Hillary backing gun control supporter is the brains behind ‘satire’movement that’s garnered 50,000 signatures
(Observer) – A petition that’s been circulating for a week on Change.org is asking the Quicken Loans Arena to “Allow Open Carry of Firearms at the Quicken Loans Arena during the RNC Convention in July.” Posted by an anonymous petitioner who calls himself The Hyperationalist, the petition caught fire when it became a darling of talk radio and right wing blogging. The petition, which calls the arena’s ban on weapons “a direct affront to the second amendment” that “puts all attendees at risk” has surpassed 51,000 signatures and is racing toward its goal of 75,000.
But the identity of its anonymous progenitor has not been fully cracked. Until now. The petition is the brainchild of a Democratic activist and blogger named James P. Ryan, who claims to be satirizing rather than supporting the idea that Republicans should bring weapons into their nominating convention.
Guessing his identity has become a bit of a parlor game among right-wing chatters and the success of the petition has stimulated Mr. Ryan, who is guarded about his identity, to call several New York City PR firms to inquire about representing him.
In an interview with Newsweek, in which he went only by “Jim” and declined to reveal his full identity, Mr. Ryan claimed to be a Democrat who is not a gun owner and is “absolutely” in favor of gun control. He claims to be “overwhelmed” by the attention the petition has received. He told the magazine that he started the petition as “satire.” The magazine reported that he is “based on the West Coast,” but the Observer reached him on a Philadelphia cel number.
“I am passionate about gun control and discouraging gun violence,” Mr. Ryan told the Observer. “When talk of a contested convention started brewing, I started thinking. On March 3, I threw a joke up on Facebook and Twitter and said, ‘hey guys, you really want guns at your contested convention?’”
The petition itself is well-written and researched if predictably strident, and cites many arguments that will be familiar to those who are familiar with the point of view of those in the gun rights movement. For example, the petition takes aim at the idea that “gun free zones” increase safety, saying “The NRA, our leading defender of gun rights, has also correctly pointed out that “gun free zones… tell every insane killer in America… (the) safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.” It even raises the prospect of an “ISIS terrorist attack on the arena during the convention: in which those in the arena “will be sitting ducks, utterly helpless against evil-doers.”
All three remaining Republican presidential candidates are quoted opposing gun-free zones and signatories are urged to “take a stand” in refusing ” to be hijacked by weakness and political correctness.”
Part of the petition’s success lies in how authentic the language is—it doesn’t read like a left-wing satire of “right-wing gun nuts.” Asked how he got the language so right, Mr. Ryan said, “It was an attempt to be aware of the language, taking the gun rights people at their word and not caricature them. We talk past each other in American politics. I’m seeing a lot of ‘oh, it’s a Hillary troll who started this thing.’ Who cares who started it? Take a look at the words and see if you support it or not.”
Mr. Ryan is, in fact, a Hillary supporter. He told the Observer, “I’m a liberal Democrat. I like Bernie a lot. I’ve donated to Bernie, I’ve donated to Hillary. I’m supporting Hillary, but I’m not a Hillary supporter in the sense that I’m carrying petitions.”
“We give Israel $10 million per day! That money can send our kids to college.” So reads a billboard on Interstate 680 in Walnut Creek, California, sponsored by “If Americans Knew.”
The organization is the handmaiden of our local dowager of anti-Zionism, Alison Weir, a self-described freelance journalist who has been called a rabid anti-Semite—a charge she denies despite her twisted fascination with Jews harvesting organs of Palestinians. Her theories of Jewish conspiracy resonate with David Duke and she is frequently cited by the Holocaust-denying Institute of Historical Review.
Of course, the obvious subtext of the billboard is that if not for those damn Jews and all their power, your kid could go to college for free.
Like all conspiracy theorists, Ms. Weir wants you to believe information about Israel is secret and hidden; consequently, “if you only knew.” Her own peripatetic undertakings on the anti-Israel circuit belie that, as would a trip to the University of California, Berkeley campus, where anti-Israel activism flourishes.
She echoes one of the same themes that Goebbels created for the burgeoning Nazi party—the truth is what you are not being told. The Jews control the truth, and only Der Fuhrer will unmask it. In our community, it is the energetic Ms. Weir who will provide that—if you only knew.
We should, however, be grateful to her and her billboard because it has created a discussion about Israel and aid to it. Ms. Weir is less important than the subject she raised.
Zionists talk of the special relationship with Israel growing out of democracy and shared values. Sorry, that’s a fiction. In the world of political realism no one cares about shared values, just shared interests.
There is a special relationship between the U.S. and Israel. It started when a young James Jesus Angleton, arguably the greatest counterintelligence mind of the 20thcentury, noticed the operations of the Aliyah Bet in smuggling Jewish survivors into the British Mandate of Palestine. Mr. Angleton was smitten with the operation and argued that the Aliyah Bet was the harbinger of a dynamic intelligence enterprise that America needed in the inevitable conflict with the Soviet Union.
Although I never met Mr. Angleton, I did meet people who worked closely with him. He was a legend in his time.
Even as head of America’s covert operations, Mr. Angleton personally managed the Israel portfolio. His bet on the Israelis paid off handsomely at a time when America—submitting to Arab pressure—was not even a major supplier of arms to Israel.
On February 25, 1956, Nikita Khrushchev made the famous speech denouncing the deceased Stalin to a secret session of the 20th Party Congress of the Soviet Union. Every Western intelligence agency wanted a copy of the speech. But Soviet counterintelligence prevented Western intelligence penetrations, except in one case—the Israeli Mossad.
The Mossad gave Mr. Angleton the speech, and he had it printed in The New York Times, scoring a massive intelligence coup and undermining the Communist Party of the United States.
In 1956, Israel secured a Soviet MiG-15, an aircraft advanced for its time, and shared the intelligence with America. But an even larger coup occurred when Israel secured an intact Soviet MiG-21 in 1966, making available to America the Soviet’s most advanced fighter, courtesy of the relationship Mr. Angleton built. Israel at this time was dependent on France as its main weapons supplier and was not flying American planes.
In 1969, Israel stole an advanced Soviet radar system, which was turned over to America.
In the same year, at the request of President Nixon, Israel flew reconnaissance missions to provide intelligence for an American mobilization against a Syrian invasion of Jordan.
Today, Israel has the best regional intelligence operation in the Middle East and shares with America intelligence on known terrorist groups.
Ms. Weir knows well that the money she crows about is by law spent back here in America—a full 76 percent, much of it right in her own California—and that the aid to Israel is a direct consequence of the deal America sought and achieved, which was for Israel to leave the strategic Sinai in return for military aid to maintain Israel’s strategic edge by replacing land with technology. Egypt received an almost equivalent aid package, a fact that Ms. Weir has never put on a billboard.
As a result of Israel’s technological and scientific innovations, American armaments sent to Israel have improved. America now spends $1.5 billion purchasing innovative Israeli military technology. Drones deployed in Iraq and Iran are from Israel. The revolutionary helmet-mounted sight used in nearly all frontline Air Force and Navy fighter aircraft was invented in Israel. The armor used against IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan was invented in Israel, as was the gun system for close-up defense of our naval vessels.
Israel serves America as an unsinkable aircraft carrier. Haifa is the only port in the Middle East where American troops are genuinely welcomed and where local authorities are really committed to their security.
The United States currently maintains several “secret” listening posts in Israel to monitor terrorist chatter, among other security interests.
Perhaps Ms. Weir should raise a billboard asking what America has received for all the aid it has poured into the bottomless sinkholes in the rest of the Middle East. How many intelligence coups have been provided? How many technological innovations saving the lives of American warriors have been created? And yes, how many college educations could have been paid for?
http://observer.com/2016/03/american-aid-to-israel-serves-our-national-interests/
No comments:
Post a Comment