Rahm's Quitting...Due To Obama Admin's "Idealism"

If I didn't read it, I wouldn't believe it.

Washington insiders say he will quit within six to eight months in frustration at their unwillingness to "bang heads together" to get policy pushed through.

Mr Emanuel, 50, enjoys a good working relationship with Mr Obama but they are understood to have reached an understanding that differences over style mean he will serve only half the full four-year term. Friends say he is also worried about burnout and losing touch with his young family due to the pressure of one of most high profile jobs in US politics.

"I would bet he will go after the midterms," said a leading Democratic consultant in Washington. "Nobody thinks it's working but they can't get rid of him – that would look awful. He needs the right sort of job to go to but the consensus is he'll go."

A Simpsons quote seems to be appropriate here. "But why now? Why not two years ago?"

He never should have had the job to begin with. The only heads he ever banged were progressive and Congressional reps; if you were a blue dog senator, he treated you like a king. No matter how useless you were.

An official from the Bill Clinton era said that "no one will be surprised" if Mr Emanuel left after the midterm elections in November, when the Democratic party will battle to save its majorities in the house of representatives and the senate.

It is well known in Washington that arguments have developed between pragmatic Mr Emanuel, a veteran in Congress where he was known for driving through compromises, and the idealistic inner circle who followed Mr Obama to the White House.

His abrasive style has rubbed some people the wrong way, while there has been frustration among Mr Obama's closest advisers that he failed to deliver a smooth ride for the president's legislative programme that his background promised.

"It might not be his fault, but the perception is there," said the consultant, who asked not to be named. "Every vote has been tough, from health care to energy to financial reform.

"Democrats have not stood behind the president in the way Republicans did for George W Bush, and that was meant to be Rahm's job."

Yes, it was. But, clearly, Rahm didn't know how to do it. All he knew how to do was water down legislation so much that nobody would give a damn if it passed, not to ensure that people vote for quality legislation. That was the source of the "frustration"; his "pragmatism" is based on little more than a wholesale lurch to the right.

There were sharp differences over health care reform, with Mr Emanuel arguing that public hostility about cost should have forced them into producing a scaled down package. Mr Obama and advisers including David Axelrod, the chief strategist, and Valerie Jarrett, a businesswoman and mentor from Chicago, decided to push through with grander legislation anyway.

And, again, this shows just how blinkered Rahm was. The public wasn't just angry about cost, they were angry about cost and the corporate handout. The public probably would have supported a public option, even if it was pricier—though it wouldn't be—since they wouldn't have thought that their hard-earned money was going to the Dems' elite buddies in the insurance industry. Yes, you would have still had tea partiers screeching about deficits. But anybody in Rahm's position should have figured out that they were never going to pull the "D" lever in the first place. Rahm didn't, but that's why Rahm shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Hell, the guy was only there as a concession to the Clinton faction. That battle is long over, so why not jettison Emanuel? He serves no useful purpose except pissing off progressives, protecting DINOs, and taking credit for what Dean accomplished in 2006. He's a big reason why Obama's situation is "troubled" in the first place.

Good riddance.

Arab-Israeli MK Receiving Death Threats. And Curses.

It's not every day you hear about somebody getting cursed. Much less a Judaic curse.

You probably already know Hanin Zoaby. She's the Arab-Israeli woman who was on the relief flotilla that provoked—in some peoples' eyes—the Israeli attack that left at least nine people killed and left the Middle East even more unstable than it already was. For that, apparently, she is now the "most hated woman in Israel".

Accused of treason for supporting the Free-Gaza movement, forbidden by the courts to leave the country for 45 days, Ms. Zoaby was attacked, physically, when she spoke in the Knesset last week to explain her decision to join the flotilla of ships hoping to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. She said she viewed her action on behalf of 1.5 million “prisoners” in Gaza as a kind of “mitzvah,” a Hebrew term for a religious good deed. The reference only made her Jewish assailants angrier.
On Sunday, Israel proposed that a three-man internal inquiry probe its bloody attack on the flotilla two weeks ago, and that it be headed by a retired Israeli judge and two high-ranking foreign observers, including a Canadian.

Ms. Zoaby has been labelled an enemy, and a supporter of terrorists. Yet the unmarried, Western-dressed Muslim woman hails from one of Israel’s high-profile Arab families, one that has counted a high court judge, a mayor of Nazareth, a long-serving Knesset member and a deputy cabinet minister among its members.

To many in the Knesset today, Ms. Zoaby’s transgression, like that of the four other Arab Israelis who joined the flotilla, is unforgivable. A Knesset committee has recommended the removal of many of Ms. Zoaby’s parliamentary privileges, including her immunity from prosecution and her diplomatic passport. The Interior Minister, leader of Israel’s Ultra Orthodox Shas Party, has asked whether her Israeli citizenship can legally be revoked.

The government itself wants to revoke her citizenship. But you have to be a citizen of something, right? If she's an Israeli, and they take away her Israeli citizenship, then where does she go? What does she do? She becomes a citizen of nowhere: an unperson.
That may be the Government's game. An unperson has no rights, and if they can arbitrarily take away an Arab's citizenship, then they can arbitrarily strip people of their rights and do with them what they will. They can be thrown into the deepest, darkest hole, in pieces, and nobody could say boo. That would mean they never had any rights at all. A terrible mockery of everything that the Jewish state historically stands for—but it sounds about right for the Netanyahu/Lieberman government.


The Government is not alone in its attitude.

There have been death threats, hundreds of them.
In the wake of the flotilla incident, a Facebook site, called Execute Haneen Zuabi [sic], was established (and later taken down) and a group calling itself Pulsa Denura , (Aramaic for “lashes of fire”) says it has carried out elaborate death curses on several Arab Israelis, including Ahmad Tibi, a member of Knesset who wasn’t even on the flotilla.

(Pulsa Denura was the name of the group that said it had cursed Yitzhak Rabin shortly before he was assassinated, and cursed Ariel Sharon after he decided to evacuate Israeli settlements in Gaza in 2005.)

"Elaborate death curses". For people who weren't even on the flotilla. I'd ask "has it really come to this", but it came to this all the way back in 1995. It has just gotten worse.
To her credit, though, MK Zoabi is not going to ground, nor acting afraid. Her and her supporters know why this is happening.

“She did what few people would dare to do,” said Teres Zbidat, a Dutch-born woman who has lived with her husband in nearby Sakhnin for 16 years.
“Which is why Israelis hate her so much,” Ms. Zbidat said. “They see her as a success story that they allowed to happen. Then they say: ‘But you weren’t supposed to become one of them [the Palestinians].’ ”

Ms. Zoaby explains the contempt for her as a reaction to the world criticism Israel is experiencing, similar to the backlash against Arab Israelis that followed criticism in the war against Hamas in Gaza.

“I embarrassed them,” she said, referring to Israelis. “I was an easy target for their revenge.”
Would she do it again, would she go on another flotilla? In a heartbeat, she says.

“I was appalled by the Israeli behaviour” on board the ship, she said. “I didn’t expect such violence.”

(Ms. Zoaby is credited by passengers with convincing the Israeli commandos – in her good Hebrew and tenacious style – with getting long-delayed medical treatment for the wounded.) What if doing it again meant losing her citizenship? “Yes,” she said determinedly. “It would just show that what they call citizenship is really just membership in the Zionist movement. It’s not real citizenship.”

"What they call citizenship is really just membership in the Zionist movement?" No wonder they want to hush her up.  That's not one of the talking points. That's not what an MK is supposed to say. Certainly it's not what an Arab-Israeli woman is supposed to say.
I don't even necessarily agree with her. She calls Arab-Israelis "1948 Palestinians". I disagree with that. I think there is a space for Arab-Israelis to care out their own identity as something other than "Palestinians on the wrong side of the wall". But death threats, curses, and unpersonhood? That's what the other guys are doing. That's what Israel is supposed to be a bastion against, which is the stated reason why they get all that American support.

It won't work, either. Look at Ms. Zbidat's comments. She isn't going to be the only one thinking that. The more that MK Zoaby is treated like this, the greater the connection that will be built between the Arab-Israelis and Palestinians. Arab-Israelis will only become more and more alienated from the Israeli state at a time when Israel badly needs to show the world that it's about more than exclusivist ethno-nationalism.

Debt: How America's Class Differences Are Seen in Stark Contrast

In 2010, if you're a billionaire banker and you end up in debt problems, the government will bail you out.

In 2010, if you're a regular person who ends up underwater, they toss your ass in jail with all the other criminal scum until you cough up the dough.

As a sheriff's deputy dumped the contents of Joy Uhlmeyer's purse into a sealed bag, she begged to know why she had just been arrested while driving home to Richfield after an Easter visit with her elderly mother.

No one had an answer. Uhlmeyer spent a sleepless night in a frigid Anoka County holding cell, her hands tucked under her armpits for warmth. Then, handcuffed in a squad car, she was taken to downtown Minneapolis for booking. Finally, after 16 hours in limbo, jail officials fingerprinted Uhlmeyer and explained her offense -- missing a court hearing over an unpaid debt. "They have no right to do this to me," said the 57-year-old patient care advocate, her voice as soft as a whisper. "Not for a stupid credit card."

She isn't the only one.

It's not a crime to owe money, and debtors' prisons were abolished in the United States in the 19th century. But people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts. In Minnesota, which has some of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country, the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009, a Star Tribune analysis of state court data has found.
Not every warrant results in an arrest, but in Minnesota many debtors spend up to 48 hours in cells with criminals. Consumer attorneys say such arrests are increasing in many states, including Arkansas, Arizona and Washington, driven by a bad economy, high consumer debt and a growing industry that buys bad debts and employs every means available to collect.
Whether a debtor is locked up depends largely on where the person lives, because enforcement is inconsistent from state to state, and even county to county.

In Illinois and southwest Indiana, some judges jail debtors for missing court-ordered debt payments. In extreme cases, people stay in jail until they raise a minimum payment. In January, a judge sentenced a Kenney, Ill., man "to indefinite incarceration" until he came up with $300 toward a lumber yard debt...

...In Minnesota, judges have issued arrest warrants for people who owe as little as $85 -- less than half the cost of housing an inmate overnight. Debtors targeted for arrest owed a median of $3,512 in 2009, up from $2,201 five years ago.

Those jailed for debts may be the least able to pay.

"It's just one more blow for people who are already struggling," said Beverly Yang, a Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation staff attorney who has represented three Illinois debtors arrested in the past two months. "They don't like being in court. They don't have cars. And if they had money to pay these collectors, they would."

This is how it works. It isn't technically illegal to owe money and be unable to repay. It can't be, or the guys with the friends in the right places and the connections to make it go away might end up in a spot of trouble.
But if you aren't the guy with the friends, if you aren't the guy with the connections, then the collection corps will exploit the law to make sure that they get that money.  And they'll keep it quiet.

No national statistics are kept, and the practice is largely unnoticed outside legal circles. "My suspicion is the debt collection industry does not want the world to know these arrests are happening, because the practice would be widely condemned," said Robert Hobbs, deputy director of the National Consumer Law Center in Boston.

So if you're going into hock, go into hock big-time. If it's big enough, the President (Democratic or Republican) will bail you out; but if it's too small, you'll have to deal with a bail of entirely a different kind. Might as well go big.


How disgusting. How predictable.

(h/t to John Robb.)

COMING THIS FALL: THE OVERTON EFFECT!

(Edit: Stripped out all the terrible formatting that was turning quoted paragraphs black. I hate the span tag sometimes.)

Wait just a goddamn minute. Beck's latest book, the one that's apparently a paranoid "Turner Diaries" fantasy about some future America that is run by them horrible libruls...

...is actually about the Overton Effect?

Beck has been exercised for some time over a concept called the Overton Window. Under this theory, put forward by public policy expert Joseph Overton, the public is willing to consider only a few ideas or scenarios as reasonable -- those are the ones that reside within the window. Radical notions remain outside the window, unfit for serious debate. However, in some cases, powerful forces can move the window, allowing for consideration of extreme ideas. And this is why Beck picked up his pen -- to warn readers that disregard for the Constitution is becoming acceptable, is creeping into the window, and must be resisted.

So, uh, is Beck a reader or something? Because while the Overton Window is an incredibly important concept in political science, it's not exactly ominous. Hell, the greatest example of the Overton Effect at work is Beck himself, as he's taken a lot of completely crazy shit into the "mainstream" by repeating it ad nauseum and giving it a prime-time platform.

(Like, say, the whole crazed militia fantasy book genre.)

In a foreword, Beck notes that his thriller belongs in a category called " 'faction' -- completely fictional books with plots rooted in fact." He attaches an afterword of nearly 30 pages that contains citations to references in the story: information on the financial bailout, unemployment, measures to ensure government operation after a disaster and the like. He laces his plot with these facts in the same manner he employs them on his TV show, to lend credence to his fantasy of a nefarious government scheme to subvert the Constitution.

"Faction". Amazing. It's like he knows what words are, but is just unclear on what they do.

Glenn, if you are a reader, then let me help you out. What you've written is speculative fiction. Either fantasy or science fiction, depending. It's not a straight-up thriller, because those are rooted in the present-day, and despite your fantasies, America isn't on the verge of some librul takeover. That you researched things is meaningless; Isaac Asimov researched the holy hell out of his books, but I don't have a starship, do you?

Asimov isn't the appropriate comparison, though:

The suspense of "The Overton Window" comes largely from wondering when the thrills will begin. There's the obligatory prologue murder, but then the pulse of this novel flatlines. In place of thrills, we get entire chapters in which characters lecture on the rightness of their viewpoints.

Yep, he's basically rewriting Ayn Rand. Is he EVER rewriting Rand. Yes, there's maybe a pinch of Clancy and a touch of the aforementioned Turner Diaries.  He's trying to use speculative fiction to sell a viewpoint, though, and he's doing a hamfisted job of it. That's Rand through and through.

The ironic part about all this is that for all that he's railing at the Overton Window, this book is an example of trying to shift the Overton Window. He's clearly trying to change the boundaries of acceptable discourse using this book. As I said above, he's doing everything he can to turn the ideas of the paranoid right-wing fiction genre into mainstream American thought. You'd think that he would be a bit concerned at the implications of that, considering that the genre—as typified by the Turner Diaries I mentioned—has a tendency towards the unbelievably racist. The End War that these books are forever discussing is almost inevitably a RACIAL war. You might think that Beck would have an issue with that.
But, then again, Beck's the guy who was steadfast in his praise of a Nazi just a few weeks ago. He really, really loved a book that contained this:

...few years, under the opportunities of the American government and the inspiration of Christianity, the American Negroes have acquired professions, property, banks, homes, and produced a rising class of refined, home loving people. This is far more remarkable than that many Negroes are still backward. The Reds play upon the Negroes' love of their own people and represent them as persecuted in order to inflame them against the very white people who have in reality given the colored race far greater opportunities than their fellow negroes would give them in Africa today. [page 36]

...[S]peakers for the debasing and degrading Hindu, Mohammedan, Pagan, and Agnostic Cults are placed in "fellowship" and on an equal footing with speakers for Jesus Christ. The audiences chant a mixture of prayers and ritual from all of these. The savage Mohammedan call of the muezzin as heard in darkest Asia is mingled with the propaganda of the Hindu, Jew and agnostic. Negro choirs and performers give an interracial touch to the meetings. [page 152]

Perhaps he doesn't have an issue with right-wing racism at all. I'm thinking that it suits him just fine.

"Vast Minerals" in Afghanistan

Hoo boy.

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

Well, so much for Afghanistan developing any sort of agriculture or manufacturing capabilities. That whole "Saudi Arabia of minerals" line shows where things are going: a small number of (ludicrously corrupt) officials and connected family members will gain staggering amounts of wealth, while the rest of the population suffers equally staggering destitution.

In fact, it's probably worse than that. Minerals are an easily fungible resource: you can sell them to just about anybody with relative ease. You know what else is an easily fungible resource? Diamonds. You know why "blood diamonds" exist? Because if you have an easily fungible resource, people can and will fight over it. They'll fight to acquire it, and they'll exploit it to fund the fights they already have. It's already happening in Afghanistan with drugs—another easily fungible resource—and now we'll have minerals added to the mix.

But it gets even more interesting when you add Great Powers to the mix:

At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region. After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more, American officials said.

 What the American officials aren't saying is that China is far better than they at signing deals to exploit these resources. The Americans talk about how it will take "decades" to build up a mining industry in Afghanistan. That's short-sighted. If the resources really are as rich as claimed, China will simply do the same thing that they did in Africa: pour as much money and manpower as necessary to build up those capabilities now.

That is assuming the Chinese are allowed to do so in the first place.  The U.S. Government (and its various private-sector allies) will want the rights to exploit these resources. They know that China will want them too, and there are a lot of people in Washington who are very, very concerned about China and its ambitions.  This is going to lead to powerful, vicious battles over whether or not to stay in Afghanistan, and the extent to which Karzai will be allowed to behave as an independent actor.

Rest assured, if Karzai starts making noises to the P.R.C. about striking a deal, you better believe that Washington will react, considering that his government exists thanks to their blood and treasure. It may yank the chain and force Karzai to be brought to heel. Yet if he does strike a deal, Washington may also be powerless to do anything about it; they can't provoke a conflict with China over this, especially if China offers a better deal.

It might be a tougher decision for Karzai than you'd think. China will not only provide more resources with less fuss, but they aren't going to care about corruption in his government, or the structure of his society. They won't think twice about helping him brutally put down the Taliban in a way that Americans would find unacceptable, and he would know that he'd be fairly safe from American intervention as long as the Chinese were active there.

The same would be true for a Taliban government, of course, which is the rub. Washington wants his government to succeed because it is their creation. China has no loyalty to his government, nor would China care at all about its continuance beyond its own economic interests. If he failed in putting down the Taliban (or whoever else) and they took over, they would just make the same deal with the new rulers. He would find himself with no real allies at all.

Still, at the moment, the debate is academic. NATO is still in Afghanistan. NATO is likely to stay in Afghanistan for a while yet. NATO may ensure that exploitation rights are secured by their own, and that China is kept outside the gates. Even so, this just got far, far more complicated. And more than a little scary.

Mob Violence, Possible Ethnic Cleansing in Kyrgyzstan

It looks like the Kyrgyz majority in Kyrgyzstan is attacking the Uzbek minority in the runup to a constitutional referendum later this month. But what's striking about this story is that it's not really that striking at all.  Read this and see if it sounds familiar:

Kyrgyz mobs burned Uzbek villages and slaughtered their residents Sunday in the worst ethnic rioting this Central Asian nation has seen in 20 years, sending more than 75,000 Uzbeks fleeing across the border into Uzbekistan.

Most of the Uzbek refugees were elderly people, women and children, and many had gunshot wounds, the Uzbek Emergencies Ministry said in a statement carried by Russia's RIA Novosti news agency. It said refugee camps were being set up for them in several areas of Uzbekistan.
Fires set by rioters have destroyed most of Osh, the second-largest city in Kyrgyzstan, and food was scarce after widespread looting. Triumphant crowds of Kyrgyz men took control of Osh on Sunday as the few Uzbeks still left in the city of 250,000 barricaded themselves in their neighborhoods. Fires continued to rage across Osh and shots were heard but police were nowhere to be seen.

The rioting has significant political overtones. Former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was ousted in a bloody uprising in April and fled the country. Uzbeks have backed Kyrgyzstan's interim government, while many Kyrgyz in the south support the toppled president...

...In Jalal-Abad on Sunday, thousands of Kyrgyz men brandishing sticks, metals bars and hunting rifles marched together to burn Uzbek property while frightened police stayed away. Uzbeks felled trees on the city's main street, trying to block their advance. Jalal-Abad is 45 miles (70 kilometers) from Osh.

Kyrgyz mobs tried to storm the city's hospital, but Uzbeks drove them off after a fierce gunbattle that raged for hours, witnesses said. Mobs also surrounded a local prison, trying to free its inmates and attempted repeatedly to capture the Jalal-Abad police headquarters, but were repelled.

Kyrgyz mobs killed about 30 Uzbeks Sunday in the village of Suzak in the Jalal-Abad region, Talaaibek Myrzabayev, the chief military conscription officer in Bishkek, told the AP. Another Uzbek village, Dostuk, was burned by Kyrgyz assailants, but it was not known how many people were killed, he said.

Doesn't it sound like Darfur? Or Bosnia? Or Rwanda? The militias of poorly-armed men running around killing everybody from the wrong group, the politicos exploiting it to try to disrupt the democratic process, the barely-concealed process of ethnic cleansing (read: genocide), the Great Power conflict behind it all...it's the same damned thing over, and over, and over again.

Technically, Kyrgyzstan is a democracy, too; more so if the referendum gets through. Hilariously corrupt, mind you, but still a democracy. Yet here we are. Says a lot about the value of democracy to forestall conflict.

IDF Using Activist's Bank Cards? (Edit: According to Haaretz, Yes!)

 This is from PressTV, which is an Iranian source and therefore something to be taken with more than a bit of salt, but see for yourself:

A US activist, who has survived an Israeli attack on a convoy of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, says Israeli forces are looting money from her bank card.

Former US nurse and aid worker Kathy Sheetz, who was on Mavi Marmara ship, has provided Press TV with bank statements proving her bank card, taken by the Israeli forces during the attack, has since been used in Tel Aviv.

"It looks as though they tried to use it without the PIN code and could not, but they could use it in a vending machine and had multiple accesses to my card to buy beer, according to the statement," Sheetz said.

"What it means is that I witnessed the Israeli Navy going and killing people and at the end buying beer with my card," she added.

Press TV has also learned that the Freedom Flotilla activists may have been robbed of cash and equipment, worth $3.5 million, by Israeli military after their ships were attacked on May 31.

The Israeli attack on the six-ship convoy in the Mediterranean Sea killed at least 20 peace activists, including nine Turkish citizens on board the M.V. Mavi Marmara, and injured over 40 others.

There are a lot of reports of people having their stuff taken, but who uses a capturees' bank card? It's almost too bizarre to believe.

Then again, with this issue, I'm starting to think that NOTHING is too bizarre to believe. 

Edit: Another journo made the same claim in Haaretz. So it's likely true. And ridiculous.

Greenwald: "Blanche Lincoln IS the Democratic Party"

I couldn't put it better, so I'll just quote:

Ordinarily, when Party leaders support horrible incumbents in primaries, they use the "electability" excuse:  this is a conservative state, the incumbent has the best chance to win, and the progressive challenger is out-of-step with voters.  That excuse is clearly unavailable here.  As Public Policy Polling explained yesterday, Lincoln has virtually no chance of winning in November against GOP challenger John Boozman.  And while it would have also been difficult for Halter to beat Boozman, polls consistently showed that he had a better chance than Lincoln did.  That's unsurprising, given how much better non-Washington candidates are doing in this incumbent-hating climate than long-term Washington insiders.  And it's rather difficult to claim that Halter is out-of-step with Arkansas given that they elected him their Lt. Governor.  Whatever the reasons Washington Democrats had for supporting the deeply unpopular Lincoln, it had nothing whatsoever to do with electability.

What happened in this race also gives the lie to the insufferable excuse we've been hearing for the last 18 months from countless Obama defenders:  namely, if the Senate doesn't have 60 votes to pass good legislation, it's not Obama's fault because he has no leverage over these conservative Senators.  It was always obvious what an absurd joke that claim was; the very idea of The Impotent, Helpless President, presiding over a vast government and party apparatus, was laughable.  But now, in light of Arkansas, nobody should ever be willing to utter that again with a straight face.  Back when Lincoln was threatening to filibuster health care if it included a public option, the White House could obviously have said to her:  if you don't support a public option, not only will we not support your re-election bid, but we'll support a primary challenger against you.  Obama's support for Lincoln did not merely help; it was arguably decisive...

...[i]n other words, Obama exploited the trust that African-American voters place in him to tell them something that is just absurd:  that Blanche Lincoln, one of the most corporatist members of Congress, works for their interests.  Bill Clinton did the same with the Arkansas voters who still trust him.  In light of all this, the next time some "conservative" Democrat such as Lincoln plays the Villain Rotation game and opposes some Good, Progressive Bill which the White House pretends to support -- but, gosh darn it, just can't get the 60 votes for -- are we going to have to endure the excuse from Obama loyalists that Obama has no leverage over Democratic members of Congress?

What's going on here couldn't be clearer if the DNC produced neon signs explaining it.  Blanche Lincoln and her corporatist/centrist Senate-friends aren't some unfortunate outliers in the Democratic Party.  They are the Democratic Party.  The outliers are the progressives.  The reason the Obama White House did nothing when Lincoln sabotaged the public option isn't because they had no leverage to punish her if she was doing things they disliked.  It was because she was doing exactly what the White House and the Party wanted.  The same is true when she voted for Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies, serves every corporate interest around, and impedes progressive legislation.  Lincoln doesn't prevent the Democratic Party from doing and being what it wishes it could do and be.  She enables the Party to do and be exactly what it is, what it wants to be, what serves its interests most.  That's why they support her so vigorously and ensured her victory:  the Blanche Lincolns of the world are the heart, soul and face of the national Democratic Party.

That last bold is mine. There's really not much I can add to that. The foursquare support of Lincoln by the Dems' Powers-That-Be, and their continual betrayal of the progressives within their party, shows exactly how much contempt they have for progressives. I can't even credibly say "contempt for their base", since it has been made abundantly clear that progressives are NOT the base of the Democratic party.

A base is a foundation. A base is something you rely on. A base is something you understand that you need. A base is what makes the rest of the organization possible, and once you understand what a base is, you understand that the progressives aren't the Democratic base. The corps that pony up the dough and the fat post-Congressional salaries, now THEY are the Democratic base.

Clearly, the unions aren't the "base" either, as we've seen and as Glenn reminds us:

In case that wasn't clear enough, the White House -- yet again -- expressed its contempt for progressives when a cowardly "senior White House official" hid behind Politico's blanket of anonymity to mock unions for having "just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet on a pointless exercise."  That comment was far more serious than mere derision.  It was an attempt to exacerbate the tensions which unions have with their members over union spending on political races  -- a rather ironic sore for the White House to try to pick at given that without massive union spending for Obama, he would not be President.  What the White House is really angry about is that the unions did not spend that money in order to help vulnerable Blue Dogs and other conservative Democrats, whose agenda could not be more adverse to union members.  In other words, the White House wants unions and other progressive groups to be nothing more than Democratic Party apparatchiks, whereby they help Democrats get elected purely for the sake of preserving Democratic power, regardless of the policy outcomes that are achieved, and regardless of how hostile those outcomes are to progressives.  The sooner that realization is pervasive, the better.

It couldn't be clearer. Liberals and labor unions and all those lovely "progressive" organizations like ActBlue and MoveOn are not the Democratic base. They probably never will be. At best, they're classic "useful idiots", to be bought off with a few kind mentions in a meaningless speech, or a firm-yet-empty handshake at an equally meaningless Oval Office photo op. 
They will be tolerated, even exploited—yet never listened to.

Yet there is hope, and this Halter v. Lincoln business has showed us where the hope lies. Again, Glenn:

Forcing Blanche Lincoln and the Democratic Party to spend its money on a bitter, draining two-step primary fight obviously makes it much harder for her -- or any other Democratic incumbent who triggers a future primary challenge -- to win the general election.
The point here, speaking just for myself, was not to put Bill Halter in the Senate.  While I am convinced Halter would have at least been marginally better than Lincoln (he certainly couldn't have been worse), I don't know if he would have been substantially better.  Nor was the point an ideological one -- the real conflict in politics is not Left v. Right or liberal v. conservative, but rather, insider v. outsider.  Lincoln's sin isn't an ideological one, but the fact that she's a corporatist servant of the permanent factions that rule Washington.  The purpose here was to remove Lincoln from the Senate, or, failing that, at least impose a meaningful cost on her for her past behavior.  That goal was accomplished, and as a result, Democratic incumbents at least know there is a willing, formidable coalition that now exists which can and will make any primary challenge credible, expensive and potentially crippling -- even if it doesn't ultimately succeed.  That makes it just a bit more difficult for Democratic incumbents to faithfully serve corporate interests at the expense of their constituents, or at least to do so with total impunity.

Halter didn't win. But he came very close, and they do have to pay attention. Glenn is right: the pettiness of the White House's reaction shows just how much this bothers them. They want Blue Dogs propped up, for Rahm's sake as much as the party's, and labor has served notice that they are not going to blithely do what the Dems tell them to. They'll pursue their own interests, thank you kindly.

Considering that (according to Glenn), people in the government have already started calling this "the third Bush term", they shouldn't be the only ones. You should too. I said a while back that you shouldn't support Dems who wouldn't fight for a public option. I still believe it today.  Unless you have a very, very good reason to vote for a Dem, I think that you should sit down and think carefully about whether he (or she) is worth it.

You aren't their base. They don't listen to you. They won't listen to you. They'll listen to BP and Goldman Sachs and big agriculture and the Netanyahu/Lieberman government. Oh, yes, they'll move heaven and earth to help that lot.

But they don't care if you and your family go unemployed, or lose your benefits, or get sick from oil in your water. They wouldn't even notice if you died in a gutter. They just don't care. You're Little People, beneath notice.  You don't even own a law firm!

Labor fought to make sure that they realized that labor couldn't be taken for granted. You shouldn't let them take you for granted, either. Let them prove that they're worth your vote. THEN think about voting for them.

Possible Video of Activist's Execution by IDF Commando (Edit: Or Possibly Not)

(See addendum below)

There's a video linked over at Juan Cole that appears to show an IDF commando pretty much executing a flotilla activist.

I'm not sure if it is real and accurate or not; it certainly appears to be. It's difficult to see what's going on, but it shows one of the commandos kicking somebody while they're down, and then possibly firing several rounds downward, presumably at the activist.

Cole believes it genuine; if it is, then it puts the lie to the claim that the commandos were only defending themselves.  If this is what it appears to be, it wasn't defense. It was cold-blooded murder.

Edit: Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander. It looks like the IDF aren't the only ones playing edit games. Here's the full clip, from WarinContext:

There is a significant time gap that was glossed over by the edited "execution" video.  We cannot take the edited clip as given.

Still, I agree with WiC's take:

The truth behind what the video depicts will only become known if the soldiers involved face questioning and if all the existing video is made available to independent investigators. If the Israeli Defense Forces have nothing to hide, they should welcome an international inquiry.

There is enough evidence that contradicts the IDF party line to warrant a full and impartial investigation. Since there is no way that Israel's current hard-right government is going to undertake such an investigation, it must be international.

So Long, San Remo Justification: Israeli Government Sez Blockade is "Economic Warfare"

Well, well, well. Looks like we may have a better idea of why Gazans don't get margarine. From McClatchy:

Last week, after Israeli commandos killed nine volunteers on a Turkish-organized Gaza aid flotilla, Israel again said its aim was to stop the flow of terrorist arms into Gaza.

However, in response to a lawsuit by Gisha, an Israeli human rights group, the Israeli government explained the blockade as an exercise of the right of economic warfare.

"A country has the right to decide that it chooses not to engage in economic relations or to give economic assistance to the other party to the conflict, or that it wishes to operate using 'economic warfare,'" the government said.

McClatchy obtained the government's written statement from Gisha, the Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, which sued the government for information about the blockade. The Israeli high court upheld the suit, and the government delivered its statement earlier this year.

Sari Bashi, the director of Gisha, said the documents prove that Israel isn't imposing its blockade for its stated reasons, but rather as collective punishment for the Palestinian population of Gaza. Gisha focuses on Palestinian rights.

(A State Department spokesman, who wasn't authorized to speak for the record, said he hadn't seen the documents in question.)

The Israeli government took an additional step Wednesday and said the economic warfare is intended to achieve a political goal. A government spokesman, who couldn't be named as a matter of policy, told McClatchy that authorities will continue to ease the blockade but "could not lift the embargo altogether as long as Hamas remains in control" of Gaza.

I will be honest: I'm not precisely confident in all this, considering that there's no link to the Gisha piece. But it's certainly likelier than not; likely enough to be able to take as a given until other sources arise.

Assuming that this IS a smoking gun about the blockade, a whole lot of the arguments about the blockade fall apart. It's officially no longer justifiable under San Remo, for example, because it violates the proportionality and humanitarian provisions of section 2, paragraph 102, subparagraph (b): "The declaration or establishment of a blockade is prohibited if...the damage to the civilian population is, or may be expected to be, excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the blockade". It was always fairly clear that the damage is excessive; what we now see is that it was always intended to be excessive.

That doesn't just mean that the blockade is now illegitimate. It means that the blockade  always was illegitimate. According to the same manual that the IDF used to justify its operation, it was created illegitimately.

The activists were justified.

Does the Washington Post Ever Get Tired of Apologias?

While I'm on the subject of the Post, what the hell is going on over there? Now they're blaming Erdogan for the flotilla massacre.  It's unfocused—big surprise there—but apparently he's the bad guy because of his ties to IHH, and because he criticizes Israel without criticizing Iran.

Yes, they're reviving that whole "IHH are terrists!" thing, despite the U.S. being unwilling to hang that hat on their heads, and that assertion being a bit dicey no matter how you approach it. It's yet another game of "if the IDF says it, it must be true". (It's all the rage at the Post these days.)

Leaving that aside, why on earth would it be surprising that Erdogan is criticizing Israel and not Iran? I hate to be reductionist, but Iran didn't kill a whole bunch of Turks on a boat around a week and a half ago. I'm sure Iran could do such a thing, and I'm sure that Iran would do such a thing. Iran is run by violent idiots. But the important thing is that they didn't do such a thing, and Israel did. Turkey being a bit miffed at Israel sort of makes sense.

Sure, the Post already discredited itself by saying that there was no violence on any ship but the Mavi, thus implying that the IDF beating and electrocuting undoubtedly innocent activists on the other ships doesn't count. Violence is only really "violence" if it's being done against the IDF, after all. And sure, the Post will give a space to idiots like Charles Lane, who is still pretending that the real problem with American finance is FREDDIE freaking MAC.

(They publish George Will, for God's sake, and at this point that should be legal grounds for having those pie-in-the-face guys show up in your office with a batch of cream pies and a meaningful expression.)

But you'd think that the editorials would be slightly more professional and slightly more, well, journalistic. No wonder they're getting their asses kicked by random bloggers. I'm a random blogger, and this would be beneath even me.

Good Bit By Klein About Labor and Blanche Lincoln

I gave Ezra Klein a lot of hell over health care. I won't take that back: my opinion then remains my opinion now.

That said, I do think that he has the right of it on labor opposing Blanche Lincoln:

Without getting into the political wisdom of the White House taking aim at a major ally in advance of the midterm elections, it's worth actually asking whether the White House was right. Did labor really "waste" $10 million mounting a close but ultimately unsuccessful primary challenge against Lincoln?
You can argue it both ways, I think. But what's hard to argue is that the money was wasted because Bill Halter lost by 3,000 votes rather than winning by 3,000 votes. It's conventional wisdom by now that the Arkansas seat is likely to flip to the Republicans no matter who is holding the flag for the Democrats. This is a bad year for Democrats and that's a bad state for Democrats. Labor wasn't pumping money into the race because they thought it was their best opportunity to replace a senator who was cool toward labor with a friendlier legislator. They were pumping money into the race because it was their best opportunity to show other senators that relying on labor to get elected and then opposing its agenda while in office could have consequences for your career.

In that way, Arkansas represented the right race precisely because it was a tough year in a tough state and the Democrat was likely to lose: Lincoln was vulnerable to a primary challenge because the electorate was cool toward Lincoln, and the fact that Lincoln was likely to lose in the general made it unlikely that the effect of the primary would be to replace a Democrat with a Republican. 

Insofar as they wanted to prove that they could and would make an incumbent's life hell, they did it, and they did it in a low-consequences state. Going forward, when they march into someone's office and threaten a primary challenge if they don't stand with labor on this or that, the officeholder will think back to Lincoln's very-bad-year and listen. That was the point of labor's challenge. Electing Halter in Arkansas really wasn't. And so though you might believe that labor is wasting its money when it focuses on legislative politics rather than organizing, it doesn't make much sense to say they wasted their money if you're trying to get them to spend that money on other races. In order for labor political spending to make a difference, they occasionally have to do things like this to make sure no one takes them for granted.

Bolding is mine. Yes, that was the point: to show Congressional Dems that they cannot take labor for granted. The Obama administration certainly does, which is why they made that ridiculous comment. Congress now knows that they do not enjoy that same luxury.
The problem the Dems have is that they still think that the only job of progressives is to deliver seats to the Democratic party. After that, their work is done, and they should be grateful for whatever scraps get tossed their way—scraps from the feast that the Dems always lay out for their favorite corporate lobbyists.  The unions may not get EFCA, and the Dems may actively work to keep the guys who are killing EFCA in office, but at least they aren't as actively anti-union as the Republicans, right?

No, that's not good enough. It never was. Hopefully labor sticks to their guns and remembers that in the months and years ahead.

Quick Tip for Bernard Henri-Levi:

Cardamon and Cilantro aren't used to make arms, yet they're banned by the Israeli blockade. So are tubs of margarine.

So don't go on about how "the blockade concerns only arms and the material needed to manufacture them", because unless the Gazans are putting together some incredible Biscuit Bombs, that chien just won't hunt.

You'd think someone like Henri-Levi would be a bit more careful to make sure that his sentences are supportable, all things considered. Of course, since he also used the word "fascislamist" without a trace of irony, that may have been too much to hope. Even so.

Edit: Gideon Levy has a lovely response. 

Description of the Commandos' Injuries By a Doctor Who Treated Them

From Robert Mackey and Sebnem Arsu at the Times, an interview with a doctor who helped treat the captured (yet basically unharmed) Israeli flotilla commandos :

In a telephone interview conducted in Turkish, Dr. Uysal said that he had treated three Israeli commandos and argued that this proved that the passengers had no intention of killing them:

First of all it’s against logic that these soldiers would not be killed but instead be taken to the medical center if the intention of the activists was to kill them. If people on board were so eager to hurt them, why would they not just shoot them to death once they had taken their guns? Why bother carting them inside for treatment? It just doesn’t add up.

I am a doctor, and the Israeli soldiers were brought to me to check their medical situation and treat them properly. I had our dead bodies and injured people lying in front of me and I was treating the soldiers that actually killed and wounded them. None of our friends in the center approached to harm or hurt them. Our injured people were lying on the ground, but I rested the soldiers on our chairs.

Asked about the wounds the commandos suffered, the doctor said:

None of the soldiers had any fatal wounds that would cause organ loss or defects. There were scratches on their faces, but since facial skin is sensitive and very likely to bleed in any trauma, there was blood on their faces — which I cleaned carefully to see what kind of injuries they had. In the end, they happened to be only scratches.

The third soldier, however, suffered a cut in his stomach that reached his stomach membrane but not the organ itself. It was nothing fatal. As a doctor, I wouldn’t want to guess the nature of this injury but it could have been caused by either landing on a sharp pole from the helicopter or a blow from a pipe with a sharp edge. I couldn’t tell.

In either case, it was not fatal but it had to be stitched. However, since we did not ever expect such a confrontation, we had not brought any stitching equipment on board. All we had was simple medical material to dress simple wounds, or drops to ease burning in case tear gas was used. If I had stitching material with me, although I am an eye doctor, I would have treated the boy properly in accordance with my general medical knowledge. I couldn’t.

Dr. Uysal said the commandos “were very startled and very scared.” He added:

With my broken English I tried to tell them that I was a doctor and there was no need to be afraid and that nobody was going to hurt them. They relaxed after a while and watched us running around, jumping from one patient to another in tears, faced with our friends bathed in blood. I also asked our assistants to keep an eye on them so that they would not be threatened.

We could have as well left them to their fate, but this is not the humanity that we act with. We asked photographers not to film in the medical center and I have no idea how and when that picture was taken but God never leaves good deeds unheard. That picture shows the difference between the Israelis and us.

Asked if he could tell how long after sound grenades were thrown at the ship, at the start of the raid, that the gunshots were fired, Dr. Uysal said: “I was in the lower deck, but could hear all the explosions and gunfire. There was no way I can differentiate the gunshots or other sounds — I am only a doctor, after all.”

And what happened to the doctors and other passengers in return?

After the Israeli military took control of the ship, the doctor said that he was treated no differently from the other passengers:

They handcuffed all of us with plastic bands so tightly that they could easily cause irreversible damage to our shoulder tissues. They made us kneel on our knees with hands handcuffed as the helicopters caused sea water to splash on us for three hours. I was shouting that I was a doctor and that my shoulder hurt in a very serious way. They pretended not to hear me. I wanted to go to the toilet; they didn’t let me. After I kept yelling about my shoulder they let my hands loose but not those of my friends.

This fits the other accounts of how the prisoners were treated.

Don't buy into the propaganda. The "murderous" flotilla passengers made a point of calming the commandos and treating the wounds they inflicted in self defense—despite having already been shot at by the helicopters. In return, they were forced to piss themselves.

Sums it up pretty well, doesn't it?

"We'll Find Out Where You Live!" vs. "No to Fascism!"

Overheard at a pro-Israeli counter-protest:

Admittedly, that was just one guy yelling that scary crap, though nobody called him out on it.

He was not, however, the only one calling the Jewish protesters "kapos". The word "kapo" refers to death camp collaborators.

Lovely.

(Credit to Max Blumenthal, by the way.)

Edit: Meanwhile, here are some other Israelis whom, I'm sure, these guys would call "kapos" as well, who are continuing to rally despite right-wingers throwing a smoke grenade at them:



The speaker stopped his speech when the smoke bomb was thrown to start singing "no to fascism" along with the crowd, who appeared unperturbed by the fact that they were ringed by right-wing football hooligans.

Good for 'em.

Illegal American Experimentation on Prisoners

Digby on a report from Physicians for Human Rights:

2010:

In the most comprehensive investigation to date of health professionals’ involvement in the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation program (EIP), Physicians For Human Rights has uncovered evidence that indicates the Bush administration apparently conducted illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody. The apparent experimentation and research appear to have been performed to provide legal cover for torture, as well as to help justify and shape future procedures and policies governing the use of the “enhanced” interrogation techniques. The PHR report, Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program, is the first to provide evidence that CIA medical personnel engaged in the crime of illegal experimentation after 9/11, in addition to the previously disclosed crime of torture.

To those of us who have been following the torture story from the beginning it has long been obvious that there were those in the government who used the "enhanced interrogation" regime as an opportunity to experiment. We had evidence that they were documenting the efficacy of various techniques from the OLC memos. But this was more systematic than previously suspected.

Some of the sick details are here:

The PHR report indicates that there is evidence that health professionals engaged in research on detainees that violates the Geneva Conventions, The Common Rule, the Nuremberg Code and other international and domestic prohibitions against illegal human subject research and experimentation. Declassified government documents indicate that:

• Research and medical experimentation on detainees was used to measure the effects of large- volume waterboarding and adjust the procedure according to the results. After medical monitoring and advice, the CIA experimentally added saline, in an attempt to prevent putting detainees in a coma or killing them through over-ingestion of large amounts of plain water. The report observes: “‘Waterboarding 2.0’ was the product of the CIA’s developing and field-testing an intentionally harmful practice, using systematic medical monitoring and the application of subsequent generalizable knowledge.”

• Health professionals monitored sleep deprivation on more than a dozen detainees in 48-, 96- and 180-hour increments. This research was apparently used to monitor and assess the effects of varying levels of sleep deprivation to support legal definitions of torture and to plan future sleep deprivation techniques.

• Health professionals appear to have analyzed data, based on their observations of 25 detainees who were subjected to individual and combined applications of “enhanced” interrogation techniques, to determine whether one type of application over another would increase the subject’s “susceptibility to severe pain.” The alleged research appears to have been undertaken only to assess the legality of the “enhanced” interrogation tactics and to guide future application of the techniques.

Of course they used detainees as guinea pigs and of course they documented it. The question is, are they still doing it?

PHR’s report, Experiments in Torture, is relevant to present-day national security interrogations, as well as Bush-era detainee treatment policies. As recently as February, 2010, President Obama’s then director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, disclosed that the US had established an elite interrogation unit that will conduct “scientific research” to improve the questioning of suspected terrorists. Admiral Blair declined to provide important details about this effort.

That doesn't sound good, does it?

No, it doesn't. It's terrible. It's unsurprising, but it's terrible. For all that I've been focusing on Israeli security and political issues lately, the fact remains that the United States really did go completely off the rails after 9/11, and the U.S. government has been responsible for reprehensible acts in the name of the "War on Terror".
(Which was won, by the by, by deciding not to use that phrase anymore. Which suggests it never really existed in the first place.)

The problem in Israel and America is fairly similar, though. It's about a lack of empathy. The Israelis have problems empathizing with their Palestinian counterparts as sentient, individual human beings. It's the same with many Americans attitudes the "terrists" with different countries of origin and cultural backgrounds to their own. And, critically, it's the same with the people that caused 9/11 in the first place. It's an issue with thinking of "America" or "Israel" or "the Jews" or "the Muslims" or anybody else...

...(China, anybody?)...

...as some amorphous entity filled with nameless, lifeless, inhuman "cells", not a collection of thinking individuals.

It's that attitude that blew up the World Trade Center.

It's that attitude that caused all the events that preceded that attack.

It's that attitude that is losing Iraq and Afghanistan.

And it's that attitude that allowed Americans to build their own little Unit 731.

Australian Shot in Raid Nearly Bleeds Out

From ABC in Australia:

The Australian shot during last week's raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla says Israeli soldiers left him to bleed on the deck after a bullet hit an artery in his leg.

Ahmed Luqman was shot twice during the raid and lost so much blood he nearly died. His condition meant he was one of the last activists deported from Israel.

He is now in an Istanbul hospital, from where he gave an interview to the ABC.

Mr Luqman said he was on the back deck of the flotilla flagship the Mavi Marmara, running to get inside, when he saw a laser sight settle on his leg.

Then he was down.

"I obviously knew that I'd been shot when I could see a bullet on the floor and a puddle of blood," he said.

"Blood just pissing out of my leg, from two holes. You put two and two together, and it looks like you've been shot."

The first bullet tore through his leg, partially severing his femoral artery. Another shot hit near his knee

The article goes on:

Mr Luqman says Israeli soldiers refused him any sort of medical attention.
"They made me walk, without a stretcher, and climb all the stairs on my own without any assistance, and I passed out like three or four times just getting up the stairs on my own," he said.

Mr Luqman's wife Jerry was with him. The nursing student helped keep him alive as his blood drained out.

Later, as other activists were deported, she chose to remain in detention in Israel to stay with her husband. She says the harsh treatment did not end on the ship.

"Their treatment of us was just completely unacceptable. I've never met anyone whose heart has become so hard and so black in my life," she said.

This while the "terrorists" were treating the commandos' injuries.
Meanwhile, Helen Thomas was pretty unceremoniously kicked out of the journalistic profession for saying that the Israelis "should get out of Palestine go back to Poland". Yes, that statement is unacceptable. Yet so is what happened to this man—and the American media isn't even covering it.

Account From Activist Kenneth Nichols O'Keefe

Here's the video:

The two key take-aways here are that:

1) They had complete control over the commandos, and did not harm them. As we see from the IHH pictures, they actually treated their wounds; and

2) they had taken away some of the commandos' weapons, but did not necessarily fire back; O'Keefe took two weapons and simply removed the (live) ammunition before discarding the weapons and ammo.  This fits other accounts stating that the activists did wrest the weapons away from the commandos, but did not use those weapons against the commandos.

(Oh, and taking all his stuff? Classy. Real classy.)

Go The Hell Away, Ahmadinejad

Iran really, really shouldn't have offered to help with the flotillas. You aren't going to help. At all. In fact, by merely making the offer, you are providing the blockade's apologists with more ammo than they could have possibly dreamed of.

Then again, considering Iran, maybe that was the entire idea. Their regime isn't exactly popular right now, so picking a fight with the Israelis may be the entire point. Sure, it won't be good for the region or the Gazans, but since when has Ahmadinejad and his crew cared about anybody but themselves?

Pictures of "Radicals" Treating IDF Soldiers

So apparently some pictures got out of what happened on the Mavi. They show the busted-up IDF soldiers, but more importantly, they show the activists treating their injuries.  That's something to remember when you heard the IDF's apologists ranting about "kidnapping" or "capturing" or whatever of the commandos. They weren't taken hostage, they were being treated.

(Not that that will deter those who just want to paint these people as Savage Mohammedans, but it's definitely something to consider.)

"Death to the Arabs" Followup

Apparently this isn't a one-off thing. From Professor Neve Gordon, about the pro-government demonstration at Ben-Gurion University:

A group of opposition students from Ben-Gurion University prepared a big banner on the street near their off-campus apartment: ‘15 Dead. The Israeli government, as usual, has its reasons, and the Zionist majority, as usual, extends its support.’ Their neighbours spat on them and called them ‘cunts’, ‘whores’ and ‘traitors who love Arabs’ until the students fled...
...At one point a Jewish provocateur, who is not a member of any group (and could even be a police agent), raised his hand in the air: ‘Heil Lieberman!’ The response of the pro-government students was immediate: ‘Death to the Arabs!’ Luckily the university security managed to create a wedge between the protesters, and in this way prevented the incident from becoming even more violent.

These people obviously do not speak for all Jews or all Israelis; these "counter-demonstrations", however, were much larger than the demonstrations over the flotilla massacre. Students don't tend to be hard-core right-wingers either.
Either way, the quotations above are incredibly disturbing. "Cunts"? "Whores? "Traitors who love Arabs?" And they spat on them?

This whole "traitor" thing seems to be more and more of an issue, too:

A Palestinian student with a Palestinian flag was shoved and had his flag torn from him by some of the pro-government protesters, who were chanting: ‘No citizenship without loyalty!’ In response, the Jewish and Palestinian oppositionists shouted: ‘No, no, it will not come, fascism will not come!’ and ‘Peace is not achieved on the bodies of those killed!’...
...[p]ro-government students interviewed in the press said they were ’shocked to see faculty members, together with students from the left and Arab students shouting slogans against Israel’. Their classmates posted pictures of the protests on Facebook, asking likeminded students to ‘identify their classroom “friends”’.

Anybody else find this incredibly disturbing? "No citizenship without loyalty"? To what, Israel? Or is it to Likud/Beiteinu?  And Are they seriously assuming a minority's disloyalty? Without any irony?
It's not that surprising, mind you. The same thing happens in America all the time, but isn't Israel supposed to be different, all things considered? Hell, forget America, this sounds like something you'd get in CHINA, with its recent headlong rush towards hardcore nationalism. And just like in China, you're encouraged to turn in "dissidents".

Including the professor who wrote the blog entry:

A Facebook group was created to call for my resignation: by the end of the day more than 1000 people had joined. As well as hoping that I die and demanding that my family be stripped of our citizenship and exiled from Israel, members of this Facebook group offer more pragmatic suggestions, such as the need to concentrate efforts on getting rid of teaching assistants who are critical of the government, since it is more difficult to have me – as a tenured professor – fired.

What is troubling about these pro-government students is not that they are pro-government, but the way they attack anyone who thinks differently from them, along with their total lack of self-criticism or restraint. If this is how students at Israel’s best universities respond, what can we expect from the rest of the population?

Good question. Again, this is somewhat reminiscent of Daniel Pipes' campaign to remove "anti-semitic'  professors from American schools, with the added complication, of course, of Gordon being Jewish and thus reasonably immune to the charge. (Barring that "self-hating" stuff.)  Again, though, you would think that the Israelis would be a bit more accepting of controversy, considering their umpteen-thousand-year traditions of discussion and debate. Times change, I suppose. 

It speaks to why the IDF keeps on pushing these feeble arguments. (Of late they're admitting that they fired "warning shots" before hitting the deck, without realizing that that is an implicit admission that they fired first.) The point of the arguments is not to win the debate. The point of the arguments is to provide cover, so that voices of dissent from both within and without can be browbeaten into silence. Not surprising. But definitely disturbing, and a little sad. Israel was supposed to be better than this.

Lies, Damned Lies, and the ACLJ

You know, if you want to defend the legality of an action, you should probably not make your argument so ridiculous that it hurts your credibility.

Yet here we are.

Never mind the whole "it's not collective punishment" bit; I wouldn't expect a lawyer to be able to explain how cardamon and margarine are used in the production of bunkers, but whatever. How on EARTH can he pretend that the Gazans isn't an occupied, subject people when Israel has completely military control over the territory?

Gaza is not sovereign, not even close, and if it isn't sovereign then by definition it is occupied. And, yes, sovereignty matters; the United States is not permitted under international law to do whatever it feels like on sovereign territory to chase Al Qaeda; it either works with the sovereign states that actually control the territory (like Pakistan or Afghanistan) or goes into conflict with the sovereign states because they're helping Al Qaeda.  Either way, it all comes down to who controls the territory: and in the case of Gaza, Israel does.

I was also really amused by the selective quotation of San Remo. If he knew about San Remo, and was drawing on San Remo (which may not even apply: that's a state-to-state conflict doctrine), San Remo makes it perfectly clear that you can't blockade goods in a way that causes disproportionate harm to the military benefits. Anybody and everybody can see that the harm is disproportionate. Under the law that he cited himself, the blockade is illegal.

"Kill All Arabs! Kill All Arabs!"

This is a bit of video I wish I hadn't seen. It's from the port of Ashdod. The title quote is a direct one.
In addition to the "Kill all Arabs" bit, we also get to see one of the pro-IDF protesters harass a young, scared Arabic-looking woman, and another attempt to assault an Arabic-looking man.

Other choice quotes:
"You know what the Israeli Army is guilty of? It's not whipping off the whole ship and killing everyone".

"Next time it will be you", aimed at the girl. She was later told that she was a "cockroach" and to "go find a man to fuck".

My favorite, of course, "Death to the leftists! Death to the leftists!"

As I said in response to the Sully piece, this isn't new, or surprising, or rare. It's tribal identification: "us" vs. "them". Sooner or later "they" stop being people. They become "cockroaches".

Which, by the by, is the slander the Hutu inciters were using to egg on the slaughter of Tutsi during the Rwandan genocide.

No, it's not new, or novel, or surprising. But damned if it isn't depressing.

Sully on the "Israel Derangement Syndrome"

I'd missed this piece about how Israel is thought of in the United States, but it's also worth linking to and quoting. First, he gets into the religious right:

for much of the Republican right, Israel simply isn't a foreign country at all. For many Christianists, it is part of a civilizational war of Judeo-Christianity (an obvious oxymoron) against Islam. Not Islamism, Islam. Ever wonder why Sarah Palin, the next GOP nominee, wore a twinned Israeli-American flag lapel for an address to the Tea Party convention? Ever wonder why every rule we normally apply to foreign countries is automatically suspended when it comes to Israel?

This is undeniably true. If anything, it's understated: I suspect that the most important book for American foreign policy these days is not anything Morgenthau wrote, but Left Behind. Millennialism has more impact than we give it credit for.

But then he gets into the sensitive issue of Jewish Americans and their relationship with Israel:

The other dimension is the deep and understandable commitment of many American Jews, particularly of the older generation, to Israel, right or wrong. You listen to Anthony Weiner, for example, a left-liberal Democratic firebrand on almost every issue, suddenly becoming an uber-neoconservative in foreign policy in one area, and one area alone: Israel. The idea of a Jewish congressman actually taking Israel's policies on is close to absurd. Name one. This is not a conspiracy. It is a mindset.

I grabbed some food the other night with a longtime Jewish friend. We had an honest conversation - the kind you cannot have on US television. He's a big liberal but strongly sided with Israel in this latest incident. Why? "They're my people." But you're an American, I countered, you're not an Israeli, let alone a supporter of Netanyahu. None of that mattered to him. His attachment to Israel was indistinguishable from his attachment to America, and, if push came to shove, Israel came first, right or wrong. This had been dinned into him since childhood. His iPhone was deluged with texts from relatives and friends all appalled by any criticism of the commando attack, and immediately seeing it as anti-Semitic or designed to end the state of Israel for ever.

To charge dual loyalty is described as a blood libel, a vile anti-Semitic charge, and it often is. But my friend was very frank about it and unapologetic. That's just the way it is, he said.

This is a disturbing topic for me. I have no tolerance for this idea that "the jews did x", or "the jews feel y". Even in this time where Israeli public opinion is slamming rightward, there are still a LOT of Israelis who not only despise the IDF's actions aboard the flotilla, but are protesting against it.  And as Peter Beinart pointed out, claiming ubiquity of opinion among American Jews these days is even more wrongheaded, since a division is growing between younger liberal Jewish-Americans who have had enough of this tribalist cant, and their older counterparts who, in Beinart's opinion, "check their liberalism at Zionism’s door." (And the conservatives who only cheer Israel on.)

Yet I do think that Sullivan has a point. Culture does not impose ubiquity and does not justify stereotyping or collective punishment, but it can have an effect. 

Sullivan goes on to discuss the Shoah and its effects; I'll pick up afterwards.

But the fanaticism and emotionalism that many Jewish Americans have with respect to Israel is so intense that, for some, it overwhelms rationality, and makes a cool strategic analysis of America's national interest close to impossible. Their total identification with Israel is often emotionally as strong, if not stronger, as their identification with America.

And this tragically means that an honest disagreement with Israel's policies is sometimes taken as a breach of friendship, a profound personal betrayal, rather than a moral and political judgment about the actions of a foreign country. It means that the head of the Mossad can be more rational in his assessment of US national interest than Joe Biden. You reach a brick wall in this. And we might as well admit it.

It has pained me enormously to have obviously hurt my countless Jewish friends and colleagues because I cannot support, morally or strategically, the actions of Israel these past two years, and especially its virulent disdain for the new American president who represented, it seems to me, the best chance for Israel in decades. I realize that the difference is that while I admire and support Israel, I do not identify with it. For me, it is a foreign country and an ally. To them it is something far more profound and indelible. So when I attack Israel's policies, it feels as if I am attacking them. I really am not. But I cannot erase how they feel; and I understand why they feel it.

A lot of this is about identification. The people and places and things you identify with have a profound impact on what sorts of arguments you are going to find acceptable.  I don't necessarily agree that "their identification with Israel is stronger than their identification with America"; I think many of Israel's American advocates see no difference whatsoever. Israel and America are two sides of the same coin; two "shining cities on the hill" in a world of darkness.  They aren't just allies, but friends and brothers.  To benefit Israel IS to benefit America, and the rest of the world can go hang. (As we've seen here.)

That's how any conflicts or "libels" can be resolved: you don't have "divided" loyalties. You have one loyalty: to "Israel-America."

(This is, by the way, not to say that Israel dictates American foreign policy or domestic policy or any of that nonsense.  It's just about identification.)

Sully goes on again, discussing his own situation:

Tribalism, of course, is universal. It is by no means the exclusive property of Jewish Americans. Irish-Americans retain a similar knee-jerk alliance with entities that plenty of people in Ireland find repugnant - just as Israelis are far more candid in their debates than Americans are. Trust me, in my own family, I know the nature of this kind of identification and the righteousness of it in many instances.

People these days tend to forget the "Troubles", and what it meant to Irish-Americans. A lot of the accusations that are levelled at Jewish-Americans today about "divided loyalties" and an over-focus on what was going on in the Home Country were far more accurate when it came to Irish-Americans. Without Irish-American fundraising, for example, the various armed groups and militias (and, yes, terrorist orgs) that fought in Northern Ireland would have closed up shop long, long before that conflict ended.  People were openly supportive of the IRA and its various militant offshoots—and let us not forget, that was a religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants.
That's something that a lot of Jewish-Americans who lose their minds at the accusation of over-identification with Israel seem to forget. While the Holocaust was a unique evil, and the plight of the Jews during their years without a homeland was tragic, this sense of nationalist identification isn't unique at all. It happens with Turks and Irishmen, Indians and Chinese, Serbs and Lebanese, Greeks and Colombians, Cubans and Bosnians. It happens with EVERYBODY. 

It's not special. It's common. Boringly, dully common.

Go read the whole piece. It's excellent, even if I disagree with a lot of it. There's an excerpt from Glenn Greenwald, for example, that I didn't cover but is worth checking out. I still have no idea what's happened to Sully, but I won't complain.

Sully on Krauthammer's "Derangement Syndrome"

So what the hell HAPPENED to Andrew Sullivan, anyway? I still don't get how the arch-Bush-apologist go to this point.

Anyway:

To read Charles Krauthammer today is to enter a twilight zone of an alternate reality. A country permanently occupying and colonizing a neighboring region, and treating its original inhabitants as dangerous interlopers, is the victim. An elite commando unit attacking a ship carrying toys and wheelchairs in the hours before dawn are those we should feel pity for. A country with 150 nuclear warheads and the strongest military in its region, the victor in every conventional war it has always fought, is somehow also always fighting for its very existence. A country backed by the sole superpower, supplied with aid by huge majorities in the US Congress, is facing extinction. Self-defense requires not civilly disabling and inspecting the cargo of an unarmed ship but raiding it at dawn and killing nine and injuring dozens. Basic human revulsion at a military that can kill over a thousand people - including scores of women and children in a trapped, impoverished enclave - can only be a function of anti-Semitism. A territory that is being systematically populated with Israelis in illegal settlements in contravention of the Geneva Conventions is merely a "buffer zone". You need to colonize buffer zones?

Invasion and occupation of neighboring countries is "forward defense". And asking that a two-state solution be moved forward by freezing illegal settlement construction and allowing a blockade that, while interdicting arms, doesn't seek to kill civilians and restrict the import of basic necessities is to deprive a country with 150 nuclear warheads of any legitimate form of self-defense.

This is a form of derangement, or of such a passionate commitment to a foreign country that any and all normal moral rules or even basic fairness are jettisoned. And you will notice one thing as well: no regret whatsoever for the loss of human life, just as the hideous murder of so many civilians in the Gaza war had to be the responsibility of the victims, not the attackers. There is no sense of the human here; just the tribe.

Something has been wrong here for a very long time, and now it is inescapable. Until the discourse is rescued from the victims of Israel Derangement Syndrome, Israel and America will slowly be drawn into wars they cannot ultimately win, lose every other ally they ever had, and embolden and fortify the very Islamist forces we are seeking to defuse and defeat.

Nothing to argue with here. Krauthammer's piece really is insane: the sort of "forward defense" he advocates is reminiscent of Stalin crushing Eastern Europe to keep his "buffer" against the West, and his version of "active defense" is near-Orwellian in its avoidance of anything like the words "attack" or "aggression"...despite the fact that it would just as easily justify a carpet-bombing campaign.

And then, naturally, he calls everybody who disagrees with him or criticizes Israel Nazis, who are absolutely panting for another Holocaust. Which is utterly offensive to both the Holocaust's survivors and everybody else. Nothing new there: it's Krauthammer.

Honestly. Krauthammer has been a nutball since the Cold War, but this is really beyond the pale.

That Audio Track That the IDF Released? Fake. (Edit: Longer Version Released. Still Fake.)

You may have heard it. (I won't link to it.) It was pretty transparently bullshit; the American accent at the end alone sounds like something a Brit would do when making fun of American accents. And no American ever says "We're helping the Arabs, don't forget 9/11." People on the American RIGHT are constantly invoking 9/11, so what the hell is THAT doing there?

(And, for that matter, why would he say "arabs"? There's no way flotilla activists would say that instead of "Palestinians". Pro-palestinian activists get really annoyed when you call Palestinians just another set of arabs.

But, anyway, now we have what appears to be confirmation.

Tel Aviv - Ma'an - The Israeli army released video footage Monday of the navy radioing the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara prior to the raid that took place in international waters and left at least nine activists dead.

But on Friday, it released a new version of the same footage — one that it says proves its claims that many aboard were religious extremists — but that some say has been very obviously tampered with.

In the first video released in the immediate aftermath of the violent raid, a soldier says, "Mavi Marmara, you are approaching an area of hostility which is under a naval blockade." There is no recorded response.

The soldier continues, "The Gaza area, coastal region, and Gaza harbor are closed to all maritime traffic." Again, no response.

The soldier radios once more, saying, "The Israeli government supports delivery of humanitarian supplies to the civilian population in the Gaza Strip and invites you to enter the Ashdod port …"

But an updated version, released five days later, includes three alleged responses from passengers who, according to the video, were supposedly on board the Mavi Marmara. This new clip shows only a still of the soldier who appears in the first footage.

The soldier, who is not named, does not address the Mavi Marmara as he did in the video released Monday. Instead, he says, "This is the Israeli navy; you are approaching an area which is under a naval blockade."

A man with an odd, indistinct accent responds, "Shut up. Go back to Aushwitz."

Then the voice of a woman follows. She states, "We have permission from the Gaza Port Authority to enter."

The third response, which seems entirely disconnected from the events, comes from a man with a heavy Southern accent. "We're helping Arabs go against the US. Don't forget 9/11 guys."

Ali Abuminah, founder of the website Electronic Intifada, reported on his blog that the woman's voice is that of Huwaida Arraf.

Arraf, a Palestinian-American who chairs the Free Gaza Movement, confirmed that it was her voice. But she emphasized that she was on the Challenger 1 boat, not the Mavi Marmara.

"I was by the radio the whole time there was any communication," Arraf told Ma'an. "Mine was the only boat in which I answered and not the captain and they all answered in a very professional manner."

Arraf told Ma'an that while she might have spoken of having permission from the Gaza Port Authority on a previous attempt to break the blockade, she is certain that she did not say it on Monday morning.

"When they radioed us, we were still 100 miles away," she said. "There's no doubt that this whole thing they put out is fabricated."

One HUNDRED miles away. And on a different day.

Now, let's remember this little incident the next time somebody cites the IDF's pre-packaged propaganda as proof of ANYTHING involving this incident.

Anyway, here's Ali Abunimah on the subject, and here's Max Blumenthal on what it means when the press "releases doctored audio as fact".

Edit: The IDF released a "clarification": that the audio was over an "open channel", so Arraf might have spoken. That might have helped resolve it; but considering she didn't say that on Monday morning, it doesn't really help much.

They posted a longer version of the clip that is supposedly "unedited". Seemed convincing at first, but unfortunately, it's not enough. All three clips (the Arraf clip, the "auschwitz" clip, and the "9/11" clip) are led and followed by completely dead air. It would be trivial to edit it in. The Arraf one, as we know, wasn't even from Monday, so it must have been edited in.

In fact, I'd say that if you just listen to them, they don't seem right. All three are far too loud, for one thing. The other comments are muted and indistinct. You can barely hear them. But these three are as loud and clear as if they were in the next room. The "9/11" one doesn't even sound like it's coming in over a radio; it sounds like it was recorded in a studio. They're louder and clearer than the Israeli speaker himself!

Listen to the languages, as well. Notice something? The only English spoken in that entire clip that I noticed, aside from the IDF guy, is spoken in those three clips. ALL of the rest of them were, I believe, in Arabic. (Possibly Turkish.) And yet, magically, there are these three English clips and ONLY these three English clips. (edit: okay, there was one other english clip. See below.)

Two had perfect audio, perfectly offensive comments, perfect english, and perfectly terrible accents. Another, apparently, traveled through time.

No, sorry, I don't believe it. Not after the IDF went to such immense trouble to steal activist reporters' footage and selectively use it for their own ends. Not after that BS about Al Qaeda ties. Not without independent confirmation that anybody would have said something as bizarre as "we're helping the arabs, remember 9/11" or "shut up, go back to Auschwitz" in such bizarre parodies of American and Arabic accents.

Sorry. Don't buy it.

Edit:  Apparently there was another English speaker on that recording. But, uh, there appears to be a problem...

In the new audio released on Saturday, a man's voice comes over the radio at 1:56 saying "Yeah go ahead, navy." Oddly, the same voice reappears at 2:24 saying the same thing. The intonation of his voice is the same in both places.

The Israeli military also did not explain the discrepancy between the video released on June 4th, and the one it released on May 31st, which depicts the same Israeli soldier apparently contacting the Mavi Marmara over the radio, in which the "Auschwitz" and 9/11 comments do not appear.

Bolding is mine.

Whoops.

See why you shouldn't seize recording equipment, guys? Yes, it does mean that you can doctor stuff. But it's not worth the embarrassment of being found out, and even if you don't doctor, you ain't gonna get the benefit of the doubt.

The "Rachel Corrie" Got Boarded (or Not)

The ship was taken over by the IDF without any violence. (For a change).

Or so the buzz seems to imply on Twitter, anyway. They shut off communications again, so who knows what's really going on. Other twitters seem to imply that the ship has NOT been boarded.

Either way, the autopsy of the dead activists is showing that they were not only gunned down from close range for the most part, but at least one was shot from behind. Lovely.

"Three Hours Later, They Ended Up Dying"

The account from Al Jazeera reporter Jamal Elshayyal contains a chilling moment. It's at about 4:30 in this video.

They stood outside the cabin...people put up signs in English, in Hebrew, saying 'we have injured in here', they waved white flags, a Knesset soldier said 'they have injured' yet the Israelis refused...three hours later, they ended up dying.

He said "aside from bars, there were no weapons." I still don't buy that many had knives. If any did. (Yes, there is that one shot in that one video of a guy with a broken bottle prior to the raid; we don't know whether he ended up using it, or was told to throw it out.)

He also said that "once the three soldiers had been taken captive, the intensity of the fighting increased...the organizers said that the soldiers be released lest the passengers be inflicted more harm". This fits the "commandos tossed ROEs out the window" scenario; the soldiers became terrified that some of their own could become hostages, and discarded all concern for the other passengers' safety in their rush to "rescue" their compatriots.

(Who were having their wounds treated, actually, but never mind.)

The best part, though, was when the soldier told him to soil his own clothing if he needed to urinate. At least he wasn't kicked around for his daring to ask to use a toilet. He said that others were. The lack of legal representation or consular support is just par for the course...but I wasn't expecting that he would be told to piss himself.

Then again, he's one of those nasty browns, isn't he? The guard was probably surprised he even knew what a toilet is.