Carter's Courage

Jimmy Carter has a lot of courage to take on the American Jewish community's virulent, racist, Zionist, hate-filled campaign against the Palestinians. This blog by Marc Ginsberg is just one example of the hate expressed toward him by Jews. Don't be fooled by the "more in sorrow than in anger" tone of the blog. It's a hate screed. The ironic thing is that as the Jews have garnered more and more power in the US, so that both the Republican and Democratic parties support Israel unquestioningly, the US has lost more and more power in the world, partly because of the hateful, racist, Israeli-inspired policies it pursues in the Middle East.

Maureen Dowd, Deer Hunter

Maureen Dowd's column in the NYT is the first I have seen that mentions the "Deer Hunter" movie. She says Pennsylvania is Deer Hunter country. What does this mean if it's not something weird having to do with bitterness and guns. Is it common for Pennsylvanians to play Russian roulette? Do they just naturally love Russian roulette like they love their God? Did Maureen and Hillary learn to play Russian roulette with their dads out behind the vacation cabins their grandfathers built? I don't think the characters in Deer Hunter would have been playing Russian roulette if they hadn't been messed up by the Vietnam war and faced a pretty depressing situation at home in Pennsylvania.

New Jewish Lobby

The Washington Post reports that liberal Jews have created a new lobby, J Street, to compete with AIPAC. This sounds great; we'll see how it works in practice. It seems true that there is much more political debate about Israel's future in Israel than there is in the US, where AIPAC is the only Jewish lobby, and AIPAC means Zionism supported 100% by the US.

Here's Mother Jones report of the new lobby.

McCain and Charlie Black

The NYT features lobbyist Charlie Black's prominent role in John McCain's presidential campaign. I didn't know that he got his start with Jesse Helms, Lee Atwater, and other assorted right wing zealots. Not a good sign for me, since Jesse was a virulent hater of the State Department and an author of the Helms-Burton Act, which was one thing that encouraged me to get out of the Foreign Service.

While I was assigned to the US Embassy in Rome, an Italian contact whose little daughter had been denied a US visa under the Act remarked to me about how it penalized the children of those it targeted. I found its operation to be very similar to the way the Nazis targeted Jews in Italy during World War II as described by Herman Wouk in Winds of War and War and Remembrance. I was not happy that the US was punishing children for the "sins" of their parents.

Plus, as I said earlier, I am not happy about lobbyists having big roles in presidential campaigns, especially of someone like John McCain, who claims to be the king of straight talk. The Black connection seems to indicate that McCain has swung hard to the right. I worry that although he has a history as a maverick, he was neutered by George Bush in the 2000 campaign when Bush beat him in South Carolina by claiming that McCain's adopted daughter was actually a black bastard conceived out of wedlock. Now, to see McCain fawning over Bush is more than I can take. Plus, I hate seeing him get his Middle East policy whispered in his ear by Israel hawk Joe (Bomb Iran) Lieberman.