04/29/15 – Philip Weiss – The Scott Horton Show

In America today, teachers, cops, judges, and other so-called public servants make far more than the average taxpayer.
And their pensions?
Well, if the people knew, they'd join us.
That's where you come in.
Taxpayers United of America is embarking on a great new project to train activists how to take on the parasites in your communities.
The entire process, from prying loose the facts to disseminating the truth to the people.
The next of these great workshops is Saturday, April 25th in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
It's just $15.
For more information, go to taxpayersunited.org slash govpensions.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Live here from noon to 2 Eastern time on the Liberty Radio Network.
And, yeah, sorry that Sean had to cancel, but we'll see if we can get him on later in the week.
But we still got Philip Weiss from the Mondo Weiss blog, where he writes a lot of great stuff, and so does a good, I don't know, half a dozen other great writers, too, mostly on the subject of America's relationship with Israel and related issues along those lines, which there are many.
But, anyway, so welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Phil?
Great, Scott.
How are you doing?
I'm doing real good.
Very happy to have you back on the show.
Thank you for having me.
So there's a lot to talk about, and so I guess the best way I can conceive of it is we got the biggest issues, of course, still are the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the nuclear deal, and then American electoral politics, and all the posturing and all the money and all that that entails and what all that has to do with it.
And it's funny, because I'm looking at the makeup of the lineup here, and I almost would prefer a third Obama term at this point, because at least he hates Benjamin Netanyahu, right, where everybody else is in a contest to see who can please him the best.
That's funny.
Yeah, they are.
I mean, you get no endorsement for Hillary Clinton from me, but at least she's been supportive of the Iran deal, and, of course, on the other side, I think Rand Paul, while he's made some missteps on the Iran deal, I think he, in the end, will support it.
But other than that, they're taking vows to overrule the Iran deal or undermine it.
Well, you know, you had an article here about Haim Sabin saying, don't worry about Hillary.
She's with us on this Iran thing.
Right.
Never mind what she says about it.
But I wonder what that really means, because if she's telling him, hey, it's politics, I have to support Obama.
I'm his last secretary of state.
I have to support him on this.
There's no way I can not do it.
But so what's the end of that sentence?
She promises to ruin the damn thing when and if she wins?
I don't know.
I mean, I think that… Because he sure sounded satisfied with her answer.
On the one hand, I think it's completely fair to be conspiratorial about this whole business, because there's secret conversations going on all the time.
And today we learned that the reason that Jeb Bush has been sounding so hawkish is that he was trying to get Sheldon Adelson's money.
And he needed to throw Jim Baker under the bus to try to get Sheldon Adelson's money, and he won't get Sheldon Adelson's money.
So that happens.
On the Hillary side, I just don't know.
I don't know where – I think that there actually is some movement on the Democratic side in the Israel lobby, the Democratic Israel lobby.
I think there is some movement to support the Iran deal.
So you have Jay Street vigorously supporting the Iran deal.
That's great.
I just don't know that – and Chaim Saban, he's a real conservative on these questions.
I don't know where he's going to end up on it.
He made those comments, and yet Hillary and Bill Clinton too has stood up for the Iran deal.
So I have my hopes that there will be a political center forming in American life that supports the deal.
So I'm ever hopeful.
Yeah, well, I have to say, I mean it seems like Obama and Kerry are pretty much committed here.
And in fact I'd even go so far as to say it seems like they already have the deal.
And it's just politics.
They have to take their time in getting the last little details lined up and all that.
And so once they had the deal, I mean it seems like – well, did you think that the Corker thing in the Senate, that that was actually a victory for Obama on this?
Because at first it looked like, oh, no, the Republicans got their veto power.
But then I saw where Bill Kristol and over at Breitbart actually – oh, what's his name – had a write-up there about how, oh, no, the Republicans blew it.
And they basically – they could have done all these things to make sure that they had the power to scotch the deal.
Instead, now they have to wait until the deal is signed and all the political wind is going the president's way.
And then they only have a very narrow amount of time to try to overrule it, etc., like that.
I've read what you've read.
I think that certainly the neoconservatives are very unhappy with this Corker-Cardin bill.
It's not going to derail the deal.
And so – but there are signs that even AIPAC is now supporting it because they're saying, okay, let's just fold in now.
This is where we got a big majority.
Let's fold in.
It's scrutiny after the deal is cut, as you pointed out.
It only gives Congress a window later on the sanctions.
But I think that what we're going to see is because it doesn't do that much to stop the deal, I think we're going to see other efforts to stop the deal.
So I think it seems like it was a bit of a draw that Obama hopped in on it.
Rather than treating it as adversarial, he hopped in on it and got changes that made him comfortable with it and that defanged Congress somewhat with respect to the deal.
But I think the result will be that AIPAC, the neocons, they'll be back in action in other ways to try to stop the deal.
Meaning like adding poison pill amendments to it and that kind of thing?
Well, I don't know.
Apparently AIPAC says we don't want poison pill amendments.
I think that there might be other efforts to just – you'll see other efforts to derail this thing.
I mean they're not going to sit – that's June, right?
I mean we've got two months before the ink dries on this or before the terms are laid out.
And I don't think they're going to sit quietly between now and late June.
I just don't see it.
I just don't see it.
I see other efforts either if not of a legislative character then this kind of renegade diplomacy that we've been seeing again and again.
Well, I mean I think the worst example of that would have been using Jandala to murder Iranian military officers back in October of 2009 during the talks on the first nuclear swap deal which killed that.
You think they might go that far?
What do you have in mind?
Well, I mean who – I would never put some things past them.
I mean if – for instance, let's say that there was a flare-up on the Lebanon border between Hezbollah and Israel.
Let's say that could do a lot to suddenly create problems for the Iran deal.
You'd have Hezbollah gaining a lot of support from Iran.
You'd have a quote-unquote war.
I mean they think there's – Netanyahu speaks of an unending war with these folks.
But that's one thing that Israel might end up doing.
Who knows?
I just don't think that given the rhetoric, I don't think that this is going to end with a whimper.
There's going to be some banging going on.
Yeah.
I wonder how much that has to do with the whole narrative of the Houthis in Yemen being backed by Iran.
And look here, we and our allies are in a shooting match, a direct shooting war, a proxy shooting war with Iran right at the time that we're doing this deal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I see what you're saying.
I mean obviously – I mean there's a Saudi angle here too although I think the Saudis have gone along with the deal by and large.
Yeah, they seem to have.
Although I don't know – I've read at least a few public statements they made along those lines.
But I guess I don't know the real diplomacy there.
It seems like they're kind of joining their policy at the hip with the Israelis right now on – certainly on Syria, huh?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So – but I'm just – that's the kind of thing I just observed from a distance.
I'm no – I can't offer any sort of insight into that.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, so we've got a lot to cover after this break which is coming up in just a sec.
But this news just came in from Haaretz.
Rand Paul tells Jewish leaders, I do not support war with Iran over their nuclear program.
His audience at a Brooklyn Hebrew Day School today.
Wow.
And he also said it was wrong to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
That's great.
You know, some guys – you know.
All right.
Well, hang tight everybody.
We'll be right back with Philip Weiss in just a minute.
Mondoweiss.net is his great website.
Hey, Al.
Scott Horton here.
It's always safe to say that one should keep at least some of your savings in precious metals as a hedge against inflation.
And if this economy ever does heat back up and the banks start expanding credit, rising prices could make metals a very profitable bet.
Since 1977, Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc. has been helping people buy and sell gold, silver, platinum, and palladium.
And they do it well.
They're fast, reliable, and trusted for more than 35 years.
Call Roberts and Roberts at 1-800-874-9760 or stop by rrbi.co.
All right, you guys.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking Israel and politics and the Iran deal and things with the great Philip Weiss from Mondoweiss.net.
He's got a great stable of writers over there too.
I hope it's in your bookmarks and you'll look at it all the time.
Here's a very interesting article I didn't get to read about Dorothy Thompson.
Definitely getting back to that.
Yeah, it was good.
You know about her, huh?
I've read one thing about her before, probably by Justin Raimondo, but I'm not sure.
Yeah, that makes sense.
But, yeah, so listen, I wanted to get back to what you said about George Bush there.
Jeb Bush, same difference.
Jeb, he took James Baker by the skull and threw him right onto the bus there about as far as he possibly could, and I think repeatedly.
Yeah.
And yet, I think you said, oh, no, he's at least in the Adelson primary, he's already lost and he will not get Sheldon Adelson's support.
Is that right?
Well, I think that Adelson is a mercurial figure.
He's an old guy who acts on impulse.
And right now, though, according to this report that's come out in National Review, Adelson is epithet removed, rip epithet removed about Bush's closeness to Jeb Baker.
He said it's going to cost you a lot of money if Baker goes before J Street, the liberal Israel lobby, and says anything critical of Israel.
Well, Baker went ahead and did it.
Bush couldn't stop him.
And now Adelson's saying you don't get the money.
I think if Bush is the nominee, the Republican nominee, that Adelson will get behind him, just as he got behind Romney the last time.
Sure.
Yeah, it's funny to me because I guess I just assume that all of the major constituencies in America, and they have nothing to do with region or ethnicity or religion really at all, mostly, all the major constituencies are the banks, the insurance companies, the arms dealers, agribusiness, and obviously Israel and maybe the AARP and the NRA a little bit.
But other than that, the AARP and the NRA are probably the only actual popular pluralistic organizations that have any real influence whatsoever when it comes down to it that could barely qualify as one of those power factions.
And Jeb has all those locked up.
It seems like Adelson would know to go ahead and get behind a winner here.
Who are they going to nominate?
Marco Rubio?
I mean, give me a break.
It's obviously going to be Jeb Bush.
You think that Bush has a clear path to nomination?
Yeah, just because of connections.
He walks in there with all of the fundraising avenues and all of the meetings already lined up.
He's got such an advantage.
And they want a winner, right?
You know what he is?
He's John Kerry from 2004.
He's John McCain from 2008.
He's the last choice, and he's the shoe-in to win because everybody else has a fatal flaw.
He's the guy that's left standing at the end kind of thing.
He's the century.
McCain's actually the best analogy because he's the liberal Republican swing voter type.
But, Scott, we've got a while to go before this happens, right?
I mean, there's always surprises, right?
That's what I always think of.
Sure, yeah.
I mean, yeah, yeah.
No, I mean, I guess I'm just saying all things being equal.
Obviously, Jeb could get caught saying the N-word in front of an open microphone or something, and that would be the end of him.
So what about Hillary?
What's her path like?
Well, I think she's pretty much guaranteed the nomination, but I think Jeb will win the general.
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
Because her negatives are just too good.
I heard it here first.
I don't know why this isn't obvious to everyone, but maybe I'm just wrong.
Someone sent me a note the other day saying it's Scott Walker, man.
That guy's a comer, you know?
Well, you know, yeah, he is referred to as also top-tier with Jeb.
I admit I don't know enough about the guy, really.
Maybe he could be the Romney to Jeb's McCain kind of the second-tier guy.
But all the rest of the guys, Rand and all the rest of them, are second-tier, unless, you know, there's a massive earthquake and everything shifts, you know.
How do you feel about Rand's navigations and twists and turns on the Iran business?
Well, I never did like the man.
I think, like Hillary Clinton, he cares about himself first and everything else a distant second or worse.
So I just don't trust his integrity, and I don't trust— you know, he's really—he reminds me a lot of Barack Obama and his supporters, a lot of the Obama bots from 07 and 08, who just want to believe, despite all evidence, that there's a secret Obama in there, that once he has total power, then he's going to get really liberal or then he's going to get really libertarian or whatever.
I just don't believe that, you know?
Do you give Obama any props for the fact that he has got this poisonous relationship with Netanyahu?
Yes, that's the thing I like about him best, is the Iran nuclear deal and just the fact that he and Netanyahu don't get along, which I entirely blame on Netanyahu.
I mean, Barack Obama is no idiot.
He had every reason in the world to get along with Netanyahu, and I think tried hard to.
Yes.
But, you know, and I know it sounds kind of pat or whatever, but I think that Netanyahu is a white supremacist racist, and he thinks that Obama basically is fit to shine his shoes, and he can't imagine that he's got to talk up to this guy and treat him with respect, and he just never could get used to doing so and never did.
And so Obama's attitude has got to be like, well, who's the emperor and who's the lackey here?
Come on.
Yes, that's interesting, because, you know, I'm sure that a lot of American black politicians would agree with your analysis, and God knows that they expressed a little of that recently when Netanyahu came to Congress.
The media don't talk about that angle.
They'll talk about the American right and how racist they are against Obama, you know, all the time, and impute that motive, but I think there's some truth to that.
I mean, blacks are second-class citizens in Israel.
Anyone who's not Jewish is a second-class citizen.
Yeah, well, and even among Jews, the whiter you are, the better too, right?
Yeah, they're at that.
As far as the law goes and power?
I don't know about the law.
I mean, certainly the Mizrahi Jews, the Jews from Arab countries, have traditionally had a second class.
They've been lower status in Israeli society.
That is beginning to change, and you're seeing the old Ashkenazi elite, which is smaller and smaller.
It's blurring a little.
It's less of an important distinction, And Netanyahu's coalition involves so many Mizrahi Jews, and a lot of the leaders are also Mizrahi.
Yeah.
Hey, you know, I wonder if there's any chance that you're not in a hurry and could hang around and do one more segment with us today, Phil?
Sure, yeah.
Okay, cool, man.
Sounds great.
I guess so.
On the other side of this break, y'all, which I started a little bit early here on the outro, what I mostly want to ask you about, I think, in the next segment will be the future of the Israel-Palestine relationship.
And also, you know, as it has to do with American politics and the American government's position on the issue, election year and otherwise.
But it seemed really important when Netanyahu announced that, yeah, no, there will never be a second state.
And when he tried to backpedal, it didn't seem like anybody believed the backpedal.
They believed that he was finally being honest for once for election's sake.
Yeah, it was great.
It was a great moment.
Yeah.
Fabulous.
So there's a real big question of what comes next then, obviously.
I think you're right.
It's important.
Okay, so that's what we'll get to on the other side of this break with Philip Weiss from the Mondoweiss Blog.
I'm sorry, are you trying to say one more thing there?
Go ahead.
No, no, no.
I had nothing to say, man.
Oh, okay.
So, yeah, Philip Weiss, mondoweiss.net.
We'll be right back.
Hey, Al Scott here.
If you're like me, you need coffee.
Lots of it.
And you probably prefer it tastes good, too.
Well, let me tell you about Darren's Coffee, company of darrenscoffee.com.
Darren Marion is a natural entrepreneur who decided to leave his corporate job and strike out on his own, making great coffee.
And Darren's Coffee is now delivering right to your door.
Darren gets his beans direct from farmers around the world, all specialty, premium grade with no filler.
Hey, the man just wants everyone to have a chance to taste this great coffee.darrenscoffee.com.
Use promo code Scott and you get free shipping.darrenscoffee.com.
All right, guys.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, and I talked Philip Weiss into staying one more segment with us on the show.
He's at mondoweiss.net.
And so, yeah, Israel-Palestine, that's the thing.
Netanyahu just won reelection, and he won it by getting out the vote with a bunch of scaremongering at the last minute.
All states are based on fear, of course.
What might happen if I wasn't here?
But the thing was, he let the truth slip out, that there never will be a Palestinian state.
And, you know, we had, Phil, didn't we, the footage back from 2001 that was leaked, where he's in a home, I think a settler's home, explaining how he screwed Bill Clinton and, you know, basically just finagled his way out of the negotiations of giving up any part of the West Bank and was laughing about it, right?
America's easily moved, don't worry about them.
Yeah, the United States is something that can be easily moved, right, right.
Yeah, it was a great moment.
I mean, he promised that there will never be a Palestinian state, and then he rallied his voters to the polls on election day by saying that Arabs are coming out in droves.
So both these statements are things that the Obama administration condemned, rightly, but also it's a great revelation.
I mean, if you've been over there, you know that it's one state.
It's all under one country's control.
There's 22% of the territory is Palestinian territories, but they're just, you know, it's tyranny.
It's Israeli tyranny and Israeli army everywhere.
And so now Americans get a chance to see this for themselves.
And the media have tried to avoid this subject, but it's right on the table now.
There is not going to be a two-state solution.
All right.
So now, and I guess that was obviously has been the case from a lot of points of view for a long time, and then I think a lot more people came around to that point of view at the end of Kerry's attempted negotiations in, I forget, I guess 2013 was when they finally gave up on that, right?
Right.
Yeah, it was a year ago.
I think two years ago he said, give me two years, you know, so we're right where, you know, the two-year thing was supposed to end.
All right.
But now, so now that Netanyahu has said this and nobody's buying his walk back of it, it's sort of like the let's all pretend they don't have nukes thing.
Now it's over.
Now it's let's not pretend they're ever going to give up the West Bank and all of that because they're just not going to.
So but what does that mean for American politics?
Just, oh, well, status quo forever or because they needed that pretension of so-called peace process this whole time for some reason, didn't they?
Yeah, well, I think it's another thing that's going to drive a wedge between the Republicans and the Democrats now.
And that is actually a hopeful sign.
I mean, because Republicans don't care.
They're going to say, hey, we're for Israel on any terms.
And Democrats are going to say, oh, we were for the two-state solution.
And so you're going to see that the chance exists that a year from now we are going to see an active conversation inside the Democratic primary process about where's the two-state solution that you're for?
And shouldn't we just be supporting democracy?
Is it just too wild an idea to support equality of all human beings in Israel and Palestine?
So that conversation I think is going to happen inside the Democratic Party.
And the Republicans are going to help it along by saying the Democrats are anti-Israel.
And then you're going to see some – you're finally going to see some kind of glass nose inside the American political process over this question, I believe, because people will actually get to take different stances.
Now, the Democratic Party is going to continue to line up with the Israel lobby, even the left side of the Israel lobby, J Street.
But I think that you're going to start seeing the Democratic base echo Palestinian human rights and one-state arguments.
Well, and I guess importantly, being that they're liberal Democrats and even the leftish side of the liberal Democrats, they should be at least somewhat inoculated from accusations of anti-Semitism because, after all, they're civil rights liberal types.
It's not like if the conversation was in the Republican Party, it's that much easier like they try to do with Ron Paul and just say, oh, he's just an anti-Semite.
You don't have to listen to him, which of course is the furthest thing from the truth.
Yeah, which neocons, they actually locked up the Republican Party in just that way.
And they threw out Jim Baker.
They thought they had thrown out Jim Baker a long time ago along with George H.W. Bush.
But hey, look at Jimmy Carter.
He's a persona non grata in the Democratic Party.
So it can happen in the Democratic Party, too.
And watch, they're going to try.
Yeah, and it wasn't because he's kind of a laughingstock as a president because he never got us into any real major wars.
And so it's not that.
It's that he wrote a book about Israel saying, hey, man, you're destroying yourself and you're destroying a bunch of innocent people.
Yeah, and it's apartheid.
Guess what?
It's apartheid.
Which, you know, now just about every – that's another great thing is that that's being – that word is no longer verboten inside the left wing part of the mainstream discourse.
People can begin to talk about apartheid.
I think you're going to see more and more descriptions of Israel and Palestine as an apartheid situation.
But now, I mean, you know, we were talking earlier about Hillary Clinton having the nomination locked up.
And as you said, the Democratic Party is still going to tow the Israel lobby line on all this stuff.
So it still raises the question of what anybody can do about it, even if they're a major faction inside one of the major two parties.
Yeah, well, I mean that's been the case.
I mean, you know, here's a – you talked about Dorothy Thompson.
Yesterday – and she's the journalist whom Obama saluted at the end of his White House Correspondents Association dinner the other night as someone who stood up for her ideals.
Well, and she lost her career to Zionists at the end of her career.
And yesterday I saw a video that she – a video that was a film that she promoted back in 1949 about the Nakba.
The Nakba was the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their land.
And what you see when you see this video is you understand these facts were known.
Everything was known.
The suffering of the Palestinians was known.
The occupation, when it began, was known, just not known in America.
So when we talk about Palestinian suffering and human rights violations, they've been – they never end.
They never end.
The only question is when that knowledge is going to begin to break into the American discourse.
And so, no, I agree with you.
They've still got it locked up politically, but I think we're going to begin to see some growing understanding.
And part of it is the end of the Holocaust as a sort of a giant theme in American discourse.
Younger people who haven't grown up with the Holocaust as a – shadowing their experience, and who've grown up with multicultural experience and diversity.
And you're supposed to tolerate fellow human beings.
Yeah.
All right.
So how much power and influence does the boycott movement have on this so far, do you think?
They're doing pretty well?
It's hard to say.
I mean, well, they're doing great because they're terrifying Israel.
They're upsetting Israel supporters.
And they're raising the awareness, and people are talking about BDS.
They have had several signal victories, chiefly in northern Europe, but they've also helped with divestment campaigns at various American institutions, liberal institutions.
So I think they're vital.
I mean, I just think it's a little bit like the South Africa situation, in that it's just who knows what ends these things.
It's a combination of factors, but this one is absolutely vital.
And it may be symbolic largely so far, but, man, it is racking up some – it's driving the conversation.
Right.
Yeah, it's just like electoral politics or any kind of activism on that level, just bringing awareness by being active and getting the work done, having a conversation about it.
You have people who will never really have any part of the actual movement or be able to make a decision or participate in any kind of decision to divest anything.
But this is where they first hear about the issue, that, wow, there's something that people are really mad and fighting about.
I wonder what it is, you know?
Yeah, I think you're right.
I hadn't thought about that, but I think that's the discursive power, yeah.
All right, well, listen, thanks for coming back on the show, man.
I always learn a lot when I talk to you, Philip.
Oh, Scott, feelings mutual, man.
All right, take care.
Okay, thanks, man.
Bye-bye.
All right, y'all, that's the great Philip Weiss at mondoweiss.net.
Hey, Al Scott Horton here for The Future of Freedom, the monthly journal of the Future Freedom Foundation at fff.org slash subscribe.
Since 1989, FFF has been pushing an uncompromising moral and economic case for peace, individual liberty, and free markets.
Sign up now for The Future of Freedom featuring founder and president Jacob Horenberger as well as Sheldon Richmond, James Bovard, Anthony Gregory, Wendy McElroy, and many more.
It's just $25 a year for the print edition, $15 per year to read it online.
That's fff.org slash subscribe.
And tell them Scott sent you.
Hey, Al Scott Horton here for wallstreetwindow.com.
Mike Swanson knows his stuff.
He made a killing running his own hedge fund and always gets out of the stock market before the government-generated bubbles pop, which is, by the way, what he's doing right now, selling all his stocks and betting on gold and commodities.
Sign up at wallstreetwindow.com and get real-time updates from Mike on all his market moves.
It's hard to know how to protect your savings and earn a good return in an economy like this.
Mike Swanson can help.
Follow along on paper and see for yourself.wallstreetwindow.com Hey, Al Scott here.
Ever wanted to help support the show and own silver at the same time?
Well, a friend of mine, libertarian activist Arlo Pignotti, has invented the alternative currency with the most promise of them all, QR silver commodity disks, the first-ever QR code one-ounce silver pieces.
Just scan the back of one with your phone and get the instant spot price.
They're perfect for saving or spending at the market.
And anyone who donates $100 or more to The Scott Horton Show at scotthorton.org slash donate gets one.
That's scotthorton.org slash donate.
And if you'd like to learn and order more, send them a message at commoditydisks.com or check them out on Facebook at slash commodity disks.
And thanks.