Antiwar.com Blog

In today’s centersmear at Frontpagemag, a Steven Plaut writes:

In a New York Times editorial, [Juan] Cole said that he saw the elections in Syria as a model for other Arab countries to follow: “The last thing the Arab people need is a red herring like ‘free and open elections’ to distract them from the international Zionist/Neo-Con conspiracy to take their oil.” Professor Cole then added that President Assad’s ability to gain such a high percentage of the vote “all the while maintaining an oligarchic cult of personality oppressive regime mired in nepotism and corruption” was “truly impressive” and a positive sign of “Arab solidarity.”

Wow. What a jerk that Cole is!

One slight problem: Cole never wrote, and the New York Times never published, any such thing. It’s a lame attempt at satire from an Iraqi blog. I didn’t bother reading any further. If David Horowitz can’t use some of his massive cash to hire a goddamn editor, then I assume he wants his writers to lie. Which they do, constantly.

UPDATE 10:30 a.m. CT: Steven Plaut sends the following e-mail:

Well, here then is a LEGIT citation from Abu Cole

Abu Cole’s ideas of democracy:

From http://www.juancole.com/ this week:
“Al-Qaeda has some political support in some regions of Saudi Arabia, and it should be remembered that Islamists did well in the recent municipal elections, so al-Qaeda there is sensitive to public opinion.”

Aside from the sheer pointlessness of this out-of-context quotation, am I to understand that a fake citation is nullified by a real one?

By the way, the fake citation is still up, and the charming little Plaut has put the same message on the Frontpage comments board under a pseudonym (Gallows).

UPDATE 3:30 p.m. CT: The passage in question has finally been removed. I saved the page this morning if anyone would like to see the original.

Poor Stephen Schwartz. No one takes him seriously, and he knows it. This is not a total negative for Schwartz, to be sure. If the squares out there in Fox News/Weekly Standard/National Review-land took Schwartz seriously as a Trotskyite, labor leader, Muslim mystic, Surrealist poet, etc., they would either recoil or, worse, roll their eyes. The only way they can accept Schwartz as an expert on terrorism is to ignore everything else he purports to be.

So Schwartz makes a living off the squares and may even derive some shallow ironic satisfaction from that fact, but it must eat at him, too. For do not all artistes (even lousy ones) rend their hair at the prospect of selling out? What goes through the mind of an “internationally recognized Surrealist poet” as he buddies up to Bill O’Reilly for the amusement of the booboisie? Surely he’s not so lacking in self-awareness as to never be bothered by the gulf between himself and his darling Andre Breton, he who said,

The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.

Which, to be fair, is what Schwartz does almost every time he puts his fingers to the keyboard, his rage redoubled, no doubt, by self-loathing. His revulsion at pandering to the illiterati builds until it must explode in senseless fury, a sort of chronic mental constipation signaled by his obsession with feces and the lower digestive tract. (See, for example, here, here, and the bottom half of this.)

But even though no one sees Schwartz as he wants to be seen, let me repeat: he is not on the fringe of pro-war thought, but in the very mainstream.

Over at Frontpagemag, where rejected submissions to National Review and the Weekly Standard go to die of embarrassment, Stephen Schwartz is on the attack again. Today, the daft little porcupine has his quills aimed at one Julia Gorin (no favorite of yours truly) for testifying to what anyone with eyes can see: the Serbs were victims of a US/NATO terror campaign that empowered Muslim terrorists in Kosovo. Along the way, Schwartz makes sure to get in an obligatory dig at Antiwar.com:

Ms. Gorin quotes “Balkan-based journalist Chris Deliso [who] wrote last year for BalkanAnalysis.com, ‘Kosovo – with its porous borders, fundamentalist minority, criminal underbelly and proximity to the rest of Europe – is a perfect hiding place.’” Christopher Deliso is not a serious journalist, but a columnist at Dennis Raimondo’s antiwar.com website.

Doesn’t he ever get bored of this shtick? Anyway, while we at Antiwar.com are looking forward to Schwartz’s continuing demonization of a fellow Frontpager – we’re all for intra-neocon cannibalism – Ms. Gorin really has nothing to worry about. Schwartz has made himself a laughingstock already this week by threatening (for the second time) to sue Antiwar.com for using hyperlinks.

But if Ms. Gorin would really like to lay into Schwartz with her savage “wit,” I suggest she investigate Schwartz’s flaky curriculum vitae, which stumbles from Trotskyite to pseudo-beatnik to “Sufi master” to … well, unclassifiable weirdness.

A quick search of Google, which is fast becoming Schwartz’s worst enemy, reveals some interesting nuggets, such as Schwartz’s participation in this nutty forum. (Google the e-mail addresses karastjepan@yahoo.com [which appears in Schwartz’s correspondence with us, as well as his TCS bio] and karastjepa@aol.com). Here’s the Sufi mystic sounding scholarly:

The fact that Big Chief Genocidal Anthro Fuck the Natives in the Ass and Then Kill Them While You Fake Academic Arguments Snot Littledick has to publish his fecal notes in UFO Magazine says it all, except what more needs to be said about him, which is a hell of a lot.

Oooohkay. Here he is writing about some other weirdo of his acquaintance:

Where in the world does a sewer rat like Hick Nerdbutt have a following except among the biker queens of Booger Creek, who are in love with his rectum?

Remember: Schwartz is NOT a fringe neoconservative. He is a frequent contributor to Fox News, the Weekly Standard, and National Review.

Good luck, Ms. Gorin!

In Backtalk:

Jay Hilgartner: There are lots of reasons to be hopeful about politics in the US today — at least as compared to Germany in the 1930s.

David Bright: Most of Kucinich’s delegates did not vote for Kerry.

Mark E. Moore: MoveOn.org was created by Clinton supporters: of course they refuse to support an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Sam Koritz: Aggressive war is not a humanitarian act.

And more…

Dear Professor Reynolds,

I find it passing strange that a law professor with an interest in all things Internet (and presumably, free speech) would ignore Stephen Schwartz’s legal bullying of Antiwar.com about hyperlinking. Yes, yes, it’s fascinating that Justin Raimondo changed his given name as a teenager – that fact doubtless invalidates everything he has ever written – but when you’re done covering that momentous issue, could you please spare a little time to explain to Mr. Schwartz the legality of linking?

Thanks for your help, which I’m sure is forthcoming.

Best,
Matt Barganier

By the way, any bloggers interested in maintaining the right to hyperlink can e-mail Mr. Schwartz with their concerns. Or you can just keep his attorney busy by providing a link to his photograph.

UPDATE 9:30 p.m.: Instapundit:

I think that AntiWar.com has the better of the law here, but I think that web etiquette is being violated all around. I think it’s OK to link somebody’s image if you’re not causing them bandwidth problems, but I think that it’s churlish not to take the link down if they complain. On the other hand, it’s also churlish to complain too readily.

Uh, thanks, Glenn, but you missed the point. He wasn’t complaining about bandwidth – check the url on the photo in question. And he didn’t merely complain, he threatened legal action. The totalitarian Schwartz thinks he can tell everyone on the Web what they can and cannot link to. That should bother even you.