Jimmy Carter @ MindSay 
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Date Line May 20, 2007
You just have to love this Whitehouse. Now former President Jimmy Carter has been branded "increasingly irrelevant" for his outspoken continued opposition to the invasion of Iraq.
As President, Carter had much going against him. Much of it was of his own making. After all, he was the first born-again president, and the first (before our current incompetent) person elected to that high office based on evangelical support.
Oh! Some might point to Reagan as the product of evangelical action, but that was not a matter of evangelicals promoting one of their own; to the contrary, it was evangelicals turning on their own.
Carter was the promoter of evangelical ideology, and he managed to seriously hurt the American economy; Reagan was a continuation of anti-communist McCarthyism, and, as such, managed to ring-up debt at a rate unsurpassed in American history (that is, until the current administration).
George W, like Jimmy, was brought into office by the evangelicals. It is worthy to note that the evangelicals would later claim Reagan as one of theirs.
Why "worthy to note"? Why because of Reagan's poor handling of fiscal matters; something which marked the Carter and current Bush administrations. Incompetent foreign policy was also a hallmark of both Carter and Bush practices.
Fortunately, we who have the eyes to see, are getting a real kick out of their self-destructive policies. Back in the days of Vietnam, warnings were made. But this evangelical group simply lacks the ears to hear.
Shall we believe the Whitehouse? Shall we accept that Jimmy Carter is now "increasingly irrelevant"? Remember!
Remember, this is the same Whitehouse, the same President, who declared a few years ago that Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were completely "irrelevant" in any of American dealings abroad, or at home.
This is the same Whitehouse which declared global warming a myth; and it is the same Whitehouse which hold evolution to be a myth, and not supported by science, anthropology, archaeology, or geology. It is, in their view, not even supported by DNA evidence of evolutionary mutations which are ongoing and demonstrative.
Well children, I must accept the administration and its belief in the Biblical. Revelation and other sources declared that the evil nations would see plagues of locus. Thus, the Whitehouse has shown it is the evil foretold.
As I write this, plagues of locus, or what we call cicadas, are emerging in the Midwest. Billions will soon swarm the skies in a display of divine wrath and retribution. That is the Biblical, the evangelical, the Right-wing mandated interpretation of natural cycles and evolution!
Isn't it?
AIDS was denounced as typical of the divine wrath response to the homosexuals. Since it started in Africa, there must be a special divine hatred for black homosexuality. And since it is spreading in many Asian nations, there must be a divine hatred of those people.
But since Buddhist Temples survived the Tsunami while churches were totally destroyed, the divine hatred is not toward Buddhists.
Come to think of it, whenever there is an earthquake, churches are the most damaged. There we have it, evangelical
pronouncement, there is a divine hatred for everything Christian; and America is a Christian nation, so we can expect major destruction here. Cheer Divine wrath!
The evangelicals gave us Carter and Bush; they want to claim Reagan as one of their own; they love depriving the poor of medical care, depriving the poor of food, they love denouncing the least among us and rewarding the wealthiest and most powerful; they serve Caesar at every opportunity; they gave us Falwell, Robertson and Dobson.
Wonder what might really be becoming "increasingly irrelevant"? 
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Horowitz exposes Carter for the Left Wing liar that he is. Carter’s Book – Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid – portrays Israel as a government of racists and oppressors.
Horowitz is so livid that he writes the true story of Modern Israel. The real oppressors are the Middle Eastern Mohammedans that have attempted to destroy the Jewish Homeland from the day of its inception.
When Carter marches around America pushing his pack of lies bound in a book, he is pushing the Mohammedan agenda that Mohammedan children are taught from the day they are able to comprehend the language of their forefathers. These lies are the propaganda machine radical Mohammedanism intently spread in their anti-Semitic agenda.
This is part of the arrogance of Mohammedanism in the delusion that their creed is superior and all other creeds are inferior. A superiority complex is fine and dandy, however a Mohammedan superiority complex implies the inferior must join the cult or die.
Kenneth Stein resigned as Executive Director of the Carter Center’s Middle East program. Why? Because there are outright errors in Carter’s book. When will Leftists in Europe and America wake up that the primary goal of Mohammedanism is to force the globe to submit to Mohammed’s Allah by hook or by crook?
Does democracy work?
Well, yes, sometimes.
The other day I heard a guy on NPR advocating a one-state solution for Israel—Palestinians and Jews living together in one nation that would be called—well, they probably couldn’t even agree on that! Anyway, they played an audio clip from Jimmy Carter, who, as you probably know, has recently written a book entitled, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. Carter doesn’t think a one-state solution will work. Why? Because there will eventually be more Palestinians in Israel than Jews, and….that won’t be good, Carter says.
The NPR fellow didn’t agree with Carter. A one-state solution won’t work because of…democracy? Isn’t that what we’re advocating in the Middle East?
Does democracy work? Yes—when the population in the majority has its morals and values founded on the God of the Bible.
You might recall my mentioning on 23 November the Jerusalem Post’s report on the new Human Rights Watch report accusing Palestinians of war crimes for protecting individual houses with ‘human shields’. Then, on 29 November, Norman Finkelstein (reprinted immediately on CounterPunch) came out against the report and called for letters to HRW demanding a retraction. This morning there was a press release from the International Solidarity Movement citing the relevant sections of the Geneva Conventions and establishing quite convincingly that HRW’s accusation was completely groundless, in their own terms. Finkelstein’s page provides links for those who want to write to Kenneth Roth and Sarah Whitson, which I encourage you to do. There are also letters from other readers on that page.
Now, Jonathan Cook has also made an impressive contribution to the discussion of the issue, which you should read in full. Among his observations,
Women volunteering to surround a mosque become the equivalent of the notorious incident in January 2003 when 21-year-old Samer Sharif was handcuffed to the hood of an army Jeep and driven towards stone-throwing youngsters in Nablus as Israeli soldiers fired their guns from behind his head.
A few days ago I wrote that Gaza residents traumatized by projectiles falling on their homes didn’t have the option of fleeing because ‘of course departure is not an option for them’. A correspondent has written casting doubt on this assertion, ‘From what I've read, it seems that Israel is perfectly willing to let Palestinians leave for other countries. If that is true, that means departure is an option’. On reflection, I wrote, ‘I have heard that, too. In fact I think foundations exist, possibly run out of Yisrael Beitenu, that will pay their way and even give them a little grant. But I'm not real sure how it works and frankly, I can't imagine anyone in Gaza being able to avail themselves of such an opportunity, as there are no Israeli officials there to entertain an application and the borders are closed.’ If you can shed any light in the issue, please let me know and I’ll post an update.
Hot on the heels of their recent military intervention in Tonga to protect the monarchy from prodemocracy ‘rioters’, in the interests of stability and democracy, Ha’aretz reports that New Zealand has now humiliated itself again by withdrawing a warrant for the arrest of Moshe Ya’alon for war crimes.
The warrant names Ya'alon for ordering an Israel Air Force attack on the home of senior Hamas official Salah Shehada in the Gaza Strip in 2002. Shahada, the founder of Hamas' military wing, and one of his aides were killed in the attack along with 13 civilians.
This morning’s mail also brought an interesting ‘cogitation’ from MediaLens’s David Edwards, where he discusses some of the mechanisms that the educational system deploys in turning us into compliant ‘responsible’ members of society, regardless of considerations of what I think he would call ‘compassion’, and I would call ‘solidarity’. Among the specific ploys that teacher John Taylor Gatto mentions in his book Dumbing Us Down,
The point is that a child who accepts the label ‘not very bright’ will, in his or her own mind, deem risible the notion that he or she might seek to understand the world, much less to challenge the assumptions accepted by the society by which he or she has been labelled. For a ’failure’ who has been successfully undermined in this way, to reject the labelling system itself will seem like the most obvious and wretched sour grapes. How can this one individual be right against a whole world of opinion? And from where can we gain the confidence that has been stripped away from us by the very system we are presuming to challenge?
On the other hand, the ‘bright’ child will feel a sense of affirmation and belonging that will make him or her disinclined to challenge the fundamental legitimacy and wisdom of the source of his or her own self-esteem. These are the ’winners’ who populate our public [i.e. private] schools, Oxbridge universities and corporate media offices.
Edwards also points out that ‘a lot of ’dim’ children are too ’bright’, or at least too true to themselves, to tolerate the trivia imposed on them as ’education’. To be indifferent to what is of minimal human significance is not a sign of stupidity.’
When I was a kid, maybe 6 or 7 years old, my grandmother took me to see a western and after some gripping scene I discovered to my horror that M&Ms actually do melt in your hand. This was a seminal event in my life, to which I attribute my low tolerance for bullshit. My mother recently reminded me of it out of the blue, so I’m pretty sure it’s not just my fevered imagination. Nevertheless, I did well in school until I dropped out in grade 10 - a decision I have never had cause to regret. I wish I’d been allowed to do it earlier. One of the many advantages was that they never got around to teaching me to hate Shakespeare.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how disappointed I was not to have run into the socialists at the secularism rally I attended. Well, I finally found them yesterday selling papers in Kızılay. I anticipate that this is going to have a significant positive impact on my energy level and my motivation to learn Turkish. It’s also possible that it will also impact on the time available for my cyberlife.
I’m going to post this before it gets too long, but I’m currently writing something about Jimmy Carter’s speech broadcast Thursday, Democracy Now!, and the DN interview with Rashid Khalidi and Ali Abunimah. I may post it later today.
The Jerusalem Post reported the other day
If moderate elements in the Palestinian Authority don't get stronger, the IDF must prepare for a large-scale military operation in the Gaza Strip, said Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief Yuval Diskin to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday.
What we have been witnessing since June, and before, in Gaza, must therefore be something other than a large scale military operation, presumably a small scale military operation, so watch out.
Gideon Levy points out what is apparently too obvious for anyone else to notice,
Nineteen inhabitants of Beit Hanun were killed with malice aforethought… anyone who bombards residential neighborhoods with artillery can't claim he didn't mean to kill innocent inhabitants.
In an article on CounterPunch, Norman Finkelstein quotes some ‘key statements’ from Jimmy Carter’s new book on Palestine, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid 
, among them,
The United States has used its U.N. Security Council veto more than forty times to block resolutions critical of Israel. Some of these vetoes have brought international discredit on the United States, and there is little doubt that the lack of a persistent effort to resolve the Palestinian issue is a major source of anti-American sentiment and terrorist activity throughout the Middle East and the Islamic world. (pp. 209-10)
I suppose it must be to Carter’s credit that there was only one such Security Council veto exercised during his administration, against draft resolution S/13911 on 30 April 1980. That draft, moved by Tunisia, basically reaffirmed previous UN resolutions calling for Israel to withdraw from the territories it had occupied since 1967 and so forth.
US Ambassador McHenry concluded his statement explaining the Carter regime’s objection to the draft resolution,
I know that in many quarters there is skepticism that negotiations in this [Camp David] framework can succeed. The road ahead will be difficult. But together with Israel and Egypt, we ask only that we be judged on the results we obtain.
…It is to the end - the attainment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East - that my government has committed itself. We solemnly reaffirm that commitment here today.
The United States will oppose the resolution before us. [emphasis added]
Thanks in large measure to the cynicism of Carter, his predecessors and successors, twenty-six years down the track, the results he obtained in this way are no peace and certainly no justice. But it seems he no longer wishes to be judged on that basis. At the risk of repeating myself, as the old saying goes, ‘Embarrassing a politician with accusations of hypocrisy is like embarrassing a dog with accusations that he licks his own balls.’
Israeli author David Grossman gave a speech at the Rabin memorial event on 5 November that has received a lot of comment. It was purportedly a masterpiece of Hebrew rhetorical prose, composed by a literary master. I won’t take issue with this assessment, because it is unsurprising in any case that the literary qualities are not evident in the translation.
Gilad Atzmon has already pointed out the contradiction inherent in Grossman’s ‘secular miracle’,
I am totally secular, and yet in my eyes the establishment and the very existence of the State of Israel is a miracle of sorts that happened to us as a nation - a political, national, human miracle.
Gilad also mentions his problem with Grossman’s ‘Jewish and universal values’. One of the thins that struck me about the speech was his description of Israel as
a state that holds as an integral and essential part of its Jewish identity and its Jewish ethos, the observance of full equality and respect for its non-Jewish citizens
Even if there weren’t a contradiction inherent between a state with a ‘Jewish identity’ and a ‘Jewish ethos’ somehow observing ‘full respect’ for non Jews, who do not comprise part of the state’s ‘identity’ and whose ‘ethos’ is excluded, it takes a very blinkered approach to the history of the Zionist project to miss one of its central aspects - ethnic cleansing of the non Jewish population and marginalization of those who managed to remain. Benny Morris was quite clear a couple of years ago when he characterized Ben Gurion’s failure to ‘cleanse the whole country’ as a ‘fatal mistake’. Ilan Pappe’s new book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, is now out and on its way from Amazon. I understand it fleshes out this story in considerable detail, amply documented.
Gilad also makes this cogent observation about Grossman’s quite blatant racism,
The critical reader may ask oneself what really Grossman refers to when he says “people with our powers of creativity and regeneration”? It is rather simple. Grossman truly believes in the uniqueness of the chosen people. In other words, Grossman is not more than a biological determinist…I find it hard to believe that the Guardian would give a voice to a German philosopher who praises Aryan people’s ‘powers of creativity and regeneration’.
Some comments that I’ve come across let Grossman get away with,
Yitzhak Rabin took the road of peace with the Palestinians, not because he possessed great affection for them or their leaders.
It’s true that the Nobel committee awarded Rabin its coveted Peace Prize, and I’ve written elsewhere what that indicates. The point is that Grossman accepts at face value and promulgates as fact that the Oslo Accords had something to do with achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians, when it was never anything other than a stalling tactic that created the bloated and ineffectual quisling Palestine Authority while doubling the Jewish population colonizing the West Bank with a view to its ultimate annexation.
One, however, published on the Electronic Intifada on the 9th, by Raymond Deane, certainly hasn’t missed this crucial point, or many others.
With Lieberman you know where you stand, and self-styled democrats and peaceniks can polish their humanistic credentials by flinging mud at him. With David Grossman, however, the same premises lead to a discourse in which everything has become muddied and inverted, the occupier has become the victim, the victim has become a twisted fanatic, and only the humanistic man of letters has retained any kind of wistful integrity. This discourse is understandably popular with those who, sometimes with honourable if misguided motivation, wish to believe that Zionism can be a liberal, humanistic ideology rather than one that is supremacist and racist to the core.
His ‘Anatomy of a Beautiful Soul’ pulls no punches and I recommend it highly.
On a lighter note, I recently reminded myself to check out David Pope’s website, which I have to recommend visiting more conscientiously than I seem to manage. I reckon he is consistently the most incisive political cartoonist I know of, although some of his material will be obscure to those who do not recognize Australian politicians or keep track of developments in Australian politics. An example (which will not display in this blog)
For more laughs, I found a link to the Dilbert site not long ago from Riverbend’s Baghdad Burning blog, of all places!
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