The Neocons’ Project for the New American Century: “American World Leadership” – Syria next to Pay the Price?

Global Research
Felicity Arbuthnot

“In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter, who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people.” (Eugene Debs, 1855-1926, speech Canton, Ohio, 16th June 1918.)

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), unleashed in June 1997, has largely disappeared from the political radar, yet the mire, murder and general mayhem the US, UK and dwindling “boots on the ground” allies find themselves in, are seemingly rooted in its aims, which march relentlessly on.

PNAC was founded under the Chairmanship of William Kristol, former Chief of Staff to Vice President Dan Quale during the Presidency of George Bush Snr. Kristol’s father, Irving Kristol has been described as the “Godfather of Neoconservatism.”

The organization was: “ ... dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: That American leadership is good for America and the world.” Projects were devised: “ ... to explain what American world leadership entails.” (i)

Consulting “the world” about the mind-numbing concept of a US planetary take-over was not a consideration.

Little time was wasted in advancing this new world order. On 29th May 1998 PNAC sent a letter (ii) to the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich and to Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott. It referred to a letter sent to President Clinton four months earlier: “expressing our concern” that U.S policy of “containment of Saddam Hussein was failing.” Thus: “the vital interests of the United States and its allies in the Middle East would soon be facing a threat as severe as any we had known since the end of the Cold War.”

Therefore a strategy should be implemented to: “... protect the United States and its allies from the threat of weapons of mass destruction (and) put in place policies” that would topple the Iraqi leadership.

Without a glance towards international law, the letter continued: “.U.S. policy should have as its specific goal removing Saddam Hussein’s regime ... Only the U.S. can (demonstrate) that his rule is not legitimate. To accomplish (this) the following political and military measures should be undertaken ...” The first “measure to be taken” was what has now become the blueprint for each planned overthrow of a sovereign government:

“We should help establish and support (with economic, political and military means) a provisional, representative and free government of Iraq in areas of Iraq not under Saddam’s control.”

That Iraq’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity” was guaranteed in law and by the United Nations was not an issue for consideration. Signatories, a veritable “Whose Who” of neo-cons, included John Bolton, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan, James Wolsey, Zalmay Khalizad and PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan.

Robert Kagan is currently on Hillary Clinton’s Foreign Policy Advisory Committee, his wife is Victoria Nuland, spokeswoman for the Clinton headed  U.S. State Department. Kagan’s loftily entitled book “The World America Made”, was publicly endorsed by Barack Obama.Its theme was referenced in his 2012 State of the Union address.

Nor has William Kristol gone away. In March 2011 he wrote an editorial in the Weekly Standard arguing that US Military “interventions” in Muslim countries (including the decimations of the 1991 Gulf War, the Balkans, and destructions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq) should not be classified as “invasions” but as “liberations.” Needless to say, he backed US “intervention” in Libya, urging Conservative support.

A more recent piece of war mongering was on Fox News (7th August 2012) when he opined:

“I went back and looked at the speech President Obama gave in March 2011 when he announced the very mild intervention in Libya, which did help to get rid of Qaddafi. Every reason he gave for intervening in Libya is there squared, in triplicate, for intervening in Syria, including the strategic importance of getting rid of Assad and weakening Iran, and we’re sitting there talking about ‘we really hope there won’t be sectarian violence later on’, and, gee, this is kind of unfortunate.”

Lobbying for War

AntiWar
Philip Giraldi

Occupy AIPAC demonstratoin against war with Iran

There has been considerable discussion of the meaning, or lack thereof, of the apparent difference of opinion between the United States and Israel over both the desirability and the possible timing of going to war with Iran. Those Americans who still revere the Constitution and the advice of the Founding Fathers should rightly be appalled that a war is even being considered on behalf of a small client state with which the United States has no treaty obliging such intervention. War with Iran would undoubtedly follow the usual pattern, being authorized by the White House without the constitutionally mandated declaration of war by Congress and likely developing out of an evolving situation in which Israel is being given a free pass to initiate the conflict.

That the United States is in such a parlous condition is directly due to the effective work of Israel’s principal lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which has just completed its annual convention. Consider what AIPAC and its friends in Congress and the media have accomplished: Understanding that the truth about Iran would not support their case, they have completely skewed the narrative about the threat posed by that country. Iran has no nuclear weapon, has not made a decision to acquire one, and may not even have the technical ability or financial resources to do so even if its government decides to move in that direction. Yet, AIPAC has succeeded in convincing the American public that Iran is already a nuclear power and is somehow a threat to the United States, all despite the fact that Iran, far from being an aggressor,  has been on the receiving end of covert operations run by Washington and Tel Aviv that have killed scores of Iranians. President Barack Obama has unhesitatingly endorsed the AIPAC line, emphasizing in his speech to that organization on March 4 that Iran is a security problem for the United States and the entire world, an elaboration straight out of Israel’s playbook that was noted approvingly by no less than Tom Friedman of The New York Times. Friedman asks “whether he [Obama] is the most pro-Israel president in history or just one of the most.”

AIPAC has also been effective in lining up Capitol Hill in its support. One third of Congress attended the AIPAC conference, and a number of individual legislators have been actively promoting the lobby’s line. Sen. Carl Levin is now calling for a military blockade of Iran, a clear act of war. Thirty-two senators, including Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and Joe Lieberman, are supporting legislation that will essentially authorize taking military action against Iran because it has the “capability” to create a nuclear weapon, a line that has already been crossed by Tehran as well as by other states in the region, including Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Why pick on Iran? Because that is what Israel wants (Israel, one might add, has, unlike Iran, attacked a number of its neighbors in recent years). Israel also possesses its own secret nuclear arsenal, giving it a combination of political recklessness and potentially cataclysmic military power that apparently causes no heartburn in Congress.

The Islamophobia Excuse

AntiWar
Philip Giraldi

It seems that the Republican presidential aspirants’ fervor to confront Islam has receded a bit with the decline and fall of Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, but one can likely still count on Rick Santorum to come up with some bon mots on the threat posed by Shariah law. Those who fear that hands will soon be lopped off shoplifters caught in Cleveland appear to be making much ado about nothing, but there is a much broader and more insidious agenda that is really playing out behind the scenes. Perry, Gingrich, and Santorum are all smart enough to know that Islamic law is hardly poised to dominate the U.S. legal system, but they are using it as the wedge issue to deny the patriotism of Muslims in general and fuel the demands to exercise a military option against Iran.

Promoting fear of Shariah law is essentially a red herring. There are more than 50 predominantly Muslim countries in the world, and, while most have elements of Shariah in their civil and family law, only two have it as their criminal codes. They are Saudi Arabia and Iran, one a close ally of the United States and the West and the other currently playing the cameo role of a threat to the entire world, to borrow a phrase from the eminent Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel. The countries that do not have Shariah as their criminal codes have modeled their laws on European and American models, some borrowing from Roman law and others from British common law.

Depicting Islam as manifestly medieval, backward, and cruel is not new, as it has been going on in one form or another since the Israelis and Palestinians first locked horns. Recognizing that the propaganda that is being ground out in the mainstream media derives from that conflict, it is easy to understand why Muslims are persistently portrayed in negative terms. And it should be equally unsurprising to learn that those who are denigrating Muslims and Islam are almost invariably among the most uncritical supporters of Likudist Israel and all its works.

The list of those who are passionate about how bad Islam is has a familiar ring to it. It is led by the truly vicious and fanatical like Pamela Geller and includes John Bolton, David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, and Charles Krauthammer. Geller has written that there is “a systematic campaign to impose Shariah on the secular marketplace” and to pervert the justice system in favor of Islamic exemptions, a theme that has been picked up by Gingrich and Santorum, both of whom favor pointless laws banning Shariah in any form. In a milder form, the same viewpoint is reflected in both the news coverage and the editorial pages of newspapers like The New York Post, The Washington Post, and even The New York Times. The arguments being made are not necessarily intended to convince anyone other than those who are already more than half onboard, but they are designed to keep the issue of how Muslims are not quite like the rest of us on the back burner to so that the legitimate aspirations of Palestinians and other Arabs will somehow always seem suspect. It also fuels other narratives that the neoconservatives and their friends support, like perpetual warfare against Islamic countries to bring about regime changes, suggesting that there is something that is not quite right in the way that Muslim countries govern themselves. The real objective is, however, spelled out in the paper that the neocons presented to Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, “A Clean Break,” advocating the breakup of Arab countries into smaller components that would be perpetually at war with themselves, thereby assuring Israeli predominance in the region. As is so often the case, the conversation in the United States is really all about Israel.

Romney, Virginia GOP commits election fraud: FOX News

The Examiner
Michael Phelps

With only minutes before the first Super-Tuesday Caucuses were set to close, FOX News and the University of Virginia Center for Politics reported a likely election fraud situation, committed by Mitt Romney and the Virginia GOP.

The establishment elite may be up to their usual 2012, nomination process shenanigans again as more people in positions of knowing have come forward to proclaim their displeasure with the establishment’s handling of challenges to their favorite candidate.

Multiple states across the country reported precincts tampered with, votes permanently lost, elections oddly postponed, permanently unverifiable results, and now simply not even allowing candidates to even be on the ballot to begin with.

Reporting from Virginia, FOX News’s Shannon Breen gave voice to political analyst, Virginia Tech’s Larry Sabato, who says it is very likely Mitt Romney and the Virginia GOP establishment, and their minions purposely kept signatures from being counted so, at least, Newt Gingrich wouldn’t be on Virginia’s ballot on Super-Tuesday.
 

With only minutes before the first Super-Tuesday Caucuses were set to close, FOX News and the University of Virginia Center for Politics reported a likely election fraud situation, committed by Mitt Romney and the Virginia GOP.



The establishment elite may be up to their usual 2012, nomination process shenanigans again as more people in positions of knowing have come forward to proclaim their displeasure with the establishment’s handling of challenges to their favorite candidate.
Multiple states across the country reported precincts tampered with, votes permanently lost, elections oddly postponed, permanently unverifiable results, and now simply not even allowing candidates to even be on the ballot to begin with.

Reporting from Virginia, FOX News’s Shannon Breen gave voice to political analyst, Virginia Tech’s Larry Sabato, who says it is very likely Mitt Romney and the Virginia GOP establishment, and their minions purposely kept signatures from being counted so, at least, Newt Gingrich wouldn’t be on Virginia’s ballot on Super-Tuesday.

 

If the allegations are investigated and found to be accurate, it would represent an addition to the growing list of reports showing the establishment elite to be manipulating the nomination process country wide, in favor on Mitt Romney.

Further stealing caucuses from other candidates, mainly Ron Paul, to likely insure the continuance of a 1%’r agenda that, according to Wall Street and the lion’s share of its campaign donation money, Mitt Romney is most likely to support should he be the nominee and beat Obama in November.

Supporting Medium: 

FOX News (video): Romney & GOP kept Gingrich off of Virginia ballot

Examiner: Ron Paul’s wife, Carol Paul says elections are being stolen

CSM: Did Mitt Romney steal Maine caucuses from Ron Paul?

BuzzFeed: “Outrage”: Ron Paul Manager Claim Conspiracy In Maine

Political Wire: Santorum Says Romney Rigged Straw Poll

WSJ: Paul Campaign Challenges Romney's Maine Win

Examiner: Maine vote fraud official

Examiner: Nevada vote fraud official

Examiner: Iowa vote fraud official

Suggested by the author:

• Iowa’s delegate seats for sale: Sources
  
• Carol Paul: Election fraud confirmed
  
• Romney Paul alliance: Pure establishment theater
  
• Ron Paul Campaign: Establishment hiding Maine Caucus results
  
• Newsmax accidentally prints Romney Nevada win article 2 days early

Israel and the American Elections

The Dukes of Hazzard star who could destroy Newt Gingrich ... again

Guardian
Ed Pilkington

The actor at the centre of Newt's mid-90s tax scandal watches the former speaker's resurrection with amazement and disgust


 

  As Newt Gingrich fights to save his political life, locked in a potentially decisive battle in the final days of the Florida primary with his bitter rival Mitt Romney, one man is following the struggle with peculiarly intense and personal interest.

Ben Jones is best known by millions of Americans as the actor who played "Crazy" Cooter Davenport, the truck driving mechanic in the hit 1980s TV series, The Dukes of Hazzard. But in politics, Jones is credited with having helped destroy Newt Gingrich's Congressional career by leveling accusations of financial improprieties at him, which ultimately led to his resignation from the speakership.

Jones has watched the improbable resurrection of Gingrich as a presidential contender almost two decades later with a mixture of bemusement and disgust. "It's astonishing to me that this has come back around. It testifies to the fact that Mr Gingrich cannot be destroyed by conventional weapons – he is the abominable Newt Man."

Ben Jones

Jones sounded the alarm about Gingrich's dodgy practices in September 1994 at a time when he was locked in his own bitter electoral battle with the speaker over a Congressional seat in Georgia. Jones, who by then had served two terms in Congress as a Democratic member having turned to politics after Dukes of Hazzard went off the air, presented the House ethics committee with 450 pages of documents that proved to be incendiary.

They revealed that Gingrich had used charitable donations that were tax-deductible to fund his own political ambitions to launch a conservative revolution in America – a violation of the law that does not allow political activities to be written off against tax.

Over the next three years, his activities were investigated by the ethics committee which discovered that Gingrich had not only committed the tax violation but had misled the committee about what he had done – thus bringing discredit on the House.

The result was a historic $300,000 fine and reprimand by Congress. The blow to Gingrich's standing proved terminal – he failed to be returned by fellow Republicans as Speaker and would quit Congress in 1998.

Jones still has a box of papers relating to the Gingrich ethics investigation gathering dust in his garage. The events of the past few weeks – with Gingrich making a surprise surge to win the South Carolina primary, only to be bombarded with accusations about his unethical past in Florida – has brought the memory of 1994 flooding back.

"It was there in black and white. The documents showed that what he had done was a tax dodge – it was chicanery and it was illegal under tax law."

Jones, 70, thinks that despite the passage of so much time, the contents of that box are still highly relevant. "It shows that what he did was wrong. And it exemplifies the way that he operated then, and operates still."

Ron Paul attacks eclipsing the real issues?

The choice for US voters in November 2012: ruin the Republican Party or the USA

Redress

Lawrence Davidson

Lawrence Davidson views the participants in the freak show of ignoramuses and bigots contending the US Republican presidential nomination and argues that the stark choice facing American voters in next year’s presidential election is either to ruin the Republican Party or their own country.

The circus

There has been a steady drumbeat of criticism levelled against the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination. As they have gone around the country holding their debates they have distinguished themselves as shallow, ignorant, hypocritical and mendacious. At these debates, the only ones who show themselves more discreditable then the candidates are those in the audience. Here is some recent criticism:
　
Marc Pitzke, writing in the German Der Spiegel Online, tells us that among the Republican primary hopefuls:

A. One thinks Africa is a country (Rick Santorum) and another thinks that the Taliban have moved into Libya (the now defunct Herman Cain).
　
B. Rick Perry falsifies President Obama’s opinions and statements with impunity while exaggerating his own achievements – claiming to have created a million new jobs while the actual number, according to Pitzke, is 100,000.
　
C. Mitt Romney, the Mormon who would lead a political party which must rely on millions of Christian fundamentalist votes, is touted as an economic expert, but Forbes Magazine describes his proposals in this area as "dangerous".
　
Newt Gingrich (who the Washington Post has called an "idea man") is, according to Pitzke, full of "lousy" ideas. One example is his public suggestion that US child labour laws be altered so that school children can clean their schools at the expense of often unionized janitors. Pitzke continues:

Gingrich claims moral authority on issues such as the “sanctity of marriage” yet he has been divorced twice. He sprang the divorce on his first wife while she was sick with cancer... He cheated on his second wife [an affair with one of his House aides] just as he was pressing ahead with Bill Clinton’s impeachment during the Monica Lewinsky affair....

Even worse will certainly come if Gingrich reaches the White House. Speaking at the Jewish Coalition Candidates Forum on 7 December 2011 Gingrich pledged to make John Bolton his secretary of state. Bolton is a vulgar warmonger – certainly one of the most dangerous of American’s neo-conservatives.
All in all, Pitzke thinks the Republican candidates "traipsing around the country" as if part of a "traveling circus" are "ruining the reputation of the United States".
　
He is not alone in that opinion. David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker Magazine, and ipso facto a representative of the US intelligentsia, has remarked that the Republican candidates collectively represent "a starting point for a chronicle of American decline". Remnick observes that:

A. Rick Perry displays an "inability to answer a simple question with a coherent reply".
　
B. Mitt Romney possesses a "spooky elasticity, his capacity to reverse himself utterly on one issue after another...."

The New Yorker editor concludes that the "spectacle of the Republican field is a reflection of the hollowness of the GOP [“Grand Old Party” – the Republican Party]itself."
　
This "hallowness" seems to be tempting others to jump into the race. Yet they are certainly no better. For instance, there are rumours that Sarah Palin might change her mind and come into the fray. And Donald Trump has repeated his determination that "if Republican primary voters can’t pick a candidate he believes will beat President Obama, he’ll run for president himself". Trump dismissed the two Republican candidates who, now and then, make sense (Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul) as "joke candidates". The media seems to agree with him, for these are the two who have gotten almost no air time either during the debates or after them. When it comes to the Republican primary, the media seems to be dancing to that old Judy Garland tune, "Be a clown ... all the world loves a clown."


The audience

“There is something at once humorous and horrifying about the audience at these [Republican] debates. Their cheers and jeers reflect attitudes that used to be restricted to drunken fraternity parties and out-of-control soccer games.”

One might wonder at such bizarre performances from folks seeking the most powerful job in the world. However, what is more bizarre still is that most of them are simply projections of their audience, who are, in turn, representatives of the so-called Republican base. There is something at once humorous and horrifying about the audience at these debates. Their cheers and jeers reflect attitudes that used to be restricted to drunken fraternity parties and out-of-control soccer games.
　
Who are these people with whom the Republican hopefuls now identify? They appear to be Tea Party people along with a healthy admixture of xenophobes and Social Darwinists. Research into the Tea Party element tells us that they are:

1. "Overwhelming white" and "highly partisan Republicans".

2. Their concern about big government is "hardly the only or even the most important" of their issues.

3. They have extremely "low regard for immigrants and [with the possible exception of the by-gone Herman Cain] blacks".
　
4. They are extreme social conservatives "opposing abortion" and demanding that "religion play a more dominant role in politics". In fact, research shows that a desire to infuse politics with religion is the most common demand of these people.

People who meet this description make up about 20 per cen  of eligible voters in the US. However, keep in mind this number goes up when looked at as a percentage of voters who actually cast a ballot. In other words, these radicals are more motivated to vote than the moderates. Sadly, these type of people have always been with us and probably always will be.

A lot of us are, to one extent or another, alienated from the society we live in, but we learn to cope. These people do not learn to cope. Therefore ,their alienation festers and the resulting anger turns them against all who are different: immigrants, gays, ethnic and racial minorities, intellectuals, secular folks, union members, etc. They find their ego strength in the illusion of self-reliance. They see themselves as the real traditional Americans, the survivors, the ones who are strong enough to stand on their own two feet. Anyone who cannot do this is "unfit" and, like the hypothetical ill fellow without any health care insurance, should be left to die. They make up a community apart and they detest the idea of paying taxes so that others in need can receive social services. They are macho, they hate the enemy – any enemy– no questions asked. Someone out there (maybe the Koch brothers) is trying to organize these people and convince them that politically their time has come. The Republican Party is their vehicle.
The choices
The two most likely consequences of this situation are: (1) the ruination of the Republican Party or (2) the ruination of the United States. The more likely Republican nominees for president would put the Republican Party far to the right of "mainstream" America. All things being equal, that should mean electoral disaster (the ruination of the party) in November 2012.

“...it is possible, if not probable, that a crazy right-wing president (one even more shallow, ignorant, hypocritical and mendacious then George W. Bush) could in fact be elected. If that happened it could mean ruin for the nation and disaster for the world.”
But, of course, sometimes all things aren’t equal. Thus, with disappointment in President Obama running so deep among America progressives, there is no telling how many of them might sit out the 2012 election. Even though progressives alone do not win elections, there numbers count if things get close. Thus, it is possible, if not probable, that a crazy right-wing president (one even more shallow, ignorant, hypocritical and mendacious then George W. Bush) could in fact be elected. If that happened it could mean ruin for the nation and disaster for the world. Here is why:

1. Such a president would almost certainly take the country into another full scale war, probably with Iran and therefore the Shi’i Muslim world. They would continue to comply with Israeli wishes without question, further alienating the majority of people in the Sunni Muslim world. US state violence and terrorism will increase and breed reciprocal terrorism in the Middle East. Therefore, more 9/11-style episodes could be expected. The new president’s tough-guy attitude would no doubt spill over into policy toward Russia and China. The United Nations and international law would be discarded (to say nothing of the general practice of diplomacy) and torture would again be a standard procedure for clandestine American government operations.
　
2. Domestically, such a president would hack away at all government agencies except those involved with the military, police bureaus (FBI), intelligence and the courts. Social services would go by the boards as would regulatory oversight. The natural environment would deteriorate. The gap between rich and poor would grow and grow while the middle class would shrink and shrink. Marx’s predictions for capitalism would come back into style on the left. Essentially, a new age of Social Darwinism would dawn. Poverty would increase, racism would come back into the public realm and urban riots would probably come along at some point as well. A new depression would be a real possibility. By the time the nation’s voting citizens came back to their senses it might be too late because by then civil liberties would be a thing of the past.

In a real sense, it is the voters’ choice in 2012. Which do they care to ruin – the Republican Party or the USA? There can be no doubt that voting again for President Obama would require strongly holding one’s nose. However, voting for his Republican challenger may well kill you outright.

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Book Review: The Invention of the Jewish People

Who makes a better case?  Newt Gingrich or Shlomo Sand?

CATO Institute
Leon T. Hadar

When I visited Greece in the summer of 2000, that state was in the midst of a heated debate about its national identity, closely tied historically to its national religion. Indeed, about 97 percent of Greece's native-born population is baptized into the Orthodox Church, which sees itself as the true guardian of Greek identity and traditions. But, in 2000, the European Union (EU) — Greece has been a member since 1981 — was putting pressure on the Greeks to follow in the footsteps of the secular members of the EU and take the historic step of accentuating the non-religious elements of its national identity.

The constitution of Greece recognizes the Greek Orthodox faith as the "prevailing" religion of the country; in fact, the blue canton in the upper hoist-side corner of the Greek national flag bears a white cross that symbolizes Greek Orthodoxy. And while the constitution guarantees freedom of religious belief for all, Greek citizens had for years carried government identity cards that stated their religion. So, by the end of the twentieth century, Brussels was demanding that Athens remove "religion" from the government's identity card.


During my visit, the debate over religion was reaching a climax of sorts. One Greek newspaper editorialized that Greece was experiencing "a profound identity crisis as it wrestles with what it means to be Greek, fundamental ties between church and state, and how Greek traditions fit in with the rest of Europe."

An American Jewish tourist from Marin County, California, whom I met at a hotel in Athens, was furious. "Could you imagine American citizens being required to carry government identity cards that name their religion?" she asked during one of our breakfasts. "And Greece is one of our closest allies," she noted. I surprised her when I mentioned that Israeli citizens also have to carry official identity cards that identify their religion and nationality. "But I thought that Israel was very much like us," she responded.

I recalled that exchange after reading Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People, a study of Jewish historiography that has ignited a lot of interest and some controversy in Israel and abroad. Sand, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University, challenges the biblical and conventional history of the Jewish people. He attempts to prove that Israeli Jews as well as those Jews who are citizens of other states are not the direct descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the First and Second Temple period but include peoples that converted to Judaism during the course of history, mostly in the Mediterranean Basin and its periphery.

Countering official Zionist historiography, Sand questions whether the Jewish People ever existed as a national group with a common origin in the Land of Israel/Palestine. He concludes that the Jews should be seen as a religious community comprising a mishmash of individuals and groups that had converted to the ancient monotheistic religion but do not have any historical right to establish an independent Jewish state in the Holy Land.  In short, the Jewish People, according to Sand, are not really a "people" in the sense of having a common ethnic origin and national heritage. They certainly do not have a political claim over the territory that today constitutes Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem.

An intellectual committed to the secular and liberal traditions of the West, Sand criticizes the Zionist historians and ideologues — he suggests that Zionist historians are ideologues — who introduced a mythical conception of the Jewish People as an ancient race. He charges them with racist thinking. "Today, if anyone dares to suggest that those who are considered Jews in the world ... have never constituted and still do not constitute a people or a nation — he is immediately condemned as a hater of Israel," Sand writes. He contrasts the Zionist dogma that legitimizes the classification of Israeli Jews as members of the Jewish "religion" and "nation" in the government's identity cards with "civic" or "contractual" nationalism. This latter concept, developed by Enlightenment philosophers like John Locke, defines the nation as an association of people with equal and shared political rights and allegiance to similar political procedures. This sort of civic nationalism excludes religious, racial and even ethnic origins from the definition of the collective identity of Americans or, for that matter, the French and other Western societies. It is celebrated by liberal American-Jews (and non-Jews) like the one I met in Athens in 2000. They recognize that any attempt to impose a more exclusive definition on American identity that reflects the white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant origin of the founders would result in the political and cultural marginalization of American Jews.

Palestinians tell Gingrich to learn history after 'invented people' claim

Guardian

Officials in West Bank and Gaza say Republican presidential hopeful is cheaply trying to win the pro-Israel vote in US

Palestinian officials have reacted with dismay after the Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said Palestinians were an "invented" people.

The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, said Gingrich was denying "historical truths".

Gingrich said in an interview with The Jewish Channel that Palestinians were not a race of people because they had never had a state and because they were part of the Ottoman empire before the British mandate and Israel's creation.

"Remember, there was no Palestine as a state, [it was] part of the Ottoman empire," he said in a video excerpt posted online. "I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places."

Fayyad demanded Gingrich "review history". He said: "From the beginning, our people have been determined to stay on their land."

Fayyad's comments were carried by the Palestinian news agency Wafa. "This, certainly, is denying historical truths," he said.

Gingrich's statements struck at the heart of Palestinian sensitivities about their national struggle. Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian politician, said Gingrich had "lost touch with reality" and his statements were "a cheap way to win [the] pro-Israel vote".

A spokesman for Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, called Gingrich's statements "shameful and disgraceful". "These statements … show genuine hostility toward Palestinians," the spokesman said.

Newt Gingrich says the Government should allow terror attacks so people are reminded how much we need them.

The level of ignorance is startling.  Is he really that dumb?

The fix is in: Republicans make sure Obama serves second term

The PPJ Gazette
John Boering

I have concluded that we may as well dispense with the coming media circus surrounding the 2012 presidential election.  Think of it: no phony “debates”, no stage shows, no mud slinging ads, no having to hear the same lame lies and

statements as one candidate after another tries to convince us that he/she will reverse the terrible destructive course the US  is on.  We don’t need to subject ourselves to any of it; the fix is in and Obama wins hands down, no competition……or at least none that the Republican party will acknowledge.  Why upset the status quo?

How do I know this?

The Republican party could easily sweep the elections and retake the White House simply by running Ron Paul (R) TX.  Poll after poll shows Paul garnering  25% with GOP voters and as much as 70% or more with the public  from BOTH sides of the political spectrum.

During the GOP debate, CBS twice removed a candidate poll because the support for Ron Paul showed that he was far and away the leading choice for Republican voters and that was not supposed to happen!




So why wouldn’t the Republican party run what is clearly a winning candidate? Hmmmmm. Because Ron Paul would put an end to much of the power Republicans and Democrats enjoy as a result of their own self-pandering, power grabbing and unconstitutional activity.

Instead they are offering the sorriest collection of non-starters most likely ever assembled for a presidential race and are actively blacking out and refusing to acknowledge the popularity of Paul with the voters and what would be a sure-fire land-slide election.

When I see politicians such as Newt (I just can’t keep my pants on)Gingrich being paraded out for the umpteenth time and treated as if he is actually a viable and desirable candidate for the country’s highest office, knowing this man’s proclivity for mistresses and philandering, for abusing position and power, I tend to think the Republican party has bottomed out.

Most of Newt Gingrich's Twitter Followers Are Fake

Gawker

Yesterday Newt Gingrich laid out a new argument for why he should be the GOP presidential nominee: He's got the most Twitter followers. But according to a former Gingrich staffer, he bought them.

Gingrich complained yesterday that the press is ignoring his prodigious Twitter audience: "I have six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined, but it didn't count because if it counted I'd still be a candidate; since I can't be a candidate that can't count." Which is true! Gingrich currently boasts 1,325,842 followers, whereas competitors Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann have yet to crack 100,000.

But if Newt is winning the Twitter primary, it's because of voter fraud. A former staffer tells us that his campaign hired a firm to boost his follower count, in part by creating fake accounts en masse:

Newt employs a variety of agencies whose sole purpose is to procure Twitter followers for people who are shallow/insecure/unpopular enough to pay for them. As you might guess, Newt is most decidedly one of the people to which these agencies cater.

About 80 percent of those accounts are inactive or are dummy accounts created by various "follow agencies," another 10 percent are real people who are part of a network of folks who follow others back and are paying for followers themselves (Newt's profile just happens to be a part of these networks because he uses them, although he doesn't follow back), and the remaining 10 percent may, in fact, be real, sentient people who happen to like Newt Gingrich. If you simply scroll through his list of followers you'll see that most of them have odd usernames and no profile photos, which has to do with the fact that they were mass generated. Pathetic, isn't it?

That's quite a different explanation for Gingrich's Twitter popularity than the one offered by this Politico story on the subject: "[I]t's his personal touch: He tweets and manages his Twitter feed himself, his campaign confirmed to POLITICO. All told, he has tweeted 2,611 times in the 29 months since he joined the site."

While it would be impossible to survey all of Gingrich's followers, a cursory glance immediately turned up a few accounts that featured odd names, no personal information, no followers, no posts, and a small follow list. And there's certainly a healthy market out there for buying Twitter followers, either by hiring a company to strategically follow accounts that will follow you back or by paying for dummy accounts. If Gingrich did goose his Twitter numbers, it would help explain why he has, for instance, more than twice as many followers as Sarah Palin, which just doesn't sound right.

The Gingrich campaign didn't respond to a message seeking comment.