George Salzman

Southern Poverty Law Center, Heidi Beirich, Kevin B. MacDonald, critical thoughts I

By George Salzman

This posting and the follow-up, 'critical thoughts II', are based on a paper nearly three years old.[1] I think the issues involved are at least as important now as they were then. A recent article by Israel Shamir brought them to attention again. He wrote critically, for the first time so far as I know, of one of the views of Kevin B. MacDonald, a man whose integrity and courage Shamir respects.[2] Shamir's paper, The Poverty of Racialist Thought, begins with a topical news item,

Racial theorist Prof Kevin MacDonald has written a piece about film director Roman Polansky's recent arrest: http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/articles/MacDonald-Polanski.html#KM. As you might expect, KMD has discovered that Polansky is not condemned by Hollywood because he is a Jew, and Jews protect their own. They also like Polansky because his films and his actions have undermined the Whites' morals and values. Life is simple for Prof MacDonald.

The Privileged and the Pillaged:Changing History, 2

by George Salzman

Taking oneself seriously is a hell of an impediment to having fun, supposedly necessary for one's mental health. I believe it is important. At the very least one needs some diversion. So I thought I'd try some light reading. As it happens, Nancy was a student of literature at Swarthmore College. Her ancient copy of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's Don Quixote de la Mancha was at hand, a bit of classical literary culture for a change of pace, I thought. At the beginning I thoroughly enjoyed the absurdities Cervantes dreamt up to satisfy Don Quixote's lust for righteous adventures. Could it be that I too, in my passion for 'straightening out the world' am but one more possessed fool devoted to tilting with windmills? Of course I don't believe that for a minute. No possessed fool sees himself or herself in the caricature that may ring true for objective outside observers.

It happened that Israel Shamir came into my life a few months ago, and with him came some light heartedness. I've joked about him, both to him and some mutual friends, claiming I know what's ‘wrong’ with him: he's just having too much fun doing what he's doing. Since I became 'entangled' with this charming but Oh! so ideologically difficult-to-pin-down artist of the written word, and a body of his uncritical admirers who gasp in admiration at his every pronouncement, mistaking art and audacity for raw truth, in fact my life too has been enlivened with fun. Is he an anti-Semite, as some friends have cautioned me? I doubt it, but I don't care. I don't think he is a Jew-hater (the common but arguable meaning of the term anti-Semite), but that he wants to think of himself not as the Russian Jew of his upbringing but as the Eastern Orthodox Catholic to which he converted. When he chooses, Shamir can be as immune to rationality as was the Don Quixote of Cervantes' imagination. But he can also be wonderfully, shockingly rational. Incidentally, I got fed up with all the violence and mayhem of Don Quixote and quit in Chapter XXI at page 231, leaving not quite 3/4 of the volume unread. Enough is enough.

John Ross, a feet-on-the-ground struggler for human rights and decency

John Ross

by George Salzman

Building circles of trust and communication

In a small community, if the social environment is a healthy one, it may be that practically everyone knows everybody else. That was the situation I observed in San Pedro, Cántaros when I visited during three days in September 2008 with Jonathan Treat and his class from the School for International Training.[1] We were hosted by what amounted to little more than an extended family, with a total population of, I would guess, probably not more than about thirty to fifty. Under those conditions, close familiarity was natural. I believe that ideally the degree of familiarity in indigenous communities in Oaxaca that are self-governing under the practice of 'uses and customs' is similar, though of course many of them don't come close to the ideal. In order to build community, mere geographical closeness is not enough.

Changing History, 1

Originally posted March 18, 2006, slight revision for today's posting

by George Salzman

Of course one can’t change what has happened in the past. One can only wish it had been different. What’s done is done. But for the present and the future, we do have choices. This paper is the start of an effort to discover how we, the entire human species, can maximize our chances for robust humane survival here on the earth.[1]

I know that many people, who like to think of themselves as “realists”, will dismiss my ideas as “mere utopian dreams”. Yet many of them don’t hesitate to acknowledge that they think the world is headed towards catastrophe, that their own children and grandchildren will inherit at most a dismally ravaged biosphere, one in which the human species might be threatened with a degree of decimation not so different from the near extinction of many other species in this era of massive global capitalism through which we now are living.

Alan Hart, a new friend and ally on the need to ‘sacrifice’[0]

Alan and Nicole Hart with Yasser Arafat at his headquarters in Tunis, 1985, some time after publication of Hart's first book, Arafat, Terrorist or Peacemaker?

by George Salzman

Alan Hart's focus is pretty much the same as mine, though his scope is much broader. His impact is, as it deserves to be, far greater. I wrote him a month ago:

Randolph S. Selig, Esq.-‘smart-ass’ NY City Jewish lawyer. Specialty -- lying for Zionism

by George Salzman   2009-08-18

Friends (and enemies -- those who deliberately lie for bad purposes),

Unknown to me initially, after my posting of 5 June 2009, "Straight talk with Israel Shamir" [1] came to New York City Jewish lawyer Randolph Selig's attention, he forwarded it on 6 June to Michael Santomauro [2], who is the editor of the Reporters Notebook website. The following day Santomauro forwarded Selig's message with its gratuitous lies to me without comment: [3]

---------- Forwarded message ----------


From: Randolph Selig 
Date: Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 10:33 PM 
Subject: Re: Straight talk with Israel Shamir 
To: ReporterNotebook

There is no "George Salzman" listed in UMass-Boston's faculty and staff directory. 
But then, the name "Israel Shamir" is itself fictitious.

Don't you feel foolish, taken in, suckered?

Lawyer Selig, who I immediately challenged, has not revealed to me how my 5 June posting came to him or how the assignment to defame Shamir and me was given him. Of course I was furious to get the forwarded item from Michael Santomauro -- that bastard Selig denying my exictence -- and I immediately wrote Selig, on 7 June, asserting angrily that his communication was clearly both stupid and false. This chutzpah-impregnated ignoramus blustered back that same day. Here are the two exchanged notes between Selig and me.

Open Letter to Prime Minister Blair: Doing a Northern Ireland in the Middle East

The original of this letter is on Alan Hart's website at http://www.alanhart.net/
open-letter-to-pm-blair-doing-a-northern-ireland-in-the-middle-east/, by Alan Hart, 11 May 2007. 
Contact information for Alan Hart [1].

The opening page of Hart's site is at http://www.alanhart.net/. A remarkably rich assembly of work on the global impact of Zionism by an unusually outspoken British Gentile committed to telling it like it is. Well worth visiting and watching the world-class interviews, each about a half hour -- really one-on-one conversations -- that Hart has posted along with a great deal of his written material. The importance of his work is also attested by the vigorous efforts of the Zionist network to prevent publication of his book and to defame him.[2]

-- George Salzman

----------------------------------------

Dear Prime Minister Blair,

"Giving the impossible a go" in Israel-Palestine

I write to you with the warning words of Yehoshafat Harkabi reverberating in my mind. (He was, before your time, Israel's longest serving and most enlightened Director of Military Intelligence. I'll get to his warning words in due course).

How many voters does it take to change a light bulb? None. Because voters can't change anything.

The values we live by -- and die from

by George Salzman

We 'westerners' have much to learn from the world's intellectual treasure trove of indigenous cultures. Although I couldn't refrain from titling this note with the anarchists' scornful little 'joke' about the social impotence of all the faithful ballot-casters who doggedly cling to the liberal myth that voting and representative democracy are not to be questioned, the truth is that this note is really "Straight talk 5, being truly human", a continuation of the discussion/debate associated with Israel Shamir. But that title wouldn't grab anybody. It's just not sexy enough.

The fact is that we human beings are fucking up the world with the incredible speed that our technological skill makes possible. It is insanity of the highest order -- a mass collective insanity based on the most destructive system of values that ever governed humanity. Almost two years ago I lamented, "[T]hese are difficult days. Everywhere the forces of fascism seem to be in ascendancy. Yet I know the world is full of good people who, like me, abhor the wanton destruction of so much that is wonderful about our species. How can it be, we must ask, that humanity has evolved a set of institutions that is ripping apart the very biosphere on which all life depends? And destroying hundreds of millions -- even billions -- of people's lives. I think we must somehow manage to get together, to understand deeply enough what the trouble is, and to figure out what to do in order to turn history around. And then, above all, we must act! Because time is running out."[2]

Straight talk 4, overcoming ethnicity, no joke. It can serve deadly ends

by George Salzman

Adolph Hitler was fixated on ethnicity. STOP! Before you read this essay, please see what my trusted friend Gordon Arnaut said, urging me not to post it. He wrote in part,

Subject: Re: Preliminary (NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION) draft of Straight talk 4, overcoming ethnicity, no joke. It's deadly!
From: gordon arnaut
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:56:47 -0700 (PDT)

... I have to tell you, as a friend ... I think you are going too far. I don't think you can compare Zionists to Nazis. I hope to god you don't post this permanently because the pro-Israel camp will use it to discredit you as an anti-semite or a loony. You are simply giving them ammunition.

While there is no doubt an element of racism in Israeli society, and even the body politic -- unfortunately -- there can be no comparison to the deeds of Israel and the deeds of Nazi Germany. Neither in scale of the horrors committed, nor in the intent of the policy, which in the case of the Nazis was to literally wipe out an entire ethnic group. Not just one actually -- the Serbs were also targeted for extermination by the Nazi Croats, for example, who managed to exterminate more than one million of them.

Straight talk 3, overcoming being Jewish, no joke

by George Salzman

Yet another truth-teller. James Petras is one of the most prolific, straightforward analysts I'm aware of. His sharp, critical, widely informed mind and his unwillingness to say gently what he thinks should be screamed makes him particularly useful to me, even when I don't totally agree with him. His range is truly global, and although I can't read everything he publishes -- there's just too much for me -- I rely heavily on his work.

 

James Petras
Photo: Reseau Voltaire