Getbig.com: American Bodybuilding, Fitness and Figure
Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: The True Adonis on November 02, 2008, 01:30:36 AM
-
-
By the way, that is one smoking hot MILF. It would be too much of a tease if she was in office.
-
cant believe she thought it was real.
-
If some users can`t view the above, here is another capture:
-
Single handily destroying the McCain Campain :-[ :-[ :-[
-
I assume that Sarah Palin gives head like a champ.
-
shes so hot when she laughs.
im still amazed how easy it is to do these things, also her email hacked and stuff. you would think that at that level things like that are impossible to do.
-
shes so hot when she laughs.
im still amazed how easy it is to do these things, also her email hacked and stuff. you would think that at that level things like that are impossible to do.
Another sign that the almighty USA is in decline.
-
shes so hot when she laughs.
I'm still amazed how easy it is to do these things, also her email hacked and stuff. you would think that at that level things like that are impossible to do.
Yip, i don,t know or understand why a full background, tests, interviews, checks, etc... were not done on this Lady, she's the hole in the ship thats getting bigger by the day...and on it goes...the ships ready to sink...forget the woman vote she was brought in for...even they are Laughing @ her and McCain... its now a non stop Comedy.
-
the dude didnt even try to make his sarkozy impression sound believable, and she still fell for it.
-
November 4th- She Won`t Recover
-
That's really funny.
Though not as funny as the fact that Obama and his wife have been eating dinner at the home of a former PLO spokesman with ties to the commander of Black September.
Now, that's a really funny. Of course that's a joke on all of us.
eh, Bros.....
-
That's really funny.
Though not as funny as the fact that Obama and his wife have been eating dinner at the home of a former PLO spokesman with ties to the commander of Black September.
Now, that's a really funny. Of course that's a joke on all of us.
eh, Bros.....
Oh yah, the same guy who John McCain as head of his committee gave the same individual over 400,000 dollars. Oopsy Doopsy!
-
the dude didnt even try to make his sarkozy impression sound believable, and she still fell for it.
Exactly, why is she even taking "phone calls" from supposedly impotent people??... where is the staff to double check, security, etc?? ???...goes on a known goof off live on air show gets the piss taken out of her...gets up and starts doing the roof, the roofs on fire hand crap like a 15yr old ::)...yeah everyone in the US is going to want you in as the vice president Miss Plain... :-[ :-[ :-[
-
that makes a total joke out of her
shes way too much of a bimbo for her own good ;D
-
McCain Funded Work Of Palestinian His Campaign Hopes To Tie To Obama
October 28, 2008 04:34 PM
The latest guilt-by-association target that the McCain campaign is using to hit Barack Obama could carry some collateral damage for its own candidate.
As Politico's Ben Smith reported on Tuesday, the McCain campaign is demanding that the Los Angeles Times release video in its possession of a party attended by Barack Obama and Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi.
"A major news organization is intentionally suppressing information that could provide a clearer link between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi," said McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb, citing Obama's friendship with Khalidi, who is now a professor at Columbia University.
The McCain camp gambit comes after conservative writers have repeatedly pressed for media outlets to write about the rather tenuous connections between Obama and Khalidi, an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights.
Specifically, National Review writers want much more attention paid to the association, given that the LA Times has reported that Khalidi lavished praise on Obama at a farewell party in Chicago at which Bill Ayers was also present. (Other writers have accused Khalidi of being an aide to Yasser Arafat, a claim which Marc Ambinder and Ari Berman have suggested is not credible.)
In regards to Khalidi, however, the guilt-by-association game burns John McCain as well.
During the 1990s, while he served as chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI), McCain distributed several grants to the Palestinian research center co-founded by Khalidi, including one worth half a million dollars.
A 1998 tax filing for the McCain-led group shows a $448,873 grant to Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research and Studies for work in the West Bank. (See grant number 5180, "West Bank: CPRS" on page 14 of this PDF.)
The relationship extends back as far as 1993, when John McCain joined IRI as chairman in January. Foreign Affairs noted in September of that year that IRI had helped fund several extensive studies in Palestine run by Khalidi's group, including over 30 public opinion polls and a study of "sociopolitical attitudes."
Of course, there's seemingly nothing objectionable with McCain's organization helping a Palestinian group conduct research in the West Bank or Gaza. But it does suggest that McCain could have some of his own explaining to do as he tries to make hay out of Khalidi's ties to Obama.
-
wow, this is really affecting my perception of the McCain/Palin campaign
-
i've just seen it on a german page,hahaha what a dumb whore she is
-
hahah Heywood just had a massive meltdown when he learned that McCain has been funding Khalidi all along. I guess the guilt by association game isn`t really worth it afterall Heywood, now is it. hahhahhah
PWNED.
-
“Questions have arisen regarding the International Republican Institute’s (IRI) work with Palestinians in the 1990s," a statement from the group reads. "In the 1990s, IRI gave grants to the Center for Palestinian Research and Studies (CPRS) for polling in the West Bank/Gaza. The polls measured support for the peace process, for various Palestinian political groups, and for efforts to enhance governance in the West Bank/Gaza. At that time no other organization could credibly conduct polling in the West Bank/Gaza
Adonis, I know the news reports too. A GOP charitable org. funded a Palestinian group to do polls of West Bank/Gaza residents.
What bothers me:
Obama's personal dinners with a PLO Spokesman.
What doesn't me:
McCain's GOP committee making a donation to this CPRS for the purpose of polling Palestinian political groups in the West Bank/Gaza.
I never trusted Obama to begin with. This is another twig in the bundle. A thick one, I might add.
-
“Questions have arisen regarding the International Republican Institute’s (IRI) work with Palestinians in the 1990s," a statement from the group reads. "In the 1990s, IRI gave grants to the Center for Palestinian Research and Studies (CPRS) for polling in the West Bank/Gaza. The polls measured support for the peace process, for various Palestinian political groups, and for efforts to enhance governance in the West Bank/Gaza. At that time no other organization could credibly conduct polling in the West Bank/Gaza
Adonis, I know the news reports too. A GOP charitable org. funded a Palestinian group to do polls of West Bank/Gaza residents.
What bothers me:
Obama's personal dinners with a PLO Spokesman.
What doesn't me:
McCain's GOP committee making a donation to this CPRS for the purpose of polling Palestinian political groups in the West Bank/Gaza.
I never trusted Obama to begin with. This is another twig in the bundle. A thick one, I might add.
Obama NEVER had a personal dinner. hahahah You are making up lies. Please show me your evidence.
Also I will defend John McCain AND Obama here regarding Khalidi. Khalidi is a very, VERY respected professor and academic worldwide and NOBODY thinks he is a terrorist or even close to it. His material is taught in EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY as he is a renowned Scholar. John McCain knew this and has had a great relationship with Khalidi!
So stop trying to make McCain look bad as he supports Khalidi. Get your facts straight.
-
The argument to tie McCain to Khalidi appears to be a convenient "straw man" for the Democrats. Although my use of that term may not be correct, I simply mean it is a convenient, but irrelevant fact.
McCain chaired an organization, the International Republican Institute, that donated $448,873 to the Center for Palestinian Research and Studies (CPRS) for the purpose of polling in the West Bank/Gaza regions. The polls were to measure the peace process and for efforts to enhance that process.
I can make an admittedly sarcastic, crude remark and say "Well, give some money to a group of Palestinians, and what are the chances one or two may be tied up with a terrorist organization in some way?" I'm stating that to give you my retort as to McCain's responsibility here. I don't know if you check out the personal lives of the individuals on the board. He should have.
What we know is that Obama and his wife went to the Khalidi home for dinner on multiple occasions. Per Obama, the two had many conversations over dinner at the Khalidis' home and according to one blog, may have constituted Obama's "primer" on the Middle East.
What we know about Khalidi is that he is a former spokesman for the PLO and wrote an obituary that praised Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) when he died in 1991. He stated that Khalaf would be "sorely missed by the Palestinian people, to whom he devoted his life."
According to reports, Khalaf held many PLO posts, including "spymaster," oversaw PLO internal security, the Special Operations Group, and Intelligence & Security Apparatus.
Khalaf was also the commander in chief of the terrorist Black September organization, which as you know massacred the Israeli (and USA born) athletes at the 1972 Olympics.
McCain's "pals," to the best of my knowledge, consist of Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, being the most notable that I am aware of.
I cannot get a clear reading on Obama. Admittedly, I don't believe what he says, so I look to who are Obama's actual friends - as in, who does he pal around with when not at work?
Going to dinner with your wife at a friend's house - more than once - is mostly a casual situation, and reflects who your friends are.
I will mention Andrew McCarthy's article in the National Review, regarding the suppressed tape of the 2003 farewell party for Khalidi, and the coincidental connection to Ayers.
-
exactly, they cant have a muslim friend without calling it conspiring with terrorists. pathetic country.
-
Rashid Khalidi (born 1950), an American historian of the Middle East, is the 'Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies' at Columbia University,[1] and director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.
Khalidi was born in New York. He received a B.A. from Yale University, where he was a member of Wolf's Head Society,[2] in 1970,[3] and a D. Phil. from Oxford University in 1974[4] and spent many years as a professor and director of both the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Center for International Studies at the University of Chicago before joining the Columbia faculty. He has also taught at Georgetown University, Lebanese University, and the American University of Beirut.
Khalidi is married to Mona Khalidi, who is the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs and the Assistant Director of Graduate Studies of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.[5] He is a member of the National Advisory Committee of the U.S. Interreligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East, which describes itself as "a national organization of Jews, Christians and Muslims dedicated to dialogue, education and advocacy for peace based on the deepest teachings of the three religious traditions."[6]
He is member of the Board of Sponsors of The Palestine-Israel Journal, a publication founded by Ziad AbuZayyad and Victor Cygielman, prominent Palestinian and Israeli journalists.
He is founding trustee of The Center for Palestine Research and Studies.
[/size]
Princeton University let it be known that it was considering hiring Khalidi in 2005.[7] However, a controversy developed over Khalidi's political involvements and no job offer was made.[8]
Academic work
Khalidi’s research covers primarily the history of the modern Middle East. He focuses on the countries of the southern and eastern Mediterranean, with an eye to the emergence of various national identities and the role played by external powers in their development. He also researches the impact of the press on forming new senses of community, the role of education in the construction of political identity, and in the way narratives have developed over the past centuries in the region.[4] Michael C. Hudson, director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown, describes Khalidi as "preeminent in his field."[9] He served as President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America in 1994. Khalidi is currently editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies.
Much of Khalidi's scholarly work in the 1990s focused on the historical construction of nationalism in the Arab world. Drawing on the work of theorists Benedict Anderson who described nations as "imagined communities", he does not posit primordial national identities, but clearly argues that these nations have legitimacy and rights. In Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1997), he places the emergence of Palestinian national identity in the context of Ottoman and British colonialism as well as the early Zionist effort in the Levant. This book won the Middle East Studies Association’s Albert Hourani Prize as best book of 1997.[10] His dating of Palestinian national emergence to the early 20th century and his tracing of its contours provide a rejoinder to Israeli nationalist claims that Palestinians either do not exist, or had no collective claims prior to the 1948 creation of Israel. Nevertheless, Khalidi is also careful to focus on the late development, failings and internal divisions within the various elements of the Palestinian nationalist movement as well.
In Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (2004), Khalidi takes readers on a historical tour of Western intervention in the Middle East, and argues that these interventions continue to have a colonialist nature that is both morally unacceptable and likely to backfire.
-
The argument to tie McCain to Khalidi appears to be a convenient "straw man" for the Democrats. Although my use of that term may not be correct, I simply mean it is a convenient, but irrelevant fact.
McCain chaired an organization, the International Republican Institute, that donated $448,873 to the Center for Palestinian Research and Studies (CPRS) for the purpose of polling in the West Bank/Gaza regions. The polls were to measure the peace process and for efforts to enhance that process.
I can make an admittedly sarcastic, crude remark and say "Well, give some money to a group of Palestinians, and what are the chances one or two may be tied up with a terrorist organization in some way?" I'm stating that to give you my retort as to McCain's responsibility here. I don't know if you check out the personal lives of the individuals on the board. He should have.
What we know is that Obama and his wife went to the Khalidi home for dinner on multiple occasions. Per Obama, the two had many conversations over dinner at the Khalidis' home and according to one blog, may have constituted Obama's "primer" on the Middle East.
What we know about Khalidi is that he is a former spokesman for the PLO and wrote an obituary that praised Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) when he died in 1991. He stated that Khalaf would be "sorely missed by the Palestinian people, to whom he devoted his life."
According to reports, Khalaf held many PLO posts, including "spymaster," oversaw PLO internal security, the Special Operations Group, and Intelligence & Security Apparatus.
Khalaf was also the commander in chief of the terrorist Black September organization, which as you know massacred the Israeli (and USA born) athletes at the 1972 Olympics.
McCain's "pals," to the best of my knowledge, consist of Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, being the most notable that I am aware of.
I cannot get a clear reading on Obama. Admittedly, I don't believe what he says, so I look to who are Obama's actual friends - as in, who does he pal around with when not at work?
Going to dinner with your wife at a friend's house - more than once - is mostly a casual situation, and reflects who your friends are.
I will mention Andrew McCarthy's article in the National Review, regarding the suppressed tape of the 2003 farewell party for Khalidi, and the coincidental connection to Ayers.
Notice that the hatred for Khalidi IS NOT COMING FROM MCCAIN and his CAMPAIGN!
They recognize Khalidi as being a great scholar and Mccain has consulted with Khalidi many times in regards to Middle Eastern and International Affairs. STOP trying to demonize John McCain and Khalidi.
There is nothing there. Let it go.
-
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/6103
Middle East studies in the News
Will the Obama Circle Be Unbroken? [on Rashid Khalidi]
by Scott Johnson
Power Line Blog
November 1, 2008
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/11/021943.php
Among the Hyde Park friends of Barack Obama was former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi was on the faculty of the University of Chicago, at whose law school Obama was a lecturer. Their children attended the same school. The Khalidis and the Obamas became friends and dinner companions.
As Paul notes below, when Khalidi moved from the University of Chicago to Columbia, Obama attended the dinner honoring Khalidi. Obama saluted Khalidi for "offer[ing] constant reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." What a guy.
Last night FOX News reported that Khalidi wrote an obituary for Salah Khalaf (also known as Abu Iyad) when he died in 1991. According to the FOX News report, Khalidi praised Khalad and said he would be "sorely missed by the Palestinian people to whom he devoted his life."
Khalaf held many PLO posts. In Inside the PLO Neil Livingstone and David Halevy report that Khalaf was the PLO's spymaster, the leader of its security and covert apparatus and the principal link to so-called rejection front elements like Abu Nidal. He directly oversaw the PLO's internal security including Force 17, the Special Operations Group and the Intelligence and Security Apparatus.
Khalaf was also the commander in chief of the terrorist Black September organization. Black September was a PLO front group that answered directly to Yasser Arafat. It is of course best known for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.
Among its other operations was the 1973 seizure of the Saudi embassy in Khartoum. During the operation the American ambassador to Sudan (Cleo Noel) and his deputy chief of misson (George Curtis Moore) were both brutally murdered on Arafat's orders along with the Belgian diplomat Guy Eid. Khalaf was involved in the planning of the operation and directed the seizure of the embassy. (I tell the story of the operation in "How Arafat got away with murder.")
Before they murdered Noel, Moore and Eid, the Black September terrorists demanded the release of Robert Kennedy's assassin Sirhan Sirhan. Obama's friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn were also big fans of Sirhan Sirhan. FOX News also reported this week that Obama's friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn dedicated their 1974 book Prairie Fire to "political prisoners" including Sirhan Sirhan.
I wonder if Obama has had a chance to discuss the fans of Sirhan Sirhan within his circle of friends as he has met up with the members of the Kennedy family who are supporting his election for president. Obama would note that he was only six years old when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Would that cut it? The younger generation of the Kennedy family that lost its father and uncle wasn't much older at the time either...
Note: Articles listed under "Middle East studies in the News" provide information on current developments concerning Middle East studies on North American campuses. These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch and do not necessarily correspond to Campus Watch's critique
-
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/6103
Middle East studies in the News
Will the Obama Circle Be Unbroken? [on Rashid Khalidi]
by Scott Johnson
Power Line Blog
November 1, 2008
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/11/021943.php
Among the Hyde Park friends of Barack Obama was former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi was on the faculty of the University of Chicago, at whose law school Obama was a lecturer. Their children attended the same school. The Khalidis and the Obamas became friends and dinner companions.
As Paul notes below, when Khalidi moved from the University of Chicago to Columbia, Obama attended the dinner honoring Khalidi. Obama saluted Khalidi for "offer[ing] constant reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." What a guy.
Last night FOX News reported that Khalidi wrote an obituary for Salah Khalaf (also known as Abu Iyad) when he died in 1991. According to the FOX News report, Khalidi praised Khalad and said he would be "sorely missed by the Palestinian people to whom he devoted his life."
Khalaf held many PLO posts. In Inside the PLO Neil Livingstone and David Halevy report that Khalaf was the PLO's spymaster, the leader of its security and covert apparatus and the principal link to so-called rejection front elements like Abu Nidal. He directly oversaw the PLO's internal security including Force 17, the Special Operations Group and the Intelligence and Security Apparatus.
Khalaf was also the commander in chief of the terrorist Black September organization. Black September was a PLO front group that answered directly to Yasser Arafat. It is of course best known for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.
Among its other operations was the 1973 seizure of the Saudi embassy in Khartoum. During the operation the American ambassador to Sudan (Cleo Noel) and his deputy chief of misson (George Curtis Moore) were both brutally murdered on Arafat's orders along with the Belgian diplomat Guy Eid. Khalaf was involved in the planning of the operation and directed the seizure of the embassy. (I tell the story of the operation in "How Arafat got away with murder.")
Before they murdered Noel, Moore and Eid, the Black September terrorists demanded the release of Robert Kennedy's assassin Sirhan Sirhan. Obama's friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn were also big fans of Sirhan Sirhan. FOX News also reported this week that Obama's friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn dedicated their 1974 book Prairie Fire to "political prisoners" including Sirhan Sirhan.
I wonder if Obama has had a chance to discuss the fans of Sirhan Sirhan within his circle of friends as he has met up with the members of the Kennedy family who are supporting his election for president. Obama would note that he was only six years old when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Would that cut it? The younger generation of the Kennedy family that lost its father and uncle wasn't much older at the time either...
Note: Articles listed under "Middle East studies in the News" provide information on current developments concerning Middle East studies on North American campuses. These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch and do not necessarily correspond to Campus Watch's critique
Again, there is NOTHING about Obama there as anyone can see. I love the opinion piece, it is laughable.
John McCain supports and consults with Khalidi regularly. He should be praised for consulting with a highly educated man as Khalidi. I ask you again to stop questioning John McCain`s judgement.
-
http://sandbox.blog-city.com/khalidi_and_obama_kindred_spirits.htm
Khalidi and Obama: kindred spirits
« H E » email
posted Thursday, 30 October 2008
"He has family literally all over the world. I feel a kindred spirit from that." —Rashid Khalidi on Barack Obama
The link between Palestinian-American agitprof Rashid Khalidi and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has finally been picked up by the mainstream media. It's something they should have looked at long ago, and even now, they aren't really digging. They're simply reporting the demand of the McCain campaign that the Los Angeles Times release the video of Obama's praise of Khalidi, at a farewell gathering for Khalidi in 2003. Obama and Khalidi (and their wives) became friends in the 1990s, when Obama began to teach at the University of Chicago, where Khalidi also taught. In 2003, Khalidi accepted the Edward Said Professorship of Arab Studies at Columbia; the videotaped event was his Chicago farewell party. The Los Angeles Times, which refuses to release the tape (and which endorsed Obama on October 19) reported last spring that Obama praised Khalidi's "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." Other speakers reportedly said incendiary things against Israel. Whether or how Obama reacted, only the videotape might tell.
That Obama spoke on this important occasion suggests that his attachment to Khalidi wasn't a superficial acquaintance. As Obama admits, the two had many "conversations" over dinner at the Khalidis' home, and these may well have constituted Obama's primer on the Middle East. Yet Obama has given no account of these conversations, even as he has repeatedly emphasized other ones which would seem far less significant.
For example, Obama, in an interview and in his spring AIPAC speech, recalled conversations with a Jewish-American camp counselor he encountered—when he was all of eleven years old. "During the course of this two-week camp he shared with me the idea of returning to a homeland and what that meant for people who had suffered from the Holocaust, and he talked about the idea of preserving a culture when a people had been uprooted with the view of eventually returning home. There was something so powerful and compelling for me, maybe because I was a kid who never entirely felt like he was rooted." (In the same interview, Obama said Israel "speaks to my history of being uprooted, it speaks to the African-American story of exodus.")
Of course, the story of someone like Khalidi could just as readily have spoken to Obama's history of uprootedness, exodus, preserving a culture, and longing to return home. (So too would the story of the late Edward Said, who was photographed seated at a dinner with Obama in 1998, and who entitled his memoir Out of Place. Obama has never said anything about the impact, if any, of that conversation.) And indeed, it stretches credulity to believe that a two-week childhood encounter at a summer camp was more significant to Obama that his decade-long association, as a mature adult, with his senior university colleague, Khalidi.
Nor does it seem far-fetched that the sense of "kindred spirit" felt by Khalidi toward Obama was mutual. One particularly striking parallel deserves mention. Obama, it will be recalled, was born to a nominally Muslim father (a Kenyan bureaucat) and an American Christian mother, which has created some confusion as to the religious tradition in which he was raised. Khalidi's father, a nominally Muslim Palestinian (and a bureaucrat who worked for the United Nations) married his mother, a Lebanese Christian, in a Unitarian Church in Brooklyn, where Khalidi would later attend Sunday school. For such people caught between traditions, Third Worldist sympathies often serve as ecumenical substitutes for religion. (Obama himself allows that as an undergraduate, "in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy." One wonders how Israel fared in those conversations.)
Were we to see the videotape, it might give us some sense of how far down the road Obama went in that direction—and not all that long ago. It would be interesting to know, for example, if there was reference to Iraq. In 2003, when Khalidi's friends gave him his goodbye party, he was deep into propagandizing against the Iraq war. Among his arguments, he included this one:
This war will be fought because these neoconservatives desire to make the Middle East safe not for democracy, but for Israeli hegemony. They are convinced that the Middle East is irremediably hostile to both the United States and Israel; and they firmly hold the racist view that Middle Easterners understand only force. For these American Likudniks and their Israeli counterparts, sad to say, the tragedy of September 11 was a godsend: It enabled them to draft the United States to help fight Israel's enemies.
This argument against the war was not at all unusual on the faculty of the University of Chicago at the time. Another professor of Middle East history, Fred Donner, gave it blatant expression on the pages of the Chicago Tribune, calling the Iraq war "a vision deriving from Likud-oriented members of the president's team—particularly Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith." So perhaps it is not surprising that Obama, in his October 2002 antiwar speech, declared: "What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne." No mention of Cheney or Rumsfeld—and no need to mention them, to a constituency that knew who was really behind the push for war, and why. (Later, the same argument would figure prominently in The Israel Lobby, co-authored by another Chicago professor, John Mearsheimer.)
Obama, when pressed during an appearance before a Jewish audience, admitted that "I do know him [Khalidi] because I taught at the University of Chicago." This sounds wholly innocuous; I also know Khalidi because I taught at the University of Chicago—twice, in 1990 and 1991, when I had an office on the same hall. Obama continues: "And I do know him and I have had conversations." Well, even I've had conversations with Khalidi. (A former Chicago graduate student who must keep meticulous records writes to me that he spotted me on December 6, 1990, at the Quad Club lunching with Khalidi.) Nor does it mean much if Khalidi introduced Obama to Edward Said; Khalidi introduced me to Edward Said in New York in November 1986.
The difference is that while I came away from these encounters convinced that Khalidi's purported moderation was a sham, and have said so, Obama went the other direction, maintaining their friendship right up to Khalidi's send-off from Chicago, to which he contributed an encomium. Which is why I'd really like to see that videotape. I'm just curious which of Rashid Khalidi's virtues I somehow missed, and Barack Obama saw.
Pointer: The next public sighting of Khalidi will be at a Columbia conference entitled "Orientalism from the Standpoint of its Victims—An Edward Said Conference," on November 7. Khalidi will deliver the opening address.
-
http://sandbox.blog-city.com/khalidi_and_obama_kindred_spirits.htm
Khalidi and Obama: kindred spirits
« H E » email
posted Thursday, 30 October 2008
"He has family literally all over the world. I feel a kindred spirit from that." —Rashid Khalidi on Barack Obama
The link between Palestinian-American agitprof Rashid Khalidi and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has finally been picked up by the mainstream media. It's something they should have looked at long ago, and even now, they aren't really digging. They're simply reporting the demand of the McCain campaign that the Los Angeles Times release the video of Obama's praise of Khalidi, at a farewell gathering for Khalidi in 2003. Obama and Khalidi (and their wives) became friends in the 1990s, when Obama began to teach at the University of Chicago, where Khalidi also taught. In 2003, Khalidi accepted the Edward Said Professorship of Arab Studies at Columbia; the videotaped event was his Chicago farewell party. The Los Angeles Times, which refuses to release the tape (and which endorsed Obama on October 19) reported last spring that Obama praised Khalidi's "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." Other speakers reportedly said incendiary things against Israel. Whether or how Obama reacted, only the videotape might tell.
That Obama spoke on this important occasion suggests that his attachment to Khalidi wasn't a superficial acquaintance. As Obama admits, the two had many "conversations" over dinner at the Khalidis' home, and these may well have constituted Obama's primer on the Middle East. Yet Obama has given no account of these conversations, even as he has repeatedly emphasized other ones which would seem far less significant.
For example, Obama, in an interview and in his spring AIPAC speech, recalled conversations with a Jewish-American camp counselor he encountered—when he was all of eleven years old. "During the course of this two-week camp he shared with me the idea of returning to a homeland and what that meant for people who had suffered from the Holocaust, and he talked about the idea of preserving a culture when a people had been uprooted with the view of eventually returning home. There was something so powerful and compelling for me, maybe because I was a kid who never entirely felt like he was rooted." (In the same interview, Obama said Israel "speaks to my history of being uprooted, it speaks to the African-American story of exodus.")
Of course, the story of someone like Khalidi could just as readily have spoken to Obama's history of uprootedness, exodus, preserving a culture, and longing to return home. (So too would the story of the late Edward Said, who was photographed seated at a dinner with Obama in 1998, and who entitled his memoir Out of Place. Obama has never said anything about the impact, if any, of that conversation.) And indeed, it stretches credulity to believe that a two-week childhood encounter at a summer camp was more significant to Obama that his decade-long association, as a mature adult, with his senior university colleague, Khalidi.
Nor does it seem far-fetched that the sense of "kindred spirit" felt by Khalidi toward Obama was mutual. One particularly striking parallel deserves mention. Obama, it will be recalled, was born to a nominally Muslim father (a Kenyan bureaucat) and an American Christian mother, which has created some confusion as to the religious tradition in which he was raised. Khalidi's father, a nominally Muslim Palestinian (and a bureaucrat who worked for the United Nations) married his mother, a Lebanese Christian, in a Unitarian Church in Brooklyn, where Khalidi would later attend Sunday school. For such people caught between traditions, Third Worldist sympathies often serve as ecumenical substitutes for religion. (Obama himself allows that as an undergraduate, "in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy." One wonders how Israel fared in those conversations.)
Were we to see the videotape, it might give us some sense of how far down the road Obama went in that direction—and not all that long ago. It would be interesting to know, for example, if there was reference to Iraq. In 2003, when Khalidi's friends gave him his goodbye party, he was deep into propagandizing against the Iraq war. Among his arguments, he included this one:
This war will be fought because these neoconservatives desire to make the Middle East safe not for democracy, but for Israeli hegemony. They are convinced that the Middle East is irremediably hostile to both the United States and Israel; and they firmly hold the racist view that Middle Easterners understand only force. For these American Likudniks and their Israeli counterparts, sad to say, the tragedy of September 11 was a godsend: It enabled them to draft the United States to help fight Israel's enemies.
This argument against the war was not at all unusual on the faculty of the University of Chicago at the time. Another professor of Middle East history, Fred Donner, gave it blatant expression on the pages of the Chicago Tribune, calling the Iraq war "a vision deriving from Likud-oriented members of the president's team—particularly Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith." So perhaps it is not surprising that Obama, in his October 2002 antiwar speech, declared: "What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne." No mention of Cheney or Rumsfeld—and no need to mention them, to a constituency that knew who was really behind the push for war, and why. (Later, the same argument would figure prominently in The Israel Lobby, co-authored by another Chicago professor, John Mearsheimer.)
Obama, when pressed during an appearance before a Jewish audience, admitted that "I do know him [Khalidi] because I taught at the University of Chicago." This sounds wholly innocuous; I also know Khalidi because I taught at the University of Chicago—twice, in 1990 and 1991, when I had an office on the same hall. Obama continues: "And I do know him and I have had conversations." Well, even I've had conversations with Khalidi. (A former Chicago graduate student who must keep meticulous records writes to me that he spotted me on December 6, 1990, at the Quad Club lunching with Khalidi.) Nor does it mean much if Khalidi introduced Obama to Edward Said; Khalidi introduced me to Edward Said in New York in November 1986.
The difference is that while I came away from these encounters convinced that Khalidi's purported moderation was a sham, and have said so, Obama went the other direction, maintaining their friendship right up to Khalidi's send-off from Chicago, to which he contributed an encomium. Which is why I'd really like to see that videotape. I'm just curious which of Rashid Khalidi's virtues I somehow missed, and Barack Obama saw.
Pointer: The next public sighting of Khalidi will be at a Columbia conference entitled "Orientalism from the Standpoint of its Victims—An Edward Said Conference," on November 7. Khalidi will deliver the opening address.
Khalidi is AN AMERICAN SCHOLAR. John McCain knows the value of Khalidi.
Look at Khalidi`s crednetials. Impressive to say the least.
Rashid Khalidi (born 1950), an American historian of the Middle East, is the 'Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies' at Columbia University,[1] and director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.
Khalidi was born in New York. He received a B.A. from Yale University, where he was a member of Wolf's Head Society,[2] in 1970,[3] and a D. Phil. from Oxford University in 1974[4] and spent many years as a professor and director of both the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Center for International Studies at the University of Chicago before joining the Columbia faculty. He has also taught at Georgetown University, Lebanese University, and the American University of Beirut.
Khalidi is married to Mona Khalidi, who is the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs and the Assistant Director of Graduate Studies of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.[5] He is a member of the National Advisory Committee of the U.S. Interreligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East, which describes itself as "a national organization of Jews, Christians and Muslims dedicated to dialogue, education and advocacy for peace based on the deepest teachings of the three religious traditions."[6]
He is member of the Board of Sponsors of The Palestine-Israel Journal, a publication founded by Ziad AbuZayyad and Victor Cygielman, prominent Palestinian and Israeli journalists.
He is founding trustee of The Center for Palestine Research and Studies.
[/size]
Princeton University let it be known that it was considering hiring Khalidi in 2005.[7] However, a controversy developed over Khalidi's political involvements and no job offer was made.[8]
Academic work
Khalidi’s research covers primarily the history of the modern Middle East. He focuses on the countries of the southern and eastern Mediterranean, with an eye to the emergence of various national identities and the role played by external powers in their development. He also researches the impact of the press on forming new senses of community, the role of education in the construction of political identity, and in the way narratives have developed over the past centuries in the region.[4] Michael C. Hudson, director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown, describes Khalidi as "preeminent in his field."[9] He served as President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America in 1994. Khalidi is currently editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies.
Much of Khalidi's scholarly work in the 1990s focused on the historical construction of nationalism in the Arab world. Drawing on the work of theorists Benedict Anderson who described nations as "imagined communities", he does not posit primordial national identities, but clearly argues that these nations have legitimacy and rights. In Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1997), he places the emergence of Palestinian national identity in the context of Ottoman and British colonialism as well as the early Zionist effort in the Levant. This book won the Middle East Studies Association’s Albert Hourani Prize as best book of 1997.[10] His dating of Palestinian national emergence to the early 20th century and his tracing of its contours provide a rejoinder to Israeli nationalist claims that Palestinians either do not exist, or had no collective claims prior to the 1948 creation of Israel. Nevertheless, Khalidi is also careful to focus on the late development, failings and internal divisions within the various elements of the Palestinian nationalist movement as well.
In Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (2004), Khalidi takes readers on a historical tour of Western intervention in the Middle East, and argues that these interventions continue to have a colonialist nature that is both morally unacceptable and likely to backfire.
-
Yes, McCain and his GOP charitable organization wrote a check to a foreign entity to do polling.
Obama went to this PLO spokesman's home repeatedly with this wife. Kahlidi's wife Mona was a top English translator to Arafat's press agency.
And Kahlidi wrote the nice tribute to Abu Iyad a/k/a Salah Khalaf who was a top PLO leader, and the commander in chief of the Black September, which you are probably too young to understand the full impact of.
Listen, do all the hero worship you want. Hopefully enough of us will be watching this guy.........
-
I can`t think of anyone more qualified on Middle Eastern International Studies than Khalidi.
John McCain has done the right thing by funding Khalidi and consulting with him regularly. This is one area you should be bragging and highlighting about McCain, instead of running away from. McCain KNOWS Khalidi is an expert and knows that 500 grand he gave Khalidi was well spent.
-
Yes, McCain and his GOP charitable organization wrote a check to a foreign entity to do polling.
Obama went to this PLO spokesman's home repeatedly with this wife. Kahlidi's wife Mona was a top English translator to Arafat's press agency.
And Kahlidi wrote the nice tribute to Abu Iyad a/k/a Salah Khalaf who was a top PLO leader, and the commander in chief of the Black September, which you are probably too young to understand the full impact of.
Listen, do all the hero worship you want. Hopefully enough of us will be watching this guy.........
I`m simply praising McCain`s own Judgment for consulting with the American Scholar, Khalidi and funding his research is all. McCain USED to be able to surround himself and choose experts.
-
Slandering a Noted Scholar
Both McCain and Palin have referred to Khalidi as a former "spokesman" for the Palestine Liberation Organization, citing his time in Beirut during the late 1970s and early 1980s when the then-exiled PLO was based there and some of its armed factions were still engaged in terrorism. Khalidi was never a spokesman for the organization, however, instead serving during that period as a fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies and as a professor at the American University in Beirut. (I first met Khalidi in the Lebanese capital back in 1981 and recall him as someone who clearly embraced an independent and moderate nationalist perspective.) Later, he served in an advisory capacity for the non-PLO Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid peace talks.
Campaigning on Wednesday, Palin referred to Khalidi as "another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama going back several years." Fox News and scores of other pro-Republican news outlets have similarly accused Khalidi of being an "extremist" and a "supporter of terrorism."
In reality, rather than allying himself with anti-Israeli extremists, Khalidi is far more closely identified with Palestinian moderates and the Israeli peace camp. For example, he serves on the national advisory committee of the U.S. Interreligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East, a highly regarded interfaith group advocating dialogue, education and peace advocacy.
Furthermore, while recognizing the international legal right for a people to resist uniformed foreign occupation forces, Khalidi has opposed terrorism and has explicitly stated that killing Israeli civilians is a "war crime" and "a violation of international law."
The apparent source of many of these misrepresentations of Khalidi come from a 2004 Washington Times article written by Asaf Romirowsky and by Jonathan Calt Harris of the right-wing Middle East Forum, which falsely accused Khalidi of "shilling for terrorists." In addition, despite Khalidi's well-known criticism of former Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, the article was headlined "Arafat Minion as Professor." Neither the mainstream media nor the Obama campaign have bothered to cite Harris' notorious history of demonstrably false reporting and mischaracterizations of Khalidi and other Middle East scholars who have dared question Bush administration policy in the Middle East. (That same year, Harris wrote a widely circulated article for the National Review Online -- another source of a series false claims against Khalidi -- in which he manufactured an anti-Semitic remark that he claimed I had made as a speaker on a panel at the National Press Club in Washington sponsored by the American Committee on Jerusalem, a group for which Khalidi once served as president. Fortunately, the event was taped, so I succeeded in getting NRO to drop the fabricated quote from the article when I threatened legal action.)
Unfortunately, the Obama campaign has yet to defend Khalidi from any of the demonstrably false mischaracterizations of Khalidi's political positions, simply claiming that Obama "does not share Khalidi's views."
For example, when McCain demanded that the Los Angeles Times release a tape -- which it received on the condition that it not be made public -- of a social event Obama attended in honor of Khalidi, McCain declared, "If there was a tape of John McCain in a neo-Nazi outfit, I think the treatment of the issue would be slightly different." Regretfully, the Obama campaign has yet to challenge the Republican nominee's unconscionable comparison of this respected Arab American scholar to neo-Nazis.
Indeed, instead of coming to Khalidi's defense against these and other racist and transparently false attacks against him, the Obama campaign has instead launched a counterattack, pointing out that the International Republican Institute, a government-funded foundation nominally headed by McCain, funded a project founded by Khalidi known as the Center for Palestine Research and Studies. The IRI has provided more than $800,000 to the group, which engages in polling and other survey research on Palestinian sociopolitical attitudes. It is unclear, however, what the Democrats find so objectionable about the center's work.
Both campaigns, then, are effectively buying into this myth that there are these far left academics who are unduly influencing our policy makers and/or squandering our tax dollars. In doing so, both McCain and Obama are thereby contributing to the growing anti-intellectualism and ongoing threats to academic freedom in this country.
-
Yeah, all that is wonderful, TA. I don't care about what other great things this guy does.
Khalaf was, at least at some point, very committed to the destruction of Israel. That's enough for me.
Note, TA - the issue is not really Khalaf, it is Obama's ties.
Funny how that LA Times tape just cannot be released. Supposedly we get Obama, Ayers, and Khalaf, and Mona. Too bad. I don't think it would stop Obama from being elected.
-
Look, TA, live in your own world.
Make fun of McCain and Palin. They are both kind of stupid and dense sometimes.
But they don't seem to have an unseen agenda. We can only guess at what Biden was talking about.
-
TA, read the last 2 paragraphs of Krauthammer's commentary:
Obama & Friends: Judge Not?
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, October 10, 2008; A19
Convicted felon Tony Rezko. Unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. And the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It is hard to think of any presidential candidate before Barack Obama sporting associations with three more execrable characters. Yet let the McCain campaign raise the issue, and the mainstream media begin fulminating about dirty campaigning tinged with racism and McCarthyite guilt by association.
But associations are important. They provide a significant insight into character. They are particularly relevant in relation to a potential president as new, unknown, opaque and self-contained as Obama. With the economy overshadowing everything, it may be too late politically to be raising this issue. But that does not make it, as conventional wisdom holds, in any way illegitimate.
McCain has only himself to blame for the bad timing. He should months ago have begun challenging Obama's associations, before the economic meltdown allowed the Obama campaign (and the mainstream media, which is to say the same thing) to dismiss the charges as an act of desperation by the trailing candidate.
McCain had his chance back in April when the North Carolina Republican Party ran a gubernatorial campaign ad that included the linking of Obama with Jeremiah Wright. The ad was duly denounced by the New York Times and other deep thinkers as racist.
This was patently absurd. Racism is treating people differently and invidiously on the basis of race. Had any white presidential candidate had a close 20-year association with a white preacher overtly spreading race hatred from the pulpit, that candidate would have been not just universally denounced and deemed unfit for office but written out of polite society entirely.
Nonetheless, John McCain in his infinite wisdom, and with his overflowing sense of personal rectitude, joined the braying mob in denouncing that perfectly legitimate ad, saying it had no place in any campaign. In doing so, McCain unilaterally disarmed himself, rendering off-limits Obama's associations, an issue that even Hillary Clinton addressed more than once.
Obama's political career was launched with Ayers giving him a fundraiser in his living room. If a Republican candidate had launched his political career at the home of an abortion-clinic bomber -- even a repentant one -- he would not have been able to run for dogcatcher in Podunk. And Ayers shows no remorse. His only regret is that he "didn't do enough."
Why are these associations important? Do I think Obama is as corrupt as Rezko? Or shares Wright's angry racism or Ayers's unreconstructed 1960s radicalism?
No. But that does not make these associations irrelevant. They tell us two important things about Obama.
First, his cynicism and ruthlessness. He found these men useful, and use them he did. Would you attend a church whose pastor was spreading racial animosity from the pulpit? Would you even shake hands with -- let alone serve on two boards with -- an unrepentant terrorist, whether he bombed U.S. military installations or abortion clinics?
Most Americans would not, on the grounds of sheer indecency. Yet Obama did, if not out of conviction then out of expediency. He was a young man on the make, an unknown outsider working his way into Chicago politics. He played the game with everyone, without qualms and with obvious success.
Obama is not the first politician to rise through a corrupt political machine. But he is one of the rare few to then have the audacity to present himself as a transcendent healer, hovering above and bringing redemption to the "old politics" -- of the kind he had enthusiastically embraced in Chicago in the service of his own ambition.
Second, and even more disturbing than the cynicism, is the window these associations give on Obama's core beliefs. He doesn't share the Rev. Wright's poisonous views of race nor Ayers's views, past and present, about the evil that is American society. But Obama clearly did not consider these views beyond the pale. For many years he swam easily and without protest in that fetid pond.
Until now. Today, on the threshold of the presidency, Obama concedes the odiousness of these associations, which is why he has severed them. But for the years in which he sat in Wright's pews and shared common purpose on boards with Ayers, Obama considered them a legitimate, indeed unremarkable, part of social discourse.
Do you? Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect. There is a difference between temperament and character. Equanimity is a virtue. Tolerance of the obscene is not
-
I do take issue with the Obama campaign for not defending Khalidi: Unfortunately, the Obama campaign has yet to defend Khalidi from any of the demonstrably false mischaracterizations of Khalidi's political positions, simply claiming that Obama "does not share Khalidi's views."
Obama should not let anyone falsely accuse Khalidi of anything. Khalidi has been a great advisor to McCain and has taken the money that McCain has given him and used it for important research.
McCain should also defend his consultant Khalidi whenver the rogue Palin brings it up. Clearly she hasn`t gotten the memo yet. McCain I am sure is pissed yet again. He knows firsthand Khalidi is an AMERICAN SCHOLAR and very knowledgeable about Middle Eastern Policies.
-
I think McCain should defend his friend Khalidi. He probably will when the election is over and he is back in the Senate.
-
Khalidi is a great American. I feel sorry for him. McCain needs to come out in his defense.
-
I do take issue with the Obama campaign for not defending Khalidi: Unfortunately, the Obama campaign has yet to defend Khalidi from any of the demonstrably false mischaracterizations of Khalidi's political positions, simply claiming that Obama "does not share Khalidi's views."
Obama should not let anyone falsely accuse Khalidi of anything. Khalidi has been a great advisor to McCain and has taken the money that McCain has given him and used it for important research.
McCain should also defend his consultant Khalidi whenver the rogue Palin brings it up. Clearly she hasn`t gotten the memo yet. McCain I am sure is pissed yet again. He knows firsthand Khalidi is an AMERICAN SCHOLAR and very knowledgeable about Middle Eastern Policies.
1) Obama went to Khalidi's home many times for dinner.
2) Khalidi was a PLO spokesperson. His wife worked for the PLO as well.
3) In 1991, Khalidi wrote a obit for Khalaf, the chief terrorist of the Black September organization.
4) In 1998, McCain was a member and chaired the International Republican Institute, which wrote a check for $448,873 to fund a Center for Palestine Research and Studies.
I'm concerned about #1, 2, and 3. My nervous system isn't so worried about #4.
-
I think McCain should defend his friend Khalidi. He probably will when the election is over and he is back in the Senate.
Nice schtick....and that's regarding BOTH Olbermann and you......
-
Khalidi is a great American. I feel sorry for him. McCain needs to come out in his defense.
As long as you're doing schtick, I'll oblige you.........
Lyrics to Hooray for Captain Spaulding:
Jamison (Zeppo): There's something that I'd like to state
That he's too modest to relate.
The Captain is a moral man.
Sometimes he finds it trying.
Spaulding (Groucho): This fact I'll emphasize with stress:
I never take a drink unless
Somebody's buying.
Crowd: The Captain is a very moral man.
Jamison: If he hears anything obscene,
He'll naturally repel it.
Spaulding: I hate a dirty joke I do,
Unless it's told by someone who
Knows how to tell it.
Crowd: The Captain is a very moral man.
Hooray for Captain Spaulding,
The African Explorer.
Spaulding: Did someone call me Schnorer?
Crowd: Hooray hooray hooray!
Spaulding: [Wacky Dance]
Jamison: He went into the jungle,
Where all the monkeys throw nuts.
Spaulding: If I stay here I'll go nuts.
Crowd: Hooray hooray hooray.
Spaulding: [Wacky Dance]
Crowd: He put all his reliance
In courage and defiance.
And risked his life for science.
Spaulding: Hey hey!
Mrs. Rittenhouse (Margaret Dumont): He is the only white man
Who covered every acre.
[Note: This line is often edited from the film, and the version from
which the sound clip was taken is no exception]
Spaulding: I think I'll try and make her.
Crowd: Hooray hooray hooray!
Spaulding: [Extended Wacky Dance]
Crowd: He put all his reliance
In courage and defiance.
And risked his life for science.
Spaulding: Hey hey!
Crowd: Hooray for Captain Spaulding,
The African explorer.
He brought his name undying fame,
And that is why we say:
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!
Spaulding (spoken): My friends, I am highly gratified at this
magnificent display of effusion. And I want you to know -
Crowd (interrupting): Hooray for Captain Spaulding,
The African explorer.
He brought his name undying fame,
And that is why we say:
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!
Spaulding (spoken): My friends, I am highly gratified at this
magnificent display of effusion. And I want you to know -
Crowd (interrupting again): Hooray for Captain Spaulding,
The African explorer.
He brought his name undying fame,
And that is why we say:
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!
Spaulding (spoken): My friends, I am highly gratified at this
magnificent display of effusion. And I want you to know -
(singing): Hooray for Captain Spaulding,
the African Inquirer.
(spoken): Well, somebody's gotta do it.
-
1) Obama went to Khalidi's home many times for dinner.
2) Khalidi was a PLO spokesperson. His wife worked for the PLO as well.
3) In 1991, Khalidi wrote a obit for Khalaf, the chief terrorist of the Black September organization.
4) In 1998, McCain was a member and chaired the International Republican Institute, which wrote a check for $448,873 to fund a Center for Palestine Research and Studies.
I'm concerned about #1, 2, and 3. My nervous system isn't so worried about #4.
You forgot number 5.
5) McCain should stop the attacks on his advisor Khalidi and tell everyone how useful the 500,000 dollars he gave Khalidi for research.
Obama should also make sure that the lies about Khalidis political positions are not distorted as the Obama camp is not calling out the lies.
I feel sorry for Khalidi, as an American Scholar, one who has served many United States Presidents, Congressman and Senators with valuable research and who has taught hundreds and thousands of people around the world, AND who has basically written every single textbook on Middle Eastern International Relations-
It is about time SOMEBODY STOOD UP FOR HIM AND SAID ENOUGH!
McCAIN and Obama. Especially McCain since he has had a long working relationship with Khalidi.
Poor Guy.
-
You forgot number 5.
5) McCain should stop the attacks on his advisor Khalidi and tell everyone how useful the 500,000 dollars he gave Khalidi for research.
Obama should also make sure that the lies about Khalidis political positions are not distorted as the Obama camp is not calling out the lies.
I feel sorry for Khalidi, as an American Scholar, one who has served many United States Presidents, Congressman and Senators with valuable research and who has taught hundreds and thousands of people around the world, AND who has basically written every single textbook on Middle Eastern International Relations-
It is about time SOMEBODY STOOD UP FOR HIM AND SAID ENOUGH!
McCAIN and Obama. Especially McCain since he has had a long working relationship with Khalidi.
Poor Guy.
schtick coma....
-
Number 2 is wrong though.
I take it you have never read any Khalidi. McCain has. He Knows. Palin I don`t think does.
Khalidi was never a spokesman for the organization, however, instead serving during that period as a fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies and as a professor at the American University in Beirut. (I first met Khalidi in the Lebanese capital back in 1981 and recall him as someone who clearly embraced an independent and moderate nationalist perspective.) Later, he served in an advisory capacity for the non-PLO Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid peace talks.
-
Poor Khalidi,
He is just an American Scholar getting drug in the mud because he has a funny sounding name. So what if McCain gave him 500,000 dollars personally for research.
So what if he is one of THE MOST ACCOMPLISHED AMERICAN SCHOLARS on Middle Eastern Studies.
He is American born and HIGHLY RESPECTED around the world and by McCain. I don`t think McCain would give someone 500,000 dollars of tax payer money if he didn`t think he would use it wisely.
McCain is smart. He knows Khalidi is brilliant.
-
William Ayers and John McCain both gave Khalidi money. Mr. Ayers also must know what John McCain does, that Khalidi is a great AMERICAN SCHOLAR of Middle Eastern Studies.
-
yeah yeah adam its ok, we know hes a good guy.
-
From National Review:
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=ZDFkMGE2MmM1M2Q5MmY0ZmExMzUxMWRhZGJmMTAyOGY=
The L.A. Times Suppresses Obama’s Khalidi Bash Tape
Obama, Ayers, and PLO supporters toast Edward Said’s successor, but the press doesn’t think it’s quite as newsworthy as Sarah Palin’s wardrobe.
By Andrew C. McCarthy
Let’s try a thought experiment. Say John McCain attended a party at which known racists and terror mongers were in attendance. Say testimonials were given, including a glowing one by McCain for the benefit of the guest of honor ... who happened to be a top apologist for terrorists. Say McCain not only gave a speech but stood by, in tacit approval and solidarity, while other racists and terror mongers gave speeches that reeked of hatred for an American ally and rationalizations of terror attacks.
Now let’s say the Los Angeles Times obtained a videotape of the party.
Question: Is there any chance — any chance — the Times would not release the tape and publish front-page story after story about the gory details, with the usual accompanying chorus of sanctimony from the oped commentariat? Is there any chance, if the Times was the least bit reluctant about publishing (remember, we’re pretending here), that the rest of the mainstream media (y’know, the guys who drove Trent Lott out of his leadership position over a birthday-party toast) would not be screaming for the release of the tape?
Do we really have to ask?
So now, let’s leave thought experiments and return to reality: Why is the Los Angeles Times sitting on a videotape of the 2003 farewell bash in Chicago at which Barack Obama lavished praise on the guest of honor, Rashid Khalidi — former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat?
At the time Khalidi, a PLO adviser turned University of Chicago professor, was headed east to Columbia. There he would take over the University’s Middle East-studies program (which he has since maintained as a bubbling cauldron of anti-Semitism) and assume the professorship endowed in honor of Edward Sayyid, another notorious terror apologist.
The party featured encomiums by many of Khalidi’s allies, colleagues, and friends, including Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, and Bill Ayers, the terrorist turned education professor. It was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), which had been founded by Khalidi and his wife, Mona, formerly a top English translator for Arafat’s press agency.
Is there just a teeny-weenie chance that this was an evening of Israel-bashing Obama would find very difficult to explain? Could it be that the Times, a pillar of the Obamedia, is covering for its guy?
Gateway Pundit reports that the Times has the videotape but is suppressing it.
Back in April, the Times published a gentle story about the fete. Reporter Peter Wallsten avoided, for example, any mention of the inconvenient fact that the revelers included Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife and fellow Weatherman terrorist. These self-professed revolutionary Leftists are friendly with both Obama and Khalidi — indeed, researcher Stanley Kurtz has noted that Ayers and Khalidi were “best friends.” (And — small world! — it turns out that the Obamas are extremely close to the Khalidis, who have reportedly babysat the Obama children.)
Nor did the Times report the party was thrown by AAAN. Wallsten does tell us that the AAAN received grants from the Leftist Woods Fund when Obama was on its board — but, besides understating the amount (it was $75,000, not $40,000), the Times mentions neither that Ayers was also on the Woods board at the time nor that AAAN is rabidly anti-Israel. (Though the organization regards Israel as illegitimate and has sought to justify Palestinian terrorism, Wallsten describes the AAAN as “a social service group.”)
Perhaps even more inconveniently, the Times also let slip that it had obtained a videotape of the party.
Wallsten’s story is worth excerpting at length (italics are mine):
It was a celebration of Palestinian culture — a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.
A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.
His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation — a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."...
[T]he warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.
Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.
At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."
One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."
Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than … his opponents for the White House....
At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. "You will not have a better senator under any circumstances," Khalidi said.
The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.
Though Khalidi has seen little of Sen. Obama in recent years, Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis' daughter.
In interviews with The Times, Khalidi declined to discuss specifics of private talks over the years with Obama. He did not begrudge his friend for being out of touch, or for focusing more these days on his support for Israel — a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S., just as wooing Chicago's large Arab American community was important for winning local elections.
So why is the Times sitting on the videotape of the Khalidi festivities? Given Obama's (preposterous) claims that he didn’t know Ayers that well and was unfamiliar with Ayers’s views, why didn't the Times report that Ayers and Dohrn were at the bash? Was it not worth mentioning the remarkable coincidence that both Obama and Ayers — the “education reform” allies who barely know each other … except to the extent they together doled out tens of millions of dollars to Leftist agitators, attacked the criminal justice system, and raved about each others books — just happen to be intimate friends of the same anti-American Israel-basher? (Despite having watched the videotape, Wallsten told Gateway Pundit he “did not know” whether Ayers was there.)
Why won’t the Times tell us what was said in the various Khalidi testimonials? On that score, Ayers and Dohrn have always had characteristically noxious views on the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. And, true to form, they have always been quite open about them. There is no reason to believe those views have ever changed. Here, for example, is what they had to say in Prairie Fire, the Weather Underground’s 1974 Communist manifesto (emphasis in original):
Palestinian independence is opposed with reactionary schemes by Jordan, completely opposed with military terror by Israel, and manipulated by the U.S. The U.S.-sponsored notion of stability and status-quo in the Mideast is an attempt to preserve U.S. imperialist control of oil, using zionist power as the cat's paw. The Mideast has become a world focus of struggles over oil resources and control of strategic sea and air routes. Yet the Palestinian struggle is at the heart of other conflicts in the Mideast. Only the Palestinians can determine the solution which reflects the aspirations of the Palestinian people. No "settlements" in the Mideast which exclude the Palestinians will resolve the conflict. Palestinian liberation will not be suppressed.
The U.S. people have been seriously deceived about the Palestinians and Israel. This calls for a campaign to educate and focus attention on the true situation: teach-ins, debates, and open clear support for Palestinian liberation; reading about the Palestinian movement—The Disinherited by Fawaz Turki, Enemy of the Sun; opposing U.S. aid to Israel. Our silence or acceptance of pro-zionist policy is a form of complicity with U.S.-backed aggression and terror, and a betrayal of internationalism.
SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!
U.S. OUT OF THE MIDEAST!
END AID TO ISRAEL!
Barack Obama wouldn’t possibly let something like that pass without a spirited defense of the Israel he tells us he so staunchly supports … would he? I guess to answer that question, we’d have to know what was on the tape.
But who has time for such trifles? After all, isn’t Diana Vreeland about to critique Sarah Palin’s sartorial splendor?
— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy chairs the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’s Center for Law & Counterterrorism and is the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books 2008).
-
Oopsy Doopsy.
Super-Zionist Peretz Defends Khalidi
November 01, 2008 1:21 PM
In Sen. John McCain's last week of campaigning, he and his campaign have done all they can to attack Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi. They've called him anti-Semitic, they've falsely called him a spokesman for the PLO, they've mentioned him on TV as a central argument in their attacks on Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.
Marty Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic and a longtime strong supporter of Israel, defended Khalidi this week.
"I assume that my Zionist credentials are not in dispute," Peretz writes. "And I have written more appreciative words about Khalidi than Obama ever uttered. In fact, I even invited Khalidi to speak for a Jewish organization with which I work. Moreover, the Israelis are trying to live cooperatively and in peace with Palestinians whose unrelenting positions make Khalidi almost appear like a Zionist."
-
William Ayers and John McCain both gave Khalidi money. Mr. Ayers also must know what John McCain does, that Khalidi is a great AMERICAN SCHOLAR of Middle Eastern Studies.
....Hurray for Captain Spalding, the African Explorer.....
Please take a look at the article above from National Review. A link is provided.
-
Oopsy Doopsy.
Super-Zionist Peretz Defends Khalidi
November 01, 2008 1:21 PM
In Sen. John McCain's last week of campaigning, he and his campaign have done all they can to attack Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi. They've called him anti-Semitic, they've falsely called him a spokesman for the PLO, they've mentioned him on TV as a central argument in their attacks on Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.
Marty Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic and a longtime strong supporter of Israel, defended Khalidi this week.
"I assume that my Zionist credentials are not in dispute," Peretz writes. "And I have written more appreciative words about Khalidi than Obama ever uttered. In fact, I even invited Khalidi to speak for a Jewish organization with which I work. Moreover, the Israelis are trying to live cooperatively and in peace with Palestinians whose unrelenting positions make Khalidi almost appear like a Zionist."
The Jews (Israel) will continue trying to survive, and will attempt to get along with whoever is in power.
-
Looks like we have probably the most RENOWNED Jewish Leader in the world defending Khalidi.
Clearly John McCain knew that giving Khalidi was a smart move.
Heywood, you should be applauding McCain, not throwing his judgement under the bus.
Khalidi is a good guy. I can`t find anyone that has an unkind word about him.
The top Jewish Leaders all agree that Khalidi is a great guy.
John McCain liked Khalidi enough to give him 500,000 dollars.
What Gives?
STOP HATING on JOHN MCCAIN`S FRIEND!
-
Oopsy Doopsy.
Jewish vote strengthens for Obama
WASHINGTON BUREAU
Friday, October 31, 2008
WASHINGTON — Jewish voters appear to be "coming home" to the Democratic Party, in the words of one political strategist.
A Gallup poll released on Oct. 23 had Sen. Barack Obama winning 74 percent of the Jewish vote in the presidential race, up 13 points from July.
A Quinnipiac University poll released the same day has Obama beating out Sen. John McCain among Florida Jews by more than 3-to-1.
Jews make up less than 3 percent of the U.S. population but are statistically significant enough to affect key battleground states like Florida.
"There is an intense focus this year," said Ira Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council. He was part of a panel of scholars and activists, including former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, who discussed the impact of the Jewish vote at a Georgetown University event Thursday.
-
Looks like we have probably the most RENOWNED Jewish Leader in the world defending Khalidi.
Clearly John McCain knew that giving Khalidi was a smart move.
Heywood, you should be applauding McCain, not throwing his judgement under the bus.
Khalidi is a good guy. I can`t find anyone that has an unkind word about him.
The top Jewish Leaders all agree that Khalidi is a great guy.
John McCain liked Khalidi enough to give him 500,000 dollars.
What Gives?
STOP HATING on JOHN MCCAIN`S FRIEND!
Marty Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic is the probably the most RENOWNED Jewish Leader in the world ....Marty???
Let me get to work...later....
-
Marty Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic is the probably the most RENOWNED Jewish Leader in the world ....Marty???
Let me get to work...later....
Have you read The New Republic? You forgot, one side of my family is full of Jews. My dad was Jewish. Marty is pretty important as far as the Zionists go. I have had to hear all about him for a long time. :-\
-
Oopsy Doopsy!
(http://sas-origin.onstreammedia.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/rpqel7ri6kksdb_fkliavq.gif)
-
She handled the prank extremely well, which shows why she is liked so much by so many.
McCain was smart in picking Palin. At least, now he has a shot of winning. All the polls tilting in his direction.
Obama is just now starting to be proud of this country. What an idiot! I've always been proud of this country, the greatest country on earth.
McCain/Palin 08!!!
-
She handled the prank extremely well, which shows why she is liked so much by so many.
McCain was smart in picking Palin. At least, now he has a shot of winning. All the polls tilting in his direction.
Obama is just now starting to be proud of this country. What an idiot! I've always been proud of this country, the greatest country on earth.
McCain/Palin 08!!!
she handled it extremely well? she thought it was the president and as soon as she found out she hanged up.
-
She handled the prank extremely well, which shows why she is liked so much by so many.
McCain was smart in picking Palin. At least, now he has a shot of winning. All the polls tilting in his direction.
You sound delusional.
-
way to get the facts out there TA, good luck on the Mr Get Big III
McCain Funded Work Of Palestinian His Campaign Hopes To Tie To Obama
October 28, 2008 04:34 PM
The latest guilt-by-association target that the McCain campaign is using to hit Barack Obama could carry some collateral damage for its own candidate.
As Politico's Ben Smith reported on Tuesday, the McCain campaign is demanding that the Los Angeles Times release video in its possession of a party attended by Barack Obama and Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi.
"A major news organization is intentionally suppressing information that could provide a clearer link between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi," said McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb, citing Obama's friendship with Khalidi, who is now a professor at Columbia University.
The McCain camp gambit comes after conservative writers have repeatedly pressed for media outlets to write about the rather tenuous connections between Obama and Khalidi, an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights.
Specifically, National Review writers want much more attention paid to the association, given that the LA Times has reported that Khalidi lavished praise on Obama at a farewell party in Chicago at which Bill Ayers was also present. (Other writers have accused Khalidi of being an aide to Yasser Arafat, a claim which Marc Ambinder and Ari Berman have suggested is not credible.)
In regards to Khalidi, however, the guilt-by-association game burns John McCain as well.
During the 1990s, while he served as chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI), McCain distributed several grants to the Palestinian research center co-founded by Khalidi, including one worth half a million dollars.
A 1998 tax filing for the McCain-led group shows a $448,873 grant to Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research and Studies for work in the West Bank. (See grant number 5180, "West Bank: CPRS" on page 14 of this PDF.)
The relationship extends back as far as 1993, when John McCain joined IRI as chairman in January. Foreign Affairs noted in September of that year that IRI had helped fund several extensive studies in Palestine run by Khalidi's group, including over 30 public opinion polls and a study of "sociopolitical attitudes."
Of course, there's seemingly nothing objectionable with McCain's organization helping a Palestinian group conduct research in the West Bank or Gaza. But it does suggest that McCain could have some of his own explaining to do as he tries to make hay out of Khalidi's ties to Obama.
-
the dude didnt even try to make his sarkozy impression sound believable, and she still fell for it.
I was amzed that she didn't realize it was fake? I mean c'mon he was telling her he wanted to hunt/kill animals from a helicopter and how good it felt to do that,etc.
-
she handled it extremely well? she thought it was the president and as soon as she found out she hanged up.
Most perturbing aspect was when he said the wrong name of Canada's PM she still didn't pick that up.
All the clues; that, saying taking lives is fun, referencing Hustler mag, asking if Joe the Plumber was her husband etc. Her acting star struck, giggling and talking about giving someone a "big hug" were no prizes either. Mortifying.
-
She gets a pass on this ambush.
-
She acts like a giddy 13-year old talking to Lance Bass.
Zero shrewdness. Zero. He teases her about the PORN movie and she says "Good".
Imagine HER at the negotiation table with a cold MFer like Vladimir Putin. Imagine that.
-
1) Obama went to Khalidi's home many times for dinner.
2) Khalidi was a PLO spokesperson. His wife worked for the PLO as well.
3) In 1991, Khalidi wrote a obit for Khalaf, the chief terrorist of the Black September organization.
4) In 1998, McCain was a member and chaired the International Republican Institute, which wrote a check for $448,873 to fund a Center for Palestine Research and Studies.
I'm concerned about #1, 2, and 3. My nervous system isn't so worried about #4.
McCain gaive 480,000 to Khalidid. Why?
-
She handled the prank extremely well, which shows why she is liked so much by so many.
McCain was smart in picking Palin. At least, now he has a shot of winning. All the polls tilting in his direction.
Obama is just now starting to be proud of this country. What an idiot! I've always been proud of this country, the greatest country on earth.
McCain/Palin 08!!!
Uh, the pranksters made two major name mistakes which she didn't catch.
Then, they talked about the Porn she was in, the fake one, and she just kept laughing and thanking them.
Unbelievable. They vetted the callers about as well as McCain vetted his VP selection.
-
exactly, they cant have a muslim friend without calling it conspiring with terrorists. pathetic country.
Yeah, having a Muslim friend requires national news coverage. ::)
Typical deflection anyway, this latest Palin episode is hard to defend - same as not knowing what the VP does, the Couric debacle, seeing Russia from her house etc - so ppl attack ::)
-
Holy Shit - I just listened to that prank call. I cannot believe that dingbat couldn't figure out it was a crank call from the first word. Even hearing Palin talk to her aide before the call started gave me the creeps. This is one STUPID person. Republicans you need to raise your fucking standards.
Regarding Khalidi, I don't know who is advising McCain on this shit but I'm guessing at least one of those 10 houses he owns is made of glass. I for one will be glad when this campaign is over just so I don't need to watch this tired, confused old man make a jackass of himself on a daily basis.
-
That heavy breathing laugh of hers is VERY hot.
-
I assume that Sarah Palin gives head like a champ.
I'm betting she gives head like a 3 speed fan.
-
This is really a stupid post. If these guys did their research they would know exactly what to say to get her on the phone and if her staff told her that is who she was talking to why should she think differently.
the other think is I personally couldnt not understand a lot of what he said. He was talking with a heavy accent and very fast and her responses were the equivelant of nodding and smiling. Heaven forbid she is thinking the guy is decent, actually is who she was told he was and not asking her lewd questions?
Is it so difficult to think that these guys could get through the lines to prank her by misrepresenting them selves after a group of religious fanatics smuggled box cutters on a plane to take it over? If you have the will, there is a way.
-
the woman is an an idiot.
-
This is really a stupid post. If these guys did their research they would know exactly what to say to get her on the phone and if her staff told her that is who she was talking to why should she think differently.
the other think is I personally couldnt not understand a lot of what he said. He was talking with a heavy accent and very fast and her responses were the equivelant of nodding and smiling. Heaven forbid she is thinking the guy is decent, actually is who she was told he was and not asking her lewd questions?
Is it so difficult to think that these guys could get through the lines to prank her by misrepresenting them selves after a group of religious fanatics smuggled box cutters on a plane to take it over? If you have the will, there is a way.
Excuses from the right wing.
Admit it, Palin is a disaster and so is her staff. She is a complete dingbat.
-
Excuses from the right wing.
Admit it, Palin is a disaster and so is her staff. She is a complete dingbat.
She's a Disaster alright spot on.
-
BABA BOOEY...
Seriously, she was the best choice as VP candidate.
That darn liberal media. It's everywhere.
-
way to get the facts out there TA, good luck on the Mr Get Big III
Howard, what part of this is good?
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/6103
Among the Hyde Park friends of Barack Obama was former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi was on the faculty of the University of Chicago, at whose law school Obama was a lecturer. Their children attended the same school. The Khalidis and the Obamas became friends and dinner companions.
As Paul notes below, when Khalidi moved from the University of Chicago to Columbia, Obama attended the dinner honoring Khalidi. Obama saluted Khalidi for "offer[ing] constant reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." What a guy.
Last night FOX News reported that Khalidi wrote an obituary for Salah Khalaf (also known as Abu Iyad) when he died in 1991. According to the FOX News report, Khalidi praised Khalad and said he would be "sorely missed by the Palestinian people to whom he devoted his life."
Khalaf held many PLO posts. In Inside the PLO Neil Livingstone and David Halevy report that Khalaf was the PLO's spymaster, the leader of its security and covert apparatus and the principal link to so-called rejection front elements like Abu Nidal. He directly oversaw the PLO's internal security including Force 17, the Special Operations Group and the Intelligence and Security Apparatus.
Khalaf was also the commander in chief of the terrorist Black September organization. Black September was a PLO front group that answered directly to Yasser Arafat. It is of course best known for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.
Among its other operations was the 1973 seizure of the Saudi embassy in Khartoum. During the operation the American ambassador to Sudan (Cleo Noel) and his deputy chief of misson (George Curtis Moore) were both brutally murdered on Arafat's orders along with the Belgian diplomat Guy Eid. Khalaf was involved in the planning of the operation and directed the seizure of the embassy. (I tell the story of the operation in "How Arafat got away with murder.")
Before they murdered Noel, Moore and Eid, the Black September terrorists demanded the release of Robert Kennedy's assassin Sirhan Sirhan. Obama's friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn were also big fans of Sirhan Sirhan. FOX News also reported this week that Obama's friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn dedicated their 1974 book Prairie Fire to "political prisoners" including Sirhan Sirhan.
I wonder if Obama has had a chance to discuss the fans of Sirhan Sirhan within his circle of friends as he has met up with the members of the Kennedy family who are supporting his election for president. Obama would note that he was only six years old when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Would that cut it? The younger generation of the Kennedy family that lost its father and uncle wasn't much older at the time either...
-
Howard, what part of this is good?
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/6103
Among the Hyde Park friends of Barack Obama was former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi was on the faculty of the University of Chicago, at whose law school Obama was a lecturer. Their children attended the same school. The Khalidis and the Obamas became friends and dinner companions.
As Paul notes below, when Khalidi moved from the University of Chicago to Columbia, Obama attended the dinner honoring Khalidi. Obama saluted Khalidi for "offer[ing] constant reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." What a guy.
Last night FOX News reported that Khalidi wrote an obituary for Salah Khalaf (also known as Abu Iyad) when he died in 1991. According to the FOX News report, Khalidi praised Khalad and said he would be "sorely missed by the Palestinian people to whom he devoted his life."
Khalaf held many PLO posts. In Inside the PLO Neil Livingstone and David Halevy report that Khalaf was the PLO's spymaster, the leader of its security and covert apparatus and the principal link to so-called rejection front elements like Abu Nidal. He directly oversaw the PLO's internal security including Force 17, the Special Operations Group and the Intelligence and Security Apparatus.
Khalaf was also the commander in chief of the terrorist Black September organization. Black September was a PLO front group that answered directly to Yasser Arafat. It is of course best known for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.
Among its other operations was the 1973 seizure of the Saudi embassy in Khartoum. During the operation the American ambassador to Sudan (Cleo Noel) and his deputy chief of misson (George Curtis Moore) were both brutally murdered on Arafat's orders along with the Belgian diplomat Guy Eid. Khalaf was involved in the planning of the operation and directed the seizure of the embassy. (I tell the story of the operation in "How Arafat got away with murder.")
Before they murdered Noel, Moore and Eid, the Black September terrorists demanded the release of Robert Kennedy's assassin Sirhan Sirhan. Obama's friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn were also big fans of Sirhan Sirhan. FOX News also reported this week that Obama's friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn dedicated their 1974 book Prairie Fire to "political prisoners" including Sirhan Sirhan.
I wonder if Obama has had a chance to discuss the fans of Sirhan Sirhan within his circle of friends as he has met up with the members of the Kennedy family who are supporting his election for president. Obama would note that he was only six years old when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Would that cut it? The younger generation of the Kennedy family that lost its father and uncle wasn't much older at the time either...
STOP DRAGGING JOHN MCCAIN`S advisor and recipient through the mud. John McCain has stated that Khalidi is a great American Scholar and acknowledged that he also is integral for his research on Middle East Relations.
I don`t doubt John McCain`s trust for one moment regarding Khalidi and I do think the 500,000 he gave Khalidi was used for a good purpose.
Stop denigrating an innocent American and John McCain.
-
but True adonis, his name is muslim sounding so that automatically makes him a sinister terrorist.
-
STOP DRAGGING JOHN MCCAIN`S advisor and recipient through the mud. John McCain has stated that Khalidi is a great American Scholar and acknowledged that he also is integral for his research on Middle East Relations.
I don`t doubt John McCain`s trust for one moment regarding Khalidi and I do think the 500,000 he gave Khalidi was used for a good purpose.
Stop denigrating an innocent American and John McCain.
ah yes, schtick coma, at it's finest....
-
but True adonis, his name is muslim sounding so that automatically makes him a sinister terrorist.
Also Matrix, I think you forgot to mention he's black.
-
If we don't allow:
I have foreign policy experience because I can see Russia from my backyard.
Then we should also not allow:
Obama's personal friendship with & continuous dinner companion is a former PLO spokesman. Now this should not be criticized because this man is a member of the Center for Palestine Research and Studies, which received a grant from the GOP's IRI fund, which was intended for studies and opinion polls in the West Bank.
A crass way of putting it:
Throw some money to a bunch of Palestinians, what are the chances one may be connected to terrorists....
(I'm admitting that's a racist/crass statement, but I'm trying to get through the grey matter)......
-
Also Matrix, I think you forgot to mention he's black.
Are you saying that "obizzma" is the type of "G" that does a driveby in a stolen car with his "homeys" after robbing the KFC earlier that day, CQ?
-
If we don't allow:
I have foreign policy experience because I can see Russia from my backyard.
Then we should also not allow:
Obama's personal friendship with & continuous dinner companion is a former PLO spokesman. Now this should not be criticized because this man is a member of the Center for Palestine Research and Studies, which received a grant from the GOP's IRI fund, which was intended for studies and opinion polls in the West Bank.
A crass way of putting it:
Throw some money to a bunch of Palestinians, what are the chances one may be connected to terrorists....
(I'm admitting that's a racist/crass statement, but I'm trying to get through the grey matter)......
Perhaps you can Email John McCain`s campaign for an answer about that 500,000 he gave Khalidi and debate him or a surrogate. You seem to be angry with John McCain and his committee for funding Khalidi, who is a great American Scholar.
I think though they will reply with, "You should trust John McCain`s judgment and know that John McCain supports Khalidi and his research as he is an exemplary American."
Post what they respond with if you get a chance.
-
Are you saying that "obizzma" is the type of "G" that does a driveby in a stolen car with his "homeys" after robbing the KFC earlier that day, CQ?
I'm saying he's the type of the brotha that graduated with honours from Harvard, made millions of dollars and weilds more power and name recognition then hundreds of thousands of people combined ;)
-
Perhaps you can Email John McCain`s campaign for an answer about that 500,000 he gave Khalidi and debate him or a surrogate. You seem to be angry with John McCain and his committee for funding Khalidi, who is a great American Scholar.
I think though they will reply with, "You should trust John McCain`s judgment and know that John McCain supports Khalidi and his research as he is an exemplary American."
Post what they respond with if you get a chance.
The issue is "who are Obama's friends?" The name Khalidi shows up.
With respect to McCain's involvement with Khalidi - there is no evidence of any. None that I can find.
I have copied this below from another board and cannot vouch for its correctness (no links provided), but it at least fleshes out some of these issues regarding McCain. But as noted, it's the Obama/Khalidi relationship I am concerned with. McCain has been a US serviceman and Congressman, Senator for most of his life. I don't question his loyalty to this country.
Obama's loyalty to this country? Not so sure. Why does he want/need the presidency so badly? I've never seen anyone want it so badly.
If we have another terrorist attack, how many will suspect that Obama could have contacted someone with terrorist connections? Obama could petition Congress to give him full authority (a temporary dictatorship). Maybe even amend the Constitution. You need to be more discerning in giving out your full trust and loyalty.
Here is what I've found (not verified). Nor do I believe it is important (you do, evidently). It's basically what I have been saying, though:
Here's what McCain was a member of:
McCain was Chairman of the IRI
International Republican Institute (IRI):
The IRI's stated mission is to expand what it interprets as freedom throughout the world. Its activities include teaching and assisting with political party and candidate development, good governance practices, civil society development, civic education, women’s and youth leadership development, electoral reform and election monitoring, and political expression in closed societies.
And their mission:
IRI's stated mission is to expand what it interprets as freedom throughout the world. Its activities include teaching and assisting with political party and candidate development, good governance practices, civil society development, civic education, women’s and youth leadership development, electoral reform and election monitoring, and political expression in closed societies.
Here's the organization re Khalidi:
Khalidi was one of 7 who founded the organization, Center for Palestine Research and Studies. He was not on staff. He was not a trustee. He was a nothing to the organization at the time of the grant. Many, including the Japanees, NED, etc., gave to the organization. The organization was intented to gather data about Palestinian people with the hopes of creating a state and/or helping to establish peace in the area.
So the truth, as usual, is SOMEPLACE in the middle. The media today are NOT a fact relating group. They are all doing editorials, giving their views. Listen to each side and the real story will be in the middle.
And I agree with the immediate above statement. the mantra of the PRC was non-political .. the IRI was simply facillitating research to help bring peace to a volatile region.
-
With respect to McCain's involvement with Khalidi - there is no evidence of any. None that I can find.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,445745,00.html
FOX News admits McCain gave $448,000 to Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research
-
The issue is "who are Obama's friends?" The name Khalidi shows up.
With respect to McCain's involvement with Khalidi - there is no evidence of any. None that I can find.
I have copied this below from another board and cannot vouch for its correctness (no links provided), but it at least fleshes out some of these issues regarding McCain. But as noted, it's the Obama/Khalidi relationship I am concerned with. McCain has been a US serviceman and Congressman, Senator for most of his life. I don't question his loyalty to this country.
Obama loyalty to this country? Not so sure. Why does he want/need the presidency so badly? I've never seen anyone want it so badly.
If we have another terrorist attack, how many will suspect that Obama could have contacted someone with terrorist connections? Obama could petition Congress to give him full authority (a temporary dictatorship). Maybe even amend the Constitution. You need to be more discerning in giving out your full trust and loyalty.
Here is what I've found (not verified). Nor do I believe it is important (you do, evidently). It's basically what I have been saying, though:
Here's what McCain was a member of:
McCain was Chairman of the IRI
International Republican Institute (IRI):
The IRI's stated mission is to expand what it interprets as freedom throughout the world. Its activities include teaching and assisting with political party and candidate development, good governance practices, civil society development, civic education, women’s and youth leadership development, electoral reform and election monitoring, and political expression in closed societies.
And their mission:
IRI's stated mission is to expand what it interprets as freedom throughout the world. Its activities include teaching and assisting with political party and candidate development, good governance practices, civil society development, civic education, women’s and youth leadership development, electoral reform and election monitoring, and political expression in closed societies.
Here's the organization re Khalidi:
Khalidi was one of 7 who founded the organization, Center for Palestine Research and Studies. He was not on staff. He was not a trustee. He was a nothing to the organization at the time of the grant. Many, including the Japanees, NED, etc., gave to the organization. The organization was intented to gather data about Palestinian people with the hopes of creating a state and/or helping to establish peace in the area.
So the truth, as usual, is SOMEPLACE in the middle. The media today are NOT a fact relating group. They are all doing editorials, giving their views. Listen to each side and the real story will be in the middle.
And I agree with the immediate above statement. the mantra of the PRC was non-political .. the IRI was simply facillitating research to help bring peace to a volatile region.
When you email the McCain campaign about his friendship with Khalidi and the 500,000 dollars he gave Khalidi`s organization, ask about G. Gordon Liddy and see if he still is appreciative of the fundraiser that he held for McCain.
Personally, it does not bother me one bit that McCain had a working relationship with Khalidi or G. Gordon Liddy. I know they are totally harmless. It seems to bother you though.
-
Obama's loyalty to this country? Not so sure. Why does he want/need the presidency so badly? I've never seen anyone want it so badly.
If we have another terrorist attack, how many will suspect that Obama could have contacted someone with terrorist connections? Obama could petition Congress to give him full authority (a temporary dictatorship). Maybe even amend the Constitution. You need to be more discerning in giving out your full trust and loyalty.
jesus christ, where do you get this stuff, seriously???
-
jesus christ, where do you get this stuff, seriously???
I got a "little creative".....not yet ready for the straight-jacket....
TA answers with the same "McCain donation" issue, which is off-topic.
Then I reply about Obama/Khalidi/PLO connection - the issue I wanted him to address.
Kind of like a bad Twilight Zone episode.
Sorry you got caught up in it.
-
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,445745,00.html
FOX News admits McCain gave $448,000 to Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research
Once more, I don't care about McCain's financial relationship regarding IRI's donation of $448,873 to the CPRS.
Once more, I AM concerned that Obama had a close friendship, including dinners with wives, at Khalidi's home. Khalidi was a PLO spokeman and wrote admiringly of the Commander of Black September, the murders at the 1972 Olympics.
-
Once more, I don't care about McCain's financial relationship regarding IRI's dontion of $448,873 to the CPRS.
Once more, I AM concerned that Obama had a close friendship, including dinners with wives, at Khalidi's home. Khalidi was a PLO spokeman and wrote admiringly of the Commander of Black September, the murders at the 1972 Olympics.
How can yoU NOT CARE that mccain gave half a mil to a terrorist???????????????
I don't like the fact that Obama consorted with a bad guy.
I also don't like the fact that mccain gave him half a million bucks.
Ya can't criticize one without shitting on the other one too.
-
How can yoU NOT CARE that mccain gave half a mil to a terrorist???????????????
I don't like the fact that Obama consorted with a bad guy.
I also don't like the fact that mccain gave him half a million bucks.
Ya can't criticize one without shitting on the other one too.
To the best of my knowledge, the IRI's grant to the CPRS was for peace promoting purposes (to study the West Bank and do polling of the Palestinian residents to find a path to an agreement the residents would agree to).
The grant was not made to a terrorist organization (such as the PLO, Abu Nidal, Islamic Jihad, PFLP, Palistinian Liberation Front).
Comparing the IRI's grant is a "straw man argument" regarding Obama's friendship to Rashid Khalidi, IMO.
-
To the best of my knowledge, the IRI's grant to the CPRS was for peace promoting purposes (to study the West Bank and do polling of the Palestinian residents to find a path to an agreement the residents would agree to).
The grant was not made to a terrorist organization (such as the PLO, Abu Nidal, Islamic Jihad, PFLP, Palistinian Liberation Front).
Khalidi was running the org - and mccain gave him 488k.
Obama gave him grants of 70k as well.
They both stink of shit in this deal...
-
The Real Point here is that Khalidi is American Born and one of the best Scholars and advisors regarding Middle Eastern relations and politics. Republicans and Democrats both respect him greatly as well as the Academic community. Jews, Muslims, Christians, Atheists all respect him. He has taught hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.
It is a shame for anyone to falsely accuse him of anything or insinuation. He is a great American. Sorry few of you actually see that.
-
Khalidi is AN AMERICAN SCHOLAR. John McCain knows the value of Khalidi.
Look at Khalidi`s crednetials. Impressive to say the least.
Rashid Khalidi (born 1950), an American historian of the Middle East, is the 'Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies' at Columbia University,[1] and director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.
Khalidi was born in New York. He received a B.A. from Yale University, where he was a member of Wolf's Head Society,[2] in 1970,[3] and a D. Phil. from Oxford University in 1974[4] and spent many years as a professor and director of both the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Center for International Studies at the University of Chicago before joining the Columbia faculty. He has also taught at Georgetown University, Lebanese University, and the American University of Beirut.
Khalidi is married to Mona Khalidi, who is the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs and the Assistant Director of Graduate Studies of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.[5] He is a member of the National Advisory Committee of the U.S. Interreligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East, which describes itself as "a national organization of Jews, Christians and Muslims dedicated to dialogue, education and advocacy for peace based on the deepest teachings of the three religious traditions."[6]
He is member of the Board of Sponsors of The Palestine-Israel Journal, a publication founded by Ziad AbuZayyad and Victor Cygielman, prominent Palestinian and Israeli journalists.
He is founding trustee of The Center for Palestine Research and Studies.
[/size]
Princeton University let it be known that it was considering hiring Khalidi in 2005.[7] However, a controversy developed over Khalidi's political involvements and no job offer was made.[8]
Academic work
Khalidi’s research covers primarily the history of the modern Middle East. He focuses on the countries of the southern and eastern Mediterranean, with an eye to the emergence of various national identities and the role played by external powers in their development. He also researches the impact of the press on forming new senses of community, the role of education in the construction of political identity, and in the way narratives have developed over the past centuries in the region.[4] Michael C. Hudson, director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown, describes Khalidi as "preeminent in his field."[9] He served as President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America in 1994. Khalidi is currently editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies.
Much of Khalidi's scholarly work in the 1990s focused on the historical construction of nationalism in the Arab world. Drawing on the work of theorists Benedict Anderson who described nations as "imagined communities", he does not posit primordial national identities, but clearly argues that these nations have legitimacy and rights. In Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1997), he places the emergence of Palestinian national identity in the context of Ottoman and British colonialism as well as the early Zionist effort in the Levant. This book won the Middle East Studies Association’s Albert Hourani Prize as best book of 1997.[10] His dating of Palestinian national emergence to the early 20th century and his tracing of its contours provide a rejoinder to Israeli nationalist claims that Palestinians either do not exist, or had no collective claims prior to the 1948 creation of Israel. Nevertheless, Khalidi is also careful to focus on the late development, failings and internal divisions within the various elements of the Palestinian nationalist movement as well.
In Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (2004), Khalidi takes readers on a historical tour of Western intervention in the Middle East, and argues that these interventions continue to have a colonialist nature that is both morally unacceptable and likely to backfire.