Tuesday, October 27, 2009

"Fuzzy" [!]: Bring Back Jayson Blair

In my “Gaza, Again” post [December 27, 2008], as Israel "Cast Lead", I wrote:

[Operation Cast Lead is] Rice’—and this [the Bush] Administration’s—fault, because they insisted upon the imposition of "democratic" elections before a fully functioning society was running in the Strip. This terror-ridden failed-state Hamas-driven entity was chosen by its people, and they bear the responsibility for the actions of their leaders, which they undoubtedly approve of wholeheartedly. The war IS with the Gazan population, and the Israelis have nothing to lose by saying so.

Writing about Gaza in today’s New York Times, Ethan Bronner records this startling exchange with a Gaza local:

Many of the professionals here reject Hamas’s ideology, although some voted for the party in 2006 out of rage over the corruption in Fatah…“Hamas won by a slim margin, and it was because of people like me,” said Mohamed, who comes from a Fatah family and works for a charity. “I regret voting for them. I wanted to punish Fatah.” Like nearly all in Gaza who spoke about politics, he asked that his identity be hidden for fear of what the government might do. The rules of political dissent remain fuzzy. “Israel is saying, ‘Because you elected Hamas, you should have no life,’ ” he said. “Yet people elected Hamas because of Fatah corruption. I believe in peace with Israel, but I wanted desperately to get away from the corruption. I didn’t expect Hamas to win. Next time, I won’t vote at all.”
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/world/middleeast/27gaza.html?th&emc=th]

If the Gaza locals are willing to even to BEGIN to THINK about taking responsibility for their own mess—why are their Western “allies” so insistent upon convincing them otherwise? Something to do with a “soft bigotry of lowered expectations”, perhaps? Somewhere there is a profound disconnect between the beliefs that comprise the doctrines of political correctness and the actual belief that all human beings are truly “equal”. [But we knew that already….]

Plus—does anyone buy that Bronner really believes that in Gaza “the rules of political dissent remain fuzzy”? FUZZY? Even Walter Duranty, in all his extensive "coverage" of Stalin's Moscow for the Times, was never so disingenuous. Where's Jayson Blair when you need him? He would have been the perfect Times Middle East correspondent.

And he and Howell Raines might still both have their jobs.

Monday, October 26, 2009

The Goldstone Chronicles

It was once said of Henry Kissinger that he wasn't anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, or even really a self-hating Jew; his real religion was "self-promotion". Seems that "Justice" Richard Goldstone's career parallels Kissinger's closely in this regard.

http://www.rferl.org/content/Who_Is_Richard_Goldstone/1856255.html

Who is Richard Goldstone?
By R. W. Johnson
Radio Free Europe

The UN Human Rights Council has endorsed Judge Richard Goldstone's controversial report accusing both Israel and Hamas of war crimes during the 2008-09 conflict in the Gaza Strip. The council has asked the UN Security Council to refer the report's conclusions to the International Criminal Court if the two sides fail to conduct their own investigations.

Goldstone's report has been dismissed as hopelessly one-sided not only by the Israelis but by many neutral observers, with both the European Union and United States dissenting both on its substance and its suggestion that alleged Israeli war crimes should be judged not by Israeli courts but by the International Criminal Court.

Even many Jews outside Israel are asking how Goldstone, himself a Jew, could lend himself to such an obviously biased mission mandated by a Human Rights Council that is itself full of human rights violators as well as habitual Israel-haters. Both Martti Ahtisaari and Mary Robinson turned down the mission for that reason, after all.

Goldstone's behavior will not surprise those who have followed his career. As a young advocate in South Africa he drew criticism for the way he privately entertained the attorneys who might bring him cases: this was seen as touting for custom. Similarly, his decision to accept nomination as a judge from the apartheid regime drew criticism from many liberal lawyers who refused to accept such nomination because it meant enforcing apartheid laws.


ANC's Favorite Judge

Then, as the political situation changed, so did Goldstone. Entrusted by President F. W. de Klerk with a commission to investigate the causes of violence, Goldstone publicized much damning evidence against the apartheid regime but refused to investigate any form of violence organized by the African National Congress (ANC). This naturally made him the ANC's favorite judge.

Moreover, Goldstone, issued a dramatic press statement suggesting that the military were involved in illegal partisan behavior. De Klerk had to dismiss 23 senior military figures, though the evidence for their guilt promised by Goldstone was never actually forthcoming. The officers sued De Klerk, who had to back down and apologize.

De Klerk was furious at Goldstone's sensational use of untested evidence and, knowing that Goldstone was ambitious to succeed Boutros-Boutros Ghali as UN secretary-general, referred to him as "Richard-Richard Goldstone."

The effect of these high profile actions was to give Goldstone international fame as an icon of political correctness. Hence his appointment as prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).


Cutting Corners In The Hague

At the ICTY, Goldstone was a man in a hurry. "They told me at the UN in New York: if we did not have an indictment out by November 1994 we wouldn't get money that year for 1995," Goldstone admitted. "There was only one person against whom we had evidence.... He wasn't an appropriate first person to indict.... But if we didn't do it we would not have got the budget."

Indeed, it was so inappropriate that the judges in The Hague passed a motion severely censuring Goldstone. After only a year in office, Goldstone offered his job to the Canadian jurist, Louise Arbour.

Throughout his career Goldstone has been criticized for cutting corners out of excessive ambition, but in the eyes of many Jews his Gaza commission has set a new low. That a Jewish judge, barred from entering Israel for accepting a commission deliberately biased against the state, should write a report based largely on interviews with Hamas activists in order to pander to anti-Zionist opinion has meant, for many, that he has simply stepped outside the pale.


R.W. Johnson is a South African journalist and historian and the author, most recently, of "South Africa's Brave New World: The Beloved Country Since The End Of Apartheid."

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Three Strikes: Euro, White, Jew

It seems that some corners of the mainstream media have actually begun to take notice of the double standard they consistently apply to Israel and its enemies in the Arabs’ war against the Jews.

[Actually, it might be more accurate to call said double standard a single one: the Arabs are always right, the Jews are always wrong. But I am about to elaborate on that very point.]

This week, the New York Times published an Op-Ed by Human Rights Watch’s chairman emeritus, Robert Bernstein [1] , in which he asserts that the organization he founded has “lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields.” He also asserted that the lobby had wasted its political capital by refusing to criticize the closed societies that were responsible for the majority of human right violations in their zeal to focus on Israel.

In the Guardian, usually a realiably Judeophobic publication, a piece by Harold Evans [2] asserted that, amidst the “the sickening spectacle of Britain failing to stand by Israel, the only democracy with an independent judiciary in the entire region”, that “poor Judge Goldstone now regrets how his good name has been used to single out Israel. The Swiss paper Le Temps reports him complaining that "This draft [UN human rights council] resolution saddens me … there is not a single phrase condemning Hamas as we have done in the report. I hope the council can modify the text."

Of course, the Guardian had to reclaim its progressive bonafides the next daym publishin a piece by Antony Lerman [3] praising the efforts of J Street to take back the debate from AIPac despite J Street being characterized as “urging Israel to make ‘further unilateral concessions to neighbours pledged to its annihilation’, as ‘self-hating Jews’ as they ‘stand at the vanguard of global efforts to demonise and delegitimise the Jewish state’; and its “appalling core premise: that Israel is to blame for Arab terror – the age-old calumny of blaming the Jews for their own destruction”; and “the Goldstone blood libel" which is "part of the UNHRC's strategy of delegitimising Israel to soften up the world for its eventual destruction".

Lerman, unfortunately, may be right when he claims: “We can dismiss this ranting”; he may be closer to the pulse of the debate because I will assume right off that he [and J Street, and Judge Goldstone] are being completely disingenuous—and that Evans and Bernstein are missing that point.

Re Evans claims regarding Goldstone’s “complaints”, they are intended to provide a façade of “neutrality” [which ostensibly fit with the predictable Israeli refusal join the proceedings], but his policies are informed by a cross between Gandhi-ism and Orientalism: that the Israelis are settlers, the Palestinians are natives, and, no matter how fascist or genocidal the Palestinians are, the “original sin” remains the “imposition” of Jews in the area. [That claim has been proven to be in and of itself historically fallacious, on two counts: one, that the “Palestinians” were actually “native” to the area; and two, that the assumption that all geographical areas have a salient exclusive ethnicity “native” to a particular area [which was the inherent flaw in Wilsonian “self-determination”]]. As Goldstone is a South African progressive Jew, these have to be unshakable core beliefs on Goldstone’s part, which he will always reflexively act upon, and will be unwilling or unable [or both] to entertain the notion that there are actually legitimate criticisms of his philosophy.

Bernstein likewise doesn’t realize that he [unwittingly, for certain] created a monster. HE may have wanted his organization to go after “closed” societies; BUT, if said societies are non-white, or third-world, or former colonies, they are ispo-facto absolved from any criticism of their political [and other] conduct. THAT is THE operative “human rights” truism. “Democracies”, because they can never be perfect, and are overwhelmingly run by individuals of European descent, are therefore fair game [if not the only game in town.]

The irony is that for centuries—at least in Europe and America—Jews tried to hard to be accepted as “white people”.

Now we are.

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/opinion/20bernstein.html

2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/20/israel-goldstone-palestine-gaza-un

3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/22/j-street-jewish-lobby

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Pass Rush?

Rush Limbaugh's ill-advised comments about Donovan McNabb and subsequent forced resignation from ESPN’s NFL GameDay in 2003 prompted acclaimed sportswriter Allan Barra to write a piece defending Limbaugh's comments on sports grounds. [Barra later ruefully noted that many of his friends wouldn’t speak to him for weeks.] In any case, Barra and Limbaugh were both wrong regarding McNabb, even sportswise.

Consider that when Limbaugh made his comments, McNabb’s Philadelphia Eagles were 2-3 at that point in the 2003 season. From that point until the Eagles loss in Super Bowl XXXIX, McNabb’s record as a starter was 21-5 [including playoffs, not including games he missed in 2004 with a broken ankle.] Even prior to Limbaugh’s comment, McNabb was 40-20 in games he’d started since 2000, his first full season as the Eagles starter. Plus, he’d taken the Eagles to the previous two NFC Championship games--and would go to the next two. The last quarterback to take his team to that many consecutive conference championship games was Kenny Stabler [five, with the Raiders, from 1973-77. The fact that he lost four of the five didn’t lead anyone to believe he was overrated.] Consider also that McNabb hadn’t been anointed as the coming of the black Johnny Unitas, John Elway, or even Brett Favre—those accolades were reserved for Michael Vick. [If only Rush had picked on him; an "I told you so" might have been slightly more credible.]

Whether Limbaugh’s comments about McNabb truly qualified as race-baiting—and he’s said worse, when discussing issues more salient than sports—was actually irrelevant; he made the mistake of thinking that he could turn a theoretically politically-neutral setting into a forum in which he could project his politics, and he thought either a] he would get away with it or b] become a martyr of free speech. [He also forgot from his previous foray into television that his act didn’t translate as well onscreen]. Instead, he was—to the extent he actually could possibly be—humbled. [The news regarding his Oxycontin addiction that followed not long after McNabbgate didn’t help his image any.]

However, Rush’s politics certainly should not serve as an automatic barrier to his entry to the NFL as an owner. If that were the case, I’d have some serious questions about Dallas' Jerry Jones’ associations with the likes of Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar, who touts himself as the #1 Cowboy fan, paints his private jet metallic blue and silver in tribute, and can be seen on the Dallas sidelines in telecasts of Super Bowl XXVII. Does that make Jerry Jones a terror-supporter? Doubtful. [Maybe Rush could use that soundbite in making his case.]

It is equally legitimate, however, for uber-demagogues Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to pressure the NFL not to allow him into their ranks, even if their characterizations of him as another Marge Schott are—well—wide right. In America—where pro football is now the quintenssential American sport [if not “pastime”] and the adversarial system governs everything, Limbaugh should be at least grudgingly supportive of a free market of ideas, no matter how intellectually dishonest and vapid [accusations which at time can be lodged at him with some degree of accuracy], and no matter how they affect his pocketbook or business.

He can also do what he does best: take his case to the media and see if they are equally as “desirous that he succeed”.

Failing that, he can try suing the NFL. Good luck with that.

Friday, October 9, 2009

“It’s Not You”

Potential is a French word that means you aren’t worth a darn yet—Jeff Van Note

When I wrote about “teachable moments” this week following the awarding of the 2016 Olympics to Rio and the snub of Chicago, I made two aaumptions: one, that some sort of turning point had been reached in how the public at large related to the President; and two, that both sides of the political spectrum might change their tactics and point to this moment as the impetus.

That moment came and went faster than the President’s pretensions to “centrism” in his inaugural address . Unfortunately, I addressed the possibility of said “teachable moments” to both sides of the political spectrum in this county only. I forgot how much internationalist influence can really be brought to bear on this Administration, or, conversely, how bending to said internationalism is a, if not the, linchpin of how this Administration conducts its business.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama is, when you think about it, not that much of a head-scratcher. A real skeptic would wonder what took the Nobel committee so long; why didn’t they just hand it to him after he won the election? [Better yet, why not split it up among all those who voted for him?]

As it stands, the Europeans—the ones who consider appeasement and abject prostration before all perceived and self-proclaimed victims of “Orientalism” [and others who have a stake in the promulgation of said political philosophy as the quasi-religion it has become]—wanted to make sure that Barack and the Dems stay the course.

The fear that Obama may take the Chicago “snub” personally was more trenchant than anyone could have realized, so this was someone’s way of making up for it.

The message?

“We still don’t like your country…but it isn’t your fault. We love YOU and what you’re trying to do. We can’t, and won’t, give your country any succor if we can help it…but take this instead, and you can consider yourself one of us.”

I can only hope that Obama is as smart as he’s been made out to be and sees through the ruse. But that would mean that I’m assuming that he’s been able to sift our country’s interests from everyone else’s [or his], and that may be giving him too much credit.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Why I Changed The Name

I discovered accidentally that there are two other "Cognitive Dissident"'s out there: 1) a band; 2) a group of bikers [who have a facebook group].

I didn't Google "Cognitive Dissident" when I started the blog because I was pretty sure I had come up with the name first, having coined the term in an essay I wrote in January of 1994 when I was auditioning for a column in the Daily Pennsylvanian [I didn't get it.]

However clever Cognitive Dissidents is/was, it's a mouthful, and in today's day and age, brevity is certainly the better part of valor, besides being the soul of wit. [Now if I could translate that skill to the essays...]

Just for the record: "Odd Cog" is a combination of a shortened synonym for "Cognitive Dissident", as well as a play on the Talmudism "Ad Ca'an", roughly translated as "The End", or "end quote", which I once Anglicized to Odd Con prior to this transformation. [It's also the name I record under. One day I'll release something.]

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Chicago Loses: A Teachable Moment?

When Ronald Regan took office in 1980, it was obvious that America was wallowing in an economic and foreign policy morass. Regardless of his Administration’s actual reversal of their predecessor’s policies, it was obvious that the outgoing Admininstration was at fault. A near perfect mirror-image of that historical moment existed, certainly after September 15, 2008 and continues to this day, despite conservatives’ insistence to the contrary.

Yet Obama may finally have overplayed his hand. One can understand how he has continued to forcefully insist on forcing “health-care reform”, having latched onto that particular policy as his legacy linchpin; despite his discovery that Congress is not an ACORN South Side Chapter community meeting, he still can at least portray to the public that he maintains a semblance of control over his domestic centerpiece.

However, his having found himself caught between the rock and the hard place of a nascent Iranian revolution and Iranian nuclear power, and simultaneously being unable to even pretend to disengage himself from the one element of the Bush Doctrine he can’t publicly disavow [nation building in Afghanistan, which is even less of a nation than Palestine], he finally takes his first real public humiliation when he goes to bat for his adopted hometown’s Olympic bid in an attempt to cash in on his ostensible international standing…and was rejected.

In theory, this was the teachable moment that conservatives might have been waiting for: the President who disingenuously assured us in his inauguration speech that he was governing from the center but instead pandered abroad to an array of international interests in the hope that sycophancy would yield a desired result instead finds that approach only leads to ridicule, and we get a chastened recentered President, a la Bill Clinton circa 1995.

This, however, is highly unlikely. And it will be conservatives’ fault.

The first is that, unlike Clinton in 1992-4, there is no semblance of a viable opposition that wants to do anything except froth at the mouth. Which is a shame, because this Administration seems intent upon somehow embarrassing itself into compliance, and it night happen if the “entertainers” in the opposition would shut up for five minutes. [Yes, Chairman Steele is right; say what you will about Al Franken, he had the brass to actually run for public office. Limbaugh/Beck/Palin et al probably don’t want to part with their lucrative paydays.]

The second is that, also unlike 1992-4, this Administration’s margin for error is HUGE; specifically, because of their unter-supermajority in both Houses, it would take a true catastrophe to make any immediate electoral impact, in 2010 or 2012. No matter how low the approval numbers sink, this country remembers the alternative all too well: the one they took 2 election cycles to vote out.

Either way, it seems the Limbaugh/Beck/Palin wing of the party will get at least half its wish: the President will fail. The other half? That he will actually get reelected, and the failures pile up—as does Limbaugh’s bank statements.

One begins to wonder if an inability or refusal to learn is a prerequisite for political [or, at least electoral] success.