Huffington Post blogger MJ Rosenberg has a strange and unhealthy obsession with the American Jewish Committee. Twice in the past week, Rosenberg has used his column to accuse AJC of attempting to derail President Obama and the Democrats’ chances in this Tuesday’s midterm elections.
Says Rosenberg:
“It really says something when a mainstream multi-issue organization like the American Jewish Committee issues a poll just three weeks before the upcoming election that seems designed to politically damage the president.”
Imprisoned for the past two years in Tehran, Hossein Derakshan, a Canadian citizen, is now said to be facing execution. The self-described “Iranian blogfather” was arrested in November, 2008 on charges of collaborating with enemy states, insulting the Khomeinist religion, and making propaganda against the regime and for “anti-revolutionary” groups. The CBC reports that the death penalty is now what the prosecutor in Derakhshan’s case has recommended.
Read the rest of Terry Glavin’s storming post here. Also see Ben’s Z Word post about Derakshan’s disappearance nearly two years ago.
One might say that it’s a political form of money laundering; just as one would wash shady banknotes through an offshore bank, so can the most bloodstained of reputations be cleansed just by engaging in a publicity stunt billed as a humanitarian gift to Gaza’s Palestinians.
Just a short note to say that I’ve started writing over at the Huffington Post. You can read my first piece, on Iran and the UN Human Rights Council, here.
Last week’s ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed Day‘ generated a number of depressinging stupid responses; nowhere more so than in Pakistan where the government resorted to blocking access to Facebook, Youtube, Flickr and parts of Wikipedia in an effort to ‘protect’ its citizens from the heinous sight of several thousand photoshopped stick-men with word ‘Mohammed’ scrawled underneath. Continue reading ‘“Everybody Research the Holocaust Day”’
As regular readers of this blog know, comments are approved before they are published and deleted if they are not. Given the issues we cover, we receive a disproportionate amount of trash, much of it abusive and antisemitic. Today, though, there was a little more than usual, including such gems as, “I hate jews who do nothing but protect the illegal country of Israel,” and “neocon jews wield almost unchallenged power in republican party foriegn (sic) policy and control many op-ed pages in major american newspapers.” I wondered why. Then the penny dropped. Glenn Greenwald linked to us. Charming company you keep, Glenn.
Please take a copy and embed it in your blogs, as a reminder that the Police should not be involved in legitimate political criticism and discourse on the Internet.
Ben Cohen writes: Stephen Sizer, the Iranian regime’s dutiful mouthpiece inside the Anglican Church, has been intimidating the author of the excellent blog, Seismic Shock, as you will read below. Both cowardly and odious, Sizer’s action underlines the fanatical determination of the pro-Palestine lobby in the UK to shut down open debate. So it’s time to declare that “We Are All Seismic Shock” - and communicate that same message to Sizer by emailing him here.
As some people have noticed, I’ve been rather quiet in blogging about the Reverend Stephen Sizer’s activities of late.
After all, what more can be said of a man forwards emails from Holocaust deniers, shares platforms with Holocaust deniers, and shamelessly flaunts his anti-Zionist theology before Iran’s apocalyptic Holocaust-denying regime? As Iranian pastors are arrested and house churches closed down, why is the Khomeinist regime translating Sizer’s book on Christian Zionism into Farsi? How many more times can I point all this out?
After a two year break, Judeosphere is back. Already, there’s a range of engaging posts, from a quick dissection of Slavoj Žižek’s recent essay on Iran (and the obsequious introduction given it by the New Age messianists at Tikkun) to a reminder of why, when it comes to successful boycotts, it’s the economy, stupid.
Here’s another excuse to hear the line that will doubtless become Judeosphere’s motto:
Here’s our good friend and occasional Z Word contributor David Adler with a charming version of a mellow Christmas tune that sounds just perfect in the twilight of New Year’s Day. In addition to writing about politics, David is a respected jazz critic. He is also, as I know from having met with him, the sort of person with whom debate and even disagreement is instructive and animating, not painful and irritating. And watching his performance below is a pleasing reminder of why a range of interests makes for a happy life. Happy New Year.
Adam Holland’s guest post earlier this week examined the growing connections between the far right and Muslim anti-Zionists. One of the photos we published in that piece showed a conference in Kuala Lumpur featuring former Malaysian leader and antisemitic conspiracy theorist Mahathir Mohamed, Holocaust denier Michael Collins Piper and a certain Yvonne Ridley, who will be well-known to Z Word readers in the UK as a loyal sidekick of insidious parliamentarian George Galloway - when she’s not acting as a mouthpiece for Iran’s murderous theocrats on their Press TV propaganda channel. Anyway, Adam has an updated post here which covers all this and is well worth reading.
A couple of weeks ago, MJ Rosenberg wrote a rather pompous piece chiding AJC for our new film on Iran.
As the creator of the film, I can categorically state that I wasn’t joking about anything contained within - not the bombing of the AMIA center, not the appalling repression which Iran metes out to its citizens, not the vile public executions which the regime revels in, and certainly not the spectacle of a nuclear attack launched by the mullahs. By contrast, Hugo Chavez finds this latter prospect deeply amusing. I trust that MJ Rosenberg, political commentator and now, apparently, film maven, will be preparing an equally stern lecture for the tyrant of Caracas.
For those of you that are familiar with the Guardian’s ˜Comment is Free, you’ll know that it has become the meeting place ˜above the line“ of Jewish anti-Zionists of the likes of Anthony Lerman and Richard Silverstein, supporters of the one-state solution such as Ali Abunimah and Khaled Diab, leaders and spokespeople for Hamas such as Khalid Mishaal and Azzam Tamimi and proponents of the ˜Israel is an apartheid state” lie such as Ben White. Only yesterday CiF readers were exposed to the toxic views of CiF regular, Seth Freedman, who incredulously denied the deeply antisemitic nature of the Aftonbladet blood libel article.
