Political Scientists

Political scientists are the men or possibly women who study Political Science i.e. how, who, does what, to whom, also why it is done. Political Philosophy is about the reasons, the why things should be done in a particular way rather than how. One might argue that women understand politics rather better because they are prone to be interested in people, in manipulation.

Two excellent examples are Professors John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt. One reason for their well deserved prominence is that they have the Moral Courage to tell the truth about Jews, in particular the Zionist crazies that run Israel.

They it was who told the world about the Israel Lobby, which then claimed very vociferously that it [ the lobby ] didn't exist. It lied. Confirmation of its lying comes from The Lobby That Doesn't Exist. The same position is taken by Professor Petras in The State and Local Bases of Zionist Power in America After the onslaught of Jews Professor Walt wrote about Defending Against Media Attacks.

Professor Ginsberg, also in the business has worthwhile things to say. He is a Libertarian albeit a Jew, the author of Fatal Embrace. There are other scientists.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Was a French Libertarian known for his writings about America.

 

Benjamin Ginsberg
Is a  Libertarian when he isn't being a Jew, one telling them to clean up their act in order to escape retribution.

 

John Mearsheimer
An American professor, Libertarian & honest.

 

James Petras
A man with sensible views.

 

Stephen Walt
 Also an American professor, Libertarian & honest.

 

Benjamin Ginsberg ex Wiki
QUOTE
Benjamin Ginsberg is a libertarian[1] political scientist and professor at Johns Hopkins University[2] who is notable for his criticism of American politics in which citizens have become "marginalized as political actors"[3] and political parties weakened[4] while state power has grown.[2] His assessment of the futility of voting along with his notion that the public has an illusion of control over government has caused controversy, and sometimes his explanations have been criticized. He is a co-author, along with Matthew Crenson, of Downsizing Democracy which received critical attention in mainstream newspapers...........

Downsizing Democracy
This book received serious critical attention from reviewers in major newspapers who explained, and criticized, the analysis of Ginsberg and co-author Matthew Crenson.

 

Fatal Embrace by Benjamin Ginsberg
Professor Ginsburg's thesis is that Jews make themselves influential by being useful to the rulers. They then abuse their influence and it all ends in tears. His book is aimed at Jews, warning them not to try it on again. He is writing to people who were thrown out of Egypt, England and literally dozens of other countries. See Jewish Expulsions. He is writing at a time of huge Jewish influence. Look at the men who surround George Bush. Some of them were in the Clinton entourage too. Ask why America invaded Iran, or was it Iraq. It is more than just a spelling mistake. He is a Jew writing for his own but he has something to say that matters to all of us. For another review see Deadly Enemy, Deadly Friend.

 

John Mearsheimer ex Wiki
QUOTE
John J. Mearsheimer (born December 1947) is an American professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is an International relations theorist. Known for his 2001 book on offensive realism, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, Mearsheimer became better known for co-authoring with Stephen Walt the New York Times Best Seller The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007). His 2011 book Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics is described as cataloging "the kinds of lies nations tell each other."[3] According to an interview with Mearsheimer in The Boston Globe, the lesson of the book is: "Lie selectively, lie well, and ultimately be good at what you do."[4]

 

Early years
Mearsheimer was born in December 1947 in Brooklyn, New York. He was raised in New York City until the age of eight, when his parents moved his family to Croton-on-Hudson, New York, a suburb located in Westchester County.[5]]

When he was 17, Mearsheimer enlisted in the U.S. Army. After one year as an enlisted member, he chose to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point. He attended West Point from 1966–1970. After graduation, he served for five years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force.[6][7]

In 1974, while in the Air Force, Mearsheimer earned a Masters Degree in International Relations from the University of Southern California. He subsequently entered Cornell University and in 1980 earned a Ph.D. in government, specifically in international relations. From 1978–1979, he was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.; from 1980–1982, he was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs. During the 1998–1999 academic year, he was the Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.[5]

University of Chicago
Since 1982, Mearsheimer has been a member of the faculty of the Department of Political Science Faculty at the University of Chicago.[8] He became an associate professor in 1984, a full professor in 1987, and was appointed the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in 1996. From 1989-1992, he served as chairman of the department. He also holds a position as a faculty member in the Committee on International Relations graduate program, and is the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy.[9]

Mearsheimer’s books include Conventional Deterrence (1983) which won the Edgar S. Furniss Jr. Book Award, Nuclear Deterrence: Ethics and Strategy] (co-editor, 1985); Liddell Hart and the Weight of History (1988); The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), which won the Joseph Lepgold Book Prize; The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007); and Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics (2011). His articles have appeared in academic journals like International Security and popular magazines like The London Review of Books. He has written op-ed pieces for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune.[9]

Mearsheimer has won several teaching awards. He received the Clark Award for Distinguished Teaching when he was a graduate student at Cornell in 1977, and he won the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Chicago in 1985. In addition, he was selected as a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar for the 1993-1994 academic year. In that capacity, he gave a series of talks at eight colleges and universities. In 2003, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[9]

John Mearsheimer is the leading proponent of a branch of realist theory in international relations called Offensive realism which maintains that states are not satisfied with a given amount of power, but seek hegemony for security.[citation needed]

Conventional deterrence
Mearsheimer's first book Conventional Deterrence (1983) addresses the question of how decisions to start a war depend on the projected outcome of military conflict. In other words, how do decision makers' beliefs about the outcome of war affect the success or failure of deterrence? Mearsheimer's basic argument is that deterrence is likely to work when the potential attacker believes that a successful attack will be unlikely and costly. If the potential attacker, however, has reason to believe the attack will likely succeed and entail low costs, then deterrence is likely to break down. This is now widely accepted to be the way the principle of deterrence works. Specifically, Mearsheimer argues that the success of deterrence is determined by the strategy available to the potential attacker. He lays out three strategies. First, a war-of-attrition strategy, which entails a high level of uncertainty about the outcome of war and high costs for the attacker. Second, a limited-aims strategy, which entails less risks and lower costs. And, third, a blitzkrieg strategy, which provides a way to defeat the enemy rapidly and decisively, with relatively low costs. For Mearsheimer, failures in the modern battlefield are due mostly to the potential attacker's belief that it can successfully implement a blitzkrieg strategy in which tanks and other mechanized forces are employed swiftly to effect a deep penetration and disrupt the enemy's rear.[10] The other two strategies are unlikely to lead to deterrence failures because they would entail a low probability of success accompanied by high costs (war of attrition) or limited gains and the possibility of the conflict turning into a war of attrition (limited aims). If the attacker has a coherent blitzkrieg strategy available, however, an attack is likely to ensue, as its potential benefits outweigh the costs and risks of starting a war.[11]

Besides analyzing cases from World War II and the Arab-Israeli conflict, Mearsheimer extrapolates implications from his theory for the prospects of conventional deterrence in Central Europe during the late Cold War. Here, he argues that a Soviet attack is unlikely because the Soviet military would be unable to successfully implement a blitzkrieg strategy. The balance of forces, the difficulty of advancing rapidly with mechanized forces through Central Europe, and the formidable NATO forces opposing such a Soviet attack made it unlikely, in Mearsheimer's view, that the Soviets would start a conventional war in Europe.[12]

Nuclear proliferation and nuclear deterrence
In 1990 Mearsheimer published an essay[13] where he predicted that Europe would revert to a multipolar environment similar to that in the first half of the Twentieth century if American and Soviet forces left following the end of the Cold War.

In this essay and in the 1993 Foreign Affairs article "The case for a Ukrainian nuclear deterrent",[14] he argued that to reduce the dangers of war, the United States should encourage Germany and Ukraine to develop a nuclear arsenal, while working to prevent the rise of hyper-nationalism. Mearsheimer presented several possible scenarios for a post-Cold-War Europe from which American and Russian forces had departed. He believed that a Europe with nuclear proliferation was most likely to remain at peace, because without a nuclear deterrent Germany would be likely to once more try to conquer the continent (See pages 32–33).[13] Mearsheimer argued that it would be strategically unwise for Ukraine to surrender its nuclear arsenal (remnants of the Soviet stockpile). However, in 1994 Ukraine consented to rid of its entire former Soviet nuclear stockpile, a process that was complete by 1996. When challenged on the former assertion at a lecture given to the International Politics department at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth, he maintained that in spite of European integration and expansion, he still believed that his predictions would come true if the United States military left Europe.[15]

Also, in op-ed pieces written in 1998 and 2000 for The New York Times, Mearsheimer defended India's right to acquire nuclear weapons. In support of this position, he argued that India has good strategic reasons to want a nuclear deterrent, especially in order to balance against China and Pakistan, guaranteeing regional stability. He also criticized United States counter-proliferation policy towards India, which he considered unrealistic and harmful to American interests in the region.[16]

Offensive realism
John Mearsheimer is the leading proponent of offensive realism. It is a structural theory which, unlike the classical realism of Hans Morgenthau, blames security competition among great powers on the anarchy of the international system, not on human nature. In contrast to another structural realist theory, the defensive realism of Kenneth Waltz, offensive realism maintains that states are not satisfied with a given amount of power, but seek hegemony for security because the anarchic makeup of the international system creates strong incentives for states to seek opportunities to gain power at the expense of competitors.[17] Mearsheimer summed this view up in his 2001 book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics:

Given the difficulty of determining how much power is enough for today and tomorrow, great powers recognize that the best way to ensure their security is to achieve hegemony now, thus eliminating any possibility of a challenge by another great power. Only a misguided state would pass up an opportunity to be the hegemon in the system because it thought it already had sufficient power to survive.[18]

In this world, there is no such thing as a status quo power, since according to Mearsheimer, "A great power that has a marked power advantage over its rivals is likely to behave more aggressively, because it has the capability as well as the incentive to do so." He has also dismissed democratic peace theory, which claims that democracies never or rarely go to war with one another.

Mearsheimer does not believe it is possible for a state to become a global hegemon because there is too much landmass and too many oceans which he posits have effective stopping power and act as giant moats. Instead he believes that states can only achieve regional hegemony. Furthermore, he argues that states attempt to prevent other states from becoming regional hegemons, since peer competitors could interfere in a state's affairs. States which have achieved regional hegemony, such as the U.S., will act as offshore balancers, interfering in other regions only when the great powers in those regions are not able to prevent the rise of a hegemon. In a 2004 speech, Mearsheimer praised the British historian E. H. Carr for his 1939 book The Twenty Years’ Crisis and argued that Carr was correct when he claimed that international relations was a struggle of all against all with states always placing their own interests first.[19] Mearsheimer maintained that Carr’s points were still as relevant for 2004 as for 1939, and went on to deplore what he claimed was the dominance of “idealist” thinking about international relations among British academic life[19]

Gulf War
In January and early February 1991, Mearsheimer published two op-eds in the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times arguing that the war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi forces should be quick and lead to a decisive US victory, with less than 1,000 American casualties. This view countered the conventional wisdom at the start of the war, that predicted a conflict lasting for months and costing thousands of American lives. Mearsheimer's argument was based on several points. First, the Iraqi Army was a Third World military, unprepared to fight mobile armored battles. Second, US armored forces were better equipped and trained. Third, US artillery was also far better than its Iraqi counterpart. Fourth, US airpower, unfettered by the weak Iraqi air force, should prove devastating against Iraqi ground forces. Fifth and finally, the forward deployment of Iraqi reserves boded ill for their ability to counter US efforts to penetrate the Iraqi defense line along the Saudi-Kuwaiti border. These predictions came true in the course of the war.[20][21]

Israel lobby
Main article: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

In March 2006, Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, former academic dean and professor of International Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, published a Harvard University Kennedy School of Government working paper[22] and a London Review of Books article[23] discussing the power of the Israel lobby in shaping the foreign policy of the United States. They define the Israel lobby as "a loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction". They emphasize that it is not appropriate to label it a "Jewish lobby", because not all Jews feel a strong attachment to Israel and because some of the individuals and groups who work to foster U.S. support for Israel are not Jewish; according to Mearsheimer and Walt, Christian Zionists play an important role. Finally, they emphasize that the lobby is not a cabal or a conspiracy but simply a powerful interest group like the National Rifle Association or the farm lobby. Their core argument is that the policies that the lobby pushes are not in the United States' national interest, nor ultimately that of Israel. Those pieces generated extensive media coverage and led to a wide-ranging and often heated debate between supporters and opponents of their argument. The article was subsequently turned into a book entitled The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

Statements on Israeli wars and a Palestinian state

Mearsheimer was critical of Israel’s war against Lebanon in the summer of 2006. He argued that Israel’s strategy was "doomed to fail" because it was based on the "faulty assumption" that Israeli air power could defeat Hezbollah, which was essentially a guerrilla force. The war, he argued, was a disaster for the Lebanese people, as well as a "major setback" for the United States and Israel.[24] The lobby, he said, played a key role in enabling Israel’s counterproductive response by preventing the United States from exercising independent influence.[25]

Mearsheimer was also critical of Israel’s offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip that began in December 2008. He argued that it would not eliminate Hamas’s capability to fire missiles and rockets at Israel, and that it would not cause Hamas to end its fight with Israel. In fact, he argued that relations between Israel and the Palestinians were likely to get worse in the years ahead.[26]

Mearsheimer emphasizes that the only hope for Israel to end its conflict with the Palestinians is to end the occupation and allow the Palestinians to have their own state in Gaza and the West Bank. Otherwise, Israel is going to turn itself into an "apartheid state." That would be a disastrous outcome not only for Israel, but also for the United States and especially the Palestinians.[27]

Mearsheimer's criticisms of Israel further extended to Israel's possession of nuclear weapons. In remarks made at the International Spy Museum in 2010, Mearsheimer asserted that a nuclear Israel was contrary to US interests and questioned Israel's accountability in the matter, stating that there was “no accountability for Israel on any issue” because, he surmised, “The Israelis can do almost anything and get away with it.”[28]

The "Future of Palestine" lecture

In April 2010, Mearsheimer delivered the Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC, which he titled "The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. the New Afrikaners." He argued that "the two-state solution is now a fantasy" because Israel will incorporate the Gaza Strip and the West Bank into a "Greater Israel", which would become an apartheid state. This state, according to Mearsheimer, would not be politically viable, most American Jews would not support it, and it would eventually become a democratic bi-national state, politically dominated by its Palestinian majority. He suggested that "American Jews who care deeply about Israel" could be divided into three categories: the "new Afrikaners" who will support Israel even if it is an apartheid state, "righteous Jews," who believe that individual rights are universal, and apply equally to Jews and Palestinians, and the largest group who he called the "great ambivalent middle". He concludes that most of the "great ambivalent middle" would not defend an apartheid Israel because "American Jews are among the staunchest defenders of traditional liberal values" resulting in the "new Afrikaners" becoming increasingly marginalized over time. Mearsheimer stated that he "would classify most of the individuals who head the Israel lobby’s major organizations as "'new Afrikaners'" and specifically listed Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Ronald Lauder of the World Jewish Congress, Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America; as well as "businessmen" like Sheldon Adelson, Lester Crown, and Mortimer Zuckerman and "media personalities" like Fred Hiatt, Charles Krauthammer, Bret Stephens and Martin Peretz.[29]

The rise and containment of China
Mearsheimer asserts that China's rise will be unpeaceful[30] and that the U.S. will seek to contain China and prevent it from achieving regional hegemony.[31][32][33][34] He believes that China will attempt to dominate the Asia-Pacific region just as the U.S. dominates the western hemisphere. The motivation for doing so would be to gain a position of overwhelming security and superiority against its neighbors which it sees as potential challengers to its status.[35] Additionally, he maintains that the U.S. will attempt forming a balancing coalition that consists primarily of India, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Indonesia to counter the growing strength and power projection capabilities of China.[36] He points to increased alliances and warming U.S.-Vietnam and U.S.-India relations as evidence of this.[37][38]

He also asserts that Australia should be concerned with China's accretion of power because it will lead to an intense security competition between the China and the US. Arguing that China is implementing the militarily aggressive philosophy of the U.S. naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan who argued for Sea control and decisive battle.[35]

Lying in International Politics
Mearsheimer wrote the first book that systematically analyzes lying in international politics. He argues in Why Leaders Lie (Oxford University Press, 2011) that leaders lie to foreign audiences as well as their own people because they think it is good for their country. For example, he maintains that President Franklin D. Roosevelt lied about the Greer incident in August 1941, because he was deeply committed to getting the United States into World War II, which he thought was in America's national interest.

His two main findings are that leaders actually do not lie very much to other countries, and that democratic leaders are actually more likely to lie to their own people than autocrats.[39] Thus, he starts his book by saying that it is not surprising that Saddam Hussein did not lie about having WMD—he truthfully said he had none—but that George Bush and some of his key advisors did lie to the American people about the threat from Iraq. Mearsheimer argues that leaders are most likely to lie to their own people in democracies that fight wars of choice in distant places, which is another way of saying the United States and Britain as well. He says that it is difficult for leaders to lie to other countries because there is not much trust among them, especially when security issues are at stake, and you need trust for lying to be effective. He says that it is easier for leaders to lie to their own people because there is usually a good deal of trust between them.

Mearsheimer argues that there are five types of international lies: inter-state lies, fear-mongering, strategic cover-ups, nationalist myths, and liberal lies. He explains the reasons why leaders pursue each of these different kinds of lies. He also says that international lying can have negative effects, and there he emphasizes "blowback," which is where telling international lies helps cause a culture of deceit at home, and "backfiring," which is where telling a lie leads to a failed policy. He also emphasizes that there are two other kinds of deception besides lying: "concealment,” which is where a leader remains silent about an important matter, and "spinning," which is where a leader tells a story that emphasizes the positive and downplays or ignores the negative. Mearsheimer does not consider the moral dimension of international lying; he looks at it simply from a utilitarian perspective.
UNQUOTE
Sounds good to me.

 

Stephen Walt ex Wiki
QUOTE
Stephen Walt

Stephen Walt

Stephen Walt (left)
Born Stephen Martin Walt
July 2, 1955 (age 57)
School Neorealism
Main interests International relations theory
Notable ideas Defensive realism, Balance of threat theory

Stephen Martin Walt (born July 2, 1955) is an American professor of international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Among his most prominent works are Origins of Alliances and Revolution and War. He coauthored The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy with John Mearsheimer.

Education and career
In 1983, he earned a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. He did his undergraduate studies at Stanford University. Walt developed the 'Balance of Threat' Theory, which defined threats in terms of aggregate power, geographic proximity, offensive power, and aggressive intentions. More recently Walt has attracted attention for co-authoring and publishing with John Mearsheimer an article, which was subsequently published as a book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, a New York Times Best Seller. Walt is an influential scholar in international relations,[1] generally associated with defensive realism. Jonathan Chait of The New Republic has called Walt an "ultra-Nixonian realist."[2]

"The Israel Lobby"

Main article: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

In March 2006, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, then academic dean of the Kennedy School of Government, published a working paper entitled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" and an article entitled "The Israel Lobby" in the London Review of Books on the negative effects of "the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby". They define the Lobby as "the loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction". The articles generated considerable media coverage throughout the world.

Prospects for effective American-European relations
Walt argues that NATO must be sustained because of four major areas where close cooperation is beneficial to European and American interest.[3]

  1. Defeating international terrorism; Walt sees a need for cooperation between Europe and the United States in managing terrorist networks and stopping the flow of money to terror cells.[3]
  2. Limiting the spread of weapons of mass destruction; Walt argues that anti-proliferation efforts are most successful when Europe and the U.S. work in concert to bring loose nuclear material into responsible custody. He cites the case of Libya's willingness to abandon its nascent fission program after being pressured mulitilaterally as evidence of this.[3]
  3. Managing the world economy; lowering barriers to trade and investment particularly between the U.S. and the E.U. will accelerates economic growth. Notable differences in trade policy stem mainly in areas of agricultural policy.[3]
  4. Dealing with failed states; failed states are breeding grounds for anti-western movements. Managing failed states such as Afghanistan, Bosnia and Somalia require a multinational response since the U.S. has insufficient wealth to modernise and rebuild these alone. In this area European allies are especially desirable because they have more experience with peacekeeping and "nation-building".[3]

Perceived Obama mistakes
Walt has written that President Barack Obama erred by breaking with the principles in his Cairo speech by allowing continued Israeli settlement activity and by participating in a "well-coordinated assault" against the Goldstone Report.[4] Walt argues against the "safe-haven myth" in Afghanistan and that Obama's justification for escalating the war is flawed.[5] This was in turn criticized by terrorism analyst Peter Bergen.[6]

Offshore balancing of China
Walt posits that offshore balancing is the most desirable strategy when dealing with China.[7] He predicts that China will attempt to bully its weaker neighbours into adopting policies that don't threaten Beijing's interest.[8][9] In 2011 Walt argued that China will seek to gain regional hegemony and a broad sphere of influence in Asia which was comparable in size to the USA's position in the western hemisphere.[7] If this happens, he predicts that China would be secure enough on the mainland to give added attention to shaping events to its favour in far flung areas. Given that China is resource poor, the nation will likely aim to safeguard vital sea lanes in areas such as the Persian Gulf.[10][11].
UNQUOTE
He is spot on regarding the Jews inciting America to attack Syria for them. The Russian navy is currently [ in 2013 ] protecting the place.

 

James Petras ex Wiki
QUOTE
James Petras is a retired Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada who has published prolifically on Latin American and Middle Eastern political issues.

Academic and Literature

Petras received his B.A. from Boston University and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.[1] His initial appointment at Binghamton was in 1972 at the Sociology Department and his field is listed as: Development, Latin America, the Caribbean, revolutionary movements, class analysis.[2] During his life he received the Western Political Science Association's the Best Dissertation award (1968), the Career of Distinguished Service Award from the American Sociological Association's Marxist Sociology Section and the Robert Kenny Award for Best Book of 2002.[1][3]

Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles in publications such as the New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, New Left Review, Partisan Review and Le Monde Diplomatique. Currently he writes a monthly column for the Mexican newspaper, La Jornada, and previously, for the Spanish daily, El Mundo.[1]

Petras is currently a member of the editorial collective of Canadian Dimension[4] and contributes to CounterPunch[citation needed] and Atlantic Free Press.[5]

Political Views

Petras describes himself as a "revolutionary and anti-imperialist" activist and writer.[citation needed]. He was a founding member of the Young Socialist Alliance and early articles by him appeared in  The Young Socialist in 1959 and 1960. He's listed as the Bay Area correspondent for the paper for several issues.[6] He has worked with the Brazilian landless workers’ movement and the unemployed workers’ movement in Argentina. From 1973-76 Petras worked on the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Repression in Latin America.[1] He has called the United States the "dominant Imperial power" and has called efforts to reform human rights in China "Washington's human rights propaganda campaign".[7]

Petras has referred to American policy towards Iraq as "The US/Iraqi Holocaust (UIH)" which he describes as "an ongoing process spanning the last 16 years (1990-2006) provides us with a striking example of state-planned systematic extermination, torture and physical destruction designed to de-modernize a secular developing society and revert it into a series of warring clan-tribal-clerical-ethnic based entities devoid of any national authority or viable economy."[8]

In November 2006 the FARC in Colombia addressed a letter concerning three American hostages (Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howes) to American film stars, the Reverend Jesse Jackson and leftist intellectuals Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, and James Petras.[9]

Petras has defended the 2009 election results in Iran giving "nationalist-populist" President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a 60%+ victory, in a 2009 article entitled "The Iranian Elections: The ‘Stolen Elections’ Hoax".[10] Describing the struggle in Iran as pitting "high income, free market oriented capitalist individuals" reformists against Ahmadinejad's "working class, low income, community-based supporters of a 'moral economy'", he denounced the claim that the election was stolen as a "hoax" perpetrated by "Western opinion makers".[11]

Controversy and Allegations of Anti-Semitism

In a 2006 article entitled "9/11 Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories Still Abound", the Anti-Defamation League noted Petras's assertion there was evidence that "Israelis" may have known about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks but withheld the information from the United States government.[12][13] Petras has called American Zionists "Israel's fifth column," a synonym for traitors, goes on to stereotype the American Jewish community "primarily defined by their entrepreneurial capacities," and then calls them "upholders of a doctrine of offensive wars."[7] Petras has also called Israel "the most militarized country in the world."[7]

In a 2009 article, the ADL again criticized Petras, stating that he has blamed the current economic crisis on the "Zionist" control over the U.S. government and world events, and has argued that pro-Israel Americans have launched a massive crusade to push the U.S. into a war with Iran. The ADL also alleged that Petras' conspiracy theories also include the anti-Semitic accusation that the American Jewish community is "controlling the communications media" and is "bloodthirsty" in its appetite for war. The ADL also cited a 2008 interview in which Petras stated that [U.S.] presidents are at the disposal of "Jewish power" [14] and maintained, according to the ADL, that Jews represent "the greatest threat to world peace and humanity."[15][16]

In the same interview, Petras stated that "it’s one of the great tragedies that we have a minority that represents less than 2% of North American’s population but has such power in the communications media" and that the reason "why the North American public doesn’t react against the manipulations of this minority...[is] because the Jews control the communications media."[17]

In an article written in 2009, Petras wrote that President Barack Obama had a "one-sided and longstanding commitment to the State of Israel and loyalty to the Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) in the United States, as well as the long-term and successful effort of a network of financially and politically powerful Jewish Zionists to ‘embed’ Obama to their ‘Israel First’ political apparatus." He also argued that "The conversion and promotion of Obama as an Israel-Firster is an excellent case study of the methods the ZPC has used to build a near invincible power base in the US political system" and that "His capitulation to the Zionofascists was the inevitable consequence of his intimate and longstanding ties to his liberal-Zionist backers." In addition, he stated that "The Zionist-influenced mass media took their cue from the far-right and orchestrated a hate campaign against Reverend Wright and his links to Obama." He concluded his article by stating that:

“ "Clearly Obama is a greater war monger on issues involving Israel than even Bush: It comes with being a “Jewish President”"[18] ”

In the same article, he stated that "The Zionist self-promoters (ZSP), ever ready to take credit for any success (no matter how notorious and immoral) – Wall Street speculators, Ivy League professors, Pentagon militarists, cultural gurus and even the key patrons of art forms like jazz and constantly rewrite history (or biography in the case of Obama) to maximize their self-importance in all aspects of American life." He also added that:

"Not only do the Zionists and their embedded clones rule the White House, they also have the political apparatus (left, liberal, center and right) to silence, insult, witch hunt and isolate any critic of their agenda, their organizations and of the State of Israel."[18]

In the article "Organized Political Terrorism: The Norwegian Massacre, the State, the Media and Israel"[19] Petras blamed Israel, and fascists in the Norwegian police, for the 2011 Norway attacks.

In an article published in Dissident Voice in 2007, Petras wrote that the "power base" of the "Zionist Power configuration" in the United states "is found in the local activist doctors, dentists, lawyers, real estate brokers and landlords who preside over the local confederations and their several hundred thousand affiliates. It is they who harass, badger, browbeat, raise money and organize propaganda junkets for elected officials and ensure their support for Israeli wars and increases in the US multi-billion dollar aid packages to Israel."[20]

Selected bibliography

UNQUOTE
A sound sort of chap.