Another Journalism Scandal – the Debat/ABC case

92 thoughts on “Another Journalism Scandal – the Debat/ABC case”

1. London Times (Murdoch Media)
   This is to Scott may inlight his argument with me before when commenting:
   What should matter isn’t the ethnicity or identity of the person raising the concern, but the merits of the complaint itself.

2. “The Great Satan,” his late grandfather called the US as he loomed into the Iranian scene as the saviour of the nation after ousting the Shah from power in 1979. “Death to America,” his followers rallied to him.
   “America means freedom,” says his grandson today. “Iranians will welcome American intervention if that the way to freedom for themselves,” he says.
   Many see Hossein Khomeini’s sudden appearance in Baghdad as a glimpse into the uncertainty of regional developments that have been brought about by the US invasion of Iraq, ouster of Saddam Hussein from power and occupation of the country.
   It comes amid an American intensification of pressure against Iran, after accusing the theocratic regime there of being a destabilising factor in the region by seeking to develop nuclear weapons and supporting “terrorist” groups in Palestine and Lebanon.
   Thomas Friedman, who interviewed Hossein Khomeini in early August, wrote: “The best thing about being in Baghdad these days is that you just never know who’s going to show up for dinner.”
   Friedman said he was introduced to Hossein Khomeini by “a rising progressive Iraqi Shiite cleric, Sayyid Iyad Jamaleddine, at his home on the banks of the Tigris.”
   Jamaleddine introduced Hossein Khomeini to Friedman, as — and rightfully so — “this is Sayyid Hussein Khomeini — the grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran’s Islamic revolution.”
   Friedman wrote of Hossein Khomeini: “He has Ayatollah Khomeini’s fiery eyes and steely determination, but the soul of a Muslim liberal.”
   Dinner With the Sayyids
   Thomas L. Friedman

3. For those who missed the reference, the factually significant observation that the London Times is owned by Rupert Murdoch has just been equated with bigotry…. (?) And it’s equally curious to see a four year old excerpt from (pro-Iraq war) Friedman’s oped on Khomeini’s grandson – as if it was on-topic. (except perhaps that HK hurt his own standing inside Iran when he became tied to the neocons @ AEI the same year.)

4. On-topic, and for more on the “curious” trail from Debat, see Laura Rozen’s blog:
   http://www.warandpiece.com/
   Among other curious tidbits, notice the letter she shares from the Nixon Center, where they note:
   “First, I should tell you that Alexis Debat is no longer affiliated with The Nixon Center or The National Interest. He resigned yesterday for personal reasons. Also, strictly for clarification, his former role as a contributing editor to the magazine was unpaid and was not a staff position; he was compensated strictly for individual contributions on a case-by-case basis.”
   —————–
   This reminds me of “Rob” Sobhani, the Shah’s son’s de facto “foreign minister” — who “teaches” courses on US-Iran relations at Georgetown University “for free” (or at least that’s what I was once told by a source there).
   Darn, no wonder part-time teaching pay rates at even major universities are so low…. (If you can get folks to teach for free — while serving their own interests — why pay real $) Ha.
   The Nixon Center admission is just as “interesting” — though it could be that he got paid as Nixon Center associate, but not as a NI editor. (and the difference is?) In the end, who got “used” more?

5. Further (on topic) here, from Rozen’s excellent digging, quoting Brian Ross:
   “We feel comfortable with sources not from Debat that the U.S. has at least contact with and communication this that group on an ongoing basis … to help fight al Qaeda.”
   Of course, the sensation in the original report wasn’t that the CIA was supporting a Baluch group to fight against al-Qaeda, but that they somehow were helping them in a fight against Iran…. (e.g., the title of the ABC “exclusive” — “The Secret War Against Iran”)
   If this is Ross’s cover-story, then he’s more slippery than Debat….

6. I looked at the French source, rue89.com, some days ago. The point not mentioned here is that Alexis Debat claims a doctorate from Edenvale University in the UK, an unapproved organisation that sells degrees, and from the Sorbonne, whereas in fact he did a DEA there (equivalent of Master’s).
   I find it a grave error that the Times took him as a serious source for a major article, which has had many consequences in the Blogosphere.
   That said, his remarks cannot be far from the truth. A war-plan to attack Iran certainly exists, and from the experience of previous US war-plans, an all-compassing bombing plan is quite likely, more likely than isolated attacks on the nuclear plants. The question is whether such an all-encompassing attack plan will succeed. I would say no; such an attack is more likely to provoke Iranian resistance.
   So why did he put it out?
   I would have thought an effort to frighten the Iranian regime. I admit to not having read the SOAS report, which claims potential success for an air attack. I think it unimaginable, whatever the qualities of the attack, that the Iranian regime would be cowed. Obviously, the Yugoslav model is being thought of, where a government could give way, or the Afghan, where local forces could follow US bombing to the capital. Neither of those circumstances exists in Iran. Only nationalist resistance will be provoked, in spite of the well-known discontent with the regime.
   I would have thought that Debat’s contribution was part of the NeoCon propaganda. He may think that by that the Iranians will spread their air defence over all targets, rather than concentrating them on the nuclear plants. The Iranian air defence is weak, whatever new Russian weapons are bought, and a US attack will certainly be able to bypass it. The aim may simply be to reduce the number of missiles flying at US planes or cruise missiles, even if they are evadable.
   The solution for the Iranians is to hide installations underground, which they are doing according to all reports.
   So Debat’s remarks are part of a game, maybe the Iranian defences will be spread out, maybe not, certainly worth saying, should the attack be limited to so-called nuclear sites.
   That is not to say that the Iranians *are* building a nuclear bomb, which they have denied, rather it is the thoughts of Washington which is in question.

7. So far there is no evidence that the Iranians are doing anything nuclearly that they do not have every right to do, and that does not make perfectly good sense to do. I understand their revenues from oil exports have been down due to high domestic demand. If they could develop nuclear power, they could export more oil. In fact, I understand that some of the very Americans who are busily beating the war drums now advised them to do just that back in the ’70’s or ’80’s.
   This whole thing is a manufactured crisis. The fact that it is not manufactured exclusively out of thin air as the Iraq “crisis” was does not change the fact that it IS being manufactured out of very little in order to justify yet more American crimes against humanity.
   And here we sit chatting about the details of it in such a calm, cold-blooded manner. SOMEBODY has to do SOMETHING about these lunatics, and I don’t know what more to do than I have been doing for the last six years.
   PS It would not concern me in the least if Iran DID get “the bomb”, and I would not blame them in the least if that were one of their goals.

8. good points…. Indeed, I hadn’t focused on the controversy regarding Debat’s credentials. (The first WaPo link I provided does) Rozen also mentions it in her work, and the second “link” in my text is to an “annotated” version of Debat’s c.v., posted to her web site) I did read Debat’s initial defense — wherein he provided a link to a Sorbonne list of dissertations completed…. I didn’t see his listed…. His “defense” and threats of lawsuits against Rue89 have apparently deepened his problems.
   By the way, by debunking Debat’s credibility (and the particular stories he’s sensationalized), I don’t think we’re denying the serious concern that (yet again) there’s a major ramping up of the rhetoric by the Bush Administration — and in the media — together suggesting there’s considerable determination to provoke a war with Iran.
   It’s a serious concern, even as I realize there’s a compelling “rational” argument that the US doesn’t really want a “hot war” with Iran. For a counter to that view, see Trita Parsi’s “Long Division” article referenced on the sidebar…. (published in “American Conservative Magazine”)

9. Barnett Rubin has been articulating the “Iran war rollout” theme, via several important posts to the new ic group blog. Here’s his latest….
   http://icga.blogspot.com/2007/09/iran-war-rollout-roils-blogosphere.html
   While I share his great concerns (as have been similarly emphasized by Parsi, Porter, McGovern, etc.), I’m still wondering, (with Gary Sick, et.al.) is the full Bush Administration really THAT irrational to pick a war with Iran now????
   Please know I don’t mean to make light of this, with such a short comment. It indeed is a huge, vital debate, and bears extremely close watching. I’ll try to at least post more of the links for those here who might not yet have seen the works I’ve just mentioned….

10. Here’s Porter’s “connecting of the dots” — with a warning that if there’s not a serious “push back,” those seeking to instigate a hot war with Iran will get their wish.
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-gareth-porter/war-against-iran-and-the-_b_63615.html
    And since I mentioned “AmConMag” above, then let’s also note Imanuel Wallerstein’s essay today in Agence Global:
    http://www.agenceglobal.com/article.asp?id=1361
    (I’ve read it three times thus far, and I’m still not sure what he’s saying at the end…. does he think that rationality will prevail, or that it won’t — and that the resulting folly will fail?)

11. Scott, I find it close to impossible to believe that even the Bushite madmen are delusional enough to actually attack Iran, but can we really afford to assume anything but that they will if something is not done to stop them?
    The question I keep asking is what? What can anyone do?

12. Core, good question Shirin. Getting informed, of course, if first step, and asking the tough questions.
    What really concerns me is when certain supposedly leftist papers, like even the Guardian, have lately become part of the war-fever, disinformation crowd. (recall my “judith miller sighting” posts)
    Today, they had a more subtle story along the same lines:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2169798,00.html
    Nobody in this story questions the evidence, just fretting about the response. Patrick Clawson’s comments are particularly telling, citing un-named lower-level officers who supposedly are chafing at the bit to hit back Iran, but oh dear, the wise one (of WINEP/AIPAC) “moderately” counsels that the US instead should work more on border control.
    Yah right. When all else fails, build a wall.
    Much more to consider, debate, — and yes, do something about. :-}

13. Scott, being informed is important, no doubt. Helping to inform others is also important, no doubt. On September 11, 2001, hours after the attacks, I heard the drumbeat beginning for the attack on Iraq. Since then I have spent most of my free time (and a considerable amount of time that is not “free”, if you get my drift), keeping up with information as best I could.
    I have done everything in my power to help inform others. I have spoken at teach-ins, rallies, and vigils, written volume after volume, done radio interviews, and created any and every excuse I could to talk to people at work, on the streets, in the line at the grocery store, in the dentists’ waiting room – anywhere I could get a captive audience for a few moments.
    It stopped nothing, and it changed nothing (except a few people’s minds).
    Being informed is not enough. Informing others is not enough.
    So, in addition to being informed, what practical steps can we take to stop the lunatic in the White House from doing something that could very well start WW III?
    I am hearing a cacophony of “we have to take action”. Two weeks ago Ray McGovern eloquently exhorted us to roll up our sleeves on Labor Day to put a stop to an attack on Iran. My question was OK, my sleeves are rolled. Now what? Roll them and do what? Whenever I ask this kind of question, the silence is deafening.

14. Excellent question Shirin. Let’s think hard on this and compare notes (and our many “silent” readers too!)…. We can also look to see what else is already being done, where’s it lacking, and what can be built upon…. You’ve indeed raised “THE” question.

15. Scott/ Shirin
    I suspect you are suffering the same frustration we had in the UK last year when the Israelis were attacking Lebanon.
    At least in the UK system the MPs could gang up on Mr Blair and force him to quit when we inundated them with mail.
    Frederick the Great said “Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.”
    To stop an attack on Iran you may need to depend on Vladimir Putin. A fast tracked membership of SCO and CSTO solves the problem.
    A Russian guided missile cruiser moored off Bushehr and a couple of regiments of Air Defence artillery deployed around Teheran and Isfahan with a couple of squadrons of Russian Air Force in Iran on a “training mission” to show the Iranians how to use their shiny new Sukhois might dampen people’s ardour.
    More worrying is the recent attack on Syria.
    Apparently the good old North Korean WMD have landed in Syria helped by AQ Khan and the Quds force with a guest apearance by the good old Syrian Chemical Weapons. Cameo Appearnce by John Bolton as the ex Administration Official. Joshua Landis relays the latest potboiler from …. You Guessed it .. The Sunday Times.
    http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/

16. With respect, inundation with mail is not sufficient, or even necessary. As a tactic, it leads nowhere.
    What has to be done is as clear as it always has been. People have to become organised in democratic formations for a single strategic purpose that must be upheld up in a clear manner and over long periods of time.
    The independence of such organisations must be absolute.
    In this case the goal is peace with Iran. It needs its own mass-membership organisation with a proper democratic structure and a constitution that prohibits it from taking up any other cause, just as much as it is prohibited from subordinating itself to any broader political body. All this should be put in place, even if the mass is only ten members to begin with.
    All-comers should be admitted, provided they support the democracy. The organisation should be sustained by the members. It is vital to distinguish between such a democratic constitution, with a circumscribed and simple goal – peace with Iran – and other, non-democratic practices.
    By non-democratic practices we would mean funded charities, and also membership organisations based on a fixed prior charter of demands. This latter form will not work, cannot work, and has never worked, because it kills democracy. It inhibits recruitment, and choice of leadership, to those who will swear a priori allegiance to a fixed hybrid formula of strategy and tactics. Whereas the strategic goal must be simple and short, and the tactics of course variable, and not dogmatic.
    But any tactics used must necessarily tend to build the organisation in numbers, in sections, and in quality and depth of understanding (conscientisation).
    Petitions and letter-writing or e-mail campaigns do not build organisation. They leave no organisational residue. Instead of using these tactics, the same effort should be applied to building the contact list of the organisation, from which its active membership should be drawn.
    A permanent standing organised body of people is much more formidable vis-a-vis the state than an inbox full of e-mail that has a half-life of about three days.
    Similarly, the organisation should at all times stress direct action of citizens (as voters, as consumers, and as workers) so as to retain agency with the movement and not to broker it away to third parties. For example, boycott (we act) is good. Sanctions (we press somebody else to act) is nothing like as good, and possibly fatal. This is a vital tactical distinction, without which the strategic initiative will be lost.
    Similarly again, the movement must stay intact and maintain a steady upward trajectory through all electoral cycles and over a period of years, perhaps decades. It must always refuse to be hushed and must expect of its cadres that they remain at their posts at election times – especially then! It is the candidates who must be obliged to move, and not the peace organisation. It must be like a rock.
    The means to build such a movement are much better now than they have ever been. A free tool like a Google Group, for example, can effect most of the membership and communication functions and from it hard copy can be generated where that is needed. Conceptually there would be three such groups (and a similar three-way effort at local and sectional levels). These would be an open discussion forum; a formal membership; and a media release distribution group.
    For an account of how the Anti-Apartheid Movement was established, see Christabel Gurney’s essay, “A Great Cause”, archived in the African National Congress web site. The way that this was done was crucial to ensuring the AAM’s more than 30 years of sustained growth and final success (in conjunction with other components of the struggle). It is the model to follow – but using the newer electronic means. Count yourself lucky if you don’t know what an Addressograph machine is, or if you have never seen a stencil duplicator.

17. Scott and Shirin
    Today it is the Telegraph.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/16/wiran116.xml
    Note how the US wants to push the Brits forward in the diagram while the Generals want to withdraw to Kuwait.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/16/wiran316.xml
    I wonder if you have listened to Patrick Clawson on the Recent Hecklers program on BBC. (You can get the audio from archives)

18. Frank al Irlandi, can you comment on Scott’s observation that the Guardian has begun to be more credulous about Bush administration assertions about the world? I’m concerned about this myself.
    Simon Tisdale, who in the past was a sober critic of US propaganda, published a column this year that parrotted without caveat unnamed American sources to the effect that Iran was sponsoring attacks on Americans in Iraq. What bothered me most about this was the Guardian’s reaction to the many complaints that resulted – a highly disingenuous “who, us?” response from both the managing editor and the omsbudsman who firmly denied that there was any basis for complaint, though there clearly was. (Unfortunately I’m unable to locate either the article or the discussions with the Guardian’s search engine).
    The was very disturbing to one who relied on the Guardian for sane analysis during the build-up to the Iraq invasion, when the entire US media establishment lost its wits.

19. Dominic, I think you’re quite right about the need to build a mass movement for peace and human equality. There are huge problems about doing movement-building in the US– not all of which are overcome by modern technology…
    But hey, why didn’t you put in the link to that fascinating, very detailed and thought-provoking article by C. Gurney?

20. No Preference
    Of the main UK newspapers the only one I trust anymore is the Independent, mainly because Fisk works for it. I refer you to Fisk’s story of his resignation from the Times after the US shot down an Iranian airliner.
    You are not the first to comment on what seems to be some sort of possible editorial shift at Guardian. (said he tiptoeing around the UK libel laws)
    They seem to use much the same sources at Times and Telegraph.
    Hence the unanimity of reporting that State Department has lost out to Darth Vader in the Washington Power Struggles.
    http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2170382,00.html

21. Thanks for the encouragement, Helena:
    “A Great Cause, The origins of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, June 1959 – March 1960” by Christabel Gurney, is at:
    http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/aam/aam_origins.html
    I would really like to know what the special problems of movement-building in the USA are, according to you and the JWN crowd. I have an idea what some of them might be, and I thought I had covered some of them already. By that I don’t particularly mean the better technology we have nowadays. I mainly meant things that Christabel brings up in her article.
    What I like about Christabel’s article is the way she shows how the crucial decisions were not “foregone conclusions” but were quite specific to the place and time and especially to the individuals involved, and could easily have gone a different way. The first of these was the adoption of the boycott tactic and the fact that it was not in the contemporary English usage (yes, Frank, it was originally Irish) but happened to be fresh in their minds because of the way it had been used in South Africa, and particularly in the great Alexandra Bus Boycott of 1957, 50 years ago this year. By the way, I am sitting about one kilometre from Alexandra as I write. So it was called the “Boycott Movement” at first.
    Boycott is a tactic, but a very special kind of tactic, and the founders of the AAM (as Christabel relates) were well aware of its special nature. They were not calling for sanctions, but boycott. They soon decided to change the name from reflecting a tactic to one that reflected a strategy (“Anti-Apartheid”) but they did not lose their determination towards autonomy in tactics and the retention of agency within the movement.
    Concerning the democracy of the AAM and its autonomy fron funders and also from the liberation movement, most especially the ANC, you can see how this was decide in one very small committee meeting where Patrick van Rensburg, with the backing of Canon Collins, proposed that the campaign should all be run with money raised by Collins and explicitly on behalf of the ANC. This was a very soft option, and times were hard, but they bravely rejected it. It was a crucial moment.
    I am certain that these deliberately chosen elements were what made the AAM work and grow for 30 years. It was not the case that the AAM was an “off-the-peg” or standard arrangement in Britain at the time, any more than it would be in the USA today.
    By the time I got involved, both the tactical autonomy, and the democracy, were ingrained in the AAM, (and Christabel was the editor of the “Anti-Apartheid News”). The decisions taken at the beginning had proved to be very robust and resilient, and remained so.
    The problem of propagating this example of the AAM is not confined to the USA, I feel bound to say. We have a big problem here in South Africa with solidarity movements (e.g. for Cuba, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Palestine). It is hard to unlearn the subsequent experience of sanctions and of funded “activism” of the “struggle accounting” type. Looking backwards on the SA struggle, it is this kind of thing that looms large at first. It is not easy to explain that we did not get there that way, and that if we had started that way (as Patrick van Rensburg wanted at the time), we probably would not have got anywhere at all.
    It is hard to “cast your bread upon the waters” and to trust the masses with democracy, in any case. But as hard as it is, it is the only way.
    Sometimes I am inclined to think that the AAM was as much a lucky accident as anything else, i.e. it was a matter of the right people being in the right place at the right time. But then I realise that history is always made of decisions, and decisions are always made by individuals. That much is surely as true of the USA as anywhere else, is it not? I mean, you have choices, don’t you? Especially in the beginning stages of a movement, you are more free, aren’t you?
    So I want to understand this sense of pre-ordained difficulty that US people often seem to express, which is almost a sense of helplessness, if you don’t mind my saying so. What is it all about?

22. The history tells there are no imperial power taken down by own people!
    Take Mongolians recent one Hitler, these warmongering powers taken down by force from outside not by peaceful demonstrations from people of that empires.
    While some give some thoughts about structuring peaceful gropes of anti war did you thought about these groups
    http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070913/METRO/109130061/1004&template=printart
    Did any one listen to this? What action you taken against him? he still setting in his office and control some thing.
    What you did folks to him?
    Did you sent him your email yet? Did you telephoned him yet?
    http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004151.php

23. Regarding Tisdale & the Guardian, I dubbed him the second Judith Miller (surpassing even Michael R. Gordon) for his disinformation item proclaiming that Iran was backing not just Shia forces in Iraq, but al-Qaeda too:
    https://vintage.justworldnews.org/archives/002514.html
    Only marginally better is today’s report in the Sunday Observer:
    http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2170382,00.html
    The assumption is that Iran is hell bent on a nuclear weapons program, and the recent important deal between Iran & IAEA is heavily discounted…. (almost dismissed — Cheney style)

24. I’ve just “picked up” that Debat has had a rather long term connection to the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment…. (WOW) If indeed true, and my source is quite confident, it’s, for starters, curious that he hasn’t put THAT on his c.v. !
    The intrigue thickens….
    (as in who was being used by whom and for what end?)

25. Dominic, you said:
    “Sometimes I am inclined to think that the AAM was as much a lucky accident as anything else, i.e. it was a matter of the right people being in the right place at the right time. But then I realise that history is always made of decisions, and decisions are always made by individuals.> That much is surely as true of the USA as anywhere else, is it not? I mean, you have choices, don’t you? Especially in the beginning stages of a movement, you are more free, aren’t you?”
    I think you inadvertently answered your own question. You are absolutely correct in saying decisions are always made by individuals. However, it is not true that this is the case in the U.S. Decisions are not made by individuals from the bottom up, decisions are made from the top down. As the elite ruling class wants to maintain control, individual decision-making is highly discouraged, indeed individuality is suppressed at every turn. The U.S. is essentially a consumer herd. To be an individual risks stepping out of line. Anyone who does not conform is punished by the cattle herders with various subliminal prompts and cues. This is true of every aspect of American society, from grade school to the work place.
    To have a robust movement, one like the AAM, you would have to have individuals making their own decisions along a solitary path, and then finally cooperating with others who have made the same journey and arrived at similar reasoned conclusions. It would be, as you said, “a matter of the right people being in the right place at the right time.”
    So the problem at the very heart of the matter, as I see it, is that we have a society that has been conditioned to be conformists and followers, always looking for someone to lead them by the nose, always following prompts and cues like Pavlov’s dog, fearful of making their own decisions lest they be banished and left out in the cold to struggle alone, and thus primed to accept propaganda by the “authorities” or so-called leadership. The solution would be individuality. I do not hope for an organizational operatus that will mobilize a movement, I hope for individuals to make free decisions based on reason and conscience. Hopefully(and I am sad to say it is my desperate hope), open one-on-one, communication on the Internet, in discussions, on blogs such as this one, will nurture and embolden individuals to make their own, free, informed decisions, and that this will eventually cohere into a movement.
    We can hope, and we must try.
    That’s why we’re here isn’t it?

26. And oh by the way, here’s a note on the Office of Net Assessment — as run for the past 24 YEARS by a single individual, Andrew Marshall.
    http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Office_of_Net_Assessment
    And who is Andrew Marshal? — an Octogenarian neoconservative who (to his fellow PNAC acolytes) “speaks truth to power”…. Ya right.
    http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Andrew_Marshall
    Marshall helped provide the “cover” to setting up the nefarious Office of Special Plans (“The Lie Factory” – see MotherJonesNews)
    http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html
    — e.g., the office of “Feith Based Analysis” (with Hardold Rhode, David Wurmser, Michael Rubin, etc.) — the cons who set out to prove what wasn’t there….. — much as they may be doing now….
    To those who will optimistically suggest that the neocons who brought us the Invasion of Iraq are no longer there, we must still consider that the DOD’s Office of Net Assessment is still there, with “Yoda” still running the show from the top….
    And Debat is but another necon Jedi?

27. Laura Rozen has also picked up the same note, confirming an added twist — that Debat is telling certain DC people that he STILL WORKS for ONA @ the Pentagon. (Deja vu anyone??! Plus ca change?)
    So ABC has a reporter who has been feeding them “hot scoops” that may very well be slick disinformatzia cooked up in the Pentagon? (in a think tank headed by the godfather to Wolfowitz, Rhode, & even Rumsfeld?)
    from http://www.warandpeace.com:
    “Debat working for the Pentagon? Alexis Debat is telling people he still has some arrangement as an analyst or contributor with Andy Marshall’s shop in the Pentagon, the Office of Net Assessments. An arrangement that he told people has not been interrupted by recent revelations of the fraudulent interviews he published in France. As I first reported on Friday, “Sources also say that Debat claimed in the spring to have received a ‘large chunk of money’ from the Pentagon to conduct a study concerning radical Islam.” I have since learned that he was preparing a study on Islamic warfare, presumably for Andy Marshall. Astounding if he’s working on the U.S. taxpayer dollar still, for the Pentagon? And that he could even get a US security clearance.
    He’s apparently convinced some that the faked interview episode is not a sign of pathology or mendacity but an opera bouffe misunderstanding brought about by different journalistic practices between the United States and France. And some people apparently prepared to buy it.”
    ———————-

28. What is to be made of a statement made on French TV by Bernard Kouchner, the Socialist* Foreign Minister of France and Founder of Doctors Without Borders, reported by the BBC today?:
    “We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war,” Mr Kouchner said in an interview on French TV and radio. Mr Kouchner said negotiations with Iran should continue “right to the end”, but an Iranian nuclear weapon would pose “a real danger for the whole world”.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6997935.stm
    *Altho Socialist, Kouchner serves as Foreign Minister in the Sarkozy government.

29. And for a truly “impressive” listing of Yoda’s (Marshall’s) leading “Jeddi knights”, see here:
    http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Andrew_Marshall_Acolytes_/_Jedi_Knights
    birds of a feather.
    By the way, I’m seeing blogs on the right trying to turn this scandal into an attack on “liberal” ABC — and doing their best to knock down Debat ties to “neocons”….

30. “The nations and its people who ignore their own history are condemned to repeat it again and again”.

31. Yesterday’s Rue89 follow-up to their initial scoop (which, btw, was Sept. 5th):
    http://www.rue89.com/2007/09/15/how-alexis-debat-managed-to-cheat-everyone-in-washington
    Story is moving beyond those questions explored ..

32. 1/ Dominic makes a very important point: organisation is necessary. The old institutions of the opposition, Unions, Socialist parties, democratically organised, political education have all gone. They must be rebuilt/replaced.
    2/The impossibility of expressing one’s convictions is what leads people to desperate acts like suicide bombing.
    3/Kouchner’s remarks are best understood in the light of the agreement with Jordan to help build nuclear power facilities. The cynicism is imperial in scale.

33. Dose Israelis working to set war with Iran?
    Some Syrian and Hizbullah reports have claimed that the alleged air foray was actually a test run by Israel for the real show – Iran. While the foreign media reports clearly dismiss that possibility – pointing out that the IAF bombed a Syrian target – if the reports are true then the alleged incident does send a clear message to Iran that Israel will not hesitate to use force to stop its enemies from obtaining nuclear power. The precedent Menachem Begin set with the bombing of the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981 is still in effect.
    http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1189411415216&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

34. Hi Diana,
    Very interesting reply!
    I personally believe that “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”. I won’t mention who first wrote that.
    The point being, in this context, that the question of organisation and the question of individuality are not two separate questions, but are one and the same question. There can be no collective agency without individual agency. Without free individuals there is no such thing as society.
    That’s where Thatcher got it so wrong. She thought these two things were in contradiction, when in fact they are conditions of each other.
    And yes, I do agree that the Internet is a good place to start, but I would tend to think one could work towards an organisation from the Internet in a rather more deliberate fashion than you imply, when you express the hope that a movement will “eventually cohere”.
    I would like to ask Helena to lead a discussion on this from time to time, here on JWN. It seems there is sufficient interest, and Helena has very powerful ideas of her own, as well as the solid and steady experience of her Charlottesville peace group, so admirable and exemplary in my opinion.

35. Well its nice to see people talking about organising and I wish I didn’t feel so cynical.

    So the MSM has finally got comfortable enough to start blowing the bugles again for stage two of Operation O.I.L. Heck, we’ve been counting down here much longer.
    We all know once the major U.S. TV channels are counting down to an attack on Iran then that’s what will happen. Its the news. You can’t disagree with the news.
    It’s an awkward and grossly artificial time so the anguished and excitable amongst us are now permitted a little ceremonial dance. Protesters protest, critics criticise, pundits pontificate. Send more troops, send less, just send bombs? The semblance of strategic debate makes us feel more civilized as our armies prepare to butcher more innocents in another shock and awe first strike.

    But to actually prevent what the media will now begin to blanket us with as inevitable Joe Public would have to be confronted with a powerful crescendo of fundamental, revolutionary, paradigm rejection. One that makes a clear counter postion and demands specific action. Like the scene in “Network” where everyone gets “mad as hell” and “won’t take it anymore.” In the movie this was a single voice at first. A single heroic rejection of the status quo from it’s center. And there are glimpses of that; O’Donnel, Olbermann, but as yet not the real deal. Courageous, charismatic people need to openly take the huge risk of openly and overtly rejecting the leadership of America by what Ike called her Industrial Military complex. Hell, don’t forget you are suposedly preparing to “choose” a new president. Tell me, folks, is the process satisfactory? Are the choices what America really wants and needs to endure as a civilized nation?

36. Looks like the Iraqi government is standing up to the hooligans and enforcing the Health and Safety at Work Act.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6998788.stm
    Blackwater banned.
    I wonder how long that will last?

37. Still on the Debat file, Laura Rozen last night posted a note referencing Mr. Debat’s latest vigorous self-defense (which he posted to the Gulf 2000 thread – a closed forum. In may respects, it’s similar to his previous denials, and doesn’t address second Rue89 story)
    http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/006616.html#more
    LR then provides a redacted memo posted by Mr. Debat to the G2k thread in mid July, wherein he still credits himself as working for ABC. (but LR cites ABC sources who contend Debat was gone from ABC a month before)

38. To clarify, you can see the latest denial in a sub-link provided by Rozen. Yet Debat still seems to not be helping himself… That link supposedly to dissertations at the Sorbonne doesn’t mention Debat completed one for the year he complains… only that he started one two years previously….
    Like Rozen, I too have been going over Debat’s contributions to the G2k discussion thread. By forum rules (quite appropriate), we’re not to repeat publicly — but it’s very tempting. Over the past three years, Debat’s been “all over the place.” Sometimes he professes (vaguely)to disagree with prominent neoconservatives, saying that he’s “100% non-partisan”; at other spots he’s suggesting/pushing theories that would make Michael Ledeen proud. (esp. re. Iran hosting Zarqawi/al-Qaeda — at several spots he purports to offer to G2k “memos” that he wrote for ABC – but then asks us not to quote, as ABC gets “skittish” about such things…. really now.)

39. Thanks Truesdell for the “news” of the French foreign minister threatening war with Iran…. Whew. (So what if he is or isn’t a “socialist” ?– most of the leading neocon godfathers were once trotskyites….)
    My reaction, *tic, would be that either Bush has found his new poodle, or Alexis Debat is writing his speeches….
    For more serious reactions, including from the IAEA and from Iran, see this bbc report:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6998602.stm

40. is Scott the same author as scott?
    can we ask for a diambiguation mechanism please.

41. Hi Roland,
    Have we met before somewhere? You seem familiar.

42. Wow, thanks Frank for stretching the ole’ vocabulary, re. “disambiguation.”
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Disambiguation
    I’ll see what I can do. AFAIK, I’m the only Scott posting in this thread — though I noticed you referencing something a “Scott” said in another thread – that I didn’t recognize. (I must have missed a fellow Scotsman…) I’ll see what we can do to be more clear when “izza me” posting.
    And speaking of disambiguation, I see we have two+ different, albeit related & important, topic lines going within this particular thread. Sorry about that – yet they’re both useful. :-} Thanx for keeping us sharp. Later I may re-post and separate….

43. Show them your support, give them your support let build more groups who are anti-war anti occupation of Iraq
    In memory of Abeer Qassim Hamza
    Peace activists in the US and the UK, mark the birthday of Abeer Qassim Hamza, the 14 year old Iraqi girl raped and murdered by 5 American soldiers in Mahmoudiya in March 2006. They held vigils in California and London. The peace activists called for an end to immunity of the occuaption forces and the mercenaries. They called for an end to the war crimes and an end to the occupation of Iraq.
    http://solidarityiraq.blogspot.com/2007/08/blog-post_23.html

44. Hi Scott,
    Yes, related topics. You are doing a good job of close-marking the poseur Debat.
    I hope you agree that exposing such things is only half the battle. There has to be at least a redoubt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redoubt – it pays to increase your word power!) on our side.
    I think that’s why the Imperialists are so busy trying to flush out academics they think are hostile or independent-minded. They are more sensitive to the value of a redoubt than we are, and of the precariousness of their flimsy feuilletons and flicks.
    (feuilleton: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feuilleton)
    Perhaps redoubt is the wrong idea. Perhaps we should rather think of a “mothership”, i.e. the Starship Cobban! (See “Beam me up Scotty. There’s no intelligent life down here.”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_me_up)
    Isn’t broadband beamin’ wonderful?

45. Dominic, you are as familiar with me as you feel I guess. After all it’s a social reality.
    I always post as Roland, I suppose there was more alliteration in my earlier post than usual and perhaps I sounded more like another regular poster. I’ve also not posted much of late, it just seems so pointless. Last night I gave making a difference another little try at my keyboard. Pretending to myself that America was asleep and not just rotten to the core.
    Frankly; given the importance of the issues the world faces; as America so farcicly prepares to attack Iran and elect a new war president, what does such personal trivia matter? I hope people follow your organising suggestions above and I pray they work brilliantly.

46. Hi Roland,
    I didn’t mean your alliteration. What’s wrong with alliteration, anyway?
    No, it’s just the idea that you can be “cynical” about nuts and bolts organisation, as if it was unreal, and then go tripping off about some film that you’ve seen, where the good folks rise up spontaneously at the call of one.
    Was that one a postman, by any chance?
    Organising is life and death, not fantasy. “Organise or starve” is a well-known slogan of SACTU, the predecessor of COSATU. It’s also much more exciting than any film, besides providing plenty of occasion for original mirth and anecdote.
    The familiar thing with a lot of US people is that they often like to change the subject to their films, most of which we are not at all familiar with. Extra-US appreciation of US cultural minutiae is sporadic. The more obscure references tend to be a bit of a conversation-stopper, to be honest.
    But don’t think twice, it’s all right.

47. Well Dominic once again all the very best with the detalied and realistic organising plan you have put forward. I will be delighted to be proven completely wrong in my cynicism.

    You dont think much of film I gather. Plenty of people saw and got the point of “Network” (a major release film) way down in New Zealand. People that perhaps didnt get the point of “Dass Kapital” which was never a major release film. As for “The Postman” we just read the reviews. But as “Network” is not an obscure german 19th century organising handbook, I guess it is unfamiliar and devoid of useful ideas and insight. Ideas like media figureheads being brave enough to lead by example and spit the dummy of an MSM and entertainment industry that has replaced religion as the opiate of the people. But if one discounts the power of popular media I guess you could watch Network and just not get it. By all means lets say all motion pictures are irelevant and obscure, as they lack the critical rigour.

    Just to be clear, I am not a US person, I’m as far away as you can get. In New Zealand Dominic, 25 odd years ago we organised to stop rugby matches in defiance of the government of the day. I don’t remember us being galvanised by analysis. Only by a desire to risk putting justice for enslaved brothers overseas above safely having fun as a sports spectator. I can remember looking after friends whose motorcylce helmets had not fully withstood the force of a police baton. Nothing serious mind, just a little blood. Not a bullet or burning tyre. We were happy to help South Africa, well frankly it was Nelson Mandela that inspired us as I recall, I wasn’t familiar with your work at that stage and the self proclaimed Marxists Leninists and Maoists were all back on campus plotting, their organiser heads to precious to put at risk.
    Anyway I was hoping people could put George Bushes latest satement about Irans nuclear program into a politico-historical context for me:
    “”If you truly care about greenhouse gases, then you’ll support nuclear power,” Bush told a news conference with Howard on Wednesday. “After all, nuclear power enables you to generate electricity without any greenhouse gases.” I presume he was only talking about white, christian or zionist nuclear power?

48. O.k., well this all started with Shirin writing “SOMEBODY has to DO SOMETHING” to prevent “yet more American crimes against humanity”.
    So I chip in with Christabel Gurney’s thoroughly practical account of the origins of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.
    Then others take the floor expressing feelings of helplessness. We take time for them.
    Hardly have we done so when in comes Roland preceded by a label called “cynicism”, which turns out (surprise, surprise) to be code for anti-communism and quite positive hatred of all forms of organised democracy.
    I would say this is a very good organising workshop we are having here. Some of the most difficult problems have to be dealt with right at the beginning, and the ones we have seen are among them.
    How do you deal with people who insist on having all the attention when what they are proposing is basically that you all go home? Or proposing something absurd like an Iranian boycott of US rugby teams (but not US films)? Or arguing against things that have not been said, while ignoring anything that has been said?
    This is one reason why the Internet is good, because a lot of this early stuff could be processed on the Internet. Then by the time people start getting together in a more formal way, they would know what they want, and what they would rather avoid, or set aside for the moment.
    They could have the confidence to be able to say to the motorcycle-helmet crowd, for example: thanks, but this is not your gig, try somewhere else. Nobody has to have a monopoly, after all.
    Peter Hain – no, on second thoughts, let’s not talk about Peter Hain!

49. Thanks S(s)cott.
    Sorry about the long word. I am reading the entry level book on speech processing. Disambiguation crops up all over the place in speech regognition, computational linguistics and machine translation.
    If I inadvertently attributed something to you in error, happy to withdraw.

50. Well Dominic once again all the very best with the detailed and realistic organising plan you have put forward.
    I will be delighted to be proven completely wrong in my *cynicism* sorry I stand corrected that should read my “anti-communism and quite positive hatred of all forms of organised democracy.”

    Guess I’m left out of your broad church then?
    And indeed, what does one do with people who aren’t really listening to one’s position?

    Please by all means proceed with organising the revolution full steam ahead and don’t give these quibbles another thought. In fact may I dare you to prove me wrong and wish all those organising against the looming attack on Iran the very best in doing so.
    Goodnight Iran, and Good luck!

51. Hi Roland,
    Corrct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I know the original cynic (dog-like person) was Diogenes.
    Let’s be honest about this. The things that Diogenes used to do in public were not conducive to “broad church” principles at all, or any other kind of church, for that matter.
    You can wear a barrel, or a motor-cycle helmet, or go starkers if you want to, Roland. You can feel free. Nobody’s in your way. So why do you feel compelled to get in other people’s way, with your sarcasm and your condescension and your gloom?
    This is a general question, because for sure, in the very first steering-committee meeting of any movement, there will be at least one voluble Roland, absolutely hell-bent on stopping the thing in its tracks. What do you do about it, class?

52. Let me attempt to answer my own question:
    You make sure to agree on a single, simple strategic goal, with a view to getting a national majority to support that goal.
    You agree that the organisation and all its tactics will be legal. By doing so, you agree that the organisation, like all mass organisations including trade unions, will be reformist in character and not revolutionary.
    You refuse to commit to any particular tactic as an organisation. You encourage and tolerate all legal tactics while trying to manage the greatest tactical concentration that can be agreed upon “by argument” as the AAM founders put it, from time to time.
    Tactical arguments are not to be permitted to divide the organisation, but instead are to be resolved democratically.
    Within the bounds of such a constitution, there is no discrimination between people of different general political outlooks, whether they be revolutionary or bourgeois. The organisation cuts across party lines from left to right. It rejects sectarianism.
    Thus:
    Those who wish to go to demonstrations prepared for battle with the police, for example, do so without the blessing of the organisation. They are not shunned, but they are also not authorised.
    Because arguments about tactics are never allowed to divide the organisation, people who insist on being dogmatic about tactics find themselves open to being exposed as splitters and/or liquidationists. They are invited to take their divisive plans elsewhere, or else to remain and co-exist within the organisation on the same terms as everybody else, and with the same democratic rights as everybody else.
    You get people to volunteer for tasks. Those who do not take on any work, or who promise and don’t deliver, are more than likely demagogues. Watch and work with them patiently, but do not let them use up all your time. Be open and frank.

53. Dominic your post was interesting reading.

    It’s implausible that all people who express “cynicism” about an issue in english are somehow like “Diogenes” or are “dog like”, despite the ancient greek origins of the word. Cynicism may or may not be justified, I believe. Surprising though to be ridiculed by a South African AAM activist for being among the New Zealand demonstrators that ended an all-white rugby tour.

    A protest that directly lead to a critical boycott of the apartheid-based South African rugby team a quarter century ago. On the basis of the front line protesters actually quite sensible apparel choices: “You can wear a barrel, or a motor-cycle helmet, or go starkers if you want to, Roland. “ Still, what we did was right and I’d do it again.

    Domininc if you come to New Zealand you would be ill advised to show such little forethought in your comments outside of a few fairly right wing and white supremacist poltical groups and maybe the seedier sports bars. Public opinion has matured here over the years. One sign of that change is that despite our historical ties, my countries army is not occupying Iraq, and won’t be in Iran. That’s organising.

    But please, if anyone feels galvanised to organise harder against the imminent Iran attack by reading of “the voluble Roland”and his dog-like crimes, then that’s wonderful. I hope that animus, I hope something, I hope pretty much anything, works.

54. guys like that show up in strike situations all the time. Somehow it seems they get excited about the events, want to be at the center of the action, and make up anything at all to get people to listen to them. I suspect they move by intuition rather than reason since they often show deft turns of logic that are just too nifty to be conscious. They can be dangerous, I guess, but I have only seen how quickly their posturing falls apart. Solid news work and insights is always remembered as something real like biting a gold coin. Do you remember the newsmen at Miami who denounced the brave pilots who had escaped with their planes from Cuba at the time of the CIA invasion, after the news men tore the story apart when one of them look a good look at the caliber of the bullet holes that stitched across the belly of one of those planes. That one sunk in. So to the great story about Iraqi soldiers bayoneting babies, until a news person checked the background of the very nice and very well dressed young woman who gushed the improbable tale.
    One trick is to read the story 3 times, how does it feel? A reporter I knew who was very good at sizing up a fake tale on the crime beat used to claim his nose twitched, some have head aches, some break pencils in sudden fits. I think one real insight is how you feel when you read it, I mean, do you have just a little warning from the side, like the little gnomes in the forest would pop up to warn the hero in a fairy story. If you have a feeling, sort of like that, pay attention. Right now their is a flood of BS about Iran, too much to check out the source and name of every item. So maybe we are back to the fairy stories which are a kind of knowledge.
    So the smart guy goes out and gets shot down by the bad habit of pride; the middle son goes out and gets shot down
    by the bad habit of laziness; and the idiot son goes out and listens to the little gnomes since he does not know any better and he gets the prize. Why not.

55. Love your contrib, Garhane.
    Concerning Roland, we have gone as far as we can. People should see that as much as everything may be voluntary, or even merely “virtual”, the most incredible passions are released when the thing at issue is organisation; and this is the main difficulty, next to which all other difficulties appear as simple matters of practical management.
    Roland is from NZ and I am from SA. Although we still have our problems, yet we have both probably got some substantial work behind us, in spite of all the problems.
    Now, my question is, once again, and addressed to the US residents: what is so especially difficult about organising in the USA?
    Because I don’t see what it can be. The main difficulty is surely the universal one, i.e stuff like what has passed between Roland and myself, above. These are the most vexing, exasperating types of thing, but they are not exceptional to the USA or anywhere. Therefore they are not an excuse. What is the excuse, please? Why can’t you succeed in organising properly over there?

56. This piece is remarkable for its mention of Amageddon by accident on purpose.
    http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/09/19/iran/index.html
    And I think this is on topic

57. Now, my question is, once again, and addressed to the US residents: what is so especially difficult about organising in the USA?
    Please Read this:!
    I know all about these DEVILS and we in America fear them too.You must know what they did to the poor survivors in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina blew through that area.
    But the hurricane did not cause all of the flooding and deaths…..as you also know.
    They (BLACKWATER USA) are ABOVE THE LAW and we “civilians” have no protection from them any more than the Iraqis have.I have a problem with A GOD
    who allows the carnage on-going world wide.
    This is not a “local” problem in Iraq, though my heart aches for all in that country who have suffered by the MADNESS of those evil men and women holding OUR country HOSTAGE the past 50 years, or maybe it was always an illusion that we had a good and free country.
    Probably so.
    I understand you are sending emails to your fellow Iraqis and I don’t know how many AMERICANS like me, are on your email list, but I wish you would at least acknowledge that you KNOW that I and others LIKE ME living in America are just as upset with what our government and their allies (who as we know are dwindling..thank GOD) have been doing to foreign countries as well as TO US here, in the USA.
    We can no longer go to our local and state police for protection.
    They are now part of the FEDERAL SYSTEM…and they will KILL us in a heartbeat and our lawyers are helpless, our judges are helpless.
    This comment made by an American who commenting on BLAKWATRERS the recent incident in Baghdad killing civilians, how much truth and honest is S/He? Leave it to our friends to tell?
    If that true then may be this one of the excuses of difficulties about organising in the USA?

58. Hi Frank,
    I suppose your salon.com link is relevant if you are suggesting that, whether or not any of the journalists are occasionally exposed as bogus, the relentless “framing” mentioned in the article will remain the same.
    And that is true, but only for as long as there is no other body of opinion autonomously growing beyond the charmed circle of the professional framers.
    That autonomous body of opinion would have to be a self-conscious and well-organised mass movement that functions both within itself and outside of itself as a medium of mass communication, on the particular topic, which in this case is peace with Iran.
    If such a movement does its work at all well it will quickly penetrate the smug and snooty dinner-party scenes such as are depicted in your chosen article.

59. Hi Dominic
    I do hope the growing body of opinion isn’t the Christian Zionists.
    The British have been rather keenly trying to publicise the casualty figures from a projected strike on Iran. Dan Plesch has far more detail and nice graphics in his recent paper.
    Fisk has a discussion of whether the million dead Armenians constiute a holocaust or whether you need you need more to qualify.
    As the upper limit of the British casualty estimate is a million, people might be talking about the Iranian Holocaust. Would they feel responsible, even a teensy bit, if they hadn’t held the B2s back?
    People were horrified at the killing of thousands in former Yugoslavia because they could see that they were just people like you and me. Somehow the Iranians have been demonised (see the cockroaches post)and we have reverted to the outright dehumanisation of the opposing side that Beevor talks about in his recent book and that was responsible for the massacres in that war.
    Paddy Ashdown set a marker for a change in thinking today. I have a lot of time for Lord Ashdown and his thinking.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,,2172021,00.html

60. http://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Civil-War-Antony-Beevor/dp/0141001488

61. Fisk has a discussion of whether the million dead Armenians constiute a holocaust or whether you need you need more to qualify.
    September 2007 – More than 1,000,000 Iraqis murdered
    http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=78
    Hope this not happen again in name of REGIM CHANGE?
    Iraq’s shock therapists blasted away at the layers too, seeking that elusive blank slate on which to create their new model country. They found only the piles of rubble that they themselves had created, and millions of psychologically and physically shattered people – shattered by Saddam, shattered by war, shattered by one another. Bush’s in-house disaster capitalists didn’t wipe Iraq clean, they just stirred it up. Rather than a tabula rasa, purified of history, they found ancient feuds, brought to the surface to merge with fresh vendettas from each new attack – on a mosque in Karbala, in Samarra, on a market, a ministry, a hospital. Countries, like people, don’t reboot to zero with a good shock; they just break and keep on breaking.

62. O.k., Frank, so you hope “the growing body of opinion isn’t the Christian Zionists”. Well, I should think so too.
    But I was writing about an autonomous body of opinion outside and beyond the framing of Iran as a target for war, actually. And opposed to that war-talk, obviously.
    From my point of view the juxtapostion of Scowcraft and Brzezinski is a distinction without a significant difference and the Christian Zionists different again, if at all, only in degree. None of them are committed to peace on principal, and that sets all of them apart from the body of opinion that, as I would propose, should be cultivated.
    I suppose you may mean something else, namely the interesting proposition that since lobby-like practices may equally be attempted in favour of the established framing as against it, so therefore such things should not be attempted at all, lest the Imperial beast should be goaded into retaliation in kind.
    This is a view that may be implied in some of the responses to Mearsheimer and Walt, for example. The Zionist Lobby is there portrayed as a huge and fearful monstrosity, and akin to a conspiracy against the people. All lobbies are consequently tainted my association, perhaps, in this view.
    Further, there appears to be a view in the USA that the number of adherents to a cause is proportional the amount of cash one has available. This is not the case. Just as with consumer economics, it is the public that produces the money, not the money that produces the public.
    Or, to put it another way, if you are the Beatles (more popular than Jesus at the time, as John Lennon said), you are hardly going to fail to pull in a lot of cash. But if you had a lot of cash and you wanted to be the Beatles, you would probably end up making a Monkey of yourself.
    But I digress.

63. Dominic, I liked your Trekkie metaphors…. :-} (NextGen remains my favorite w/n the sub-genre, especially the episodes on “terror”) Alas, the neocons try even to control that arena…. (e.g., “The Rise of the Vulcans.”)
    I know of “redoubts” too — as many moons ago, I worked summer jobs at Valley Forge where, among other things, we explained to visitors the import of “redoubts” in the line… uggg.
    I continue to be aghast at the power and omnipresence of these neocon think-tanks in Washington — and their stifling, overwhelming presence on the MSM, PBS, etc. Even the oil companies, once more “even-handed” on mideast issues, are now reported as big backers of AEI, etc.
    Live long, nonetheless, and prosper… peacefully.

64. I wonder Frank if you found the Salon headline on the optimistic side? Condi helping George look reasonable, sure. Condi holding policy cards over Dick, really? So I too assume your point was about the commonness of media framing.
    Lets look back to Shirin’s understandable anguish for a moment “I have done everything in my power to help inform others. …It stopped nothing, and it changed nothing (except a few people’s minds). Being informed is not enough. Informing others is not enough.” The US and increasingly SKY-wide MSM is a sophisticated tool that has surely already transcended the well established techniques of organising the masses by assuming a leadership role on topical issues. Let’s review that proposition in the months ahead, no need to debate it as time will tell how well the organizing works.
    OK well there has been some form of jingoistic media and propaganda for millenniums, the world over, but the modern US version has free market capitalism and rigorous science behind it. Even newer tools would be needed to counter today’s MSM jingoism. I like to try and consider if such tools may exist.
    What is to be done, in today’s world? We work hard, we go to our respectable homes, driving our respectable vehicles, and watch the same junky world news as all the other hard working people down our street and go to bed. Many of get fed up, we can still for the moment go online and find alternative news channels. And when we head out in the morning, we fell a little nervous, and hope we still look as mainstream as the neighbors. At the office Xmas party or similar function, emboldened by boredom and an after dinner brandy, we may exchange a few whispered or jocular political observations with suspected kindred spirits on the understanding that such talk is reserved for special occasions. And sure, a few of us may make donations, join organizations, speak at rallies, even maybe letting ourselves become identified as “hippie activists”, outsiders, so we can talk all we like and mainstream people won’t dare listen. Outsiders may be terrorists. Or maybe we take the paranoid route, and stash a bug out kit in the garden shed for Armageddon.

    So it would seem to me, we have to reach down a level to protest effectively. Ordinary individuals need to find dramatic ways in everyday lives, to show they feel part of mainstream society but don’t buy the current plan to grabbing the last oil as the world burns. This means finding new and peaceful, but shocking and startling ways to protest, courageous and powerful gestures and symbols of protest, performed in the context of every day life, until enough people are doing it that we and our neighbors all know none that in fact hardly any of us are buying the future being sold to us. An encouraging example was the recent protest where anti war vets responded to counter protesters by performing a drill in front of them and calling out ant war slogans marine style. Apparently even the gathering of “Eagles” stopped squawking for a moment.

65. Roland. Now that’s a scene I’d like to see repeated on YouTube. Recall where this happened or have a link for us? (sorry if I missed it here.)
    I like the concept of finding new and peaceful, yet startling ways to protest…. That last rally in DC, alas, was too easy for the neocons and the msm to lampoon…. (as will be their want) And even the very phrase “anti-war” starts us off badly, as the critics will easily retort, by bringing our troops home, you won’t be ending any war — but (so they’d say) opening the flood gates….
    Instead of Code Pink, how about Code Jefferson or Code Quincy? (for JQAdams)
    e.g., something to draw out the emphasis that the “real” patriots would wish to see American values restored, not trampled on and burned….
    (Then again, I wonder if the Miss South Carolina’s & bubbas out there have ever heard of Jefferson, much less Adams — the one who once waxed on about America goes not goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy — but is the well-wisher of freedom, etc.)

66. Sorry Scott a little voice told me it was sloppy not to pull out the link but it does refer to a DC rally last Saturday Sep 15th, is this the same one you mention being readily lampooned? Maybe I’ve become a hippie. Maybe the MSM did it’s job.
    Code pink from this angle seem happy to be a laughable part of the ritual of dissent. Trying to look odd and therefore discountable is exactly the wrong starting point for a dialogue with everyday people.
    At the other end of the spectrum we even saw Miss South Carolinas speech on NZ TV. It may be generation z, in all the countries it exists, won’t risk chipping a nail let alone a tooth in the name of preserving any constitution or institution no matter how honorable the history. “Pieces of paper” as they say and classes already passed. And in that generation, for the fretful and guilty, there is the “emo’ option I believe.
    But all people of all generations in every country care to the core about the threat of their future being destroyed. This threat is indeed very real, and it’s global, just terribly misunderstood and propagandized by the very worst offenders, who own the MSM of course.
    So there are two counters I see to the MSM, the internet, linked to decentralized mobile communication and the type of protest the vets did. Respected members of society, doing something that looks normal familiar and acceptable, but which actually turns out to be a fearless public rejection of the obviously unsustainable path of US/western foreign and economic policy. If these two tools in combination arouse adequate consciousness of the threat and courage to stand against it, then there needs to be a simple message to hear about the practical steps to a sustainable and therefore different future. Without that simple agenda than can be no other for any of us. We need a united anti-catastrophe movement. After all, you’re either for Catastrophe or against it.
    I’d love to see suggestions of other examples. Can anyone think of some, even as a simple intellectual exercise?

67. Looking through the youtube posts so far I could only find a clip of this guy. “True grit”, if you’ll forgive the cinematic reference. Not the above mentioned vets’ drill routine though

68. Frank, special thanks for that link to the Guardian item on Ashdown’s pending report. If we miss it, give us the link for the full report if/when available.

69. Thanks Roland
    OK well there has been some form of jingoistic media and propaganda for millenniums,
    What we are seeing is actually very close to Cato the Elder “Cartago delenda est”
    The point I picked up on in the Salon piece was in fact Mr Wurmser and his ideas of a provocation to cause a retaliation and escalation.
    It recalls the burning of the Reichstag and in particular the Gleiwitz incident.I am amused that the Salon piece apears a week after an Israeli strike on something in Syria.
    You will have seen the embargo on any mention of Vietnam until the President brought it up. One of the results of that war will have been an analysis of the influence of the media on the military progress.
    Today I expect there is a media management strategy that uses TV and MSM to transmit “messages” to the enemy and manages opinion at home. Fisk’s description of his problems of getting the Vincennes incident reported indicates that this is true as does the embargo on pictures of coffins.
    As such a campaign is probably sailing a bit close to the wind constitutonaly I expect it is very secret indeed.
    I suspect that grassroots activism that Dominic talks about, what would have been called “Samizdat” is the USSR is the only way to overcome the control. The beginnings of comment that says that blogging and social networking sites are going out of fashion might be a sign of the closedown of this mechanism.

70. Hi Scott,
    Concerning the power of think-tanks, I wonder if they are all not really paper tigers. Or Wizards of Oz, maybe.
    I think the think-tanks rely heavily upon the general absence of other voices. For example, the news trick of anchor moving straight from reporter to “analyst” without any intermediate step, surely makes transparent the circular, in-bred character of whole spectacle.
    Those who think it impossible to stand out against such a bland background have not been trying very hard, I think.

71. Thanks Roland for the link. We blogged last year’s big rally a bit here last year; Helena was present as I recall… Alas, the critics seized on Jane Fonda’s presence, code pink, etc. — and other side shows. Unfortunate we can’t have debates on substance, but so it goes.
    Please know I mean no disrespect for the various march organizers who devoted sincere time and energies to organizing such protests…. It must be a supreme challenge and frustration for the “Peace Veterans” of Vietnam, etc. to re-engage to motivate today’s seemingly self-absorbed, non-draft-facing, “younger generation” to activism. (ok, the Dharfur campaign has been, on the whole, a marked success…. but that hasn’t much transferred much over to Mideast/Iraq/Iran issues, AFAICT….)
    Then again, public opinion against bombing Iran and staying in Iraq seems overwhelmingly with us…. (at least in the abstract level of “opinion” — rather than activism) But the politicians, the corporate media, and powers-that-be largely are not in sinc, perhaps as they thus far calculate that the intensity of public displeasure is not yet high enough….
    And then there’s the “structural issues” that Helena might have been getting at — that we don’t live in a responsive Parliamentary system…. plus the in-grained advantages going to incumbents, crooked campaign financing, “broken” political parties, K-Street, the explosion of lobbying for vested interests (and one in particular), corporate domination of the media, etc…. all the factors seeming to work against serious change….
    Meanwhile, the Republican Senators (minus 6) plus Lieberman shamefully block an effort to restore habeas corpus…..
    HALL OF SHAME time.

72. Frank thanks for clarifying your take on the salon piece.
    I’ll be greatly relieved if Dominic’s grassroots “self publishing” organising works the way some say it did against the Soviet regime, augmented by the net. It would have to not only spread to a considerable extent but withstand all efforts to divide it from the general population. Such as the one you mention beginning to appear. OTOH, here it is, right now, working to some extent. I just feel it’s insufficient on it’s own.
    Were you aware that “after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was exiled by the Shah of Iran in 1964, his sermons were smuggled into Iran on cassette tapes and widely copied, increasing his popularity and leading, in part, to the Iranian Revolution.” As they said in Syriana, everything is connected.
    The MSM has a range of tools for labelling genuine community groups as outsiders. Outsiders are quickly turned into objects of fear and ridicule, and labelled as adherents to an alien counter culture in wartime or even traitors to their country. Conversly once even a secretive group grows to any size, it runs the risk (as it still must have lines of communication and organisation) of being manipulated for alterior motives, like winning elections, because of its very success.

73. Further concerning the “stifling, overwhelming presence” (according to Scott) of the think-tanks, must they really be regarded as a smothering blanket?
    Are they not nearer to the condition of the murky water in a wide but very shallow pond?
    If you have the habit of writing every day, then the problem faced by these pundits each day is very clear. They have to cover acres or hectares of newsprint and long hours of broadcasting time, while trying not to sound stale and repetitive.
    In these circumstances it is not hard to communicate over the top of the stagnant lagoon, or even to walk right through it.
    Attempts at changing the contents of this vast and shallow expanse are somewhat misdirected. It is not a good idea to “shout at the top of your voice so as to be heard for 15 minutes” as Berthold Lubetkin the great architect once said, or words to that effect.
    Instead, it is better to communicate directly to a few people, and without much regard to whether or not, or how well, “the media” have picked it up. Each human being is a medium of communication. We were there before “the media” ever existed.
    But what you will in practice find is that the artificial entities called think-tanks, puffed up with cash but so thin on ideas, will rush to pay attention if you have something to say, if only because it is so difficult for them to fill their quota from their own mental resources.

74. We have put down the makings of a mini-manual. It is not a “Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerilla”, but something opposite to Carlos Marighella’s thesis.
    So now I want to suggest a final chapter, influenced by a different Brazilian, namely Paulo Freire.
    In Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” he advocated that the knowledge we seek, which is the only knowledge that can be effective, is the kind that sits between us, and which is made manifest in dialogue.
    Freire opposed “activism”, which he held to be distinct from action. Always the necessary action would be of the kind that tends towards the creation of a broader and broader dialogue.

75. Off topic I know. Someone spread the word, one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse has showed up.
    NYT reports cholera in Baghdad.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/world/middleeast/20cnd-cholera.html?hp

76. Back on topic, take a look at the link that follows for hybrid forms of organising exploiting Internet, led by black US Americans.
    It’s at:
    http://www.counterpunch.org/modiano09202007.html

77. Most the talking what should be done for organizing/gathering/anti war groups to stop those warmongering to go to a new war by .
    Although some in current US politics driving for a new war, what should the other side of the fence “IRAN” do to stop this running to the war.
    As an Iraqi experiencing ruing to Iraq invasion war saga were hoplessly with those warmongering, nothing can stop those warmongering whatever Iraqi said or did, so in this case if Scott inlight us what should/Shouldn’t Iran/Iranins do to help stopping these warmongering?
    interesting to see your views views for the other side of the fence.

78. Just looks so funny when GWB said:
    “Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas,”
    https://vintage.justworldnews.org/archives/002632.html.
    So if this the way some one holding war decisions what he might say about Iran “Iran killed all the Mandelas” and stat his war!.
    The problem is not with Iraq or Iran the brome at home “The Americans” themselves they lost the carriage to stand up and tell this or that this just “Rubbish” and they should force him to resign as same as they enforce that senator with his public toilet sex saga “Gary”.
    Which one more dangerous?
    Which case more need attention from American citizenry?
    Which case should Americans concerned more?
    These questions needs real answer from you Americans and the world listen to you to hear your loud voices to stop this president spreading his words of his imagination its time to say enough Mr President we got sick and tired of you nonsense words and you should put pressure on your elected Senators those keep shaking their heads showing there agreement with Mr. President with these type of words.

79. Apologizes, this is the link for the above post.
    http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-09-20-voa53.cfm

80. “nothing can stop those warmongering whatever Iraqi said or did, so in this case if Scott inlight us what should/Shouldn’t Iran/Iranins do to help stopping these warmongering?
    interesting to see your views views for the other side of the fence.”
    Well Salah, from this distance Iran has every reason to prepare for an Iraq style disaster, maybe they should do it the way americans try and prepare for a hurricane. In other words rationally preparing; not for any kind of even vaguely equal military contest, (let’s stop being ridiculous) but for devastation by a forseen but unstoppable, overwhelming, unreasoning and amoral force. Taking all available steps to protect citizens, property and essential services from a cataclysm. Because that is in fact what Iran is facing. Can one plead with a hurricane?

    For example, Iranians could designate a safe refuge area to which they would evacuate all children, say to a nominated city, with the children’s acommodation supervised by a neutral 3rd party and international media permitted entry. This might seem a massive exercise but would be overtly reasonable step to avoiding the many thousands of child victims that will otherwise be the inevitable result of O.I.L. stage two. Other steps might include the relocation of national treasures, and a major crash course program of civil defence and emergency first aid training.

    Alternately, Iran could offer to privatise her oil and “allow” the US army to “protect” the privatized fields without destroying the country first and then doing it. Surrendering before being attacked. Unfortunately American leaders may prefer the economic and political opportunities they expect from military escalation over obtaining control of this next major oil resource peacfully.

81. Roland and Dominic
    You may be interested in the mechanism identified here. (From Washington Post Jena)
    Most people know the outlines of the story by now, but here’s a synopsis: Black students at the local high school sat under a tree that everyone knew was a place where white students usually congregated. White students reacted by hanging three nooses in the tree. Racial tensions escalated from there, including fights in which both black and white students got roughed up, but no one was seriously injured. Local officials, who are white, handled the white offenders with a “boys will be boys” attitude — a few brief school suspensions, basically. Black offenders were expelled from school, arrested and charged as adults with felony offenses, including attempted murder.
    These events happened in 2006. For months, they utterly failed to penetrate the national consciousness. We still might not know about what was happening in Jena if the case hadn’t been noticed by bloggers, who sounded the alarm. And I’m quite sure there would have been no busloads of protesters descending on Jena if the cause hadn’t been taken up by a radio personality best known for R-rated banter about sex and relationships.

82. Well Frank,
    There are two ways to look at this. One is that, as you say, “we” wouldn’t know about this if not for the fact that the “MSM” picked it up from the bloggers.
    The other is that the said bloggers have in fact created a de facto mass medium of communication and used it to expand real organisation on the ground in Jena and support for that organisation in Jena. In this view the MSM tails the the bloggers and is practically irrelevant to the growth of collective subjective agency among the black youth of Jena.
    If one takes the second view, then there is an implied opposition to the first. That is to say that the MSM, far from furthering agency, obliterates it not only by ignoring it, but equally as much by taking it over and substituting for it. It generates the view that nothing is real unless and until it appears in the MSM, and then follows through with the actual impotence of the MSM to have any effect on the events that it reports, such as war in Iraq or hurricane Katrina or anything else.
    It is not the late-arriving MSM that was or will be effective here, but on the contrary it was the bloggers and the organised black youth of Jena. So, effectiveness should not be guaged by the degree of reflection in the MSM. It would be better to ignore the MSM and concentrate on the organisation. Then let the MSM follow as a lamb’s tail follows the lamb, if it will.

83. Iran could offer to privatise her oil and “allow” the US army to “protect” the privatized fields without destroying the country first and then doing it.
    Roland, What we saw in Iraq, American had no attention to destroy the oil fields, its the opposite, in fact the oil field was scoured before the bombing started by sending special forces to protect those Iraqi oil fields specially in the south, during US troops advancing to Baghdad they moved fast to hold the ministry of oil and protected the building with all it assets.
    So this point we can eliminated if there is any coming war with Iran, as US very interested in the energy and oil resources in the region.

84. Frank you’re right of course that is a good example of bloggers getting “sat on” news out, and inspiring action which makes more news. Jena was even discussed on NZ national radio this morning. We heard the young black men were charged with “using” the shoes on their feet as “weapons” to make a battery charge stick. Totally appaling.

    I see this as an instance where the US MSM has painted itself into a corner. Now that it failed to sit on what happened in Jena, because of the bloggers and eventually the shock jock’s commentary, the MSM isn’t in a position to cast the news aside saying, “those colored folk are getting too uppity again.” Because they have gone to considerable lengths trumpeting exaggerated civil rights progress as proof of American democracy. So in Jena, blogging was able to help cultivate grass roots action as Dominic said, and then the MSM simply reported it.

    But I fear if equivalent injustice happened in Baghdhad, there would be nothing like the outrage. Far worse things are overlooked repeatedly, blogged hard or not, because the MSM has convinced the US public that “Arab Muslims” are usually at least harboring terrorists, some of them are Americas military enemies (could be any of them) and so they deserve no better.

    Look too at the Kerry forum student tasering viral video and the reaction to that. Very different. The student was an Look too at the Kerry forum student tasering and the reaction to that. Very different. The student was an “obnoxious protester” and so could be tasered right in front of a rambling Kerry with astonishing approval in the crowd and in following blogs also.

85. Salah forgive me I did not express myself well. I did not mean to say the US wish to destroy Iranian oil, merely control it’s supply. I meant to say with their war focused economy and politics they may prefer military conquest to obtaining it peacefully.
    Then, if it all goes according to plan it will be on to helping freedom loving people in Darfur and Venezuela.

86. Roland and Dominic
    You have got the picture but I wonder if Scott will jump on us for straying off topic.
    I read Laila and her pal Heba’s logs from Palestine and it keeps me motivated to keep doing what I do.
    We hear about the ground level activities to do with living in Gaza with missiles and helicopters and lead flying about.
    We wouldn’t hear about this if there werent bloggers.
    I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the chaps in Belfast and Derry could have blogged in the 1970s and 80s.
    We are of course open to the weakness of blogging which is that there is no editorial control and people like Michael Leeden can scare us all to death by reporting that important people in Iran are dead, or the conspiracy theorists can speculate on stuctural engineering in unplanned fire situations.
    But on the whole blogging, and social sites provide a grass roots antidote to the Return of the Spanish Inquisition.

87. Again we got inflammatory interview with Hussein Shariatmadari, managing editor of the “Kayhan” newspaper, who is also an adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran in a television interview said many Arab regimes will fall if the war broke between Iran and US, also he prized Iran roll with Hezbollah and what Hezbollah did to Israel during 33deys war with Iranian help.
    He added Iran control totally the situations in most ME and Iraq now!
    (Arabic Text) I couldn’t found reference in English to it.
    http://www.assafir.com/Article.aspx?EditionId=746&ChannelId=16663&ArticleId=2283&Author=

88. Well yes indeedy Frank. But actually this topic is about media of communication. Scott’s post is about the Debat doozies and the Nixon (a Quaker, he, lest we forget) think-tank. It naturally leads to a discussion of the media. It is not for anyone to treat it as a given that the the MSM is to be taken at its own face value. This has to be part of any discussion that proceeds from the Debat doozies. So don’t think twice, it’s all right to discuss this, and I think Scott would agree with me, although I am ready to be corrected about that.
    But now, why are you hankering after “editorial control”? Who sold you that pup, pray tell? Who is this editorial uncle that will stand over all, guiding everyone? How is he different from Big Brother, actually?
    I’m afraid you still don’t really get it, Frank. Why would the “chaps in Belfast and Derry” have been better off with blogs? Do you mean blogs with editorial control, or without? Those chaps, Catholics and proddies, organised very well as it was. Maybe all too well in some cases. It is a completely inappropriate example, if lack of communication and lack of organisation is the complaint. Let me remind you that in the USA, this lack is the actual problem.
    Or maybe you mean exactly what you say in that respect? In other words that the “blog” factor is a good way to extend the power of controlling hand that currently guides the MSM. If so let me apologise for the misunderstanding, but only so that I can oppose you more directly.
    Of course it is true that if the MSM could be subverted and turned into a duplicitous spectacle, then so can the blogosphere be turned to the purposes of Imperial monopoly/finance capital and all the rest of it.
    It’s a battlefield, as Graham Greene might have said, me old left-footer. Or right-footer? No matter.
    On our South African television screens yesterday we saw pictures of Jena, USA for the first time, and striding out on the screen was the big fella, Rev. Jesse Jackson himself. Now we in SA know Rev. Jesse quite well as it happens. This is the geezer who always pops up at dramatic moments and insinuates himself between whatever is going on, and the cameras. That’s the only time you see him.
    Jesse Jackson’s job is to smother all free-spirited initiatives with a standard-issue blanket, reclaiming the usual hegemony, and even the victims love to give him a helping hand in this work. For him, it’s like picking apples with free help, and then selling the apples to the pickers. For example, Mr Purvis’s mother was quoted, and I have no reason to doubt the truth of the report, as saying that if the MSM had not got there the boys would all still be in jail!
    In this version of Mrs Purvis’, agency has been safely restored to the MSM. How the MSM loves to quote such quotes! How gratifying it is for them! How they love to shoot the arrival of Jesse! That familiar moment when all is restored, and when the strange peculiarity of a place like Jena can at last be fitted back into an older frame.

89. Dominic
    One of my friends told me how she used to have to take the train from Belfast to Dublin to file her copy, because of the censorship.
    I think I am using the word control more in the french sense of “controle” meaning to check for veracity and accuracy.
    History is full of rather misguided movements that arise spontaneously.
    The Children’s Crusade is one though its historical foundations are questioned.
    The Pyramid selling scheme that caused so much trouble in Albania ten years ago is another.
    Part of the role of a press is to alert people to the crooks and snake oil salesmen who run these schemes.
    This is the fundamental problem I am trying to get my mind around. I know that providing ubiquitous broadband access adds great economic value to countries, but does expose their populations to a torrent of partially clad young ladies and broad spectrum ideas and views. It is very difficult to separate the economic benefit of providing a globalised window for trade from providing a globalised window for ideas.
    I have difficulty assimilating and understanding some of the concepts described and often have fun identifying the underlying agenda of the author.
    Just at the moment I don’t quite know how you counter some of the dafter things coming out of say Frontpage Magazine which is using some of the classic propaganda techniques and looking for Reds under Beds.
    Wikipedia has difficulty managing the accuracy of some of its entries because of the controversy about the underlying facts and there is a dnager of people using Wikipedia as a reliable source. (If you looked at the Cockroach post and looked into Marsha Cohen’s instrcutions to her students she warns against the use of Wiki as much more than a pointer to releaible sources)
    Paddy Ashdown and George Robertson (he used to be Sec Gen of NATO so he is no wimp) are looking at how to roll back the overreaction to the New York attacks and counter the people who want to treat Muslim European Citizens as automatic suspects based on fear and suspicion that fed on itself.

90. Dominic
    This is promising looking.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/22/washington/22bloggers.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1190479562-eJFvXJAdRwQzUePX7FRTJg
    I would just like to state for the record that I am just me and not a state department person.

91. Is Mona-el-Naggar Cairo’s answer to Margaret Thatcher, or what?
    Come on Frank, pull the other one. It’s got bells on.

92. Well Dominic we come back round to the subject of the original post. Tom Clancy / Dale Brown / Freddie Forsyth does International Relations Part II. They are off again.
    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2512380.ece
    Well you asked me to pull the other one.
    Ding Ding!!

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