Monday Afternoon Scandals
David Swanson says that angry veterans surrounded and berated Richard Perle, a major architect of the Iraq War, when he showed up at one of their events for a PBS photo op.
Raw Story says that the Bush administration is tracing the telephone calls of ABC and other reporters in an attempt to find the source of leaks. The leaks are of things like the fact that the Bush administration is tracing people's phone calls.
Yet another attempt is being made to institute an academic boycott in Europe of Israeli professors. Academics, please sign this petition and stand up. Israeli academics as a class have not done anything wrong and it is not right to subject them to a blanket ban.
See the Committee for Academic Freedom letter from the Middle East Studies Association on this matter last year this time. See also my Chronicle of Higher Education piece on this issue.
posted by Juan Cole @ 5/15/2006 07:05:00 AM
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8 Comments:
"Raw Story says that the Bush administration is tracing the telephone calls of ABC and other reporters in an attempt to find the source of leaks. The leaks are of things like the fact that the Bush administration is tracing people's phone calls."
It goes like this:
Cheney wrote in the margin, "Where are the WMDSs?"
and the answer came back,
"ABC News hid them.
Yours truly,
Curveball"
The rest is history.
I belive Israeli academics can get out of the ban if they publically condem the occupation.
Maybe I am misinformed, but if so perhaps your concern is misplaced?
Of course, your defence here of Israeli academics will never be taken into account by those looking to paint you as being anti-semitic or even just Anti-Israel (in the rare instance where people distinguish those two concepts).
Nice to hear Perle got a dose of unpleasant reality from those hurt by his actions. Too many Neo-cons are fabulously wealthy and live in a self-imposed bubble of safety from ever having to see or hear the actual consequences of their policies. Like Colbert at the Correspondents' dinner, doses of actual criticism never reach these people.
Good for my fellow Veterans and their families making neo-con Likudnik Richard Perle publicly drink his own urine. As with us Vietnam Veterans so many decades ago, our colonial foreign legion comes home once more to apathy, ignorance, and a self-celebration by the villians -- which the best among us will never passively accept or ever stop working to dispel. For my part today, I'd like to contribute a Terza Rima sonnet in honor of Dante's "Divine Comedy," especially the first and scariest part: "The Inferno."
----
Like Barney Fife the deputy still green
George works for Sheriff Cheney, one-eyed Jack,
The other side of whose face we have seen
Deciding which new countries to attack
Ambushing captive quail from point-blank range
And stabbing secret agents in the back
Because they will not knowingly estrange
The truth from what they think of as their work
To mollify mad mongrels with the mange
Factotums who for presidents will clerk
Exceptions all, they claim immunity
For presidents who wage war as a perk
Like one who in his lust for legacy
Screwed up and bombed a Chinese embassy
----
Go get 'em guys and gals! Let them eat yellowcake.
Bush is really sick.
Interesting post today, thank you!
Dear Juan Cole,
Thank you for working so hard to be fair, to face the truth, and for sharing this work with those of us who hope for a better world. I was at the AFSC event Saturday. I can hardly believe Richard Perle had the brazenness to appear there, not to apologize to those kids and parents, but to attempt to justify himself. I wonder if he has looked at the pictures on afterdowningstreet. I can't get the picture of the young Lcpl standing with the two Iraqi boys who are holding the sign he obviously made. They are all giving thumbs up and he's grinning widely. The sign says "Lcpl Baudraut killed my father he knocked up my sister".
Juan,
I respect the fact that you are against the proposed academic boycott of Israel. It is a complex issue and very easily dismissed. I am not sure whether I support a blanket boycott, or whether we should have a targetted boycott.
Here are some links to relevant articles:
rticles on the academic boycott and related issues:
AUT/NATFHE/UCU and the Academic boycott of Israel
http://www.sue.be/pal/academic/AUT.html
Academic and Cultural Boycott articles collected by the Electronic Intifada
http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/375.shtml
Boycotts and Divestment News articles collected by the Electronic Intifada
http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/174.shtml
Israel?s Apartheid articles collected by the Electronic Intifada
http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/149.shtml
Israelai academic Tanya Reinhart: Why Us? (on The Academic Boycott)
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7790
http://www.themightyorgan.com/features_parisiv.html
http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/7/1137
Both Palestinians and Israelis will benefit from a boycott: The racist and colonial policies echo apartheid, and call for a similar response
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1491569,00.html
Norman Finkelstein: Why an Economic Boycott of Israel is Justified
http://www.counterpunch.org/finkelstein01182006.html
Freud, Zionism, and Vienna: The late Palestinian-American Prof. Edward Said explains why intellectuals must fight on, against all the odds, for peace with justice
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2001/525/op2.htm
Oren Ben-Dor: To Create Academic Freedom in Israel, a Boycott is Needed
http://www.counterpunch.org/bendor05212005.html
Palestinian teachers union calls for Sari Nusseibeh's dismissal
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3872.shtml
'It's water on stone - in the end the stone wears out',
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,858360,00.html
UK Academic Boycott, U.S. Divestment Campaign Target Israeli Occupation
http://www.wrmea.com/archives/July_2005/0507070.html
http://www.wrmea.com/archives/Jan_Feb_2005/0501015.html
Palestinians Call for Boycott of Israeli Academia,
http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/10/3434
Boycotting Israel Put High on the Agenda
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3881.shtml
Questioning the Israeli Boycott
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030324/webletter20030306
Shahid Alam: The Academic Boycott of Israel
http://www.counterpunch.org/alam0731.html
Omar Barghouti: Israeli Apartheid - Time for the South African Treatment
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11762.htm
Descending the ivory tower
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/622/cu4.htm
Why I'm Boycotting Anything 'Made in Israel'
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0417-01.htm
The AUT Boycott: Freedom vs. 'Academic Freedom', Omar Barghouti and Lisa Taraki
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3895.shtml
Palestinian farmers, women and youths support the AUT position to boycott Israeli universities
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3876.shtml
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