SPQR Today

My Great Good Friends,

Whilst this note may end up on SPQR.today (my editor is always looking for grist) it is not the usual polemic, or, as some of you call it ‘rant’.

This is a solicitation for help. The unprecedented success the left is having in scuttling free speech and debate is striking close to home. An acquaintance, Gavin McInnes, co-founder of Vice Media, is in my opinion one of the essential resources for the thinking right. His articulate defense of traditional values and success at illuminating the fascist tactics the militant left employs to silence conservatives has had a cost attendant.

After eight years on Fox News, Gavin’s regular contributor segments were dropped and he is building out new forums (having resigned this week from Rebel Media and Compound Media).

While engaged in the high profile national media debate over Orwellian Antifa, Gavin still shows tremendous concern for for those mostly anonymous individuals caught in the nascent violence of the militant left.

One such case is Tommy Christensen. Gavin has told me after being harassed and assaulted in Portland Mr. Christenson relocated to Chicago where he was again assaulted and hospitalized. A year later, assaulted a third time he fought back, hospitalized his assailants and was arrested.

Gavin has established a legal defense fund for Mr. Christenson. Donations may be made through PayPal at gavin@streetcarnage.com. Gavin has promised complete transparency and receipts, so please help if you can.

AnyHowitzer, enjoy the Labor Day weekend, and remember: “Labor without Capital is just a hobby.”

Thanks,

-ATN

My Great Good Friends,

On July 20th I scribbled a brief parry-ripost to the news 43 Senators and 247 House members backed a bill (S.720 / H.R.1697) to criminalize American citizens support for BDS.

Within one week they had been backed down. As the kids say: “You couldn’t make this stuff up”.

Drafted by AIPAC, the legislation mirrored a ‘Basic Law’ recently passed by the Knesset. Unfortunately for the zionists, our country is a secular representative democracy not a segregationist theocracy like the country they are truly loyal to, and the bill was crushed.

The number of Representatives and Senators who walked back their typical knee-jerk support of anything AIPAC feeds them (e.x.; J. Kennedy III, Gillibrand, Cantwell, Wyden, McCaskill, Bluementhal) turned into a stampede when an op-ed in the Washington Post by David Cole and Faiz Shakir (respectively Legal and Political Director of the national ACLU) appeared stating the bill was unconstitutional.

The pols hypocritical retreat was hysterical, however none more cringe evoking than that of the bill’s lead author Senator Cardin who said; “We thought it only dealt with civil penalties, not criminal penalties… .” Jesus Bill, read your own legislation much or just shovel AIPAC ghost written bills onto the Senate floor?

There was a time when just stopping a zionist anti-American initiative was considered a victory. Today we expect and receive more. For example Senator Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) was questioned at a town hall meeting in NYC (of all places) on the bill and in addition to saying she was ‘reviewing’ her support added a strong criticism of Netanyahu whom she said “had no vision for peace in the region” and concluded with “I do share concerns about the current government of Israel“.

These are great days for freedom.

-ATN

Artist Sasha Trubetskoy has reimagined major Roman roads as a subway-style diagram. Based on the Empire circa 125 AD, it took a lot of research.

Read more about the project and download a high-resolution copy of the map on his site.

My Great Good Friends,

As I wrote in the gloaming of the previous administration; America facilitating the unanimous passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 was the seminal event in the world wide opposition to Israeli oppression of individuals in the occupied territories and the apartheid treatment of their own non-Jewish citizens.

An acquaintance has just returned from Israeli where he interviewed Jews and Gentiles including members of the Knesset. His on the ground observations confirm my opinion (from reading the Israeli press) that the discussion there is both more nuanced and broader than here. And so again my curiosity is piqued: Why are we only exposed to the Likud version propaganda?

Certainly the traditional left liberal prospective of American Jewry would be expected to rage against statist oppression, institutionalized violence, civil rights predicated on professions of religious belief and communal punishment, if it were practiced by any other theocracy.

Paradoxically, while my acquaintance was there, laws were enacted to bar entrance to the country based upon an individuals beliefs versus actions. Orwell’s nightmare of INGSOC thought police made real.

And a pitiful paradox at that. As Ms Mairav Zonszein wrote in The Nation:

“The law passed last week by Israel’s Knesset makes clear that being pro-Israel has nothing to do with being Jewish, or liberal, or supporting democratic values, human rights or critical thinking. By trying to fend off criticism of it’s democratic infractions, the Israeli government has doubled down on it’s anti-democratic policies, declaring war on American liberals, and as regarding the Jewish community, turning Israel’s greatest allies into it’s greatest nemeses.”

I remember with disgust the damning silence in 1982 from my liberal friends when the massacres at Sabra and Chatila were exposed as murdering as many as 3,500 innocent women, children and elderly men. Even then their painful cognitive dissonance, of knowing that they had witnessed a crime but they could not bring themselves to criticize the criminals, was a foreshadowing.

A foreshadowing of the hegemonic veil of American Jewry’s support for Israel being ‘rent in twain from top to bottom’ (KJV) thirty five years later. It’s been a long time, but from death camps to J Street was a long way to travel.

For a profound exposition on the subject I commend to your attention Peter Beinart’s essay “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment” published in the New York Review of Books. Beinart is a 40 year old Orthodox Jew, professed Zionist and former editor of The New Republic. His attack on the AIPAC establishment for supporting Israeli apartheid at the cost of the community’s ethos is scathing.

Beinart in part; “For several decades the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now – to their horror – they are finding many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.”

Finally, to Likud Israeli apartheid policies destroying cultural diaspora as well as the inhabitants of the occupied territories; Professor Stephen M. Cohen, Director of the Jewish policy archive at NYU.

Cohen in part: “Jews are torn between two instincts, they want to protect Israel but they see Israel’s actions as undermining their basic values as Jews, as Americans and as human beings. Israeli policy seems to them to be xenophobic, chauvinistic, ultra-religious, non-pluralistic and discriminatory towards foreigners.”

And so, to the extent the old Zionist’s diversion defense of accusing anyone who objects to Israeli policy of being an anti-Semite is not going to work anymore, this brings us back to UN SCR 2334.

I confess to being light years removed from the fear and suffering imposed by each side on the other in the Palestinian / Israeli conflict. My concern, my only concern, is for America – and I hate anyone who uses the freedom America grants them to hurt her.

As I predicted (A Big Tent, 01-16-17, SPQR.Today) the impact of the UN Resolution will be to cast light on the fact that it is only the United States which enables Israeli apartheid. And we do so to our own strategic disadvantage only because their fifth column in government and the media shape public perception whereby our blood and treasure can be squandered for their interests.

1. A UN report written by two Americans (available in its entirety at electronicintifada.net) and unanimously approved condemns Israel as an “Apartheid State”. Which in international law is the penultimate condemnation, second only to “Genocidal State”.
2. Ambassador Nikki Haley demands, under threat of US funding, the report be withdrawn.
3. The Head of the UN Commission which published the report publicly resigns.
4. And another million Americans realize we are alone as the only country naive (I would say magnanimous) enough to permit these genocidal fucks to infiltrate our policy formulation with individuals more loyal to Israel than America.

These are great days for freedom,

-ATN

My Great Good Friends,

I thoroughly enjoy reading all responses to my modest missives from acquaintances and strangers alike. The letter below is particularly poignant in that it illustrates these are not academic or political, idealogical or philosophical arguments.

The power the Zionist lobby represents a real world threat to real Americans like the young First Infantry Division Officer who penned the letter below.

-ATN

Anthony:

Having taken a similar position to your own since 1968, I have often found myself called by many names including Nazi and Anti-Semitic, this in spite of the fact that my daughter in law is Jewish, and my grandchildren refer to themselves as Greekish.

It is of interest to note, that while serving with the First Infantry Division in Germany, during the early 70’s our Division was put on full alert, rode off to Wiesbaden AFB with our APCs and such and signed our Last Wills. We were about to load the C-130s, when we were told the Israelis had won the conflict and we were “not needed.”

Our Battalion Commander, a highly decorated Colonel of Infantry and Veteran of Vietnam, at a subsequent Officer’s call wondered aloud if the Israelis would have been as quick to respond on our behalf as we had been for them. He was reprimanded shortly thereafter for that comment and demoted to a lesser command. End of career. We, that is the Officers, were all stunned and wondered who had ratted out a great guy and what he had said that was so wrong (it was not).

I am reminded of Winston Churchill’s quote that “All men are equal and all distinctions between them are unhealthy and undemocratic.” And he was an honorary citizen of the US.

Your Pal,

T.

My Great Good Friends,

Having just been confirmed as Secretary of Defense, the opinions of General James Mattis, USMC (Retired), are of utmost importance.

Lest anyone suspect I’ve carefully selected quotes to illustrate his agreement with my contention that we suffer from Israel’s fifth column in Washington, all quotes are from J.J. Goldberg‘s article in the Jewish ‘Forward’ print edition and on line at their English and Yiddish language sites.

The article entitled Top U.S. General: We pay a Price for Backing Israel contains the General’s verbatim answers to Wolf Blitzer’s questions at the Aspen Security Forum, as well a link to the 66:13 minute video of their talk (comments on Israeli settlements in Palestine begin at 41:22).

From the article:

The current situation is unsustainable, America must act with a sense of urgency toward a two state solution. The chances of success are starting to ebb because of the settlements and where they’re at, if it fails the result will be apartheid.

And then this bombshell:

‘I paid a military-security price every day as the Commander of CentCom because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel‘.

Mattis’ predecessor as Chief of CentCom, General David Petraeus, made much the same point in a briefing paper to the Senate Armed Services Committee shortly before he handed CentCom over to Mattis.

The article also has a link to the ADL’s unhinged response to General Petraeus. Some of you may recall his more personalized remarks along same lines to a newly commissioned officer I brought to a small luncheon with the General.

Wolf Blitzer: Is the Israeli Palestinian peace process going anywhere?

General Mattis: Well, Wolf that depends on the protagonists, and do they want it as much as our valiant Secretary of State [Kerry] wants it. The settlements are making it impossible. For example if I’m Jerusalem and I put 500 Jewish settlers out there to the east and there’s 10,000 Arabs there, if we draw the border to include them either it ceases to be a Jewish state, or they say the Arabs don’t get to vote – apartheid. And that didn’t work out so well for a government the last time I saw that practiced in a country. ”

Wow, more concise and eloquent than I’ve heard the argument put by anyone in BDS.

These are great days for freedom,

-ATN

My Great Good Friends,

The change in fortune of the BDS-Israel movement has been so dramatic and rapid since President Obama’s decision to allow the Security Council’s (unanimous) adoption of resolution 2334 as to be breathtaking.

Reminiscent of the precipitous collapse of the Soviet Union, oppression and injustice can not hold back the swell of global opinion forever. And apparently when the dam breaks it’s hard and fast.

The current moment has positive domestic and geo-political ramifications.

First domestic: Assuming the Trump Administration reverts to the Middle East policies of President G.W. Bush, it will become increasingly clear the US is alone in supporting Israeli aggression and oppression. A fact heretofore obscured by America blocking unanimous United Nations boycotts, divestitures and sanctions.

To the extent those action are now being put into place, our fellow countrymen will be confronted by what it costs American interests to be subordinate to Israeli, which will in turn illuminate those fifth columnists’ here who have so cravenly betrayed us.

Internationally the positives are too obvious to list, however, before yesterday’s Paris Summit and tomorrow’s UN Security Council meeting overwhelm the more pedestrian accomplishments of the movement, I would like to briefly review some of the 2016 BDS victories.

1. Under crushing international condemnation Veolia, Orange, CRH and G4S have all divested their businesses in Israel.
2. In spite of Likud ‘declaring war on BDS’ with propaganda, espionage, intimidation and legal action, The European Union and numerous individual countries upheld the right of their citizens to boycott Israeli products and companies doing business with Israel.
3. The UN Human Rights Commission has begun compiling a database of Israeli and international corporations complicit in and / or profiting from the occupation regime.
4. And the zeitgeist needle moves: The Brookings Institute recently published an opinion poll finding 46% of all Americans and 60% 0f Democrats support “sanctions against Israel for it’s colonization of Palestinian land”.
5. Broadening mainstream church groups participation in BDS including the United Methodist, the Presbyterian, and the Alliance of Baptists Churches joining the long list which began with the National Coalition of American Nuns boycott on October 21, 2007.
   And my favorite each year:
6. Those wild and crazy young whippersnappers. Pharrell Williams and Beyonce cancelling scheduled gigs in Tel Aviv and undergraduate student governments from the University of Chicago to the University of Quatar.
7. Finally organized labor from the United Electrical Workers Union to the NYU Graduate Assistant Teachers Union.

So, once again this year: ‘A Big Tent’.

-ATN