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Alright, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
Website is www.scotthorton.org.
For all my interview archives, more than 2,500 of them now going back to 2003.
Hey, and also check out my blog, www.scotthorton.org.
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First guest on the show today is our friend Sheldon Richman from the Future of Freedom Foundation.
Of course, he has his own blog, Free Association, www.sheldonrichman.com.
And then, wow, it looks like your piece got picked up in the counterpunch here.
APAC and the Undemocratic Convention.
Welcome back to the show.
Sheldon, how are you doing?
I'm doing fine.
Great to be with you as usual.
Well, very happy to have you here.
So you know what?
I have the clip here, and it's only like a minute and a half.
And so for the people who haven't seen it, I think this actually should be just as effective on the radio.
Yeah.
I guess I'll set it up real quickly.
This is the controversial or should have been, anyway, controversial voice vote on the change to the Democratic Party platform.
You explain in your piece here at counterpunch.
Somehow, and we'll get back to that, but somehow this language, which was always in the Democratic Party platform, at least for the last few conventions or so, was removed.
And so this was a move to put the language back in that says that the Democratic Party of America recognizes Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel.
And then there was this other thing about God-given potential and whatever, and whether the word God is going to be in there or not.
So this is the controversial voice vote.
I want people to take a listen to this here real quick, and then we'll be back and talk more about it with our friends.
Hang on right there.
Hearing none, the matter requires a two-thirds vote in the affirmative.
All those delegates in favor say aye.
Aye.
All those delegates opposed say no.
No.
In the opinion of the, let me do that again.
All of those delegates in favor say aye.
Aye.
All those delegates opposed say no.
No.
I, um, I guess.
I'll do that one more time.
All those delegates in favor say aye.
Aye.
All those delegates opposed say no.
No.
In the opinion of the chair, two-thirds have voted in the affirmative.
The motion is adopted, and the platform has been amended as shown on the screen.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Governor Strickland, thank you again for your service.
All right, well, I have to tell you, I kind of think it's hilarious, but then again, I gave up believing in American democracy a long, long time ago, so I don't really see the tragedy in it.
I'm rolling on the floor here.
Yeah.
I mean, almost literally.
What a gag.
It's funny.
It's appalling, but funny at the same time.
And you do lose something.
We're not seeing the video, so people can go to my website or find it anywhere else and watch Villaraigosa's look on his face.
He's clearly pained and embarrassed.
I mean, I don't know what they were thinking.
I don't know if they were thinking they were going to get the two-thirds on that first voice vote and it was going to be clear cut, but to me it sounded like a tie all three times.
Maybe the nose might have even had a slight edge the last time, but of course they didn't get two-thirds any of those times, and he's just smiling like, okay, what do I do now?
So just say it failed.
Say the truth.
I'm sorry.
The motion does not carry.
Tough.
Yeah, but he, look, he could do that, but he's able to think ahead and realize he's doomed if he does that.
So he's a hero for like a second.
Then what happened?
He's in big trouble.
So hilarious.
I mean, unbelievable.
As Mondo Weiss says today, Phil Weiss says today, the curtain has been stripped aside.
We get this clear glimpse of what actually goes on.
And, you know, just to give the context, and I haven't seen an explanation for this yet, but in the platform committee, they did not include that language that said that Israel should be recognized, sorry, undivided Jerusalem should be recognized as Israel's capital.
There was also language there about how, you know, the parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations and it should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.
So the point is they say it is and will remain the capital of Israel.
That came out for some reason.
And then when it was discovered, they, on the floor, tried to amend it, and that's what we just heard, and that takes a two-thirds vote.
And they did it by hook and crook.
In other words, it was really a throwback to the old days of smoke-filled rooms when the nominees of the parties were picked by powerful people sitting in back rooms deciding, you know, how the delegates would vote.
It's really appalling.
And, of course, I mean, if you want to go into the legal issues involved, you might say, well, why shouldn't they recognize Jerusalem?
Well, because nobody in the world, with a few exceptions, Israel and its lobby here, basically, regards an undivided Israeli capital of Jerusalem as legal.
First of all, East Jerusalem was taken during a war and under international law.
You're not allowed to annex territory you've gained through war and conquest, but Israel has annexed East Jerusalem and has kicked out Palestinians and built Jewish-only settlements.
And that's a growing presence in East Jerusalem.
They haven't kicked out all the Palestinians, but increasingly they have kicked out a lot of them.
The other half of Jerusalem, West Jerusalem, there's no clear-cut claim either, because under the UN partition, all of Jerusalem was supposed to be a united international city.
That would have been, I suppose, the capital of both the Palestinian part of the partition and the Israeli part of the partition.
Israel colluded with Jordan in 1947 and 1948 to make sure there was no Palestinian state.
And so, therefore, Jordan got East Jerusalem along with the West Bank in 1948, and then Israel in 1967 took the West Bank and East Jerusalem for itself.
It's now, of course, building settlements throughout the West Bank, including a vicious wall to separate people from each other and from their farmland and whatnot.
And, like I said, formally annexed East Jerusalem.
So it's a system that's regarded as illegal under international law, condemned by the UN.
And so for the Democratic Party and the Republican Party to simply declare that Israel's way is the way it's going to be, first of all, undermines the idea that the U.S. could possibly be an honest broker in the so-called peace process, which it's never been.
But this lays clear that's fair for all to see.
Right.
Now, it's a funny thing, and Romando, Justin Romando remarks about this in his article today, too, that all of the American politicians at this level anyway, they always pay lip service to this.
And yet no president ever moves.
George W. Bush didn't.
Barack Obama hasn't.
And Barack Obama, four years ago, made the most strident statement ever, I think, along these lines out loud, you know, written text in a party platform to the side saying that I don't know his exact words.
It was very close to Jerusalem will always be the undivided Jewish Israeli capital of Israel forever.
Some kind of very redundant way of saying, screw you, Palestinians who live there, basically.
And yet he hasn't moved the embassy.
And that's always the big question is, are the Americans going to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem?
Because if they do, then that will be the real change in recognition.
And they can't do that.
But why not?
They don't do it.
Why not?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I guess they want to maintain this pretense that they're an honest broker, that any president wants to be able to say, look, we can be the mediator.
We can meet with both sides.
And when they don't want to meet with each other and pass the word back and forth.
And I guess maybe the Palestinians have let it be known that if that were to happen, you know, there would be no peace process, even such as it is.
I mean, you have to use quotes around that term and that no president has wanted things to look so totally, you know, collapsed.
I mean, I'm speculating here.
I don't know if there's a better reason, but that would seem to explain it.
I know the Democrats on TV yesterday were trying to distinguish recognizing it as the capital and, you know, deciding on the location of the U.S. embassy.
They were trying to make some big deal over that distinction.
I mean, typically we put the embassy, doesn't the U.S. put its embassy in the capital of a country?
And I assume that's true.
I assume the Italian embassy, U.S. embassy in Italy is in Rome.
So I don't, that's the only thing I could figure why they long ago haven't moved the embassy.
So they're threading a needle.
On the one hand, they can say, look, Israel, we've declared that you're, at least in our party platforms, we've declared that our, I don't know, is there an official government policy?
We've declared that your capital is Jerusalem.
On the other hand, they can say, look, Palestinians, we haven't moved our embassy there yet.
So let's get the peace process going.
I think it's politics.
Right.
Well, no, I'm trying to think back.
I think one of the first indications I had of just how much power the Israel lobby has over the debate in D.C. was back in, I don't know, I guess it must have been in the year 2000 when Hillary was running for Senate.
Is that right?
And she had said while she was still the first lady that, well, you know, one day the goal here is to create a Palestinian state.
And everybody freaked out.
Oh, my God.
She said the words Palestinian state.
You're not supposed to ever say the words Palestinian state.
That's where it was at the turn of the century.
And then Bush came in and Bush said Palestinian state.
And so that meant that, OK, I guess it's OK to say Palestinian state now.
But you're certainly not allowed to do anything about it.
As Barack Obama showed us in 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu says, no, tough.
What are you going to do about it?
The answer is nothing.
So but that's really, you know, here's Hillary Clinton.
She's Hillary Clinton.
She's the dragon lady, man.
She can say whatever she wants, anyone she wants.
She's the most powerful woman in the history of the world, probably.
Right.
And yet, boy, you better not say the words Palestinian state, except in this very specific preapproved context.
Wow.
What the hell?
You know, it's not like.
Well, like I was already saying, it's not like they're actually making a Palestinian state.
You're not even really supposed to pretend that far ahead of the game here, Hillary.
You know.
Right.
Right.
You know, it's funny how those things work.
You can't say certain things like, you know, depending on who you are, you can't say you can't say that the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians or if you're in big trouble.
And then sometimes they go the other way.
Yeah.
So there's all these niceties, diplomatic niceties.
No, I think Sharon uttered the word Palestinian state when he was prime minister and was, you know, taking the Israeli troops out of Gaza.
And so that made it a little bit more permissible to acknowledge that as some distant, you know, distant goal.
But of course, it was such a stripped down goal because it was OK.
And I did a blog post once about this where where they said, yeah, you can be a state if.
And then there was like, you know, 15 years, which which basically was basically ruled out the nature of a political state, as we understand it.
Right.
If you don't do right, they were.
If you don't do A to Z, you can be a state.
But A to Z are the defining characteristics of a state like you'd be in charge of your own security, you know, trade, blah, blah, blah.
So it was a big joke.
And and so that's what they mean.
You know, what they mean is a bunch of little banter stands right in the in the West Bank that are barely connected and they're connected by road to the Israelis control.
And then when they want to say, hey, we're off in your state.
So it's it's really pretty disgusting and it hasn't advanced.
It's just a game everybody plays.
I mean, the peace process is a game that will put out a board game called Peace Process.
Yeah.
Probably make a lot of money because it's a total joke.
And the U.S. is not an honest broker and everybody knows it.
I don't know who we're trying to fool.
The Palestinians know it and the Israelis know it.
I guess only dumb Americans don't know it.
Well, you know, it's funny.
I kind of want to go back to my archives from the beginning of 2009.
I remember talking with somebody.
I don't know if it was Jim Loeb or somebody who's, you know, really well versed in all of these D.C. ins and outs and all of these policies in such an intricate way.
And he was already, I think, had written a thing pointing out that Obama wasn't putting any real teeth in any of his new declarations on the Palestine issue whatsoever.
And that really he was only setting himself up to back down and and fail.
And it was pretty obvious at the time.
But what wasn't obvious and the part that I still don't really know the answer to is why did he even bother?
Why in the world?
I mean, to this day, Obama is suffering under the all the criticism of him of not being loyal enough to Israel.
And then they have 2009 to point out.
Remember when he tried to make us stop building settlements for a week?
Why?
What is he, some kind of anti-Semite or something?
And so he's got all of this negative PR from it.
But he didn't accomplish a damn thing.
And he wasn't willing to tell Netanyahu or else anything.
And so what do you think was going on there?
I mean, was he just really that full of his own PR about how persuasive he is in speaking or something?
Or what the hell did he think was going on there?
You know, who knows?
I mean, you'd have to have him on a couch and have him talking a lot to try to figure out what it was he was thinking.
I mean, Bill Clinton put off failing like this till the last year of his presidency so that it wouldn't be that big of a deal.
Right.
Because he's smart.
Same thing for Bush Jr., really.
Yeah, I don't know whether Obama just thought he was magic and his unique combination of handling all this was going to bring an amazing transformation.
It was pretty naive if that's what he was thinking or if it was just cynical.
Well, you know, if we credit what Gareth Porter and Jim Loeber are writing, although Phil Doraldi doesn't seem to quite buy it, that he has at least put a damper on Netanyahu's war drive toward Iran.
And, you know, they've had the Joint Chiefs of Staff chief over there saying, you know, don't do this.
You're not going to get any help from us and there's no way you can pull it off.
He seems to have put a damper on it.
There's a lot of dissent in Netanyahu's own cabinet.
He had to disband a cabinet meeting the other day because of what he claimed were leaks.
Because they're all saying, this is nuts, we better not do this, it's crazy, the Americans aren't going to be with us.
And Jeffrey Goldberg, who channels Netanyahu and that crowd, is writing in The Atlantic, you know, seven reasons not to go to war.
Israel shouldn't go to war against Iran.
And with number six being, it's going to be bad for the Jews.
American Jews are going to suffer if it looks like the U.S. is dragged into a war in Iran, which is going to be really bad with innocent civilians being killed and all that stuff.
So I've been breathing more of a sigh of relief lately.
So if Obama's behind that, I'm willing to give him credit if it was intentional or even if it was unintentional.
If that's the effect he's getting, then I'm willing to give him credit for that.
Yeah, it's true.
I mean, that's really the one thing that I can think of where he differs from Mitt Romney in any substantive way.
Romney at least says, and I'm inclined to believe him, that he'd be much worse in all these issues.
Especially I'm inclined to believe him because of his personal relationship with Netanyahu going way back.
I agree with that.
But, you know, yeah, you look at just this year, Obama has put in The New York Times major stories.
I mean, I think all of these, and not just The Times, NBC, he gave them the story that Israel's behind using the MEK, communist terrorist cult, to assassinate scientists.
He put a story in The Times about, no, they're not making nukes and all of our spies still say so.
He put a story in The Times about the generals don't want to do this because they think it'll cause a regional war.
I mean, all of these were very top-down leaks.
And then we talked on the show with Gareth, and I guess with Phil too, actually, about the pushback from Ehud Barak saying, oh, yeah, there's this new intelligence in America that says that they are making nuclear bombs.
And that provoked the National Security Council and then the White House spokesman, Carney himself, the mouth of Sauron up there, officially declared, I think, the highest level declarations that we've ever heard in this country.
You know, not Langley, Virginia, but repeating what Langley told the White House people, and that is that they're not even making nukes, so shut up.
And, hey, that's actually like, I'm not saying I'd vote for him, but that makes him pretty good on the Iran issue compared to, you know, what he's up against on that.
Right.
But only so far.
It's not like I trust him to continue to face down this pressure.
I mean, for all I know, he's waiting until next February.
You know, earlier this week, Sunday, the New York Times had an article, which I assume, again, was leaked from somebody high up in the administration, saying that Iran has converted, there's a quote, has converted some of its highly enriched fuel to a form that would be difficult to use in a weapon.
Close quote.
In other words, into fuel plates that can't be turned, can't be weaponized.
Right.
So, and that was in the New York Times.
That was in the New York Times.
Well, did they give credit to Gareth Porter, because he's the one who reported that first?
Well, I'd have to go back and look at the full story.
I doubt it.
Yeah, I doubt it, too.
But that was what Gareth said immediately when that thing came out, is he said, hey, look at all what they've done.
They've taken their 20% enriched uranium, and they've made these fuel plates out of it, you know, like they said they were going to for their medical isotope reactor there in Tehran.
Yeah.
Yeah, so, like I said, it just feeds this narrative that you and I are at least hoping is true, that Obama doesn't want a war, certainly before the election, and may well not want one after the election.
And he's putting the screws to Netanyahu.
He just can't do it real publicly.
He can't do it personally, because that will upset AIPAC and some people with big bucks during the election season.
But nevertheless, it seems like he doesn't want Netanyahu dragging the U.S. into war.
And I would say probably any time, I don't see why after the election he'd want, you know, gasoline prices shooting up to whatever, $10 a gallon or something.
I mean, it seems to me he wouldn't want that.
I don't mean to say Obama's a good guy and has social justice and peace in mind, because I don't buy that.
I think he's still part of the permanent regime, but I just think he's calculated his interests as being against a war with Iran.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I kind of wonder whether Obama was reading Ray McGovern, because Ray McGovern was saying for months that, look, put yourself in Netanyahu's position.
There's only one conclusion that you can make, that Obama is weak and pathetic and will do what he's told and will not push back.
Because look at what a tool he is on ABCDEFG issues, starting with Palestine, like we were just talking about.
And so why not do it?
Why not, you know, put him in a corner and make him help?
And it seemed like that was, you know, the kind of leaks that were in Ynet over there in Israel, where this is Netanyahu's thinking, that the Americans, especially before the election, that Obama will have to join in.
And then Obama really did push back against that.
I think that specific message that, you know, I think that was probably why Dempsey came out and said what he said.
You know, that Obama means it, that he's not going to help.
Yeah, and let's add to this speech recently by the, you know, the Supreme Ayatollah who said, who ruled out a nuclear bomb for Iran.
Right, well, and he always has since 2004 is when he first said that.
Apparently that's the only thing he says that's disbelieved.
People, you know, believe him when he says this.
Who was it, Newt Gingrich says, when a dictator talks, I believe him, until he says, I don't want a nuclear bomb.
Right.
Then he doesn't believe.
That sounds about right.
Well, yeah, you know, I thought that Obama knew better than this all along.
But then again, I agree with, or I have agreed with McGovern and I think Giraldi on this.
You know, what would Netanyahu think, though, about whether he could get away with it or not?
And I think maybe that's changing.
You know, like you said, there's that piece that Gareth and Jim Lowe wrote after Dempsey warning Israel, looking like they're beginning to back down.
There was a piece in Reuters like that, too, chastised Israel.
Yeah, I think a lot of it was in Science Monitor, too.
Oh, yeah.
You know, maybe the military people, along with the Joint Chiefs, the head of the Joint Chiefs, sat Netanyahu down and said, look, face reality.
You guys can't do it.
You won't be able to do it.
It'll just accelerate Iran.
It may talk, but I shouldn't say accelerate.
It may convince them that they need a nuke after all.
And, you know, meanwhile, they're putting their facilities deeper underground and hardening the targets.
And so you can't do it without the U.S., and the U.S. isn't going to follow you.
And maybe that was like throwing a bucket of cold water on Netanyahu, and he finally woke up and said, yeah, I guess this would be pretty stupid, just like the former Mossad chiefs have been telling me.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
And who knows?
But that could be what's going on behind the scenes.
Stranger things have happened.
Yeah.
Well, the other thing is, too, and here's the kind of thing that's happened before a lot of times in history.
A war breaks out where you didn't really mean it to.
And, you know, there was this thing from the Telegraph.
I don't know if this is true.
Why not?
Iran sends elite troops to aid Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.
So, you know, just making things up here.
But you have an Iranian Revolutionary Guard guy kills an American CIA officer over there.
Or, I don't know, Al-Qaeda blows him up with a suicide bomb, and the whole thing escalates.
Iran's role escalates.
America's role escalates over there.
And the covert war in Syria could turn into a real war with Iran in one day, you know, based on who knows what could happen, you know?
No, that's true.
And, you know, we have a model of that in World War I.
And, you know, the game of chicken sometimes can end up in disaster, even though neither side wants it.
And, you know, as Germany and Russia were mobilizing before the war, World War I, the Czar and the Kaiser, who were cousins, were telegraphing each other on a first-name basis, right, Nicky and Willie, about how they don't want to go to war.
But the snowballs were going down the hill, and mobilization was occurring as a game of chicken, and you get to a point where you can't turn back.
And that was one of the catastrophes of the 20th century.
I heard you talk about this just the other day, or maybe I only listened to it the other day, but you said it some months ago.
But, you know, that changed the complexion of the whole 20th century, right?
You take away World War I, and it's a very different century.
Well, especially my case is always against Wilson.
If you take American involvement out of World War I, then it ends in stalemate, instead of ending in the creation of Nazi Germany and the USSR.
Well, you're absolutely right about that.
But you can set it back, you know, even another step if that hadn't happened.
But all I mean is you could say, well, Netanyahu's really just bluffing.
I know that's been a theory.
He's just been bluffing Netanyahu to get stuff out of him.
He's been bluffing Obama to get stuff out of Obama before the election.
This is a great time to twist his arm and get some concessions.
And so even if you grant that, that's no reason to relax.
Right.
And you know what?
What if they accidentally gave him some placebos instead of his regular Ritalin or whatever, and the guy freaks out?
Yeah.
You know?
All right, everybody, that is the great Sheldon Richman from the Future Freedom Foundation and SheldonRichman.com, the Free Association blog.
Here he is at Counterpunch, AIPAC, and the Undemocratic Convention.
Thanks very much for your time, Sheldon, as always.
Anytime, Scott.
Bye-bye.
