Front Row Seat

[Political Waves]

First off, this is a Big Astro day, so do drop by PWaves to read Len's nod ... wise and welcome ... to the energies.

Self actualization comes to pass. Our old paradigms are no longer able to contain our reality. We’re becoming aware of how we live and the consequences. There are auspicious gatherings and meetings. Indications are that the implicit will be come explicit, but that is for posterity to determine.

It's also ... ohhhhhh, smell the irony, like choking crude fumes ... World Ocean Day. And the only president giving that a nod, at this writing, is the Leader of Taiwan.

So, Helen Thomas ... bless her pointy old head ... did what she always does, speaking candidly, and we ran for a noose. She said the unsayable -- she thought the unthinkable. "Jews should get the Hell out of Palestine," said she. The heat came down, and the attack/defend meme began in earnest, changing the conversation and blowing smoke from Hell and back.

Helen never wrote an op/ed that intrigued me -- her talking points were simplistic and I seldom learned anything new. It wasn't her writing skills that endeared her, it was her stunning courage in asking confrontive questions. She was not politically correct, this woman -- but she was fierce, closing in on her 90th birthday and still swimming with the sharks. This is the woman, let's remember, that shattered the glass ceiling among reporters to cover TEN PRESIDENTS over 50 years! She's also the one who gave Ari Fleisher fits as she grilled him about Bush's war, torture and mayhem. She has remained the only reporter focused on the wars and keeping them in the conversation; the anti-war folk are bereft that she has retired in the face of Village push-back.

If she seemed a thorn in the side of government spin, that's because she was. She asked pointed questions about empiricism, militarism and corruption. She even had the temerity, recently, to question Israel's "secret" nukes. As Presiding Elder, Helen had a front row seat, determined by seniority. In the last decade, she was the voice no Press Secretary could skirt, whether they wanted to or not -- except when Bush got ticked in 2003 and moved her to the back of the bus by refusing to call on her -- and they all wanted to avoid her, Pub AND Dem.

So now FOX and Bloomberg are fighting over Helen's vacant front row seat -- they have been for a couple of years, waiting for the old gal to keel over. Sullivan suggests a blogger would be better, but don't hold yer breath.

As PWaves makes clear, on a day when Uranus and Jupiter conjunct in Aries ... and never again in our lifetime ... it's time to call the game and start a new one. Here's the game I want -- let's all tell the truth and let the cards fall.

Israel behaves as if it isn't just a tiny little island of democratic process -- population, the size of Houston, Texas -- nestled in the vast land of the Prophet. It doesn't have to make concessions, so long as America supports it and it seems confident we always will. The entire UN disapproved Israel's latest adventure, shooting first and asking questions later, but not the US of A. And speaking of democratic process, Hamas was legally elected by the Palestinians -- I, for one, considered that an opportunity for them to learn how to play well with others, take care of their people and learn how to govern; silly me. That social experiment was never allowed, so they went back to being hateful and resentful. Can't imagine why.

Was Turkey, among others, provocative? Sure -- defying the blockade was part genuine relief effort, part PR stunt to garner attention. It should also be noted that Turkey spent more than a decade bellying up to the bar to join the UN and become a partner with 'civilized' nations and George Bush kicked it to the curb, over and over. Not much has changed in the last 18 months, so Turks are shifting allegiance to those who support them. Bad news for Israel, with whom they shared at least minimal political goals -- stupid move from Israel who needed them. Destabilizing news for us, at a time when we didn't need more.

I keep tabs on the Glenn Beck files, his call for active revolution and overthrow of the government, branding us Communists and Obama seditious -- and I wonder how it is that octogenarian Helen Thomas is being pounded for telling her truth and Beck is being celebrated for telling his. Beck makes up revisionist ... and yes, anti-Semitic ... nonsense and draws it on a blackboard and the Baggers cheer and shout and trade gold shares.

It seems to me that Helen Thomas made a clumsy political statement about the Jewish state, didn't personally attack the Jewish people, but we can't tell the difference any more, thanks to folks like Sarah and Beck and Rush. Thomas speaks to the topic of occupation and colonization and the Lefty's just sigh at the inevitable fallout, and write cards of condolence. Where did the Left go, anyhow? When did controversy prove poisonous? We used to have a big rowdy pie of political thought in this nation, everybody with their slice. Now we got a Hot Pocket -- two boringly similar bites and that's it.

There's no peace process in the Mideast because both sides are wrong-headed and inflexible. We're at an impasse but we need some kind of activity so we can keep the blood pumping. It seems like we're obliged to have a Two-Minute Hate in this country every half hour or so, giving the PR boys their toe-hold to get their spin moving. Now, Helen Thomas will be vilified to the grave, the larger context of her statement never explored and the conversation changed to anti-semitism. New day, is it? Then let's take responsibility for our actions, let our past go and step into TODAY.

In the spirit of truth-telling, I'd like an explanation about autopsy reports of one of those killed on the ship taking a bullet into the top of his skull -- from above. I'll even let the reports of multi-shot 'execution style' bullet holes 'between the eyes' go; maybe the Israeli commandos are extraordinary shots, able to defend themselves from pipe and deck-chair attack with supreme skill bordering on assassination. But the TOP OF THE HEAD, as if delivered by repelling marauders?

I'd like the answer to that one but I won't get it from American press -- perhaps the Israeli papers will answer it, they seem much braver in confronting their demons than we are. The only one that would have been willing to ask it here was Helen Thomas -- and she's dead to us now.

The Israeli's say they've launched an investigation into their own actions but I'd trust those results about as much as a Pentagon review. So, in 2010, speech ain't free and truth is still lost in political darkness. Helen Thomas can't infer that Israel took land that wasn't theirs and that their settlers are still doing it, and the Texan's are rewriting history so the Alamo can't ever be thought of as a skirmish in the American land grab that became an illegal war. The Mexicans are still the 'enemy,' so are the Arabs -- yet nobody seems to mind that some half-assed politico recently called our President a 'rag-head.'

If the New Deal is "I don't care what you WERE, I want to know what you are NOW," then Helen is branded a dotty old racist senile, best sitting on her couch at home. The question is -- what is Israel now? Even more important, what are we?

Without dotty old Helen to ask the disturbing questions, I guess it's up to us. I hope somebody has the chutzpah to step up! We can't even begin a leap in consciousness unless we're telling ourselves the truth.

 

The interesting reads, below.

Jude


Look Who's Talking
digby, Hullabaloo
06/06/10
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/look-whos-talking-helen-thomas-hissy.html

Helen Thomas expressed a truly ugly point of view and there's no defending it except to chalk it up to the lack of filter most 90 year olds seem to develop. But please, please spare me the outrage from people who have been telling me my whole life to "love it or leave it" and are in the process of trying to revoke the citizenship of people who were born in this country to "send them back" to where their parents come from. And please don't try to tell me that there hasn't been many a discussion among the wingnuts that ended with the statement that we "should round up all the ragheads and send them back to the desert" and the like. Just because they want to pretend to like Jews for the moment (the enemy of my enemy etc) doesn't mean they don't have exactly the same impulse as Thomas when it comes to the idea of "repatriation" of all sorts of people they don't like.

But hey, they got an 89 year old woman's scalp, so I'm sure they feel very morally superior. Wake me when they introduce the bill to revoke the 14th amendment. ++


The Real Helen Thomas Scandal
John McQuaid, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, HuffPo
June 8, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mcquaid/the-real-helen-thomas-sca_b_604161.html

Last week, Israeli commandos boarded a relief ship attempting to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip and, during a clash with pro-Palestinian activists, shot nine people to death. It was an old-fashioned, bona fide "international incident," a fiasco that raised alarming questions about the current trajectory of Israel's security, the wisdom of its government, as well as the fate of Obama's Middle East policies and U.S. security in general.

Within a few days, though, the Washington media's "Israel narrative" abandoned those questions and focused instead on the ugly words and sudden retirement of cranky 89-year-old White House correspondent Helen Thomas. Somehow, the debate shifted from Israel behaving badly to Helen Thomas behaving badly.

I'm not going to defend Thomas -- what she said was deeply offensive. But in the overall scheme of things, it was a trivial incident, and DC's sudden obsession with it -- to the exclusion of a lot of other, more important things -- is especially ironic given the parlous state of the Israeli situation.

The Washington media universe may not have set a new speed record here for spinning itself, Tasmanian devil-style, from grave and difficult to trivial and ironic. (That seems, after all, to be what it does nearly every hour of every day.) But it did set a kind of distance record for leaping the moral gulf between important, complex issues and easy, knee-jerk ones.

If you withhold judgment for just a moment on Israel and the Palestinians, all you see are difficult issues, stark moral choices, no-win scenarios. The appalling economic conditions in Gaza, the awful paradox of a democratically-elected Hamas, the unintended consequences of Israel's unyielding military and diplomatic posture, the blowup with Turkey, potential impacts for terrorist recruitment, Iran, ad infinitum.

But American politicians flee from these issues. Instead they fell over one another defending Israel for doing something indefensible. (Yes, of course the blockade-running is a provocation. But if you're smart, you don't kill provocateurs.)

The media and punditocracy follow the politicians. And pretty soon you've got Liz Cheney denouncing Turkey -- our ally -- for all but countenancing the destruction of Israel. Add Helen Thomas into this combustible mix, and a serious engagement with these issues (never a likelihood, but still) becomes impossible.

There are two problems here: The default media posture for hard issues is he-said-she-said, and when you try that with the Middle East all you get is people hurling accusations back and forth. That might work for cable chat shows, but not for understanding what's really going on in the Middle East. Worse, few in the media are smart or brave enough to weigh these issues. If they were, we might get more pushback on the vacuous political debate on Israel here in the United States. For instance, read Peter Beinart's carefully-argued piece on the failure of the American Jewish establishment in the New York Review of Books. Beinart's arguments are alarming. But he is simply too reasonable and nuanced to get much of a hearing in a media that feeds on outrage and is dealing with a situation that is a bottomless BP well of outrage. Reasonable won't cut it when you're arguing with Liz Cheney. ++


Helen Thomas
James Zogby, HuffPo
June 7, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-zogby/helen-thomas_b_603588.html

For years now Helen Thomas has been a challenging voice asking tough questions and refusing to accept evasions from White House spokespersons whose job it is to give as little information as possible. She never let go. During the lead up to the Iraq war, when too many of her colleagues were playing stenographer taking White House dictation, Helen was the ornery one demanding the truth. She was carrying the torch of a free press when many of her colleagues were unable to acknowledge that there was one to carry. Respect is due this woman. We owe her service and courage more than eye rolls and scorn.

In the incident under discussion, Helen Thomas clearly misspoke. She has admitted as much, apologized, and resigned from her post. It is a shame that her career ends this way. But Helen should be honored and revered for her decades of professionalism, not remembered for one mistake.

It would be an even bigger shame if the likes of Ari Fleischer and Sarah Palin were viewed as victors in this affair. Where was their indignation when Rush Limbaugh was making disgraceful and insulting comments about African Americans, gays, Muslims, and women and then was hosted and toasted at the White House? And did they speak out when Pat Robertson was making bizarre pronouncements connecting the devastation of Katrina or Ariel Sharon's stroke with God's justice? If I thought they understood shame, I would advise them to feel some. ++

 
In Defense of Helen Thomas -- On Apologizing to Apologists
Paul Jay, The Real News Network via HuffPo
June 7, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-jay/in-defense-of-helen-thoma_b_602972.html

Helen Thomas was the dean of the White House Press corp. She has a fifty-year history of tough-minded journalism and is one of the very, very few journalists in the mainstream press who has had the guts to question US policy towards Israel. On Monday she was pressured into resigning, "effective immediately".

On Friday she was asked by a guy who stuck a video camera in her face for any comments on Israel and she said, "Tell them to get the get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people [the Palestinians] are occupied and it's their land. It's not Germany, it's not Poland." She was asked where they should go and she answered, "They should go home, to Poland, Germany and America". The video has been making its way around the Internet.

This was said days after the Israeli attack on the aid flotilla that killed at least nine activists as their boat sailed in international waters. [NOTE: When I originally wrote this article, I was mistaken about the sequence of events. The video was shot on May 27th, a few days before the Israeli attack. Of course it was after the Israeli war on Gaza and the blockade].

She later apologized in a short statement on her website "I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon."

Her apology was not enough to stop calls for her head from those who have wanted to shut Thomas up for years.

Ari Fleischer, President George W. Bush's press secretary, led the call in an e-mail Friday to the Huffington Post saying Thomas' comments amount to "religious cleansing."

"She should lose her job over this," Fleischer wrote. "As someone who is Jewish, and as someone who worked with her and used to like her, I find this appalling."

Perhaps Fleischer should also add that he is someone who knows something about apologies . . . being the leading apologist for the Bush administration as their war led to the deaths of at least one million Iraqis.

But Lanny Davis, former special counsel to and White House spokesman for President Bill Clinton, went even further than Fleischer. He issued a statement on Sunday saying Thomas, "has showed herself to be an anti-Semitic bigot."

Now, Davis should know something about apologies and apologists as well. TheHill.com reported that Davis led a lobbying effort against deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya on behalf of Honduran business leaders. This is in defense of a regime that came to power in an illegal coup and is killing journalists and activists. Hmmm . . . defending those that kill activists . . .

Davis went on "Her [Thomas] statement that Jews in Israel should leave Israel and go back to Poland or Germany is an ancient and well-known anti-Semitic stereotype of the Alien Jew not belonging in the 'land of Israel' -- one that began 2,600 years with the first tragic and violent diaspora of the Jews at the hands of the Romans," said Davis.

Thomas was not talking about Jews that lived in the region from Roman times. If she had been given more of a chance to explain herself, rather than the 30-second sound bite traveling around the web, she might have made it clear that she also wasn't referring to the thousands of Jews who lived in Palestine prior to 1948.

What Thomas clearly did say she was talking about was Jews that had come from Germany, Poland and America. Now it's likely that most of the Jewish refugees that came to Palestine from Europe just after the War, did so not because they "belong to the land of Israel", but due to fact that the American, Canadian and British governments wouldn't drop their anti-Jewish quotas even after the horrors of the genocide were fully exposed (let's talk about some real anti-Semites).

I don't know of any opinion polls taken at the time, but if those refugees had a real choice to go to some impoverished potentially war-filled land in the Middle East or join the Jewish community in New York, I know what I would have chosen.

The American Zionist organizations at the time did not fight for a more open immigration policy to allow Jews into America; they lobbied furiously for the Jewish refugees to go to Palestine as part of a move towards the founding of a Jewish state.

As is well known, this state was created in the process of expelling thousands of Palestinians from their lands, people who had nothing to do with the European genocide against the Jews. You cannot say the same about the Anglo-American countries that for much of the '30s were quite happy to equip Hitler with cars and machinery. Quite content to shut their mouths as Hitler began an ethnic cleansing that would end in barbaric genocide.

As far as the American Jews that went to live in Israel after 1948, it's difficult to believe they went to escape persecution, as many of the Jews from other places that went to Israel, in fact did. So, one can understand a certain specific resentment against American Jews who decided that it was ok, at someone else's expense, to work out their identity crisis and pick up some free airline tickets to boot.

Lanny Davis statement continued, "If she had asked all blacks to go back to Africa, what would White House Correspondents Association position be as to whether she deserved White House press room credentials -- much less a privileged honorary seat?"

Our defender of illegal coups knows very well this is not analogous. The obvious comparison is asking all European Americans to "get the hell out", and leave the land to its rightful owners, Native Americans. One could argue Mexican Americans might have an argument to stay in certain parts of the country.

The European migration to America isn't such a stretch if one thinks about it. Colonialism makes use of people fleeing religious persecution to populate their new possession . . .

At any rate, we all know what's going on here. The hyper-pro-Israel lobby, in both parties, hasn't much liked the fact that Helen Thomas dares to speak up and question that most sacred of topics, and right from the front row of the White House Press Gallery. Heck, she had the gall to ask President Obama about Israel's "secret" nuclear weapons. She even asked the current White House spokesman why the US had not condemned the Israeli attacks on the aid flotilla. No wonder they want her the hell out.

Do I think all Jews (that came after 1948) should get out of Palestine? Well, no more or less than Europeans should get out of North America, or the Portuguese should get out of Brazil, or the British should get the hell out of Australia. There does come a point where such things are simply not possible.

There's really no need anyway, there's plenty of land and resources. The only issue is, are the rights of the people who owned the land before colonization going to be respected now; is there proper compensation; do they have the right to self-determination and so on.

In the case of the Palestinians, what Israel needs to do has been made very clear in UN resolutions and in the demands of the Palestinians. In spite of the illegal blockade of Gaza, almost no one, including the Hamas representative I interviewed a few weeks ago, says the Jews have to get out. Ok there are some that say it, people get very angry after 62 years in a refugee camp, but what most Palestinians want is to live as equals with Jews in a truly democratic state.

It's way past time that we can discuss Israel and Palestine without the McCarthyite witch hunt atmosphere that has ruled for sixty years.

I said in my last blog, not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism - but some is.

Helen Thomas' isn't. ++


Helen Thomas, Throwback
08 Jun 2010 12:57 pm
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/06/helen-thomas-throwback.html

I found her remarks about Israelis returning to Poland unconscionably callous and vile, although I do think it should be possible for an anti-Zionist to be a major political reporter and/or columnist. (Bleg: is there a columnist on any American op-ed page who is explicitly against the existence of the state of Israel?) But as reporters cavort with Joe and Rahm with squirt guns, one cannot see the end of her career without some regrets. After all, who will now ask:

"When are you going to get out of Afghanistan? Why are we continuing to kill and die there? What is the real excuse? And don't give us this Bushism, 'If we don't go there, they'll all come here.'"

There's a fearlessness here that we desperately need. Instead we have socializing, trivia, source-greasing and stenography. ++


How Objectivity Breeds Extremism
Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish
08 Jun 2010

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/06/how-objectivity-breeds-extremism.html

Matt Welch has a theory about reporters forced to "submerge or even smother their political and philosophical views in the workplace":

Show me the world's most intractable problems–the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the inability to produce mass amounts of energy without negatively impacting the environment, the search for a beer that tastes great and is less filling–and I'll show you reporters in bars having conversations worthy of the Alex Jones show. It's not that they're all Helen Thomases–she is truly one of a kind–but that in the absence of subjecting their own beliefs to journalistic rigor, they are more likely than many would expect to quietly nurture beliefs that outsiders would find surprisingly slanted and even extreme.

Yglesias nods:

When you get in the habit of arguing about politics professionally, you tend to learn something about what the other side’s counterarguments are and hopefully develop some better arguments of your own. If you just kind of sit around in the vicinity of important issues stewing in your own views but never working on articulating them or developing them, then you’ve set the stage to cut loose with some serious nonsense.

Any time people feel required to suppress their real views for whatever reason, untruths fester without the disinfectant of sunlight. That's why I've always tried to raise some difficult issues - racial differences in IQ, or the impact of testosterone on gender, or the sexual orientation of a possible Supreme Court Justice - as a way to get them on the table. In this, I'm a liberal and always have been. Which means I'm against the cult of journalistic objectivity - which often means simply never asking the questions that really do need to be talked about. ++

 

 

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~ Barack Obama

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