Once-powerful US lobbyist Jack Abramoff is likely to spill the beans on the inherent corruption within the Washington power elite. The Republicans, and some Democrats, are in for a rough year. What kind of man is Abramoff? Washington Post journalist Susan Schmidt has a few ideas:
"We do know he spent millions of dollars on his two restaurants, that he bankrolled a religious academy that educated his children, that he was sending money to settlers on the West Bank for a sniper school. He also lived extravagantly, flying by private jet and buying expensive cars."
UPDATE: Juan Cole has much more on Abramoff's funding and support of Jewish extremism.
"We do know he spent millions of dollars on his two restaurants, that he bankrolled a religious academy that educated his children, that he was sending money to settlers on the West Bank for a sniper school. He also lived extravagantly, flying by private jet and buying expensive cars."
UPDATE: Juan Cole has much more on Abramoff's funding and support of Jewish extremism.
9 Comments:
Let me make a prediction:
This scandal will get bigger and bigger, BUT his connections to zionist extremists will be largely ignored.
Nope, didn't know that.
Yet more are brought into the circle and many in the media, a little unsure of their role, clearly, are exposed.
Was it a sniper school, or training in self defence? Are not Jews allowed to defend themselves? Are they to be shot for the crime of being jewish on Islamic land and not fight back?
Are they only allowed to shoot back if they can't aim?
Using Juan cole as a source is just asking for trouble:
Juan Cole and His Bad Week
by Charles
The reason I seldom read Gloom Juan Cole and his weblog Malformed Informed Comment is because he subscribes to the Immutable Laws of Gilliard, described below the fold. His problem, though a smart and knowledgeable fellow, is that he's so blindered and shackled to his ideology that he's prone to whopping mistakes and misjudgments. His downtalking the Iraqi election last January was one example, and his entries this past week are the latest outbreak.
So obvious and glaring were his recent errors that even a dKos diarist took Cole to task. Martin Kramer busted Cole on both his wrong interpretation of history and his duplicitousness, both here and in a follow-up here. It's one thing for a semi-anonymous sweatpant-wearing blogger to be so blatantly wrong and pettyminded, but it's another thing altogether for a prominent professor of Middle East studies and Chairman of the Middle East Studies Association to be so. Dare I say that Cole was being McCarthyesque by getting personal and calling for oppo research against Kramer?
Tony Badran of Across the Bay starts here and follows up here, here, here, here and here. Ouch. All in all, a bad week for the academic.
So what are these Immutable Laws of Gilliard? In the days before he had his own blog and when he was a prolific dKos commenter, Steve Gilliard employed certain tactics when discussing the pre-war and war efforts. Inspired by the Immutable Laws of Dowd, I thought that Gilliard and the like (including Cole) deserved their own Immutable Laws:
If there's bad news, report it. Add little snippets on how awful things are. Liberally toss in words like "quagmire", "ignorance", "hegemony", "hubris", "incompetence", "lies" and the like.
If there's neutral news, cherry-pick the worst parts and write things like "this can't be good" or "things are going from bad to worse" or "this has been another bad week for Bush". Ignore positive developments by downplaying or sidestepping them, or trying to discredit them.
If there's good news and no bad news can be plucked, deny that it's actually good news. Write something like "this looks like good news but it's really not". Or, "this can't be right, these reports can't be trusted" or "it may sound good but this will surely backfire on us" or "oh, sure, this may be a positive development but look at all these other areas where things are falling apart".
Add no constructive suggestions or solutions.
Always take the obligatory dig at the Bush administration.
Make sure to add an ominous forecast or two.
Ignore all past predictions that were proved wrong, don't admit you were wrong, don't re-visit past wrong posts to see where they went wrong, soldier on and make more Chicken Little predictions. When confronted with past wrong predictions, ignore them or change the subject, then default back to telling everyone how awful things are going.
The problem is that these commenters are so locked into a certain worldview that they refuse to process information that contradicts their doctrine. That is why I only read them occasionally.
Juan Cole, Media -- and MESA -- Darling
by Jonathan Calt Harris
FrontPage Magazine
December 7, 2004
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=16241
Professional organizations choose their leaders as much for their symbolism as for organizational ability. The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) is the foremost professional organization representing academics working on this region. Once a bastion of respectable scholars, the organization has fallen on hard times, becoming today a hive of academic opposition of America, Israel, and, in the larger sense, rationalism itself.
It was Stanford University's Joel Beinin, president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) in 2002, who famously articulated the group's post-9/11 osterich mentality by praising "great wisdom" of his colleagues for avoiding the study of terrorism. Coupled with entire panels of anti-Israel "scholars" and special sessions on "American imperialism," and the three-day event can look more like an Arab political rally than a conference of specialists.
But the organization out-did itself when, in November 2004, it elected Juan Cole as its next president. Cole has a string of impressive titles, being a professor of modern Middle East and South Asian history at the University of Michigan, editor of the International Journal of Middle East Studies, and author of a weblog focusing on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. He emerged in 2003 as a Middle East expert for the media (The New York Times,[1] Washington Post,[2] National Public Radio)[3] and for influential leftist bloggers such as Josh Marshall, Brad Delong, or Mark A. R. Kleinman.[4]
But what the academics validated – and the major media are drawing on – is one strange professor. Cole's view is shaped by his fundamental belief in a conspiracy of Jewish "neo-conservatives" that largely runs U.S. policy toward the Middle East. His recurrent theme is that a nebulous ‘pro-Likud' cabal controls the U.S. government from a small number of key positions in the Executive Branch. He never names the leaders or organizations behind this fabulously clever and utterly secret conspiracy but vaguely associates it with AIPAC, MEMRI, and any prominent Jew in the Bush administration.
I am citing that Cole is a suspect source. I am questioning the identification of a 'sniper' school as opposed to a school for armed self defense including rifle training.
Again, a tiny kernal layered in addamo.
Just more addamo out of our resident antisemite.
You are identifying residents?
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