Zionism

Wiretapped congresscritters blackmailed to defend wiretapping

Madness of King George, US politics, Zionism
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In a not very surprise revelation it turns out illegally wiretapped congressscritters were blackmailed into defending the illegal wiretap programme:

Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.

In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.

Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”

[…]

And that, contrary to reports that the Harman investigation was dropped for “lack of evidence,” it was Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush’s top counsel and then attorney general, who intervened to stop the Harman probe.

Why? Because, according to three top former national security officials, Gonzales wanted Harman to be able to help defend the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about break in The New York Times and engulf the White House.

It’s a clusterfuck of corruption with members of congress lobbying on behalve of dodgy organisations to get nice jobs in return and a even more corrupt administration using this corruption to help legalise their own crimes. Surprising? Not very. The deep structures of the state — the intelligence services and permanent bureaucracies — have always used these methods.

When Is An Anti-Semite Not An Anti-Semite?

Australasia, Zionism
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Back in January during Israel’s invasion of Gaza the Israel lobby here in the Netherlands pulled out all the stops to delegitimise opposition to the invasion, with the usual accusations of anti-semitism flying through the air a bit like Hellfire missiles on Gaza. It’s interesting to see that these tactics are not unique to Dutch zionists, as this Australian article shows:

Once again, the so-called pro-Israel lobby has shown how it feels about debate on Israel.

The latest major episode is the Jeff Halper affair. The Australian Jewish News (AJN) refused to publicise the times and venues of Halper’s talks, and urged the Temple Emanuel to cancel its invitation of him. This was because Halper not only opposes house demolitions, but is “a hardline detractor of Israel”, who believes that the state “courts ‘apartheid'”.

In a sense, this is a useful demonstration of the sorts of views “supporters of Israel” think the Jewish community should be protected from. Yet, most of these major organisations do not identify as pro-Israel, but as simply Jewish. The Executive Council for Australian Jewry (ECAJ), with all of its underlying Jewish bodies, the AJN, the Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) are all presented as Jewish organisations, but they are all committed to strongly partisan positions on Israel.

This is problematic for a variety of reasons. Firstly, they claim to speak on behalf of the Jewish community, even though political opinions by a community organisation are unlikely to ever be entirely representative. Consequently, these organisations often say things that members of the Jewish community — such as myself — strongly disagree with.

Perfect for every Internet Hard Man

Israel Apartheid state, Zionism
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IDF t-shirt gloryfying violence against Palestinians

From Barbaric Document comes the height in Israeli fashion:

You’ll have a hard time choosing between the mosque being blown up, the Palestinian baby with the fun slogan NO MATTER HOW IT BEGINS, WE’LL PUT AN END TO IT, the Martin Amis DEAD BABIES tribute, the Palestinian child in the centre of a target with the message THE SMALLER THE HARDER, the pregnant woman wearing Islamic clothing and veil with a bull’s eye targeting her stomach with the caption 1 SHOT 2 KILLS, the one inciting sexually abusive behaviour towards Palestinian women, and the hilarious drawing of a weeping mother alongside her dead child with the slogan BETTER USE DUREX.

Waltzing with Bashir: sympathy for killers

Zionism
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The Angry Arab is less than impressed with this movie’s “humanity”:

I found myself scrutinizing the drawings of the enemy soldiers’ faces and asking myself: did I see one of these when I took refuge in the town of el-Qalila near Tyre in summer 1982? Did one of them stop me at their checkpoint? Did one of these participate in our morning assembly in the plaza of el-Qalila in order to isolate the “terrorists” among us, based on the suggestions of masked informants? And I found myself following the film in anger and rage as it attempted to re-write that era. […]

It is painful to watch the film for those who can distinguish landmarks and streets and gardens. What are they doing on our land? The film wants you to sympathize with soldiers of the occupation and to forget that the occupiers of Palestine walk and wander in panicked fear on the occupied land of others. It is the occupation repeated and doubled. The film wants us to accept their occupation and feel only the pain of the witness to the murder of Palestinians at the hands of gangs from the Lebanese forces who arose and flourished and grew by a decision from Israel. But this Israeli insistence on separating the army of occupation from the forces of one Israeli man in Lebanon represents an evasion of direct responsibility for the invasion.

The Other Theft

'08/12 Election, Election Skullduggery, US politics, Wingnuts, Zionism
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While the public’s attention is on taxpayer billions being stolen with one Republican hand, the democratic process is being stolen with the other…

I found this description of dirty electioneering in the comments to another TPM post re the anti-Islam agitprop DVD that’s being inserted and distributed in newspapers in key voting districts by an unknown (possibly the JDL) lobby group. They’ll try anything to confuse and obsfuscate voters out of their ballots:

The mailing was addressed to me, but using a form of my name (an extra initial) I don’t use – and am not registered under. It was two forms for absentee ballots inside. But on the reverse of the address – photos of 4 “bad guys” (Chavez, Osama, Kim Jong Il, and the president of Iran… not gonna try to spell his name). When I went to City Hall I found out that many people had received a mailing telling them to send the request for absentee ballot to the WRONG city!! Our city clerk was annoyed because this costs the city postage, telling someone they sent the form to the wrong place. Or if I had applied under the name as they addressed it to me, I would not have shown up as registered! That was my concern, as I have a hispanic last name – and was concerned I’d been targeted for that reason.

This is just one person in one voting district – how many hundreds of thousands of others are being taken in by this Republican ratfuckery – and is it enough to swing the election?