John Mearsheimer, realist extraordinaire, was the dim bulb of the panel discussion on the Israel lobby at Cooper Union last night, according to Philip Weiss, who could barely contain his anticipation about this event last night and now is unembarrassed to report Mearsheimer’s scant knowledge about, you know, the actual Lobby and equally unembarrassed to praise Mearsheimer nevertheless for his great bravery in breaking the silence about this deep, dark secret of the hidden influence of Jews on government policy:

The other three intellectuals’ knowledge was more limited. John Mearsheimer deserves the greatest credit of all for breaking the seal on this discussion. But his actual knowledge of the lobby is drawn from reports of people who have seen Kong in the jungle, and lived to tell. So he read from one account or another of the lobby’s existence, and its function in pushing for the Iraq war. Living in Chicago, he lacks intimate knowledge of its workings. His best moment came when he said that the U.S. ought to put pressure on Israel to come into line on matters that are important to us and if it fails to do so, or chooses a different course, the U.S. and Israel “should go their separate ways.” This was a clean and bracing view of the relations of states.

But that is as nothing compared to Mearsheimer’s lack of embarrassment about publishing a paper based exclusively on secondary sources and, apparently, hearsay and then wrapping the mantle of scholarship around it by virtue of the imprimatur of the Kennedy School of Government and his position as an academic, all the while claiming that he was censored by American publications and could publish only in the London Review of Books.

Michael J. Smith gives an alternate view of the evening’s doings. He certainly bears no love for the “pro-Israel” panelists. Yet he is not altogether displeased with the result of the evening, which is surprising, given that he’s writing in CounterPunch:

If I weren’t such a misanthrope,I might be tempted to say that nevertheless, the glass is half full. Twenty years ago, such a discussion, in this venue, would have been unthinkable; any attempt to raise the topic at all would have been shouted down by a coalition of JDL thugs from Brooklyn, and tough little old ex-Communist ladies from the Upper West Side. Twenty years ago, you would not have seen Establishment figures like Mearsheimer and Walt saying such things. Twenty years ago, a New York audience would have received Indyk’s cheap demagogy with thunderous applause rather than groans and boos.

So the times they are a-changin’. But we still have a ways to go.

From these two fiercely opinionated opinion writers, I get the sense that they felt genuinely stifled from airing their anti-Israel views and now that they’ve had a chance to hear their views spoken in public, by others who felt likewise stifled, they feel somehow satisfied. Pathetic.

It’s heating up. Two days after Kazakhstan launched a print-media blitz with a four-page spread in the New York Times, Borat showed up at the White House to invite “Premier George Walter Bush” to a screening, and he gave a statement to the press:

“Jagshemash, my name Borat Sagdiyev. … I would like comment on recent advertisements on television and in media about my nation of Kazakhstan, saying that women are treated equally, and that all religions are tolerated — these are disgusting fabrications.”

Attributing the real-life Kazakh ads to a propaganda campaign by the “very nosy” country of Uzbekistan, Borat went on to threaten military action: “If there is one more item of Uzbek propaganda claiming that we do not drink fermented horse urine, give death penalty for baking bagels or export over 300 tons of human pubis per year, then we will be left with no alternative but to commence bombardment of their cities with our catapults.”…

“All claims that our glorious leader is displeased with my film, ‘Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,’ is lie,” the mustached character announced. “In facts, main purpose of Premier Nazarbayev’s visit to Washingtons is to promote this movie-film.”

This international three-ring circus is costing Kazakhstan a small fortune, reports MTV News:***

The Times blitz didn’t come cheap. According to a staffer in the paper’s advertising department, the rate for a full-page color ad in the A section of the Times can run up to $100,000 a page. And considering the spread re-ran in the Thursday edition of the Times-affiliated International Herald Tribune, the ad campaign could have cost upward of $1 million. That’s not including a series of TV spots, which ran on networks like CNN. Under a bed of Middle Eastern-sounding instrumental music, a series of picturesque urban and pastoral scenes float across the screen, ending with an Australian-sounding voice intoning, “Kazakhstan, ever wandered?”

You can enjoy the commercial here.

Stay tuned.

———

***CNN has been having a field day with Borat—Soledad O’Brien and Miles O’Brien were giggling about his swimming gear this morning, and John Roberts has been guffawing over his antics this evening. But the only print reports I can find is on MTV (and it’s syndicated to other entertainment sites).

Jodi Cantor of the New York Times says there’s a war on between mothers and the baby-sitters who care for their children—over food.

Alcohol abuse. Adultery. Carbonated beverages?

One of these things is not like the others. But in an age of organic everything, rampant childhood obesity and widespread food allergies—not to mention poisonous spinach—the feeding and misfeeding of children has become a tense, awkward point of debate between parents and baby sitters.

Just a few years ago, giving lunch to a 1-year-old was a simple matter of popping open a jar of the Gerber mush du jour. But many parents now feed their children with the precision of chemists and the passion of Alice Waters, and expect sitters to do the same. Fruit juice, once a childhood mainstay, is now considered a sweet slosh of empty calories, and soft drinks are a potential firing offense.

There was a kid who used come to our house clutching his own 1% milk, because we only drink whole milk here. The kid was 12, and he had been brainwashed about the fat content of milk. I thought that was pretty weird. Now I know how that might have happened.

Trying to keep his name alive, the Egyptian doctor makes a public appearance on video, in which he preaches about the war in Iraq, Bush’s lies, and the pope’s insults to Islam:

As-Sahab, al-Qaeda’s multimedia production arm, issued today, Friday, September 29, 2006, a 17:51 minute video speech featuring Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and titled: “Bush, the Pope of the Vatican, Darfur, and the Crusader Wars”. He appears in two scenes: one, subtitled in English, with an office-setup background with a lamp, flag bearing “No God, but Allah”, and a cannon; the other is without a background, and depicts Zawahiri dressed entirely in white, without subtitles.

To U.S. President George W. Bush, Zawahiri brands him a “deceitful charlation” and liar, and questions: “why don’t you tell them how many million citizens of America and it’s allies you intend to kill in search of the imaginary victory and in breathless pursuit of the mirage towards which you are driving your people’s sons in order to increase your profits?” He questions his motives for initating the War in Iraq, ridiculing the false prexets under which it was conducted. To this end he cites the purported links of Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda, and the presence of weapons of mass destruction.

I wonder: don’t the Democrats get nervous when they hear Zawahiri mimicking their talking points?

On a side note, I find it fascinating that al Qaeda has a “multimedia production arm,” As-Sahab, which even advertises its productions ahead of time, as noted by Stratfor in early September:

Arab satellite news network Al Jazeera and an Islamist Web site aired previously unseen footage Sept. 7 of Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking al Qaeda leaders apparently planning the 9/11 attacks. The video, like most other recent ones of al Qaeda leaders, was produced by the jihadist network’s As-Sahab media branch, the fairly new organization behind the network’s latest media blitz. In fact, banner ads appearing on extremist Web sites claim the video is a trailer for an upcoming As-Sahab documentary on the 9/11 attacks. [emphasis added]

As-Sahab began advertising this new tape a couple of days ago, too.

The original Al Qaeda (bin Laden and Zawahiri) is now reduced to competing for our attention with Anna Nicole Smith, the torture bill, torture victims in Iraq, Torture by Bill [Clinton], a depraved sex-murder maniac in Colorado, and George Allen’s racist slurs.

This weekend, we’ll see two “documentaries” on cable news about our secretary of defense—one on CNN (Rumsfeld: Man of War) and one on Fox (Why He Fights).

The specials will air at the same time: this Saturday, September 30, at 8 p.m.

For a contrast, visit Frontline’s site, where you can view their two-year-old documentary and read supplementary materials.

I talk a good game about the power of infotainment and pop/tabloid culture, because I believe it has an unsurpassed power to get information out into the culture, information we need. But when it comes to analysis of current events, there is no better, more serious journalism to be found on TV than on Frontline. I often disagree with its slant, but its information-gathering is unsurpassed.

TiVo it, watch it, and bookmark the site, which is heavy with supplementary materials, including full-length interviews, reports, links, and so forth. Many of the old programs are available for viewing online.

The Democrats brought out a lot of big guns in the last couple of weeks. Daniel Henninger tells us what they have to show for it: nada:

A fortnight ago, the big political story suddenly became ABC’s made-for-television movie, “The Path to 9/11.” Out of the woods to dominate the news cycle came the ghosts from the Clinton past–Sandy Berger, Madeleine Albright–condemning the film as a slander on their long years before the antiterror mast. Up to this point, Democratic candidates had seemed to be surfing smoothly toward control of the House on waves of bad media news out of Iraq. Suddenly they’ve got to deal with a movie suggesting we’re in Iraq because their president failed to pull the trigger on Osama bin Laden.

This sideshow culminated last Sunday morning in a bizarre exchange between Bill Clinton and Chris Wallace of Fox–Mr. Clinton wagging a familiar finger at Mr. Wallace and accusing the anchorman of smirking at him. …

Democrats found themselves back in Afghanistan with Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright, rather than where they wanted the news to be, amid Baghdad’s bombs. A messy week.

Then came the leaked NIE story in the New York Times this past Sunday. What a bombshell. This would put them back on message: Iraq as failure. But by now it’s evident that the whole workweek invested in the National Intelligence Estimate story was a colossal waste of the time devoted to it. What began Sunday as the Times’s towering bonfire–16 intel agencies and 12 anonymous sources writing off Iraq–by Wednesday had burned down to embers.

Henninger fails to describe the entire landscape of the last two weeks, which also includes the extraordinary appearances before the UN of Iran’s Ahmadinejad and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez; Bush’s aggressive push for the “torture” bill, which the Senate has since passed; the “duel” between Hillary and Condi over how much Bill did; Bush’s rigorous defense of his post-9/11policies and his strong attack on his  political opponents, as well as the Karzai-and-Musharraf dog-and-pony show.

A much, much messier week than even Henninger allows. And it’s bad news for all of us, not just the Democrats.

This country is a mess.

Lynne Stewart, 66 years old, is battling breast cancer. A politically radical defense lawyer, she was convicted in February 2005 of providing aid to terrorism in her defense of the fundamentalist Islamic cleric Sheik Omar Abel Rahman, who was implicated in and convicted of plotting to bomb sites in New York City in 1993.

For a year and a half, her sentencing has been postponed as Stewart deals with her health issues. Now, however, she’s due to appear in court for sentencing on October 16. In advance of that event, she has written to the judge personally and asked for mercy. The New York Times reports [emphasis added]:

Lynne F. Stewart, the once brashly defiant radical defense lawyer who was convicted in a federal terrorism trial last year, has acknowledged in a personal letter to the court that she knowingly violated prison rules and was careless, overemotional and politically naïve in her representation of a terrorist client…

Her argument is strikingly different from her testimony during the trial, when she admitted no wrongdoing and confidently defended her provocative legal strategies….

Now Ms. Stewart admits that she intentionally broke strict rules that barred the sheik from communicating with his followers outside the prison, when she conveyed messages from him to the press in June 2000. But she insists that she “tested the limits” of the law only as a zealous lawyer, and never intended to help the sheik’s terrorist followers, whose goals she did not share….

“My only motive,” she wrote, “was to serve my client as his lawyer. What might have been legitimately tolerated in 2000-2001, was after 9/11 interpreted differently and considered criminal. At the time I didn’t see this. I see and understand it now.” …

Ms. Stewart says that she committed lapses of judgment, and “I was also naïve in the sense that I was overly optimistic about what I could and should accomplish as the sheik’s lawyer, and I was careless.” She failed to understand, she said, that in representing a convicted terrorist, “a lawyer might need to tread lightly on this ground.” And she underestimated how prosecutors would react to her pushing the edges of the law.

“I was blind,” she wrote, to the fact that the government “could misunderstand and misinterpret my true purpose, which was to advocate for my client.”

She thought she was above the law. She was arrogant about it, because she believed that she, not the law, was right. She defended her actions, even though she knew they were illegal. She expected sympathy and understanding, because she thought she was on the side of right and that she knew better. She will—and should—pay for her naivete.

This, not the torture bill, is the real news of the day: our lawyers have been a weak link in our fight against terrorism.
Is anyone listening?