Jimy Carter - again

Jimmy Carter, former US President and current disgrace to humanity, appeared on Piers Morgan's CNN Tonight show last week. The whole interview was full of inaccuracies, you can see the whole transcript here, but the one that I want to concentrate on is this:

'When I first went to Israel, about 15 percent of the Palestinians were Christians and they were my friends and they were my soul mates in the worship of the same god in the same way. Now they've almost been removed from Palestine because of some pressures and encouragement from the Israelis.'

So Jimmy Carter blames Israel for the reduction in the percentage of Palestinians that are Christian. Jimmy Carter blames Israel, now that's hardly news, the man persistently attacks Israel for one thing or another, but he blames Israel for the diminishing percentage of Christians amongst the Palestinians. First of all Israel does not run the Palestinian Territories, if it did there would be less rocket attacks launched against Israeli civilians from Gaza. Second the real reason for the diminishing number of Christians in the Palestinian Territories is that Islamists have been seizing land from Christians, demanding jiyza (protection money) from them and assaulting those who choose to stay behind in their Holy Land. It should also be notes that the Christian population of multi-faith Israel is increasing not diminishing.


Jimmy 'Dhimmi' Carter gets away with making statements like the above because he was US President, why does nobody ask Jimmy carter about the money he has received from Islamists and whether that money has any bearing on the opinions he spouts so freely?

'What money, I don't know anything about Jimmy Carter receiving money from Muslim countries and organisations? ' I hear you ask. Well take a read of this article by Alan Dershowitz from 2007, here's a few extracts:

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

And let there be no mistake about how dirty the Zayed Foundation is. I know because I was involved, in a small way, in helping to persuade Harvard University to return more than $2 million that the financially strapped Divinity School received from this source.  Initially, I was reluctant to put pressure on Harvard to turn back money  for the Divinity School, but then a student at the Divinity School, Rachael Lea Fish showed me the facts.  
They were staggering. I was amazed that in the twenty-first  century there were still foundations that espoused these views. The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up, a think-tank funded by the Shiekh and run by his son, hosted speakers who called Jews "the enemies of all nations," attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States' own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a "fable." (They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.) To its credit, Harvard turned the money back. To his discredit, Carter did not.

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

...

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

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

...


By Carter's own standards, therefore, his views on the Middle East must be discounted. It is certainly possible that he now believes them. Money, particularly large amounts of money, has a way of persuading people to a particular position. It would not surprise me if Carter, having received so much Arab money, is now honestly committed to their cause. But his failure to disclose the extent of his financial dependence on Arab money, and the absence of any self reflection on  whether the receipt of this money has unduly influenced his views, is a form of deception bordering on corruption.

I have met cigarette lobbyists, who are supported by the cigarette industry, and who have come to believe honestly that cigarettes are merely a safe form of adult recreation, that cigarettes are not addicting and that the cigarette industry is really trying to persuade children not to smoke. These people are fooling themselves (or fooling us into believing that they are fooling themselves) just as  Jimmy Carter is fooling himself (or persuading us to believe that he is  fooling himself).

If money determines political and public views as Carter insists "Jewish money" does, Carter's views on the Middle East must be deemed to have been influenced by the vast sums of Arab money he has received. If he who pays the piper calls the tune, then Carter's off-key tunes have  been called by his Saudi Arabian paymasters. It pains me to say this, but I now believe that there is no person in American public life today who has a lower ratio of real to apparent integrity than Jimmy Carter.  The public perception of his integrity is extraordinarily high. His real integrity, it now turns out, is extraordinarily low. He is no better than so many former American politicians who, after leaving public life, sell themselves to the highest bidder and become lobbyists for despicable causes. That is now Jimmy Carter's sad legacy.'

Remember those facts about Jimmy Carter the next time his 'expert & impartial' views are sought  about Israel and the Middle East.
 

Jimmy Carter

My view of Jimmy Carter is well known so I was interested to read this:

Dershowitz: I Challenge Carter to Human Rights Debate at Cardozo

 

I will come, at my own expense, to debate Jimmy Carter on Carter's own human rights record. If Cardozo will have me, I will come and provide the students, the administration and anyone else that is interested, with a first rate debate about the meaning of human rights and they can decide whether what Jimmy Carter has done, constitutes human rights or human wrongs.

Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter professor of law at Harvard Law School, has challenged former president Jimmy Carter to a debate on his human rights record.

Dershowitz spoke by telephone to a reporter with The Jewish Press, on Monday, April 8, in response to the news that the Cardozo School of Law’s Journal of Conflict Resolution will be honoring Carter with the “International Advocate for Peace” Award this Wednesday, April 10, as reported that morning.

During the course of the interview, the law professor recounted the widespread death and devastation caused by Carter’s efforts at “human rights.”

“What should be discussed is not Jimmy Carter’s role as a peacemaker, but instead it should be his role as a deal breaker,” said Dershowitz.  He then proceeded to tick off the bases for his reasoning.

“First, it was Carter who advised Yassir Arafat not to accept the peace deal offered in 2000-01.  That failure led to the deaths of more than 4000 Israelis and Arabs.”

“Secondly, by encouraging and supporting Hamas, and always placing the blame on Israel, Carter has guaranteed the continuation of terrorism.”  Indeed, “Carter has embraced Arafat, he’s embraced Mashaal, why, he’s never met a terrorist he didn’t love, and never met an Israeli whom he did.”

“And third,” the professor said, “it was Carter who was responsible for not acting to prevent the death of two million Cambodians at the hands of Pol Pot.  Carter was the president of the United States and yet he did not intervene in that slaughter, he did not lead and prod the United Nations to take action.”

Dershowitz paused, to sum up, “Carter has prevented peace, encouraged terrorism and done more than anyone else to isolate and demonize the Middle East’s only democracy, Israel.”

But Dershowitz wasn’t finished.

“Jimmy Carter has distorted the very meaning of human rights, he has turned the concept on its head, what he does should be called ‘human lefts.’”

What does that mean?

“The way human rights should be addressed is based on ‘worst, first,’ you deal with the most egregious wrongs, the worst kind of abuses committed by governments first,” Dershowitz explained.  “He’s turned everything upside down.  Instead of Israel, just look over a little to the south, “Saudi Arabia is the worst human rights violator in the world: sex segregation, gender preference discrimination, religious discrimination,” that’s where a real human rights activist would focus, said the law professor.

“But Jimmy Carter was bought and paid for by the Saudis.  The Carter Center stopped criticizing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia when the Saudis started funding it.”

I'd love to see Jimmy Carter try and answer those points but it will never happen. He's a coward as well as a nasty piece of work.

Darfur and the Global Elders

I blogged recently about Jimmy Carter (one of the Global Elders) and his lack of backbone in Darfur despite the AP headline "Jimmy Carter faces down Darfur officials". Now I read that "As the Darfur peace mission of the retired statesmen known as the Elders came to an end, two of their number - former UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and former US President Jimmy Carter - chastened the West for its handling of the violent situation in Sudan." Yes, that's right, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed by the government troops and their Janjaweed Arabic speaking militia and the Global Elders criticise the West for its handling of the violent situation. Brahimi and Carter are so blindly pro-Islam that they can happily forget about the around half a million people killed by an Islamic government and its Muslim militia in order to criticise the always evil West.

So who are these two Elders?
I am sure you know that Jimmy Carter is an ex-President of the United States. You may also remember that he only served one term and as Wikipedia puts it "During Carter's presidency the United States was beset by stagflation, suffered massive fuel shortages, and struggled through several major crises including the invasion of the American Embassy in Tehran and the subsequent holding of embassy personnel as hostages by Islamic Radicals". The latter two crises had a rather odd effect on Jimmy Carter and he is now a leading exponent of anti-Israel and pro-Muslim rhetoric. His "Carter Center" was funded (before his death in 2005) by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, "in 1993 alone, the king presented Carter with a gift of $7.6 million. And the king was not the only Saudi royal to commit funds to Carter’s cause. As of 2005, the king’s high-living nephew, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, has donated at least $5 million to the Carter Center....Meanwhile the Saudi Fund for Development, the kingdom’s leading loan organization, turns up repeatedly on the center’s list of supporters. Carter has also found moneyed allies in the Bin Laden family, and in 2000 he secured a promise from ten of Osama bin Laden's brothers for a $1 million contribution to his center."(1)

Jimmy Carter refuses to debate the issues he raises in the aforementioned book with Alan Dershowitz or anyone tainted by being “representatives of Jewish organizations” or by their support for Israel, their ties to pro-Israel lobbying organizations, or their Jewish background. He is however happy to take the money from Arab countries such as the United Arab Emirates. "In 2001, Carter even traveled to the country to accept the Zayed International Prize for the Environment, named for Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, the late UAE potentate and former president-for-life. Having claimed his $500,000 purse, Carter enthused that the “award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan al-Nahyan.” Carter also hailed the UAE as an “almost completely open and free society” -- a surreal depiction of a rigidly authoritarian country where the government handpicks a select group of citizens to vote and strictly controls the editorial content of the newspapers and where Islamic Shari’a courts judge “sodomy” punishable by death. (To appreciate the depth of Carter’s cynicism, one need only compare his gushing encomia to the emirates with his likening of Israel, the most modern and democratic country in the entire Middle East, with the racist “apartheid” of South Africa.)" (1)

"Carter was offered a forum at the Abu Dhabi-based Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow Up, the country’s official “think-tank.” For his part, Carter declared his intention to forge a “partnership” with the center; in a 2002 letter, Carter praised its efforts to “promote peace, health, and human rights around the world.” Inconveniently for Carter, the center has since become famous for a different reason: It has repeatedly played host to anti-Semitic speakers who have denied the Holocaust, supported terrorism, and alleged an international conspiracy of Jews and Zionists to dominate the world."(1)

"On its face, there is nothing objectionable about these contacts. What has raised critics’ eyebrows is Carter’s immense chutzpah: In securing the financial support of assorted Arab leaders, Carter has gradually come to parrot their anti-Israel political agenda -- even as he styles himself as a dispassionate mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." (1)

"This was nowhere more evident than in Carter’s credulous support for the late Yasir Arafat. Although Carter had championed Araft as a committed peacemaker since his presidency, in the face of ample evidence to the contrary, his apologies for the terrorist chieftain became particularly shameless in the 1990s. When Arafat and his PLO backed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, thereby loosing the support and -- more important for the corrupt Arafat -- the funding of neighboring Sunni Arab powers, Carter embarked on a Middle East publicity tour to revive Arafat’s diminishing fortunes. As recorded by Carter biographer Douglas Brinkley, “together [Carter and Arafat] strategized on how to recover the PLO’s standing in the United States.” In desperation, Carter turned up in Saudi Arabia on what Brinkley called “essentially a fund-raising mission for the PLO,” pleading with King Fahd to restore Arafat to the Saudi dole.



Now that Arafat’s Fatah has been replaced with Hamas, Carter has again proven himself a reliable ally of Palestinian extremism. Scarcely had the terrorist group ascended to power last January than Carter launched a media blitz urging the United States to circumvent its own laws against financing terrorism in order to fund Hamas. As the New York Times put with exquisite finesse, Carter called on Western nations to "redirect their relief aid to United Nations organizations and nongovernmental organizations to skirt legal restrictions” -- that is, to launder money to a terrorist group. When American policymakers declined to heed his advice, and Israel proved unwilling to bankroll the enemy seeking its destruction, Carter promptly denounced the both countries for their “common commitment to eviscerate the government of elected Hamas.”" (1)



What of Lakhdar Brahimi, he is described as a "former UN envoy" as though that makes him immune from criticism and indeed he is a former UN envoy. "Before coming to the U.N., Brahimi, who represented the National Liberation Front in Jakarta during Algeria's 1956–1961 independence movement, was an Arab League official (1984-1991) and the Algerian Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1991 until 1993."(2)

"Most prominently, his criticism of Ahmed Chalabi has led to Chalabi's claim that Brahimi is an Arab nationalist who should have no role in determining the future of Iraq. At the same time, close allies of Chalabi have been pushing claims that various world leaders and the UN took bribes from Saddam Hussein under the Oil for Food program."(2)


Anyway, to return to Brahimi and Carter in Darfur, laying down the law. Reuters reports that Carter called Washington's use of the term "genocide" was both legally inaccurate and "unhelpful." "There is a legal definition of genocide and Darfur does not meet that legal standard. The atrocities were horrible but I don't think it qualifies to be called genocide," he said. Washington is almost alone in branding the 4 1/2 years of violence in Darfur genocide. Khartoum rejects the term, European governments are reluctant to use it and a U.N.-appointed commission of inquiry found no genocide, but that some individuals may have acted with genocidal intent. Carter, whose charitable foundation, the Carter Center, worked to establish the International Criminal Court (ICC), said: "If you read the law textbooks ... you'll see very clearly that it's not genocide and to call it genocide falsely just to exaggerate a horrible situation I don't think it helps."" (3)



(1) http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={D7B261EF-A52C-428E-9E5F-D6BBF5C49132}

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakhdar_Brahimi

(3) http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1005/p99s01-duts.html

Jimmy Carter dishonesty

My article about media dishonesty was based upon this report and it contains an example about my "favourite" ex-US President Jimmy Carter. This story concerns Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" which traces the ups and downs of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, beginning with Jimmy Carter's 1977-1981 presidency and the historic peace accord he negotiated between Israel and Egypt and continuing to the time the book was published in 2006. According to the American Thinker "His book was so full of errors, including doctored maps, that his chief collaborator, Kenneth Stein of Emory University, resigned his position with the Carter Center. Carter's book was condemned by Alan Dershowitz and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, among others." According to The Washington Post "A veteran Middle East scholar affiliated with the Carter Center in Atlanta resigned his position there Monday in an escalating controversy over former president Jimmy Carter's bestselling book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...Kenneth W. Stein, a professor at Emory University, accused Carter of factual errors, omissions and plagiarism in the book. "Being a former President does not give one a unique privilege to invent information," Stein wrote in a harshly worded e-mail to friends and colleagues explaining his resignation as the center's Middle East fellow...In a telephone interview yesterday, Stein said that Carter had "taken [material] directly" from a published work written by a third party but that legal action was being contemplated and he was not yet at liberty to make the details public. He said accounts in the book about meetings he had attended with Carter between 1980 and 1990 had left out key facts in order to "make the Israelis look like they're the only ones responsible" for the failure of peace efforts."

The list of news outlets that have criticised this book is longer than I care to repeat on this blog, you can find them easily enough on the web if you want, one example is this article which lists many examples of the books, and Jimmy Carter's subsequent interviews, factual errors - here are just five examples:

1) "CARTER:

Pages 51-52: ...[I]mportant provisions of our [1978/79] agreement have not been honored since I left office. The Israelis have never granted any appreciable autonomy to the Palestinians ...

FACT:

Obviously, after 1993 the Palestinians gained "appreciable autonomy." The Oslo process created the Palestinian Authority and gave Palestinians control of political, civic, security, medical, educational and media institutions. Israel ceded 40 percent of the West Bank and eventually the entire Gaza Strip. About 98 percent of the Palestinian population lived in the areas of Palestinian self-rule.

Any subsequent Israeli military incursions into these areas have been in response to their use by Palestinians as bases for terrorism.

Moreover, Carter omits that Palestinian autonomy as envisioned in the agreements was bitterly opposed by the very PLO he defends. Yasir Arafat and his lieutenants publicly denounced autonomy efforts, and Palestinians who supported them were killed. The New York Times reported on one such murder on Dec. 21, 1977, recounting the gangland style execution of a Christian Arab whose only crime was supporting reconciliation with Israel."


2) "CARTER:

Page 62: When I met with Yasir Arafat in 1990, he stated, "The PLO has never advocated the annihilation of Israel. The Zionists started the 'drive the Jews into the sea' slogan and attributed it to the PLO."

FACT:

The original PLO founding charter speaks almost exclusively of "the liberation of Palestine," and calls on Palestinians to "move forward on the path of jihad until complete and final victory has been attained." (Note that this was written in 1964, before Israel's entrance into the West Bank and Gaza Strip.) It adds: "The partitioning of Palestine, which took place in 1947, and the establishment of Israel are illegal and null and void ..."

Likewise, the 1968 version of the charter describes "Palestine" as the area encompassing the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel, then states: "Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase."

Arafat himself frequently called for destroying that nation, as in: "The goal of our struggle is the end of Israel, and there can be no compromise" (Washington Post, March 29, 1970) and "[p]eace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will last for generations" (El Mundo [Venezuela], Feb. 11, 1980).

And Israel’s enemies have indeed referred to driving Jews into the sea. For example, the New York Times quoted speakers at a July 13, 1947 meeting held by the Palestine Arab High Committee and "attended by leading sheikhs, mukhtars and other persons of consequence in the Palestine Arab world" calling for Jews to be "thrown into the sea" ("Young Arabs Defy U.S., Britain, Jews," July 14, 1947). And in a 1948 interview with the New York Times, Muslim Brotherhood head Sheikh Hassan el-Bana said: "If the Jewish state becomes a fact, and this is realized by the Arab peoples, they will drive the Jews who live in their midst into the sea" ("Aim to oust Jews pledged by sheikh," Aug. 2, 1948).

More recently, Lieutenant-Colonel Munir Maqdah, who had commanded Arafat's Fatah army in Lebanon before being suspended, said his forces would continue fighting "the Jews and their agents" despite any peace talks, promising that "[s]ooner or later we will throw the Zionists into the sea." (Reuters, Oct. 8, 1993)"


3) "CARTER:

Page 179: Hamas was now [January 2006] holding many local posts, and their incumbent officials had been free of any allegations of corruption and, for sixteen months, had meticulously observed a cease-fire commitment, which they called hudna.

page 184: When I questioned him about the necessity for Hamas to renounce violence and recognize Israel, [Hamas member Dr. Mahmoud Ramahi] responded that they had not committed an act of violence since a cease-fire was declared in August 2004 ..."

CNN, Larry King Live, Nov. 27, 2006:

... since August of 2004 ... Hamas has not been guilty of an act of terrorism that cost an Israeli life."

PBS, NewsHour, Nov. 28, 2006:

Carter: "... since August of 2004, has not committed a single act of terrorism that cost an Israeli life, not a single one."

Judy Woodruff: "I think many Americans would be surprised to hear that."

Carter: "I know. They would be surprised, but it's an actual fact."

FACT:

On Aug. 31, 2004, Sixteen people were killed and 100 wounded in two nearly simultaneous suicide bombings aboard two city buses in Beer Sheva. Hamas claimed responsibility.

On Sept. 29, 2004, two preschool children were killed by a Qassam rocket fired from Gaza. Hamas claimed responsibility.

On Jan 13, 2005, Palestinians terrorists attacked the Karni crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, killing 6 civilians. Hamas claimed joint responsibility.

On July 14, 2005, a woman was killed by a Qassam rocket fired from Gaza. Hamas claimed responsibility."


4) "CARTER:

Page 147: Unfortunately for the peace process, Palestinian terrorists carried out two lethal suicide bombings in March 1996, a few weeks after the Palestinian election. Thirty-two Israeli citizens were killed, an act that probably gave the Likud’s hawkish candidate, Binyamin Netanyahu, a victory over Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

FACT:

This, too, is an error of omission, as Carter fails to mention significant Palestinian attacks that immediately preceded the March attacks. On February 25, 1996, a Hamas bomber killed 26 at the central bus station in Jerusalem, and a separate bombing claimed the life of another Israeli. "


5) "CARTER:

Page 168: Living among 1.3 million Palestinians, the 8,000 Israeli settlers [in the Gaza Strip] were controlling 40 percent of the arable land and more than one-half the water resources ..."

FACT:

Settlers lived on roughly 15-20 percent of Gaza land, and controlled little of its water. In fact, Israel has supplied, and continues to supply, large amounts of water to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The American Journalism Review in August/September 2004 published the following correction after similarly misstating Gaza statistics:

In "Caught in the Crossfire" (June/July), Barbara Matusow wrote that Israeli settlers occupy 25 percent of the land in the Gaza Strip and control most of the water resources. According to the Institute of Applied Research in Jerusalem, the Palestinians control 95 percent of the water resources in Gaza. Estimates vary widely when it comes to control of the land, however. A June 2004 report on Gaza by the World Bank states that 15 to 20 percent of the land is occupied by settlements."


You can find more links to articles regarding the anti-Israel bias in this book here



Wikipedia has a carefully worded article on the book and the reaction to the book.


You might care to read this article on Jimmy Carter's position on the Arab-Israeli conflict and his part in the rise of Iranian fundamentalism.

You might also care to read this article from Philowiki includes the following "Fact is, Carter has long since joined the Israel-hating left — where true anti-Semitism resides today. In so doing, Carter has joined a long line of those who, like ex-Attorney General Ramsey Clark, linguist Noam Chomsky and faux-documentarian Michael Moore, see Israel as the root of all evil. Any ill found in the Mideast — poverty, inequality, corruption, human rights abuses — can somehow be traced to Israel’s supposed mistreatment of Palestinians, they say... "
It also includes the full statement from Kenneth Stein which includes this passage which I think says a lot "President Carter's book on the Middle East, a title too inflammatory to even print, is not based on unvarnished analyses; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments. Aside from the one-sided nature of the book, meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book. Being a former President does not give one a unique privilege to invent information or to unpack it with cuts, deftly slanted to provide a particular outlook. Having little access to Arabic and Hebrew sources, I believe, clearly handicapped his understanding and analyses of how history has unfolded over the last decade. Falsehoods, if repeated often enough become meta-truths, and they then can become the erroneous baseline for shaping and reinforcing attitudes and for policy-making. The history and interpretation of the Arab-Israeli conflict is already drowning in half-truths, suppositions, and self-serving myths; more are not necessary."

Jimmy Carter does it again

Just when you think that Jimmy Carter must have said all the rubbish one man was capable of, he proves you wrong... World Net Daily report that:

"The Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist organization lacks missiles to "defend" itself from Israeli aircraft, former President Jimmy Carter claimed upon returning from a trip last week to Lebanon.

"The general showed us a graph of the many flights of Israeli planes over all parts of Lebanon, averaging about a dozen each day. Neither Hezbollah nor the Lebanese Armed Forces have any anti-aircraft weapons for defense," wrote Carter in a first-person report posted on his Carter Center website.

Carter was recounting how upon his trip to the region, Italian General Claudio Graziano, chief of the UNIFIL international forces deployed in southern Lebanon, brought him on a tour of the Israeli-Lebanese border.

"At one site near the border, two different Israeli tanks came about 70 yards from us to observe our group," Carter wrote, before claiming Hezbollah lacks anti-aircraft weapons for "defense" against Israeli over flights. "

Jimmy Carter never happier than when he is shilling for his Arab friends and trying his best to destroy Israel.

Who's a racist Jimmy?

Jimmy Carter was accusing some opponents of Barack Obama as being motivated by racism, so I was interested to read at Donal Blaney's blog this from The National Review:

"When former president Jimmy Carter accuses the opponents of Barack Obama’s policy of nationalizing broad aspects of our economy and spending us into bankruptcy of being “racists,” perhaps he should look in the mirror. In his 1982 book, Keeping Faith, Carter disingenuously said he “was not directly involved in the early struggles to end racial discrimination.” No kidding — in fact, he directly and unambiguously supported segregation. When Carter returned to Plains, Georgia, to become a peanut farmer after serving in the Navy, he became a member of the Sumter County School Board, which did not implement the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision handed down by the Supreme Court. Instead, the board continued to segregate school children on the streets of Carter’s hometown.

As Laughlin McDonald, director of the ACLU’s Voting Project, relates in his book A Voting Rights Odyssey: Black Enfranchisement in Georgia, Carter’s board tried to stop the construction of a new “Elementary Negro School” in 1956. Local white citizens had complained that the school would be “too close” to a white school. As a result, “the children, both colored and white, would have to travel the same streets and roads in order to reach their respective schools.” The prospect of black and white children commingling on the streets on their way to school was apparently so horrible to Carter that he requested that the state school board stop construction of the black school until a new site could be found. The state board turned down Carter’s request because of “the staggering cost.” Carter and the rest of the Sumter County School Board then reassured parents at a meeting on October 5, 1956, that the board “would do everything in its power to minimize simultaneous traffic between white and colored students in route to and from school.”

I am not aware that Rep. Joe Wilson has ever supported segregation or engaged in the same type of reprehensible, racist behavior. The idea that opposition to Obama’s policies reflects “racism” is absurd; even the White House has rejected it. All of this raises a larger issue about Carter’s remarks. When he makes such a claim, is he projecting his own inner racial beliefs? Is he so guilt-ridden over his past racist behavior that he wants to make amends to the race-baiters that today populate the Left? Or is he just cynically helping them score political points?"

Who's a racist? Who was a racist?

One of the "Global Elders" show backbone? Sorry, false alarm!

I blogged back in July about the formation of the "Global Elders" a group set-up by Nelson Mandela of "12 wise men and women" to address global problems by offering expertise and guidance.

An AP Headline gave me some hope that at least one of the Global Elders might have managed to grow a backbone, the headline was "Jimmy Carter faces down Darfur officials". Wow Jimmy Carter stands up to a Muslim government, now that would be worth a headline. Unfortunately the article itself reports a different story.

Here's the story
"KABKABIYA, Sudan - Former President Carter got in a shouting match Wednesday with Sudanese security services who blocked him from a town in Darfur where he was trying to meet with refugees from the ongoing conflict. ...

“You can’t go. It’s not on the program!” the local security chief, who only gave his first name as Omar, yelled at Carter, who is in Darfur as part of a delegation of respected international figures known as “The Elders.”

“We’re going to anyway!” an angry Carter retorted as a crowd began to gather. “You don’t have the power to stop me.”

“I’ll tell President Bashir about this,” Carter said, referring to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir."

Well done that man, you tell then Jimmy...


"Carter later agreed to a compromise by which tribal representatives would be brought to him at another location later Wednesday. But the refugee delegates never showed up."

A compromise that meant the local Muslim officials got exactly what they wanted, I wonder what fate befell the refugee delegates?


Well done Jimmy, you are as effective as you ever were.

I think this should be filed under - Good, about time

The JC reports that:

'The former US President Jimmy Carter is facing legal action from readers who claim he misrepresented Israel in a book about the Middle East conflict.

Mr Carter, who was president between 1976 and 1980, could have to pay more than £3 million if the case is successful.

The dispute is over his 2006 work “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”, in which Mr Carter compared the Israeli government to the leaders of apartheid South Africa.

He wrote: “When Israel does occupy this territory deep within the West Bank, and connects the 200-or-so settlements … with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or in many cases even crossing the road, this perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa”.

The case, filed at the Manhattan Federal Claims Court by a group of readers, accuses Mr Carter of filling his book “with demonstrable falsehoods, omissions and knowing misrepresentations intended to promote [his] agenda of anti-Israel propaganda".

According to court papers quoted by the New York Post, the group who filed the case said Mr Carter was wrong to have promoted the book as “non-fiction".

The papers added: “This lawsuit challenges the defendants' actions in attempting to capitalise on Carter's status as a former president of the United States to mislead unsuspecting members of the reading public who thought they could trust their former president to tell the truth."

Mr Carter, who as president oversaw the historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, is a prominent critic of the Israeli government. In 2008 he described Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip as “one of the greatest human-rights crimes on earth”.

The lawsuit is directed at both Mr Carter and his publishers, Simon & Schuster.

A spokesperson for the company said the lawsuit was "frivolous".'

Until recently I had always believed Jimmy Carter to have been the worst American President since the end of World War II. Of course Barack Obama is providing strong competition now...

What is wrong with Jimmy Carter?

Watch the above video, it's fairly obvious what the members of the Egyptian army are doing to that poor girl isn't it? Not if your former US President Jimmy Carter it isn't.

The video's description runs thus:

'Egypt. beating of a veiled woman in Cairo helmeted officers charging toward a woman in Tahrir Square, drag her on the ground, beat her with clubs and kicking her in head stomp on her stomach and breast drag her by hair also kick and clubbed people in the head ripped off the top clothing grabbing by veil... One soldier even pulled her veil over her head stomps on her breasts, the overthrow of former dictator Hosni Mubarak was in February.'

Jimmy Carter, however, knows better:

'Tuesday morning we received detailed analyses by experts on the election process and political affairs, and then had a thorough discussion with Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, head of the SCAF and acting as de facto president of Egypt.

I was received with a friendly welcome as I congratulated the military leaders for what seemed to be a successful election, and then asked a number of questions. It seemed that the SCAF had full confidence that there would be accommodation to their demands by the Muslim Brotherhood and their coalition partners as the new government is formed. Instead of the reported 12,000 mostly political prisoners being held for trials in military courts, the Field Marshal stated that there were no more than 3,000, all of whom were guilty of criminal acts and being tried in civilian courts. He stated that the widely promulgated videos showing military attacks on demonstrators and a woman "with the blue brassiere" were all falsified. He said the soldiers were actually helping the woman re-clothe herself with what was provocative attire. '

No questioning of the Field Marshall's claims, no wondering at how his claims fit with the evidence? Just what I would expect from Jimmy Carter.


Thanks to Elder of Ziyon for the heads up.

The "Global Elders"

Nelson Mandela has setup a group of "12 wise men and women" to address global problems by offering expertise and guidance. Let's have a look at the members and the baggage that they will bring to the problem of conflict resolution, the "comments" are taken mostly from their Wikipedia entries, not the usual depth of research but less controversial than others:

Present at the launch:
Nelson Mandela - the former President of South Africa (and living totem) - Outspoken opponent of the United States involvement in Iraq ""What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust." and "If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don't care." Nelson Mandela has also kept quiet about the atrocious activities of Robert Mugabwe's government in Zimbabwe.

Graca Machel - Nelson Mandela's wife - widow of Samora Machel, the former Mozambican president and ANC ally of Nelson Mandela.

Desmond Tutu - Archbishop of South Africa - Tutu has criticised human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, calling Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe a "caricature of an African dictator", and criticising the South African government's policy of quiet diplomacy towards Zimbabwe. He also warned of corruption shortly after the election of the African National Congress government of South Africa, saying that they "stopped the gravy train just long enough to get on themselves." Tutu is, nonetheless, an active and prominent proponent of the campaign for divestment from Israel, and has likened Israel's treatment of Palestinians to the treatment of Black South Africans under apartheid. Tutu has made some controversial statements involving Israel. In 1988, he was quoted as saying that Zionism has "very many parallels with racism", Speaking in a Connecticut church in 1984, Tutu said that "the Jews thought they had a monopoly on God; Jesus was angry that they could shut out other human beings." In the same speech, he compared the features of the Temple in Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest site, to the features of the apartheid system. In conversations during the 1980s with the Israeli ambassador to South Africa, Eliahu Lankin, Tutu "refused to call Israel by its name, he kept referring to it as Palestine," Lankin recalled. During a 1989 trip to Israel's Yad Vashem museum, Tutu said, "We pray for those who made it happen, help us to forgive them and help us so that we in our turn will not make others suffer." The Simon Wiesenthal Center called the statement “a gratuitous insult to Jews and victims of Nazism everywhere.” In another instance, Tutu said "You might even say that the gas chambers made for a neater death" than South Africa's resettlement policies. Some Jews objected the remark, arguing that the evils of apartheid had never extended to systematic annihilation of the blacks and pointing out that no rabbi in Nazi Germany was extended the freedom to criticize the regime as Archbishop Tutu had. Tutu's response was to describe this "as a kind of Jewish arrogance." "Jews seem to think that they have cornered the market on suffering," he said to interviewers

Jimmy Carter - Former President of the USA - Carter visited Cuba in May 2002 and met with Fidel Castro. He was allowed to address the Cuban public on national television with a speech that he wrote and presented in Spanish. This made Carter the first President of the United States, in or out of office, to visit the island since the Cuban revolution of 1959.

A popular petition resulted in Venezuela holding a recall election on August 15, 2004, and Carter was there to observe it. European Union observers had declined to participate, saying too many restrictions were put on them by the Chávez administration. A record number of voters turned out to defeat the recall attempt with a 59% "no" vote. The Carter Center "concluded the results were accurate." On the afternoon of August 16, 2004, the day after the vote, Carter and Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General César Gaviria gave a joint press conference in which they endorsed the preliminary results announced by the National Electoral Council. The monitors' findings "coincided with the partial returns announced today by the National Elections Council" said Carter, while Gaviria added that the OAS electoral observation mission's members had "found no element of fraud in the process". Directing his remarks at opposition figures who made claims of "widespread fraud" in the voting, Carter called on all Venezuelans to "accept the results and work together for the future". However, a Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates (PSB) exit poll had predicted that Chávez would lose by 20%, and when the election results showed him to have won by 20% Schoen commented, "I think it was a massive fraud". US News and World Report offered an analysis of the polls, indicating "very good reason to believe that the (Penn, Schoen & Berland) exit poll had the result right, and that Chávez's election officials — and Carter and the American media — got it wrong". The Schoen exit poll and the government's programming of election machines became the basis of claims of election fraud. In March 2004, Carter condemned George W. Bush and Tony Blair for waging an unnecessary war "based upon lies and misinterpretations" in order to oust Saddam Hussein. He claimed that Blair had allowed his better judgment to be swayed by Bush's desire to finish a war that George H. W. Bush (his father) had started.In his book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, published in November 2006, Carter states that "Israel's continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land." While he recognizes that Arab citizens in Israel proper have equal rights, he declares that Israel's current policies in the Palestinian territories constitute "a system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land, but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights." While some have praised Carter for speaking honestly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, others have accused him of anti-Israeli bias and of making significant factual errors and misstatements in the book.

Kofi Annan - former Secretary General of the United Nations - Oil-for-Food Program
and Conflict between the United States and the United Nations, I need say no more.

Muhammad Yunus - Nobel laureate economist and founder of the Bangladeshi Grameen Bank - Someone who has actually achieved something in the world outside of politics

Mary Robinson - former President of Ireland - Concerned with Human Rights since her fall from power. shortly before the September 11 attacks, as the UN’s High Commissioner on Human Rights, she presided over the infamous antisemitic conference in Durban, South Africa, with the Orwellian title “World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.” "The hate literature distributed during the NGO conference included caricatures of Jews with hooked noses, Palestinian blood on their hands, surrounded by money, and Israelis wearing Nazi emblems. At the Government Conference, there was daily distribution by NGO participants of literature reading “Nazi-Israeli apartheid,” while inside the drafting committees, states such as Syria and Iran objected to the inclusion of antisemitism or the Holocaust on the grounds that antisemitism was a “complicated,” “curious,” and “bizarre” concept, and reference to the Holocaust would be imbalanced or “favoritism.”

Meanwhile, outside the conference hall, as one delegate reported in the Los Angeles Times, he and other representatives of Jewish groups were subjected to taunts and physical intimidation. At one point, thousands of South African Muslim demonstrators marched bearing banners proclaiming “Hitler should have finished the job.”

Thus, success on the political battlefield was to be accomplished by utilizing the language of human rights to demonize, and then dismember, the opponent. In this way, the Durban Conference provided rampant antisemitism with a global platform under UN auspices, in a conference allegedly against racism and xenophobia. It also revealed the malevolent antisemitism underlying the campaign to delegitimize the state of Israel." From http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp468.htm



Invited to join but not present or yet confirmed:
Li Zhaoxing - former Foreign Minister of China - Let's just say Falun Gong, supression of human rights and Tibet

Ela Bhatt - Indian activist - founder of India's Self-Employed Women's Association and a respected leader of the international labour, cooperative, women, and micro-finance movements. A great fighter against poverty and the oppression of women.

Gro Harlen Bruntland - former Prime Minister of Norway and director of the World Health Organisation - now very concerned with sustainable development

An empty chair will be at all meetings, reserved for Aung San Suu Kyi - the elected leader of Burma/Myanmar who has been under house arrest almost continuously since her 1990 victory.


So that's a collection of almost completely left of centre people with received opinion views of the USA, Israel and most other matters, Tibet might be a sore point so that will be brushed under the carpet whilst they concentrate on the really major issue in the world - Palestine and I think we can see how unbiased they will be on that issue.


Here's an image that Theo Spark has brought to my attention regarding this matter -

'the moral compass of the State-Controlled Media'

'The moral code, the moral compass of the State-Controlled Media is something to behold. Now, some of you may not know the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Winner hosted a state dinner last night for Hu Jintao of China. Hu Jintao is holding the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Winner in prison in China. Not making it up. The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Winner hosted a dinner for the guy holding the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Winner in prison, and the media does not get the irony of this at all. They're too busy running around chasing Sarah Palin and radio talk show hosts over "civility." Our media is so fraudulent. No talk about the political prisoners. No talk about the gulags.

A question about human rights, the ChiCom leader is allowed to slither out of the answer by saying, "I did not hear the question. I thought President Obama was going to answer that." There's no talk about how they harvest organs from prisoners in China -- and there's Obama, telling the head of this depraved society that we're all pleased with his country's progress. Meanwhile, the very same media is attacking innocent American citizens who have nothing to do with a horrible crime. The moral compass of our media is just stunning -- and, by the way, the media laughed when Hu Jintao side-stepped the question about human rights. Jimmy Carter has won a Nobel Peace Prize as well, and Jimmy Carter also attended Hu's dinner.

So you had two American Nobel Peace Prize Winners effectively honoring the head of a country who's holding 2010's Peace Prize Winner in prison -- and we had to listen to our fearless leader talk about aaaaall the great progress the ChiComs are making and how pleased we are with all that progress.'

Not a word on the BBC about the discgusting lack of moral courage expressed by the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama and his predecessor Jimmy Carter; but who would expect any?

The quotation is from Rush Limbaugh.

You can't argue with his mum

I am not a fan of ex US President Jimmy Carter as some of my previous posts should have made clear. Hence my joy at seeing this quotation from Jimmy Carter's mother, Lillian, on Last of the Few -

"Sometimes, when I look at my children, I say to myself ~~"Lillian, you should have remained a virgin.""

You said it Mrs Carter...

Is it a "lefty leader" thing

Sean Linnane reports the words of Ronald Kessler about the men who guarded US Presidents from JFK to BHO. Apparently Jimmy Carter was the "least likeable" president. Carter was "moody and mistrustful" and sought to micromanage everything, agents told Kessler.

"Moody and mistrustful"; does that remind you of a certain UK Prime Minister?

"Kessler discloses that Carter "would regularly make a show of going to the Oval Office at 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. to call attention to how hard he was working for the American people."

In fact, "he would work for half an hour, then close the curtains and take a nap," Robert B. Sulliman Jr., who was on Carter's detail, told Kessler.
"His staff would tell the press he was working.""

I wonder if the same is true of the same UK Prime Minister, renowned for being a hard worker and "getting on" with the job.

"GSA managers found that when Carter stayed at the townhouse, he would take down the photos of Republican presidents Ford and Nixon and put up a half-dozen large photos of himself."

Vanity as well, this sounds more like the aforementioned Prime Minister's predecessor, or maybe his wife.


Ronald Kessler's book "In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes With Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect" sounds like a good read.

If President Donald Trump is a vile racist, so was Jimmy dhimmi Carter

'... "Trump is a monster, a madman and a vile racist. He's just like Hitler. Or Jimmy Carter.

During the Iranian hostage crisis, Carter issued a number of orders to put pressure on Iran. Among these, Iranians were banned from entering the United States unless they oppose the Shiite Islamist regime or had a medical emergency."

He cites two specific actions. One was an order for Iranian students to report to immigration offices in order to determine if they had violated the terms of their visa; if they had, they would be deported. The second was an order to end all future visas for Iranians and to stop issuing most new visas. '

Interesting historical context, of the sort that the BBC will definitely not ever relay.

More here http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/article/2015/dec/17/why-trumps-muslim-ban-idea-isnt-really-same-jimmy-/

Jimmy Carter = Barack Obama. Barack Obama = Jimmy Carter

Not an original thought I know but this Dry Bones cartoon summarises it well:

Thanks to Theo Spark for the spot.

By your friends you shall judge them

Daily Caller reveals that:

'According to a column in the Feb. 24 edition of the Falls Church News-Press by Nicholas F. Benton, the editor-in-chief of the publication, the paper’s newest columnist Helen Thomas had a surprise waiting for her after an extraordinary interview she gave to HLN’s Joy Behar last week. That was flowers from Rosie O’Donnell, who had been on the record for defending Thomas in the past.

However, as Benton noted, at the time of the Thomas’s infamous remarks, there were very few willing to defend her other than O’Donnell and the 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter'

Jimmy Carter a truly nasty man who cheerfully supports some of the nastiest people and most evil regimes in the world.

Another great Barack Obama appointment

I realise that the Obamemessiah is running out of people he can appoint as so many of his preferred appointees seem to have problems remembering to pay tax, but his latest appointee is wild even for him. Barack Obama has appointed as an adviser to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michelle Fluornoy, one Rosa Brooks. Rosa Brooks has, as they say, form and plenty of it. She described George W. Bush as "our torturer in chief" and compared the Bush Administration's legal arguments on the war on terror with Adolf Hitler's use of political propaganda. Writing in the LA Times, Brooks compared being a citizen in George W. Bush's America "to being a passenger in a car driven by a drunk driver," and compared the Bush Administration ("our local authoritarians") to the leaders of North Korea or Iran.

Another great appointment by the man who is exceeding even my expectations for how poor a President he would be. I think within a few years even I may even remember the incompetent that was Jimmy Carter with fondness. Jimmy Carter was a fool and many of his views still disgust me but he was not as dangerous as Barack Obama is.

How pickpockets work

Here's a short extract from Adam Green’s recent profile of Robbins:

'He is probably best known for an encounter with Jimmy Carter’s Secret Service detail in 2001. While Carter was at dinner, Robbins struck up a conversation with several of his Secret Service men. Within a few minutes, he had emptied the agents’ pockets of pretty much everything but their guns. Robbins brandished a copy of Carter’s itinerary, and when an agent snatched it back he said, “You don’t have the authorization to see that!” When the agent felt for his badge, Robbins produced it and handed it back. Then he turned to the head of the detail and handed him his watch, his badge, and the keys to the Carter motorcade.'

Dear Jimmy

Following this morning's piece about Jimmy Carter's report on his trip to Egypt, I thought that I would ask the former US President for an explanation, so I emailed him:

'A query regarding your report on your visit to Egypt

Nota Sheep	09:58 (2 minutes ago)
				to carterweb

Your report on your recent trip to Egypt (http://www.cartercenter.org/news/trip_reports/egypt-011712.html) included this section:

'Tuesday morning we received detailed analyses by experts on the election process and political affairs, and then had a thorough discussion with Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, head of the SCAF and acting as de facto president of Egypt.

I was received with a friendly welcome as I congratulated the military leaders for what seemed to be a successful election, and then asked a number of questions. It seemed that the SCAF had full confidence that there would be accommodation to their demands by the Muslim Brotherhood and their coalition partners as the new government is formed. Instead of the reported 12,000 mostly political prisoners being held for trials in military courts, the Field Marshal stated that there were no more than 3,000, all of whom were guilty of criminal acts and being tried in civilian courts. He stated that the widely promulgated videos showing military attacks on demonstrators and a woman "with the blue brassiere" were all falsified. He said the soldiers were actually helping the woman re-clothe herself with what was provocative attire. '

You don't seem to question that which the Field Marshall said to you. Perhaps you could spare less than a minute to look at this YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vf_0p4a_GwI) of the girl in the blue bra and let me know whether you think the video was falsified or shows the woman being repeatedly beaten by Egyptian soldiers.

Your thoughts on this matter would be welcomed.

NotaSheep MaybeaGoat'

I wonder if I will get a reply and if it will be any more informative than a reply to a complaint to the BBC?

My favourite US President

The BBC's Daily Politics programme are conducting a poll entitled: "My Favourite President". Currently the voting stands like this:

"Harry S Truman 7.35%
Dwight D. Eisenhower 3.42%
John F. Kennedy 15.67%
Lyndon B. Johnson 4.80%
Richard Nixon 4.08%
Gerald Ford 0.66%
Jimmy Carter 7.81%
Ronald Reagan 20.62%
George H.W. Bush 0.87%
Bill Clinton 31.34%
George W. Bush 3.37%"

So if you want to stop a philandering liar from winning the poll, get voting for Ronald Reagan...