Kiss Of ‘Democratic’ Death: Israel’s Plot To Take Down Syria I

83 Responses to “Kiss Of ‘Democratic’ Death: Israel’s Plot To Take Down Syria I”

1. 

   Loulou Reply 08. Jul, 2011 at 3:20 am

   Thank you for this real intersting article!

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2. 

   Jane Whitehead Reply 08. Jul, 2011 at 4:16 pm

   I’m stunned, sickened and utterly dismayed. What on earth can be done when the press, TV and radio are bought and sold. Only the Internet is free and must, at all costs, be kept free.

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3. 

   Jeff Blankfort Reply 09. Jul, 2011 at 3:32 pm

   Mr. Azaziah,

   I just read your article or as much of it as I could take and wish to welcome you to the Affinity for Dictators Club whose members seem to think that the only criteria with which to judge anything that happens in this world is how it is viewed by the US and Israel. Were that things were so simple. But what you write, in this instance, isan insult to the memories of those Syrians and Palestinians who were jailed by Hafez al-Asad when he staged a coup against the pro-Palestinian president Atasi after, as head of the Syrian air force, he refused to come to the aid of the Palestinians during Black September in 1970, an insult those who those who died and those who survived the massacre at the Tal Al Zattar refugee camp in Beirut in 1976 in which Syrian troops joined the Falangists in doing the killing of their mainly Muslim brothers and sisters, an insult to those Palestinians who happened to be loyal to Fatah and who al-Asad had his Palestinian thugs attack at Nahr al-Bahrad and Bedawi outside of Tripoli in 1983, after Israel’s invasion, in which there were so many casualties that the floors of the Tripoli hospital were tp slick with blood that it was hard to keep one’s footing, and it is an insult to those Syrians who do not need any help or instructions from the Zionists or Washington to demand an end to decades of dictatorship under which, as in Libya, no political dissent has been allowed.

   I know about Black September because I was there when it began, and earlier I had spent more than a week in Tal al-Zaatar which, to the misfortune of the Palestinians who died there, was on the wrong side of Beirut, and I was in Lebanon and in the refugee camps that were under assault by al-Asad’s Abu Musa thugs and I could barely keep my footing in that Tripoli hospital.

   What you and those who think so simplistically as you have been doing is pushing the dissidents throughout the region into the arms of the West, just as those who supported the police states of Eastern Europe who went out in the streets to protest when their governments tried to silence them, turned their backs on their brothers and sisters in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia, when they demanded the same political freedoms. One can and must oppose the phony “humanitarian” interventions of the US/NATO pushed by the ZIONTERN whenever and whereever they occur or threaten to occur but when you take the side of the dictators, you are doing the Zionists’ and imperialists’ work.

   Jeff Blankfort

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   Earlaiman Reply:
   July 10th, 2011 at 12:07 am

   There are a lot of things I can find “wrong” with Jonathan Azaziah, but “being wrong” is not one of them.

   Earlaiman

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   nota Reply:
   July 16th, 2011 at 2:57 am

   Leaving all the “emotive, reactionary, pointless and deflective diatribe” (as Jonathan put it below) aside, I find your conclusion interesting:
   “One can and must oppose the phony “humanitarian” interventions of the US/NATO pushed by the ZIONTERN whenever and whereever they occur or threaten to occur but when you take the side of the dictators, you are doing the Zionists’ and imperialists’ work.”

   Are you seriously saying:

   “One can NOT and must NOT oppose the phony “humanitarian” interventions of the US/NATO pushed by the ZIONTERN whenever and whereever they occur or threaten to occur IF that intervention is against a dictator”????

   Is this a joke??

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4. 

   Jonathan Azaziah Reply 09. Jul, 2011 at 11:34 pm

   To Mr. Blankfort,

   With all due respect sir, your emotive, reactionary, pointless and deflective diatribe had absolutely nothing to do with any of the points that I raised in my article. My article was an insult to nobody. It was a dive down the rabbit hole into information being suppressed by all media, mainstream and alternative alike. First and foremost, it is a well-known fact and not a matter of debate that the United States and Israel manipulated the Lebanese civil war for the sole purpose of breaking up Lebanon into smaller satellite states that would eventually be conquered by Israel. Henry Kissinger has admitted it. It goes beyond the blood on the hands of every militia-faction involved, far beyond into something much bigger.

   Second of all, Hafez al-Assad staged the Corrective Revolution against ex-President Nureddin al-Atassi because Attasi lost al-Jaulan and he lost the support of the Syrian people. And he was considered to be a ‘neo-Baathist’ who ruled Syria with an iron fist. Al-Assad didn’t ‘refuse to come to the aid’ of the Palestinian people prior to coming to power, it was a political struggle between him and al-Atassi. Not to mention, it was al-Assad who regained part of al-Jaulan.

   Thirdly, did you really just use the color revolutions of Eastern Europe as an an example of people rising up against their ‘dictators?’ Mr. Blankfort, you are an extremely intelligent man, you should know better. Those ‘revolutions’ were nothing but destabilizaiton campaigns completely stage, manipulated and controlled by the CIA, NED and George Soros. This has been documented over and over and over again through the years by a plethora of analysts, writers and activists. Anyone that still isn’t aware of this fact is blind or willfully ignorant.

   And finally, the vast majority of the Syrian people support Bashar al-Assad and his Resistance in the region, something that I documented in my articles. This is not a ‘revolution,’ this is not ‘people power,’ this is another destabilization plot with Israel and Saudi Arabia at the helm and the Zionist-owned mainstream media and Al-Jazeera providing the lies, cover-ups and talking points for it. Soldiers and policemen and the supporters of al-Assad are being murdered and mangled in the streets by people that you would call ‘political-freedom-seeking’ protesters when evidence shows that they are armed thugs trying to overthrow the regime.

   These ‘protesters’ are openly chanting against Hezbollah and other Resistance entities in the streets and I’m sorry, even if all of the evidence didn’t point to the ‘Syrian revolution’ being another Zionist take-down operation (which it most certainly does), I still would never, ever support such filth. Doing the Zionists’ and imperialists’ work? Please. By standing with Saudi-Zionist-trained stooges against the Lebanese Resistance and those who have given it political and financial support when the entire world turned its back on it, that is exactly what you’re doing.

   Thank you for reading,

   ~ Ziah

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   Jeff Blankfort Reply:
   July 10th, 2011 at 6:50 pm

   Mr. Azaziah,

   Thanks for your reply. I, too, used to view the world as if all the issues could be broken down into good vs evil but my life experiences led me to understand that most global situations are far too complicated to be divided so easily. The difference is that the other side, the US, Israel, France, Britain, know the meaning of contradictions and how to exploit them while our side frequently tends to speak about contradictions but consistently fails to take advantage of them. As you cannot make a fire without tinder, you cannot, now matter how clever you may be, manipulate a people into rising up against their government unless that government has provided them just cause to do so. By definition any society in which political dissent is forbidden, be it a police state or dictatorship does just that.

   That being said, I would be interested in whatever documentation you have concerning Kissinger’s role in fomenting the Lebanese civil war with the object of it being taken over by Israel since I have never seen any evidence of that. I am, of course, aware of the position paper of Oded Yinon which put the break-up of Iraq high on its list but that was written after the civil war was well under way.

   Re Syria, I must state that I object to such terms as Corrective Revolution, Great Leap Forward, etc. I was not in Syria under al-Asad senior’s rule, but under al-Atassi, at the borders to both Lebanon and Jordan one found both Syrian and Palestinian entry/exit booth on either side of the highway, flying their respective flags, which, I was told, was not the case when al-Asad took power. Before his so-called Corrective Revolution, Syria sponsored a fedayeen miltia Al-Saika which in turn sponsored the DFLP and had the same radical political line. Al-Asad shut that down and, as I understand it, some of it leaders were among those who al-Asad imprisoned. And, the fact of the matter, is that when in 1970, al-Atassi sent his tanks across the border to assist the Palestinians and needed support from the air force, al-Asad refused, putting, evidently, his political differences with al-Atassi before the lives of the Palestinians being slaughtered by King Hussein’s Bedouins. It might have been, as Kissinger tells us, that threats by Israel to intervene is what gave al-Asad cold feer but we’ll probably never know. But what we do know is that other than providing office space for Palestinian dissident groups, the PFLP, DFLP, PFLP-GC, and later Hamas, he did nothing to help the Palestinian cause while his troops were stationed in Lebanon. And then again, was his role in having his troops participate in the Tal al-Zattar massacre.

   I have been well aware for years of the roles played by the CIA, NED, and the AFL-CIO, long before George Soros appeared on the scene in “destabilizing” the countries in Eastern Europe, all of which just happened to be police states, a fact that the international left ignored in practice. As long as they claimed to be “socialist” and provided free education, low cost housing, free medical care, etc. (as in Libya), the fact that people were imprisoned or “disappeared” for speaking out against the system were totally ignored, as were the workers when they tried to carry out strike actions in what were supposed to be “workers’ states.” But since all of these police states were considered to be enemies of US imperialism, their own injustices to their own peoples were ignored. The message sent to the peoples of these countries was “Don’t look for help from us.” And we know who was waiting to help them.

   Now, the situation for Hezbollah is quite different because it has no choice but to support the Syrian regime, for the same reason that Castro had to support the Soviets when they invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968. He needed their support while threatened by the US. Hezbollah’s first obligation is to the people of Lebanon which is under constant threat of attack by Israel and it needs that open border and what passes through it that Syria provides. It is a tragic situation. I am very familiar with Hezbollah and probably am the only radio host in the US to have interviewed someone from the organization on my program, which I did back in 2007, and I respect it more than any other political group on the scene. I am sure whatever signs of protest against supporting Hezbollah that may appear in protests inside Syria—although I have seen none yet myself from the cell phone videos shown on al-Jazeera–I would suspect they might be Israel inspired as the Hariri tribunal most certainly was but, aside from speculation, one cannot expect Syrians to put asides their demands for an end to the dictatorship because of Hezbollah’s needs. That’s what I mean when I write that the situation is complicated. But do you really think that people have willingly gone out on the streets to protest knowing they may be shot down because the Zionists or CIA agents have paid them to do it? Do you not think that people have a right to peacefully protest anywhere without being beaten up or killed as they were in Syria before anyone in the opposition, and not just the Muslim Brotherhood, started fighting back? Do you swallow all of the Syrian propaganda as people swallowed all of the Soviet propaganda in yesteryear because they knew that the US and its allies were always telling lies? Even as the Syrian army was shooting and killing its own citizens, which I and the world saw on al-Jazeera and while thousands of Syrians were fleeing across the border to avoid the violence, I heard the spokeswoman for al-Asad denying anyone had been shot. You do the cause of justice no service by saying essentially the same thing with your articles.

   Jeff Blankfort

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5. 

   Jonathan Azaziah Reply 11. Jul, 2011 at 1:18 am

   Salaam again Mr. Blankfort,

   I’m a tad surprised that you’ve never heard of/seen anything regarding Henry Kissinger’s devilish meddling in Lebanon, but that’s okay. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addressed this in his 2010 Martyrs Day speech and the second link is a more ‘journalistic’ take on the matter: http://bit.ly/pMQxqO http://bit.ly/rk8bwq

   Mr. Blankfort, you keep beating around the bush in regards to Syria by attempting to deflect facts on the ground with this emotional talk of ‘people not having the right to peacefully protest.’ Firstly, the opposition’s protests are not peaceful. They haven’t been from day one, they’ve been violent and policemen and security forces have been killed in the hundreds. The US State Dept has admitted the opposition is armed. On the other hand, the protests supporting Bashar al-Assad are peaceful and their numbers are much, much larger than any of the opposition’s gatherings.

   Secondly, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood is the dominant force in the opposition and the Zionist-occupied US government is in routine contact with it and the hypocritical regime in Turkey has facilitated meetings with these two entities.

   Thirdly, you haven’t seen evidence of anti-Hezbollah protests on Al-Jazeera so therefore, they don’t exist? Ridiculous. Al-Jazeera Mr. Blankfort is the not begin-all, end-all of information in regards to Syria. You have shot yourself in the foot by playing the Al-Jazeera card. As the 2nd part of my article displayed, which you would have known if you had read it, Al-Jazeera is severely compromised. Al-Jazeera has been caught fabricating information, inflating protest numbers, deliberately ignoring attacks on security forces and gov property, creating false eyewitnesses and manipulating imagery. Hence why Ghassan Bin Jeddo, one of the Arab world’s most respected journalists and a man of undeniable integrity, stepped down and called Al-Jazeera an ‘operations room for mobilization and incitement.’ Nothing that comes out of Al-Jazeera is reliable, absolutely nothing, especially in regards to Syria. It is just as bad as any other Zionist-owned media organization, if not worse. These four links thrash and expose Al-Jazeera’s reporting through & through: http://bit.ly/lBaZhC http://bit.ly/moqW6d http://bit.ly/gXQAzm http://bit.ly/owjn8k

   There absolutely is an opposition, something that Bashar al-Assad acknowledges. But there is a difference between agitators and protesters, gunmen and peaceful demonstrators. And the evidence of the ‘Syrian Revolution’ being another destabilization operation, like Iran 2009, is astounding. I’ve linked the Zionist entity at the head, the US, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to this plot in my pieces and the evidence continues to emerge everyday to corroborate it further. These are the facts Mr. Blankfort, documented by me, several writers at Global Research and a slew of other independent writers, activists and bloggers, if you choose to ignore them to continue existing in some sort of fantasy realm, that of course, is your prerogative, but I will not waste another second of my time on this.

   We do agree on one thing however and that is yes, the situation is very tragic. Very tragic indeed.

   ALLAH yfatte7 3ouyounak (May your eyes be opened),

   ~ Ziah

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   Jeff Blankfort Reply:
   July 11th, 2011 at 1:57 pm

   Thanks for your reply. I have questioned Al-Jazeera myself since the Bahrain and Libyan uprisings began with first being played straight if at all and the latter with the network’s obvious support, with broadcasters using the term “democrats” to describe the Libyan rebels which even if it were true, is not acceptable journalism. But have al-Jazeera and the Western media fabricated the thousands of Syrians who have fled across the borders to Lebanon and Turkey? It does not make a good case for Syria when foreign journalists are not allowed in unless you believe that Fisk, Patrick Cockburn, and Seale, are Zionist agents and won’t do fair reporting. I have differences with Fisk over Hezbollah but he is one of the most honest journalists reporting on the scene and brings more to the issue than the wackos who dominate Global Research. Do you support keeping foreign journalists out of Syria the way that Israel did from Gaza?

   Your sources on Kissinger’s involvement in instigating the civil war in Lebanon are incredible as in NOT credible. First of all, the EIR report made in 2005 makes a claim that LaRouche predicted, just at the moment before it occurred, the beginning of the Lebanese civil war but there is nothing in that article that proves it. I am more than familiar with LaRouche and EIR but I have never found it to be a reliable source since it tends to blend fiction with important facts and makes inferences which can not be proved. LaRouche has been obsessed for decades with the idea that the Queen of England runs the world’s drug market and that notion carried over in that article with the suggestion that bit was Britain that urged King Hussein to launch Black September. That, more likely, would have been Kissinger’s role. When Israel rejected the Rogers plan, it was dead in the water. I was in Jordan when Nasser accepted it and those in Fatah, who were big fans of his were stunned. The folks in PFLP and DFLP knew better.

   With all due respect to Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, I simply do not believe that Kissinger wrote or would ever write to Raymond Edde or anyone else that he had “contrived” a war and the rest of that letter is equally unbelievable. He may be the epitome of evil but Kissinger is no fool. I suspect that Nasrallah was given a fictional letter by the folks at EIR who hate him even more than they do the Queen. I have no problem with that but I don’t like made up facts.

   I don’t happen to support dictators. Period. And I don’t support peaceful protesters being fired on by anyone. And I do support the right of armed struggle against an oppressive government. You may keep a double set of books but I stopped doing that long ago.

   Jeff Blankfort

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   Jonathan Azaziah Reply:
   July 12th, 2011 at 6:32 pm

   Double set of books? No Mr. Blankfort, not at all. There is only one set of books that I keep Sir, and each book in the set represents another degree of the truth, with each subsequent reading treading down a new path of depth.

   The people now know whose side that you are on, and they are obviously acutely aware of what side that I’m on. You’re no fool Mr. Blankfort. When what is taking place in Syria spins completely out of control, you will awaken from your slumber. And when you do, you’ll remember that ’24-year old punk kid’ named Jonathan Azaziah.

   Peace and blessings,

   ~ Ziah

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   nota Reply:
   July 15th, 2011 at 8:02 am

   “When what is taking place in Syria spins completely out of control, you will awaken from your slumber. And when you do, you’ll remember that ’24-year old punk kid’ named Jonathan Azaziah.”

   Trust me it is no “slumber”. Blankfort is what we call a “gatekeeper” and is WIDE awake.

   I’d take the ’24-year old punk kid any day over an old goat who — by his own admission — see’s so ‘clearly’ everything looks fuzzy to him (“By the age of 24, Jonathan’s age, I had already been an activist for ten years and I long past that now and able to see things more clearly and in less black and white terms than I did then.”)
   

6. 

   J. Cunningham Reply 11. Jul, 2011 at 6:33 am

   Mr Blankfort, you seem to be completely taken in by the media propaganda if you think that peaceful demonstrators have been killed by the government in Syria. You are one of the many small minded people, who seem to believe everything that you see on the TV. I was in Syria throughout the troubles and can confirm the lies being told by the media. It incensed me so much that you can read it on friendsofsyria.wordpress.com. Mr. Azzariah has written the best in depth article I have read on researching the subject.

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   Jeff Blankfort Reply:
   July 11th, 2011 at 2:02 pm

   You may see my reply above. Your statement implying that peaceful demonstrators have not been killed is utter nonsense since you could not possibly have been everywhere at once. Moreover, what is your word compared to that of the many Syrians who have fled the violence? Were those cell phone videos that I saw on al-Jazeera phony? Were the ones from Bahrain? Do you, too, support the government’s decision to keep foreign journalists out?

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7. 

   kwibono Reply 12. Jul, 2011 at 10:57 am

   This is an important discussion of a vitally important article, so it’s a shame that it has disappeared from the front page. I think maybe a longer list of “recent articles” might be a good idea, one that would include everything published in the last three or four days?

   I’d also like to quibble about the format which has article headlines appearing in two or more places. I don’t like the “rotating headline” feature at all.

   I DO like just about everything else about the site. One thing I find especially gratifying is that there is a Printer Friendly version, which is easy to copy and paste into emails to my friends & allies, allowing me to continue to avoid giving my information to Social Media to be funneled to the ZPC/Rockefeller State Intelligence Apparatus. Yes, I know, but why make it easy for them?

   One important disagreement with Elias: he says War For Oil and fails to mention the Dinar/Central Banks angle. Or the Africom angle, or just the simple fact that Zionist planning makes destruction of any viable Arab or Muslim polity a high priority. So yes, Oil is a factor, but there are others just as or even more important. But no one can say everything in one brief comment, so I’ll consider it an oversight due to the rush of business:)

   ROB: I’m in complete agreement with your political sentiments, but you’ve made a serious booboo which detracts from your credibility. “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is a work plagiarized from a novel published about a century earlier by a French writer. The villains of the original work were not Jews. This has been well documented by both pro- and anti-Zionist scholars.
   As principled anti-Colonialist/anti-Racist anti-Zionists, we need to be careful to avoid falling into the trap of echoing stuff coming from the traditional fascistoid antisemitic white supremacists. Yes sometimes some of them have produced useful research, but you have to be clear that their goals are not our goals.

   Last point: what a shame that a brilliant man with such a great record as Jeffrey Blankfort has such an achilles heel. I’m amazed that he cites Al Jazeera as a credible source about Libya, when it is well known that Qatar is one of the principle participants in the criminal plot against the Libyan people.

   Isn’t politics interesting? How you can find yourself closely allied with somebody on a whole range of issues, and then one day you discover that your ally is just Out To Lunch on something important?

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8. 

   Jeff Blankfort Reply 12. Jul, 2011 at 8:37 pm

   Kwibono, if you read the first paragraph of my last post you can see that I am critical of Al-Jazeera’s coverage of both Libya and Bahrain. Quite apart from that, Jonathan has no response to my questioning of his sources regarding Kissinger’s alleged admission of being responsible for the Lebanese civil war nor did he answer my question as to whether he agreed with the Syrian government’s decision to bar foreign journalists. By the age of 24, Jonathan’s age, I had already been an activist for ten years and I long past that now and able to see things more clearly and in less black and white terms than I did then.

   I also believe that neither I nor anyone else has the right to tell people who live under dictatorships that they have no business rebelling. Period. I also believe that a single person, be it a Ghaddafi or an al-Asad does not make a revolution and, however, noble their motives, as I suspect Ghaddafi’s were nobler than al-Asad’s, they both became examples of the corruption of power which knows no idelogy.

   Now, as for Libya, there are a couple of articles that I recommends to you. The first is a story in the Jerusalem Post about a recent visit of a Libyan government delegation to Israel to garner its support: http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=228717

   This should not come as a total surprise since at the beginning of the Libyan uprising the colonel compared his reaction favorably with that of Israel. Here’s Ha’aretz:

   “Speaking with France 24 later Monday, however, Gadhafi defended his military’s right to oppress rebel activity, comparing his crackdown to Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2009, saying that “even the Israelis in Gaza, when they moved into the Gaza strip, they moved in with tanks to fight such extremists.”

   “It’s the same thing here! We have small armed groups who are fighting us. We did not use force from the outset… Armed units of the Libyan army have had to fight small armed al Qaida bands. That is what’s happened,” Gadhafi said.” http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/gadhafi-crackdown-on-libya-revolt-is-like-israel-s-war-on-hamas-in-gaza-1.347662

   Then, last August, you probably missed this story which was reported in the Telegraph, Daily Mail and the BBC, about Ghaddafi’s trip to Italy where he demanded at least 5 billion euros to keep the “barbarians” from Africa from destroying Europe.

   “Tomorrow Europe might no longer be European, and even black, as there are millions who want to come in,” said Col Gaddafi, quoted by the AFP news agency.

   “He was speaking at a ceremony in Rome late on Monday, standing next to Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

   “We don’t know what will happen, what will be the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans faced with this influx of starving and ignorant Africans,” Col Gaddafi said.

   “We don’t know if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions.”
   http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11139345 and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1307704/Colonel-Gaddafi-demands-4bn-EU-prevent-immigration-Libya.html

   There’s your “revolutionary” brother. If you want him, you can have him.

   [Reply]

9. 

   kwibono Reply 12. Jul, 2011 at 10:01 pm

   Jeffrey Blankfort said above: “Were those cell phone videos that I saw on al-Jazeera phony? Were the ones from Bahrain?”

   I don’t know what “ones from Bahrain” you refer to, but to me it’s only common sense to assume tbat anything about this issue appearing on Al Jazeera is phony until proven otherwise.

   Neither do I have any faith in Agence France Press or the British MSM when it comes to accurately quoting what Gaddafi may or may not have said. But for the sake of discussion, I’ll posit that what you report as Gaddafi’s words are indeed words he uttered at some point in some particular context.

   If that is so, it would be my judgment that Col G. had made a number of incorrect and ill-advised statements for which he would deserve to be duly criticized. But I’m less interested in what he may or may not have said as I am in what he has done.

   It’s clear that after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Desert Storm destruction of Iraq, Gaddafi & Co made an “agonizing reappraisal” of his geopolitical situation and drastically trimmed his foreign policy sails. He made a number of concessions to various Western interests and demands.

   But at the same time he was going ahead with plans/programs to empower the peoples and nations of both North and Trans-Sahara Africa. It seems to me incontrovertible that the primary reason for the US/Nato attack at this time was the alarm felt by US/EU banksters over the Gold Dinar plan. Oil was a factor mainly in the calculations of Sarkozy and the French petroleum industry, who wanted to undercut the deal Berlusconi had made.

   When you add the SOI and the ZPC into the equation, interests which overlap with and often are synonymous with those of the global banking sector, we see a neat illustration of the concept of Overdetermination. But I digress.

   Having read some of your writing, such as your 2003 article “A War For Israel”, and having followed your many exposures of the distinguished Dr Chomsky’s political clay feet, I remain impressed. I do realize how intelligent you are and how long you have been dealing with some of these questions.

   So I consider that we are having a discussion, that we disagree on some important points but we are not enemies. I know we are both searching for the truth; I hope by continuing this discussion we and those reading this will be able to produce a clearer picture of what’s really going on and what the implications are.

   I think your stance of always siding with the “protesters in the streets” is too mechanical. I think it’s a basic flaw in your grasp of the historical process. But the tail hanging thereby is too long to address at this time of night. Next time:)

   [Reply]

10. 

    Jeff Blankfort Reply 13. Jul, 2011 at 8:30 pm

    Kwibono, first, I don’t consider either you or Jonathan to be my enemies. In fact, sad to say, I have a number of friends of my generation who also rallied to the side of Ghaddafi as they did to Milosevich as they did to the Soviet Union and all of its police state allies, and, as I am sure they have to al-Asad, not because they were or are communists or necessarily Marxists but because they saw and still see the world in largely black and white terms and so all that is required to take the side of a dictatorial regime is that it is viewed as an enemy by Washington and the West. I do not attempt to argue with them since I know, by now, it is useless and since we agree on almost every thing else, I let it go.
    Individually, what any of this think matters little, but collectively, what is generally considered to be the Left, by demonstrating what I had referred to as an “affinity for dictators” has taken itself out of the game where it might have had some positive influence, first in Eastern Europe before its collapse and now in the North Africa and the Middle East in the so-called “Arab Spring.” On one hand, we have some who see the hand of the NED, the Democratic and Republican Inst., George Soros, Gene Sharp, the ICNC et al, as the moving hand behind the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings as if setting such events in motion was a matter of a few meetings, and handing out some pamphlets and organizing tools. As I mentioned in another post, without tinder there can be no fire.
    And there was ample tinder in all of North Africa and the Middle East that was ready to burn. It was represented by a younger generation that was not willing to put up with crap that its parents had. This is what explains the first Palestinian Intifada, which arose in the first generation to be born and grow up in the West Bank and Gaza under the Israeli boot. It has been the youth that have led the way in the current wave of uprisings although efforts have been made, such as In Egypt and Tunisia, to stifle them.
    In London, where I lived for a time off and on from 1969 to 1973, Muslims, most of whom were Pakistani, walked with their heads down and were constantly the subject of attacks by racist skinheads. When I returned to London a few years ago, it was like a different city. Young Muslim men walked erect and proudly and no skinheads were about to mess with them. This is not the kind of information one finds on Global Research, Veterans Today, or any blog. It does not involve Zionist or any other kind of manipulation. It just is. It doesn’t mean that youth involved in the various uprisings, although they can’t be lumped collectively as a single group, have simply determined that they do not want to live the way their parents lived, afraid to speak their minds out of fear they will be denounced and taken away in the middle of the night which was the case in the old Soviet Union and the East Bloc, as well as in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria.
    As for Libya, I should say that I have never been a supporter of Ghaddafi because I found his behavior shaky and too often useful to the US. When I was living in London in 1971, I read two long pieces in the Observer describing in detail how the US interceded to prevent a coup against him. Trying to find a reference to that on the net, I came up with this article from 2003: “1969-1972, Libya: America’s New Ally, Colonel Qaadafi” http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/issue51/articles/51_26.pdf which doesn’t say much for his so-called “revolutionary” credentials.
    I also recall how strange it was when he hired a former CIA agent, Ed Wilson, to provide training for his men, and with CIA approval, he did so and had a group of former Green Berets carrying out training for such fringe Palestinian groups as the PFLP-GC. Wilson was later convicted of shipping 20 tons of plastic explosives to Libya and his life story is incredible, but the question needs to be asked, why would Ghaddafi hire him in the first place? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_P._Wilson
    Not only did Ghaddafi provide and office for the PFLP-GC but also for the Abu Nidal group which had broken off from the PLO and only targeted Israelis (once) when it was useful to Israel, shooting Shlomo Argov, the Israeli Ambassador to London, which was used by Begin as the excuse to launch the war on Lebanon in 1982. Nidal’s most successful terrorists acts were attacks were against PLO officials and on civilians in countries which were supportive of the Palestinians such as Austria and Italy. Former Israel General Matti Peled, who became a strong critic of Israel, believed him to be working for Israel. In any case, why would Ghaddafi give an office to such a man?
    In 1978, the leading Shia imam of Lebanon, Musa Sadr, who had been successful in reaching out both to Lebanon’s Maronite as well Sunni communities and was so beloved that his posters can still be found on the walls in Beirut, particularly at election time, went to Libya where Ghaddafi “disappeared” him, claiming, without any proof, that Musa Sadr and his party had left for Rome.
    In August 1981, the Reagan administration sent 8000 members of the National Guard to Honduras which immediately stirred up a controversy but on Aug. 19th, a day or two later, Ghaddafi had his fighter jets engage US aircraft over the Gulf of Sidra and two were shot down. The focus of attention shifted to Libya and Honduras and the National Guard were forgotten and never to be debated again. Since then 70,000 US guardsmen have been stationed off and on there. I was already a Ghaddafi watcher in 1981 and so I remarked how convenient the attack in Sidra was for the US. My conclusion was that either Ghaddafi was US tool or that there was someone close who was able to manipulate him.
    I mention all of this because I suspect, in fact, would bet, that most of it is unknown to those supporting him and human nature being what it is, I don’t think it will or would change anyone’s mind who has decided that he is right and those opposing him are wrong. But just to give one last example of how Ghaddafi thinks and how he sees himself and that he doesn’t have a democratic bone in his body, here’s an article by, I assume, a Libyan that describes Ghaddafi’s support for the ousted Tunisian dictator, his friend, Zine, and his contempt for the Tunisian people. Here’s an excerpt, then the link:
    -Gaddafi said he was pained by Ben Ali’s unceremonious exit and spoke at length about the shortsightedness of Tunisians who wasted their lives for nothing, just to get rid of a corrupt president. He chided them for being misled by WikiLeaks (which he called “Kleenex”) into destroying their country and putting the future of their children on the line. After expressing his distrust of any form of social media, Gaddafi turned to pay homage to Ben Ali, whom he refers to as “Zine”:

    -“There is not anyone better than Ben Ali at the moment for Tunisia and if it were up to me I would want him to continue not till 2014 but for life.” http://electronicintifada.net/content/libyas-tragedy-gaddafis-farce/9814

    I don’t think Jonathan understood what I meant by not keeping a “double set of books.” What I meant is that I have the same standards for everyone, exactly what I want for myself, and that is the right to politically dissent and be politically active to whatever extent or direction I desire without the fear of the police breaking in my door at night and, if I’m lucky, be merely in a prison cell, by morning. In June 1996, I forgot to mention earlier, over a two-day period, the Gaddafi regime killed nearly 1200 prisoners in the notorious Abu Salim prison in Tripoli in putting down a prison uprising. It was ignored by activists in the West, even those who had correctly made a big deal about the 41 prisoners who were murdered in Attica, NY when they staged an uprising following the murder of George Jackson at San Quentin. But that mass murder at Abu Salim was one of the events that the rebels talked about when they began the uprising. May they bring the person responsible to justice.

    Jeff Blankfort

    [Reply]

11. 

    kwibono Reply 14. Jul, 2011 at 8:35 am

    Thank You, Jeff Blankfort, it looks like you have provided solid evidence that Col Gaddafi’s record leaves much to be desired. However his record includes a great deal on the positive side of the ledger, as Cynthia McKinney has documented.
    Likewise, we’ve all heard a great deal about evil deeds perpetrated by the leaders of the old Soviet Union, thanks to such as Robt Conquest,Solshenytsin and Victor Navasy.
    And now the USSR and the Warsaw Pact are gone and replaced by what? To what effect on the rest of the world?

    And here you are baying for Gaddafi’s scalp like you did for Brezhnev’s. Well, you got your wish in Brezhnev’s case. Brezhnev out, Yeltsin in. Which removed the biggest obstacle to the unleashing of The War On Terror(tm) as well as the war on the US poor/workingpoor & working classes.

    But I don’t think the majority of Libyans are going to buy into your pleas for them to replace Gaddafi with that bunch of monarchist criminal scum that calls themselves “the rebels”.

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    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 17th, 2011 at 9:03 am

    With all due respect, and that respect is considerable, my friend Cynthia is no more an expert on Libya were others, including friends of mine who visited the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites, who visited those countries and came back speaking in glowing terms about how socially progressive they were in comparison to the reactionary West.

    And, of course, in many respects they were correct. There was no unemployment and workers had longer vacations, there was free health care which, if not the best, at least was available, low cost-housing, which was certainly not the best but kept people from living in the streets, free education, which varied in quality but was not up to Western standards, etc, and it is true that once the USSR dissolved and its allies in the East collapsed, that the capitalists of Western Europe felt empowered to launch an all out war on the working class, the sad fact among others that was undeniable, was that these were all to varying degrees political dictatorships in which political dissent and challenging the status quo in any significant way was, by definition, not allowed and consequently the lifeline of each of these societies atrophied and evaporated. The “dictatorship of the proletariat” had become, not what Marx conceived it to be but a dictatorship over the proletariat by a central committee which demonstrated, in practice, contempt for the working class. To accomplish and jthat Lenin came up with the oxymoron or oxymorons, the notion of “democratic centralism,” which Rosa Luxemberg, the best revolutionary of them all, predicted would lead to the demise of any experiment in socialism or communism.

    My knowledge of what was going on in the USSR and its satellites was based on my own limited experiences on the other side of the curtain but mostly on conversations with people from those countries who in different ways lived through what those on the outside were haling as “workers’ paradises,” all of whom remained ideologically socialist and none of whom worked for the CIA.

    I did not “bay for Breznev’s scalp” nor for the end of the USSR although I may have been among the first to predict its collapse when on reading a small item in the paper about fighting between Soviet Azerbajian and Soviet Armenia that if these two were fighting, that was a sign that the whole regime was going to fall. I was, in fact, concerned because despite my criticism of the Soviet Union, it was the only bastion remaining in the fight against US imperialism to which revolutionary movements around the world could turn for support and with its collapse, all of those movements had to readjust their worldview as well as their practice, and we have seen, for example, with the transformation of the ANC in South Africa into something that would have been unthinkable to its members and supporters in the struggle against apartheid. Take a look at what has become of Vietnam, but make sure you hold your nose. So it goes.

    Now, as for Ghaddafi, whether he stays or goes is not that important since Libya is not and has never been, despite Ghaddafi’s efforts, a major player on the world scene and with a population less than that of LA County it never will be.

    Although apparently, no one else on this thread is aware of it, not to mention most of Ghaddafi’s champions among the Left, all of the country’s oil reserves have been spoken for by the world’s major oil companies with whom the colonel negotiated deals that any new government would be forced to recognize. BP has all the offshore rights and inside there is Exxon, Total, ENI, Occidental, and the leading Spanish and German firms.

    The notion by the way, that Ghaddafi’s Gold-Dinar standard was taken seriously by anyone in the business world is as ludicrous as was the notion that Iran’s opening of it own oil bourse would get their knees to shake or the bowels to quiver. Sub-Saharan Africa is dependent on the West despite the colonel’s desire to be considered Africa’s “King of Kings.

    What I find interesting but mostly depressing is that people who have justly ridiculed and attacked Bush and Obama for prattling about the dangers of Al Qaeda, have not a word of criticism about the mad colonel when he not only paints all his enemies as Al-Qaeda but ignore the fact that he and his regime were collaborating with the CIA since, at least, 2003, and reportedly participated in the rendition program. Frankly, I am unable to take anyone who supports him seriously.

    Does that mean that I am championing the rebels? Not at all. Perhaps, none of you can understand it, but there is no objective reason to take sides in a struggle when both sides appear to have many more negatives than positives and when what position we take will have not the slightest bearing on the outcome.

    But, as we have seen in Eastern Europe, the failure of the Left to even acknowledge legitimate grievances claimed by those peoples living under those police state regimes made us non-players when those regimes fell, and looking at all the efforts to attribute the uprisings in the Arab world to the likes of the NED, Gene Sharp and George Soros is not only, again, an insult, and an ugly example of the Left’s patronizing attitude toward the “Third World,” but a guarantee that it will have no influence on its future. On second thought, reading this thread and the crap that one finds on Global Research, maybe that’s a good thing.

    [Reply]

12. 

    nota Reply 15. Jul, 2011 at 7:41 am

    Jeff says I “able to see things more clearly and in less black and white terms than I did then”

    Sorry but it gave me the giggles…Isn’t it the same as saying “I see clearly now that everything looks fuzzy now”. That is because you probably have made too many compromises (and justified too many dirty deeds) over the years and have lost sense of what is right vs wrong, good vs evil.

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13. 

    kwibono Reply 15. Jul, 2011 at 9:46 am

    Sorry, Nota, your comment >“I see clearly now that everything looks fuzzy now”.< IS amusing, but your speculations which follow are way off base. Jeff Blankfort does not compromise with what he sees as Evil, even when it involves risk to himself. The trouble is with what he sees as evil.
    He seems to have difficulty dealing with too much complexity, which may (?, I'm guessing) have to do with his rejection of Marx, which leaves him employing a Kantian approach to things which can only be understood via the dialectic, ala Mao Zedong, Gilad Atzmon et al;)

    [Reply]

    

    nota Reply:
    July 15th, 2011 at 9:54 pm

    No apology needed — that “off base” bit was intentionally off base .

    I am sure Jeff does not compromise what “he sees as Evil” but that is the point isn’t it? What if he DOESN’T see a particular evil (when it is all fuzzy, “a mystery wrapped in an enigma…”), does it make it any less Evil?

    Here I do have issues with a lot of what Jeff is saying (would it be impolite to call them outright lies?) Here are some examples:
    Though I agree with him that “without tinder there can be no fire”, his outright rejection of the involvement off “see the hand of the NED, the Democratic and Republican Inst., George Soros, Gene Sharp, the ICNC et al, as the moving hand behind the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings” on the LIE that “setting such events in motion was a matter of a few meetings, and handing out some pamphlets” is TOTAL B.S. See Tony Cartlucci’s excellent pieces on this e.g. Who are Egypt’s Protesters? (http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/search/label/egypt?updated-max=2011-02-19T09%3A55%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=20)

    As another example of that B.S., is this bit by Jeff:
    “I am, of course, aware of the position paper of Oded Yinon which put the break-up of Iraq high on its list but that was written after the civil war was well under way.”
    Do you expect me to take this joke seriously? Stating that break-up of Iraq was talked about “after the civil war” is total falsehood (I certainly do not believe there is a civil war” ongoing in Iraq even today, despite the several attempts by the occupation forces to start one). And to claim that the Oden Yinon paper “was written after the civil war was well under way” is as plain a lie as any. I say it was written in 1982:

    Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization.15

    (Source http://homepage.mac.com/kaaawa/iblog/C177199123/E657017417/ )

    Will he claim next that PNAC and “A Clen Break” too were written after (See the PNAC Primer at http://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/PNAC-Primer.htm)

    You say “He seems to have difficulty dealing with too much complexity, which may (?, I’m guessing) have to do his rejection of Marx”. He also seems to have swallowed the “Dictators EVIL” (pill and any monstrosity to get rid of one GOOD). I am sure he is happy that Saddam the Dictator is gone and Iraq is now “free” (and I am sure he has welcomed the joke of the day: “U.S. formally recognizes Libyan rebels as legitimate government”)

    BTW: Some excellent papers on the “dialectic” at http://humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/

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    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 17th, 2011 at 9:09 am

    Nota, you need a class in reading comprehension. I was referring to the Lebanese civil war which began in 1975, not to the Iraq War and if you want to see for yourself what I have written instead of exposing yourself as another ignoramus, see this: “A War for Israel” http://www.leftcurve.org/LC28WebPages/WarForIsrael.html

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    nota Reply:
    July 15th, 2011 at 10:09 pm

    P.S. I am will familiar with Jeff work, like
    “A War for Israel” (http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0007040.html)
    And am no fan of Gaddafi or Asad but believe they are MUCH lesser evil than the cure being offered to the Libyans and Syrians through NATO. Let the Libyans and Syrians turn the “tinder into fire” ON THEIR OWN!!!

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    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 17th, 2011 at 9:13 am

    Nota, if you are familiar with that article, how could you write such nonsense about what I wrote or didn’t write in the previous post?

    I also am adamantly opposed to NATO or any outside intervention but I am equally opposed to those on the Left with not a single accomplishment to their credit, telling people living under dictatorships that they should just shut up and accept them because it’s all for “the greater good.”

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    kwibono Reply:
    July 17th, 2011 at 10:50 am

    Well Jeff, now that you’ve sunk so low as to attack Cynthia McKinney’s credibility, I’m afraid I can no longer consider you any kind of an ally going forward, earlier valuable contributions notwithstanding. Matter of fact, I’m going to have to reevalute positions of yours I bought into on the basis of your distinguished work about the “Israel Lobby” (sic). If you can come up this wildly wrong about McKinney and Libya, you could be wrong about other things too.
    Well, this is my last comment on your opinions re “dictators”, Libya, Syria and the Cold War. After reading your last couple of statements, I’ve concluded that further dialog with you would be a waste of time.
    If a chorus of comments erupts here on IVP in support of your position, I might take notice. But otherwise, I pass.

14. 

    kwibono Reply 16. Jul, 2011 at 2:50 pm

    Nota: Thank you for your very pertinacious comments with which I am in complete accord; may I call you Nota Bene?
    I did hit the link to the Yumanbeans1st page, which looked VERY interesting, except it turned out to be cybernetically incompatible with the IE9 I’m using. It kept freezing; Windows kept telling me The Page Is Not Responding. I eventually gave up. I have a lot of similar problems; my guess is I’ve been hacked by some real pros that have found ways to get past AVG et al. But it might be a good idea if the First Yumans checked to see if there might not be some tweaking they could apply to their server.
    Thanks again,
    K.

    [Reply]

    

    nota Reply:
    July 16th, 2011 at 8:58 pm

    You can call me anything you like
    Sorry you had trouble with ‘First Yumans’ site…yeah home page is bit massive though I doubt it is the server that needs tweaking as it is a blog on Google’s Blogger and a mirror on WordPress at http://humanbeingsfirst.wordpress.com (I myself use IE8 and Firefox and never had any trouble…)

    If you like, you can start here just as an intro:
    “Unlayering the Middle East War Agenda: Making Sense of Absurdities”
    http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2011/01/unlayering-middle-east-war-agenda.html

    And

    “FAQ What is ‘Hegelian Mind Fck’”
    http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/01/faq-what-is-hegelian-mind-fck.html

    (These are much shorter/single essay pages)

    [Reply]

15. 

    Jeff Blankfort Reply 17. Jul, 2011 at 11:24 am

    Kwibono, Cynthia and I are good friends and have been for some years but that does not mean that I am in agreement with everything she says, although this is the first issue in which we don’t see eye to eye. Since this is a serious difference, it is not something that can be easily debated on the internet. But the fact remains, she is not an expert an expert on Libya, does not speak Arabic, and couldn’t expect to be an expert after having spent a relatively small amount of time there. I have many friends in the Middle East who are very familiar with Ghaddafi’s Libya over the years and not a single one supports him. I do not see you as an ally and, in fact, do not care who or who doesn’t support my position since, as I have noted before, what any of has to say about this issue, and that includes, Cynthia, will have no effect on the outcome. I should add, that the IAC, which is promoting her speaking engagments, has a track record of supporting Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Ceaucesku and the Chinese crackdown in Tienamen Square. And that may be the saddest part.

    [Reply]

16. 

    kwibono Reply 17. Jul, 2011 at 5:58 pm

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28601.htm#idc-cover

    Jeff you seem to have spent too much time out there in the woods with the hippies and lost touch with what’s going on. Maybe you should move back to Oakland & reconnect?

    I’m really astonished to read such anti-African statements coming from you of all people. “As the Dialectic Turns”, things & people turn into their opposites.

    [Reply]

    

    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 17th, 2011 at 6:38 pm

    Actually, I have not lived in Oakland for decades but was there Friday night for a powerful celebration of the life of Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, the Black Panther whose served 27 years in California state prisons for a murder he did not commit. If you check my history, you’ll find I spent not a little time working with the BPP back in the days and I am sure some folks who were there on Friday who I have known for many years including members of the San Quentin Six would consider you nuts for suggesting that anything I have said or done would be considered “anti-African.”

    I recorded the event which I will soon be posting on the internet. For those who have an open mind and want to see what I’ve been doing and saying, you can click on http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/1752

    You seem to be so desperate for arguments to counter the facts that I have related about the questionable history of Ghaddafi that you are now resorting to outright slanders. You should be ashamed of yourself but that, obviously, is too much to expect.

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    kwibono Reply:
    July 17th, 2011 at 8:30 pm

    Hold on, back up, Jeff DOES have support in the Bay Area Black community, from one reader of the Bay View National Black Newspaper at least. This was appended as a comment on a piece about Jeff’s friend McKinney’s SF talk about Libya:

    >Green Party Sucks commented on The politically conscious gather for Cynthia McKinney – but where are all the youth? – San Francisco Bay View:

    I will neeeeeeeeeeeever vote for someone this crazy again. Neeeeeeeever. McKinney is on some anti-war tip, however the one who has her info all messed up is HER. Qadafi Duck, this Jewish man who is supported by a bunch of nutty NOI types and racist McKinney, has hired these black Africans to kill his own citizens. If Asians wee suddenly employed by the President to kill Blacks in the U.S. would you not shoot back? She has no youth supporting her because the minority who IS there are a bunch of backward imbeciles and they all happen to be old. @Rob Tomorrow…………. she is a female NOI nutcase who is not capable of using her intelligence right now.<

    Jeff, let's be clear, I didn't say that YOU are "antiAfrican", but your statements and position on Libya, Gaddafi and McKinney ARE antiAfrica and antiAfrican. Whether your contemporaries from the good old days of the BPP newspaper are still politically alert enough to realize that, I have no idea.

    Yee godz man, this US/Nato/Israel attack on Libya is the opening of a new and more dangerous front in their offensive aimed at total recolonization of the continent. You sound like you think Cynthia made that up.

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    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 17th, 2011 at 9:29 pm

    My statements are nothing of the kind and I resent the implication. Libya is an unimportant player on the world scene and the African scene despite Ghaddafi’s tireless efforts to make it one and that is why, whether you want to believe it or not, Obama and Gates (as opposed to the Valkrie Hillary) were reluctant to get involved in the Libyan mess but were forced to do so because France and Britain, which had cozied up to Khaddafi, all of which was well documented, pressured the US to get involved. The US has plans to militarize Sub-Saharan Africa which already began before AFRICOM but there is no evidence that Libya that I have seen, with its six million population figured in those plans.

    Cynthia knows and is familiar with US politics but she is no expert on Africa and none of the people who have been traveling with her are either. People do not become instant experts on such complicated issues overnight. She has been swallowing the line of the International Action Center cult which never saw a dictator it couldn’t support. I will bet that she never even knew about the 1200 political prisoners that Ghaddafi had murdered in Tripoli in 1996 or any of the other history that I have laid out on this thread and I know damn well that you didn’t either. But you’ve made your mind up so whatever or whoever contradicts you, they have to be wrong.

    Israel has never given a damn about Libya because they know Ghaddafi has never been a serious threat to it and the only involvement that I have seen that connects the two is the recent visit by officials from Ghaddafi’s government to Israel who met with Livni in order to get Israel’s support.

17. 

    kwibono Reply 17. Jul, 2011 at 8:52 pm

    for the record, this is apparently what lit that Green Sucks character’s fuse:

    http://sfbayview.com/2011/the-politically-conscious-gather-for-cynthia-mckinney-but-where-are-all-the-youth/#IDComment174578294
    kwibono · 3 days ago

    There is a substantial Libyan emigre population in the US and EU countries, I have discovered, one that to me is similar to other emigre national groups brought to the US after losing power in their home countries, such as the Gusanos in Miami nostalgic for the days when Cuba was run by Meyer Lansky’s pals. Other parallels are with the Vietnamese Americans nostalgic for the privileged existence their families enjoyed under French colonial rule or/and later under the CIA.

    Young pro-intervention Libyan emigres in the US are largely offspring of families who had a large stake in the colonialist puppet King Idris regime, and are understandably enthusiastic at the prospect of having their fortunes restored by Nato.

    For instance, one vociferous defender of the “rebels” on various blogs, Nafissa Assed, turns out to be the daughter of a high Idris regime official, and the granddaughter of a man who was King Idris’ Prime Minister.
    So when you hear a Libyan resident of the US denounce Gaddafi, find out where they’re coming from: were members of their family officials or beneficiaries of the Mussolini/Churchill/Idris monarchy?
    xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
    In some of the instances Jeff cites, it may have really been peaceful nonviolent protesters who first took to the streets, and were then hijacked by counterrevolutionary Contra types funded by the NED/CIA/Soros et al.

    But in the Libya case, it is clear that was not the case. The plot to take over Benghazi/Barqa, declare a “no-fly zone”, sieze funds foolishly deposited in US banks, and start bombing toward the stone age was hatched in DC, Wall St, Paris and London months before the “Arab Spring” hit the headlines.
    So Kaddafi seems to be erratic at times, make moves that seem regrettable, and say things that to us USians seem foolish.

    The fact is that the vast vast majority of the Libyans in Libya support him. What other leader of a country has distributed AK47s plus ammo to the entire population?

    But here we have Jeff, who claims to be “neutral” between Nato and Gaddafi. How absurd. If you’re neutral, why didn’t your keep your mouth shut instead of jumping in to defend the apologists for recolonization?

    [Reply]

    

    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 17th, 2011 at 10:22 pm

    Kwibono, you know next to nothing about Libya, about how many support Ghaddafi and how many oppose him and even less about the Libyan community in the US and elsewherw, otherwise you would not make generalizations about either.

    When, in the first days of the Libyan uprising, Libyan students in London occupied the $16 million dollar mansion of Saif al-Islam, Ghaddafi’s number one son. Would you have been there defending it against those students? Seems so.

    People who don’t want to live under dictatorships should have a right to emigrate and no one, Americans or anyone else, whatever their color or gender, have any business putting them down for doing so, particularly privileged white Americans who can come and go as they please.

    All the Cubans who left Cuba, particularly in later years, were not Gusanos. They simply no longer wanted to live in a country where to dissent politically put them at risk of a long prison sentence. At least, unlike Ghaddafi, Castro did not have Cuban agents pursuing dissidents outside of the country and offing them but even today, people wishing to emigrate from Cuba can’t do so, and they can’t, unless they’re privileged, even browse the internet. That okay with you? And if they’re black, they can’t get into hotels and restaurants that cater to white folks, Cuban or tourist. That okay with you?

    You write and I have read that Ghaddafi is distributing AK-47s and ammo to the entire population. Do you have any proof that’s he done that in Tripoli or anyone else? Do you have any idea how full of shit that man is and has been for years? Do you think the rebels, the good, the bad, and the ugly, are mercenaries, born someplace besides Libya? Do you think they have the right to oppose a dictatorship of 42 years? No, I guess not. You need to take a serious look at yourself in the mirror.

    Given the reality that political organizing outside of the regime has been illegal, it’s not surprising that opportunists looking for the Yankee dollar have seized the leadership, but they will find out, as I mentioned before, that control of Libya is relatively unimportant in the imperial scheme of things compared, for example to all the counties in the Horn of Africa. Do you know where that is? Just asking.

    The only thing important about Libya is its oil and Ghaddafi already signed contracts with all of the world’s leading oil majors and those contracts will have to be honored by a new Libyan government if he goes.

    How come nobody’s talking about Bahrain and the crackdown against the resistance there? Is that the work of NED and George Soros, as well? I think I need some fresh air.

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    Deadbeat Reply:
    July 18th, 2011 at 1:40 am

    When, in the first days of the Libyan uprising, Libyan students in London occupied the $16 million dollar mansion of Saif al-Islam, Ghaddafi’s number one son. Would you have been there defending it against those students? Seems so.

    If I knew then what I know now about Libya I would have defended Qaddafi against the students especially since the students unfurled the banner of the old monarchy as seen here in this photo from the Christian Science Monitor

    [Reply]

    

    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 18th, 2011 at 10:35 am

    That just happened to be the flag that Libya adopted when it became a country and if you notice it has the same colors as one finds in other flags throughout the Middle East. That green flag was indentified with Ghaddafi. Why would they have waved that? That you have no problem with Saif al-Islam owning a $16 million mansion in London I find depressing.

18. 

    Deadbeat Reply 17. Jul, 2011 at 11:18 pm

    I have to express my disappointment with Jeffrey Blankfort’s position on Libya. While I don’t reside in the African American community, my understanding is that the African American community has had a long affinity with Qaddafi and Libya. Thus support for Libya goes beyond Cynthia McKinney to include the African diaspora.

    One of the reasons for the respect that Qaddafi has is due to his achievements in Libya bringing about democratic governance that extends well beyond the parliamentary governance currently ruling the West. You would think that the ideas Qaddafi exposes in The Green Book and brought to his people would be a topic of discussion, debate, learning, implementation and struggle for the Left.

    Here’s a link to a video that explains the Libyan Jamahiriya …
    Libya: The State Of The Masses: Understanding the Libyan political system

    However what puzzles me is WHY there is such resentment and downright ill-feelings towards Qaddafi coming primarily from the [White] Left — especially Troskyite outfits like the ISO and the WSWS. They have labelled Qaddafi as a “dictator” and claimed Libya to be a “Capitalist” nation. Why such distortions if Libya is such a “minor” player?

    Could it be that Qaddafi succeeded at building a Socialist Democracy without following Marxist prescriptions?

    This isn’t a rhetorical question. I’m VERY SERIOUS about discussion this because I don’t understand this level of resentment towards Libya coming from Left “allies”.

    I can’t believe that the outpouring of support that the Libyan people have for Qaddafi is imaginary. I can’t believe that the African community has been so wrong about Qaddafi for 40 years. I can’t believe that he would arm his own citizens and not one of them even attempted to shoot him if he was so “brutal” or that Libyans would rally behind him if he bomb legitimate protestors as was falsely claimed.

    Qaddafi hasn’t been in power since 1977 so even if he cuts private deals the Libyan people have the right to say yes or no. So what’s the problem here?

    I hope someone can honestly address my questions because this is one of the most serious issues facing the Left as it goes to the core of the question of “Who side are you on?

    [Reply]

    

    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 18th, 2011 at 10:16 am

    Deadbeat, I would suggest that you read my previous threads to learn about Ghaddafi’s history to understand why I do not and have never supported him. I don’t have the time to go back over it.

    The support for Ghaddafi within the African-American community is largely through Louis Farrakhan and the NOI who Ghaddafi has funded. Apart from that I have never been aware of any significant interest in Ghaddafi from any other sectors. I would hope that there would be more concern from the African-American community about what is happening in the Congo and Somalia and Zimbabwe but there isn’t because what political leadership there is in the Black community seems to ignore situations when the aggressor is also black.

    I am not sure what you mean when you speak about “democratic governance” when political dissent is not tolerated, and that you and others who otherwise have an intelligent head on their shoulders believe that he gave up power in 1977 and has not been a dictator for the past 42 years is just the kind of smoke and mirrors that makes me want to wash my hands of the Left, such as what there is of it. The notion that the Libyan people have had anything to say about Libya’s selling its oil, about Ghaddafi’s collaboration with the CIA in its war on terror, about his killing of 1200 prisoners, many of them political in 1996, about his “disappearing” the progressive Shia Imam, Musa Sadr, in 1978, is simply nonsense.

    The country is clearly divided and until the WW2 was two countries, Cyrenica in the East and Tripolitana in the West and who are we to judge those in the East who are tired of his dictatorship, many of whose relatives were murdered in that prison in 1996?

    We have heard that Ghaddafi has armed the people but there have been NO reports that this has been actually done and Ghaddafi himself is not appearing in public so the likelihood of someone popping him in the street is unlikely.

    What our job here is not to take sides but to oppose the US/NATO intervention and expose the notion that the US can ever participate in anything “humanitarian.” Those who are taking the side of Ghaddafi, however noble their motives, are working against that.

    [Reply]

    

    Deadbeat Reply:
    July 20th, 2011 at 4:21 pm

    I thought it would be fair that I take up Jeff’s request to do some research. Due to time constraints I cannot possibly come up to speed with all of the intricate politics surrounding the issues he sited. However the one that is probably the most compelling is the allegation that Qaddafi had a hand in the disappearance of Musa Sadr. From what I’ve seen there is NO conclusive evidence that I can find that Qaddafi was involved in Musa Sadr disappearance.

    By 1978, Gaddafi was out of power and the Libyan governments stated that Musa Sadr left for Italy. The Italian government claims he never arrived thus the accusations have been reduced to conjecture.

    Wikipedia (which has a pro-Israel slant) has this remark… In 1978, al-Sadr disappeared in mysterious circumstances while visiting Libya, the Amal movement’s regional supporter at the time. There are credible allegations that Yasser Arafat asked Gaddafi to “disappear” al-Sadr.

    The problem with this comment is that it is NOT footnoted and there is NO reference to identify, research, or fact-check the so-called “credible allegations”. It is only unsubstantiated conjecture.

    I did find an detailed article by Dr. Ragheb Elsergany that provides greater details into Musa Al-Sadr’s background. Apparently Musa al-Sadr is not as “progressive” as Jeff implies:

    Furthermore, Musa Al-Sadr did not forget to curry favor with the USA. In a meeting with the US ambassador, Al-Sadr stated that he resists the Nassirite Socialist expansion among the Shiite youths. His relations with the Americans got so disclosed that Al-Khomeini’s escort accused him of it, bearing in mind that Al-Khomeini, at that stage, considered the USA to be a contingent peril as it strongly supported the Shah. Contrary to all Al-Sadr’s expectations, a serious development took place when Palestinian refugees in Jordan suffered from the Black September massacre which lasted with the expulsion of the Palestinian fighters led by Fatah to Lebanon. Unwelcoming expulsion of “Sunni” Palestinians to the south Lebanon (near Palestine), Shiites thought it might be a stumbling rock in the way of the Shiite state plan, bearing in mind that Fatah at that time had socialist secularist tendency and was far away from Islamic teachings.

    The Story of Hezbollah 1/3

    The Story of Hezbollah 2/3

    The Story of Hezbollah 3/3

    [Reply]

    

    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 20th, 2011 at 6:55 pm

    Deadbeat, thanks for doing some checking, but first, the notion that Ghaddafi gave up power in 1978 or at any other time since 1969 is belied by the fact that he has continued to rule Libya, sign its oil contracts, and conduct business with foreign countries to this day. Otherwise there would be no debate today about whether or not he should step down, right?

    Musr Sadr, as Shia cleric, was no socialist, nor for that matter was Yasser Arafat. The socialists were the DFLP and PFLP and al-Saika,a Syrian sponsored group that was dismantled by Hafez al Assad when he staged his coup.
    So far from being socialist was Arafat, that when spending considerable time with Fatah people in Lebanon and Jordan 1970, I and my two companions were treated to a steady stream of red-baiting.

    What was important about Musa Sadr, and I had a close friend, Maronite Christian, who worked with him, was that he had a broad outreach to the other religious communities which may be one of the reasons that Hezbollah is supported today by the largest Christian party and two of the smaller ones, one of the best guarded secrets by the US mainstream media. Musa Sadr is still so popular that one can see his face on posters today throughout Southern Beirut and Southern Lebanon. Because of his “disappearance” in Libya, Lebanon broke off diplomatic relations with Ghaddafi that have never been resumed.

    That Arafat might have wanted him eliminated was something that I had not heard but I would not discount it. Arafat’s behavior and the corruption that he not only tolerated but fostered when he was a power in Lebanon, plus that of a handful of small Palestinian militias that were funded by various Arab regimes, eventually turned the Shia majority against them and not only explained why the Israeli invaders were initially welcomed by the Shia in June 1982 but why so many Lebanese are still hostile to the Palestinians living there today.

19. 

    kwibono Reply 18. Jul, 2011 at 7:35 am

    With “Friends” like you, Jeff, Cynthia McKinney has little need for enemies.

    A question for you: when you first noticed your bikini twisting to the right over her statements about Libya, did you as a friend call or write to her and offer the information you’ve offered above? Yes?

    Assuming that you did, what did she say back to you?

    I don’t have time to deal turd by turd with all the bullshit you’ve been posting,
    but your claim that Libya is totally unimportant ignores Libya’s liquid wealth, which gives it a base from which to do things the Central Banksters don’t like, such as fund an independent communications net for the continent of Africa.

    Before you launch into another hysterical tirade, I’d suggest you might want to widen your spectrum of news sources. That you bought into the crap about those monarchist London students makes it obvious that you have blinders on.

    [Reply]

    

    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 18th, 2011 at 10:29 am

    I did not write Cynthia because when one is dealing with a controversy like this, as we can see on this thread, email exchanges are counter-productive, and the last thing she needed to read and argue about when the US and NATO were dropping bombs on Tripoli was an email from me telling her she should Ghaddafi and take the first plane out of there.

    The only reason I even got on this thread was to challenge some of the nonsense that Jonathan has been peddling from somewhere in Florida about Syria, another dictatorship. Usually, I don’t bother because, as I have learned, once people have made their minds up about some issue, the last thing they want to deal with are facts that contradict their new found opinion. That’s human nature and one of the reasons I didn’t write Cynthia.

    I didn’t say Libya was totally unimportant, I said it was relatively unimportant. Ghaddafi has already sold all of Libya’s oil rights to most of world’s oil majors, and yes, it’s BP, who has all the offshore rights.

    Since you are clearly unable to justify what I have told you about Ghaddafi’s history, which most of those supporting him are completely unaware of, you respond with insults. Well, Dan, insult away. I’ve written you off.

    [Reply]

20. 

    kwibono Reply 18. Jul, 2011 at 11:37 am

    Kiss of hubris? Peter Lee in Atimes Online, ME section, fwdd by C McKinney:
    >”As for the West, it can content itself with the observation that, if it wasn’t able to save Libya, at least it was able to cripple it.

    It is a pattern that has served the West reasonably well as its diplomacy engineered partition instead of national reconciliation in Kosovo and Sudan, and expedited the fragmentation of the Soviet Union into a suspicious Russia and a host of new NATO members.

    It is another lesson in US “nation-building” – born of a casual disregard for sovereignty, circumvention of the United Nations, a cavalier attitude toward international law and a reckless deployment of political power – that China, one of the last great multinational empires left standing, is likely to take to heart.:<

    link to the full article:
    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/MG19Ad01.html

    cf. the links at the bottom of P2.

    [Reply]

21. 

    kwibono Reply 18. Jul, 2011 at 4:09 pm

    Waddy ya no, get online every day and you see something new. I guess Liberal Zionism is old hat now, but never fear, modern tricknology has innovated a new device: a Cold War Liberal Anti-Zionist!

    Not only that, but bundled with an Anti-African Black Panther!

    Well Jeff, I used to think you were one of the smartest people I’d ever encountered. Goes to show, doesn’t it? That’l teach me! From now on you won’t catch ME believing everything I think:)

    By the way, your self-deception is — I was going to say “hypocrisy” but my guess is you really believe the nonsense you’re spreading — it’s really amazing to see you parroting the Idris Regime Restorationist line. “When Libya became independent”: what a crock. More accurate would be to say “When the Al Senussis switched colonial masters”.

    It’s one thing to be critical of Gaddafi, but another to start regurgitating Restorationist propaganda. Jeff, those “rebels” based in Benghazi are not a bunch of idealistic students complaining about free speech. If there are any such among them, they’ve been duped. The whole scam was hatched by the US/SOI/Nato state apparatus.

    What are these “rebels” demanding? A Bill of Rights? A fairer sharing of the oil revenue? Or anything else you might see demanded by grassroots protesters in other places?
    No, Jeff, they have only three demands: one, they want access to the funds Gaddafi & Co foolishly deposited in US/EU banks; two, Gaddafi Must Go, period, and three which we hear constantly: “Please Nato, please bomb the shit out of Tripoli some more.”

    Your Benghazi pals, Jeff, and this include the Pulse crew, are nothing but a bunch of gangsters and wanna-be gangsters.
    Back Up, You Are Going The Wrong Way.

    [Reply]

    

    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 19th, 2011 at 9:28 pm

    Dan, I don’t know who all the rebels are any more than you do, but it seems obvious that however the rebellion began it is not being run by opportunists. I guess that’s what can happen when independent political organizing is forbidden as it has been under Colonel Daffy. I once had respect for you but you now seemed to be something I stepped in. Obviously brain-dead, you haven’t been able to challenge a single fact that I put up on this thread about that MF nor has anyone else. Even though I am not a Maoist, there is something he is supposed to have said which needs to be said to you: “No investigation, no right to speak!

    [Reply]

    

    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 19th, 2011 at 9:29 pm

    Before you get your balls in an uproar, that “not being run by opportunists” should read “now being run by opportunists.”

    [Reply]

    

    nota Reply:
    July 19th, 2011 at 9:54 pm

    Jeffy,
    You have no ‘facts’, just F@RTS!

    [Reply]

    

    nota Reply:
    July 19th, 2011 at 9:50 pm

    “Not only that, but bundled with an Anti-African Black Panther!”

    Amazing, isn’t it? Well they do say “Truth is stranger than fiction”…

    “What are these “rebels” demanding? A Bill of Rights? A fairer sharing of the oil revenue? Or anything else you might see demanded by grassroots protesters in other places?
    No, Jeff, they have only three demands: one, they want access to the funds Gaddafi & Co foolishly deposited in US/EU banks”

    Let’s NOT forget here that one of the first acts of the “rebels” was to “form their own Central Bank” and started selling Libyan oil on the cheap (http://www.cnbc.com/id/42308613/Libyan_Rebels_Form_Their_Own_Central_Bank and http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/05/libya-rebels-sell-first-oil)

    Now are these “rebel” or Wall Street/Rothschild economists??

    (Please see my brief post on the “conspiracy theory” on central banks (note: I have mislabeled Sudan as still having a government-owned central bank and breaking up. Sudan, as we now know, has already been split into two countries and it’s central bank fallen into the private hands)

    Here is an example of Jeff’s soldiers fighting against “dictatorship” in a “non-violent” way:
    http://uruknet.de/?p=m76906

    And stop arguing against ‘this is home grown revolution of the masses against a tyrant’ despite the fact that it has been continuously for some 35 years…ignore the elephant in the room
    http://happening-here.blogspot.com/2011/03/cia-works-to-overthrow-qaddafi-now-and.html

    [Reply]

    

    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 19th, 2011 at 11:13 pm

    Nota, did you have anything to say when Ghaddafi put down a rebellion in the Tripoli prison in 1996 and killed 1200 people?

    Have you said anything about Ghaddafi collaborating with the CIA and its rendition program since 2003 which was well reported in the world’s media?

    Do you believe that all those opposing him are Al Qaeda as he declared at the beginning of the uprising?

    Did you read any of the links I posted above about his history?

    Can you find Libya on the map?

    [Reply]

    

    nota Reply:
    July 20th, 2011 at 9:26 am

    Dear Blankf@rt
    “Nota, did you have anything to say when Ghaddafi put down a rebellion in the Tripoli prison in 1996 and killed 1200 people? ”

    Before I answer that, care to tell me how many innocent civilians you liberation has killed? Oh, better yet, let’s wait, for the killing is ongoing …

    “Can you find Libya on the map?”
    Oh, you pathetic little pr**k! This is the best you can do? I’ve known Qaddafi before you learned how to spell “Muammar” (assuming you do, of course). In fact I was in the audience in Qaddafi stadium in Lahore, Pakistan in 1974 the day Qaddafi spoke there and it was rename that in his honour (a name it carries to this day )
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaddafi_Stadium

    You should feel stup!d just about now but you are too big a fool for that

    “Did you read any of the links I posted above about his history?”
    D@mn! What kind of a foll do you think I am to want to take a lesson in “history” from a guy who can’t tell his brains from his behind.

    

    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 20th, 2011 at 5:40 pm

    Nota, the fact that you were in Lahore in 74 to see the megalomanic doesn’t impress me. I was in London in 1971 reading a detailed report in the Observer about how the US had prevented a coup against Ghaddafi because they saw him as a firm anti-communist.

    I have been following his strange career which included hiring ex-CIA operatives, with the CIA’s approval, to train his security forces which I may not have mentioned before. I have been watching him for many years and hold him responsible for what is happening now in Libya. I don’t know who the rebels are–they are a mixed bag and some of them are pretty ugly–but I do know who Ghaddafi is. If all you can come up with are insults it shows you have no solid arguments. I guess you would have given the colonel a high five in 1996 after the bloodbath in the prison.

    [Reply]

    

    nota Reply:
    July 20th, 2011 at 9:40 pm

    @Jeffy
    “Nota, the fact that you were in Lahore in 74 to see the megalomanic doesn’t impress me.”
    It wasn’t supposed to impress you jeffy (that is something you are fond of trying to do..”I was there… and “I was there…so no one can challenge me for I am the lord of Libya”). Just was meant to show how wrong you are in your assumptions — just like your “facts” — when you talk out of your @rse saying thing like “Can you find Libya on the map?”

    “I was in London in 1971 reading a detailed report in the Observer…”
    Now that is impressive! Hey folks, jeffy could read a “detailed report” in Observer back in 1971 so he must know everything (and Observer never lies, of course). BTW: Are you implying that because you read a report in Observer back than makes you all knowing about Libya? Pretty foolish argument I must say

    “I have been following his strange career which included hiring ex-CIA operatives, with the CIA’s approval, to train his security forces which I may not have mentioned before. ”

    And you consider this “news”? You consider this some hidden secret that only Jeffy is aware of? Sir, you are a bigger fool than I thought!!

    “I have been watching him for many years and hold him responsible for what is happening now in Libya.”
    Well then you have wasted all those years for you haven’t learned a damn thing. And blaming him for what is happening now in Libya is a pure fabrication though NATO (and WaPo — see comment below) would love you for it for pushing their agenda.

    “I don’t know who the rebels are–they are a mixed bag and some of them are pretty ugly–but I do know who Ghaddafi is.”
    Now you disappoint me Jeffy. Suddenly someone who claim to know everything about Libya is feigning ignorance. You know 100% who they are but you are liar trying to sell the same bullshit WaPo is.

    “If all you can come up with are insults it shows you have no solid arguments.”
    Look at your posts above. See how many ties you have spewed filth from your filthy, rotten mouth. Just throwing back some of what you are spewing back at ya and now you cry “Mama!” (But of course you will calim you did no such thing even though the proof is right in front of you. What a d!ck head you are!!!)

22. 

    Deadbeat Reply 19. Jul, 2011 at 3:50 pm

    Listen to someone who has been to Libya and has seen the conditions for herself …

    Eyewitness Libya: Cynthia McKinney

    The most telling remark is that these so-called “rebels” and “students” have unleashed a race war against Black Libyans. Qaddafi as Ms. McKinney points out gets a lot of his support from Black Libyans.

    [Reply]

    

    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 19th, 2011 at 9:40 pm

    Deadbeat, I don’ deny anything Cynthia has seen nor her sincerity but I don’t think she is qualified to speak as an expert on Libya from the limited time she has spent there or from her travels in the country which by her own account have been limited. I think it is unfortunate that she is portraying this as a race war although she is entitled to her point of view.

    Clearly there have been atrocities on both sides and there is no doubt resentment against Ghaddafi for having poured a lot of money into Sub-Saharan Africa, not to mention real estate and banks in the US and Europe, but none of this makes Ghadaffi into anything but a dictator who has crushed political dissent for 42 years. BTW, have you read the various aspects of his history that I have taken the time to put on this thread which seems in Jonathan and Dan’s (Kwibono)case to have been a waste of time? I would like to think that you would at least make the attempt.

    [Reply]

23. 

    kwibono Reply 19. Jul, 2011 at 10:33 pm

    Jeff ol’ buddy you crack me up:) Everybody but you and Hilarity Clinker have by now figured out exactly who & what the “Transitional National Council” is and what they represent. Of course they are “opportunists”!

    I hope you’ll realize you’re making a fool of yourself in public and stop grinding this tired Trokstyistic axe of yours, because it damages your credibility on the issues you really know something about.

    Gaddafi as an individual leader seems to deserve criticism about some statements and some actions, but it’s clear that the positives outweigh the negatives. However, the Gaddafi is not the point. The point is the attack on the Libyan people and even more importantly, the offensive against the people of Africa aimed at the recolonization and intensified exploitation of the whole continent.
    And here you are, you of all people, carrying water for the ZioImperialists, participating in their propaganda offensive.
    For shame.

    [Reply]

    

    Jeffrey Blankfort Reply:
    July 19th, 2011 at 11:06 pm

    Dan, you don’t have the faintest idea what you are talking about. You have not the faintest idea about the history of Ghaddafi and since you had already made your mind up did not bother to check out what I had provided links to. I don’t need your approval when it comes to my credibility. I’ll stand on my track record and I do not support dictators. Period. That piece of meglomania Ghaddafi created the situation in Libya today by suppressing all political dissent and organizing over the last four decades which drew not a holler from all those leftists, black and white, who went over there over the years and fed at his trough. But you are to dense to understand that.

    I do not support those who are leading the rebels but that doesn’t mean I have to support Ghaddafi. Thinking in such black and white terms is for infantile leftists and I thought you were too old for that. I was evidently wrong on that count.

    You are simply not worth arguing with or communicating with at any level so I’ll leave this sandbox to you.

    [Reply]

    

    nota Reply:
    July 20th, 2011 at 9:40 am

    “I hope you’ll realize you’re making a fool of yourself in public”

    Right! Isn’t that the definition of fools that they don’t realize they are fools. If they did, they’d stop being foolish now wouldn’t they?

    And Jeffy has just proven that — again and again. Jeffy has run out of arguments (not that he ever had any) and keeps repeating the same old “I am against dictators”, “Things are not black and white”, “I am the only Libya expert”, “Everyone’s a fool who doesn’t buy my cr@p 100%”. What is incredible is that he is the one who accuses others of “you had already made your mind” — made even more incredible coming from someone who just made a statement like “I do not support dictators. Period.”

    These are just the ravings of a “infantile”, spoiled three-year old…

    [Reply]

    

    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 20th, 2011 at 5:44 pm

    I am not an expert on Libya but I damn well know more about Ghaddafi than anyone else on this thread. And kif you have a problem with my principled opposition to dictatorships, that tells me everything I need to know about you but your name which you obviously haven’t the balls to publish.

    [Reply]

    

    kwibono Reply:
    July 20th, 2011 at 6:06 pm

    Point one: You may know a lot about Ghaddafi but neither his personality or his foibles, even if satisfactorily documented, are the point.
    The point IS the struggle in Libya between forces opposed to the ZioImperialist offensive against the entire Muslim world and against Africa, and the US/Nato/Izzy stooges now in power in Benghazi, thanks to Nato bombing.

    Two: your definition of “dictatorships” seems inconsistent, since you see nothing wrong with the pro-Nato/pro-Israel dictatorship that’s been installed in Benghazi.

    Three: Some people, including “little people” like myself are less confident that you seem to be of being able to survive unwanted attention from DHS & Stand With US/Mossad USA et al. So I resent both your disparaging of persons who value their privacy or/and personal safety, and your inconsiderate use of my first name. I know, they probably have a thick file on me already, but why make it easy for them? In any case, it is not your right to make such decisions for me.

    I hope you don’t take it upon yourself to reveal any more confidential information about me. I thank you kindly.

    

    nota Reply:
    July 20th, 2011 at 9:52 pm

    @Blankf@rt
    – “I am not an expert on Libya but I damn well know more about Ghaddafi than anyone else on this thread.”
    Great! You win the trophy for the 2011 “Legend in one’s own Mind (or is that @rse)!

    – “That piece of meglomania Ghaddafi created the situation in Libya”
    How many times are you going to repeat that LIE? going for the Goebbels-ina “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.”???

    – “And kif you have a problem with my principled opposition to dictatorships, that tells me everything I need to know about you but your name which you obviously haven’t the balls to publish”
    Again you are issuming you have principles. You don’t. Just because a dog barks does not mean he has principles. He can’t do any better. You are just what we call a “presstitute” hired by you know who
    And why do you want to know my first name? You want to marry me or want to send your zionist thugs after me??

24. 

    kwibono Reply 20. Jul, 2011 at 10:35 am

    “Peter Dale Scott” – Who are the Libyan ‘Freedom Fighters’ and their Patrons?
    March 31, 2011
    Gary Null
    http://www.opednews.com/articles/Who-are-the-Libyan-Freedo-by-Peter-Dale-Scott-110328-30.html
    ——————-
    Subject: Petroleum and Empire in North Africa. NATO Invasion of Libya Keith Harmon Snow

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23481
    allthingspass.com

    Note: Mr Snow’s professional training is as a Photographer, as is Mr Blankfort’s. Excellent photos at both the GR version and Mr Snow’s page; visit above links. dixclaimer: I don’t agree with everything Snow thinks, just ninety pct of it.
    Petroleum and Empire in North Africa. NATO Invasion of Libya Underway
    Muamar Gaddafi Accused of Genocide

    By Keith Harmon Snow

    Global Research, March 2, 2011
    allthingspass.com
    ——————-

    http://globalciviliansforpeace.com/2011/07/18/sky-news-coverage-of-zlitan-demonstration-against-nato-and-rebels/

    http://en.rian.ru/world/20110320/163101148.html
    —————–
    http://www..middle-east-online.com/english/?id=44543

    (lousy rightwing site but gives standard history of “monarchist” & other flags
    —————-
    Libya all about oil, or central banking?
    By Ellen Brown
    —————–
    to be continued…

    [Reply]

25. 

    kwibono Reply 20. Jul, 2011 at 10:54 am

    http://hamsayeh.net/articles/503-the-cias-libya-rebels-2007-west-point-study-shows-benghazi-darnah-tobruk-area-was-a-world-leader-in-al-qaeda-suicide-bomber-recruitment.html
    excerpt:

    >The Obama strategy would have preferred an exclusive reliance and the illusion that the Arab Spring was really a matter of youthful visionary idealists gathering in the public square to praise democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. This was never the reality: the actual decisions were being made by brutal cliques of generals and top officials bribed or blackmailed by the CIA who were moving behind the scenes to oust such figures as Ben Ali or Mubarak. Whatever else Qaddafi has done, he has undoubtedly forced the CIA and NATO to drop the pleasant mask of youthful idealism and human rights, revealing a hideous visage of Predator drones, terror bombing, widespread slaughter, and colonialist arrogance underneath. Qaddafi has also ripped the mask of “Yes We Can” off Obama, revealing a cynical warmonger intent on the continuation of Bush’s infamous “Dead or Alive” and “Bring it on” policies, although by other means.<

    This piece by W. Tarpley is from March. I read it then. The information it provides forms one element underlying my view of Libyan events. Much of it is directly pertinent to the debates on this thread.

    I don't want to give the impression that I vouch for/agree with everthing said or done by Mr Tarpley, or his early sponsors. But most of his recent work seems to be of a quality that has him being published by outlets with high standards. I believe this particular article will survive all attempts to rebut it.

    [Reply]

26. 

    kwibono Reply 20. Jul, 2011 at 11:55 am

    This by Franklin Lamb was posted and reposted by several online outlets, but you can read the whole article here: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/07/02/countdown-to-invasion/

    Excerpt: >The neighborhoods in Libya are preparing for a ground invasion and to confront directly the invaders with a plan that one imagines would not be unfamiliar to a General Giap of Vietnam or a Chinese General Lin Peio, being a massive peoples defense. It has been organized with a house by house, street by street defense plan for every neighborhood and will include all available weaponry.

    The defenders are not military although many of the older ones had done one year compulsory service following high school. Their ranks include every able bodied woman and man from age 18 to 65. Younger or older will not be refused.

    They are organized into 5 person squads once they complete their training. It works like this: Anyone over 18 years of age can report to his neighborhood “Tent”. Knowing virtually everyone in the area, the person will make application and will be vetted on an AK-47, M-16 or other light arm.

    Depending on her/his skill level he will be accepted and given a photo ID that lists the weapons the applicant qualified on. If he needs more training or is a novice it is provided at the location which includes a training area, tent with mattresses for sleeping, a make shift latrine and canteen.

    The basic training for those with no arms experience, including women, is 45 days. Past that, the commitment is four months. Each accepted individual is issued a rifle (normally an AK-47 “Klash” along with 120 rounds of ammo.) Each individual is asked to return in one week to discuss their training and show that they did not waste their bullets which cost around one dollar each. If approved, they will be issued more.<

    Mr Lamb's references to Gen Giap and "Lin Peio" (sic) indicate he hasn't followed East Asian events as closely as he does those in Southwest Asia. The late Chinese general's name is now usually transliterated to English as "Lin Biao"; neither general earned their military renown for organizing popular militia defense of large urban areas but for skillful deployment/manuevering of regular army units.
    The WWII defense of Stalingrad and of Leningrad come to mind. But I'm quibbling, overall Lamb's report merits high praise.

    [Reply]

    

    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 20th, 2011 at 6:30 pm

    There will be no invasion of Libya. You can bank on it.

    [Reply]

27. 

    kwibono Reply 20. Jul, 2011 at 3:42 pm

    Published on Black Agenda Report (http://blackagendareport.com)

    Western Hubris on Full Display at So-Called Libya Contact Group
    by Peter Lee
    (originally published at AsiaTimes Online, Atimes.com)

    The Libya Contact Group (LCG) is “largely coordinated by Atlantic ex-colonial powers and anxious Arab autocrats who are most deeply committed to the bombing campaign against Gaddafi,” pretending to be a “united effort by ‘the leaders of the world.’” Its primary job is to circumvent the UN Security Council. The LCG’s biggest problem is that “the Libyan rebels have been unable to drive Gaddafi from power and thereby demonstrate the potency of Western arms and self-righteous bluster.”

    [Reply]

28. 

    kwibono Reply 20. Jul, 2011 at 4:21 pm

    Mr Blankfort:
    With all due respect, it is you who sees the world in “black and white” terms. To you, any political leader who fits your personal definition of “dictator” is thereby to be denounced and attacks by reactionary figures such as “popes” are to be supported.

    The Gomulka government in Poland fit your definition of a “dictatorship”, so you applauded the Vatican-guided “Solidarnosc” counterrevolutionaries as they moved to dislodge the first vulnerable state in the anti-fascist/anti-imperialist alliance created by the Soviet Union as it tried to rebuild from the ravages inflicted by Hitler and to survive the new damage being inflicted by Churchill, Truman and Co.
    Are the Poles any better off today, with Vatican agents controlling political discourse, than they were before Lech Walesa was erected into a demigod courtesy of “the world press” as you describe it?

    Trouble with you, Jeff, is you have one foot in a very solid analysis of the evils of Zionism in the political realm, and another firmly planted in a touching faith in Cold War propaganda.

    It seems the favorable attention you’ve been getting from a lot of “progressive” people (including myself) has gone to your head and made you somewhat arrogant.
    Which has caused you to go off on tangents, trying to defend the reactionary Libyan so-called “rebels”, and forget to keep your eyes on the prize, on the most important aspects of the current conjuncture.
    Here you casually start badmouthing Cynthia McKinney, telling us she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, that she’s “no expert on Libya”. The implication is that you think she’s stupid, or at least not nearly as smart as you are, somebody who’s thoughts are to be dismissed with a casual remark: “no expert”.
    If she’s as stupid and misguided as you claim, she has no business running for President against Obomba. So who else is going to step in and challenge Obamania’s ideological hegemony in the US Black political arena? Which of your BPP old comrades is ready to step up & offer her/himself? Which ones have been vocally challenging Obama in Black-focused fora?

    I’m sorry Jeff, but based on my correspondence with both of you, my considered opinion is that she’s way ahead of you. Unlike myself, she doesn’t always blurt out everything she knows about a topic at the first opportunity.

    Okay, I’ll send this now before I goof and erase it. More to come, watch out for flying sand:)

    [Reply]

29. 

    Jeff Blankfort Reply 20. Jul, 2011 at 6:28 pm

    I am not “bad mouthing” Cynthia, unless to disagree with someone is to bad mouth them. It is clear that when someone disagrees with you and the same goes for Nota, the response is insults and personal attacks.

    I am not going to re-argue the left’s mistakes in the Cold War that saw them justifying what were nothing less than police states. Instead of offering constructive criticism, the left preferred to view these states through rose colored glasses and accept all the propaganda that was issued by their information ministries.

    I remember reading Emma Goldman’s critique of the Soviet Union that she wrote for the Nation in 1937. No one wanted to believe what she had to say and she criticized the left for its hypocrisy. Seventy four years later nothing has changed. I’m outta here. It’s been a waste of time.

    [Reply]

30. 

    kwibono Reply 20. Jul, 2011 at 9:11 pm

    If I remember correctly, Mr Blankfort, it was YOU who responded to criticism of your views with insult and personal attacks, going so far as to deploy gutter language.

    You continually try to erect a strawman by claiming that since I don’t accept your characterization of the Soviet Union as a “police state” and nothing more, that I must agree with all the propaganda the CPSU and CPUSA used to put out.

    But it is not the good or bad aspects of the USSR that is at issue here & now. I had the temerity to criticize your propensity to uncritically support every “Color Revolution” destabilization campaign launched by the CIA/NED/Mossad-west, without carefully investigating the makeup of the forces involved, their histories, connections and funding sources.

    So that is the issue: your tendency to embrace all sorts of counterrevolutionary swindles and ZioImperialist stooge bunco jobs as long as they claim to be altruistic idealists concerned only about preserving the “right to dissent”.

    I noticed this tendency of yours some time ago, but since it didn’t seem to be germane to anything happening at the time I let it pass. I guess I might be open to criticism for failure to “combat liberalism”, but I try to keep my eyes on the prize and not get bogged down over secondary matters. But now this tendency of yours has become a problem for me.

    I don’t know if you read Alan Sabrosky’s series of articles reposted here, or my comments on same. He assessed the struggle for Palestine and the closely related struggle against Zionist power in the ME and the US, and concluded that nothing being done now will succeed in altering the present balance of power. So he employed his background in military science, and came up with a strategic approach. I don’t see much future in the strategy he outlined, but I see much of value in the methodology he tried to employ.
    So I started trying to recast his scenario in terms that to me seem more realistic. I concluded that if the entire antiwar & anti-Racism movement could unite behind a second Cynthia McKinney for President campaign, building on the base created last time, the deepened base in the Green Party & among “enviros”, plus the NOI, ANSWER, and those who remember that Cynthia was on board the first vessel trying to break the Gaza blockade, and if Nader could be persuaded to refrain from injecting any more confusion, there might be a chance to create something extraordinary, which might have a limited impact this election cycle but which would create substantial momentum for next time and the time after that.

    Because without an “act of god” or some unforeseeable Deux Ex Outerspace, nothing anybody does will displace the current power setup in the next couple of presidential election cycles. But the way things are going, when even career military guys are getting disenchanted with the status quo, with more economic distress looming, normal public services being drastically cut, soaring unemployment & homelessness, people are going to be looking for answers.

    So I was typing away here, offline, trying to clarify the visions cropping up in my head, asking myself how realistic my notions really were… when along comes Jeff with some Let’s Destabilize Syria & See What Happens rap. With the whole issue narrowed to the person of Bashir Al Asad, who being the son of the late Hafiz couldn’t be other than No Damn Good.

    So that was bummer enough, very unpleasant to have to try to respond to such arguments from someone I’d to that point considered a political ally. But then he raised the ante by casually suggesting that McKinney isn’t anyone whose thoughts and actions merit being taken seriously.

    If he’s right, then McKinney is making a big mistake by going around the country saying bad things about Jeff’s idealistic student protesters and good things about Gaddafi. On the other hand, if it eventually becomes the consensus among antiwar & anti-Jake types that she was right all along, the prospect of a 2012 campaign making a sizable dent it the currently hegemonic ZioImperialist ideological consensus becomes more substantial.

    Well, time will tell, but in the meantime I view anybody who says or implies that McKinney is a dummy as either a dummy themselves or an element which originated on the other side of the Principal Contradiction.

    Of course we all make mistakes; I’ve made more than my share. But when I make a Political mistake, as soon as I realize I’ve goofed I immediately acknowledge it and start moving to the next problem.

    Undoubtedly to be continues:)

    [Reply]

    

    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 20th, 2011 at 11:49 pm

    You keep putting words in my mouth. When I disagree with someone that doesn’t mean I think them to be a dummy, except I do in your case, whatever your motives. I simply think she has made a mistake, not in attacking the US and NATO whose motives are never noble, but in believing Ghaddafi is a revolutionary socialist under who needs to be defended.

    That I don’t have double standards when it comes to believing that all peoples have the right to politically dissent without fear of death or imprisonment seems to bother you as it does those cretins from ANSWER/IAC who have supported every dictator in sight, from Pol Pot to Ceaucesku to Saddam Hussein. Did opposing the US invasion of Iraq require supporting Saddam? Does opposing the US and NATO in Libya require supporting Ghaddafi. Maybe you think so but I don’t. And while I respect Sabrosky, I don’t think we have a chance of a snowball in hell in turning this country around electorally or any other way, given the lack of political consciousness and willingness to take on the system across what it considered the left part of the political spectrum. Your friends in ANSWER don’t even have the balls to take on the Democrats in their home turf and they and their allies in Socialist Action have effectively stifled the development of a new political movement.

    What I have learned, unhappily, over the years is that all too many people on the left who employ the rhetoric of human rights and toss around slogans such as “no justice, no peace,” are very selective as to who deserves justice and who doesn’t, pretty much in the end, mirroring those on the right. They seem to think, and “they” includes you, that some people are deserving of the political liberties we are enjoying right now while others aren’t and they think that they are the ones who have the right to determine who gets what. I call that hypocrisy.

    [Reply]

31. 

    nota Reply 20. Jul, 2011 at 9:19 pm

    Is Jeff vying for a job at WaPo???
    WaPo Whitewashes Al Qaeda War Criminals — Propaganda campaign ensues after US recognizes terrorists as Libya’s government.

    [Reply]

    

    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 21st, 2011 at 12:02 am

    How easy it is throw shit out there when disguising your name. Back under your rock, “Nota!”

    [Reply]

    

    nota Reply:
    July 21st, 2011 at 5:33 am

    Jeffy Blankf@rt
    You didn’t answer the question
    (But then again I bet your ‘job’ already pays more that a WaPo one..You know, the “‘By Way of Deception, thou shalt do War’ one ;-P )

    [Reply]

32. 

    kwibono Reply 20. Jul, 2011 at 10:07 pm

    Let us ponder this jewel contributed by the distinguished Mr Blankfort:

    >All the Cubans who left Cuba, particularly in later years, were not Gusanos. They simply no longer wanted to live in a country where to dissent politically put them at risk of a long prison sentence.<

    Could Congresscritter from Fla Ms Ros-Lehtinen have articulated it any better?

    It is possible that some of the Cubanos who migrated to the US in recent years really were motivated by nothing more than attachment to Enlightenment principles, Liberte Egalite Fraternite etc, but I haven't seen any evidence of it.

    I HAVE met a lot of "Mariels", Cubano gay men and men with a history of mental/emotional problems, who arrived in the mid-eighties boatlifts. Most got out of Florida ASAP. Same would be true of any Cubano "democratic dissenters" who failed to buy into the whole Gusano ideological package.
    Everybody knows that the Miami-South Florida Cuban Exile community is ohe of the most toxic nests of fascistoid racist reactionaries in the world, who elect some of the most bizarre freaks seen since Cheney and Goering to represent them in Congress.

    But to Jeff, they're just idealists "yearning to breath free". How bizarre.
    It's hard for me to comprehend how somebody so acute in other areas could be so, ah, screwed up about the Gusanos.

    I think hip rumberos might describe Jeff's rap as "cruzado", crossed, meaning wrong way to the clave: A! E! I, O U!

    To me it's just square.

    [Reply]

    

    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 21st, 2011 at 12:00 am

    Dan, you’re just another white boy telling those black and brown Cubans to just keep their mouths shut, that they have no right to emigrate should they choose to do so. You don’t have to tell me about the Cuban exile community in Florida but does the fact that its politics have been reactionary, that Ros-Lehtinen is a running fog for the Zionists, mean that those living in Cuba have no rights that the outside world should respect? It seems you think they don’t. You are more than qualified to be a member of the Affinity for Dictators Club since you don’t seem to have a democratic bone in your body. I never would have thunk that before this exchange. I guess that’s what separates you and me.

    [Reply]

    

    kwibono Reply:
    July 21st, 2011 at 11:15 am

    Haha:) Jeff you crack me up:) Somebody who never met you might be impressed by your shuck & jive, but having observed you week after week from one table over at Franco Bruno’s coffee store, this latest trip of yours is just laughable.

    Get up in the morning, turn on the PC, and see something new, something you never imagined:) Here I am, getting maumaued by a flaccid middleclass Jewish Senior Citizen calling me “whiteboy”:) Hahaha!

    Jeff, Jeff. It says here you posted this at midnight. Hmm, could you be up past your bedtime? A little tired, a bit frazzled by all the negative feedback? So frazzled and frustrated you’ve stooped to flinging epithets like “white boy”?

    “Boy”? How old are you, Jeff? I’m at least as old, probably older. Are you hoping readers will believe that you’re a real Black Panther? Or that your complexion is darker than mine?

    How interesting: here we have this highly educated fellow from a petty bourgeois background, one affluent enough to enable him to travel the world back in ’71 calling out poverty-struck Senile Citizen longtime ghetto resident me for being “white”.

    Jeff, Jeff, that kind of street level stuff is just not your shtick. “Chale, el rincon no sta su estancia, ese”:) Oops, that’s right, Cubanos no usando Calo, do they;)

    So what you tryna do, convince the readers here that I’m some kinda racist? (giggle).

    Well I certainly have my faults, but harboring an arrogant attitude toward persons of African descent is not one of them. From all the information I’ve come across, these “dissenters” you’re so enamored of are overwhelmingly white.

    Now in the abstract, I’m for everybody being able to say anything they want. In a place like Cuba, however, which is under daily attack from the forces of Yanqui Imperialism deploying both ideological and covert action tactics, common sense dictates to the average person that anyone caught participating in US-sponsored destabilization efforts needs to be dealt with. Actually the Cuban government tends to be gentler with these “dissenters” of yours than is the general population. The government took a stand opposing imposition of the death penalty on the bunch caught redhanded committing treason a couple of years ago, but the general public would have none of it.

    I’m not a real Cuba expert. I do know something about it, but Saul Landau IS an expert, so I’d advise anyone seeking clarification of these questions to check what he’s had to say about them.

    Yes, it is true that centuries of colonial/neocolonial rule has left Cuba with a legacy of racist attitudes among European-descended Cubans, who form the majority. And it is true that Fidel and the Cuban CP, while they immediately outlawed legal discrimination, did not fully perceive the depth of the problem. For instance, they tried to “stamp out” Santeria and associations like Palo as “opium of the people”, and didn’t understand that Cuban folkloric music was one of Cuba’s greatest assets, so failed to provide alternative employment for musicians displaced by the closing of tourist night spots.

    But much has been learned since those days; under Raul’s administration large scale efforts are being made to understand and remedy the effects of lingering discrimination & attitudes. So yes, there is still some racism in Cuba, but it survives in spite of the government, not because of it.

    Let’s see, have I dealt sufficiently with the charge of being a “white boy” trying to tell Afro-Cubanos what they can do, etc?

    Maybe, maybe not. I don’t recall addressing anything one way or the other to Cubanos in Cuba about what they must or must not do or say. What I DID do, was I denounced the Gusano gang based in the Miami area. And I compared them to the Libyan worms active in the US and on English language blogs/webpages doing their best to support the US/Nato/Jake recolonization of Africa and the disempowerment of all Africa-descended people everywhere.

    Sorry Jeff, you’re the one who has messed up, not me. “History will absolve me”.

    [Reply]

    

    Jeff Blankfort Reply:
    July 21st, 2011 at 12:47 pm

    My last post, guaranteed.

    You write, ” So yes, there is still some racism in Cuba, but it survives in spite of the government, not because of it.”

    That’s true. Anti-AfroCuban has not been a government policy, but little has been done to change the racist attitudes of much of the EuroCuban population. Black Cubans still cannot enter restaurants and night clubs frequented by Europeans and still suffer localized discrimination in other aspects of their lives which has been attested to by Black Cubans still living there as well as folks from the US who are supporters of the regime.

    When a few years back, Amy Goodman did an interview with an African-American in Cuba who spoke about the problem she was attacked for even bringing up the subject.

    From your standpoint, it would seem that every political dissenter there would be on the US payroll. Do you really believe that? Do you think that Cubans have the right to openly question decisions made by the regime that have had negative effects on the population as a whole or must they wait in silence for the Castro brothers to get the message? Do you think that Cubans wishing to emigrate should be legally allowed to do so?

    You might ask Saul Landau, who openly supported the Pacifica establishment when it tried to crush KPFA and turn Pacifica into NPR-lite back in the 90s, about the “review” he wrote in In These Times of the first film that arrived here on the occupation of Palestine in the early 80s in which in trashing it, he wrote that the cries of the women in Gaza over their demolished homes did not seem to be genuine, a review which seriously undermined the further distribution of the film in progressive circles.

    You arrogant attitude may not be racist because your willingness to deny political rights to people in dictatorial regimes and police states that have been targeted by the US is obviously not based on skin color, just what is commonly referred to as “knee-jerk leftism. That attitude I would say mimics that of those in Washington who also think they know what’s good for the rest of the world better than do the folks in those countries.

    I don’t know and you don’t know what you are talking about when you say to saw me in Franco Bruno’s coffee shop. Never heard of the place and have never been there. And, yes, I probably am darker than you, having been stopped more than a dozen times in San Francisco and LA when I was younger while “driving while brown” by cops who thought I was a Chicano, but that’s irrelevant here.

    Yes, you can say I came from a petit bourgeois background, my dad having been a black listed writer who defied HUAC and was barred from the industry, but I worked and paid my way through college and I worked as photographer while living and working in Europe and the Middle East in 70 and 71. I have nothing to be ashamed of, and I still have to work to survive. I’ve been fortunate enough since that people thought well enough of me here and over there to pay my air travel for other trips, all of them political. And I learned more from those experiences than anything I’ve read on a printed page.

    I’ll check later if you answered any of my questions which you have avoided up to now by “answering” questions that I hadn’t asked but in any case I’ll give you the last word.

    

    nota Reply:
    July 21st, 2011 at 5:45 am

    @Jeffy really said “All the Cubans who left Cuba, particularly in later years, were not Gusanos. They simply no longer wanted to live in a country where to dissent politically put them at risk of a long prison sentence” too????? Wow! Not that it is any surprise after the sh!t he has spew above (and continues to despite having promised at least twice “I’m outta here. It has been a waste of time.”

    Jeffy, it has NOT been a waste of time. You have exposed yourself more than it is even polite (but you are too big a fool to see it and I know you will continue to blow wind ’cause you can’t help it)
    

    [Reply]

    

    Kwibono Reply:
    July 21st, 2011 at 2:14 pm

    Well, Nota, I do find your posts wonderfully entertaining, and I tend to agree with what I take to be your general intent, but I’m afraid that your posts indicate that you’ve been making some assumptions about Mr Blankfort that aren’t supported by the facts as I know them.

    I don’t really know Mr Blankfort personally, but DID have ample chance to observe him in conversation with friends/associates at Malvina’s on the corner of Grant and Union in SF; also when I set up a couple of “House Meetings” in Sacramento in the mid-eighties in an effort to raise funds for his ME Labor Bulletin; also I have a two-hour DVD of him debating Chomsky’s “warferoyl” thesis with Gnoam helper Steven Zunes, and have enjoyed first subscribing to his email listserve and also exchanging numerous emails about matters re which we usually agreed.
    So I don’t claim to really “know” him or to be a personal friend of his, so it’s possible that I could be wrong about some aspects. But I don’t think so.
    Nothing has ever come to my attention that would indicate he is other than a dedicated enemy of all things Zionist as well as all things Pentagon.

    He’s a well known figure on the Left publication and radio scene who has been bitterly excoriated by all kinds of Zionists and Soft Zionists for years, but nobody has ever to my knowledge suggested that he might be a closet sayan, or have any improper contact with Mossad or other Zionist outfits.
    So I would urge you to drop that line of attack, thank you, as one that is not productive, as one that ultimately undermines your own credibility.

    I do think however that you are correct when you note that the longer this exchange goes on, the more Mr Blankfort exposes his rightward leanings.

    Let me submit this now before I accidentally erase it and continue in a fresh “blank”…

    [Reply]

    

    nota Reply:
    July 21st, 2011 at 9:13 pm

    “Well, Nota, I do find your posts wonderfully entertaining, and I tend to agree with what I take to be your general intent, but I’m afraid that your posts indicate that you’ve been making some assumptions about Mr Blankfort that aren’t supported by the facts as I know them.”

    Well, that bit was tongue-in-cheek and meant to be ‘entertaining’ But let’s back up a bit. You state “some assumptions about Mr Blankfort that aren’t supported by the facts as I know them”. Suppose we haven’t had this input from Mr. Blankfort and we only had the “facts as you knew them”. Based on those, would you have ever predicted you’d have an exchange as the present one? I bet not!

    BTW: One thing I have learned is that the best successful liars are the ones that speak the truth the most — that is how they gain ‘credibility’. I have found dissent is often a manufactured commodity (now I am not talking one at grassroots level but the ‘leadership’). Of course we have the glaring example of the ‘Color revolutions’/'Arab Spring’ before us. (On a side note: interestingly, Europe is ‘burning’ too but no one is talking bombing it — must be because they have ‘democracy’ )

    Wish you could read the excellent seven-part (so far) “My Confusion” series starting HERE to see what i am talking about…

33. 

    kwibono Reply 21. Jul, 2011 at 9:25 am

    from BET Online 03/31/2011:

    Blacks Unhappy With Libya Action
    President Obama often gets to rely on the support of the vast majority of Blacks in his policy decisions. Not this time.

    By Cord Jefferson

    African-Americans are a famously steadfast bunch of Obama supporters. While the president’s approval ratings have dipped significantly since his election, Blacks generally continue to support him in vast majorities, according to public polling. However, with his latest foreign policy snafu, an unpopular engagement with Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, Obama may have pushed his luck with black Americans too far.

    According to a new poll from African-American-centric website YourBlackWorld.com, more than a quarter of Blacks—27.3 percent to be exact—disagree with Obama’s movement on Libya, saying it has “reduced their faith in his leadership ability.” Just 20 percent said it’s increased their faith in him, while half didn’t care one way or the other.

    And it’s not just survey respondents who are attacking the president, public figures are joining in the naysaying as well. In USA Today, African-American columnist DeWayne Wickham brought up the horrible human-rights violations happening in Cote d’Ivoire, under autocratic President Laurent Gbagbo, who lost a reelection bid but refuses to leave office. “[W]hen it comes to using America’s military might to protect innocents,” writes Wickham, “the Obama administration needs to explain why it has chosen to do so in the North African nation of Libya, while disavowing it in the Ivory Coast, a sub-Sahara African nation where a greater ‘potential humanitarian crisis’ is unfolding.”

    The controversial and outspoken Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has also come out against the Libya actions, telling Chicago’s WVON radio station, “Whenever government wants you to think and act in a certain way that would bring justification to an action that they are already planning to make, they must make the person that they hate a bogeyman.”

    Farrakhan, of course, has taken funds from Gadhafi for Nation of Islam purposes for years, so his words should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt.

    Nevertheless, the fact still stands that Americans of all colors aren’t very pleased about our fight in Libya, which has cost the U.S. $400 million in just six days. Imagine how far $400 million could have gone toward helping the African-American community instead of bombing Libya? That’s a lot of college scholarships.
    ——————————–
    Disclaimer: my posting this doesn’t mean I agree with Mr Cord’s comments re the situation in Cote D’Ivoire/Ivory Coast when this was published, which were
    wildly wrong as has been proven by subsequent events.

    But this piece does illustrate how the Libya issue impacts the struggle to overcome Obamania addiction among US Black voters/potential voters.

    [Reply]

34. 

    kwibono Reply 21. Jul, 2011 at 7:37 pm

    First I want to respond to Nota, then to Mr Blankfort.

    Nota, I do find your posts quite entertaining, some of the earlier ones quite informative, and I tend to be in general sympathy with what seems to be your intent, but I must take issue with your statements indicating you believe Mr Blankfort to be some kind of a double agent or a false-flag zionist of some kind.

    I don’t claim to “know” him personally, to be a personal friend or professional associate of his, but I HAVE had the opportunity to observe him at close range as he interacted with friends/associates of his, in Franco Bruno’s Malvina coffee roasting shop on Grant & Union in SF; also on the two occasions in the mid eighties when I was able to set up “House Meeting” fundraisers for his ME Labor Bulletin at the homes of two Sacramento labor officials; about five years ago on the lawn in front of the Unitarian Church during a talk by the late Tanya Reinhart; also I purchased the DVD of the two hour debate in which he, Hatem Bazian, and Joe Anderson reduced Chomsky disciple Steve Zunes to a quivering mass of lemon jello (is Jello Kosher?); also I subscribed to his email updates until he stopped doing that; and I have been lucky enough to exchange numerous emails with him about political topics re which we normally agreed. Until recently:)

    So even though I don’t really “know” him, I think I know a great deal about him. No information has ever come to my attention that would indicate he is other than exactly what he purports to be: a dedicated, courageous pioneer Red Diaper-type of anti-Zionist who has been unable to overcome some of the Trokstyistic type of baggage he absorbed from his early environment. The type of knee-jerk anti-Sovietism he repeats is still hegemonic in most parts of the US/Euro “left” today, so he probably seldom encounters anyone who agrees with him re “Jake” and “The Lobby” (sic) but doesn’t share his affinity for counterrevolutionary movements in countries trying to defy Imperial writ.

    So I hope you’ll drop the “zionist agent” (sic) line of attack, which to me is counterproductive in that it does nothing to rebut the arguments he presents, and ultimately may do more to damage your own credibility than his. Sorry.

    Now back to Mr Blankfort. Gonna give me the last word, huh? Okay
    I’ll take it. Thank you very nice!

    Gee, it’s real nice of you to say that my take on the Gusanos “may not be racist”! How generous of you! Reminds me of how generous Bob Dresser was when the JCRC assigned him & Darrel Steinbug (current Calif State Senate head honch) the job of trashing me before the Sac Human Rts commish because I had the temerity to offer a resolution copied from the one they’d just passed in favor of “Free Mandela” but this time about Isreali apartheid.

    “This draft could be interpreted as anti-Semitic” he said. Big chill in the room, stunned silence. All the good Democrats bought hook line/sinker. When I piped up, defying the Chairwoman’s efforts to gavel me into silence, to say Wait A Minute, what about the anti-nazi/klan march I invited you to participate in, the one for which I was the Sac Area lead organizer? Good ol’ Bob said, “well, yes, I do seem to remember that you, uh, may have had some participation in that, uh…” and sat down. “Participated in”, my ass. I organized the whole damn thing, on the phone morning till night for two/three weeks. But I digress.

    One of your problems Mr Blankfort, is you really don’t know anything about me, can’t even remember my face, which is fine with me, I’m not looking to get famous. But you are wise to stop trying to pin the “racist” label on me:) BTW I was working in West Oakland in 1982, getting my coffee at the Long Branch Cafe, spending nights at the Trois Coleur hanging out with Saunders King Jr, if that name rings your bell. Sonny King, lucky husband of Nancy Wilson King the drop dead georgous best jazz singer ever, period, Pharoah “Little Rock” Sanders crush on her so comical…but I’m digressing again:) Hmm, just in case any readers like jazz, 18 years old Nancy had the whole Annie Ross book cold, all that acrobatic soprano shit, and did it better than Ross did it. “My annaliss tole me, that I was outa my head…” Like Brownie did Fats better than Fats. One time me & Cowboy Noyd… Okay, I’m running on, sorry.

    The original point I was trying to make, was to expose the true political character of the Libyan exile “bomb Tripoli back to the Paleolithic” lobby. I compared them to the Gusano lobby and supporters in the Miami area. Re which phenomenon not even Jeff has anything good to say.
    So he tried to shift the discussion to whether I believed Cubanos in Cuba have the right to do this or that. And I bit on his gambit, largely because it struck me as incredibly farfetched that he would choose to echo Republican Party anti-Cuban propaganda. So we wound up discussing Cuba instead of Libya.

    I want to talk about Libya, about which I have learned more in the last few months than Carson ever wanted me to know, “Alpobreath”:) Yes, this thread started as responses to Jonathan’s Syria pieces; I tried to stay out of it until the Libya issue was raised.

    >we have some who see the hand of the NED, the Democratic and Republican Inst., George Soros, Gene Sharp, the ICNC et al, as the moving hand behind the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings as if setting such events in motion was a matter of a few meetings, and handing out some pamphlets and organizing tools. As I mentioned in another post, without tinder there can be no fire.From your standpoint, it would seem that every political dissenter there would be on the US payroll.I don’ deny anything Cynthia has seen nor her sincerity but I don’t think she is qualified to speak as an expert on Libya from the limited time she has spent there or from her travels in the country which by her own account have been limited.I think it is unfortunate that she is portraying this as a race war although she is entitled to her point of view.That you have no problem with Saif al-Islam owning a $16 million mansion in London I find depressing.<

    Huh? Why should it matter how I feel about some jerk, or nice guy even, owning a mansion somewhere? I bet Saif’s joint isn’t any more luxurious than Jeter’s pad, so what am I supposed to do, get outraged because ballplayers make too much money? One mansion is the biggest thing there is to worry about?

    Sixteen mil is a drop in the bucket at the Head of State level, especially if the country has Oil. But stealing half the country is OK with you, right?

    Before I post this, I want to draw attention to the links I posted a day or two ago, which are all to articles which demolish various points made by Mr Blankfort that I wasn’t able to respond to off the top of my head.
    In particular, I’d like to point out that Mr Blankfort has had nothing to say about the report by Franklin Lamb describing in detail the distribution of weapons and ammunition to Libyan civilians. Mr Blankfort thought my reference to it was so farfetched as to be ludicrous, but lo and behold I was right.
    Any reader impressed by any other attempts by Mr B to dispute matters of fact cited by me are urged to review the linked-to articles; in most cases you will find documented rebuttal of his version of the facts.
    If you are unable to find such, which is possible because I may not remember each and every allegation, please note the allegation in question here on this thread, and I’ll respond ASAP.

    Okay, now to submit this…

    [Reply]

    

    nota Reply:
    July 22nd, 2011 at 12:26 am

    “So I hope you’ll drop the “zionist agent” (sic) line of attack, which to me is counterproductive in that it does nothing to rebut the arguments he presents, and ultimately may do more to damage your own credibility than his. Sorry.”

    Oh come on! I had already answered that above and a repeat was not necessary. Now you are pulling a Jeff Blankfort on me. I NEVER said Jeff was a “zionist agent” (sic) or no (sic). Look above and the proof is there (I did use that “By Way of Deception…” line in jest and I think you are being a bit too sensitive on that one. Here it is reproduced again:

    >>>(But then again I bet your ‘job’ already pays more that a WaPo one..You know, the “‘By Way of Deception, thou shalt do War’ one ;-P )<<<

    P.S. Just for record, the only time the term "zionist agent"(sic) was used above was by the author of the main article and Jeffy himself so please don't claim it was I who used it. Now if I wanted to say it myself, I don't need your help and would say it, nothing will hold me back. But I do not appreciate you putting words in my mouth and claiming I said something which I did not.

    P.S. I think Jeffy is too dumb to be a "zionist agent". A "useful idiot" maybe but that's all

    [Reply]

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