A ‘Warning’ To Us All

“Patriotism is not pinning a flag pin to one lapel to free up both hands, so you can tear up the U.S. Constitution.”
-Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in The Warning.

The new production company/website Truthtopower.tv has just released its powerful first film, The Warning, featuring exclusive interviews with five recently-published authors Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Crimes Against Nature), Naomi Wolf (The End of America), Chris Hedges (American Fascists), Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine) and Joe Conason (It Can Happen Here). Director/Writer/Producer J.P. Sottile wisely steers clear of cinematic fireworks, keeping a tight focus on the writers’ frightening observations about the subversion and erosion of American Democracy in recent years. Privatized warfare, illegal torture and wiretapping, corporate and religious influence, the ballooning power of the Executive and more are exposed as the film warns just how slippery a slope the U.S. is sliding down. The Warning is an excellent example of the kind of patriotic dissent the country needs right now.
Find out more and get your own copy here.

Check the preview below:

The Barefoot Strip

The Free Gaza Movement’s chartered boat “Dignity” arrived earlier today in the Gaza Strip, loaded down with humanitarian aid supplies for the blockaded populace, but there’s one thing they probably didn’t think to pack, and is going to be increasingly hard to come by for your average Gazan.

Shoes.

Yes, shoes. Israel has reportedly banned shoes and other clothing from being imported into the Gaza Strip, claiming that “they could be used in producing military uniforms.”

Now, humanity has been making shoes for itself for at least 10,000 years, and there’s no denying that some of those shoes have been put the military use in that time. Still, its something one can at the very least consider a “dual use technology.”

Of course, with some Gazans finding electric car technology as a solution to harshly curbed fuel imports, the production of shoes seems well within their technological capabilities. But expensive and scarce materials will make satisfying the demands of the strip’s million and a half residents for footwear extremely difficult if not impossible.

Obsession Gets Some Overdue Mainstream Attention

Obsession, the Islamophobic video that has been distributed via newspaper inserts to some 28 million households in key swing states this fall, is getting some overdue negative attention from the mainstream media at last. The Washington Post carried an article about the video Sunday that made it clear that the mass distribution was intended to influence the election in the Republicans’ favor. And Monday’s Atlantic online blog post by Jeffrey Goldberg, entitled “The Jewish Extremists Behind Obsession” was particularly notable.

He casts a remarkably negative light on Aish HaTorah, the Israeli organization whose U.S.-based officials, in Goldberg’s words, “are up to their chins in this project.” (I think IPS was the first news source to point out the connection between Aish and Obsession in an article published back in March, 2007, although more has since come out, including a recent IPS update in September which noted other Israeli connections to the video and its distribution.)

I especially appreciated Goldberg’s identification of the Jerusalem Post’s Caroline Glick as one of his “favorite hysterics” — I posted on one of her fulminations last June — and as those behind the project as representing the “lunatic fringe.” In addition to Glick, who also heads the Middle East program at Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, Goldberg would presumably apply that description to Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson who played prominent roles in the video. It was Goldberg, a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), who wrote that passionate indictment, “Israel’s ‘America Problem’” in the Washington Post’s Outlook section last May of the major national Jewish organizations, particularly the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and AIPAC, for confusing “pro-Israel” with being pro-settler in their advocacy efforts.

Of course, the producer/distributor of Obsession was the still-mysterious Clarion Fund, which has just released a sequel, The Third Jihad about which my colleague Eli Clifton posted earlier this month. The new video, originally intended for distribution before next week’s election, according to the Post’s article, suffered production delays (hence, the distribution of Obsession instead).

While I haven’t yet seen it, I understand that it features commentary by Clifford May of the Likudnik Foundation for the Defense of Democracy and, more prominently, Princeton historian and neo-con icon Bernard Lewis, who, according to various accounts, helped persuade Dick Cheney, among others, that the Iraq invasion would be a very good thing for all concerned. It was also Lewis who on August 8, 2006, predicted on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would very possibly launch an attack on Israel exactly two weeks later, on August 22, to mark “the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to ‘the farthest mosque,’ usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back. This [date],” he went on, “might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world.” Goldberg’s words about “hysterics” and “the lunatic fringe” come to mind.

Nonetheless, it was just six months later that, with Cheney in attendance, Lewis delivered the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) annual Irving Kristol Lecture — in which he warned that militant Islam was launching its third attempt to conquer Europe and the West through “terror and migration.” And it was presumably after that that he sat down for a long interview with the Islamophobic makers of Obsession and The Third Jihad.

Incidentally, for a penetrating analysis of Obsession, read a review by David Shasha featured on Richard Silverstein’s blog at the Tikun Olam site.

@Bin Laden sez OMG! Jihad!

Hold on to your MP3 players and Palm Pilots. The tragically hip in US Army intelligence have discovered the popular micro-blogging service Twitter. The crux of the draft by the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion is that terrorists could make use of the 140 character one liners normally reserved for teenage girls announcing breakups, exhibitionist bloggers titillating fans (e.g., “I’m blogging naked,) and unironic reviews of the mundane. “Yum….macaroni and cheese is delicious”

The report ominously warns that “Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences…”

There is really no end of possibilities now that the I-Pod nano rocks in nine amazing colors. Prescient trend watchers might also note that bus systems, fast food and strip clubs can also be utilized by terrorists. The only possible use of such obvious and pointless breakthroughs in “intelligence” is to make the case to the dim and frightened that if terrorists might be using some common and day-to-day element of normal human life, then that common and day-to-day element of human life needs close surveillance and containment by the feds.

Meanwhile, Antiwar.com is making use of Twitter here and here.

No Noam on Base?

A group of South Korean military officers is pressing a court to overturn the military’s ban, announced earlier this year, on books which it considers dangerously pro-North Korean, anti-US, or anti-capitalist. The military says the “seditious” books would hinder the concentration of soldiers, and harm the military’s “mental power.” The officers say the move is censorship and unconstitutional.

The list reportedly includes 23 books, including two by US author Noam Chomsky which were listed for being “anti-government and anti-US.” One of those books is Year 501: The Conquest Continues.

‘King of Salsa’ Turned Accused Spy Speaks of His Magical Powers

Iranian-born British Army interpreter Daniel James, who is accused of spying for Iran, has too interesting of a backstory not to mention. With a background in body building and kick boxing, James says he eventually rose to the title of “Danny James, King of Salsa.” And that’s not even the funny part.

He apparently also traveled to Cuba at some point, during which he became a priest in a native religion and learned some magic. This came in really handy when he was sent to Afghanistan as an interpreter for General David Richards, as James told the court he “did black magic for General Richards to protect him from the Taliban.”