J's Cafe Nette

Archive for April 28th, 2007

Diversity is one reason I read Roger Simon every day. When he chooses to write on politics he will praise or a take to task the right or the left. I could not let this article pass by without sharing, not because of politics but rather the take on being a politician today.

It’s because I’m not good enough an actor. My real thoughts and feelings pop out too easily.

I don’t regret this for a second. I wouldn’t want to be a politician. I want to stick with my own opinions, thank you. And my own self. The need for political victory not only distorts what you think and feel, it distorts it to such a degree that you probably no longer remember what you thought and felt in the first place. You have become a creature of your own prevarications. You are … someone new.

That politicians are inauthentic human beings is not exactly news, but it has been exacerbated in our times by their high visibility . They are forced to give their opinions on virtually all matters in a non-stop all-news cycle. These opinions are in turn crafted to appeal to constituencies (often the “base” in primaries, then the “center” in the general election) much in the manner products are crafted for consumers. They are, in essence, phony – and we the consumers (the voters) know it. How could we not? Yet we – with the media as the all-too-willing promoter – participate in this charade.

Mr. Simon, I would not presume to speak for others but as for me, these few paragraphs speak volumes.

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Fred Thompson’s thoughts on the NFL Draft:

I’ve been a dedicated fan of professional football since I was a kid. I have the “premium” satellite football package and I’ve had seats for Tennessee Titans games since they first came to Nashville. So you can probably guess what I’ll be doing this weekend. Like a lot of other fans, I’ll be listening to draft guru Mel Kiper, Jr., as the NFL draft plays out in New York.

Mr. Thompson offers an interesting assessment of the process and the players involved.

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Alan Dershowitz is not known to be a political conservative under any circumstances. He worked to get Jimmy Carter elected and must surely feel betrayed by the former president now.

I have known Jimmy Carter for years. I first met him in the spring of 1976 when, as a relatively unknown candidate for president, he sent me a handwritten letter asking for my help in his campaign on issues of crime and justice. I had just published an article in The New York Times Magazine on sentencing reform, and he expressed interest in my ideas and asked me to come up with additional ones for his campaign. Shortly thereafter, my former student, Stuart Eisenstadt, brought Carter to Harvard to meet with some faculty members, me among them. I immediately liked Jimmy Carter and saw him as a man of integrity and principle. I signed on to his campaign and worked very hard for his election.

I continued to work for Carter over the years, most recently I met him in Jerusalem a year ago, and we briefly discussed the Mid-East. Though I disagreed with some of his points, I continued to believe that he was making them out of a deep commitment to principle and to human rights.

Recent disclosures of Carter’s extensive financial connections to Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia, had deeply shaken my belief in his integrity. When I was first told that he received a monetary reward in the name of Shiekh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and kept the money, even after Harvard returned money from the same source because of its anti-Semitic history, I simply did not believe it. How could a man of such apparent integrity enrich himself with dirty money from so dirty a source?

And let there be no mistake about how dirty the Zayed Foundation is. I know because I was involved, in a small way, in helping to persuade Harvard University to return more than $2 million that the financially strapped Divinity School received from this source. Initially, I was reluctant to put pressure on Harvard to turn back money for the Divinity School, but then a student at the Divinity School, Rachael Lea Fish showed me the facts.

They were staggering. I was amazed that in the twenty-first century there were still foundations that espoused these views. The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up, a think-tank funded by the Shiekh and run by his son, hosted speakers who called Jews “the enemies of all nations,” attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States’ own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a “fable.” (They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.) To its credit, Harvard turned the money back. To his discredit, Carter did not.

Jimmy Carter was, of course, aware of Harvard’s decision, since it was highly publicized. Yet he kept the money. Indeed, this is what he said in accepting the funds: “This award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan.” Carter’s personal friend, it turns out, was an unredeemable anti-Semite and all-around bigot.

The extent of Carter’s financial support from, and even dependence on, dirty money is still not fully known. What we do know is deeply troubling. Carter and his Center have accepted millions of dollars from suspect sources, beginning with the bail-out of the Carter family peanut business in the late 1970s by BCCI, a now-defunct and virulently anti-Israeli bank indirectly controlled by the Saudi Royal family, and among whose principal investors is Carter’s friend, Sheikh Zayed. Agha Hasan Abedi, the founder of the bank, gave Carter “$500,000 to help the former president establish his center…[and] more than $10 million to Mr. Carter’s different projects.”

Carter gladly accepted the money, though Abedi had called his bank, ostensibly the source of his funding, “the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists.” BCCI isn’t the only source: Saudi King Fahd contributed millions to the Carter Center “in 1993 alone…$7.6 million” as have other members of the Saudi Royal Family. Carter also received a million dollar pledge from the Saudi-based bin Laden family, as well as a personal $500,000 environmental award named for Sheikh Zayed, and paid for by the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates. It’s worth noting that, despite the influx of Saudi money funding the Carter Center, and despite the Saudi Arabian government’s myriad human rights abuses, the Carter Center’s Human Rights program has no activity whatever in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis have apparently bought his silence for a steep price. The bought quality of the Center’s activities becomes even more clear, however, when reviewing the Center’s human rights activities in other countries: essentially no human rights activities in China or in North Korea, or in Iran, Iraq, the Sudan, or Syria, but activity regarding Israel and its alleged abuses, according to the Center’s website.

The Carter Center’s mission statement claims that “The Center is nonpartisan and acts as a neutral party in dispute resolution activities.” How can that be, given that its coffers are full of Arab money, and that its focus is away from significant Arab abuses and on Israel’s far less serious ones?

No reasonable person can dispute therefore that Jimmy Carter has been and remains dependent on Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia. Does this mean that Carter has necessarily been influenced in his thinking about the Middle East by receipt of such enormous amounts of money? Ask Carter.

With the recent publication of Carter’s book which seems to blame the Israelis for all the problems in the Mid-East while excusing the actions of the Palestinians, has made people think of Carter as an anti-Semite.

With this kind of financial backing by anti-Semitic Arabs, or more accurately, anti-Jew Arabs, it would seem Carter has been bought and paid for.

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Saudi Arabia has announced it has foiled a terrorist plot by rounding up 172 would-be terrorists who were planning to blow up oil facilities and kill government officials.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia announced yesterday that an anti-terrorism sweep netted 172 Islamic extremists and had stopped plans to mount air attacks on the kingdom’s oil refineries, break militants out of jail and send suicide attackers to kill government officials.

A government official said the plotters had completed preparations for their attacks, and all that remained to put the plot in motion “was to set the zero hour.”

It was one of the biggest roundups since Saudi leaders began cracking down on religious extremists four years ago after militants attacked foreigners and others involved in the country’s oil industry, seeking to topple the monarchy for its alliance with the United States.

The Interior Ministry said the plotters were organized into seven cells and planned to stage suicide attacks on “public figures, oil facilities, refineries … and military zones,” including some outside the kingdom. It did not identify any of the targets.

The militants also planned to storm Saudi prisons to free jailed militants, the ministry said.

“They had reached an advance stage of readiness, and what remained only was to set the zero hour for their attacks,” the ministry’s spokesman, Brig. Mansour al-Turki, said in a phone call. “They had the personnel, the money, the arms.”

The ministry said some of the detainees had been “sent to other countries to study flying in preparation for using them to carry out terrorist attacks inside the kingdom.”

Brig. al-Turki said he didn’t know whether the militants who trained as pilots planned to fly suicide missions like those in the September 11 attack on the United States or whether they intended to strike oil targets in some other way.

“I have no information on what they were planning to do with the airplanes, but I assume, based on the possible use of airplanes in attacks, that they planned to fly the airplanes into specific targets,” he said.

The militants were detained in successive waves, with one group confessing and leading security officials to another group as well as caches of weapons, Brig. al-Turki said. He told the privately owned Al Arabiya television channel that some of those arrested were not Saudis.

The Interior Ministry said police seized large quantities of weapons and explosives and more than $5.3 million in currency during the sweep. State TV showed video of one cache dug up in the desert that included explosives, assault rifles, handguns and ammunition wrapped in plastic.

Saudi justice is swift and we can count on these people being executed as soon as all the information they have is given.

This is a big catch, as we don’t know how far their tentacles were extending.

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From the Washington Times:

President Bush yesterday invited congressional leaders to the White House to discuss redrafting a new war-spending bill next week, and warned Democrats he is willing to wield his veto power repeatedly to block troop-withdrawal deadlines for Iraq.

“I’m optimistic we can get a bill, a good bill, a bill that satisfies all our objectives, and that is to get the money to the troops as quickly as possible,” Mr. Bush said during a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the president’s Camp David retreat.

Speaking a day after the Democrat-led Congress passed a war bill with troop-pullout dates, Mr. Bush said he has enough support to sustain his veto as Democrats began looking for a resolution to the impasse that would appease its anti-war wing.

“If the Congress wants to test my will as to whether I’ll accept a timetable, I won’t accept one,” said Mr. Bush, who is awaiting the bill to formally veto it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he thinks the president is open to negotiations based on his recent statements, and called on the president to “carefully” read the bill, “stop swaggering” and sign it.

“He will see it fully provides for our troops and gives them a strategy worthy of their sacrifices,” the Nevada Democrat said. “Failing to sign this bill would deny our troops the resources and strategy they need.”

Democratic and Republican leaders agreed to meet with Mr. Bush Wednesday, and Mr. Reid has talked to Sen. Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, the minority leader, about how to move forward.

Senior House leadership aides have held “very preliminary” discussions with White House staffers about post-veto negotiations, although House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, has not yet reached out to Republican leaders on the issue, one official told the Associated Press, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the talks were not public.

Senator Reid knows the president won’t sign the bill in its present form, but he is at least willing to discuss compromise legislation with the president. That’s a step in the right direction.

Speaker Pelosi will hopefully come around to also attending the meeting and a compromise can be reached that will satisfy everyone.

Politics is a game of compromise, and each party must be willing to give up something he wants in order to come to a consensus. Here’s praying this works to the benefit of our troops who are the political football in all of this and are the most innocent parties, but the ones who are affected the most.

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