Libyans should be forced to turn over large portions of their oil revenues to repay the U.S. for the costs incurred in bombing Libya”
reminds me of the reported “bullet fees” imposed by certain governments and/or death squads on the families of those they just murdered. classy. it’s also funny to hear such things from the same faction that mocked trump’s “build a wall and make mexico pay for it” delusion. maybe if we just chose to Not Bomb People In The First Place we wouldn’t have to discuss imaginary cuts to medicaid (which, by the way, displays a sucking black void of knowledge in regards to government spending).
and making “people start to think that our military is just for-hire to carry out the agendas of other people”? what could EVER give anyone that idea. besides, you know, the last 70 years or so of history.
all this talk of “heretical” material that needs “auditing” would seem normal if we were in north korea or saudi arabia but seeing it here in this context suggests deep mental illness on top of the previously mentioned craven cowardice. i get the money connections with the high-ticket cluster bombs and such (“trade and guns” indeed), but it still seems odd that anyone in western countries would grovel at the feet of a “state” whose sole reason for existence is the tax revenue parasitically sucked out of those very countries every year to the tune of several billion dollars. that’s some weird “render unto caesar” shit right there.
that said, CAP is an employer. if an otherwise talented reporter/journalist chooses to work there instead of a more reputable outlet they have no real right to complain.
I’d always suspected the subversion of ThinkProgress, but had no idea just how bad it was.
Good job, Glenn.
I’m sorry to see that Glenn Greenwald can’t see through the pretense
of Netanyahu and Obama’s opposition.
The democrats and republicans both cherish Nutjobyahu –
as is made clear by the invitation.
All the storminess of their relationship is fake theatrics to
cover the fact that the “deal” against Iran is part of the continuing effort
of all of them to crush Iran into subservience of the corporate state.
Come on, Glenn, please stop repeating what you clearly show is false.
Israel and both parties of the fake US government are in cahoots to
plunder as much as they can.
You should write for The ISIS Times where everyone shares your ideas. Here thankfully most people are of the opinion that the Russians and the Chinese are the biggest threats, and unless we have an astute president like Donald Trump history will see us relegated to the same kind of irrelevance that Great Britain has been laboring under ever since Churchill took charge.
Wow!
You do have a president with the astuteness of Donald
Trump and you will again – as soon as you elect the next democrat or
republican liar in chief.
Also, the majority of people need to realize that the “biggest threats”
are the corporate owned parties who are telling people that
the Russians and the Chinese are the biggest threat.
“Other emails show Tanden arguing that Libyans should be forced to turn over large portions of their oil revenues to repay the U.S. for the costs incurred in bombing Libya, on the grounds that Americans will support future wars only if they see that the countries attacked by the U.S. pay for the invasions.”
People like Neera Tanden and Bobby Jindal are basically desi people who come here from India and generate wild and suicidal ideas in order to prove their usefulness to their foster country, much like what’s happening in some other places as well. We should bomb India and Kenya using the same logic instead of other countries that these kind of useless people suggest we do. And we should bomb the Pakis as well, free 3 for 2 deal.
Neera is from Massachusetts.
The Desi people from India usually try to hide their ancestry just like many of the Paki people who are their neighbors. Wait till Donald Trump starts asking them for their birth certificates, or failing which he will pack them off to the nearest CCA guest-house. As consolation they may even share accommodation with some Kenyan folks that Mr Trump has in mind.
Thank goodness Donald Trump will never be president.
Reason #379 I will not vote for former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton–prostration of self before an odious organization like AIPAC or a fucking troglodyte like PM Netanyahu. Here general hawkishness and sociopathy re: demise of Gaddafi and the results in Libya, her vote on Iraq, her position(s) on Syria were all enough in and of themselves for me not to vote for her. But this latest act of political fellatio on Israel and Netanyahu might have done it for me in isolation.
Just another in a long line of red-lines for me re: her unsuitability for POTUS. If not voting for her makes me the bad guy in the minds of some nominal “liberals” or “Democrats” I could care less.
I’m not looking for the perfect candidate, just one who appears to have the slightest shred of integrity and a coherent politics/policy regarding the biggest and most important issues to “liberals/progressives” i.e. militarism, corporatism, financial sector, environment, trade, I/P issue, workers rights, civil liberties, healthcare . . . And former Sec. of State Clinton doesn’t have the political history of leadership or integrity on most of those, except theoretically healthcare, and any recent flip flops I consider born of political expediency rather than true enlightenment or political evolution in thinking. IMHO. She’s a closer to a conservative neoliberal/neocon than she is a credible progressive except with respect to some narrow sets of issues re: family and women’s and children’s rights and programs and healthcare.
She’ll never get my vote and I could care less what any nominal liberal or progressive thinks about it. I could no more plug my nose and vote for her simply because she becomes the Democratic Party nominee than I could vote for a present day Republican. As far as Supreme Court goes I’ll just have to hope every “liberal” on the Court survives the next Republican administration, with exception of Ginsburg who is likely to retire, and hope that’s the only replacement necessary until a better candidate can be found to run in 2020 assuming it isn’t Sen. Sanders as nominee and ultimately POTUS.
And then I’ll squeeze my eyes real tight and hope two out of Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito retire or collectively perish in a lightning strike from God over the next four years.
Short of that I just don’t see it getting any better in America with a POTUS Clinton at the helm. She’s the worst parts of President Obama, but on steroids–sorta like a MegaThatcher.
I sure wish Sen. Elizabeth Warren, despite her imperfections, would have run. She was somebody other than Sen. Sanders I could have easily gotten on board with helping to elect.
Clinton Ain’t Cuttin’ It.
AMEN!!!! FEEL THE BERN!!!!!
“I’m not looking for the perfect candidate, just one who appears to have the slightest shred of integrity and a coherent politics/policy regarding the biggest and most important issues to “liberals/progressives” i.e. militarism, corporatism, financial sector, environment, trade, I/P issue, workers rights, civil liberties, healthcare . . . ”
WOW rrheard … dont go holding your breath waiting for someone to appear who will fit those criteria … unless your favourite colour is blue (which appears unlikely).
The ethnic-cleansing of ‘Palestine’ will begin soon after the coronation…
Shameful and shameless all at once.
It’s how Shilldog rolls!
“Other emails show Tanden arguing that Libyans should be forced to turn over large portions of their oil revenues to repay the U.S. for the costs incurred in bombing Libya, on the grounds that Americans will support future wars only if they see that the countries attacked by the U.S. pay for the invasions.”
*projectile vomits*
I mean, the whole thing is gross, including CAP’s deliberate cover-up of Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians, but that ^^^ is truly sickening. Not surprising that this horrible bitch is a fan of Hillary Clinton, who led and cheered the obliteration of Libya (a country whose only crime was that it wanted to be independent from US hegemony) and helped carry out an illegal coup that ousted the popular and democratically-elected leader of Honduras (Zelaya), where the US-backed regime (led by a fraudulently “elected” president that most of the world, including Latin America, doesn’t recognize as legitimate) now oversees murders of farmers and resisters trying to reclaim their rights and land from an extremely corrupt regime that is allowing greedy corporate interests to devastate the Honduran people (see Jesse Freeston’s latest documentary). Femicide has also skyrocketed in Honduras since that coup.
Lybia, which was known as Africa’s wealthiest democracy and was relatively peaceful with virtually no extremist violence, is now overrun by extremists, including ISIS, after the US (and Clinton) destroyed it. Here’s a great article about what Lybia was like before we bombed it (even the NYT called it a democracy where everyone has a voice when it was invited to visit Lybia back in 2009): http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/20/libya-from-africas-wealthiest-democracy-under-gaddafi-to-terrorist-haven-after-us-intervention/
And all of this is just the tip of the iceberg. My god, if people only knew exactly the mass suffering and criminality groups like CAP and people like Hillary Clinton support and are directly responsible for in the US and around the world, the political system would change in a heartbeat. But Americans are fed shit and kept in the dark. Here’s hoping for some kind of awakening…
Perversely, Democrat subjugation to Israel censorship is much more disappointing and disheartening then Republican policy . Democrat partisans are largely critical of Likud, the settlement policy, anti Palestinians racism, complete & utter disregard to the two state solution, and Israel & Zionism in general, while the Republican base actually loves Israel & demands blind loyalty to everything Zionism.
The Republican party follows their wider electorate while the Democrat party is busy disgracefully pandering to their wealthy Zionist donors.
Center for American PROGRESS?
You’ve heard of “green washing”? Say hello to Progress washing. Presenting the ideas of Rumsfield and Netanyahu as being “progressive”, must take the heavy duty spin cycle.
I feel bad for the writers who were under the illusion that Obama’s favourite think tank was interested in independent “scholarship”, found out it’s funded by the war industry, and had their articles altered, and themselves forced out.
Nice article, by the way, Greenwald. Very interesting.
Real progressives (and by that I mean people who are against things like Israeli apartheid, and war for oil) are so out in the wilderness in America.
Zionists aren’t a fifth column, Zionists aren’t a fifth column, Zionists aren’t a fifth column, Zionists aren’t a fifth column, Zionists aren’t a fifth column. Anyone who’d say so is clearly an anti-Semite
I have long stated that the reason the Democratic party is so moribund and has such a hard time with messaging is because it’s leaders are Republicans. Not by party affiliation, but by interest. They are statist insiders with no actual interest in progressivism or liberalism, but are just political opportunists who found the Democratic party the path of least resistance to power. As these documents indicate, they have no core principles whatsoever besides the accumulation and maintenance of their own personal and group influence. This might be acceptable for a political organization during normal times, but we are at the nadir of populism and democracy in America, and a backlash is growing. If CAP and organizations like it insist on business-as-usual unprincipled power-mongering, they will be blindsided by the anger of a population drained of hope and resources after decades of militarist and corporatist abuses.
America is craving a reformer to save it from this backlash, or at least channel and guide it constructively. I don’t know whether Sanders is that man, but the Beltway insider Clinton is most certainly not. And, obviously, CAP is too intensely focused on preserving its power in this moment to turn its attention to the larger national picture and advocate for the reforms America needs
If Hillary is the nominee, enough of that disgruntled vote may go to Trump to elect him.
Well that would be the Democratic Party’s fault. Not the fault of people who are sick of having to choose between two steaming piles of shit. No one’s falling for that “lesser of two evils” garbage anymore…because it doesn’t exist. The political spectrum has shifted so far to the right these last few decades that Bernie Sanders (who is slightly left of center at best) is seen as a “radical leftist” (whatever the fuck that even means), the true Republicans (the Democrats) are thought of as “liberal” and “left” while the crazy, fringe, off-the-spectrum conservatives that would be outlawed in any normal, sane country are still given a platform.
These basic truths are becoming more apparent to people, and the status quo is no longer acceptable. So if someone like Trump gets elected, you can thank the shit Democrats who’ve cynically created an illusion of difference to fool people and continue to serve the greedy, corporate interests of both Democrats and Republicans.
@ Alana
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
If I was a praying man I’d say “Amen sister” (or brother as the case may be).
Albatross, take yourself from around your neck and realise NO ONE GETS OFF THE GRAVY TRAIN. The only way for America to change is for 5-10 million people to march on Washington and dismantle the whole fucking lot, never to rebuild it in the same way again. I might even suggest you do not try to base it on the original principles of your Founding Fathers appealing as they were, simply because history has just proven it a FAILURE.
I would guess you have a few years left to do this, until the next bit of technology comes along that makes it impossible. I think this will be the nanobot technology, and suggest that mini robots that can fly up your nose and cure cancer can also flying up your nose and kill you without any evidence, making drones look like cavemen’s clubs in comparison.
indeed, we are entering the era of the killer robots. Quadcopters with poison darts. Should be very interesting.
Bernie Sanders should be our first Jewish president. He’s a Zionist — lived in a kibbutz after graduating college. But irnoically, he’s the most reasonable candidate on Israel with a shot at winning. (And he’s better as well on most other things.)
Hillary would be Netanyahu’s toady, willingly. As aggressive and non-submissive as she is, that’s one submission she embraces.
Glenn: great work.
I plan on voting for a Jew for president in 2016, just like I did in 2012: Jill Stein, the Green candidate. If you read her positions, you will find that she is not only not a Zionist, but favors a two state solution, curtailment of American arms shipments to the Middle East (including Israel), and support for Israel conditioned on good behavior, meaning no automatic Security Council vetoes.
But I guess she will be painted as an anti-Semitic Jew, which is even worse than being an anti-Semitic German. And on the other hand, Bernie Sanders has consistently supported every pro-Israel measure and resolution. He is counted as a staunch supporter of AIPAC. I am not saying that this disqualifies him to be president, just that it ought to, and that people should realize that he is not a progressive in all respects.
Oh, and on the topic of winnability: that has been an obsession of the politicians for decades now, and look what it has brought us: a long succession of nabobs, corrupt and incompetent. Democrat and republican alike, playing the same old shell game on the American electorate. And you, who keep making the same mistake over and over and over again, you have the gall to tell us few who vote for people who really would make a difference, that we are ‘wasting’ our votes, as though what you do on election day mattered. As long as you have that attitude, and are unwilling to send a message with your vote, nothing will change.
24b4Jeff
Like the cut of your political jib brother (or sister as the case may be). I voted for Dr. Stein in 2012 as well.
I voted for Dr. Stein in 2012
I did too. And will also do so again….after voting for Sanders in the primary just to fart a tiny “fuck you” in Hillary’s general direction. ;-}
If Sanders is the Democratic nominee I would likely vote for him. Not because Jill Stein isn’t better, but because I can live with him and I think he’d actually follow through on reining in the oligarchy to the extent the Executive can do that.
Excuse you? I’ve never uttered a word to that effect, and do not believe it. In my view Bernie Sanders would actually “make a difference.” He’s not ideal, to understate, on Israel. But he is very close on many other issues.
There is no such thing as a candidate who is good on everything. A big difference exists between accepting that on the one hand, and accepting whatever shit the Democrats toss out in the name of LOTE voting on the other.
I have always voted Green Party and always will. I too plan to vote for Dr. Stein in 2016. I plan to vote for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, and Jill Stein in the General.
Democrats tell me I’m wasting my vote, but I usually reply with your argument above: what have Democrats done for us lately? I tell them I’m a Green, and if they would like me to consider changing parties then they need to give me a reason to change. The Democratic platform does sound a lot different from the Republican platform (granted) but you’d never know they had such a platform if you only looked at the performance of Democrats in office. I exclude the Progressive and Black Caucuses from this criticism, they do try to enact the platform, but there are not enough Democrats to back them up. If the platform made such a difference, then most of the Democrats would belong to the PC, and this is not the case.
I think it is possible for Dr. Stein to win the election if we stop saying that she can’t win. However, we are going to have to fix the problem with rigged elections before we can send anyone with integrity to Washington. In many places our votes are probably programmed, not counted. We also need to get money out of elections. Once that happens, the GP will gain lots of ground because they are truly grassroots and we can trust them- in fact, they are us!
I also plan on voting for Stein a 2nd time. Intercept readers also might like to know she’s the only candidate I know of who has indicated she’d use her power of presidential pardon for Snowden, Manning, and Assange. I have seen this reported nowhere except the Oct. 24, 2015 newsletter I received from the Jill Stein campaign. Excerpt:
“I would welcome Edward Snowden home a
hero, and release Chelsea Manning, Jeffrey Sterling, Julian Assange and other
courageous truth tellers with praise and reparations. Their actions are essential
for preserving our imperiled democracy in the face of secretive, unaccountable
corporate government.”
–Jill Stein
And what would be different in terms of US policy toward Israel if Bernie Sanders become president? With details, please.
Sanders is a genuine leftist, of the sort disappearing in Israel itself. He’s bucked the Israel lobby over its opposition to Palestinian statehood initiatives at the U.N. Unlike Hillary, he does utter the word “Palestinians” and criticizes some Israeli use of force. If Sanders were Israeli, he couldn’t get elected dog catcher in that country. He would not fellate Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sanders is a genuine leftist,…
I can understand why you intend to vote for him and won’t argue with that choice, but I will note that there are people out there who believe that Bernie left a lot of his leftist credentials in the political dirt a long time ago:
http://blackagendareport.com/node/4604
I haven’t been able to do extensive fact-checking of that article and welcome any information that either supports or negates it factually. But I can’t quite get past what happened in 2008 and the whole LOTE machine which always ends up with people being demonstrably worse off than they were before, no matter which D or R they vote for in a given general election.
Pedinska, this pro-Bernie website would seem to contradict some of that:
HuffPo reports:
Especially that last bit about DOMA persuades me he is more likely than many to do as he promises.
Yes
It is coming up for Christmas in cash-strapped America – maybe you can bomb Lappland and get Santa to pay for it in presents. Then bomb Mexico for some spring cleaning and house repairs, Sweden for some new furniture and India for some IT work. CAP are geniuses! I think I’ll bomb my wife for some sex later, she’s vagina-rich after all.
she lost my support
I was splanning on sucking her off in a cupboard. Not any more. Or maybe I was thinking of her husband… They both stand up to pee, so I guess it could be either. Or both!
Jeez, American politics is SOOOOOO confusing. Like, is Caitlyn Jenner a man or a woman? Is John Oliver really actually popular and for fuck’s sake why? Is Donald Trump straight or gay for wanting ladyboys in Miss Universe? Is Miley Cyrus a slut or what? And how long before even one person in the US gets off their rolly lard arse and says “STOP ALL THIS NONSENSE!!!”?
I tell you, those Columbians have been putting some nasty-ass whackout juice in your crack cocaine, guys. It’s really played havoc with the old sensibilities and ruined Hollywood.
Do you even know any Americans, or are you just judging us all by the whacked out crap on American TV? The media and our politicians conspire daily to embarrass us all but they are just the narcissistic sociopaths in our midst. You have them where you live too! Maybe you don’t put them on TV, but they are there in your government – unless you live in Iceland.
The irony of the completely one sided support for Israel by the US, is it’s abject failure. Despite (possibly because of) the huge investment in armaments, Israel is now less secure than it was at the time of the Camp David accords. A previously largely compliant Palestinian population has become radicalized over the last 30+ years, because of their oppression.
There seems to be a pattern – spend up big militarily and see it all turn to custard – Iraq, Libya – and now Israel?
The more that you oppress the bigger the knock back.
John Rothery (New Zealand)
Here’s how it works. In an decent “hypothetical” democracy: politicians earn an ok salary representing the electorate; people take and active and interested role in the democratic process; judges enforce laws; big business is stopped from monopolising markets and influencing politics; militaries are held in reserve in case the unthinkable happens; and everyone strives towards a more peaceful and better future for everyone.
In reality: politicians get involved in industries that they can sign big public-sector cheques on then join the Board of Directors and pocket the cash with very little actually benefitting the society whose taxes paid for it all; people are marginalised and spied upon and criminalised by the people who are supposed to be representing them, but are forced to keep paying taxes; judges enforce laws that serve the big moneymakers and oppress the people; big business forms monopolies so large they become global economic powerhouses paying virtually no tax and completely controlling huge sectors of industry killing competition, enslaving suppliers so that the need to be subsidised with tax money and holding on to key patents so that they can milk auxilliary companies without having to bear their infrastructure costs; and militaries create a constant threat of war to justify huge military expenditure again using the population’s taxes, whilst profiting on arms sales to foreign countries; peace is a dirty word and out of the madness emerge totalitarian Hate States hellbent on benefiting a tiny percentage of the population by using drone attacks, assassinations, mass surveillance, incarceration in for-profit prisons, controlling the supply of medicines and healthcare, slander and defamation and any other hateful shit they can dream up in some paid-for-by-the-stupid-taxpayer-again Think Group.
Only a few years ago – even still now!!! – people would look at me like I was some sort of paranoid crazy hippy communist type for even suggesting any of that were true. I feel cursed to have been born intelligent but working-class. We are living in a Lovecraftian nightmare, where the more you understand, the more insane you become.
ZeusWorriesYouAren’tUpToSpeedYet
Man so far this is turning out to be a thread for people who “get it”. Craig Summers should be around directly for one of his substance free “whataboutery” screeds to derail the fun.
Actually, it’s everyone else who is insane.
Well, okay, not everyone else. That’s the mental mistake that we make — that I made. The reality is, only those people who drink the MSM Kool Aid, only those people are insane. And do we really know what proportion of the American population actually drinks that Kool Aid? And what proportion sits in front of their television set and says “What a load of bull!”? When all you got was the mainstream media — the condition that prevailed before the internet — you might well have made the mistake of thinking that everyone else watching that crap buys into it, actually drinks the Kool Aid. When you make that mistake, when you think that you are the only one who sees “the truth” — what kind of a “truth” can it be if you are the only one who sees it? — then you can easily feel insane. I know, because that was exactly how I felt. (I actually took some comfort in thinking I was insane, because, if the “truth” I saw was the real truth, then the world was a savage monstrosity. Better to be insane.) When you think and see a reality that no one else sees,… well, that’s a pretty good definition of insanity right there.
Then, in 1987, I watched an hour and a half of Chomsky on CSPAN speaking before the National Press Club. Scared the crap out of me. Stripped away my “insanity defense” security blanket. Plunged me into a deep despair. Chomsky’s reality matched mine point for point. The world was a hell hole.
But here’s the good news. It comes in two parts. First, the internet has disposed of the MSM’s “perception management” monopoly, and the truth is getting out. And second, folks like you and me were never alone in our “insanity”. Rather, it was an “Emperor’s new clothes” situation. The truth was there all along, for everyone to see, but almost everyone kept silent. Meanwhile the MSM blared its propaganda, controlling the cultural narrative with an overwhelming dominance.
From Bob Dylan’s “Jokerman”
Freedom just around the corner for you
But with truth so far off, what good will it do.
The truth is a lot closer now, and thanks to the internet we know that we are not alone (or insane), that we are legion.
Thanks my good man. I am actually insane though, I have been certified several times and spent a few years in and out of various institutions. I tried different medicines, but I do not like the dulling effects they have on my intellectual sharpness, so I moved to a sunnier country to help minimise the mania caused by winter.
Only kidding. But I do believe ignorance is bliss sometimes. And I like referring to HP Lovecraft’s work, as he WAS nuts! Some of my wife’s family are very politically powerful and most of them are involved in law or government to varying degrees. I appreciate the game politicians play at close quarter, and I believe the primary problem is not corruption, or human nature, or technology changes, or external influences, it is just giving governments too much money and too much power. American politicians and their paymasters are drunk and insane with power and loaded to the gills with money and seeing their insanity makes me feel sick and depressed – and as one is seemingly permanent, so is the other. Depression is a natural state, and only becomes medical condition when it continues for a prolonged period.
I have been writing a story about the Greek myths, that there were great divisions between the seemingly close-knit gods trying to undermine Zeus as the Anax Anakton – the King of Kings – through a load of treachery and double-dealings and sowing of dragon’s teeth, as a group set about claiming the Souls of all mortals in death. It is actually kind of close to the real stories about the rape of Persephone and other myths. It’s been fun and I have been so ill it has consumed me and kept me occupied whilst I recouperate. But now I am back to full alertness, I saw Ed Snowden’s valiant actions and realised America and its supporters have gone insane. I have watched a lot of Chomsky, but he is very old now and no one has stepped up as his successor. I most sincerely hope that Jeremy Corbyn can get his Labour Party into power in England and start dismantling this insane contraption at its centre and show to the scared leaders of other countries that the American government has lost its mind and needs bringing back to humanity, or there will be terrible war and hateful manipulation of weaker states and peoples.
I only speak on here because I do not have that much to lose, but think many are too scared to do so because they have mortgages and jobs. I have nothing but my sharp wit and my anger. And so it goes.
That’s Bob IBM Dylan.The master of war.
This helps to explain the MSM’s flagrant support for all things Hillary…
Guys, they are all the same. Do not be bamboozled by even the illusion of choice or differences in opinions; the Juggernaut rolls on regardless, fuelled by the delusions of the American electorate as it spews out its taxes and bends over for some more arse-reaming, but without any of that’s normal and consentual pleasure.
The solid foundation for relations with Israel will begin the second Hillary takes her first position in the White House. It’s regal and its going to happen.
you’re a steamer, Stanley.
no I’m a screamer steemer
I sincerely hope you like immoral, unwarranted, and unnecessary foreign wars, and corporate power, and oligarchy, and lie after lie after lie, because that is what Hillary Clinton threatens to bring with her if she becomes President.
Indeed. Her record speaks for itself. Warmonger
Look at what she has done not what she or anyone else says.