Everybody Needs A Hobby
Posted by harto
October 8th, 2007 @ 2:57 am
When not trying to get Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic, fired, the rival Weekly Standard’s blogger, Michael Goldfarb, shakes those pom-poms and high kicks rather strenuously for war, death and the continued occupation of a country that never did anything to harm us. This is, perhaps, not surprising, considering WHO the Weekly Standard speaks for.
According to SourceWatch:
“The Weekly Standard magazine is considered the prime voice of Republican neoconservatives, and one of the most influential publications in Washington under the Bush Administration. [1] It was first published [by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation] on September 17, 1995.”
Yes, the ACTUAL Neocons who fought, pleaded, wheedled and puled for this war, with William Kristol – there’s an official bio HERE, which, strangely, suppresses THIS bit of impressive biographical data HERE — the founder/editor/boss of the magazine, and of THAT OTHER THING.
So, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Goldfarb has once more donned his cheerleader’s outfit, carefully arranged his tight sweater, smoothed the pressed and starched pleats of his skirt, and swung his pom-poms and heels high.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Petraeus: “Absolutely no question” of Iranian InvolvementGeneral Petraeus said today that while al Qaeda continues to pose the most immediate threat to security in Iraq, Coalition strikes against the group have eroded its capacity to spur sectarian violence. The upshot: Iran increasingly looks to be the most serious long-term threat to peace and stability in Iraq.
“Al Qaeda remains the wolf closest to the sled, if you will,” he said. “The enemy that is always bent on reigniting sectarian violence, causing the most horrific casualties, damaging the infrastructure in the most difficult way. So you cannot lose focus on al Qaeda…”
“Militias could potentially be the long-term problem for Iraq, if you assume that we can continue to make progress against al Qaeda…”
And again, Petraeus described the evidence of Iranian support for those militias: [… Read the rest]
Well, all right. This is what Goldfarb is paid to do, and it’s good to see that he’s diligently passing on Administration Iran War Sales brochures. And when things get slow, he and his blog buddies (some of whom were among those invited to the White House “milblog” summit a couple weeks ago), well, they can always try to destroy the lives of that soldier, his wife, the editor of the New Republic, and the magazine itself.
And it’s a great coincidence that Petraeus’ Public Relations officer chose to confirm the Army’s “finding” that the TNR “Baghdad Diarist” stories were not confirmed …
“An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims.”
… by the Army’s investigation of one lowly Private THROUGH the Weekly Standard’s blog. That’s cozy. Sometimes you can’t quite tell where the Rightie blogs, the Rightie magazines, the Rightie TV news networks, the Army and the White House begin and end. But that’s OK.
It’s important that we keep those sabers rattling. But it’s also good that Goldfarb has a hobby.
Courage.
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UPDATE 4:00 AM PDT:
Just stumbled on this, which is rather interesting:
Michael Goldfarb’s 2005 bio when he was working for Freedom House, Inc. immediately prior to going to work for the Weekly Standard:
Michael Goldfarb is Senior Press Officer at Freedom House. He has worked as a reporter in Israel for United Press International and as a writer for Time.com, the Web site of Time magazine. He serves as a Middle East analyst for Freedom in the World.
And then, this, from Media Transparency:
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Bill Berkowitz
April 4, 2006Freedom House receiving US government money “for clandestine activities inside Iran”
While Mohamad ElBaradei, the atomic energy chief of the United Nations, urges restraint, Michael Ledeen, an American Enterprise Institute neocon, advocates “regime change” in Iran, and charges the Bush Administration with being asleep at the wheel
Regardless of what Michael Ledeen thinks of conflict in the Middle East, Iran has been in George W. Bush’s sights for quite some time. Recently Bush Administration officials and some members of the European Union have been warning that conflict with Iran over its nuclear program may be inevitable, particularly if Iran doesn’t cease its effort to perfect uranium enrichment.
In a newly released National Security Strategy (NSS) the Bush Administration placed Iran squarely in its crosshairs. Along with affirming Bush’s preventive (not “preemptive”*) strike doctrine — as outlined in the 2002 NSS — the current document clearly has Iran in mind when it states that the U.S. is “committed to keeping the world’s most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the world’s most dangerous people.”
On March 30, 2005 the Financial Times (London) reported that at a speech at New York’s Freedom House, Bush “stepped into an intense debate among democracy activists in the US and Iran over how US dollars should be used to carry out the administration’s policy of promoting freedom in the Islamic republic.”
Freedom House is one of the organizations that is receiving money from the Bush Administration “for clandestine activities inside Iran,” according to the Financial Times. A Freedom House research report concluded that “Far more often than is generally understood, the change agent is broad-based, non-violent civic resistance — which employs tactics such as boycotts, mass protests, blockades, strikes and civil disobedience to de-legitimate authoritarian rulers and erode their sources of support, including the loyalty of their armed defenders.”
Reuters recently reported that “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said…[that] the United States…will talk to Iran about Washington’s accusations of Iranian destabilization of Iraq, in the first public acceptance of an Iranian offer to meet.” [… more]
And here’s who pays the bills.
More “classic conservatives” I guess.
According to Wikipedia:
Like National Review in the administration of Ronald Reagan, [The Weekly Standard] is very popular among United States President George W. Bush’s administration.
The magazine posts more than one million dollars of annual losses. Nevertheless, Rupert Murdoch, the head of the News Corporation, denies that there are any plans to sell it”
You don’t suppose that Rupert Murdoch is subsidizing Irving Kristol’s son William to the tune of $1 million a year in an under-the-table contribution to the GOP do you? Naww.
Curiouser and curiouser.
