Re Calvinism, check this. Though as it looks now much of the West will collapse demographically before the Evangelical/Calvinist demographic revolution arrives to the rescue. Some Western countries seem to be teetering on the brink.

The Arctic has given up the ghost, with sea ice volume plummetting into oblivion.

I would say plummeting into sublime oblivion

I don’t think it was arson, but I am surprised we still don’t have ecoterrorism on a massive scale. I pray to Allah that he continues keeping the more insane of his servants mired in ignorance

Carl

The day you find no conspiracy theories floating around in Russia, please let me know. I have an almost irresistible obsession with supranatural phenomena

Access to water is not zero sum issue and was not the reason for the collapse of the Oslo process (the refugee issue was). As a matter of fact in recent years Israel has embarked upon construction of desalination and waste water recycling facilities on a massive scale. I also think we should remain faithful to the futurological orientation of SublimeOblivion blog and admit for the possibility that technological progress may soon render the issue of access to water resources irrelevant for some developed countries just as it’s likely at some point to obliterate much of the value of Russia’s oil reserves.

“Alexander G says:
August 23, 2010 at 1:09 pm

I don’t think its possible to really stop Iran from acquiring nuclear capabilities by bombing them?”

I would like to stop this parade of silliness. May I? It would take the US exactly one day to burn to the ground all Iran’s refineries and power stations bringing the country to a total halt. The sanctions against gasoline imports to Iran are already in place. The state of Iran’s economy is dire, it’s absolutely unprepared to handle such confrontations. As long as the US is not committed to bringing democracy to the Middle East and engaging in nation building projects in the region, it’s unstoppable. The US Arab allies in the region, which basically include major Arab countries in the Middle East, have already let it be known, that co-existence with the nuclear Iran is not an option for them at all and they expect America to take action. Given the near total dependence of the US on petroleum imports and escalating competition between it and China for access to natural resources, the US should better heed their advise.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,706445,00.html

“Alexander G says
As far as our Arab allies are concerned, I’m sure they were equally displeased when Israel acquired nuclear weapons, but life goes on, and we still buy their oil.”

Arabs don’t care so much for Israel’s nuclear weapons, which officially Israel don’t even have. In the Arab perception, Israel’s territorial ambitions, if they exist, don’t extend beyond the already half evacuated by Israel West Bank, which is a tiny piece of wasteland devoid of any strategic or economic importance. Iran’s nuclear program, however, has already spawned at least six parallel programs in the Arab world.

Another thing is that Israel’s existential paranoia notwithstanding, Israel is a mini state surrounding by Arab nations, has a significant Arab minority, is hosting Islam’s third holiest site and, as rumors in the Middle East have it, is targeting with its nuclear warheads Mecca and Medina as an option of last resort. No regime in the region, let alone a regime run by Muslim clerics, is very likely to dare to consider dropping a nuclear bomb on Israel.

One should also understand that contrary to the nonsense you and Larius are spewing here all over the place, Israel does not have any real issues with Iran as Israel and Iran are separated by two thousand kilometers. There is no real historic precedence to the obsession of the current regime in Tehran with Israel. If anything, one of the Persian emperors is accorded a messiah like status in the Bible for restoring Israel after the exile in Babel and rebuilding the grand temple. The Romans during their campaigns in the Middle East have habitually and correctly suspected Jews of being sympathizers and agents of Rome’s Persian rivals. Israel used to have full relations with Iran during the Shah.

On the other hand, the Arab Persian rivalry is a thousand years old and continues unabated to these very days. It includes everything from an Arab minority in Iran that occasionally together with Kurds and Baloch stage uprisings against the Persian rule to territorial conflicts. Territorial conflicts are ranging from Iran’s occupying presumably Arab land to territorial incursions into Iraq and occasional musings that Bahrain is actually not an independent Arab state but one of the Persian provinces. Never mind Arab suspicions that Iran is heavily involved with the restless Shia minorities across the region. http://www.stratfor.com/memberships/148952/analysis/20091116_iran_naval_deployment_and_houthi_rebellion

The anti Israel obsession of Tehran will be over the very moment this regime, which is already showing cracks all over the facade, goes away. But the Arab Persian conflict will probably continue for another millennium. Under these conditions the Saudis and Emiratees have been apparently offering China to replace one million of foreign workers in the Gulf with Chinese in exchange for China’s support for action against Iran. This year more Saudi oil was sent to China than to the US. If America continues to delude itself that Iran’s nuclear program is Israel’s problem, nobody should be surprised when America’s Arab proteges in the region start shopping around for a better patron.

Russia is pretty much set to keep reaping bucketfuls of petrodollars (make that petroyuan soon?) in the future.

Making that petroyuan would forcefully unpeg China’s yuan from the dollar and send the USD tumbling down. With the US accounting for a lion’s share of oil imports, it means collapse of the oil market and switch of the US market into a low carbon mode. It would be the end of the US dependence on the Middle East within years.

With the US technological potential I would bet on the time span of less than a decade for the US to come up with an alternative technology that would be competitive not only in the US but globally. Russia’s oil fields are not cheap anyway, so Russia would be the first to get out of the market. Saudi Arabia will only suffer a massive revenue loss, but Russia will have to simply stop production.

@AG

The Purim story ends with a Jew being reinstituted in the position of VP to the Persian emperor. Did you read the story? It’s simply not about it. Purim is a story of a court intrigue.

And Netanyahu can appear on the US TV every single day. He is by far not the only leader in the Middle East who is preoccupied with the Persian nuclear program, but unlike others he does not share borders with Iran, nor has territorial disputes with the Persians, nor has a Shia minority in his country. The moment Velayat e Faqih finishes its career in Iran, Iran and Israel will happily forget about each other. These days the concept is not endorsed even by Shia Ayatollahs in Iraq and actually anywhere in the Shia world. Iran’s Islamic Revolution can no longer be exported even to Shia countries around, it has become a historic anachronism that outlived its purpose.

“I suspect you probably know this already, and are engaging in “hasbara.” (see link below).
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook07212009.html

Judging by the quality of you “hasbara,” (propaganda), you’re most likely new at this game.”

This is too silly even by you standards. Well, what can I tell you….hmmm… But basically you are right, you are surrounded by Mossad agents from all sides. They are watching your every single step. So … Behave …

😀 😀

seed says:
August 27, 2010 at 11:00 am

US insolvency would take a giant bite out of its technological potential, and it would become less able to borrow from foreign investors if the petrodollar disappeared.

If the US government becomes insolvent, the dollar will have to collapse. If the petro dolar is replaced by petroyuan or petrosomething it will have the same effect. It’s simply impossible that the US government declares default or something and exchange rates remain the same.

As a matter of fact the US economy is not that critically dependent on borrowing from foreign investors since it borrows in the same dollars that it prints. Its position is not the same as that of Argentina that owed truckloads to foreign investors and had to clatch to its currency peg. If the dollar crashes, it’s the holders of the US debt and other dollar denominated assets, who will suddenly find their savings wiped out of existence. For the US government and companies, their debt obligations remain the same.

The US position towards holders of its debt is more alike to those Russian governments of the late Soviet era who were monetizing their pension liabilities until eventually price controls had to be removed and people’s savings were wiped out in the matter of weeks. In this sense the US government can simply print its way out of its debt obligations and wipe out the holders of its debt, means individuals and treseuries around the world and in the US itself. The US governemnt is only inflation constrained, it has no solvency issues. It depends only on how much inflation the US government is ready to tolerate.

I am not saying that the US is very likely to come out unscathed from this ordeal and obviously with their car culture, urban sprawl and other shit the US is heavily dependent on petroleum imports. Any drastic readjustment of exchange rates will knock the society off its feet, but what will follow will do very little to, say, heal the wounded imperial pride of the same Russia. As the price of petroleum imports shoot up, it would automatically make all alternatives more competitive. The US is a huge market and billions in the private sector will be redirected into research and development of more alternatives. Under this scenario we will have dramatically update our time estimates for the end of the oil era. Oil producing countries, like Russia, will see both their oil revenues and foreign reserves disappearing.As a matter of fact there is no need for a silver bullet technology. What’s missing is only a price signal which the new exchange rate will promptly deliver.

As to China, I am yet to see any East Asian nation belonging to the same cultural block (Japan, Korea, different Chinese countries) succeeding to create a self sufficient economy sustained by the domestic demand. Until now such a thing has never been observed in nature. If the dollar tanks, China is done.

Author: seed
Comment:
NB,

I mean, without commodities like oil it would be hard for the US to get others to hold those debts and dollar denominated assets”

It has nothing to do with oil. The current system we have, which is unsustainable in the long run (I agree), is a legacy of the post ww2 era when the US accounted for a much larger share of the global economy. Under these conditions countries like Japan and South Korea have been industrializing themselves by exports to the US market, which is one of the most open markets in the world. At that time the US did not mind this situation because its economy was big enough relative to the rest of the world.

The situation with China is no different these days. It’s just that China is too big while the relative share of the US economy has diminished. The current system is based on governments around the world and not only China, manipulating their exchange rates and buying the US debt in an attempt to squeeze the last bits of demand out of the US market. It’s not unlike a housing bubble with banks making saltos in the air trying to prop up demand for new houses.

It’s not that the US is fundamentally very interested to feed this army of leeches or should care for the preservation of their dollar denominated savings. Far from this, the US economy is now stuck unable to properly adjust its currency rate, since most governments are manipulating their exchange rates by propping the dollar up. When the current system start unraveling, the US economy will certainly get a knockout. But those waiting for their shadenfreude moment should think twice, because demise of the system is very likely to cure them and their Mother Russia of their obsessive compulsive imperial syndrome in no time. This is really one of those wonderful moments in the history of humanity when the wisdoms of not biting the hand that feeds one, and being careful about what one is wishing for, come together.

We had plenty of cases in recent decades when abrupt devaluation, after initial devastation, was followed by strong economic recoveries. The same Argentina. The Russian default. We have yet to see however, as I already mentioned, any nation from that Confucian cultural unit ridding itself of its dependence on exports. In case the unraveling happens, it’s not China with its rapidly aging and chronically oversaving and underconsuming population, who is going to have the last laugh.

“Author: seed
Comment:
I am not sure what is supposed to happen after collapse and rebirth. I just said that it would likely follow the path of Britain and Russia.”

Put this in your head that it’s very uncommon for governments who borrow in their own currency to go bust because they have a simple tool to send bust everybody around instead of themselves. Have you heard that if you owe one thousand USD to a bank, it’s your problem , but if you owe one million it’s the banks? Now imagine that you can just draw a one million banknote in your kitchen and the bank will have to accept it. This is true that the situation is grotesque and somebody has to take a loss here. That’s why when the time comes the US government will simply print Russia’s and China’s national savings into oblivion. Into sublime oblivion. The US is not likely to follow Russia’s path because it borrows in its own currency. Its debt obligations are not foreign currency denominated. The US government is absolutely oblivious to who is holding its debt. Outsiders, locals, they are all the same. It’s dollars.

“Its dependencies would find other patrons, and its access to those markets would diminish. Europe, China, the Middle East, Latin America, etc. would go their own ways. ”

The US is not dependent on anybody, it’s everybody else got addicted to the US demand. America is a huge and self sustained market of an exceptionally industrious nation whose religion is “In shopping we trust”. It’s China who needs the US market and Russia who needs the US market and the US to keep consuming something like one quarter of the global oil. Not the other way round. This is what you should know to be sure about what’s supposed to happen after collapse and rebirth.

“Author: seed

Debt usually matures, so there is no nuclear option for the US government against its creditors.”

The US was in this situation shortly after the ww2. The debt to GDP ratio was not unlike the current one. In the years that immediately followed the war there was a massive inflation in the US that wiped out large chunk of the debt pretty much as what the Russian governments did to their people’s savings. Put the US government with its back to the wall and it will do it again. Not out of some malevolence but because this is what governments who issued debt in their own currency usually do when they find themselves with their back to the wall.

“If they do not buy more, the cost of borrowing for the US government rises, and the incentive to diversify increases for risk-averse investors.”

The US does need to run these deficits in the first place and that it does comes mainly from the fact that the current system makes America overstretched economically just as it’s overstretched militarily by Iraq and Afghanistan. When the exchange rate adjustment comes it will cure the US economy in one go of its addiction to oil and cheap produce from China. You should understand that the US retrenchment from its global status is mostly good for the US. It’s the would be superpowers who are interested to have the US to run these deficits and this is why they are all too eager to stockpile US dollars and US debt. From the point of view of the US itself, they are not doing any favors to the US with this, but rather serving the US government a rope to hang itself with.

“The aging population of the US must invest in emerging economies (such as BRIC) because there are few places in the world seeing large growth.”

Who told you that BRIC have brilliant demographics? You mean Russia? Ha! China? China will soon have the worst demographics in the world since another thing very typical of countries of that cultural unit, besides their incurable export dependence, is their predisposition to super low fertility and China has already spent decades under the one child policy.

“It is not the only place with a consumer market. Europe is already a large one and China has 300m people in the middle class. Also, many of these people have more savings than their American counterparts (the euro proving to be almost as strong as the DM).”

The euro is a mega disaster under which the German export machine has decimated peripheral economies of the EU and now relying on the constant threat of default by member countries to push the euro down and keep exporting elsewhere. It could take exactly a 10% devaluation of the Spanish Peseta and a 10% appreciation by the DM to cure the EU periphery of its troubles. They just can’t do it any longer because they are all locked into the same currency. The future by far does not look bright for Europe.

Alexander G says:
August 28, 2010 at 8:35 am

I said nothing about the Mossad. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t hire you anyway (these are pretty smart folks).

****************

Then my chances are not that bad. Dunno if I am smart, but I think myself to be quite pretty

seed
It was fixed at $35/ounce of gold. Peoples’ savings were not wiped out because those savings during the war were responsible for the post-war boom.

***********************

Only foreign governments and central banks could redeem dollars for gold under the BW. Domestic holders of the US debt were not protected and that debt was mostly domestic. The BW was not a real gold standard. Not sure about how much the debt to GDP ratio was eliminated by inflation in the decade that followed but it should be something in between 25% and 35%. I mean between 25% and 35% of the real value of that debt.

“You believe in magic. There is nothing in this plan to back up the dollar and keep it from spiraling out of control.”

I don’t believe in any magic. Neither I have any plan. And neither I promised to anybody that it’s going to be a walk in a park. I am just saying a very simple thing. The current system looks anachronistic. Precisely because as you said “Also, US was by far the biggest economy at the time. The situation is always changing.”. Correct. If and when this system goes down, there will be a big mess. It will affect everybody. However, when the dust settles down, it’s not the would be superpowers who will find themselves among the beneficiaries of the new order because the current situation benefits them at the expense of the US. Get it!

As a matter of fact China understands this. This is why they are in no hurry to step in and start unwinding this bubble. They know that they are very likely to only lose from this. Their only motivation, if it exists, is that the current system looks increasingly shaky and unstable and better to fall apart sooner than later. But this is not that China is very eager to unseat the US. They can only be forced to do it as choosing of the least between the two evils.

As to Russians, the Russians are always pursuing self destructive agendas. If you are taught for 70 years that if your neighbor has more than you, then he is stealing and likely from you, you are very likely to develop irrational belief that the world is such a zero sum game that people can only advance themselves by other people’s failures. So you will be fighting Muslim insurgencies in your own country and have terror attacks by Muslim radicals in your main cities, and still you will be building nuclear reactors in a nearby Muslim country run by clerics whose main specialty is exporting their Islamic revolution around the world. Just because you will think that being the country of no means that you are protecting your interests. Only the likes of Stratfor can rationalize this absurd into the concept of national interests. Russia’s interest in having the current currency order destroyed is no more rational than its silly games in the Middle East.

Seed

Let this thread die. It became like Velayat e Faqih. It outlived its purpose

seed

I will just comment on this one

“China is the one who has been quite vocal about ending the dollar’s hegemony.”

You know, man. If you invite me for a drink, after a few rounds I am very likely to get quite vocal as well. I usually do. Hugo Chavez also used to be quite vocal about boycotting the US. I wonder why his vocalizations never got translated into practical action. Maybe because he could not find enough buyers for his “high quality” oil outside the US?

You know, we are not under the BW or something. Offer the world an alternative basket of currencies to swap its dollars for and the current system is gone. And when it comes to such alternatives there is no better place to start with than …. You guess.. Bingo! China itself. It’s not that China should be very vocal about it (Never mind that we did not hear from them on this issue for quite a while). All China should do is to offer itself as a replacement. Why are they procrastinating so much with this? Maybe for the same reason that Germany dropped its DM and locked itself into the same currency with dozens of other European nations? Or maybe China is just waiting for other suckers to wreck themselves in a vain pursuit of glory?

“Neither can really do anything about it, but the US is destroying the order on its own.”

Right. The big uncle has lost his mind and destroying the foundations of the house. Nobody can do much about this. This is why everybody should immediately vacate the premises and duck for cover.

I actually found his “Chechnya, the once and future war” is an even more entertaining and illuminating reading on Russia and the Caucasus, even though it’s a technical stuff. This guy should start writing books. He got a great talent

*** Finally, it is argued there’s also a “cultural” element in Russia’s arms trade policy, namely, an “inferiority complex” towards the US that translates into a kind of overcompensating need to prove itself as an independent Great Power in the eyes of the world and its own citizens. This is meant to explain its desire for the “thrill of causing the US discomfort by selling weapons to anti-American governments in Caracas and Damascus.” These arguments are mostly sociological truthiness that I doubt merit detailed rejoinders. ***

He got this part just right. If anything I would say he is rather underestimating it. It’s not an “also cultural element”, this is what it’s mostly about. Russia’s foreign policy not a foreign policy so much as a form of group therapy of a former superpower suffering from a severe PSTD (Post Soviet Traumatic Disorder). Russia is deliberately seeking points of controlled friction with the West because it makes Russians feel that they are back in the saddle again. And he is absolutely right that it goes well with the domestic audience since this thing is afflicting just about everybody over there. This is the only reason why Russia is constantly betting on hopeless wrong horses or arming with nuclear weapons a nearby Islamic theocratic state while its Southern periphery is permanently in danger of catching fire of Muslim insurgencies. Russia’s foreign policy is fundamentally irrational. It’s a subject of study for psychologists and not for the Stratfor and diplomats. There are no real interests there beyond twisted reading of Soviet school textbooks on the Marxist concept of imperialism, made even more grotesque by Russia’s PSTD. If somebody succeeds to convince Russians that the winds are guaranteed to spread nuclear radiation from Russian Far East into North America, they will drop a nuclear bomb on Vladivostok tomorrow.

“Russia is deliberately seeking points of controlled friction with the West because it makes Russians feel that they are back in the saddle again.

And here was me thinking it was all about acquiring levers of influence so as to extract maximum value during negotiations. Idiot!”

You said it.

“What is the evidence that Russia is arming Iran with nuclear weapons? PS. No, Bushehr doesn’t count.”

No. Russia is not, but Russia has a huge exposure to the Muslim World through Caucasus and Central Asia and their respective diasporas in its big cities. It’s not in the interests of Russia to take any chances in these matters, neither to sell reactors to Iran, nor to provide Iran with any kind of support or cover. Iran is a fundamentalist theocratic state whose official ideology is exporting its Islamic revolution elsewhere. Iran made tremendous efforts to break free out of its sectarian cage by cultivating relations with various Sunni radical groups. Today they are friendly with Russia because they need the bomb, tomorrow they will get the bomb and may well switch their attention to the part of the Muslim world under Russian control or within the Russian sphere of influence. Never mind that as an oil exporter Russia has nothing to lose if somebody knocks out Iran and plunges the global oil market into turmoil.

“Exactly. Which is why 81% of Russians oppose Iran getting nukes.”

Maybe in some polls Russian population shows more sanity than the leadership, but fundamentally the Russian mindset is just as described.

You sure sound like a person who can quickly remedy the situation

Russia would want to drop a nuclear bomb on Vladivostok? What the hell are you smoking (and can I have some)?

You can, but my stuff is likely to leave you unimpressed. I am still looking for a stuff that can make one lose the ability to distinguish between what should be understood literally and what is a hyperbole

“Oh, sure, now you’re backing off and saying it was “hyperbole”, but at the time you really meant it, didn’t you, dickweed?”

Look, I presume a certain minimum of intelligence in people I talk to. If it does not exist, I am not bothered by this

😀 😀

Unz states: “A crucial part of the critique consists of the claims of an anonymous individual calling himself “NB,” which are based upon his private analysis of non-public data and cannot be externally verified.” I am “NB” and one of the audience members who spoke to Unz after his talk yesterday. I asked Unz to look at the Yale Alumni directory with me, precisely so that he would cease to describe my data as unverifiable. Unz initially agreed, but then started debating with me about other aspects of his article. I repeatedly tried to get our conversation back on track: performing Weyl Analysis on the names of Yale alumni, but Unz ultimately declined and walked away when I said I was not interested in a debate but wanted to show him the data I am using. (Unz has access to the Harvard alumni directory too.)

Finally, as Unz met me yesterday, he knows I’m female. Incidentally, anyone with a passing familiarity with identifying Jewish names would know that my first name (which Unz revealed in his previous blog entry) is a common female Israeli/Hebrew name, which brings me to another point: Unz continues to claim, “during the thirteen years since 2000, just two of the 78 names of Math Olympiad winners appear to be Jewish, and this is also correct.” Since two of the names are from the Weyl list of distinctive Jewish surnames, Unz must be classifying only these 2 names as Jewish. There is another 2x US IMO team member with an obviously Israeli Jewish name and several others with names classified as possibly Jewish on ancestry.com. e.g.:
http://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=kane
In contrast, I do not see how it is possible for Unz to have obtained the estimate that 44% of the 70s US IMO team members were Jewish unless he counted overtly German (and other non-Jewish names) as Jewish. e.g.
http://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=tschantz
I request that Unz please list the last names of the 70s US IMO team members whom he classified as Jewish. The list is available here, so I recommend interested parties take a look:
http://www.imo-official.org/country_individual_r.aspx?code=USA&column=year&order=desc

Yes Steve, but how do you get Indians to respect the Republican Party? I just posted this comment over at Caplan's blog:

" No Bryan, speaking as a S Asian Indian, I think you have it exactly backwards. Indians vote democrat not because democrats respect them, but because they respect democrats. The reason is that the democrats have successfully branded themselves as the party of high education, intelligence and status, while equally successfully branding the Republicans as the party of dumb-ass white trash. The Indian community in the US is heavily biased towards an upper-caste Brahmin background, people whose ancestors were the traditional clerical intelligentsia, which in modernity translates into a fanatical respect for education and IQ. These are people who would rather die than be identified with the Stupid Party."

To get respect from this lot Republicans would need to re-establish themselves as also a party of the high IQ and highly educated elites. I think that would be something highly useful for the Republicans to do anyway. Because even white proles secretly hanker to be ruled by their betters.

I would like to refute a couple misleading and false statements in Unz’s rebuttal.
1. Unz’s reported %ages for the racial background of Harvard undergrads from the Harvard NCES IPEDS data DO include full-time Harvard Extension School Students. The full-time undergraduate enrollment at Harvard in Fall 2011 is listed in the IPEDS data as 3,652 males and 3,555 females, summing to 7,207 students. The enrollment at Harvard College in Fall 2011 was 6,657. The IPEDS data cannot be used to draw any conclusions about the demographics of Harvard College.

2. Prof. Mertz did NOT state that the correct figure should be 7% for the % of Jewish NMS semifinalists. She said that when I added in Unz’s new results for MA, I got 7% *based on Unz’s data for each state.* The whole point of emphasizing that Unz underestimated by a factor of over 5 the % of Jewish IMO team members since 2000 is both that Unz’s ability to recognize Jewish names is poor and that many Jews do not have obviously Jewish names. Hence, we believe that Jews represent more than 7% of NMS semifinalists.

Also, I wanted to add a bit more about Unz’s remarks on Jewish NMS semifinalists. Unz’s analysis of Jewish academic achievement is predicated on his ability to identify Jews on the basis of their names, which proved spectacularly wrong in the one data set on which there exists confirmed data about the ethnic background of the students, thus calling into question his entire analysis wrt Jews. I suspect all of Unz’s state-by-state estimates of the % of Jewish NMS semifinalists are underestimates.

However, I’m glad Unz is drawing attention to the disparities in NMS qualifying scores by state since this is a critical issue that has a substantial impact on estimating the % of high-ability Jewish students in the Harvard applicant pool (i.e. Unz is underestimating that %). Unz recently reported that 19% of MA NMS semifinalists are Jewish (also likely an underestimate based on my perusal of the names), and MA historically has the highest NMS qualifying score. Not only that, MA is arguably the most over-represented state at Harvard. I will be discussing the flaws in Unz’s NMS data in greater detail in an upcoming blog post. I will also compare the results of Weyl Analysis on the names of NMS semifinalists and Harvard undergrads – they are very similar. I’ve recently determined that Unz did not mean Gold* when he included “Gold-” as part of his Weyl list of distinctive Jewish surnames, so I’m in the process of finalizing my figures.

Sorry to be spamming the comments here, I just wanted to note I wrote my above comment before seeing TomB’s comment.

Regarding your request for proof that we believe that Jews represent more than 7% of NMS semifinalists…what is Unz’s proof that Jews represent 7% of NMS semifinalists? It is based on Weyl Analysis and his subjective name inspection method, which produced gross underestimates for the recent IMO participants. I don’t expect you to trust my subjective name inspection method (though I can prove that some of the people with non-obviously Jewish names on the MA NMS list are Jewish via publicly available info), so all I can do is compare Weyl Analysis (which is an objective methodology, assuming it is clearly defined) on the names of NMS semifinalists and Harvard students. Like I said, I’ll be posting those figures once I finalize them.

“Unz comes forward with statistics that he says indicate about a 3000% favoritism factor for a certain group. And your initial take on this isn’t … amazement? Flabbergastment? Outrage?” This absurdly misleading 3000% factor is based on Hillel’s unreliable [and I believe inflated] estimates of the % of Jewish students at Harvard divided by the % of Jews in the population. Like Asians, Jews are over-represented among high academic achievers, so the 3000% factor is misleading, as one could also post some silly favoritism factor for Asian-Americans, who represent 21% of the Harvard College Class of 2016 and ~5% of the US population. The proper question is, “What is the % of Jews, Asian-Americans, and non-Jewish whites among high academic achievers in the Harvard applicant pool?” I will address this question in my upcoming blog post.

TomB,

You stated, “What I asked for, very carefully, was whether you had any *evidence* to back up your belief.”
My evidence is based on Unz’s statement that Weyl Analysis produced virtually identical results as his own subjective inspection method on the set of NMS semifinalists. I performed Weyl Analysis on the Harvard alumni directory, and I already reported that I arrived at a figure for the Jewish enrollment at Harvard that was lower than Hillel’s figures by a factor of 2.5. i.e. when using the same objective methodology on both data sets, I get similar results for both the % of Jewish NMS semifinalists and the % of Jewish Harvard students. Prof. Gelman and I have already reported this, and apparently you don’t find this convincing, so I doubt there’s anything I can do to convince you.

As I said above, I’ve recently determined that Unz did not mean Gold* when he included “Gold-” as part of his Weyl list of distinctive Jewish surnames, so I’m in the process of finalizing my figures for Harvard College’s Jewish enrollment based on this new info (my figures are currently at 7-9%, though I will double-check that before writing up my results in a blog post).

“Now, almost certainly you’ll be able to come up with *some,* just as Mertz came up with some evidence that one estimate Unz used was a few individuals off.”
That this is how you describe a factor of 5+ error once again indicates that it’s doubtful anything I say will change your mind.

For example, Stanford has a public student directory. You can search that and see that Weyl Analysis performed on the names of Stanford undergrad students yields the result that 4-5% of Stanford undergrads are Jewish (half of Hillel’s report). This is lower than Unz’s claim that 6% of NMS semifinalists are Jewish (which did not include his recent report that 19% of MA NMS semifinalists are Jewish; when including this result, I arrived at 7% *based on Unz’s own data for each state*). Does this prove that Stanford is discriminating against Jewish students? Of course not. Stanford draws a disproportionate number of students from the West Coast, where the Jewish population is much lower than in the Northeast, from which Harvard College draws a disproportionate number of its students.

william wright said:
“Umm, don’t you mean a “divisor” of 2.5? A “factor” of 2.5 would have made the number higher.”
Umm, what I said was correct. I’m using definition 4 here:
http://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=factor

In mathematics, the term divisor refers to an integer, so 2.5 isn’t even a divisor of 25:
http://www.math.niu.edu/~beachy/abstract_algebra/study_guide/11.html

“More generally, you haven’t provided evidence; you’ve made an argument based on conclusions in support of which you’ve again presented no evidence.”
Obviously I can’t post a list of the names of Harvard students. When I spoke to Unz in person, I asked him to look at the Yale alumni directory with me, precisely so that he would cease to describe my data as unverifiable (Unz has access to the Harvard alumni directory too). Unz declined my request, but he did say that I should publish my counts for each surname from the alumni directories, so I will do that when I write up my blog post. You can also perform Weyl Analysis on Stanford’s public directory, so you can see that yields a result half as large as Hillel’s report and lower than Unz’s figure for the % of Jewish NMS semifinalists.

“And if you conclude that that only 7-9% of Harvard College’s students are Jewish, your methodology is terribly flawed.”
I never said that only 7-9% of Harvard College students are Jewish. I said that Weyl Analysis [using a restrictive list of Gold- names rather than Gold*; see my previous comment] performed on the Harvard alumni directory names yielded that result. As I have stated previously, I believe that Weyl Analysis yields underestimates of the % of Jews (given a reasonably large sample size). Hence, I believe Unz’s result for the % of Jewish NMS semifinalists is an underestimate. The point is that using the same methodology on both the names of NMS semifinalists and the names of Harvard students produces similar results.

You continue to claim that there has been a collapse of Jewish academic achievement in recent decades. Now that it’s been established that Jews represent at least 13% of US IMO team members from 2000-12, where is this evidence of a collapse of Jewish academic achievement?

The ratio of Jews to non-Jewish whites among US IMO participants (1:2-3) has scarcely changed over the decades, despite that Jews represent a declining %age of the US population. What has changed is the massive overrepresentation of Asian-Americans at the highest levels of HS math and science academic achievement, so what we’re actually seeing is a decline of white academic achievement in HS math and science competitions vs Asian-Americans.

I’d also like to note that you seem happy to engage in polemics with Prof. Gelman via email but ignore my dry inquiries asking for clarification as to how you performed Weyl Analysis.

I’d like to separately address Prof. Mertz’s academic work on the representation of women in mathematics. Once again, Unz is misrepresenting Prof. Mertz’s work. In particular, I highly recommend that readers look at Table 5 (p. 1252):
http://www.ams.org/notices/200810/fea-gallian.pdf
From 1977 to 1990, the East German IMO team had 5 girls (at least one of whom was a gold medalist), while the West German IMO team had none. This represents a significant disparity between two nations that were comprised of the same ethnicity and suggests the significance of sociocultural factors in the absence of girls on the West German IMO team.

The US IMO team did not have a female member until 1998. i.e. for over 2 decades, there were zero girls on the US IMO team, even though the USSR had had female gold medalists at the IMO in 1962, 1976, 1985, etc. The UK first had a female IMO team member in 1983, 15 years before the US. The US did not have a female gold medalist until 2004, while the UK had had 2 female gold medalists at least 10 years prior. From 1998 to present, girls have represented 6% of US IMO participants. Clearly, this change is not due to genetics but rather sociocultural factors. Prof. Mertz is simply demonstrating the importance of sociocultural factors in assessing the under-representation of women at the highest levels of mathematics.

Gaeranee, Prof. Mertz counted half-Asians as half-white and half-Asian in her data, just as she counted half-Jews as half-Jewish and half-non-Jewish white. There is no inconsistency.

You have misinterpreted several of Prof. Mertz’s remarks. Unz stated that he counted East European and Germanic names as Jewish, which is how he arrived at a gross overestimate for the % of Jews on the 1970s US IMO teams. Yet, Unz ceased to count ethnic German names (e.g. Mildorf) as Jewish in the post-2000 data, i.e. Unz used an inconsistent methodology to identify Jews. By overestimating the % of Jews in older data and underestimating the % of Jews in recent data, Unz exhibited a spurious collapse in Jewish academic achievement.

Prof. Mertz counted both Miller and Lawrence as half-Jewish/half-non-Jewish white in her data. She counted Mildorf as non-Jewish white, as she did for all white people on whom we have no info.

We have not suggested that the admissions rates for Jews have remained the same in the past 25 years, and if you had read Prof. Mertz’s rebuttal of Unz, you’d see that Unz’s Harvard enrollment data includes the non-selective Harvard Extension School and does not account for the significant %age of students who are multiracial or whose race is unknown. Prof. Mertz also linked to a Harvard website stating that Harvard College’s Class of 2016 is 21% Asian-American, far higher than Unz’s claimed quota for Asian-Americans.

I find it curious that you chose to refer to Prof. Mertz as “Ms. Mertz,” while at the same time properly addressing Prof. Gelman as such.

A couple commenters appear to be requesting that Prof. Gelman, Prof. Mertz, and I disprove Unz’s claims, and that the burden of proof is on us. It is not possible for any of us to prove or disprove that Asian-Americans and/or white Gentiles are discriminated against in favor of Jews in Ivy admissions. I will be writing up a comprehensive blog post in which I show that no conclusions can be drawn from Unz’s data sets.

Prof. Thomas Espenshade at Princeton found that on average, Asian-Americans applying to a particular set of universities had the same chances of admission as white applicants with SAT scores that were 140 points lower. Yet, he stated:

People may read this and want to say, “Oh, because I’m Asian American, my SAT scores have been downgraded.” That is not really the way to interpret these data. Many times people will ask me, “Do your results prove that there is discrimination against Asian applicants?” And I say, “No, they don’t.” Even though in our data we have much information about the students and what they present in their application folders, most of what we have are quantifiable data. We don’t have the “softer” variables — the personal statements that the students wrote, their teacher recommendations, a full list of extracurricular activities. Because we don’t have access to all of the information that the admission office has access to, it is possible that the influence of one applicant characteristic or another might appear in a different light if we had the full range of materials.

Prof. Espenshade has done far more research on this topic than Unz, Prof. Gelman, Prof. Mertz, or I, and I think it’s instructive to note how cautious he is about drawing far-reaching conclusions from his SAT score data. In contrast, Unz has far less definitive data (as his data on Jewish students is extremely flawed) and drew sweeping conclusions.

Prof. Espenshade found that Asian-Americans applying to a particular set of universities had the same chances of admission as white applicants with SAT scores that were 140 points lower. He said that his results do not prove that there is discrimination against Asian-American applicants. In contrast, Unz claimed his data proves discrimination against white Gentiles (yet curiously not Asian-Americans) based on similar data (NMS status being used as a proxy for SAT scores, which is a flawed analysis due to the fact that the NMS qualifying score varies by state). I think it’s clear that Prof. Espenshade would disagree that Unz’s data proves bias.

Gaeranee stated:
There’s clearly a problem if Asian-Am academic achievements have been going up recently and yet admissions rates don’t reflect that. And there’s clearly a problem if Jews’ academic achievements have been going down but admissions rates have been going up.

There is no evidence that the admissions rates of Jews have been increasing, as we don’t know the % of Jewish applicants in the Harvard applicant pool. In addition, Hillel’s data for the Jewish enrollment at Harvard and Yale exhibit such stark statistical anomalies that they can’t possibly be considered reliable data. Furthermore, Unz’s Asian-American enrollment data for Harvard (and presumably other universities) is quite simply wrong for reasons already discussed. e.g. Asian-Americans represent 21% of the Harvard College Class of 2016 according to the Harvard College Office of Admissions.

You’re now resorting to data sets with a sample size of 1 to prove your conspiracy theory? You haven’t been able to prove your conspiracy theory that Jews are admitted to Harvard out of proportion to their academic accomplishments, as Weyl analysis performed on the *current* and *public* Harvard directory coincides with the Weyl analysis results on NMS semifinalists: both are 6-7% Jewish. Well, here’s a report of a Jewish student with similar stats who got rejected from Harvard, not even wait-listed:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/14120121-post50.html
The Jewish girl had a 2340 vs the above-mentioned WASP’s 2370 on the SAT. It’s hard to compare the GPAs (would need more info about their high schools), but the Jewish student had 5s on several more AP exams and was a semifinalist in the USA Biology Olympiad. The latter is more exceptional than anything mentioned in your anecdote above.

And here are 3 white Christian students accepted to Harvard with SAT scores of 2340 or lower.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/14117664-post34.html
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/14114931-post6.html
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13608004-post14.html

Thus, it is absurd to attribute the rejection of the aforementioned WASP to his ethnic/religious background.

Also, note that Princeton accepts 18.7% of applicants with SAT scores of 2300+:
http://www.princeton.edu/admission/pdfs/Profile_12.pdf
While this is over twice as high as Princeton’s overall acceptance rate (7.9%), 2300+ SAT scores by no means guarantee admission to HYP.

M_Young, the white male student that attended a Catholic school is indeed Catholic, and his father even stated that it was obvious from his application that his son is Catholic:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/1458267-how-unique-exracurricular.html#post15456540

I’m not sure why you mention that the other two are female – do you think Harvard has lower admissions standards for females?

As for the white Christian student with an interest in Okinawa, that in no way indicates the student is not white (which is probably obvious from her name). Many of Harvard’s own faculty in East Asian studies are white:
http://harvardealc.org/people.php?type=faculty

Finally, your example of the Asian-American with unimpressive SAT scores who was admitted to Harvard proves my point – one can’t use a few anecdotes to prove anything about discrimination in Harvard’s admissions. In fact, her post mentions an important aspect of the Harvard admissions process that Unz elides: the significance of the essay.

Anonymous, how do you propose handling Social Security benefits for the plural spouses of a decedent? yet another roadblock to the legalization of plural marriage that can be easily accommodated for gay marriage…

TomB, what is this “specific, detailed evidence of long-term, systematic, massive discrimination against white gentiles at Harvard” of which you speak? That Hillel says that 25% of Harvard undergrads are Jewish, and Unz says that 6-7% of National Merit Scholarship semifinalists are Jewish? That’s it, isn’t it? …except using the same methodology (Weyl Analysis) Unz used to determine that Jews represent 6-7% of NMS semifinalists ALSO yields the result that Jews represent 6-7% of current Harvard students.

TomB, Unz calculated the percent of white Gentiles at Harvard by subtracting Hillel’s reported % of Jewish undergrads (25%) from the % of Harvard undergrads who reported that they’re white (44%), giving 19%. i.e. Unz calculated those enrollment ratios for Harvard (that supposedly demonstrate non-Jewish whites are victims of discrimination) by assuming Harvard College is only 19% white Gentile. This is absurd, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone actually attending Harvard who believes that. To obtain those enrollment ratios, Unz also assumed there were no Jewish students among the ~12+% of Harvard undergrads who did not report their race or are biracial (like Tiger Mom’s daughter).

Finally, there is a negative correlation between the National Merit qualifying score for a state and its % of non-Jewish whites, while there is a positive correlation between a state’s NMS qualifying score and its % of Jews, which is also the case for Asians. (Unz briefly mentioned that qualifying scores vary by state; they range from 201 in Wyoming, which is merely the 96th percentile, to 221 in Massachusetts, which is the 99th percentile. This corresponds to a 200 point difference in SAT scores.) This means that white Gentile NMS semifinalists are disproportionately from states with low qualifying scores while Jewish and Asian NMS semifinalists are disproportionately from states with high NMS qualifying scores, i.e. this suggests that the average non-Jewish white NMS semifinalist has a lower [P]SAT score than the average Jewish or Asian NMS semifinalist. Hence, one cannot use the set of NMS semifinalists to validly deduce the existence of bias against white Gentiles.

Take a look at high school math and language curricula in late Victorian and Edwardian times. They would leave many a modern college grad floored … the Idiocracy cometh!

I have posted a critique of Unz’s article here:
http://alum.mit.edu/www/nurit

Columbia statistician Andrew Gelman discusses it here:
http://andrewgelman.com/2013/10/22/ivy-jew-update/

In short: Unz substantially overestimated the percentage of Jews at Harvard while grossly underestimating the percentage of Jews among high academic achievers, when, in fact, there is no discrepancy. In addition, Unz’s arguments have proven to be untenable in light of a recent survey of incoming Harvard freshmen conducted by The Harvard Crimson, which found that students who identified as Jewish reported a mean SAT score of 2289, 56 points higher than the average SAT score of white respondents.

Giraldi makes a number of factual errors, misleading statements, and notable omissions with the apparent goal of leading readers to believe that the notion that Assad ordered a chemical weapons attack on his people is all a fabrication of the Mossad.

As such, Giraldi’s piece provides fascinating insight into how one can spread a conspiracy theory:
1. Point out facts that sound suspicious out of context while omitting facts that do not support your narrative: “Whether the victims of the attack suffered symptoms of Sarin was also disputed…”
This is false: “’The United Nations Mission has now confirmed, unequivocally and objectively, that chemical weapons have been used in Syria,’ declared Mr. Ban, underscoring that 85 per cent of blood samples from the sites in Ghouta tested positive for Sarin, and the majority of the rocket fragments were also found to be carrying the deadly nerve agent.”
http://www.un.org/news/dh/pdf/english/2013/16092013.pdf
(Recall that Giraldi claimed that sarin was only found on one of the two rockets identified.)

Giraldi continues: “…no autopsies were performed to confirm the presence of the chemical.” While this appears to be true, Giraldi conveniently omitted the fact that the UN took blood samples from survivors, 85% of whom tested positive for sarin.

2. Make authoritative-sounding claims of questionable veracity: “it was widely believed that the information might have been fabricated by Tel Aviv.”

In fact, US, British, and French intelligence agencies, as well as Human Rights Watch, have all pointed the finger at the Syrian government:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-13/assad-sarin-gas-attack-claim-implausible/4951502
I seriously doubt that all based their conclusions solely on the claims of the Mossad.


3. Throw in some big words to confuse readers while simultaneously making yourself sound authoritative: “the trajectories and telemetry of rockets that may have been used in the attack was also somewhat conjectural and involved weapons that were not, in fact, in the Syrian arsenal, suggesting that they were actually fired by the rebels.”

Giraldi makes several dubious claims:
1. Giraldi claims that the notion that Islam has become a breeding ground for terrorism is “largely a construct developed by Israel and its friends in the media and academia, including most notably Princeton Professor Bernard Lewis.” The only source Giraldi cites for his assertion is the wiki entry on Bernard Lewis, and the only reference to terrorism I can find on that wiki page is regarding a book Lewis published in 2008, so Giraldi provides no evidence to support his claim. In fact, the the wiki entry for “War on Terror” has scarcely a mention of Israel, and in fact, it was the Reagan administration that first used the term “war on terrorism.”

Giraldi has a history of making dubious claims about Israel, most notably his recent piece “Quitting over Syria,” in which he insinuates that the notion that Assad ordered a chemical weapons attack against his own people is based on fabricated Israeli intelligence, falsely claiming that “whether the victims of the attack suffered symptoms of Sarin was also disputed.”

2. Giraldi states: “Palestinian terrorism, which also took root at the same time [1970s], was not in any way intrinsic to Islam as it developed as a reaction to the Israeli occupation.” Palestinian terrorism/violence long predated the 1970s and the Israeli occupation: 1834 Safed pogrom, 1921 Jaffa riots, 1929 Hebron massacre, title=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Tiberias_massacre” href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Tiberias_massacre”>1938 Tiberias massacre, etc. In addition, the PLO was founded in 1964 – before Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
(To be clear, I am not arguing that terrorism is intrinsic to Islam, nor am I denying the existence of Jewish terrorism.)

3. Giraldi states: “an American is more likely to die from falling furniture in his own home than as a victim of terrorist violence.” This argument is addressed here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-12/what-conor-friedersdorf-misunderstands-about-terrorism.html

KA, your comment contains a number of false and misleading statements. I’ll briefly point out some of them, though I’m not sure why I’m bothering to respond at all given your outrageous claim that “Each know what other Zionist is thinking”:
1. “[Israel] has tried to implicate Syria for Harriri killings through multiple levers”
Two UN reports have implicated Syrian government officials in the assassination of Rafic Hariri:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FitzGerald_Report
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehlis_Report

2. “[Israel] has been blaming Syria for using gas and was providing information on created and manufactured intercepts”
I take it your source is Philip Giraldi for this claim? I’ve already debunked Giraldi’s piece here:
https://www.unz.com/article/quitting-over-syria/#comment-51936

3. “[Israel] has attacked Syria every few years from 2006 without condemnation and sanctions”
Yes, it’s true that in 2007, Israel carried out an airstrike on a Syrian nuclear reactor and that Israel has attacked Syrian missile shipments/bases during the Syrian Civil War. The US invaded Iraq based on fake intelligence (no nuclear reactors were found in Iraq, whereas the IAEA confirmed that the Syrian site Israel had bombed was in fact a nuclear reactor) and has been conducting an ongoing drone war in Pakistan. The US has caused far more civilian deaths in the past decade than Israel. Do you think the US should be sanctioned?

tadzio, what is your source for your claim that “jews are overrepresented to an obscene level…even if adjusted of college boards [sic] scores”? Ron Unz’s “Myth of American Meritocracy” article? There is no evidence that Jews are overrepresented at Harvard in relation to their academic merit, as Unz substantially overestimated the percentage of Jews at Harvard while grossly underestimating the percentage of Jews among high academic achievers; in fact, there is no discrepancy. In addition, Unz’s arguments have proven to be untenable in light of a recent survey of incoming Harvard freshmen conducted by The Harvard Crimson, which found that students who identified as Jewish reported a mean SAT score of 2289, 56 points higher than the average SAT score of white respondents.

I have posted a critique of Unz’s article here:
http://alum.mit.edu/www/nurit

Columbia statistician Andrew Gelman discusses it here:
http://andrewgelman.com/2013/10/22/ivy-jew-update/

Alex, I didn’t know that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and George W. “Saddam tried to kill my Dad” Bush are Jewish or that the Israelis assassinated JFK. Thanks for the new information.

KA, you have not posted any credible sources to support your contentions. You stated, “[Israel] has been blaming Syria for using gas and was providing information on created and manufactured intercepts.” The Guardian article actually contradicts your claim (as well as Giraldi’s):
“…the intercepts tended to add weight to the claims of the Obama administration and Britain and France that elements of the Assad regime, and not renegade rebel groups, were responsible for the attack in the suburb of Ghouta…”
(The Guardian reported that anonymous sources claim that Assad did not personally order the chemical weapons attack; they did not dispute that the Syrian govt perpetrated the chemical weapons attack.)

The Times of Israel article also did not state that the Israeli intelligence was fabricated. No credible sources have reported that. Counterpunch is not a credible source and cites no evidence for their claims. [Likewise, your sources challenging the UN reports on the Hariri assassination are not credible.]

In contrast, credible sources report that the evidence implicates the Assad regime:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-13/assad-sarin-gas-attack-claim-implausible/4951502

BMG stated: “I have often wondered why during the French revolution, the Russian revolution, the so called Syrian revolution, Churches have been looted and destroyed, while Synagogues have remained largely unscathed.”

Do you have a credible source for your claims? There appear to be very few synagogues in Syria, and one of them was burned to the ground earlier this year:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/historic-damascus-synagogue-looted-and-destroyed/

schmenz, I cite Wikipedia b/c Wiki tends to be fairly neutral and links to primary sources. Giraldi cited Wiki in his piece as well (except the wiki article to which he linked did not actually support his claim).

The CounterPunch articles cite no evidence for their controversial claims. Is there a specific point I’ve made that you’d like to contest?

Yes, I know what happened in 1948. After the Arabs rejected the two-state solution they were offered in the 1947 UN Partition Plan, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria invaded Israel in order to “drive the Jews into the sea.” But I’m assuming you’re actually referring to the war crimes committed by Zionists during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and ignoring all the other stuff. Here’s another wiki link with a convenient list of violence/terrorism in Mandatory Palestine prior to 1948:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_conflicts_in_the_British_Mandate_of_Palestine

KA, I already said in my first comment that I’m not denying the existence of Jewish terrorism. Indeed, it is discussed in the wiki link I posted above that lists violence/terrorism in Mandatory Palestine prior to 1948:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_conflicts_in_the_British_Mandate_of_Palestine

However, you are once again posting from sources that are not credible. At best, one could describe Mondoweiss as presenting a one-sided narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For example, you cite a particular Mondoweiss blog post that highlighted cherry-picked articles from the NYT archives in order to present the Mondoweiss anti-Israel narrative. Here are a couple random stories from the NYT archive that Mondoweiss conveniently omitted:
Arabs lay siege to Jewish colony (January 1948)
And here is an article that briefly mentions the Kfar Etzion massacre on May 13, 1948 in which most of the [Jewish] population was killed after surrendering to Arab troops:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=FB0711FA3F59157A93C4A8178ED85F4C8485F9

Mondoweiss seems to think they’re unearthing new information, but in fact, the simple wiki link I posted above discussed the 1947-1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine, during which both sides committed atrocities, proving once again the value of Wikipedia, as it presents a balanced history of the violence/terrorism perpetrated by both Arabs and Jews.

KA, Mondoweiss is not a credible source b/c at best, they present a one-sided narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They cherry-picked stories from the NYT archive about violence perpetrated by Jews and omitted the stories about Arab violence.

you claimed: “our May 13 -1948 is the sad event but by that time Israeli thugs have cleaned 500,000 Arabs out of Palestine starting long before the declaration of the independence , from Nov 1947.”
There are two problems with your statement:
1. You parrot the Palestinian narrative: that the Arab exodus was due to expulsions by “Israeli thugs.” The Israeli narrative is that Arabs fled under orders by Arab authorities. As you might guess, the truth is somewhere in between. Here is a Time article from May 3, 1948:
“Of the 60,000 Arabs who lived there, many had fled to safety even before the attack started….The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by orders of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city. More than pride and defiance was behind the Arab orders. By withdrawing Arab workers, their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.”
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,798519,00.html

2. You seem to be implying that the Kfar Etzion massacre was somehow a justifiable response to months of violence (starting in November 1947) at the hands of “Israeli thugs.” Well, here is another story from the NYT archive dated November 30, 1947 that Mondoweiss conveniently omitted:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F00E1EFC355E17738DDDA80894DA415B8788F1D3
“In a violent Arab retort to the United Nations decision on Palestine [NB: the UN Partition Plan’s two-state solution], seven Jews were killed by Arab ambushes in Palestine today. Five were slain in an attack on one bus and one in an assault on another bus…
The Arabs will wage a holy war if an attempt is made to enforce the partition plan, Dr. Hussein Khalidi, acting chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, declared in an interview tonight…
Partition, Dr. Khalidi said, ‘is going to lead to a crusade against the Jews.’”

KA states: “The violence did not start in 1936 or 1948.It was started when Balfour wrote that letter .”
Well, perhaps you agree that Giraldi is mistaken when he claims Palestinian terrorism took root in the 1970s in response to the occupation? I guess that’s progress.

Except the violence started before the Balfour Declaration too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1834_Safed_pogrom

1886 attack on Petah Tikva:
http://books.google.com/books?id=8Teb4dKHQcoC&pg=PA82&lpg=PA82

KA, once again, you are only presenting one side of the story. I am aware of the expulsions and already acknowledged that. You refuse to acknowledge the other side of the story. Read the Time magazine article from 1948 that I posted.

Also, in regard to the 1834 Safed pogrom, Jews lived in Safed for centuries prior to 1834. Are you justifying the 1834 Safed pogrom on the basis that Jews seized land from Arabs in Safed? Source please.

Please post a source supporting your claim that the 1834 Safed pogrom was a “normal response” to “rich collaborators.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1834_Safed_pogrom
“Most sources contend that the agitators used the prevailing lawlessness as an opportunity to attack and pillage the *weaker* members of society, namely the Jews and Christians.” (emphasis mine)

Misleading and erroneous statements in Margolis’ piece:

Nelson Mandela did not call Israel an apartheid state:
http://www.wbez.org/news/palestinians-and-jews-both-lay-claim-mandela’s-legacy-109375

The claim that Israel supplied Pretoria with nuclear technology is controversial:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Alleged_collaboration_with_Israel

Netanyahu did not “boycott” Mandela’s funeral any more than Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan:
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/no-turkish-leader-to-attend-nelson-mandela-funeral.aspx?pageID=238&nID=59254&NewsCatID=359
Neither Netanyahu nor Erdogan attended Mandela’s funeral; neither did so as an act of protest, which the term “boycott” implies. Lower level representatives of both governments attended Mandela’s funeral. Interesting that Netanyahu’s absence provoked an international outcry but not Erdogan’s.

Thomas O. Meehan, I suggest Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Thomas O. Meehan, my username is linkified to my personal website where my name is featured prominently.

As for your desire to catalog “Zionist offenses” in a database, may I ask what you mean by the term “Zionist” and what your goals are for this “invaluable” resource?

According to The American Heritage Dictionary, a Zionist is one who supports the maintenance and preservation of the state of Israel as a Jewish homeland. While anti-Zionists try to appropriate Nelson Mandela for their cause by cherry-picking his statements (like the link Giraldi cites above), Mandela was arguably a Zionist, albeit a Zionist who criticized Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip (much like myself!):
Nelson Mandela: “I understand completely well why Israel occupies these lands. There was a war. But if there is going to be peace, there must be complete withdrawal from all of these areas.”
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Mandela-and-Israel-334174

Nelson Mandela: “I cannot conceive of Israel withdrawing if Arab states do not recognize Israel, within secure borders”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/mandela-says-israel-must-give-up-arab-land--but-only-for-peace-740133.html

However, according to a poll conducted by The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 84% of Arabs are opposed to their countries’ diplomatic recognition of Israel.

Hence, the logical deduction from Mandela’s statements is that the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is due to Arab states’ refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist within secure borders, as even Mandela acknowledged that Israel cannot withdraw from the Palestinian territories while Arabs refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist. As far as I’m concerned, that makes Mandela a Zionist, so I hope you will include Mandela’s “offenses” in your “Zionist offenses” database.

Amry stated: “NB, interesting how you accuse others of ‘cherry-picking’ while you then went ahead and not only did so with Mandela’s statements”
I was not cherry-picking – my statement was a comment on Giraldi’s piece, which appropriates Mandela for the anti-Israel cause, i.e. my comment was intended to be read in concert with Giraldi’s article and the one-sided piece he cited in Al-Ahram. I’m presenting the other side, assuming one is already familiar with Mandela’s criticism of the occupation of the Palestinian terrorities. Had I written an article asserting Mandela was pro-Israel and only citing the quotes above, you would be correct to accuse me of cherry-picking.

“[Mandela] certainly did not equate the current conflict with the ‘Arab state’s refusal to recognize Israel’.”
That is certainly possible. I’m saying it’s the logical deduction from Mandela’s statements, combined with the poll indicating that 84% of Arabs are opposed to their countries’ diplomatic recognition of Israel. It’s entirely possible that Mandela did not appreciate the fact that few Arabs recognize Israel’s right to exist within secure borders, especially since he made those remarks in 1999, before the failure of the 2000 Camp David summit.

“Especially since the Saudi Plan – where the Arab States will all recognize Israel and all that – are still waiting for Israeli approval (but of course, peace is not as profitable, and how else can the Israeli government cry of being in ‘existential danger’ if all their neighbours leave them alone?).”
And here is another one-sided narrative. If Israel does not want peace as you imply, why did most observers agree that the 2000 Camp David Summit failed primarily due to Arafat’s insistence on the “right of return”? The Palestinians thought that the 2000 Camp David Summit did not adequately recognize Palestinian right of return, and the Israelis thought the Saudi Plan was too accommodating of the Palestinian “right of return,” as that could eventually lead to Jews being a minority in Israel and the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

“It is, however, quite damning that you did not even once try to answer Mandela’s claims of Israeli apartheid”
It is quite damning of you, in fact, since Mandela never made a claim of “Israeli apartheid”:
http://www.wbez.org/news/palestinians-and-jews-both-lay-claim-mandela’s-legacy-109375
[Note how this article is balanced and presents both sides!]

“Unless of course, if you think Arabs” and “Palestinians” are one an indivisible – sort of like saying that unless if Uganda stops their mischief, the Boers cannot grant South African blacks independence.”
What a bizarre accusation. Where did I imply anything of the sort? I’m well-aware that Palestinians are a subgroup of Arabs. Of course, not all Palestinians or Arabs think alike, and public Palestinian opinion and public Arab opinion are not necessarily identical. For example, a recent poll found that 62% of Palestinian Muslims believe that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are often or sometimes justified, while just 12% of Tunisian Muslims believe that suicide bombings are justified:
http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/09/10/muslim-publics-share-concerns-about-extremist-groups/

However, for the subject at hand, Palestinian and overall Arab public opinion appear to be aligned, as only 23% of Palestinians recognize Israel’s right to exist [as a homeland for the Jewish people]:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3987277,00.html

Jeff Blankfort, is it true that you once stated, “I do not believe there was any official Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews because, had there been, there would not have been close to a million left alive” as claimed here?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/29/988922/-Mondofront-Now-with-Gilad-Atzmon
just curious.

America First, I’m actually a Mossad agent.

goldhoarder claims: “Your problem is you want to insist the arabs recognize Israel without any agreement on Israel to do the same.”
That’s because it’s a non-issue. The Jewish leadership accepted an Arab Palestinian state in 1947; it was the Arab and Palestinian leadership who rejected the 1947 UN Partition Plan two-state solution, as they refused to accept a Jewish state. Indeed, Abbas’ red line is refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/12/abbas-rejects-west-bank-border-security-plan-20131213102049774691.html
The issue is not whether Netanyahu accepts a Palestinian state; it’s whether Netanyahu accepts [what Palestinians consider] a viable Palestinian state. [of course, the “right of return” remains a huge sticking point for both sides.]

The Israeli public was fully behind the Cast lead operation and cheer on the slaughter any time Isreal drops bombs on them.
Yes, most Israelis supported Cast Lead [in order to stop Hamas’ rocket attacks]; however, that is not the same as supporting the slaughter of innocent civilians. Please cite a source for your claim that the Israeli public “cheer on the slaughter any time Israel drops bombs on them.”

The movie 5 broken cameras shows in perfect detail the apartheid state that Osrael has become. You are an apologist for racist views.
Five Broken Cameras is about the West Bank. I said that I support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish homeland but that I don’t support the occupation. How does that make me an apologist for racist views?

Thomas, where is the evidence that I place the interests of Israel above those of the US? Or that I place the interests of Jews above those of Americans [in general]?

fyi, being anti-anti-Semitism ≠ philo-Semitic or being anti-Gentile.

The definition of Zionist is one who supports the maintenance and preservation of the state of Israel as a Jewish homeland. Supporting Jewish self-determination does not necessarily mean denying the right of Palestinians to self-determination. Nor does it necessarily mean placing the interests of Israel above those of the US.

So when you say you want to chronicle and examine “people who propel [their] group interest above that of the majority,” are you talking about Jews or Zionists? or Jewish Zionists? 82% of American white evangelical Christians vs 40% of American Jews believe Israel was given to the Jewish people by God:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/10/03/more-white-evangelicals-than-american-jews-say-god-gave-israel-to-the-jewish-people/
So are you planning to chronicle the offenses committed by these white Christian Zionists?

The majority of Americans support Israel’s right to exist:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/israel_the_middle_east/71_say_middle_east_peace_agreement_must_recognize_israel_s_right_to_exist
http://www.gallup.com/poll/161387/americans-sympathies-israel-match-time-high.aspx

66% of Americans think US support of Israel is “about right” or insufficient:
http://www.people-press.org/2012/03/15/little-support-for-u-s-intervention-in-syrian-conflict/

Hence, it’s clear that the majority of Americans are Zionists.

Giraldi claims: “Stanley Fischer is being promoted under the radar by the Israel lobby to take over the number two spot at the Fed.” No source is cited to support this claim, and this article says that Fischer was chosen by Obama. As a second-term President, why would Obama need to kowtow to the Israel Lobby? If Obama’s decisions were dictated by the Israel Lobby, why would he pick Hagel, who loudly complained about the “Jewish lobby” intimidating congresspeople, as the Defense Secretary?

Giraldi then states that Fischer “has aggressively advanced Israel’s interests vis-à-vis the US Treasury,” citing an article posted on an anti-Israel website. I barely know who Stanley Fischer is, so I’m not going to research his life history, but it’s clear that the article cited is not credible, as it makes a number of false, misleading, and illogical claims:
1. “New bills in Congress drafted by AIPAC call not only for additional sanctions aimed at thwarting a fledgling deal on Iran’s nuclear program (favored 2-to-1 by Americans). AIPAC’s bill forces the U.S. to “have Israel’s back” in the event of a unilateral Israeli strike.”

a. There have been a number of polls on American public opinion on the Iran deal, and predictably, the piece cited the poll most favorable to supporting his “the Israel Lobby is subverting the American will” narrative. e.g. this poll found that only 32% of Americans approve of the Iran deal, while 43% disapprove:
http://www.people-press.org/2013/12/09/limited-support-for-iran-nuclear-agreement/

b. The bill in question does NOT force the US to “have Israel’s back,” as the relevant provision is non-binding.

2. The article claims that Americans have never been polled on US aid to Israel. This is also false; in fact, 66% of Americans think US support of Israel is “about right” or insufficient:
http://www.people-press.org/2012/03/15/little-support-for-u-s-intervention-in-syrian-conflict/

Of course, citing such a poll result would undermine the article’s entire thesis about how Jews/the Israel Lobby are subverting the American will.

3. “Soon after word of his Fed nomination spread, Fischer again made uncharacteristically harsh statements about Israel…Fischer told the audience that Israel is not seeking peace “to the extent that it should” and that it is “divided between those who want to settle the West Bank and those who seek peace.” Fischer—who had every chance to pull U.S. and Israeli financial levers that could have forced Israel out of occupied territories or forced compliance with International law—never did. Adding to suspicion that the statement was simply more empty “lip service””

i.e. the article is claiming Fischer’s criticisms of Israel are insincere presumably b/c he could’ve singlehandedly “forced Israel out of occupied territories” when he was Governor of the Bank of Israel or when he was purportedly unduly influencing American policy on Israel in various other capacities. that’s an absurd and illogical statement. The President of the United States has criticized Israel’s settlement policies; do people seriously argue that Obama’s criticisms of the settlements are empty “lip service”? Surely Obama could “pull US financial levers that could have forced Israel out of occupied territories” by making all US aid contingent on Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories. That doesn’t make Obama’s criticism of the settlements insincere.

Don Nash, I’m pointing out that Philip Giraldi makes claims that are not credible and also cites sources that are not credible.

Are you saying that I’m an Israel Firster and/or that Stanley Fischer is? Where is the evidence that either of us places the interests of Israel above those of the US?

I wish I were paid for being an Israel troll, i.e. pointing out false and misleading statements published on unz.com about Jews, Israel, etc.

Wow, unz.com managed to turn an unjustly mild sentence for a Texas teen who committed vehicular homicide while drunk into a rant about Israel and Jews. bravo!

Can any of you point out any false or misleading statements I’ve made? If I’m such a “slimy character,” surely you should have no problem doing so.

Giraldi previously claimed that “whether the victims of the attack [in Ghouta, Syria] suffered symptoms of Sarin was also disputed” when, in fact, the UN “confirmed, unequivocally and objectively, that chemical weapons have been used in Syria” (with 85% of blood samples testing + for sarin); Giraldi’s apparent goal was to lead readers to believe that the notion that Assad ordered a chemical weapons attack on his people is all a fabrication of the Mossad. a shining example of integrity, indeed.

Thomas O. Meehan, Stanley Fischer has spent far more time in the US than in Israel. He’s been a US citizen since 1976. Given that he’s a dual citizen, I see no problem with pointing out that he may have dual loyalties; the charge being made is that he’s more loyal to Israel than to the US. And somehow people don’t seem to get as exercised about dual citizens with countries other than Israel; has anyone seriously suggested that Ted Cruz is more loyal to Canada than to the US?

You misunderstood my remark about the bill introduced by Kirk, Menendez, and Schumer. Passage of the bill could certainly lead to Iran walking away from the agreement; however, I was specifically responding to the following claim made by the source Giraldi cited: “AIPAC’s bill forces the U.S. to ‘have Israel’s back’ in the event of a unilateral Israeli strike.” This is not true, as that particular provision of the bill is non-binding. I never stated that the bill is non-binding, but rather that the provision regarding US support for Israel in the event of a unilateral Israeli strike is non-binding. Hence, the bill does NOT “force the US to ‘have Israel’s back’ in the event of a unilateral Israeli strike.”

A few more points:
1. I’ve never claimed that the Israel Lobby doesn’t exist.
2. My age is irrelevant – you are indulging in the “appeal to authority” fallacy. I am indeed a nobody, but that doesn’t make me wrong. A UMass grad student found a crucial mistake in the work of two Harvard professors; that the Harvard professors are older and more established was irrelevant. I’ve asked y’all to cite false or misleading statements I’ve made, so I’m still waiting.
3. You compared the Israel Lobby to rats?

Philip Giraldi states: “Nurit, if you do not understand why having a foreign citizen with demonstrated loyalty to a foreign government as the number two in the Fed you are delusional.”
If I don’t understand what? I already said that “Given that [Fischer] is a dual citizen, I see no problem with pointing out that he may have dual loyalties.”

“Your fundamental problem is that you place your tribal interests above the broader national interests that most of the rest of us hold dear. The people you are attacking on this site are loyal to the United States while you define yourself in terms of your ethnicity and are passionately attached to a foreign interest.”
Where is the evidence that I place my “tribal interests” above American interests? Where is the evidence that I define myself in terms of my ethnicity and not my [American] nationality? Where have I advocated policy that would benefit Israel and harm the US?

“Your dismissal of a US pledge to fight in a war initiated by Israel as non-binding after tying yourself in knots over the meaning of non-binding is ridiculous.”
How am I tying myself in knots over the meaning of non-binding? I cited an article in Foreign Policy, which states “The bill includes a non-binding provision that states that if Israel takes ‘military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program,’ the U.S. ‘should stand with Israel’…” (i.e. “have Israel’s back” in the parlance of the source your cited: “AIPAC’s bill forces the U.S. to ‘have Israel’s back’ in the event of a unilateral Israeli strike.”) I’m not tying myself in knots. I’m merely citing ForeignPolicy.com. A non-binding provision does not force the US to do anything.

Philip, I find it fascinating that you chose to make a number of personal attacks against me without citing any examples of my engaging in any of the behaviors of which I’m accused. Why not respond to my criticism of your “Quitting over Syria” piece? Why did you say that whether sarin was used at Ghouta was disputed when the UN unequivocally confirmed it? Why did you say sarin was found on only one of two rockets when in fact, the UN found sarin on the majority of the rocket fragments?

Oscar Peterson claims: “If Israel gets its way and attacks Iran, embroiling the US, it will no doubt put serious strain on the Israeli financial system. I wonder who will be called upon to bail it out? And little Stan Fischer will be perfectly placed as an Israeli mole in the US Fed to achieve that and other pro-Israel, anti-American policies.”
I’m not overly familiar with the Fed’s activities, but I’m skeptical that the Fed can unilaterally decide to bail out a foreign country. Wouldn’t Congress have to approve aid to a foreign country? (I may well be mistaken, so feel free to cite reputable sources proving me wrong.)

“That you defend Israeli Firster Fischer is ample evidence of your own Israel Firster status.”
I don’t see how my statements regarding Fischer are evidence of my Israel Firster status. I said that Giraldi’s source attacking Fischer is not credible. I mostly addressed other misinformation in Giraldi’s source b/c I know nothing about Fischer beyond his wiki bio. I never even expressed my support for Fischer’s nomination since I know so little about him.

Oscar Peterson, I asked for evidence that Stanley Fischer is an Israel Firster. I never said I disagreed with the notion wrt Fischer, as I know so little about him; hence, I am not in a position to evaluate to which country he is more loyal. That Fischer served as the Governor of the Bank of Israel certainly suggests he has dual loyalties – I’m not contesting that; however, I’m still unconvinced that Fischer places Israel’s interest before US interests. That said, I know that I do not value Israel’s interests above US interests, so I strenuously object to being called an Israel Firster.

Thanks for posting the info on the Fed bailing out foreign banks – I did not know about that.

Oscar, the antiwar.com link you are citing is a reprint of the source that Giraldi cited. I already demonstrated false and misleading statements in that piece in my original comment. When I’m able to easily identify factual errors in a piece, I no longer trust other claims made in that piece (without further verification).

Regarding Fischer’s position as governor of the Bank of Israel, you seem to imply that the economy is a zero-sum game; that is, since Fischer managed Israel’s economy (and apparently did a good job according to his wiki page), he must have worked against US interests. The economy is not a zero-sum game, and I’ve seen no evidence Fischer damaged US interests while at the helm of the Bank of Israel.

Why would Fischer leave a chairman’s position in the middle of a term to become a deputy?
Because being #2 at the helm of the world’s largest economy is a bigger deal than being #1 manager of world’s 42nd largest economy.

Another question I asked was: Why would a second-term President nominate someone who places another country’s interests above US interests, given that Obama is no longer beholden to any lobby and has actually “antagonized” the Israel Lobby (Hagel, Iran deal, etc)?

Of course, Israel is NOT objectively important to the US. In fact, it constitutes one of our greatest strategic liabilities.
Actually, that’s your opinion, and you’re entitled to it, of course. The [neutral] wiki page on US-Israel relations mentions ways the US has benefited from the US-Israel alliance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel–United_States_relations
And here’s a random opinion piece touting the benefits of the alliance for the US:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/31/opinion/la-oe-blackwill-israel-20111031
I’m not interested in arguing this point, as it is way off-topic. I made one point, which is that Giraldi cited a source that is not credible to support his claims regarding Stanley Fischer, and this has blown up into a larger disagreement I’m not interested in furthering.

again, I’m not “defending” Stanley Fischer and have no opinion on his nomination; I’m just pointing out that I have not seen evidence of anything sinister at play here.

Thomas, I was responding to your attack on me based on my age, not to mention your false statement that I “barely exist save for your vigorous peddling of your attack on Ron Unz in numerous Jewish internet sites of self-absorption.” Last I checked, my debunking of Unz’s piece, which erroneously claimed that Harvard discriminates against white Gentiles in favor of Jews, was discussed on more academic [math/stats] blogs than “Jewish internet sites of self-absorption.”

btw, do you describe sites like ChristianPost.com as “Christian internet sites of self-absorption”?

Do you condemn the 46% of American Christians who identify as Christians first, not Americans? In fact, 70% of white American evangelicals, who are overwhelmingly Zionist, see themselves first as Christians rather than as Americans.

That I am interested in combatting anti-Semitism does not make me any less American than you.

And no one has demonstrated any false or misleading statements I’ve made or any policy I’ve advocated that would advance Israel’s interests to the detriment of American interests.

Oscar, I’m not going to respond to most of your hostile and borderline libelous reply except to point out false statements you’ve made about me.

By your logic, Fischer could become the head of the Bank of China and there would never be a conflict with US interests because “the economy is not zero sum.” Of course, you’d never make that argument if the other country were not Israel, which brings into question YOUR loyalty.
China is not an ally of the US and is in fact a competitor, so your analogy is invalid. I couldn’t care less if a former governor of the Bank of Canada served on the Federal Reserve, and in fact, a former governor of the Bank of Canada is currently governor of the Bank of England:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Carney
Somehow I doubt people ascribed insidious motivations to Carney’s decision to take the helm at the Bank of England, accusing him of treachery, as you have accused Fischer.

That you wrongly assume that the only dual citizens I accept as candidates for Federal Reserve positions are US-Israel dual citizens speaks volumes about YOU and YOUR motivations.

So, first of all, you admit that when he left the BOI almost a year ago, it was because he was being prepared for the Vice Governor position at the Fed which was not announced until earlier this month.
I admit nothing. You asked why anyone would leave a chairman’s position to become a deputy, so I explained why. I haven’t followed Fischer’s timeline. He could’ve left BOI for any number of reasons.

minor correction: that should say: “That you wrongly assume that the only ‘foreign’ candidates I accept for Federal Reserve positions are those who have served in the Bank of Israel speaks volumes about YOU and YOUR motivations.”

Oscar, I’m not responding to most of your comments b/c my interest is in correcting misinformation. I’m not interested in engaging in a debate on the value of the US-Israel alliance. You call me “conniving” and “disingenuous” b/c I deny being an expert on the Federal Reserve and Stanley Fischer’s life story? The fact remains that you are unable to point to any false or misleading statements I’ve made (or any policy I’ve advocated that would benefit Israel and harm the US), while I’ve clearly exhibited factual errors and misleading statements in the antiwar.com/IRmep article cited by you and Giraldi. I’ve also exposed Giraldi for claiming that “whether the victims of the attack [in Ghouta, Syria] suffered symptoms of Sarin was also disputed” when, in fact, the UN “confirmed, unequivocally and objectively, that chemical weapons have been used in Syria” (with 85% of blood samples testing + for sarin); Giraldi’s apparent goal was to lead readers to believe that the notion that Assad ordered a chemical weapons attack on his people is all a fabrication of the Mossad. But I’m the “conniving, “disingenuous,” and “slimy character,” according to you.

Furthermore, you have made FALSE statements about me, claiming, “By your logic, Fischer could become the head of the Bank of China and there would never be a conflict with US interests because “the economy is not zero sum.” Of course, you’d never make that argument if the other country were not Israel, which brings into question YOUR loyalty.”

You had no basis on which to make such a false accusation. Having an interest in exposing false and misleading statements published about Jews and/or Israel in no way suggests I’m more loyal to Jews and/or Israel than I am to my country.

I also find it fascinating that someone who uses non-American slang is questioning my loyalty to the US. The only US citizen I’ve ever personally heard use the term “winge” (as a synonym for whine) is a US-Australia dual citizen. Those treacherous US-Australia dual citizens, ay?

Thomas O Meehan wrote, “The more Christian they get, the more in line with American tradition they become. But of course you know that.”
Oh, of course I know that you think that.

“As Christianity is a religion rather than a blood-line, it lacks its own little rogue ethno-state. Some countries are more rather than less Christian. But since Christianity enfolds all mankind in pursuit of goals beyond this world, we have no folk state such as you have. We are already home.”
Are you implying that American Jews aren’t home?

I guess you forgot about the concern that JFK would take his orders from the Pope in Rome.

How are you different from a member of the old German American Bund?
You fundamentally don’t understand that combatting anti-Semitism does not make me anti-Gentile. I have never advocated policy that would benefit Israel and harm the US. The German American Bund promoted anti-Semitism and a favorable view of Nazi Germany (which was an enemy of the US, while Israel is an ally of the US) by disseminating misinformation. Interestingly, the Bund published a document entitled “What Price Federal Reserve? Hordes of Jews Have Swarmed Into Government Posts in Positions of Control”:
https://ia600404.us.archive.org/29/items/WhatPriceTheFederalReserve/GAB.pdf
how delightfully topical.

Buy flaunting your dual loyalty here, are you sure you aren’t propelling rather than combatting anti-Semitism?
I certainly agree that my debunking anti-Semitic/anti-Israel conspiracy theories is sure to enrage anti-Semites.

Philip, can you please clarify what your intentions were for your “Quitting over Syria” piece? Why did you say that that “whether the victims of the attack [in Ghouta, Syria] suffered symptoms of Sarin was also disputed” when, in fact, the UN “confirmed, unequivocally and objectively, that chemical weapons have been used in Syria“?

Why did you mention that “no autopsies were performed to confirm the presence of the chemical [sarin]” when “85 per cent of blood samples from the sites in Ghouta tested positive for Sarin” according to the UN? To the uninformed reader, your assertion sounds suspicious. In actual fact, there is no need to perform autopsies when multiple survivors have had blood tests to confirm sarin exposure.

Why did you say that “traces of Sarin were not found in most of the areas being investigated, nor on one of the two rockets identified” when sarin was “recovered from a majority of the rockets or rocket fragments,” and sarin and its byproducts “were observed in the majority of the [environmental] samples” according to the UN?

You were clearly trying to sow doubts that a sarin attack even occurred (when the UN unequivocally confirmed it had); if a chemical weapons attack had indeed occurred, you then suggested that the notion that Assad’s regime perpetrated it was based on intelligence “widely believed [to] have been fabricated by Tel Aviv.” Besides the fact that I haven’t seen any credible source corroborate your claim about “Tel Aviv” (i.e. the Mossad) fabricating intelligence wrt the Syrian chemical weapons attack, US, British, and French intelligence agencies, as well as Human Rights Watch, have all pointed the finger at the Syrian government:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-13/assad-sarin-gas-attack-claim-implausible/4951502
I glanced at the Human Rights Watch report, and they do not rely on “interceptions of telephone conversations” [which you claim were “widely believed” to have been fabricated by the Mossad] to implicate Assad’s regime.

Based on the above, I have concluded that your apparent goal was to lead readers to believe that the notion that Assad’s regime ordered a chemical weapons attack on his people is all a fabrication of the Mossad. Do you have an alternative explanation?

Finally, Israelis do not “want to enslave the Palestinians;” most polls have shown that the majority of Israelis support a two-state solution.

Thomas O Meehan stated: “I’m asserting that you and a large number of your co-religionists behave as though your real home is elsewhere.”
And what is your evidence for this? I consider the Iraq War the worst foreign policy disaster for the US in a long time, and American Jews were less likely to support the invasion than Americans in general:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2003/03/13/powell-scoffs-at-conspiracy-theories-on-iraq-war/
(This is an AP feed reprinted by Fox, not an “original” Fox News story)
“Americans Jews appear to express significantly less support for military action against Iraq to end the rule of Saddam Hussein, according to research by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Overall support is just above six in 10, 62 percent, in an analysis of Pew polls over the past six months, while Jewish support is at 52 percent. Evangelical Protestants are most likely to support military action, with 73 percent backing a war with Iraq.”

What could be more patriotic than opposing a disastrous war for the US?

If you are not one hundred percent investing in this country to the exclusion of all others, you are not dual loyal; you are disloyal.
Well, you’re entitled to that opinion, but lots of Americans would disagree with that. I was born and raised in Boston, so I’m quite familiar with Irish-American culture, and many Irish-Americans take pride in their ethno-cultural heritage and identify strongly with their ancestral homeland, as do many Italian-Americans, Mexican-Americans, etc. I don’t think caring about two countries necessarily makes one disloyal. In fact, by your logic, one who cares about 2+ countries is automatically disloyal to both/all of them!

Your position is ridiculous in that you attack others versions of events while fatally undermining your own standing as an objective participant.
No one has been able to exhibit any false or misleading statements I’ve made. The responses to my comments pointing out misleading and false statements in articles published on unz.com or sources cited on unz.com have been almost entirely personal attacks that do not actually refute my points. Actually, I’m not even sure it’s accurate to describe them as personal attacks; they’re attacks based on false assumptions stemming from stereotypes about Jews (like the accusation that I only accept US-Israel dual citizens for the Federal Reserve, not any other dual-citizens).

If you refuse to read the UN report on the Syrian chemical weapons attack (to which I linked above) and accept Giraldi’s claims simply because you automatically discount anything I say related to Israel due to my ethnicity, that says a lot more about you than it does about me.

I sure hope this back and forth has been good for readership but I have no more time to waste on an ethnic troll. When your identity is your motive, debate is pointless.
I don’t deny that my ethnic identity (not to mention my affiliation with Harvard and prior knowledge that some of the high academic achievers Unz classified as non-Jewish white are actually Jewish) motivated me to take the time to debunk Unz’s article claiming that Harvard discriminates against white Gentiles in favor of Jews. That doesn’t make my rebuttal incorrect. In fact, no one has identified any errors in my rebuttal (to my knowledge). Feel free to try to find any.

More to the point, my motivation to fight anti-Semitism (which stems from the fact that most of my father’s family was killed in the Holocaust) is surely more just than motivation based on hate.

Here is evidence suggesting that Assad’s regime was indeed behind the sarin gas attack:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-13/assad-sarin-gas-attack-claim-implausible/4951502
(includes a link to a Human Rights Watch report fingering the Syrian govt)

and a rebuttal of the Hersh piece:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/12/09/sy_hershs_chemical_misfire

jack_kane, I have written a rebuttal of Unz’s “Meritocracy” article:
http://alum.mit.edu/www/nurit

Columbia statistician Andrew Gelman discusses it here:
http://andrewgelman.com/2013/10/22/ivy-jew-update/

In short: Unz substantially overestimated the percentage of Jews at Harvard while grossly underestimating the percentage of Jews among high academic achievers, when, in fact, there is no discrepancy. In addition, Unz’s arguments have proven to be untenable in light of a recent survey of incoming Harvard freshmen conducted by The Harvard Crimson, which found that students who identified as Jewish reported a mean SAT score of 2289, 56 points higher than the average SAT score of white respondents.

Taylor accuses Wolfowitz, Perle and Feith of having “cooked up bogus ‘intelligence’ to get us into the Iraq war for Israel’s benefit.” What “intelligence” did they fabricate? My understanding is that the single greatest intelligence failure of the “case” for the Iraq invasion was the Nigerian yellow cake uranium “evidence,” which was forged by a spy in the Italian intelligence service:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/04/international/europe/04italy.html

Philip, Glenn Greenwald already answered your question:
“Contrary to the claim in this article, I never called for Pollard’s release. I don’t have any position on that at all, and never expressed one.”

KA, given your rampant misspellings, I can’t be bothered to discern the identity of all ~15 people you blame for the Iraq War, but it appears that [almost?] every single name you listed is of a Jewish person (or individuals described as Jewish on anti-Semitic websites like Occidental Observer). That you seem to think that [almost?] all of the people who drove the US into the Iraq War are Jewish speaks volumes about you. Yes, Jews are over-represented among those folks, but they were not most or all of them. Here is a list of the architects of the Iraq War – note all the non-Jews on this list that you failed to mention:
http://thinkprogress.org/report/the-architects-where-are-they-now/

KA claims, “No intelligence, no debate, just plain demand– do it, we the neocons want it, we will force US to do it– no intelligence, no cooking of intelligence. Actually America past that point. Israel signals – Congress moves”
If Congress/US does whatever Israel wants, why didn’t the US launch a military strike against the Assad regime? Congress isn’t controlled by Israel, as you’re insinuating; Congress’ actions are largely dictated by American public opinion, which [initially] supported the invasion of Iraq, opposed military involvement in the Syrian civil war, and supports new Iran sanctions. Netanyahu was also highly critical of the Iran agreement signed by US et al, and yet, it’s likely going to stand despite that American public opinion has been equivocal wrt the Iran deal.

And where is the evidence that neocons were behind the Italian uranium-Niger forgeries?

KA, I will continue to cite polls, as they reflect American public opinion and undermine your conspiracy theories. Obviously American public opinion isn’t always right, as invading Iraq was a grievous mistake. So it’s fine to criticize and seek to change American public opinion when it’s mistaken or bigoted. However, given that Americans [initially] supported the invasion of Iraq, and GW “Saddam tried to kill my Dad” Bush needed little convincing, it’s disingenuous to blame “the Jews” for the Iraq War, as you are clearly doing by only listing the Jewish individuals and not the non-Jews who helped drive the US into war. You even mention Jews like Trotsky who have nothing to do with the Iraq War!

As for Powell, his advocacy for invading Iraq damaged his reputation, so of course he wants to blame others. Curiously, he changed his mind on this issue after the war didn’t turn out so well:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2003/03/13/powell-scoffs-at-conspiracy-theories-on-iraq-war/
Published March 13, 2003 Associated Press [i.e. not an “original” Fox News story]

“Secretary of state Colin Powell flatly rejected on Thursday any suggestion that the Bush administration’s confrontation with Iraq was engineered by Israel or American Jews. Powell told a House Appropriations Subcommittee that the drive to compel Iraq to disarm stretches back over two administrations and 12 years of United Nations resolutions.

“It is driven by our own national interest,” Powell said under questioning by the subcommittee chairman, Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., who said he wanted to clear up media suggestions that American supporters of Israel — and Israel itself — were driving U.S. strategy.

Americans Jews appear to express significantly less support for military action against Iraq to end the rule of Saddam Hussein, according to research by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Overall support is just above six in 10, 62 percent, in an analysis of Pew polls over the past six months, while Jewish support is at 52 percent. Evangelical Protestants are most likely to support military action, with 73 percent backing a war with Iraq.

Powell told the subcommittee the U.S policy “is not driven by any small cabal that is buried away somewhere,” nor by a small group of individuals.”

KA, I cited the Pew polling that found that American Jews were significantly less likely to support military action against Iraq than Americans in general.

And the first Salon article you cited contradicts the narrative you’ve been pushing:
“The touchiest aspect of all is the role played by pro-Israel neoconservatives in laying the groundwork for the Iraq war. Much of the media has been loath to go near this, for obvious and in some ways honorable reasons: It feels a little like “blame the Jews.” But that taboo has faded as it has become clearer that “the Jews” are not the ones being blamed for helping pave the way to war, but a group of powerful neoconservatives, some but not all of them Jewish, who subscribe to the hard-right views of Israel’s Likud Party.” (emphasis mine)

You’ve repeatedly focused on the Jews who played a role in the invasion of Iraq and ignored the role of non-Jews.

As for Colin Powell, his remarks in 2003 speak for themselves. He was a highly respected statesman prior to the Iraq War, so he could’ve resigned if he didn’t actually support the Iraq War, rather than give a BS speech before the UN. As I said previously, Powell’s advocacy for invading Iraq damaged his reputation, so of course he wants to blame others.

Philip Giraldi falsely claims that “Iran has never actually threatened to attack Israel”:
http://www.tasnimnews.com/english/Home/Single/128150
“Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari warned the US about severe consequences of any military intervention in Syria, and stressed that the possible war in Syria will result in imminent destruction of the Zionist regime of Israel.”

Giraldi then states that Iran “hasn’t attacked anyone since the seventeenth century.” This is misleading as Iran is an active state sponsor of terrorism (Hezbollah, Hamas, etc) and is intimately involved in the Syrian civil war:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_terrorism

Regarding Giraldi’s claim that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, the UN-affiliated IAEA does not share Giraldi’s confidence. Here is a recent IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program:
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2013/gov2013-40.pdf

“While some of the activities identified in the Annex have civilian as well as military applications, others are specific to nuclear weapons….The Agency has serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program me…The information indicates that Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device…Between 2007 and 2010, Iran continued to conceal nuclear activities…”

“As stated in the Annex to the Director General’s November 2011 report, information provided to the Agency by Member States indicates that Iran constructed a large explosives containment vessel in which to conduct hydrodynamic experiments; such experiments would be strong indicators of possible nuclear weapon development. The information also indicates that the containment vessel was installed at the Parchin site in 2000. The location at the Parchin site of the vessel was only identified in March 2011, and the Agency notified Iran of that location in January 2012.”

Also, despite Giraldi’s claim that a “veto proof majority of Senators now appear to be willing to vote for new Iran sanctions,” I predict that a veto override isn’t going to happen:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/01/15/push-for-iran-sanctions-bill-losing-momentum/

Philip Giraldi states: “read your own citation from the IRGC General – he is not threatening to attack Israel. He does not speak for the Iranian government in any event, but no Iranian government has ever threatened to attack Israel.
The leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard warned that if the US launches a military strike against Syria, Israel will face “imminent destruction.” I fail to understand how that is not a threat to attack Israel, nor why the leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is not considered to speak for the Iranian government. If the US Defense Secretary or the Secretary of the US Army threatened the “imminent destruction” of a country, I would certainly consider that a threat made by the US government to attack said country.

Third, Hamas and Hezbollah are groups that are resistance to Israeli occupation. Whether or not they are terrorists is a judgement call and many countries do not consider them to be terrorists.
You are correct – many majority Muslim countries do not classify Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist groups, and if you don’t consider Hamas and Hezbollah to be terrorist groups, you are entitled to your opinion. However, such an opinion would put you at odds with most of your countrymen, esp as Hezbollah is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans.

Some people don’t consider Al-Qaeda a terrorist group either – after all, bin Laden wanted to liberate Muslim holy lands from US occupation.

Israel meanwhile is a demonstrated state sponsor of terrorism with its assassinations of Iranian scientists and Palestinians.
Sure, but the same argument can be made about the US too (see: Anwar al-Awlaki). In fact, Iranian state TV has called the US “the world’s number-one terrorist state.”

Fourth, both the CIA and Mossad agree that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapons program. Your citing “concerns” by the IAEA does not change that.
Are you privy to the CIA’s and Mossad’s current opinions on this matter? The IAEA has noted that aspects of Iran’s nuclear program are “specific to nuclear weapons.” In addition, you are misleadingly characterizing the intelligence regarding Iran’s nuclear program. The consensus, as I understand it, is that Iran is looking to achieve “critical capability,” which gives Iran the ability to build a nuclear weapon without detection in a matter of weeks once the decision is made to do so. This “breakout” time has been steadily decreasing over the past couple years:
http://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/critical-capability/8

Ha, I wish I were paid for this!

It’s no accident that Unz concocted his theory that Jews are preferentially admitted to Harvard and also regularly publishes anti-Israel pieces based on misleading and false information.

Oscar Peterson, the editor and publisher of unz.com has himself stated:
“Science largely runs on the honor system, and once simple statements of fact…are found to be false, we cannot trust more complex claims made by the particular scholar.”
https://www.unz.com/article/race-iq-and-wealth/
By demonstrating false and misleading statements made by Unz, Giraldi, et al, I am simply following Unz’s own rubric for discrediting “scholars.”

However, since you believe that the IAEA, which is clearly the most credible source on Iran’s nuclear program, is not in fact credible due to the fact that the current director happens to agree with the US on various issues, here’s an IAEA report from 2009, when Mohamed ElBaradei was the director of the IAEA:
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2009/gov2009-35.pdf
“there remain a number of outstanding issues which give rise to concerns, and which need to be clarified to exclude the existence of possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme.”

“Contrary to the request of the Board of Governors and the requirements of the Security Council, Iran has neither implemented the Additional Protocol nor cooperated with the Agency in connection with the remaining issues which give rise to concerns and which need to be clarified to exclude the possibility of military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme. Unless Iran implements the Additional Protocol and clarifies the outstanding issues, the Agency will not be in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran.”

So how is Giraldi in a position to declare that Iran has no nuclear weapons program?

I find it fascinating that now folks are arguing that we should listen to CIA reports from a couple years ago and not the IAEA’s current reports. I have always regarded IAEA as the most credible source on such matters. Anyone who read IAEA’s reports on Iraq in 2003 would not have supported the invasion of Iraq. Should we have listened to the CIA in 2003 too? I’m merely being consistent, as I form my opinions on the basis of the most authoritative sources.

I’m not sure what position you think I’m arguing anyway – I oppose the Kirk-Menendez bill; however, one’s opposition to it should not be based on the mistaken belief that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, as there are credible concerns that Iran’s nuclear program has military dimensions.

correction on my previous comment: one’s opposition to [the Kirk-Menendez bill] should not be based on the unsupported belief that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, as there are credible concerns that Iran’s nuclear program has military dimensions.

Looks like unz.com is attracting attention from the Stormfront crowd. Mazal tov, Ron Unz!

I posted a correction retracting my use of the word “mistaken.” The correct term is “unsupported.” Giraldi attacked Rubin’s integrity for making the unproven assertion that Iran has a nuclear weapons program when he made an equally unsupported claim: that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. There are two problems with Giraldi’s claim:
1. They are based on reports that are 2 years old and thus are questionable assessments of the current state of Iran’s nuclear program.
2. The US intelligence consensus in early 2012 was that Iran is laying the groundwork for building nuclear weapons in order to give Iran the capability to assemble a nuclear weapon fairly quickly if the Iranian govt decides to do so. Thus, it is misleading to simply declare that Iran “does not currently have a program to develop nuclear weapons” full stop.

Oscar Peterson claims: “The passage from the 2009 IAEA report you quote does not contradict the view of the US Intelligence Community (IC), which Giraldi is citing.”
It contradicts Giraldi’s misleading characterization of the 2012 US intelligence consensus. The 2009 IAEA report cites possible evidence of a nuclear weapons program (i.e. nuclear activities inconsistent with a peaceful nuclear program); it in no way asserts that Iran has no nuclear weapons program as Giraldi claimed.

“When the Iranians suspected Amano of leaking secret data to the US, they stopped complying with it. They have broken no law or agreement in doing so.”
Even ElBaradei asserted that Iran had broken the law: “Iran broke a transparency law of the U.N. nuclear watchdog by failing to disclose much earlier a nuclear plant being built for uranium enrichment, agency director Mohamed ElBaradei said in a televised interview.”
http://in.reuters.com/article/2009/09/30/idINIndia-42812320090930

Fran Macadam, you are correct regarding Truman’s anti-Semitic quote (approvingly cited by Oscar Peterson, of course). However, most Jews are Zionists; most American evangelical Christians are Zionists too, so in fact, most American Zionists are not Jewish. However, some unz.com commenters use the term “Zionists” to refer to “the Jews.”

oh, look, more lists of Jews from unz.com commenters! Warren Buffett has injected more money into the Israeli economy than Larry Ellison and likely some of the others you mentioned. But, of course, Buffett won’t get a mention from you.

Fran MacAdam – Zionism is simply the belief that Israel has the right to exist as the Jewish homeland; being a Zionist in no way implies that one supports all of Netanyahu’s policies, the occupation of the West Bank, etc (I, for one, do not).

Oscar Peterson – nothing you have posted contradicts my argument that it is misleading for Giraldi to simply declare that Iran “does not currently have a program to develop nuclear weapons” full stop. Once again, you are citing 2 year old reports – there’s a reason things have come to a head now and not 2 years ago; I’m not going to countenance your choice to ignore the most credible source on the matter – the IAEA’s updated reports on Iran’s nuclear program – simply b/c the current IAEA director happens to be in greater agreement with the US than ElBaradei.

However, both articles you cited buttress my argument that the US intelligence consensus in early 2012 was that Iran is laying the groundwork for building nuclear weapons in order to give Iran the capability to assemble a nuclear weapon fairly quickly if the Iranian govt decides to do so (despite your claims otherwise). The NYT article you cited includes the following quote: “James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, stated explicitly that American officials believe that Iran is preserving its options for a nuclear weapon, but said there was no evidence that it had made a decision on making a concerted push to build a weapon.” It also details criticism of the US intelligence assessment, as well as gaps in our intelligence capabilities in Iran, so it is certainly a helpful source for this discussion. In addition, the LA Times article you cited states: “The most recent report, which represents the consensus of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, indicates that Iran is pursuing research that could put it in a position to build a weapon, but that it has not sought to do so.” The LA Times article also notes that “some developments have bolstered the view that Iran is secretly pursuing a weapon” and quotes Michael Hayden, the former CIA director: “They are doing everything they can to put themselves in a position so that they have a clear and fairly quick route to a nuclear weapon.”

Oscar, I’m not going to engage with you on a number of diversionary points that you raise that are irrelevant to the discussion at hand, which is Giraldi’s article that makes the unsupported and misleading assertion that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, as well as my interest in demonstrating that unz.com is, to a significant degree, an anti-Semitic enterprise designed to attract anti-Semitic readers (like you!).

Philip Giraldi claims: “Iran has no weapons program. Period.”
See, the problem is your full stop, as I have repeatedly demonstrated. Anyone seeking to accurately characterize Iran’s nuclear program would not end that statement with a full stop. “Mr. Panetta said: ‘Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that’s what concerns us.’…In saying that the United States did not have any evidence that Iran was seeking to develop a nuclear weapon, Mr. Panetta was hewing closely to the conclusions the often fractious American intelligence agencies agreed upon in 2007 and again in 2010. Two National Intelligence Estimates, designed to reflect the consensus of the intelligence community, concluded that Iranian leaders had made no political decision yet to build an actual weapon. Instead, they described a series of steps that would take Iran right up to that line — and position it to assemble a weapon fairly quickly if a decision to do so were made.” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/world/middleeast/iran-will-soon-move-uranium-work-underground-official-says.html
“Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says Iran is laying the groundwork for making nuclear weapons someday, but is not yet building a bomb”
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-01-08/iran-nuclear-weapons/52451620/1
I will now repeat the same statement that I’ve made twice, which strings together almost verbatim the two phrases I bolded: US intelligence consensus in early 2012 was that Iran is laying the groundwork for building nuclear weapons in order to give Iran the capability to assemble a nuclear weapon fairly quickly if the Iranian govt decides to do so. My statement is correct, and nothing that you or other unz.com commenters have posted refutes my contention.

“Not wanting to go to war for Israel is not anti-Semitism, it is pro-Americanism.”
Ah, the straw man fallacy. I have not only never expressed support for war in Iran, I explicitly stated above that I oppose the Kirk-Menendez bill but that one’s opposition to it should not be based on misinformation. There are credible concerns that Iran’s nuclear program has military dimensions, as opposed to your misleading, unsupported assertion that “Iran has no nuclear weapons program. Period.”

But you must be challenged when you refer to us as an anti-Semitic enterprise. …Unz.com has a great deal of material posted on it that has nothing to do with Israel or the Middle East
I’m well-aware that unz.com publishes material not relating to Israel or the Middle East, which is why I was careful to say that “unz.com is, to a significant degree, an anti-Semitic enterprise designed to attract anti-Semitic readers.” Interestingly how you omitted any reference to one of Unz’s signature writings: his Myth of American Meritocracy piece, which indeed has nothing to do with Israel but everything to do with “the Jews.” And I wouldn’t know who Ron Unz is (or even The American Conservative!) if it weren’t for that piece.

so I have to believe that you are using the anti-Semite label to discredit the site, an all too typical response from the Netanyahu/neoconservative crowd which you presumably adhere to.
Straw man, once again, especially ironic given that I stated that I don’t support Netanyahu’s policies in the previous comment. And if you think I’m a neoconservative, then I suspect that would make me the only neocon who opposed the Iraq War from day one and even participated in the Cambridge/MIT anti-war protest on March 20, 2003.

Despite my staunch opposition to the Iraq War from day one, I find odious the attempts to blame the war on “the Jews,” by focusing only on the role played by, say, Feith, Perle, and Wolfowitz and not the many other non-Jewish agitators for war (esp since American Jews opposed the war to a greater degree than Americans in general).

I should also have pointed out that many of the most effective and vocal critics of Israel and its policies, to include its criminal treatment of the Palestinians and its incitement to war with Iran, are themselves Jewish. Do you consider them to be anti-Semites or are they self-hating Jews?
According to the US State Dept’s definition of anti-Semitism, “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic,” and I certainly agree with that. Surely, there is much to criticize about Israel and Netanyahu’s war-mongering, settlement expansion, etc.

In any case, I knew that my reference to unz.com as an anti-Semitic enterprise would elicit censure and accusations that I’m pulling the anti-Semitic card in order to discredit unz.com. Of course, the first time* you (Philip) ever responded to my criticism of your writing was with anti-Semitic personal attacks, claiming that “Your fundamental problem is that you place your tribal interests above the broader national interests that most of the rest of us hold dear. The people you are attacking on this site are loyal to the United States while you define yourself in terms of your ethnicity and are passionately attached to a foreign interest.” (See the last item under “Contemporary Examples of Anti-Semitism” in the State Dept’s definition of anti-Semitism.) You had no basis on which to accuse me of placing the interests of Jews above the interests of my country, and my interest in combating anti-Semitism in no way suggests that.

*At least, I believe that was the first time.

My “bold” html tags did not work in my previous comment, so it’s a bit screwed up.

Fran MacAdam – yes, I agree that Israel is the/a Jewish homeland in the same sense that Japan is the homeland of the Japanese or Italy is the homeland of Italians, etc.

Johnny Ive – the National Interest piece that you cite does not strike me as credible; the author clearly has an agenda, as should be obvious from reading his discussion of Meme 8 and his references to “Iran’s allegedly ‘covert’ behavior,” which he even seems to justify! (see here) Also, he does not appear to cite any IAEA reports, which detail credible concerns of possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.

Oscar Peterson, I have no interest in engaging with you on issues unrelated to Giraldi’s article; needless to say, you’ve made a number of false accusations about me based on various anti-Semitic assumptions. Anti-Semites rarely acknowledge that they’re anti-Semitic, so your reaction is entirely predictable, despite that you’ve made several statements that are clearly anti-Semitic according to the US State Dept’s definition of anti-Semitism.

Thomas Meehan, by [sarcastically?] implying that I would consider Postol and Lloyd anti-Semitic, you are engaging in the disingenuous argumentation tactic of attributing false arguments to your adversary. According to the State Dept’s definition of anti-Semitism, it is abundantly clear that there is nothing remotely anti-Semitic in the report published by Postol and Lloyd (and, unsurprisingly, that you have made anti-Semitic statements). btw, here is some commentary on their research, which has been mis-characterized by some media sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/world/middleeast/new-study-refines-view-of-sarin-attack-in-syria.html
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/01/15/214656/new-analysis-of-rocket-used-in.html
““I honestly have no idea what happened,” Postol said. “My view when I started this process was that it couldn’t be anything but the Syrian government behind the attack. But now I’m not sure of anything”…Both said they were not making a case that the rebels were behind the attack, just that a case for military action was made without even a basic understanding of what might have happened.”

Fran MacAdam, I agree with you that we should keep the conversation on addressing the facts rather than diverting off into accusations of anti-Semitism; however, let the record show that my original responses to Giraldi’s pieces on unz.com have done exactly that, while Giraldi, Oscar Peterson, et al have replied to me with anti-Semitic personal attacks, smearing me as a hasbarist and Israel-firster (when I have never advocated policies that harm the US in order to benefit Israel). What’s good for the goose is good for the gander…
(Also, to be clear, my remark about Thomas Meehan was in reference to our interactions on other unz.com stories; he did not post any anti-Semitic comments on this piece.)

Oscar Peterson, here are a few examples of false accusations you’ve made about me based on various anti-Semitic assumptions:
You claimed that I’m on an “obsessive jihad to further Israel’s unrighteous and iniquitous campaign against the Iranians,” when I explicitly stated that I oppose the Kirk-Menendez bill and Netanyahu’s warmongering. Quoting the IAEA in no way implies I’m advocating war against Iran. (In fact, Netanyahu has been dismissive of the IAEA’s findings as insufficiently harsh on Iran.)

You stated: “YOU are the successor of those Zionist Jews whom Truman had to deal with and who led Truman in frustration to make the remarks that he did…” i.e.
“The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered…”
It is outrageous for you to suggest that I don’t care about the lives of non-Jews. Nothing I have posted has even remotely implied that.

“Your true loyalties are entirely transparent.”
Pointing out misleading and/or false statements made about Israel and Jewish people on unz.com in no way implies I’m more loyal to Israel (or to my “tribal interests,” as Giraldi put it) than the US.

Also, my discussion with Fran regarding Zionism started in response to her comment on your approving citation of Truman’s explicitly anti-Semitic remark. Also, note that my replies to her were very brief, whereas you are interrogating me about my opinions on a slew of unrelated issues that would require a significant time expenditure for me to detail.

I will also briefly respond to another misleading statement you made: “The problem is that as of c. 1900 90% of the population of Israel-Palestine was Arab, not Jewish and so an ethnic cleansing project had to be initiated in order to create a Jewish state”
The Jewish partition in the 1947 UN Partition Plan two-state solution, which was rejected by the Arab leadership, was majority Jewish.

Johnny Ive stated: “It would take years for Iran to produce a weapon if it chose to from my understanding, and during this time it will be monitored by the IAEA”
I just wanted to clarify something: I’ve noticed that the discussion of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program has often not made clear the distinction between Iran’s ability to assemble a crude nuclear bomb and Iran’s ability to assemble a nuclear missile. The latter would take at least a year; the former could take as little as a few months:
http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Albright_Testimony.pdf

LOL at geokat’s comment: anti-Semitism is the Jews’ fault.

in any case, I already said that I predict that a veto override of the Kirk-Menendez bill won’t happen. i.e. I’m not concerned that AIPAC is going to prevail on this issue.