Jack, flip a coin for my answers. I honestly don’t think you will give a shit no matter what my answers are.
**Mandelstam ** - In reply to the first (of your two substantial) psts:
I agree and it has never been my position – it has, however, been how Jack Klugman/mannii likes to depict my position. And yep, I agree the phrase is misleading in its over-simplicity.
As best I understand, Jewish opinion, like any other, is immensely varied and that is reflected in media coverage – the differences between, say, you and december is mirrored throughout Jewish society, including those parts of the media in which Jewish influence is found. Indeed, I linked to the IDF Refusnik Network earlier in this thread as an example of pro-Israeli’s who reject Sharon’s policies and whom I support.
In relation to (specifically) the media influence, though, would you agree that the bottom line is always that –whatever the differences in opinion on the correct approach of US or Israeli policy – any position (of, say, the NYT) considers and then rests on the premise of what is best for the State of Israel; thus the NYT can express a different view of Sharon’s policies than does the Washington Post and everyone is convinced they’re right ?
And, of course, when there is no countervailing pro-Palestinian (media) influence, that which does exist has even greater force.
Indeed. But it’s also one of the world’s most sophisticated and cosmopolitan crowds. Maybe that carries a little weight …
Well, I probably just need to remind you that, in general terms, British / London Jews have a different mind set to their US counterparts – one perhaps not entirely mirrored by the significant difference between European and US political (Right/center/Left) frames of reference, but similar. This distinction is perhaps exemplified by the Chief Rabbi,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2218571.stm
“Britain’s chief rabbi has taken the unprecedented step of warning that Israel’s stance towards Palestinians is incompatible with Judaism.
Professor Jonathan Sacks described the current situation in the Middle East as “nothing less than tragic.”
It is forcing Israel into postures that are incompatible in the long run with our deepest ideals," he told the Guardian newspaper.”
- I’ve not seen that view expressed witin the US Jewry, have you ?
London_Calling, perhaps it would be a good time to acknowledge Dex’s words a little higher up on the page as well. I’m of course not going to force you to apologise, but at the same time, I know you’re a man who’s not afraid of owing up to the occasional gaffe, so to speak.
Mandelstam, I see you’ve been designated the good ni- I mean, Jew. Don’t let the home side down.
Reassure our boy that it’s true - in his words, “there’s no conspiracy, it’s just good business” - Jews have no real convictions, it’s all about money.
Once he’s lulled into complacency, the Cabal™ can deal with him. ;j
It’s another blockbuster december thread. His fifteen minutes just goes on and on. ;j
He’s a Superstar. awkward split, stumbles into furniture
London_Calling:
“I agree the phrase [pro-Israel lobby] is misleading in its over-simplicity.”
May I suggest a switch to “pro-Ariel Sharon lobby”–that is a phrase that I saw in Tikkun (about which more later). I myself almost always direct my critique at the Bush administration as opposed to the United States since I’m well aware–thanks partly to december ;)–that I too am a citizen of the United States and, like hundreds of thousands of other Americans, I don’t agree with the Bush administration’s foreign policy. By criticizing the Sharon administration in lieu of “Israel” one can also distinguish beween people who are pro-Israel in a general sense but not necesarrily pro-Sharon. (In a similar vein I would describe myself as pro-Britain, as I have close ties to that country, but not in the least pro-Blair!.)
“As best I understand, Jewish opinion, like any other, is immensely varied…”
Yes indeed, you will find Jews on the far left and on the neoconservative right and just about everywhere in between.
"…including those parts of the media in which Jewish influence is found. "
Right–although I wonder if it even makes sense to discuss media owned by Jews in terms of “Jewish influence.” To do so is to assume that Jewish owners and managers a) identify themselves primarily as Jews and b) turn this identification into specifically Jewish influence of some kind. While I’m sure this actually happens, and perhaps especially with regard to Israel and other Jewish-related topics, I don’t think we can assume it happens every time a Jewish person happens to own or manage a media outlet. I think that really depends on a lot of things: including (among others) how strongly one identifies as a Jew (as opposed say to identifying as an educated, upper-middle-class, American journalist who just happens to be Jewish), and how much one’s own sense of of professionalism deters one from allowing personal allegiances of any kind to translate into blatant “influence.” Certainly I would say that the Jewish editors of the Nation seem to identify first and foremost as the editors of a liberal news weekly that aims to hold itself to the highest standards. So in that case, at the very least, I’d say that the prominence of journalists/editors who are Jews doesn’t translate into identifiable “Jewish influence.”
“Indeed, I linked to the IDF Refusnik Network earlier in this thread as an example of pro-Israeli?s who reject Sharon?s policies and whom I support.”
Right–and I hope that that’s been noted by others as well.
“In relation to (specifically) the media influence, though, would you agree that the bottom line is always that ?whatever the differences in opinion on the correct approach of US or Israeli policy ? any position (of, say, the NYT) considers and then rests on the premise of what is best for the State of Israel; thus the NYT can express a different view of Sharon’s policies than does the Washington Post and everyone is convinced they’re right ?”
I’m not really sure I follow the second question.
As to the first: does the NYT’s editorial view on US foreign policy boil down to what is best for the state of Israel first and foremost? I’ve honestly never thought through this question but I don’t think so. I think what is best for the United States itself would also be prominent in the logic. And I think that questions of internationalism and fair play would figure to some degree insofar as the Times genuinely thinks of itself as holding to high-minded standards (whether it actually achieves those standards is another question.) Part of those self-consciously sought standards, I think, would involve the Times’s shuddering to think that they might perceived as editorializing first and foremost from the standpoint of what is best for Israel. To the contrary, I think the Times sees itself as an organ of cosmopolitan opinion: anchored to New York City and the US, to be sure (and perhaps more tacitly to Israel), but, transcending all that in its efforts to be a beacon to national and world opinion. The “newspaper of record” as the saying goes.
“And, of course, when there is no countervailing pro-Palestinian (media) influence, that which does exist has even greater force.”
That is certainly true though 1) as Arab Americans become more economically important they are getting a bit more recognition in the media; and 2) I’m not sure that the fact of there being no pro-Palestinian influence can be directly tied to there being so many prominent Jews in the media. Part of the problem is that lack of prominent Palestinians in the US (Edward Said, who frequently contributes to the Nation and who has occasionally written op-eds in the Times, being one of the few exceptions)
“Well, I probably just need to remind you that, in general terms, British / London Jews have a different mind set to their US counterparts ? one perhaps not entirely mirrored by the significant difference between European and US political (Right/center/Left) frames of reference, but similar.”
I’m sure it is similar and, indeed, that would be an important point. I.e. the context of American politcs en masse vs. British politics en masse is a major influence on the political opinions of the Jewish populations in both countries. But some of your posts, including the ones in other threads, have given the impression that the opposite is true: i.e., that US Jews, due to their media influence, are influencing American opinion/policy at large and pushing it in a reflexively pro-Israel/pro-Sharon direction. (That’s not to say that there isn’t any truth to that view; just that I don’t think this would work if the context weren’t amenable to it.)
*"This distinction is perhaps exemplified by the Chief Rabbi…
?Britain’s chief rabbi has taken the unprecedented step of warning that Israel’s stance towards Palestinians is incompatible with Judaism.
Professor Jonathan Sacks described the current situation in the Middle East as “nothing less than tragic.”
It is forcing Israel into postures that are incompatible in the long run with our deepest ideals," he told the Guardian newspaper.?
- I’ve not seen that view expressed witin the US Jewry, have you ?"*
Actually, I have–though there is no Chief Rabbi here, and the individual I have in mind, Rabbi Michael Lerner the editor of Tikkun, is perhaps not well-known to many Jews. (Though he is prominent in left and liberal circles). Here is their homepage, and here is Lerner’s statement on Israel.
An excerpt:
*"The distortions in Israeli society required to enable the occupation to continue have been yet another dimension of the problem: first, the pervasive racism towards Arabs, manifested not only in the willingness to blame all Palestinians for the terrorist actions of a small minority but also in the willingness to treat all Israeli citizens of Palestinian descent as second class citizens (e.g. in giving lesser amounts of financial assistance to East Jerusalem or to Israeli Palestinian towns than to Jewish towns); second, in the refusal to allocate adequate funds to rectify the social inequalities between Ashkenazic and Sephardic/Mizrachi Jews; third in the willingness of both Labor and Likud to make electoral deals with ultra-orthodox parties intent on using state power to enforce religious control over Israelis’ personal lives and to grab disproportionate state revenues–in order that they could count on these religious parties to back whatever their engagement or disengagement plans in the West Bank.
Perhaps the greatest victim of all these distortions has been Judaism itself. *"
And then, of course, if American Jewry also counts secular leaders there are numerous figures of some importance. There is Jeff Cohen, the founder of FAIR, a media watchdog group that publishes alerts such as this one which criticizes the New York Times on their reporting of Palestinian deaths. (I should add that I don’t know for a fact that Jeff Cohen is Jewish, but I’ve never met anyone named Cohen yet who wasn’t.) And there are many academics: Chomsky springs to mind as one you’ll have doubtless heard of.
I hope I’ve got everything in the right place, in this post …
I looked at that phrase and thought ‘Why didn’t I think of that earlier!’ Yet, yet … there’s something I can’t quite (yet) put my finger on that doesn’t work about that phrase, either. Yep, on first blush it is a whole lot more accurate than ‘pro-Israeli lobby’ but give me a little while to see if I can describe what’s bubbling to the surface …. Is there a ‘pro-4th June, 1967 borders’ lobby …… ?
Perhaps it’s that I’m adverse (in a constructive debate) to being ‘anti’ something without proposing a ‘pro’ something alternative … we’ll see …
I think you have greater faith in the concept of journalistic ‘Chinese walls’ than do I. The principle of journalistic integrity is all fine and dandy but if the businessman boss / owner (through his appointed editor) asks if you want to pay the mortgage this month …… And, of course, (here, at least) an awful lot of journalism is freelance, nowadays.
Of course, it’s possible that my view is overly cynical as a result of years of tales from Rupert Murdoch employees here in London – including on what used to be referred to here as ‘The newspaper of record’, The Times, which he owns – but I don’t believe businessmen get into the newspaper owning game because they like the smell of newsprint; newspaper ownership has always, always been about power and influence, IMHO - that’s the starting point and the finishing point.
Whether influence is exerted at any given point depends on the views of whoever is in a position to exert that influence and, as we’ve already discussed, that varies greatly as between individual owners (and their personal philosophies).
and …
Mine was a cumbersome passage that got mangled further when you parsed it (somehow, the colon’s became question marks in the parsing – a keyboard designation issue, I’d imagine). Okay, lets try again;
I tend to think that, emotionally speaking, the general population of US Jews is already in the bag (as one might say, here) whereas, the US population as a whole needs constant massaging – but this, again, doesn’t quite grasp my position. Let me try this and see what you think;
US policy towards the State of Israel isn’t so much influenced by the media’s portrayal of Israel (the soft-focus ‘oh, we must support this poor, beleaguered democracy’, etc.) as it is by having influence on how the general US public perceives presidents and those seeking election to the presidency – it’s not the press supporting Israel as much as all presidents supporting Israel. This is important to my view so let me re-state: what I mean is this; unless a presidential candidate – of both political parties - has met ……., etc and done the ‘smoky backroom’ deals (as a Republican candidate would with, say, the NRA or a Democrat candidate with the Teamsters), he’s in greater danger of receiving negative press through his (not yet ‘her’) election campaign and after (if he survives) than is a presidential candidate who has jumped through the …………. particular hoop – i.e. the deal in relation to US policy toward Israel is done before voting day and with both candidates.
I’d particularly like your view on this point as it’s important to my take, if you have one ?
I wonder if the only bottom line we can use is this; compare the partiality of US coverage with, say, western European coverage (we don’t have a whole bunch of Palestinians to hand here, either). It’s vastly different (the balance is vastly different), thus the public’s perceptions are widely different. QED or another exxplanation ?
Btw, I’m going to try and address the issue of ‘racism’/ignorance and ‘prejudice’ terminology (in relation to december) in another distinct post (as well as the other maters in your other big post) later. It would be natural (at least for my argument) to include the Judaism/ Rabbi Michael Lerner / Chief Rabbi discussion there.
Well, this is a shame and I wish it were different, really, but to be frank, Coldfire, I read his “For the record” response and was … ‘under whelmed’.
He confess his” exasperation”, informs us he is “highly offended”, and all the while ascends to the “racial stereotyping” moral high ground. One wonders if ‘Dex’ is an abbreviation of ‘dexterous’…… <do I get a ‘touche!’ ?>
Beyond that, he gets in a “Brits with sticks up their arses” aside.
So I acknowledge his words (as you say), but it would be naïve of me to apologise for anything more – the key, however is this: he chose (in this recent post) to explain nothing (except his emotional hurt), therefore he has chosen not to correct any misapprehension I may have been under. And he knows exactly what he’s doing. What am I to do except pass him a handkerchief?
For your earlier explanation, however, I am still grateful and reassured about ** C K Dexter Haven** ability to temper his emotions behind the scenes and I also continue to offer him kudos for so doing.
Kudos dexterous ! – wasn’t there a Roman Emperor of that name ?
**Mandelstam ** - Damn! I just re-read my most recent and the two gaps about the lobby should have had ‘AIPAC’ there – I forgot the name and meant to come back to fill in those two gaps.
Sorry for any (further) confusion!
That was, indeed, my point. You hinted that Dex’s stance on Israeli matters would interfere with his impartiality as an administrator, and I assured you this was not the case. In fact, when sending out e-mail warnings to posters who cross the line, we often decide that Dex is to send the e-mail because of his impartiality, mainly caused by his lack of interaction with the offending poster.
As for the rest of it, you can debate with any poster on the boards, and be over- or underwhelmed by them. Dex is an administrator as well as a participating poster: he’s no exception to the rule.
Cheers for the response.
London Calling: << the key, however is this: he chose (in this recent post) to explain nothing (except his emotional hurt), therefore he has chosen not to correct any misapprehension I may have been under. >>
I don’t see that I’m under any obligation to correct any misapprehensions you might have. I wish that I could. I’d start with your nonsensical misapprehension that “the media” is some sort of monolithic beast controlled by Jews.
I did say that your comments about my impartiality regarding Board administration were insulting. I have nothing to explain. I certainly am not going to “explain” any comments that you think I might have made to the other moderators in a discussion about whether specific conduct by a specific person merited banning. I’m not even sure that I know what it is you think I said. You’ve speculated, wildly, and now you’re asking me to explain that I didn’t say anything anywhere resembling what you’ve speculated? Sheeeeesh.
Besides, such discussions have NEVER been public – we respect privacy, even that of jerks who get banned.
London Calling: << Beyond that, he gets in a “Brits with sticks up their arses” aside. >>
Huh??? I used that as one example of racist/ethnic/national stereotyping that I was condemning. The other examples, you may recall, dealt with Arabs, the French, Americans, blacks, and Jews.
You might want to hone up on your reading comprehension skills.
I now speculate that you have made anti-semitic, anti-black, anti-American, and anti-French remarks to a secret terrorist group. Go ahead, explain that you didn’t. Bah.
You’re not. Obviously.
Coldfire asked me If I would consider apologising. That presupposes there’s been an explanation. You didn’t offer an explantion so I couldn’t apologise.
That’s all she wrote.
Neither of us was born yesterday and I’m sure neither of us wants to do ‘petty’, so lets drop it ?
London_Calling,
No response at all for me? And after you specifically called for anyone to challenge your facts?
Frankly I’m a bit surprised that others have not seized on this to a greater extent as well. Perhaps my charges were not clear enough. Specifically, I am charging that you lifted a bunch of text from some racist or quasi-racist website and posted them - without attribution as to source - in GD. I am unclear as to your exact source, as the same articles seem to get copied to all sorts of racist websites and it is not clear who got it from who. But I will compare paragraph by paragraph (they are not all in the same order) your post here with this article by National Vanguard Magazine (a White Supremacist publication).
See also a similar article at the National Alliance website. So again, I can’t say for sure who you cribbed it from but there’s no way you can deny that you ripped it off from someone. And given the places I find it on the net, and your coyness about identifying your source, likely someone that you knew had a racist agenda.
What do you say?
**London_Calling **:
“Is there a “pro-4th June, 1967 borders lobby” ?”
I understand the problem. This a historically complicated situation–one that Sharon has exacerbated but didn’t create overnight. Still, unless one feels that there mere existence of an Israeli state in the region is itself oppressive to Palestinians (as some extremists feel), it remains useful to distinguish one’s criticicism of this or that Israeli policy (from 1967 on) from just being critical of “Israel.” It’s cumbersome but arguably worth the extra bandwidth. 
“I think you have greater faith in the concept of journalistic “Chinese walls” than do I. The principle of journalistic integrity is all fine and dandy but if the businessman boss / owner (through his appointed editor) asks if you want to pay the mortgage this month ??”
I doubt that I have greater faith in the concept: I just know that the concept operates for some journalists/editors and that it–along with the equally important point I made about whether or not one’s identification is first and foremost as Jewish–helps to explain why the many prominent Jews involved in publishing the Nation, for example, so consistently criticize Israeli policies. Another way of seeing this is that such people are more identified with their left-liberal worldview, which dictates that Palestinians deserve justice as much as any other people, as they are to the idea that, as Jews, they should support fellow Jews in Israel.
Let me add that not all Jews in the US, even ones who aren’t lefties, reflexively feel a kindredness to Israel. My own father is a good example. He is much more conservative than I am–conservative on economic matters, though like many Democrats of his ilk, not on social issues like abortion. He loves to pick fights with me on political topics, so I know his views fairly well. He supported the Iraq war because, like a lot of Americans, he thought Saddam was dangerous, believed the stuff about WMDs getting in the hands of the wrong people, etc. He would have preferred a UN resolution, but was willing to go ahead without it. Note that so far this makes my dad look a lot like Tony Blair. My dad also doesn’t like Bush very much at all; and, although he’s visited Israel and has Israeli acquaintances, he thinks American Jews are Americans and owe their allegiance to the USA. I know this because when I was a teenager I wanted to go on a summer trip to Israel organized by an Israeli youth organization and he wouldn’t let me go b/c he was afraid that I’d be indoctrinated and end up living on a kibbutz. (The truth is I just wanted to be on my own in a foreign country at the ripe age sixteen and eventually we settled on England ).
“Of course, it’s possible that my view is overly cynical as a result of years of tales from Rupert Murdoch employees here in London : including on what used to be referred to here as “The newspaper of record”, The Times, which he owns, but I don’t believe businessmen get into the newspaper owning game because they like the smell of newsprint; newspaper ownership has always, always been about power and influence, IMHO - that?s the starting point and the finishing point.”
Well, in a sense Murdoch helps me to make my point. Because if the NYT ever behaved as the LT does then it would lose whatever influence it had. Newspaper culture here is very different than in the UK,and serious broadsheet newspapers can only retain their audiences by marketing their seriousness. Otherwise people will just watch TV and, when they want to read a paper, read something namby pamby like USAToday, or read their local newspaper to find out what the school board is doing. The NYT, remember, is owned by a family (I think it’s actually a publicly traded corporation now so it’s technically owned by its shareholders if I’m not wrong about that). In any case, it’s not owned by an entrepreneur such as Murdoch, or Charles Foster Kane ;).
Of course that doesn’t mean that its publisher and top editors don’t wield great influence and don’t see themselves as wielding great influence. It only means, as I already said, that it is not in their interest to wield that influence blatantly. And I do believe that they believe in their own cosmpolitan high-mindedness, though that doesn’t mean, of course, that they achieve it.
*"I tend to think that, emotionally speaking, the general population of US Jews is already in the bag (as one might say, here) whereas, the US population as a whole needs constant massaging …
US policy towards the State of Israel isn’t so much influenced by the media’s portrayal of Israel (the soft-focus “oh, we must support this poor, beleaguered democracy”, etc.) as it is by having influence on how the general US public perceives presidents and those seeking election to the presidency…"*
I would agree that no presidential candidate who ran on a Palestininian justice platform would make it out of the gate. But it is–or used to be–possible to get mileage out of a “peace in the Middle East” approach. And the thing is that it’s Democrats in particular who have generally been seen as inheritors of the Jewish vote, and, therefore, Democrats in the primaries who have had to make clear to American Jews what their position was on Israel/Palestine. Most Americans Jews haven’t been–hopefully still aren’t–convinced Wolfowitzians; they are simply not that hawkish. But, of course, since 9/11 the whole country has been drifting towards a more hawkish neo-imperial foreign policy stance and I’m not at all clear where Jews as a group stand on this.
What I would say though is that I don’t think many Jews or many Americans saw strong ties between war in Iraq and the security of Israel. Again, like Tony Blair, they saw and, to use your term, were “massaged” into seeing Saddam as a serious threat to all. I think, for now, it’s a uniquely neocon position that the Middle East needs massive revamping via aggressive US foreign policy intervention: and while some Jewish neocons will see Israel as a beneficiary of this policy, others will just see Israel as a potentially useful ally. (For example, our own Sam Stone who, to my knowledge, is not Jewish.)
Now, 1) did the media collaborate in producing US support for the war in Iraq, and, if so, 2) to what extent is that traceable to Israeli sympathizers among prominent Jewish media owners/professionals?
Well, if the NYT is example the answer to one is only up to a point (the Times was freaked out by the Bush doctrine and more or less held the Blair position–except that they were openly critical of the alleged links between Saddam/Al Qaeda). And, so, in this particular case I’d say that the Times’s sympathies with Israel were more or less irrelevant since Israel was never the main focus. (When Israel came up in Times editorials it was usuallly by way of saying that the Bush admin. needed to focus more on the Israel/Palestine peace process as part of its anti-terrorism strategy.)
More generally, on this idea of the media “influence.” Please note that the Times management certainly wanted Gore to win in 2000 and yet their reporting on Bush was notoriously soft and their reporting on Gore cut the man no breaks at all. One major theory for this is that the reporters just liked Bush personally. Also note that during the lead-up to the absurd impeachment proceedings against Clinton, the Times editorial page was very critical of Clinton and, IIRC (it’s all getting a little fuzzy) were fairly tolerant of though not actually supportive of the impeachment.
So I think we’d need a much clearer gauge than we have on hand right now. I don’t actually remember what Times editorials were during the Oslo period as I had very little time to devote to current events at that point in my life. Maybe someone else can fill in. In any case, now as we follow the “road map” process we can look clearly for signs of editorial bias (both on the page itself and in the journalism) on that subject.
“I wonder if the only bottom line we can use is this; compare the partiality of US coverage with, say, western European coverage (we don’t have a whole bunch of Palestinians to hand here, either). It’s vastly different (the balance is vastly different), thus the public’s perceptions are widely different. QED or another exxplanation ?”
I do strongly feel that US coverage on Israel/Palestine stinks and that European coverage is much fairer. As the link to the FAIR alert shows, the Times way of covering the day-to-day stuff is, while not the worst of its kind, complicit in this bias. But whether that’s because the ownership and management of the Times is Jewish, as opposed to an overall less liberal view on this and other matters which is by now historically entrenched in American politics, I don’t know.
Bear in mind that US coverage also differs from European on the environment, on globalization, on social welfare policies, etc. The Times tends to be more factual in its reporting than other US media, but still tends to obscure the kind of information that would be required for a reader to sit up and say, “Hey, government policy on this matter really sucks!”
I sort of see the Times’s coverage on Israel/Palestine in the light of those other failings. So it’s hard for me to say: well, on globalization they do this just because they’ve bought into a certain neoliberal economic dogma, but on Israel they do this because they’re Jews. And when I look over to the Nation, or to Tikkun or to FAIR and see how the Jews writing for these publications have a much more progressive viewpoint, I’m that much less prone to reduce the Times’s biases, such as they are, to Jewishness among its management–especially since such rhetoric does, very quickly, start to resemble the anti-semitic cliche of the Jewish media conspiracy.
My feeling in this is as in all other such matters is that I gain almost nothing by harnessing my critique to identitarian theories, and have a lot to lose by making identitarian assumptions prematurely.
And yet, you’re doing it so well.
L_C, I suggested an apology with regard to your remarks about Dex’s impartiality, not with regard to his motivation of his stance in Israeli matters.
Also, you can add me to the list of people who read Dex’s “Brits with sticks up their asses” as an example of foolish stereotyping rather than an attack on yourself.
Ditto - perhaps a bit oversensitive on that one I fear, L_C.
Nice piece of detective work, Izzy.
I’d like to hear his response to this as well.
If this carries on much longer, I’m going to need a secretary. Any chance of borrowing one from the good offices of ‘Drive-by, Smear and Apologist’, IzzyR ?
Anyway, I feel I’m doing a fair impression of Jason here, no Argonauts I’m afraid, but I feel like I’m battling a three headed-tempest called ‘Izzy and The Odd Couple’ …
IzzyR – Last I read you were scurrying off to find out some facts in relation to ownership, and had, at that point, found out Katherine Graham had a Jewish father but had been baptized (dang !) and, also, there was doubt about the big banana at Dow Jones … wassup ?
But look, while you’re here, one or two others in this thread seem concerned about my use of** “cabal”**, as you used the word first in this thread and I followed from that lead, can you tell us if there’s a dodgy meaning attached ?
Anyway, this is my definitive answer to your latest hijack/distracting strand:
Firstly, while I admire the scholarly, legalistic approach to your research, I ‘umbly submit, yer ‘onour, it ain’t worth a wank. Here’s the of chronology of events:
20 months ago; that’s 1 and 2/3 years ago in your earth years, the following exchange took place;
*Originally posted by Jackmannii *
London_Calling, would you care to expand on your statement about how “owners” and “investors” (nudge nudge wink wink) in American media compel our politicians to support Israel? If there’s a conspiracy theory you’d like to flesh out, then have at it. Don’t be bashful, boy.
*Originally posted by London_Calling *
Ah ! …err no. I wouldn’t particularly but thanks very much for asking
Okay, firstly an advisory notice:
<snip>
- Now IzzyR – As you have discovered in your scholarly research, there aren’t any web sites out there that say, ‘Hi, we’re Jewish and we’re proud of the influence US Jews have over the US print medial!. Come see how much!’. Instead, they’re all supremacist / racist / whatever. On that I hope we can agree. Not a pretty bunch through whuch to wade.
So, what do I do; Jack Klugman/mannii want me to “expand”, I want to help him out (not knowing who he was at the time, having never come across him before) and everything I know is sitting in articles and on book shelves. Pressed for time (as always), of course I use the Internet.
Now, if you can tell me what research tools you used on one post twenty months ago, you’re a better man than me. Also, besides the issue of which damn index / engine / directory I used, every one of those changes its algorithm every month so the results are jumbled. Then, what keyword(s) did you used because, I can’t remember what I used.
Next, how do you / me / anyone know if the same web site still exists.
Finally, as you’ve discovered, many of those racist / supremacist sites copy each others content – it’s pretty much the same stuff all over the damn show.
So look, I don’t even remember who I slept with that long ago, let alone what I did in a hurried couple of minutes of Internet research for, as I thought, a favour to another poster on this message board. Let me say that again, I dug it up at someone else’s request (Jack Klugman/mannii). Not. My. Gig.
Finally, you’re a bright guy, IzzyR. Why get sucked into this business of attacking me rather than the information / facts itself. With all due respect, you’re better trained and a better man than ‘The Odd Couple’.
End. Finished. Who’s next … ? ah yes, the ‘bottom’ business ….
Yep, you did. But, look, I’m losing the plot, now. Are you suggesting I still owe him an apology, or are you posting for the purposes of general clarification ? If the former, is that based on your explanation or on his post – I just don’t get this so bear with me …. ?
Regarding the “up the arse” controversy as mentioned by the Bottom Brothers, Coldfire and ** Gary Kumquat**: Okay, if it seems / reads coincidental rather than anything else, than so be it. Just an unfortunate coincidence, then, and I shall bidet and then wipe it clean from my mind.
If I apologise to ‘Kudos Dexterous’ for that now, it might save a post or two; apologies C K Dexter Haven !
Mandelstam – Thanks for the genuinely worthwhile debate and I do want to get back to you very much. Indeed, I owe you at least two posts, give me this evening or a buxom kibbutz-nik secretary ……