The First Church of Free Speech

I wasn’t surprised to hear that Mel Gibson went into a Jew-baiting tirade when he was busted for drunk driving. Like Dr. Strangelove’s right arm, Gibson’s bigotry against Jews, homosexuals and Englishmen keeps popping up no matter hard he tries to restrain it. I’d be surprised if it took more than a beer or two for this asshole to show his true colors. Anything stronger would be guilding gold and painting lillies.

I’m simultaneously amused and annoyed to see Michael Huffigton’s ex-beard Arianna calling for Gibson to be blacklisted in Hollywood -not for putting the lives of others at risk by driving drunk, but for being an anti-Semite. I don’t remember Huffington calling for others to be ostracized like wife-beater Mickey Rourke, dope addicted home invader Robert Downey Jr., pill-popping thief Winona Ryder, child molester Roman Polanski and numerous others who have turned up on the police blotter. If it’s racism that gets her goat, I find it funny how she hasn’t called for Quentin Tarantino to be shunned, given his fondness for dropping the word “nigger” into his scripts frequently enough to please a gaggle of Ku Kluxers.

For the record, I have no patience for anti-Jewish bigots since part of my family is Jewish, nor do I have any use for Gibson or any of his movies over the last decade or so. But this is a crude, phony and self-righteous case of the vapors and is more in line with the bogus outrage over Andrew Dice Clay than any real concern that Gibson or his movies are going to kick off a Fourth Reich.

“So what’s going on here, then?”, you might ask. Mel Gibson has found his way on Arianna Huffington’s shit list in much the same way as another overrated movie star: Tom Cruise. Like Gibson, Cruise is a jerk. But Huffington has it in for him because of what he has in common with her, namely he is a spokesman for a cult (The Church of Scientology) while Huffington was a longtime proponent of the John-Roger Cult. This is what the shrinks call “projection” as is Huffington’s new obsession with Mel Gibson. As I noted in an earlier entry, Arianna doesn’t have that much of a problem with people who get arrested for drunk driving and spew bigoted, half-baked bullshit afterward. The difference is, Gibson was drunk when he had his little tantrum about Jews, while the smug little pipsqueak Bill Maher was sober when he claimed that Palestinians never existed. Just as Cruise and Huffington are two of a kind, so are Gibson and Maher -only Gibson has a successful career in show business.

In my last post I mentioned how Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz plagiarized a hoax. Now he’s copying Professor Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado. The difference?

Here’s Digby over at Hullabaloo:

Digby

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Civilian Continuum

by digby

Ward Churchill:

[I]f what the combat teams did to the WTC and the Pentagon can be understood as acts of war – and they can – then the same is true of every US “overflight’ of Iraqi territory since day one. The first acts of war during the current millennium thus occurred on its very first day, and were carried out by U.S. aviators acting under orders from their then-commander-in-chief, Bill Clinton. The most that can honestly be said of those involved on September 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course.

That they waited so long to do so is, notwithstanding the 1993 action at the WTC, more than anything a testament to their patience and restraint.

They did not license themselves to “target innocent civilians.”

There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple.

As for those in the World Trade Center, well, really, let’s get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire, the “mighty engine of profit” to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved and they did so both willingly and knowingly.

Alan Dershowitz:

[T]he recognition that “civilianality” is often a matter of degree, rather than a bright line, should still inform the assessment of casualty figures in wars involving terrorists, paramilitary groups and others who fight without uniforms — or help those who fight without uniforms.

Turning specifically to the current fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and Hamas, the line between Israeli soldiers and civilians is relatively clear. Hezbollah missiles and Hamas rockets target and hit Israeli restaurants, apartment buildings and schools. They are loaded with anti-personnel ball-bearings designed specifically to maximize civilian casualties.

Hezbollah and Hamas militants, on the other hand, are difficult to distinguish from those “civilians” who recruit, finance, harbor and facilitate their terrorism. Nor can women and children always be counted as civilians, as some organizations do. Terrorists increasingly use women and teenagers to play important roles in their attacks.

The Israeli army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to leave those areas of southern Lebanon that have been turned into war zones. Those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit. Some — those who cannot leave on their own — should be counted among the innocent victims.

If the media were to adopt this “continuum,” it would be informative to learn how many of the “civilian casualties” fall closer to the line of complicity and how many fall closer to the line of innocence.

I should point out that while Churchill has been blackballed and has received numerous death threats, and that a well-organized campaign is afoot to get him fired from his job teaching at CU for (among other things) plagiarism, Alan Dershowitz is treated as a serious scholar and invited on TV and radio on a regular basis and overall given a pass for not only the cribbing from Joan Peters, but for using Harvard’s website to slime a dead woman who is the only member of her family to survive the Nazi Holocaust. Readers, I shit you not.

Apparently Prof. Dershowitz had no rebuttal to the accusations that he plagiarized from Peters’ From Time Immemorial, other than to claim that his accuser, Norman Finkelstein, believes his own mother was a Nazi collaborator!

Norman Finkelstein

Of course it’s a lie and without a doubt the most disgusting one I’ve ever seen in print. Even more disgusting is the fact that Dean Elena Kagan of Harvard Law School considers this repulsive calumny to have a welcome place on the law school’s website. It also found a welcome place on Front Page, a website with a track record of printing the ravings of Holocaust “revisionists” like Robert H. Boatman, who was fired by Rep. Helen Chenoweth for writing a column claiming that Anne Frank’s diary was a forgery.

For the record, Norman Finkelstein’s mother, the late Maryla Husyt Finkelstein, was the only member of her family to survive the Nazi death machine in the Second World War. After the war, she was a witness against camp guards at a war crimes trial in Germany, as well as a deportation hearing of a camp guard who beat an inmate to death. But because her son is the man who exposed Dershowitz as a charlatan, the Professor has gone to the trouble to shit on her grave and accuse her son of calling her a kapo.

Ward Churchill just claims he’s innocent.

Bill Maher is a funny comedian, only not as funny as he thinks he is. He’s also not as smart as he thinks he is, nor as “edgy”. In his most recent column at The Huffington Post, he boasts about how for once he supports Dubya because Bush gave the green light for Israel to bomb Lebanon and to kill Palestinians in Gaza. Why does Maher think this is a good thing?

Because according to this marvel of intellect, Palestine never really existed and the Arabs aren’t handling the Palestinians with “maturity”. Aside from kissing Arianna Huffington’s ass and posing as a bold commentator who says the unspeakable, the column has one message: If you’re on the receiving end of ethnic cleansing, just go quietly like sheep to slaughter. I guess that’s the “mature” thing to do.

Just when it appeared that Maher couldn’t be any more fatuous, he blames the sorry lot of the Palestinians on… the Arabs! It wasn’t the Arabs who drove Palestinians from their land in 1948 by murdering and terrorizing them. It wasn’t the Arabs who invited squatters from the four corners of the globe to colonize the West Bank and Gaza, and it’s certainly not the Arabs who are at this moment carrying out a campaign of piecemeal ethnic cleansing to purge all Palestinians west of the Jordan River. Yet in Maher’s Wonderland, it’s the Arabs’ fault. If this sort of logic were applied anywhere else one ethnic group was purging another from its homeland, it would be greeted with scorn, contempt and ridicule. Even other Muslims aren’t shit on in this manner by smugly stupid commentators like Bill Maher. I don’t remember apologists for Serbian ethnic cleansers saying “Why don’t those Bosnian Muslims go live in Turkey or Iran? If they’re refugees, it’s all because other Muslims won’t take them in.” Only Israel’s fanwhore apologists are so shameless.

The notion that the ethnic or religious group being purged never really existed and is being childish for not laying down like kicked dogs is an old one and is all too familiar. It’s the same idea in the head of whites who killed all those pesky Injuns and Meskins and stole their land. It was also prevalent among the Boers who colonized South Africa, as well as the British who did likewise in Australia. It was even the mindset of the English and Scottish who pulled a train on Ireland. In all these cases, you see an ugly game of Three Card Monty being played:

Card #1: The people slated for ethnic cleansing are killed off, run off or harassed to the point where they give up and leave or fight back. If the latter, it is taken as proof that those people are savages.

Card #2: The place is colonized, usually with the dregs of the sponsor’s society: Criminals, outcasts and other undesirables who are truly desperate are deposited in the newly acquired lands. This has two effects. First of all, these colonists are like cornered animals with no alternative but to stay since they aren’t exactly welcome back home. If they could hack it in their homeland, they would still be there. Second, it allows their homeland to dump all sorts of undesirables elsewhere.

Card #3: The MYTH is created. There never were very many of those people, and they were a bunch of savages anyway. They were primitive and childish. Besides, they have all that other land. Why can’t they just go live with their kindred peoples? If it weren’t for us, none of this would have ever been built.

It was from this depraved mentality that you had smug whites claiming that North America was empty before the railroads and shopping malls. Never mind all those states, cities, counties, rivers, lakes and mountains with Indian names. It’s from this steaming pile of horseshit that you heard Afrikaaners claiming with a straight face that there were no blacks in southern Africa before the Boers arrived (This kind of crude racism was so pervasive that when ancient ruins in North America and Africa were found, it was assumed that lost colonies of white men built them, or maybe Martians: anything was more plausible than the idea that dark-skinned people built them). And it’s from this open sewer of bigotry that you get the ravings of imbeciles like Joan Peters.

Joan Who?

Back in 1984 (perfect timing if you ask me), crank pseudo-historian Joan Peters wrote a book called From Time Immemorial, which claimed that there were no Palestinians. Even though the book was exposed by Norman Finkelstein as one of the biggest and most laughably inept frauds ever printed, and every reputable Israeli historian dismissed the book as nonsense, Israel’s more ignorant/ shameless/ dishonest groupies in the U.S. lapped it up and still do to this day, including apparently Bill Maher, syndicated columnist Mona Charen and Harvard Prof. Alan Dershowitz. In fact, Dershowitz was such a fan of the book that he plagiarized large sections of it for his own apologia for ethnic cleansing The Case for Israel, even copying Peters’ misquotes. For more, check out Norman Finkelstein’s excellent book Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History

Why Arianna Huffington, who usually doesn’t suffer fools, gives both Maher and Dershowitz column space on her website to cough up their agitprop furballs is beyond me. I do have a theory, though:

The way the readers pummel Dershowitz in their responses -to the point of reducing the Nutty Professor to a whimpering pile on the floor- is quite amusing. Maybe she enjoys watching him squirm and whine.

In the case of Bill Maher, she is a friend -and friends don’t let friends drive drunk. Maybe she thinks that every minute he spends typing out such smugly ignorant nonsense is one less minute he can spend getting liquored up and driving under the influence. Whatever it takes to keep a drunk from behind the wheel.

For those of you not following the greatest sporting tournament in the world, Italy beat Germany 2-0 yesterday in a fantastic match to earn the right to play in the final match of the World Cup. In case you hadn’t guessed, I’m of Italian descent, and since the United States was eliminated early on, I cheer for Italy. (That’s a great thing about being an American. If you can’t cheer for the home country, cheer for the old country.)

Italy scored two goals in less than two minutes during the final minute of the second overtime period. The first was scored in the 30th overtime minute (120th game minute) and the second during injury time. Here’s a beautiful shot of the first goal.

My hat’s off to the Germans. They played great, and it was an awesome game. They’ve been good hosts to put up with Budweiser taking over the games and selling their shit to European fans. But Italy’s defense was just plain rock-solid, as it’s been throughout the tournament. They’ve only given up one goal, and that was an own-goal. They’ve got the best keeper in the world, and he’s saved their asses on numerous occasions throughout the tournament.

People bitch about soccer matches tying frequently, but in a match like this, a scoreless 119 minutes is all made worth it when one team finally puts one in the back of the net. Scoring a goal in soccer is supposed to be difficult. When one finally happens, it’s usually the result of an almost perfect synergy among the offense. That’s why fans always go bat-shit when a goal is scored.

Some interesting factoids about the game.

• This was the first time the German national team has ever lost a game in Westfalenstadion, where the game was played.
• This game continues Italy’s record of never losing a World Cup match to Germany.
• The Italian national team is on a 25 game unbeaten streak.
• This match, while very violent (every other minute, an Italian player was hitting the ground and laying the melodrama on), only saw three yellow cards. This is a stark contrast to the initial and quarter-final stages of this World Cup, which saw 16 red cards and a record number of yellow cards.
• Italy is ranked 14th in the world by FIFA.
• The game nearly went to a penalty-kick shoot-out. Germany is undefeated in PK shoot-outs in World Cup matches.
• Italy has never won a game in the World Cup on a PK shoot-out.

When a large number of Iraqis long for the good old days of Saddam Hussein, you know Dubya has turned the country into a complete charnel house. Here’s the latest atrocity (from the Associated Press):

Iraq war vet charged with murder, rape of Iraqis

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (AP) — Federal prosecutors charged a veteran of the Iraq war with murder and rape Monday in connection with the killing of an Iraqi female and members of her family.

Steven D. Green, a 21-year-old former private first class who was discharged from the Army, appeared in a federal magistrate’s courtroom in Charlotte Monday.

The charges grew out of a military investigation involving up to five soldiers in the alleged March rape and killing of the female in Mahmudiya and three of her relatives.

Prosecutors said Green and other soldiers entered the home of a family of Iraqi civilians, where he and others raped a member of the family before Green shot her and three of her relatives to death.

Green was arrested recently in North Carolina, two federal law enforcement officials said Monday. He is being held without bond pending a transfer to Louisville, Kentucky.

Green had served with the 101st Airborne, based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. It was unclear why Green had been discharged from the Army.

On Friday, the U.S. military acknowledged that Maj. Gen. James D. Thurman, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, had ordered a criminal investigation into the alleged slaying of a family of four in Mahmudiyah.

Why does Maj. General Thurman hate America so?

There’s more:

The suspects belong to the same unit as two soldiers kidnapped and killed south of Baghdad last month, a military official said on condition of anonymity because the case was under way.

The military has said that one and possibly both of the slain soldiers were tortured and beheaded. The official said the mutilation of the slain soldiers stirred feelings of guilt and led at least one member of the platoon to reveal the rape-slaying on June 22.

One soldier was arrested after admitting his role in the alleged attack on the family, the official said.

So it’s quite possible -even probable- that the abduction, mutilation (which is to say, castration) and beheading of Pfcs Tucker and Mancheca two weeks ago weren’t revenge for the bombing of Zarqawi, but rather, an “honor killing” of two soldiers from the same unit that raped and murdered a 15-year-old girl and slaughtered her parents and 7-year-old sister. Mancheca and Tucker paid for this atrocity (which as far as anyone knows, they had no part in) with their severed balls and heads. If justice were anything but an abstract notion, that’s what would be in store for those who actually did commit the crimes.

I just wonder what the war whores will say now (actually I don’t -they’re more predictable than a sunrise in the East). After all, a number of them wanted to use atrocities as an excuse to slaughter Iraqis, even when Iraqis had nothing to do with them. It appears that some Iraqis observed the precedent the Bush-Cheney Junta set and used an American atrocity as an excuse to take revenge. Payback’s a bitch.

How long before Haditha Hannity and other warmongering cretins try to smear Maj. Gen. James D. Thurman? Or Abeer Qasim Hamza, the victim? Wednesday at the latest.