David Waldman Devastates the Dim Bulbs on CNN

Waldman, always one of my favorite bloggers at Daily Kos, literally walked over a panel on CNN yesterday.

Our Man at Bilderberg

The common convention is that people who care about such organizations as the Bilderbergs are suffering from some paranoid obsession that often afflicts people who have seen too many episodes of the X-Files. But as Charlie Skelton demonstrates, writing for the Guardian, it is the Bilderberg crowd that clearly suffers from paranoia.

I've never had much interest in groups like these. This is because I have never seen evidence that a group like the Bilderbergs exercise direct political power like, for example AIPAC. But when a journalist like Skelton, working for a prominent newspaper like the Guardian, gets treated like a terror suspect to impede his coverage of what is billed as a benevolent chat among elites, I get interested. From the Guardian Series: Our Man at Bilderberg:

Ten years ago, when Jon Ronson dared to report on Bilderberg, he found himself "chased by mysterious men in dark glasses through Portugal". He was scared for his safety.

"When I phoned the British embassy and asked them to explain to the powerful secret society that had set their goons on me that I was essentially a humorous journalist out of my depth, I wasn't being funny. I was being genuinely desperate," he wrote. I know exactly how he feels.

Only out of sheer desperation did I try to arrest one of the goons following me and then follow my flimsy leads up the Greek police ladder, finally catching one of the goons wet-handed in the lavatory of the department of government security. And only then did I know the extent of Bilderberg's paranoia: they had set the state police on me.

So who is the paranoid one? Me, hiding in stairwells, watching the pavement behind me in shop windows, staying in the open for safety? Or Bilderberg, with its two F-16s, circling helicopters, machine guns, navy commandos and policy of repeatedly detaining and harassing a handful of journalists? Who's the nutter? Me or Baron Mandelson? Me or Paul Volker, the head of Obama's economic advisory board? Me or the president of Coca-Cola?

It makes me want to spit, the absurdity of it: the cost, not just in Greek tax euros, but on my peace of mind, of having (conservatively) a dozen Jack Bauers assigned to tailing me. I hope the operation at least had a cool name: Operation Catastrophic Overreaction, perhaps.

So, yes, Bilderberg's paranoia is half to blame. But there is another reason why Ronson was hounded round Portugal, why I was chased round Greece, and why on Sunday the Romanian journalist Paul Dorneanu was strip-searched by goons in Vouliagmeni, held for four hours and forced to purge his camera of images (for the crime of trying to film the delegates leaving). And it is this: they can harass and detain us only because so few of us are there.

Just now, I searched for "Bilderberg" on Reuters. I did the same on AP. And this is what I turned up:

Publicity is pure salt to the giant slug of Bilderberg. So I suggest next year we turn up with a few more tubs. If the mainstream press refuses to give proper coverage to this massive annual event, then interested citizens will have to: a people's media. Find the biggest lens you can and join us for Bilderberg 2010. No idea where it's going to be, but there's usually a few days' notice.

We'll have a barbecue selling bilderburgers (with extra lies), and we will set up our own press centre near the cordon. Get some lanyards. Email me at bilderberg2010@yahoo.co.uk and we'll start prepping.

Meanwhile, petition newspapers to send a correspondent. Petition your MP to ask a question in parliament. This happened a few days ago in Holland. Citing an article by Paul Joseph Watson on prisonplanet.com, a Dutch MP asked in parliament about the involvement of the prime minister, the minister for European affairs and Queen Beatrix, asking them to make public any items that were on the agenda, and whether the ratification of the Lisbon treaty was discussed.

I've got a couple of questions I would like to ask Peter Mandelson, mainly about the freedom of the press and what he thinks about a Guardian journalist being detained, shoved and intimidated by the Greek state police on his behalf. Mandelson's office has confirmed his attendance at this year's meeting: "Yes, Lord Mandelson attended Bilberberg. He found it a valuable conference."

Oh, good. Maybe he stole a bathrobe. Peter has been a busy baron these last few days: all that beach volleyball and global strategising, then straight back to address the Google Zeitgeist conference on Monday, where he talked about "the need for regulation" of the internet. "There are worries about the impact of the internet on our society," he said. I bet he is worried; but not half as worried as I am about "the need for regulation".

But these worries are small potatoes compared with the biggest concern Bilderberg 09 has given me. My experience over the last several days in Greece has granted me a single, diamond-hard opinion. Meaning I now have two: that John McEnroe is the greatest sportsman of all time; and that we must fight, fight, fight, now – right now, this second, with every cubic inch of our souls – to stop identity cards.

I can tell you right now that the argument "If I've done nothing wrong, why would I worry about showing who I am?" is hogwash. Worse than that, it's horse hockey. It's all about the power to ask, the obligation to show, the justification of one's existence, the power of the asker over the subservience of the asked. (Did you know that most Greek police don't wear a number? This is an obligation that goes one way.)

I have learned this from the random searches, detentions, angry security goon proddings and thumped police desks without number that I've had to suffer on account of Bilderberg: I have spent the week living in a nightmare possible future and many different terrible pasts. I have had the very tiniest glimpse into a world of spot checks and unchecked security powers. And it has left me shaken. It has left me, literally, bruised.

I can tell you this from personal experience: the onus upon the individual to carry with them some external proof of their identity is transformative of his or her status as a human being. The identity card turns you from a free citizen into a suspect. It is a spanner with which to beat the individual around the head. It is the end of everything. And how much easier to put all that information inside a microchip so you don't have to carry around that pesky card all the time. How much more efficient!

Listen. I don't care if you don't love liberty. For the love of yourself: fight identity cards. Don't let them happen. STOP IDENTITY CARDS. Stop identity cards. And while you're about it: stop identity cards. And that's all I have to say, you will be delighted to know, about Bilderberg 2009. Oh, except for a giant word of thanks to everyone who has written supportive or interested comments on these blogposts (let's meet up for a proper debrief!) And one little correction: for the record, Kenneth Clarke's office has said he was "in his constituency" at the weekend, not at the Astir Palace doing sambuca shots with the CEO of Airbus. Just in case he remembers differently when asked again.

The Embarassment that is the GOP: Con't

This is why I've almost stopped paying attention to these clowns. If it weren't for their sponsors in the corporate media, they would have probably dissolved by now. But as long as cable news and the Sunday talk shows still pretend they matter, the GOP will keep pretending they haven't completely self-destructed.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican Party leaders are dropping a proposal aimed at changing the name of the Democratic Party.

In a deal reached Wednesday, the GOP will not vote on a resolution asking the Democrats to rename their party the "Democrat Socialist" party.

Two Republican National Committee members who had backed the measure say that supporters have agreed to change the resolution's language to urge Americans to oppose what the GOP is calling the Democrats' "socialist" agenda.

GOP Chairman Michael Steele had opposed the name-changing resolution, and other party leaders have called it "stupid" and "absurd."

Wow

Via The Hill

Arlen Specter defending Pelosi?

"The CIA has a very bad record when it comes to -- I was about to say candid, that's too mild -- to honesty."

TPM Muckracker has more...

"Director Panetta says the agency does not make it a habit to misinform Congress. I believe that is true. It is not the policy of the Central Intelligence Agency to misinform Congress," Specter said. "But that doesn't mean that they're all giving out the information."

Because of leaks that have come from Congress, Specter said he understands the agency's hesitancy to disclose all its information.

"The current controversy involving Speaker Pelosi and the CIA is very unfortunate in my opinion because it politicizes the issue and it takes away attention from ... how does the Congress get accurate information from the CIA?" Specter said. "For political gain, people are making headlines."

OK, you can chair the Senate Special Committee on Aging.

Greenwald on where idiocy and cowardice merge once again...

I really have nothing to add to this except read the whole thing.

The "debate" over all the bad and scary things that will happen if Obama closes Guantanamo and we then incarcerate those detainees in American prisons is so painfully stupid even by the standards of our political discourse that it's hard to put into words, and it also perfectly illustrates the steps that typically lead to America's National Security policies:

(1) Right-wing super-tough-guy warriors project some frightened, adolescent, neurotic fantasy onto the world -- either because they are really petrified by it or because they want others to be ("Putting Muslim Terrorists in our prisons will make us Unsafe! -- Keep them away from me, please!!!");

(2) Rather than scoff at the inane fear-mongering or point out simple facts to reveal its idiocy, Democratic "leaders" such as Harry Reid echo the right-wing fears in order to prove how Serious and Tough they are -- in our political debates, the more frightened one is, the more Serious and Tough one is -- and/or because they are genuinely frightened of being called mean names by Sean Hannity ("Harry Reid isn't as scared of this as I am, which shows that he's weak");

(3) "Journalists" who are capable of nothing other than mindlessly reciting what they hear then write articles depicting the Right's frightened neurosis as a Serious argument, and then overnight, a consensus emerges: Democrats are in big trouble politically unless they show that they, too, are as deeply frightened as the Right is.

Until recently, I thought the single most embarrassingly stupid event of the last decade's national security debates -- the kind that will make historians look back with slack-jawed amazement -- was the joint dissemination in the run-up to the war by the Bush administration and the American media of playing cards that featured all of the "Most Wanted" Iraqi Villains and their cartoon villain nicknames. Saddam Hussein was the Ace of Spades; Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash -- Mrs. Anthrax -- was the Five of Hearts; Ali Hassan al-Majid -- Chemical Ali -- was the King of Spades; sadly, Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha -- the dreaded "Dr. Germ" -- didn't make it to the deck, but she certainly had her day in the American media sun (AP: "Iraq's 'Dr. Germ' Surrenders to Coalition" -- CNN: "U.S. military holding 'Dr. Germ,' 'Mrs. Anthrax'").

AIPAC's Hidden Persuaders

The Israel lobby is aiming to soften up US public opinion for an attack on Iran. Americans should resist its propaganda

by Richard Silverstein

Despite the ballyhoo of the recent Aipac national policy conference in Washington, when Israel-US bonds were feted, relations between the two countries are currently more strained than at any time since 1991. That was when the elder George Bush, as US president, fiercely lobbied Yitzchak Shamir to join in the Madrid peace conference. Relations then reached their nadir when James Baker uttered his infamous remark about Israel's American-Jewish supporters: "Fuck the Jews, they don't even vote for us."

If relations continue to deteriorate in coming months, we might have to go back in time to the Suez crisis of 1956 to find a time when relations were this fraught.

A case in point is Iran. That bogey-nation was everywhere at the Aipac conference. Every keynote speech - if they weren't directly written by that group's staff - seemed unmistakably scripted and "on message", dedicated to the existential threat that Iran poses not just to Israel, but the entire world.

A glossy brochure distributed at the Aipac meeting showed a map (pictured below) centred on Iran and beyond, with a dark ominous ring around Iran's neighbours and as far away as India, Russia, Africa and eastern Europe. The message: these are the countries under imminent threat of Iranian ballistic missiles.

A map contained in a brochure distributed at an Aipac meeting

The brochure copy even intimates that the next step for Iran is "building a missile with range to reach US territory". (Never mind that Iran doesn't yet have any ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear weapon, nor will it have the bomb itself for anywhere from a year to five years depending on which you source you choose to believe.)

Israel is in the midst of a massive diplomatic, political and intelligence campaign, both public and covert, that could lead - if those officials behind it have their way - towards a military strike on Iran. It is a war for the hearts and minds of Americans. Or you might call it the war before the war. In intelligence circles, this Israeli project is known as perception management and defined by the department of defence as:

Actions to convey and/or deny information ... to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives and objective reasoning as well as to intelligence systems and leaders ... ultimately resulting in foreign behaviours and official actions favourable to [US] objectives. In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception and psychological operations.

The Israelis are following the template of the Bush administration's run-up to the Iraq war. First, the US government advocated half-hearted efforts at diplomatic engagement. Then it ratcheted up pressure through sanctions and UN resolutions. That is where the Israeli campaign stands now.

Aipac's members carried a unified message to Capitol Hill during their lobbying of US senators and members of Congress. They demanded that Congress pass the most draconian sanctions ever proposed against Iran. They demanded that Iran be offered a limited time in which to respond to an ultimatum insisting it drop its nuclear programme.

What then? If you review Aipac's literature and the various commentaries published either by Israeli diplomats or their supporters in the US media, they don't specify what comes next. But any sensible person can guess that the final step will be war: "Israeli leaders have ... hinted at pre-emptive military strikes if they decide that diplomacy has failed."

The Israelis surely know that the Obama administration will never go to war against Iran. In fact, they know that Obama would not approve of Israel doing so. But I've become convinced, in doing the research and speaking to knowledgeable sources, that Israel is prepared at some date in the near future to attack Iran itself, even against the wishes of the US.

This of course will put Obama in an untenable position: do US forces attack the Israelis (in effect defending the Iranians) and risk the fallout that would occur in relations between the Democratic administration and American Jews? Or does he allow the Israelis to carry on to their targets and bomb Iran, accepting the bloodletting and mayhem that will inevitably result? If Israel wishes for the latter outcome, they must lay the groundwork here in the US for tacit acceptance by the American people of a third-party attack on Iran.

Indeed, they are already a good deal of the way toward this goal, as the latest polling from Rasmussen Report reveals. According to it, 49% of Americans believe that if Israel attacks Iran then the US should help Israel.

Some readers may say this is alarmist. Before I learned some of the information I gathered from sources both public and not, I also would have labelled this as overly dramatic. But Israel hasn't shrunk, for example, from drafting opinion columns for US newspapers on the menace posed by Iran, and telling the editor that a local Jewish community leader would be attaching his name to it.

Within the US Israel exploits a willing circle of Likudist advocacy groups and thinktanks - such as the Washington Institute for Near East Peace, the Israel Project, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs as well as Aipac itself - that are closely scripted and co-ordinate their political message with Israeli diplomats. While some of these groups deny such a close affiliation, there is proof of scripting and amplification of the Israeli government's agenda. And of course there may be cases in which the organisations know the needs of their patron so well that they need no prompting.

In another example, Israeli diplomats monitored and encouraged a member of Congress to host an anti-Iranian conference that would advocate Israel's message of sanctions (and more).

Israel, along with enablers like Aipac, has not shrunk from hounding its critics. One peace activist in the US so angered Israeli authorities that he was driven from a job through a whispering campaign in the community, which also included a disparaging article leaked to a willing reporter.

The level of hubris necessary to pull this off is astonishing. Fresh off the dismissal of the Rosen-Weissman spy charges involving its own employees, Aipac is flexing its political muscle and reminding the world of its resurgence. It does this through a combination of manipulation, public lobbying and punishment of its enemies.

We in the US must be prepared to resist. We must protect ourselves from Israel's propaganda offensive ginning up war with Iran. We must encourage President Obama to stay strong in his commitment to Israeli-Arab peace, whether or not Israel is a willing partner. Keeping our eyes on the prize of peace is going to be the hardest challenge of all, because the Netanyahu government is doing everything it can to divert the world's attention.

Congressional leaders inadvertently expose Israeli lobbyists behind letter to Obama

This would be funny.

Update: In response to an email query, Katie Grant, a spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, “The letter was discussed with AIPAC, and a staffer named it that.”

Josh Block, a spokesman for AIPAC, said he wasn’t familiar with the particular letter but that he could “only guess that whoever wrote the [letter] used it that title as shorthand, since it’s well know that we support the Hoyer/Cantor letter it is attached to.”

GOP House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) circulated a letter to colleagues this week urging President Obama to support Israel when moving forward with any Israeli peace process.

Trouble is, they forgot to delete the name of the lobbying group involved in the letter from the document.

Attached to the email message they circulated when seeking signatures from other members of Congress was the document, titled, “AIPAC Letter Hoyer Cantor May 2009.pdf.”

AIPAC stands for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, a powerful bipartisan pro-Israel lobbying group. Recently, the group found itself in the news over allegations that two former staff members were involved in espionage — though the Justice Department recently dropped the case against them and no wrongdoing was alleged against the group itself.

The file name flub was discovered by The Washington Post’s Al Kamen in his “In the Loop” Column Friday.

The email to congressmembers seeking their support said they hoped they’d sign onto “the attached letter to President Obama regarding the Middle East peace process,” which argued that the US “must be both a trusted mediator and a devoted friend to Israel” and added, “Israel will be taking the greatest risks in any peace agreement.”

“Seems as though someone forgot to change the name or something,” Kamen quipped. “AIPAC? The American Israel Public Affairs Committee? Is that how this stuff works?”

The practice of lobbyists writing letters for congressmembers — to which they affix their names — is not uncommon. The custom was prominently in view during the scandal involving fallen power-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose staff were sometimes responsible for drafting letters that found themselves on congressional letterhead. Abramoff pled guilty to fraud and corruption charges in 2006.

An email to Hoyer’s press secretary was not immediately returned. The spokesperson for Cantor could not immediately be reached for comment, nor could a spokesperson for AIPAC.

The letter follows as a GIF. The PDF version can be downloaded here.

President Barack Obama spoke to the AIPAC Policy Conference in June 2008.