News! now fit to print
Today’s (June 24) editorial on Sheldon Adelson in the New York Times at last gets down to some home truths about Adelson’s gazillion dollar contributions first to Newt Gingrich and now to Mitt Romney. Yes, he’s a Republican; yes, he’s rich, really rich; yes, he’s to the right of….. Yes, he expects a Romney campaign to call off federal investigations of his gambling interests.
What the Times has finally alluded to is that Mr. Adelson’s primary interest is not his own country, but Israel which, he has made clear, is his real country.
Gist: “[W]hy is Mr. Adelson writing these huge checks? The first answer is clearly his disgust for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, supported by President Obama and most Israelis. He considers a Palestinian state ‘a steppingstone for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people,’ and has called the Palestinian prime minister a terrorist. He is even further to the right than the main pro-Israeli lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which he broke with in 2007 when it supported economic aid to the Palestinians.”
So, taking Chinese money to influence an American presidential election in support of Israeli domestic policy. The world is indeed flat.
Margaret, what is even more troubling is the degree to which he has wrestled control of Israeli media. He has used his millions to invest in an overt, explicit strategy to transform the Israeli meda. He is a genuinely scary form of money in (global) politics and the way in which media control is a direct part of that influence. Thanks for highlighting it.
Here is the story that I found most helpful on the Israeli media control side of Adelson and how it has directly fused itself with Netanyahu.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/06/bibi-netanyahu-israels-editor-in-chief-125548.html
None of our pleas wil help the flickring dying hope for a rwo state solution.
More violence spaning the Mdidle East ahead !
Again, if Romney loses, then what?
About international money and the media ==
The U. S. founding fathers prohibited foreigners from becoming presidents. We should prohibit them from controlling large segments of the press. I’ve been saying for years that in this country we should prohibit a foreigner from owning more than one or two major media outlets. (Murdoch and his toxic influence inspired my opinon, but it should apply to all foreigners.)
The principle could/should also be applied in Israel.
A newspaper or TV channel is not just one little sub-system among many in the body politic. It is a sort of meta-system that gets outside of the primary facts and, by interpreting and describing them, can ultimately distort them for its own purposes. Bad.
Isn’t xenophobia a sin?