Antiwar.com Blog

Yes, Benito Giuliani’s foreign policy team is very … Halloweenish. In addition to Daniel “Ethinc Cleanser” Pipes, we have one Martin Kramer, as profiled by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

“‘Academic colleagues, get used to it,’ warned the pro-Israel activist Martin Kramer in March 2004. ‘Yes, you are being watched. Those obscure articles in campus newspapers are now available on the Internet, and they will be harvested. Your syllabi, which you’ve also posted, will be scrutinized. Your Web sites will be visited late at night.”

Kramer’s “Campus Watch” is devoted to harrassing anyone on campus who doesn’t kowtow to The Lobby. How would you like to see him as, say, Secretary of Education?

If Rudy makes it to the White House, and you’re an academic, especially one involved in the realm of Middle Eastern studies, get ready for the knock on the schoolhouse door at night  ….

The apppointment of Daniel Pipes, whose particular brand of political extremism is documented here, as a top advisor to the Giuliani campaign is about par for the course for Rudy, whose over-the-top pronouncements fit right in with Pipes’ hate-all-Arabs shtick. But how far is Rudy willing to take it — as far as Pipes? The reason I ask: Pipes is on the “presidium“ of something called “the Jerusalem Summit,” which has a “solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: “A generous relocation and resettlement package to allow them to build a new life for themselves and their families in countries preferably, but not necessarily exclusively, with similar religious and socio-cultural conditions.” In short: the wholesale deportation of the Palestinians.

It’s fair to ask: Is this Giuliani’s Middle East “peace plan”? And if not, why has he appointed a nut-bag like Pipes to a top position on his foreign policy staff? 

 

According to ABC News:

“[Ron Paul] does not, in the ads running in early primary states and intended to introduce him to traditional Republicans there, mention his opposition to the Iraq War.”

If true, this is a major mistake. The reason for Paul’s rising popularity is his unique confluence of antiwar and anti-Big Government views: without the former, the latter loses its punch. Methinks the Ron Paul Revolution needs … a revolution from within.

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_10_18_hedges.mp3]

Chris Hedges, veteran war reporter and author of War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning and many other books, discusses the convergence of the Egyptian and American national security states as their puppet military dictatorship kidnaps and tortures people at the best of the U.S. government, the incompatibility of the rule of law and a republican form of government with empire and oligarchy, the “ghost prisons” and “ghost detainees,” held by the U.S. government around the world, the tortured (and false) testimony of Ibn-al Shaykh al-Libi which was used by Colin Powell in his UN speech to justify aggressive war against Iraq, how Mamdah Habib was threatened with rape by an animal, the perhaps thousands of victims of these crimes, his article about American war crimes in Iraq (soon to become a book), the Egyptian war against domestic dissidents, the long term consequences of abandoning law and the American population’s preference for Amusing Ourselves to Death.

MP3 here. (26:00)

Chris Hedges has been a war reporter for 15 years most recently for the New York Times. He is author of What Every Person Should Know About War, a book that offers a critical lesson in the dangerous realities of war. He’s also author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_10_18_danner.mp3]

Mark Danner, writer for the New York Review of Books and author of The Secret Way to War: The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War’s Buried History, discusses George Bush’s faith in himself as revealed by the recently disclosed transcript of his meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Aznar in February, 2002, and how it keeps getting innocent people killed, the narratives of “enhanced interrogations” and “weapons inspections” that make torture and aggressive war acceptable and “legal,” Bush’s belief, in spite of all evidence, that everything he does is right no matter what, the relevance of his former life as a cheerleader to his mindset today, the infighting between the neocons in the DoD and the State Department and the CIA, the administration’s accusations that racism against Arabs was somehow responsible for European opposition to the war, Bush’s refusal of the option of exile for Saddam, the decision to install the Iranian-backed SCIRI/Da’wa Party types in power and the recent decision to stab them in the back and “redirect” toward the Ba’athists again, the question of whether the Bush/Cheney regime always meant to break Iraq apart and the danger of war with Iran.

MP3 here. (49:40)

Mark Danner, longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, and professor at Berkeley and at Bard, writes about foreign affairs and American politics, including Latin America, Haiti, the Balkans and the Middle East. He speaks and debates widely about America’s role in the world.

Chris Deliso, longtime Antiwar.com columnist and proprietor of Balkanalysis.com has written a new book called The Coming Balkan Caliphate: The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West.

Check out his speech, “New Information and Key Trends Regarding Islamic Extremist Groups in the Balkans,” given on October 5, 2007 in Athens, Greece, at the University of Indianapolis international campus.

You didn’t think U.S. support for the Mujahideen ended with Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan… did you?

Hell no. Bill Clinton brought them to Europe.