The Political Thread

[The Prodigal]

working full time in the field of anti-racism and anti-sectarianism in Northern Ireland is the most interesting job I've heard of for ages!  How's it going?

Judge its going somewhere-its the where I am often un-sure of. The sectarian thing is still the biggie in the eyes of most but to articulate how it is going it in a line or two is difficult. Maybe the best short take on it is to say that its an uneven picture of progress and a case of the more things change the more it stays the same.

[judgefloyd]

well I take my hat off to you - it sounds like admirable work.  There are shadows of sectarianism here, but it's not the force it used to be and is mainly to be seen in historical hangovers like the names on law firms and support for football teams.  Oh and it's trotted out as an alibi everytime our bizarre school funding policies are questioned (ie the religious private schools are subsidized by people who can't afford to use them).
As for racism, we  have a bit, but overall we do pretty well with multiculturalism, I reckon (of course I'm in the group that experiences the least racism and in an industry that is full of dedicated non-racists, so I would say that)

[The Legendary Shark]

American / Isreali Dual Citizens Running the American Government
Attorney General – Michael Mukasey
Head of Homeland Security –  Michael Chertoff
Chairman Pentagon's Defense Policy Board – Richard  Perle
Deputy Defense Secretary (Former) – Paul Wolfowitz
Under Secretary  of Defense – Douglas Feith
National Security Council Advisor – Elliott  Abrams
Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff (Former) – "Scooter"  Libby
White House Deputy Chief of Staff – Joshua Bolten
Under Secretary of  State for Political Affairs – Marc Grossman
Director of Policy Planning at  the State Department – Richard Haass
U.S. Trade Representative (Cabinet-level  Position) – Robert Zoellick
Pentagon's Defense Policy Board – James  Schlesinger
UN Representative (Former) – John Bolton
Under Secretary for  Arms Control – David Wurmser
Pentagon's Defense Policy Board – Eliot  Cohen
Senior Advisor to the President – Steve Goldsmith
Principal Deputy  Assistant Secretary – Christopher Gersten
Assistant Secretary of State –  Lincoln Bloomfield
Deputy Assistant to the President – Jay Lefkowitz
White  House Political Director – Ken Melman
National Security Study Group – Edward  Luttwak
Pentagon's Defense Policy Board – Kenneth Adelman
Defense  Intelligence Agency Analyst (Former) – Lawrence (Larry) Franklin
National  Security Council Advisor – Robert Satloff
President Export-Import Bank U.S. –  Mel Sembler
Deputy Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and  Families – Christopher Gersten
Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban  Development for Public Affairs – Mark Weinberger
White House Speechwriter –  David Frum
White House Spokesman (Former) – Ari Fleischer
Pentagon's  Defense Policy Board – Henry Kissinger
Deputy Secretary of Commerce – Samuel  Bodman
Under Secretary of State for Management – Bonnie Cohen
Director of  Foreign Service Institute – Ruth Davis
(I haven't fact-checked this list.)



Dual Citizenship -- Loyal to Whom? (http://www.viewzone.com/dualcitizen.html)



The power of America's "Jewish lobby" is said to be legendary.

[Roger Godpleton]

...

[TordelBack]

Ah hey now, I know you said you didn't fact-check it, but that list has been kicking around for a long time and is deeply suspect.  Several people on it aren't even Jewish, never mind 'dual-citizen' Israelis.  By virtue of being exaggerated, it is dangerously close to classic "you can never trust those Jews" anti-semitic propaganda.

Not suggesting for a moment that was or ever would be your intention, Sharky, or that a healthy suspicion about Israeli influence on American policy is in itself even vaguely anti-semitic.  But this sort of thing...

[Ancient Otter]

Several people on it aren't even Jewish

Well as a supposedly democratic country, I imagine you wouldn't have to be Jewish to be a Israeli citizen....
They are drafting a new law allowing Israeli Arabs & ultra orthodox Jews to be conscripted into the army, anyone else think that sounds like they are in trouble? 

[JOE SOAP]

No! Legendary Shark's an anti-semitic nut-farmer.

[The Prodigal]

Ah hey now, I know you said you didn't fact-check it, but that list has been kicking around for a long time and is deeply suspect.  Several people on it aren't even Jewish, never mind 'dual-citizen' Israelis.  By virtue of being exaggerated, it is dangerously close to classic "you can never trust those Jews" anti-semitic propaganda.

Not suggesting for a moment that was or ever would be your intention, Sharky, or that a healthy suspicion about Israeli influence on American policy is in itself even vaguely anti-semitic.  But this sort of thing...

Agreed. Well said.

[TordelBack]

Well as a supposedly democratic country, I imagine you wouldn't have to be Jewish to be a Israeli citizen....

Well of course not, but I'd direct you to early internet versions of this kind of list: http://www.radioislam.org/islam/english/toread/frnklin.htm

This thread is already Godwinned six ways to Tuesday, so I have no hesitation in suggesting that this kind of 'outing' is straight out of Goebbels for Dummies.  Every politico, every person, has ties that may be in conflict with the common good they are supposed to represent, be it family, region, business, ancestral country or religion.  Picking one out, exagerrating it, and then suggesting questionable loyalties is pretty poor fare.  Where this is predominantly parsed through identification of a Jewish background we are treading a well-worn and hateful path.

Far better to focus on the actions of a government and its members rather than creating fear of zionist cabals.  Again.

And just to be absolutely clear, I'm not in any way implying TLS is any kind of unpleasant-ist.  He's not.

Well, maybe an onanist.

[Ancient Otter]

And just to be absolutely clear, I'm not in any way implying TLS is any kind of unpleasant-ist.  He's not.

MLK and Jimmy told me otherwise...

[The Legendary Shark]

I posted that list and those articles simply to foster debate and provide a viewpoint some may find worth studying if they think this exploration of the anti-Semitic phenomena is worth exploring. Personally, I'm not really interested in this sort of thing as it smacks to me of an advanced kind of name-calling. Organizations set up to combat anti-Semitism (for example) by their very nature foster distrust and tend to focus on the differences between believers or races instead of the similarities. There are only two kinds of people in this world; those people who are me and those people who are not me.

I'm far more interested in this LIBOR thing and wondering why nobody's talking about it very much. The Bank of England had to be involved and if the Bank of England was involved then the Treasury was involved. That's before we even get to the intimate relationships the Bank of England has with, say, the US Federal Reserve (from whence I've been led to understand the LIBOR mechanism is controlled), the IMF, the European Central Bank, JP Morgan Chase and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. The LIBOR manipulations made the things WE buy more expensive. That's stealing from everyone and what does Bob Diamond get? £2M instead of £22M, was it? How about 20 years instead of £2M? But no, he'll just move on to another job for some big financial company and carry on helping the Banksters steal from anti-Semites, Muslims and Christians alike.

I'm not saying that arguments about what or who is anti-Semitic or not are trivial or that the people who enjoy this thread are wrong in their opinions or beliefs. It's just that I personally don't give a flying drokk whether somebody's an anti-Semite or not. I wouldn't care if the fireman who pulled me from a burning building was a white supremacist and I don't care if the Minister for Agriculture abhors homosexuality or if half our MPs have dual British/Ugandan passports. So long as they do no harm, keep to their word as best they can, think of the people first and limit the fraud to the odd free lunch then I'm content to leave them to it.

I'll stop ranting now, lol, you all know where I think the real threat to society is coming from - and it's not the Jews.

[TordelBack]

...you all know where I think the real threat to society is coming from...

Short shorts?

[The Legendary Shark]

Godpleton's mom!

[judgefloyd]

Well as a supposedly democratic country, I imagine you wouldn't have to be Jewish to be a Israeli citizen....

Well of course not, but I'd direct you to early internet versions of this kind of list: http://www.radioislam.org/islam/english/toread/frnklin.htm

This thread is already Godwinned six ways to Tuesday, so I have no hesitation in suggesting that this kind of 'outing' is straight out of Goebbels for Dummies.  Every politico, every person, has ties that may be in conflict with the common good they are supposed to represent, be it family, region, business, ancestral country or religion.  Picking one out, exagerrating it, and then suggesting questionable loyalties is pretty poor fare.  Where this is predominantly parsed through identification of a Jewish background we are treading a well-worn and hateful path.

Far better to focus on the actions of a government and its members rather than creating fear of zionist cabals.  Again.

And just to be absolutely clear, I'm not in any way implying TLS is any kind of unpleasant-ist.  He's not.

Well, maybe an onanist.

I'm with you on the list, Tordelback .
     The Legendary Shark's second link was to an article  and later book by Walt and Mersheimerabout the Israel lobby in the US.  I've read the article in the London Review of Books.  It seemed pretty reasonable to me.  The lobby they describe is a real organisation, called AIPAC. 
  Of course, discussion of anything related to Israel being what it was, it was not only hotly disputed but also described as 'anti-semitic' by the 'Israel can do no wrong and it's antisemitic to say otherwise' crowd.  One of the Israel-firsters later referred to the book as 'discredited', mainly on the basis that a bunch of his mates had written the same thing about it.   
  short shorts?

[Roger Godpleton]

I farted on my hand today and it smelt like I don't really know where I'm going with this.