Editor’s note:

The following report released today by the David Horowitz Freedom Center exposes and ranks ten professors who have abused their academic positions by promoting blood libels against Jews and Americans as “colonial settlers” and imperialist aggressors through university events, classroom diatribes, and academic publications. They have utilized university resources to spread terrorist propaganda, and promote the genocidal Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

The existence of these professors reflects not only on these individuals but on the institutions that support them. The presence of an Israel- and America-hating front on America’s college campuses is an ominous development and a clear threat to America’s future.”

Read the full report on the Top Ten Jew-Hating and Terror-Promoting Professors below.

#1: Hatem Bazian, University of California-Berkeley
#2: Rabab Abdulhadi, San Francisco State University
#3: Jasbir Puar, Rutgers University
#4: Joel Beinin, Stanford University
#5: Joseph Massad, Columbia University
#6: Yến Lê Espiritu, University of California-San Diego
#7: Saree Makdisi, University of California-Los Angeles
#8: Samer Alatout, University of Wisconsin-Madison
#9: Asad Abukhalil, California State University-Stanislaus
#10: Mohammed Abed, California State University-Los Angeles

Introduction

As the coronavirus crisis roils America, forcing closures of colleges and universities across the nation, anti-Semitism continues to take on new and disturbing dimensions. Jews and Zionists have been blamed for the spread of the virus.  In a report released in April, the Simon Wiesenthal Center noted that the COVID-19 epidemic has prompted a resurgence of “thousand-year-old prejudices demonizing Jews not just as Christ killers and Shylocks but as disease purveyors.”

The campus proponents of anti-Semitism and BDS have not suspended their anti-Semitic diatribes during this time of crisis. Unable to carry on with traditional “Israeli Apartheid Week” events on campus, National Students for Justice in Palestine—a campus hate group that receives funding from the terror group Hamas—has instead moved to a “virtual” Israeli Apartheid week. SJP is exploiting the worldwide pandemic to promote the false narrative that Israel will discriminate against Palestinian and Arab victims of coronavirus and to invoke centuries-old blood libel claims against the Jewish people. It is imperative that we do not allow these anti-Semitic lies to go unchallenged.

To combat the growing problem of campus anti-Semitism, and to respond to the “virtual” hate weeks organized by SJP, the David Horowitz Freedom Center is publishing the following report on The Top Ten Jew-Hating and Terror-Promoting Professors. The existence of these professors reflects not only on them but on the institutions that support them. The presence of an Israel and America-hating front on America’s college campuses is an ominous development and a clear threat to America’s future.

University faculty and administrators are indispensable spreaders of Jew-hatred and anti-American lies on campus. They provide the official resources of the University, both financial and academic, to promote fantastic libels against Jews and Americans as “colonial settlers” and imperialist aggressors through university events, classroom diatribes, and academic literature. They abuse their positions of authority over students in the classroom to spread terrorist propaganda, and promote the genocidal Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. They invite extremist, terrorist-supporting speakers to campus to speak at official university functions or as guest lecturers in class. One of the professors profiled in this report, Asad Abukhalil of California State University-Stanislaus, recently appropriated the coronavirus crisis to propagate a malicious conspiracy theory that Israel was planning to discriminate against Arab coronavirus victims by housing them in “mass prisons.”

Israel and the Jews are the canaries in the mine. The real target of this hatred is America – the “Great Satan” to Israel’s “Little Satan” in the iconography of the Islamic terrorists. The following report describes the poisonous views of ten Jew-hating and terror-promoting professors who should have no place in the universities of a democracy, but unfortunately do.

#1: Hatem Bazian, University of California-Berkeley

UC-Berkeley Professor Hatem Bazian has an extensive history of Jew hatred, extending back to his days as a student at San Francisco State University where he served as president of the General Union of Palestinian Students, an extremist anti-Israel group that fomented a climate of anti-Semitism on campus. In 2001, while a graduate student at UC-Berkeley, Bazian co-founded the Hamas front group Students for Justice in Palestine to support the Second Palestinian Intifada. The Second Intifada introduced suicide bombing into the attacks on Israel’s citizens in September 2000.

In the nearly two decades since its founding, chapters of SJP have proliferated across the nation, and are now active on approximately 200 American college and university campuses, broadcasting Hamas propaganda and advocating the destruction of the Jewish state. Bazian also founded the Hamas front group American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and serves as the chairman of its board. AMP funnels Hamas funds to SJP chapters on American campuses to aid the BDS movement to destroy Israel.

Throughout his academic career, Bazian has promoted classic anti-Semitic tropes and fostered Jew hatred. In May 2002, Bazian participated in a Middle Eastern “cultural assembly” at George Washington High School. Under his leadership, the event the was dedicated to extreme anti-Israel rhetoric including a student-sung rap song that compared Zionists to Nazis, which was accompanied by other students parading with Palestinian flags behind the performer. The high school sent out letters of apology after the event.

At a 2004 anti-war rally in San Francisco, Bazian called for an Intifada, or violent uprising, in America:

“Well, we’ve been watching [an] Intifada in Palestine, we’ve been watching an uprising in Iraq, and the question is that what are we doing? How come we don’t have an Intifada in this country? Because it seem[s] to me, that we are comfortable in where we are, watching CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, and all these mainstream … giving us a window to the world while the world is being managed from Washington, from New York, from every other place in here in San Francisco: Chevron, Bechtel, [Carlyle?] Group, Halliburton; every one of those lying, cheating, stealing, deceiving individuals are in our country and we’re sitting here and watching the world pass by, people being bombed, and it’s about time that we have an Intifada in this country that change[s] fundamentally the political dynamics in here. And we know … they’re gonna say some Palestinian [is] being too radical. Well, you haven’t seen radicalism yet!”

More recently, in July 2017, Bazian retweeted an anti-Semitic meme which plays on classic tropes of Jewish blood libel and also compares Jews to the Nazis. The meme was originally tweeted by infamous anti-Semite Ron Hughes, whose account Bazian follows. It featured a photo of a man presumed to be Jewish, with Hasidic style curls, with the quoted statement:  “MOM LOOK! I IS CHOSEN! I CAN NOW KILL, RAPE, SMUGGLE ORGANS & AND STEAL THE LAND OF PALESTINIANS *YAY* ASHKE-NAZI”

Bazian has promoted the idea of a world Jewish conspiracy, telling student protestors on one occasion to “look at the Jewish names on the school buildings” and adding “Take a look at the type of names on the buildings around campus — Haas, Zellerbach — and decide who controls this university.” He has also called the U.S. Congress “an Israeli-occupied territory” and has suggested that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) controls U.S. foreign policy.

Professor Bazian’s Jew hatred extends to his role as an instructor. He now serves as a lecturer in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He also founded the Center for the Study of Documentation of Islamophobia on campus in 2009. The Toronto Sun reported in 2014 that Bazian requires students enrolled in his course on “Islamophobia” to create a Twitter account and tweet weekly on Islamophobia. “I can’t help but feel this is unethical,” commented a student taking the class. “This is his agenda not mine.”

The student noted that Bazian “excludes both the Twitter account requirement AND the final project from his official syllabus”—perhaps an indication that he is trying to conceal his use of the classroom to promote Jew hatred.

The controversial professor has repeatedly defended the anti-Israel terror group Hamas, tweeting an article which disputed Hamas’s status as a terrorist organization. The article claimed that “The Europeans who fought Nazism with arms were labeled ‘terrorist’ by Hitler. Hamas is fighting against the occupation of Palestinian lands and is labeled ‘terrorist.’” Bazian also spoke at a 2018 event hosted by American Muslims for Palestine and other Hamas-linked anti-Israel groups which promoted the cause of Hamas-affiliated insurgents who participated in the so-called “Great Return March,” which in truth was an attack on Israel’s borders.

Israel does not occupy one square inch of Palestinian or Arab land. It was built on land confiscated from the Turks who are neither Arabs nor Palestinians, and given to the Jews by the United Nations in 1948. The Arabs who were given 80% of the so-called Palestine Mandate promptly attacked the new Jewish state with the goal of “pushing the Jews into the sea.”

#2: Rabab Abdulhadi, San Francisco State University

On a campus already known for extremists and anti-Semites, Professor Rabab Abdulhadi serves as the public face of SFSU’s Jew hatred. To say that Abdulhadi is notorious is an understatement. She is a rabidly anti-Semitic professor of Ethnic Studies who also heads SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED), an academic program which flouts its anti-Semitism by openly declaring Zionism to be racism and Israel to be the occupier of Palestine. AMED is known for sponsoring events which feature posters reading, “My Heroes Have Always Killed Colonizers,” referring to Israel’s Jews.

Abdulhadi has glorified anti-Israel terrorism in public talks. A letter sent by a coalition of concerned Jewish groups to SFSU President Leslie Wong in 2014 describes in chilling detail how an Ethnic Studies Department event organized by Abdulhadi featured “wild inaccuracies, monstrous distortions, and blatant lies — all intended to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state and promote a boycott that would hasten its demise.”

Professor Abdulhadi’s husband, Jaime Veve, a union activist, also spoke at the event to exalt anti-Semitic terrorists and murderers.  The letter to President Wong describes how Veve “insisted that Palestinians who had injured or murdered Jews were not terrorists but rather ‘heroes or heroines’ who had ‘committed political acts of defiance and resistance,’ and he justified Palestinian terrorism by calling it ‘the cry of a baby calling for the attention of the world.’”

During her tenure at SFSU, Abdulhadi has sought to build relationships with anti-Israel terrorists. While attending a university-sponsored trip to Israel in 2014, she met with anti-Israel terrorists Leila Khaled and Sheikh Raed Salah. Abdulhadi has praised Khaled, a notorious airplane hijacker, as “an icon in liberation movements and…an icon for women’s liberation.” Salah served a prison sentence in Israel for aiding the terrorist group Hamas. He has also been charged for incitement to violence for giving a public speech in which he accused Jews of using the blood of Palestinian children to bake their bread.  Despite this, Abdulhadi has insisted that he does not have terrorist ties.

Abdulhadi also attempted to open a formal collaboration between SFSU and An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine. An-Najah University has been described by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as “known for its advocacy of anti-Israel violence and its recruitment of Palestinian college students into terrorist groups.”

The notorious professor has not hesitated to use her privileged position as a professor at SFSU to promote her anti-Israel agenda. Abdulhadi is a founding member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), and also supports the wider Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel, an anti-Semitic, Hamas-funded campaign to isolate and weaken the Jewish state. She frequently promotes BDS at university-sponsored events and forums.

In March 2019, she shared a live video and statement on the official Facebook page for the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED). The statement demonized Israel and invoked anti-Semitic Zionist conspiracy tropes by accusing the SFSU administration of “collaborat[ing] with the Zionist designs to silence us… staff, faculty and community who view Israel (as I do) as a colonial, racist and occupying power…” and labeled the administration’s conduct as “the weaponizing of free speech in the service of Nazis, Zionists and other white supremacists…” In July 2019, she shared an image of a large banner exhorting “Zionism = Racism, Silence = Death, Palestine is a Queer Issue – Boycott! Divest! Sanction!”

While Abdulhadi uses the public resources of San Francisco State to promote her Jew hatred, she is notably less tolerant toward pro-Israel views. When SFSU President Leslie Wong was forced to clarify that he welcomes Zionists at the University, Abdulhadi responded by equating Zionists with the KKK: “I’m waiting for him to say, white supremacists is welcome, KKK is welcome, David Horowitz is welcome, Richard Spenser is welcome, Neo-Nazis are welcome, homophobes are welcome, misogynists are welcome, why stop only at Zionists? Welcome them all. I mean bring the…whole club. Bring everybody who is right wing and racist, bring them to campus, why only stop at Zionists.”

Nor is her promotion of Jew hatred limited in scope to SFSU’s campus. In a guest lecture in a UCLA anthropology class in the Spring of 2019, Abdulhadi equated Zionism with “white supremacy,” refusing to back down even when a Jewish student tearfully attempted to counter her vitriol.

Abdulhadi has also dedicated herself to encouraging the next generation of Jew haters. For several years she served as faculty advisor to SFSU’s chapter of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS), an SJP surrogate group. During her tenure as faculty advisor, organization president Mohammad G. Hammad was exposed as having written a number of threatening social media posts describing his wish to attack students, teachers and Israeli soldiers and to ally himself with anti-Israel terrorists including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Hammad’s posts included a photo of himself holding a large knife with the caption, “I seriously cannot get over how much I love this blade. It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and just holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier…”. Hammad was investigated for terrorism by the FBI.

#3. Jasbir Puar, Rutgers University

Professor Jasbir Puar serves as an Associate Professor of Women’s & Gender Studies at Rutgers University and also directs the University’s Graduate Program for the Women’s and Gender Studies Department. She has repeatedly used her academic position to promote the Hamas-funded Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, an anti-Semitic plot to weaken and ultimately destroy the Jewish state. She also serves as an Advisory Board member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), which is directed at Israeli universities and cultural institutions.

Puar has defended violent acts of terrorism against Israelis, labeling them acts of “resistance” and stating that “we need BDS as part of organized resistance and armed resistance in Palestine as well.” This is just an Orwellian inversion of the truth, since the so-called “resistance” is a genocidal aggression whose goal is the destruction of the Jewish state.

The controversial professor has also promoted classic anti-Semitic tropes such as accusing Israelis of harvesting the organs of Palestinians, intentionally maiming them, and stunting the growth of Palestinians by limiting the availability of food and resources to them, a strategy that Puar describes as a “biopolitical tactic that seeks to render impotent any future resistance.”

In a speech at Vassar College in 2016, Puar claimed that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) was responsible for “more than 120 deaths by field assassinations of young Palestinian men, largely between the ages of 12 to 16,” without mentioning how those young men perpetrated terrorist violence, including stabbings, against Israelis. She also claimed that the nation of Israel had “mined for organs for scientific research” from the Palestinian population.

Puar’s recent book, Right to Maim, repeats these anti-Semitic and blatantly false accusations, accusing Israel of “creating injury and maintaining Palestinian populations as perpetually debilitated, and yet alive, in order to control them” and also claiming that children are a “prime target” of Israel, when in fact the IDF goes to extreme lengths to avoid injury to children and civilians despite Hamas’s use of civilians and particularly children as human shields.

While many anti-Israel advocates deceitfully insist that their demonization of Zionism is not anti-Semitic, Puar herself has conflated Zionists and Jews, referring to Jews as “Zios” in a Facebook exchange with another faculty member. That same term, “Zios,” is commonly used by former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke to refer to the Jews.

#4: Joel Beinin, Stanford University

Joel Beinin is a Professor of Middle East History at Stanford University and a founding member of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a radical anti-Israel group that attempts to provide what has been described as “a façade of Jewish legitimacy” to the genocidal Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

While president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Beinin abused his position of authority to promote the inclusion of anti-Semitic class “exercises” in high school textbooks which portrayed a conflict between “advantaged” Jews and “disadvantaged” Palestinian Arabs.

Beinin’s “scholarship” is long on Hamas propaganda and short on facts. He claimed in an interview that “Israel has been the aggressor for most of its historical existence” and that Israel “aggressively attacked its neighbors in 1956, in 1967, in 1982” while failing to acknowledge that in each instance Israel was responding to unprovoked aggressions and attacks on its existence by the Arab dictatorships which surround it. He has also claimed absurdly that “the U.S. government has given Israel nearly one trillion dollars” in military aid since 1948, a number he appears to have pulled out of his hat.

A passionate advocate for the Hamas-funded BDS movement against Israel, Beinin supported a BDS resolution at Stanford in 2015 and is also a signatory to letters promoting the academic and cultural boycott of Israel, an extension of the anti-normalization policy promoted by Hamas. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Beinin has also served as a featured speaker for Israeli Apartheid Week at UC-Berkeley, another slander against the Jewish state which is the only society in the Middle East that is integrated.

Throughout his career, the radical professor has found myriad ways of minimizing and justifying Palestinian terrorism against Israel, while condemning Israel’s legitimate defense. Beinin described the First Palestinian Intifada (1988-92) as a “strike for peace” against Israeli oppression and lauded “the first martyr of the uprising” while downplaying attacks on Israeli citizens as a “small number of violent incidents.”

In his 1990 book on the Israel/Palestinian conflict, titled, Was the Red Flag Flying There?, Beinin defended the Intifada on the grounds that it was the “Palestinians’ primary weapon of resistance” against the alleged “colonialist thrust of the Zionist project.” He also justified Palestinian terrorism, labeled euphemistically as “armed struggle,” as an “understandable error for people who felt themselves otherwise powerless.” Beinin even attempted to pin the 9/11 terror attacks on the Jewish state, claiming in an October 2001 column in the Jordan Times that “Israel’s disproportionate use of force in attempting to suppress the Palestinian uprising” was partly responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Consistent with this tendency to minimize and whitewash anti-Israel terrorism, Beinin frequently uses the word “moderate” to allude to Islamic extremists including Hamas operative Adnan Asfur who Beinin describes as “generally considered a moderate within Hamas.”  Asfur has promoted terror attacks against Israeli civilians and has been arrested at least 16 times. Yet, Beinin considers him a “moderate.”

The Stanford professor has repeatedly characterized Jews and Israelis using historically anti-Semitic tropes, claiming that “visceral hatred” and “open bloodthirstiness” were “common” in Israeli society. Beinin was a signatory to a 2002 open letter suggesting that Israel would use the war in Iraq to engage in “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians—an event which never happened. Beinin also falsely claimed that Israelis have conducted “pogroms” against Arabs in East Jerusalem and has also called Israeli teenagers “Nazis,” a characterization more appropriately applied to Hamas terrorists who openly proclaim the destruction of Israel and its Jews as their goal. Beinin has also labeled the Israeli government “fascist terrorists,” while defending Hamas’s use of civilian human shields, stating, “Of course Hamas hides among civilians. Gaza’s a very small, densely populated place. Where else are they going to hide?” Hamas has placed its military headquarters in hospitals, and its rocket sites in urban neighborhoods.

#5: Joseph Massad, Columbia University

Joseph Massad is a Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia who has imposed his anti-Semitic views on generations of Columbia students.

The forms of anti-Semitism promoted by Professor Massad are numerous. He denies the Jewish people’s historical connection to Israel, he propagates the lie that Israel is a “racist settler colony” and he has repeatedly compared Jews to Nazis. He is also a staunch advocate for the Hamas-funded Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, a genocidal campaign to weaken and ultimately destroy Israel. In a widely quoted speech given at Oxford University in 2002, Massad denied that Israel had a right to exist, claiming “The Jews are not a nation… The Jewish state is a racist state that does not have a right to exist.” This is the language of Nazism.

Massad has also issued not-so-subtle endorsements of Palestinian terror attacks on Israel, stating in a 2002 lecture that Israel is “a Jewish supremacist and racist state,” and adding that “[e]very racist state should be destroyed.” “It is only by making the costs of Jewish supremacy too high that Israeli Jews will give it up,” Massad said in another address. The professor has also stated that the “resistance of Palestinians”—“resistance” is a well-known euphemism for terrorism— must extend to Israel’s “civil institutions” and he has referred to Palestinian terrorists as “anti-colonial resisters.”

In 2004, Massad was one of several Columbia professor profiled in the film Columbia Unbecoming which was produced by the David Project. The film exposed Massad’s anti-Semitic commentary in the classroom and his intimidation of pro-Israel students. According to witnesses interviewed in the film, Massad asked a Jewish student who had formerly served in the Israeli Defense Forces “How many Palestinians have you killed?” and he ordered a female student to leave his class because she asserted the indisputable fact that – unlike Palestinian terrorists – Israel warns Palestinian civilians before launching attacks. In 2011, another Jewish student reported that she was discouraged by a Barnard Professor from enrolling in Massad’s class because it might be “uncomfortable” for her—an indication that the professor’s Jew-hatred extends to the students in his classroom.

Massad’s extensive catalogue of written work provides ample evidence of his Jew hatred and his sympathy for Islamic terrorism directed against the Jewish state. In a May 2013 editorial for Al Jazeera titled “The Last of the Semites,” Massad falsely declared that Jewish claims to Israel as their homeland originated only during the Protestant Reformation and argued that Zionism itself is anti-Semitic and a policy promoted by the Nazis.

The Nazis “not only killed 90 percent of European Jews, but in the process also killed the majority of Jewish enemies of Zionism who died precisely because they refused to heed the Zionist call of abandoning their countries and homes,” Massad claims in the piece. Of course, Jews who heeded the Zionist call to return to the Jewish homeland would have survived the Holocaust. Massad also advances the absurd notion that “the only remaining ‘Semites’ who are fighting against Zionism and its anti-Semitism today are the Palestinian people.” Palestinians, of course, have waged a 70-year war to destroy the Jewish state and push its Jews into the sea – which is what the struggle against the self-determination of the Jews – Zionism – is actually about. There are 57 Islamic states, but one Jewish state is one too many for Nazi professors like Mossad.

These anti-Semitic tropes are a common theme running throughout Massad’s writings. In a 2003 essay he wrote that “the ultimate achievement of Israel” is “the transformation of the Jew into the anti-Semite, and the Palestinian into the Jew” and in 2004 he claimed preposterously that “the real victims of Western anti-Semitism are Arabs and Muslims… and no longer Jews.” The Arabs and Muslims oppressed in the Middle East are oppressed by Arab and Muslim dictatorships like those which rule the West Bank and Gaza.

#6: Yến Lê Espiritu, University of California-San Diego

Yến Lê Espiritu is a Hamas-loving “Distinguished Professor of Ethnic Studies” at the University of California-San Diego, and was formerly chair of the University’s Ethnic Studies Department. And unlike some of her Jew-hating colleagues, she makes no secret of her sympathies for terrorists. A recent profile in the American Spectator notes that “Espiritu’s office door is adorned with posters glorifying Hamas and accusing Israel of engaging in apartheid” – a Hitlerian lie about a country whose Palestinian citizens have more rights and privileges than the inhabitants of any of the Islamic dictatorships in the Middle East, including those which rule the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Unsurprisingly, Professor Espiritu also has a reputation for biased and one-sided instruction in the classroom and a blatant intolerance for students with pro-Israel views. A student who took her course, “Circulations of Difference: Introduction to Ethnic Studies,” described it as a course designed to delegitimize the existence of Israel and also the United States.

“Espiritu believes that Israel and the United States are colonialist nations. She is adamant – despite thousands of years of recorded evidence – that Jews have no connection to the land of Israel,” the student reported to the Haym Salomon Center.

“She is so adamant about her own views that students fear voicing a different opinion,” added the student, who chose to remain anonymous. “If you support Israel or show patriotism for the United States, expect to be lambasted by her. These are perspectives she would never tolerate.”

In case her own brand of Jew-hatred is not enough to sway her students, Espiritu is fond of bringing in equally anti-Semitic guest speakers to support her bigoted views. In March 2018, Espiritu brought in UCSD doctoral candidate Leslie Quintanilla to address her class. Quintanilla serves as a leader in the Palestinian Youth Movement and is also an assistant professor in the Chicano Studies Department at San Diego City Colleges.

Quintanilla used her presentation time in Espiritu’s class to launch a diatribe against America and Israel, slandering both countries as being founded on “settler colonial violence” – a favorite anathema of the collegiate left – and “a similar strategy of genocide and indigenous removal from indigenous lands.” Of course Jews are the actual indigenous people of the land around the Jordan. When a student referred to a map showing Israel by its correct name, she exclaimed “No! You are breaking my heart.”

Espiritu also signed a letter to the regents of the University of California, objecting to their characterization of “anti-Zionism” as a form of “intolerance” – a more accurate description would be a form of Nazism.

#7: Saree Makdisi, University of California-Los Angeles

Saree Makdisi is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA and an outspoken advocate for the Hamas-funded Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, a genocidal plot to weaken and destroy the world’s only Jewish state. Makdisi supports a one-state solution and promotes the Palestinian “right of return” which would eliminate Israel as a Jewish nation. “What’s wrong with Jews being a minority” in Israel, he has asked. Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority of course has declared that there will be “no Jews” in a liberated Palestine.

A nephew of the notorious Israel-hating professor Edward Said, Makdisi has repeatedly and enthusiastically promoted anti-Israel Hamas propaganda in numerous articles published on websites such as Mondoweiss, Salon, Electronic Intifada, and the Los Angeles Times. In a 2014 op-ed, he defended the labeling of Israel as an “apartheid state” although Palestinian Israelis sit in the Knesset and on Israel’s Supreme Court. He further claimed that Israel maintains “a systematic, vigilantly policed separation of the two populations and utter contempt for the principle of equality” – accusations that are transparently false.

A prolific user of social media, Makdisi is known for defaming Zionists as “Ziotrolls” and mocking claims about the Jewish people’s thousand year ties to Israel. Makdisi has no respect for the truth. According to the Canary Mission, “Makdisi often lies, in articles and on social media, that Israel is an ‘apartheid’ state… In a January 2016 Los Angeles Times article, where he advocated for an academic boycott of Israel, Makdisi showcased the use of debunked statistics that he uses to bolster his claims.”

Makdisi has frequently promoted anti-Semitic tropes and libels in his public writings and addresses. Speaking at a 2009 UCLA event on “Human Rights and Gaza,” Makdisi claimed that Israel attempts to starve, kill and stunt the growth of Palestinian children in Gaza as a matter of “deliberate premeditated, totally thought through [Israeli] state policy.” Such blood libels are a classic form of anti-Semitism. He also claimed falsely that Israel uses white phosphorus and uranium to target the people of Gaza.

The UCLA professor has also demonized Israel (another classic form of anti-Semitism), condemning Israel for responding to rocket attacks from Hamas and characterizing this defense as “the slaughter of innocents in Gaza.” In addition to promoting the wider BDS movement, Makdisi has also endorsed the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI). Perhaps most ominously for a professor who ought to defend free speech on campus, Makdisi testified in court in defense of the “Irvine 11,” a group of anti-Israel members of the Muslim Student Union who were arrested for repeatedly and maliciously disrupting a campus address by former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren at UC-Irvine.

#8: Samer Alatout, University of Wisconsin-Madison

As an associate professor of Community and Environmental Sociology at UW-Madison, Samer Alatout uses his academic position and credentials to promote Jew hatred and the Hamas-funded Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

Alatout has spoken in support of BDS at events organized by the anti-Israel hate group Students for Justice in Palestine and has repeatedly demonized the Jewish state on social media by describing Israel as an “apartheid” nation and falsely claiming that Israel is conducting “ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”

The professor is a signatory to multiple letters supporting various forms of the BDS movement against Israel including an Open Letter on Gaza and BDS from the Middle East Caucus of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies which characterizes Gaza as “the largest ‘open air prison’ in the world” and accuses the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) of using “indiscriminate and disproportionate violence” against the civilian population of Gaza during “Operation Protective Edge.” In truth, this operation was a defensive action on the part of the IDF to protect Israel from Hamas’s constant missile, mortar, and rocket attacks on its civilian population centers. These attacks were the Palestinians’ response to Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 as a unilateral gesture of peace.

Professor Alatout has also endorsed the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), a particularly insidious branch of the genocidal BDS movement that aims to isolate Israel academically and culturally. He also signed a petition to support the American Studies Association’s (ASA) highly controversial resolution resolution calling for an academic boycott of Israel. And he signed his name to the “Campaign to Boycott the Oral History Conference at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.” That document asserted that “while all Israeli universities are deeply complicit in the occupation, settler-colonialism, and apartheid, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is particularly noteworthy.” Such lies demonizing the world’s only Jewish state, are expressions of classic Jew-hatred which should have been buried with the Nazi regime but unfortunately were not.

Alatout also signed a petition to defend disgraced former University of Illinois Professor Steven Salaita. That university withdrew an offer of employment that had been made to Salaita because of vehemently anti-Semitic tweets made by the professor. One of these statements, posted in the wake of Hamas’s kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens, read, “You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.”

#9: Asad Abukhalil, California State University-Stanislaus

Asad Abukhalil is a rabid anti-Semite and professor of political science at California State University-Stanislaus. Although he has long possessed a reputation as a Jew-hating academic, the professor recently achieved a new level of notoriety by taking advantage of the coronavirus crisis to propagate a malicious conspiracy theory that Israel was planning to discriminate against Arab coronavirus victims by housing them in “mass prisons.”

“Israel will — I am sure — have different medical procedures for Jews and non-Jews. Non-Jews will be put in mass prisons,” Abukhalil tweeted. This was an especially offensive lie since Israel is legendary for providing medical help to its worst enemies, including the Hamas leader in the Gaza strip.

After numerous responses from both Jews and non-Jews disputing these false allegations, Abukhalil claimed that he had only been “mocking Israeli racism” and that “Zionist hoodlums” had unfairly reported his post to twitter alleging anti-Semitism.  He also claimed—contrary to historical fact—that Israel was “founded atop the Palestinian nation.” The “Palestinian nation” is a concept invented in 1963, fifteen years after Israel’s creation on land that had belonged to the Turks who are not Arabs, let alone Palestinians, for four hundred years previously. “Palestinian nation” is an invention of Arab imperialists to make their aggressions against the Jews seem like acts of “resistance” by innocent victims. It is the Big Lie of the Arab cause.

Abukhalil’s many tweets showcase his rampant anti-Semitism. He has compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to various Nazi leaders, writing in a 2015 tweet, “Trump and Netanyahu are different in the same way that Hitler was different from Goebbels” – a sentence that makes no sense except as an expression of hatred towards the individuals in question and their peoples.

Abukhalil is an ardent supporter of the genocidal terrorist-orchestrated Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Unlike many of his Jew-hating colleagues, Abukhalil doesn’t attempt to disguise the true aim of BDS which is to destroy Israel. In a February 17, 2012 article, Abukhalil wrote: “the real aim of BDS is to bring down the state of Israel.” He also noted his agreement with disgraced professor and Holocaust denier Norman Finkelstein that the destruction of Israel “should be stated as an unambiguous goal.”

The CSU professor has repeatedly condoned Palestinian violence and terrorism, claiming that Palestinian Arab massacres of Jews before the founding of Israel were merely “violent resistance” and that such actions when taken by the Islamic terror organization Hezbollah had proven a better and more effective strategy than peace negotiations with Israel. He has also declared that terrorist George Habash, founder of the terror organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and known as “the godfather of Middle East terrorism,” is one of his greatest inspirations.

#10: Mohammed Abed, California State University-Los Angeles

Mohammed Abed is a tenure-track Professor of Philosophy at CSU-LA and a longtime activist and speaker for the Hamas-funded campus hate group Students for Justice in Palestine. He has used his academic credentials to lend credence to false and genocidal attacks on Israel.

Professor Abed is a member of the Palestinian Right to Return Coalition Al-Awda which seeks the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state and also endorses the Hamas slogan “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea” — a genocidal call for Israel’s destruction since the river and the sea are Israel’s eastern and western boundaries. Abed was a workshop leader at the pro-terrorist Palestine Solidarity Movement’s national conferences in 2003 and 2004. During the 2004 event, Abed helped organize a seminar with Al-Awda co-founder Mazin Qumsiyeh, who told the assembled audience that “Zionism is a disease” and that “Nazi-Zionist collaboration” helped to bring about the Holocaust.

In 2010 Abed spoke at the University of Southern California’s Israeli Apartheid Week at which students were urged to “Buy a USC Intifada shirt.” An intifada is a violent uprising perpetrated by the Palestinians against Israel’s Jews; many Israeli civilians, including women and children were targeted and killed during the previous two intifadas.

While a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Abed wrote his PhD. dissertation on the “study of suicide bombing and ethics of self-sacrifice” and questioned whether suicide bombing might “have some feature that could be considered morally laudable.”

Professor Abed has endorsed the United States Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), an anti-Semitic campaign to isolate Israel academically and culturally, and at one time was a member of its Organizing Collective. He has frequently promoted the larger Hamas-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel in his public speeches and writings.

The Cal State Professor has also resorted to demonizing Israel through transparent lies on multiple occasions, in itself a form of anti-Semitism. He has accused Israel of “genocide,” “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” and committing “state terrorism against Palestinian civilians.” At the same time, Abed is more than ready to rationalize Palestinian violence against Israel. He defended the 2010 “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” which was found by a United Nations commission to be an attempt to initiate an organized, violent confrontation with the Israeli military. Abed however wrote that “the Israelis had no right to attack [the flotilla]. Doing so was a naked act of aggression…only the activists on board the flotilla can legitimately claim self-defense as their cause and as a means of explaining their actions.” He concluded that the “activists on board the Gaza flotilla …should be praised.”

All my life, I have dismissed paranoids on the right (“America is headed to communism”) and the left (“It can happen here” — referring to fascism). It’s not that I’ve ever believed liberty was guaranteed. Being familiar with history and a pessimist regarding the human condition, I never believed that.

But the ease with which police state tactics have been employed and the equal ease with which most Americans have accepted them have been breathtaking.

People will argue that a temporary police state has been justified because of the allegedly unique threat to life posed by the new coronavirus. I do not believe the data will bear that out. Regardless, let us at least agree that we are closer to a police state than ever in American history.

“Police state” does not mean totalitarian state. America is not a totalitarian state; we still have many freedoms. In a totalitarian state, this article could not be legally published, and if it were illegally published, I would be imprisoned and/or executed. But we are presently living with all four of the key hallmarks of a police state:

No. 1: Draconian laws depriving citizens of elementary civil rights.

The federal, state, county and city governments are now restricting almost every freedom except those of travel and speech. Americans have been banned from going to work (and thereby earning a living), meeting in groups (both indoors and outdoors), meeting in their cars in church parking lots to pray and entering state-owned properties such as beaches and parks — among many other prohibitions.

No. 2: A mass media supportive of the state’s messaging and deprivation of rights.

The New York Times, CNN and every other mainstream mass medium — except Fox News, The Wall Street Journal (editorial and opinion pages only) and talk radio — have served the cause of state control over individual Americans’ lives just as Pravda served the Soviet government. In fact, there is almost no more dissent in The New York Times than there was in Pravda. And the Big Tech platforms are removing posts about the virus and potential treatments they deem “misinformation.”

No. 3: Use of police.

Police departments throughout America have agreed to enforce these laws and edicts with what can only be described as frightening alacrity. After hearing me describe police giving summonses to, or even arresting, people for playing baseball with their children on a beach, jogging alone without a mask, or worshipping on Easter while sitting isolated in their cars in a church parking lot, a police officer called my show. He explained that the police have no choice. They must respond to every dispatch they receive.

“And why are they dispatched to a person jogging on a beach or sitting alone in a park?” I asked.

Because the department was informed about these lawbreakers.

“And who told the police about these lawbreakers?” I asked.

His answer brings us to the fourth characteristic of a police state:

No. 4: Snitches.

How do the police dispatchers learn of lawbreakers such as families playing softball in a public park, lone joggers without face masks, etc.? From their fellow citizens snitching on them.

The mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, set up a “snitch line,” whereby New Yorkers were told to send authorities photos of fellow New Yorkers violating any of the quarantine laws. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti similarly encouraged snitching, unabashedly using the term.

It is said that about 1 in every 100 East German citizens were informers for the Stasi, the East German secret police, as superbly portrayed in the film “The Lives of Others.” It would be interesting, and, I think, important, to know what percentage of New Yorkers informed on their fellow citizens. Now, again, you may think such a comparison is not morally valid, that de Blasio’s call to New Yorkers to serve a Stasi-like role was morally justified given the coronavirus pandemic. But you cannot deny it is Stasi-like or that, other than identifying spies during World War II, this is unprecedented in American history at anywhere near this level.

This past Friday night, I gathered with six others for a Shabbat dinner with friends in Santa Monica, California. On my Friday radio show, I announced I would be doing that, and if I was arrested, it would be worth it. In my most pessimistic dreams, I never imagined that in America, having dinner at a friend’s house would be an act of civil disobedience, perhaps even a criminal act. But that is precisely what happens in a police state.

The reason I believe this is a dress rehearsal is that too many Americans appear untroubled by it; the dominant force in America, the left, supports it, and one of the two major political parties has been taken over by the left. Democrats and their supporters have, in effect, announced they will use state power to enforce any law they can to combat the even greater “existential” crisis of global warming.

On the CNN website this weekend, in one of the most frightening and fanatical articles in an era of fanaticism, Bill Weir, CNN chief climate correspondent, wrote an open letter to his newborn son. In it, he wrote of his idealized future for America: “completely new forms of power, food, construction, transportation, economics and politics.”

You cannot get there without a police state.

If you love liberty, you must see that it is jeopardized more than at any time since America’s founding. And that means, among other things, that at this time, a vote for any Democrat is a vote to end liberty.

The Washington Post, an enormously influential and widely cited publication, fought the good fight. For five solid weeks, it was able to pretend that Tara Reade’s sexual-assault allegations against Joe Biden either didn’t exist or were so illegitimate as to be unworthy of any serious attention. For five solid weeks, The Post was able to wait and see which way the political winds might ultimately blow, and to give Ms. Reade some time to realize that she was fighting a losing battle and should just go away.

Consider a few remarkable numbers. On September 15, 2018, The Washington Post published its first story about Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual-assault claims against Brett Kavanaugh. Three weeks later — on October 6, 2018 — the Senate voted to confirm Kavanaugh. During the 21 days in between, The Post produced approximately 760 news articles and opinion pieces about the Kavanaugh-Ford affair. The vast majority of those stories trashed Kavanaugh and were sympathetic to Ford.

By contrast, Tara Reade went public with her sexual-assault charge against Joe Biden in a podcast interview on March 25, 2020, when she reported that Biden had digitally raped her when she was an employee in his Senate office. During the 21 days after Ms. Reade went public with her story, The Washington Post published a grand total of precisely 4 articles or op-ed pieces about the case. That’s right. The 21-day ratio for Post coverage of the Kavanaugh and Biden stories was 760 to 4 — or, to put it another way, 190 to 1. In fact, the paper did not publish even a single story about Reade’s claims against Biden until April 12 — fully eighteen days after the accuser publicly announced that Biden had forcibly inserted two of his fingers into her vagina.

And that’s despite the fact that in 2018 — while Christine Blasey Ford was accusing Brett Kavanaugh of a past sexual assault — none other than Joe Biden himself had piously pronounced:

For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it’s been made worse or better over time. But nobody fails to understand that this is like jumping into a cauldron.

The Post’s decision to ignore Reade’s allegations for so long is even more remarkable when we consider the enormously serious nature of the charge she was making. On January 6, 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that FBI Director Robert Mueller — in response to “the voices of survivors, advocates, law enforcement personnel and many others” — had just made an “important change” in how the Bureau defined “forcible rape.” Whereas the definition previously had “only included forcible male penile penetration of a female vagina,” the new definition would now be this: “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”

But The Washington Post doesn’t give a damn about the new rape, the old rape, or any other kind of rape — unless the suspected offender is a conservative. Not until April 28 — five weeks after Tara Reade had gone public with her claims against Biden — did The Post even begin to give her case anything more than the barest passing mention. Whereas the ratio for Post coverage of the Kavanaugh and Biden stories had theretofore been about 190 to 1, beginning on April 28 the new ratio was about 8 to 1 — still a shameful, though not nearly as astronomical, discrepancy.

Why the shift at that point? Because by April 28, it was no longer possible for The Post to pretend that Tara Reade didn’t exist. Because by then, other news outlets were reporting that people who knew Reade in the 1990s were now corroborating the fact that she had told them about the assault shortly after it happened. You see, if everyone else is reporting that it’s raining outside, you look rather imbecilic if you lock yourself in a windowless room and keep claiming that it’s a sunny day.

In short, The Washington Post didn’t begin to give the Reade-Biden story anything more than an occasional obligatory glance, until it was absolutely forced to do so. That’s because The Washington Post is not a newspaper. It is a demonstrably worthless, politicized rag whose sole purpose is to propagandize on behalf of Democrats and left-wing politics. Aside from that, it is a paper of considerable utility for anyone who needs to wrap a fish, ignite some kindling, soak up some grease, line the bottom of a bird cage, or swat a cockroach in the bathroom. Certainly, no one can deny that The Post has its uses.

The Post’s Kavanaugh Stories Were Overwhelmingly Anti-Kavanaugh & Anti-Trump.

Before we examine the substance and tenor of The Post’s Kavanaugh-related stories, let us first briefly recollect the allegations that three separate women brought against Kavanaugh about 19 months ago:

• In mid-September 2018, Christine Blasey Ford claimed that during a party at an undisclosed location 36 years earlier, an intoxicated 17-year-old Kavanaugh had held her down on a bed, grinding his body against hers and groping her, until another boy who was present jumped onto that same bed and caused Ford and Kavanaugh to topple off, giving the girl an opportunity to flee the scene. Her evolving recollections of that party included a very long list of contradictions, bald-faced lies, and unverifiable claims.
• On September 23, 2018, a woman named Deborah Ramirez made a second allegation against Kavanaugh, claiming that during a dorm room party at Yale University 35 years earlier, a laughing, inebriated 18-year-old Kavanaugh had thrust his penis toward her face and caused her to touch it without her consent. Yet Ramirez acknowledged that she was not actually certain that it was Kavanaugh who had done this. Moreover, every person whom Ramirez named as having been present in the room when the alleged incident happened, denied that it had ever occurred.

Also on September 23, 2018, a third woman, Julie Swetnick, came forth to claim that 36 or 37 years earlier, a 16- or 17-year-old Kavanaugh had been among a contingent of boys who routinely attended parties where they spiked girls’ drinks and then took turns gang-raping them. The Wall Street Journal contacted “dozens of former classmates and colleagues” and was unable to find anyone who could corroborate Swetnick’s allegations. The woman’s story then fell apart completely when, during an NBC interview, she contradicted major parts of her sworn statement and conceded that she could not be sure if Kavanaugh was actually guilty of anything at all.

Following Ms. Ford’s initial public statement, ​The Washington Post raced to print the first of what would become more than 760 stories about Kavanaugh and the allegations against him. Below is a sampling of just a few of those stories. Each listing begins with the date of the article or opinion piece, followed by the title in bold italics, followed by a brief excerpt from the text in order to convey some sense of the story’s tone and content.

Sept. 15: We need the fullest possible airing of the accusation against Brett Kavanaugh:
“Failing to conduct an adequate investigation would leave both the Senate and the Supreme Court … under a lingering cloud.”

Sept. 16: Kavanaugh’s accuser steps forward:
“Certain facts add to [Ford’s] credibility…. Will [Republicans] be dutiful partisans or act like responsible members of an equal branch of government?”

Sept. 16: This is the Kavanaugh mess we feared:
“[T]he American people should understand just who this justice is, how the investigation of him was rigged and how his elevation to the Supreme Court has sullied the institution.”

Sept. 17: Now that his accuser has spoken out, is Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination in danger?:
“As far as tracing decades-old sexual harassment allegations go, Ford’s story is remarkably credible.”

Sept. 17: The storm brewing in Trump’s muted response to Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser:
“President Trump has made a habit of doubting women who accuse him and his allies of misconduct.”

Sept. 17: Brett Kavanaugh is accused of sexual assault. Here’s why Republicans are hesitating to pause his nomination:
“This allegation is serious and credible, and yet it’s notable that there’s no sign (yet) Republicans will pause the nomination over it.”

Sept. 17: Kavanaugh’s accuser should have spoken up sooner? Give me a break:
“His legal record indicates he would, if confirmed to the Supreme Court, use his power to do his best to enshrine the values and laws of an earlier era — one where it will be harder, if not impossible, for women to control their own bodies, and where employers can treat employees with impunity.”

Sept. 20: Brett Kavanaugh’s most dubious character witness:
“Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh made a fateful decision over the summer in accepting a White House nomination for a seat on the Supreme Court.… With the association comes slime…. A Supreme Court nominee couldn’t ask for a more dubious character reference than this president of the United States.”

Sept. 20: Fairness left the GOP long ago. Is decency gone, too?:
“By now, we should know not to expect fairness from this Republican leadership, which richly deserves to be voted out of power.”

Sept. 22: Ford runs circles around hapless Republicans, who now have a second scandal:
“Even if they had tried, Republicans could have not done a better job demonstrating their bias, ineptitude, unseriousness, meanness, unfairness and general lack of empathy.”

Sept. 23: The Republican Party has laid itself bare:
“If you assumed that these Republicans cared about character, or that the concerns of women matter to them in any way, it’s time to revise that assumption.”

Sept. 24: The staggering hypocrisy of Brett Kavanaugh:
“The allegations made by Christine Blasey Ford and now Kavanaugh’s Yale classmate Ramirez … indicate, to use Kavanaugh’s own words, a possible ‘pattern of behavior.’”

Sept. 25: This is Trump’s most insulting — and revealing — lie about Brett Kavanaugh yet:
“Trump’s view that he and people like him should be able to do whatever they like with impunity has stained and corrupted the process of selecting a new Supreme Court justice from top to bottom.”

Sept. 27: I hope you cried:
“Christine Blasey Ford’s courage is the courage of every woman who has had to live with the trauma a man has inflicted on her.”

Sept. 27: Just how low can Republican senators go?:
“Christine Blasey Ford was the soul of credibility, which should be no surprise. She is a PhD psychologist in the middle of a distinguished career. Her voice was both strong and vulnerable as she recounted the details of the sexual assault she says she suffered more than 35 years ago at the clumsy, drunken hands of Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh. She didn’t sound like a partisan. She sounded like a determined survivor.”

Sept. 28: Brett Kavanaugh, disrobed:
“Brett M. Kavanaugh proved himself unfit to serve on the Supreme Court…. His testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday was a howl of partisan rage [and] revealed him to be a political hack more than a jurist.”

Oct. 2: Brett Kavanaugh’s lies are part of the Republican ecosystem:
“Brett M. Kavanaugh is a liar…. Kavanaugh’s tall tales are part of a larger ecosystem. The Republican Party, as part of its quest for power, has been waging a battle with the truth for decades.”

Oct. 3: The news this week confirms it: Donald Trump is the worst person ever to be president:
“Trump attacked Ford for not remembering all the details of the trauma that she says she suffered…. His heartless japery was greeted with laughter from his cult followers…. Trump is far less effective a president than Bill Clinton … Yet Republicans are willing to forgive him far more than Democrats ever forgave Clinton. For the GOP, loyalty to its odious leader trumps everything else, even the most basic dictates of humanity.”

How The Post Has Covered the Current Allegations Against Joe Biden.

Before we examine how The Washington Post has covered the recent sex-assault charges against Biden, let us briefly review the relevant facts:

• On March 25, 2020, podcaster Katie Halper interviewed Tara Reade, a committed Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, and whose first two choices for president in 2020 were Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. In the interview, Reade, who worked as a Senate assistant for Joe Biden for about eight months in 1992-93, said that one day in the spring of ’93 Biden had pushed her up against a wall, reached up underneath her skirt, inserted two of his fingers into her vagina, and asked her: “Do you want to go somewhere else?”
• Not long after she had been violated in this way by Biden, says Reade, she recounted the incident to her brother and to a female friend — both of whom today confirm that Reade did in fact tell them the story of Biden’s transgression many years ago.
• Reade also says that she described the assault, soon after it happened, to a therapist and to her own mother. At least part of this claim is corroborated by the fact that in 1993 Reade’s mother called then-CNN host Larry King to seek on-air advice on how she might be able to help her daughter deal with an injustice she had suffered in her Capitol Hill workplace. An audio recording of that phone call has been recovered by the Media Research Center.
• Two additional women — former neighbor Lynda LaCasse and former co-worker Lorraine Sanchez — have also come forward to verify the fact that Reade told them about the Biden incident in the 1990s. LaCasse describes herself as “a very strong Democrat” who is “for Biden, regardless” of what he did to Reade.

It is arguable that the allegations against Biden, if true, are far more serious than those aimed at Kavanaugh because: (a) the incident is not said to have occurred when Biden was a drunken teenager at a dorm party, but rather, when he was a sober 51-year-old man who had already been a U.S. senator for 20 years; (b) Biden is accused of having actually penetrated the woman’s vagina with his fingers; and (c) Biden is currently running for election to the highest political office in the land.

As noted earlier, The Washington Post did not even mention Reade’s allegations against Biden until 18 days after she had gone public with them. Moreover, what is particularly striking about the mere handful of stories that The Post published about the allegations during the five weeks immediately following Reade’s initial public statement, is that those stories spent just as much time trying to soften or discredit the claims against Biden, as they spent on laying out the details of the case. Let’s take a look at a few of these stories, the first of which appeared on April 12:

April 12: Sexual assault allegation by former Biden Senate aide emerges in campaign, draws denial:

Aside from its description of Tara Reade’s charges against Biden, this news article also reserves some space for information that is clearly designed to drag President Trump into the narrative and smear him — even though he had nothing whatsoever to do with the Reade-Biden incident. Here’s what The Post says:

• “The former vice president [Biden] has been accused of unwanted hugging and other physical contact, but The Post found no other allegations against him as serious as Reade’s. More than a dozen women, by contrast, have accused Trump of forced kissing, groping or sexual assault, and he has been recorded on audio boasting about grabbing women between their legs.”
• “Near the end of the 2016 campaign, The Post uncovered a 2005 videotape in which Trump bragged that because of his fame he could grab women between the legs, comments he dismissed later as ‘locker-room banter.’ In the days after that audio was published, about a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct going back decades. Their stories ranged from Trump groping their breasts and buttocks to him kissing them without consent on the lips. Trump called the women liars. More recently, he has denied a New York writer’s allegation that he sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room more than two decades ago.”

The article also devotes considerable space to quotes by people who express doubt about the veracity of Tara Reade’s claims.

• One was Marianne Baker, a former executive assistant to Biden, who describes the allegations as “clearly false.”
• Biden’s former chief of staff Ted Kaufman and former deputy chief of staff Dennis Toner are both quoted as saying that they have no recollection of Reade or of her complaint.
• Melissa Lefko, who was a Biden staff assistant in 1993, says “there was never anything like that” in “the culture of working on the Hill at that time for Biden.”
• Biden’s current deputy campaign manager and communications director is quoted as saying: “Vice President Biden has dedicated his public life to changing the culture and the laws around violence against women. He authored and fought for the passage and reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act…. What is clear about this claim: It is untrue. This absolutely did not happen.”

Further, the article quotes Tara Reade as having occasionally praised Biden in recent years. For example:

• “She occasionally has tweeted positively about Biden, saying in 2017, ‘My old boss speaks truth. Listen’ with a link to a BBC story about Biden calling for the tech industry to help fight cancer.”
• “Reade told The Post in a recent interview that she tweeted support of him because she admired some things about Biden despite the alleged assault. ‘Here’s the person I admire, who stands for all I believe in,’ she said.”

On the other hand, the article at one point seemingly tries to discredit Reade by referencing “her effusive praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin,” whom she had once described as a “compassionate, caring, visionary leader.”

Three additional stories which The Post has published about Reade’s allegations against Biden are listed below. Under each date and title is an excerpt from the text of the story:

April 15: The problems Tara Reade’s allegation runs us into:
“[Reade’s] story has no witnesses…. Biden has built his record on women’s rights, and … he stands in a broader sense for what most Democrats think is right and just. Or at least, he stands for it better than almost any Republican … [especially] President Trump — who embodies everything abhorrent in his political and public self but also in his personal ‘grab them by the p—y’ past.”

April 15: Assessing Tara Reade’s allegations:
“[Christine Blasey] Ford did not strike me as a person who was coming forward because of political motivations or because she wanted publicity — anything but. Reade seems a much different and less reliable figure.… My gut says that what Reade alleges did not happen.”

April 28: On Biden and the Tara Reade allegation, do our normal standards apply?:
“[E]ven if you find Reade credible, it is perfectly defensible to vote for Biden anyway, as I myself am planning to do come November…. [It is important] to protect victims of abuse, protecting them very much includes getting the Republic out of the hands of our current fool of a president.”

Conclusion.

If a particular story — however false, far-fetched, or unverifiable — has the potential to harm President Trump or conservative agenda priorities, The Washington Post will devote unlimited financial and manpower resources to keeping Americans’ attention firmly fixed upon it for as long as possible.

By contrast, if another story — however plausible or widely corroborated by credible witnesses — has the potential to harm a key political figure to whom the Democratic Party has hitched its star, The Post will do everything within its power to bury, whitewash, soften, or discredit that story.

It isn’t even debatable. The Washington Post is not a newspaper. It’s a comic book, minus the gravitas.

19.

Nancy Pelosi’s Jesus Complex

Why leftists think and behave like sociopaths.

Tue May 5, 2020

David Horowitz

[David Horowitz is the author of the forthcoming book Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win, to be published on June 2 by Humanix Books and available now for pre-order.]

Nancy Pelosi is the leader of a party that has accused the president and the 63 million Americans who voted for him of betraying their country, destroying its Constitution, colluding with its enemies, causing the deaths of thousands of coronavirus victims, and hating immigrants, Muslims, people of color, gays, and women. According to Pelosi and the Democrats, Trump is so dangerous a threat to the republic that he must be removed before the next election, although it is only months away.

How does Pelosi see herself and the party that has faithfully supported her vendetta and smeared millions of Republicans as xenophobes and white supremacists? Pelosi answered this question during a recent interview with MSNBC host Joy Ann Reid. When Reid asked her whether releasing convicted criminals from jail would be a part of her COVID-19 relief legislation, Pelosi’s response was: “In our caucus, we are very devoted to the Gospel of Matthew.”

Pelosi then quoted from memory the particular parable in Matthew she was referring to: “‘When I was hungry, you fed me. When I was homeless, you sheltered me. When I was in prison, you visited me,’ and so this for us is part of our value system.”

In sum, while the unconverted might reasonably view Pelosi as the leader of a party of hate, she regards herself as leader of the party of Jesus.

One of the defining characteristics of a sociopathic personality is what psychologists call a “grandiose sense of self.” This hyper-elevated sense of one’s own importance and righteousness leads to a second crucial sociopathic personality trait: the lack of a conscience, of a sense of empathy with the victims of one’s behavior. For example, since the Speaker of the House is not Jesus, her lack of concern for the plight of ordinary citizens who are not worth $200 million and can’t afford elaborate walls, gates, and private security agents to protect them from the criminals that her legislation causes to be released. Or for that matter, the illegal aliens she invites into the country without being vetted to see if they are sex traffickers, drug dealers, violent criminals, rapists, or carriers of infectious diseases.

These observations are not offered as an exercise in pop psychology. They are just obvious patterns of behavior for Nancy Pelosi and the party she leads, an attempt to understand how and why Democrats have divided this country into warring camps. Over the last twenty years, “Identity Politics,” which is better understood as “Cultural Marxism,” has become the ideological religion of the Democrat Party. Such absurdities as “believe all women,” and distrust “old white men” are tropes of the Democrats’ new world order. How do adults actually swallow such racist and sexist piffle?

The answer is collectivism. If one believes in the primacy of groups over individuals, as Democrats universally do, and if one couples that with a belief in a redeemed future in which social justice reigns, everyone is equal, and Green New Deal panaceas prevail, then the sociopathic traits – self-righteousness, and lack of sympathy for those one walks over to get to the promised land follow as night follows day. Thinking of one’s self as saving the planet is a direct path to oppressing one’s peers.

Group think erases the individual and creates collective villains. Thus, according to the Democrats, because people of color suffer disproportionately from the coronavirus the villain must be “systemic inequality.” The solution, of course, is a socialist redistribution of income. In reality, however, the culprit is individual behavior and individual choice. Two of the top co-morbidity factors leading to coronavirus fatalities are Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Both are caused by a third: obesity. These are the results of eating badly – of individual choices. Over 38 percent of African American adults are clinically obese, and four out of five African American women are either overweight or obese, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Recognizing this doesn’t mean we don’t take care of stricken individuals but that we do them the service of making them aware of their responsibility for their fates. We don’t subsidize their bad behaviors. In the iconography of the left, such sensible approaches are condemned as “blaming the victim.”

Blaming others – demonizing others – is the socialist way, and the prime reason the Democrats have become a party of hate. The designated guilty are rich white men and the western democracies they have been most prominent in creating.

This perverse religion has been exposed in an extraordinary way by the current global pandemic. The Chinese Communist Party’s gross malfeasance in handling this virus led to the deaths of more than a quarter of a million innocent people to date. As collectivist Marxists who see themselves as saving the world, the Chinese Communists have no hesitation in blaming others, in particular the United States – the Great Satan in radical religions. The Democrat Party, led by Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, has leapt to their defense condemning President Trump’s use of the term “Chinese virus” as “racist.”

Consider the spread of the virus in America itself. Eight of the nine states with the most cases, and eight of the eight with the most deaths are run by collectivist Democrats who condemned Trump’s ban on travel from China as racist and have created a network of “sanctuary” cities and states to defy the nation’s immigration laws and invite people into the country who have not been vetted for infectious diseases. The very concept of sanctuary is religious in nature and one can be sure makes Pelosi and her political allies feel like Jesus. But they are not divinities, and their policies are deadly.

20.

21. ΝΑΤΟ

Game of drones? How new technologies affect deterrence, defence and security

•  Dr Antonio Missiroli
•  05 May 2020

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Exponential technological progress, especially in the digital domain, is affecting all realms of life. Emerging mainly from the commercial sector, it has led to a democratisation of technologies that could also be weaponised. Technological developments are also generating new dilemmas about their use by the military.

In September 2017, in a speech to students in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin famously argued that whichever country becomes the leader in artificial intelligence (AI) research – a goal that China has explicitly set itself for 2030 – “will become the ruler of the world”.

A few months later, in his presidential address to the Duma, Putin announced that the testing of Russia’s new hypersonic glide vehicle was complete and production was about to begin (this technology is capable of dramatically reducing the time required to reach a target and loadable with both conventional and nuclear warheads).

In September 2019, Houthi rebels from Yemen claimed the first known coordinated massive swarm drone strike, on two oil production facilities in Saudi Arabia, after defeating Saudi air defence systems.

And, in the latest global crisis over COVID-19, there is additional growing evidence of the disruptive, even subversive effects of psychological and (dis)information operations conducted through social media – not to mention widespread espionage activities based on spear-phishing or even direct cyberattacks against medical care facilities.

In short, at both national and multilateral levels, new and potentially disruptive technologies are dramatically challenging the way deterrence, defence, and more broadly security policies are conceived and carried out.

Technology and warfare

From the Stone Age to Hiroshima, technology has deeply influenced (and sometimes contributed to revolutionising) warfare. In turn, warfare has often boosted technologies later applied to civilian life. Purposeful human manipulation of the material world has virtually always been dual-use – from hunting tools to boats, from explosives to combustion engines, from railroads to satellites – as have platforms like chariots, galleys, mechanised vehicles and aircraft. Science-based engineering has always supported warfare, from fortifications to artillery and from communications to surveillance. However, systematic state-funded research and development (R&D) for military purposes started only during the Second World War and arguably peaked during the Cold War.

Technology harnessed by skilled commanders has always acted as a force multiplier in war, allowing them to inflict more harm on the enemy or limit harm on their side. Throughout history, technological superiority has generally favoured victory but never guaranteed it: comparable adversaries have often managed to match and counter tactical advantages, even within the same conflict, whereas manifestly inferior adversaries have often (and sometimes successfully) adopted ‘asymmetric’ tactics in response. In other words, the value of technology in warfare is always relative to the adversary’s capabilities.¹

However, what we are experiencing now, at least since the 1990s, is exponential technological progress that is affecting all realms of life – not only, or primarily, the military. In the deterrence and defence realm, the development and application of information communications and technology (ICT), resulting in precision-guided weapons and so-called ‘net-centric’ warfare, was initially conceptualised as another ‘revolution in military affairs’ (RMA). Previous RMAs include the advent of the chariot in antiquity, gunpowder at the dawn of the modern era, mechanised units after the industrial revolution, and nuclear weapons since the Second World War. Yet, it is now evident that ‘net-centric’ warfare, while developing at a fast pace, is probably more an evolutionary and incremental process of transformation than a revolution in its own right. Nevertheless, it still has largely unpredictable implications for deterrence, defence and security at large.

Just like previous (r)evolutions, the current one is expected to alter dramatically the global balance(s) of power – not only between empires, city-states or nation-states, as in the past, but also within and across actors as, for instance, big tech companies begin to cultivate power and even status often associated with statehood. The 21st century has in fact seen a unique acceleration of technological development – thanks essentially to the commercial sector and especially in the digital domain – creating an increasingly dense network of almost real-time connectivity in all areas of social activity that is unprecedented in scale and pace. As a result, new technologies that are readily available, cleverly employed and combined together offer both state and non-state actors a large spectrum of new tools to inflict damage and disruption above and beyond what was imaginable a few decades ago, not only on traditionally superior military forces on the battlefield, but also on civilian populations and critical infrastructure.

Moreover, most of these technologies – with the possible exception of stealth and hypersonic systems –emanate from an ecosystem fundamentally different from the traditional defence industrial model or ‘complex’, based on top-down long-term capability planning and development, oligopolistic supply (a small number of sellers given to non-price competition) and monopsonistic demand (a single buyer). Accordingly, in the past, military R&D resulted in technology – such as radars, jet engines or nuclear power – that was later adapted and commercialised for civilian use.² By contrast, these new technologies are being developed from the bottom up and with an extremely short time from development to market: only after hitting millions of consumers worldwide and creating network effects do they become dual-use, and thus ‘weaponisable’.

The vector of dual-use innovation has significantly shifted, with spillover and spin-off effects stemming primarily from the civil realm. Investment in science and technology (S&T) is now mainly driven by commercial markets, both nationally and globally, and the scale of its expenditure dwarfs defence-specific S&T spending, giving rise to technology areas where defence relies completely on civil and market developments. The new superpowers (and ‘super-influencers’) are the private big tech consumer giants from the West Coast of the United States and mainland China.

Remote control and lack of control

The latest technological breakthroughs have fostered in particular the development and democratisation of so-called ‘standoff’ weapons, that is, armed devices which may be launched at a distance sufficient to allow attacking personnel to evade defensive fire from the target area. Delegation and outsourcing of military functions to auxiliaries, mercenaries, privateers, insurgents or contractors – recently labeled as ‘surrogate warfare’ – is nothing new, of course. But these new technologies are challenging the underlying trade-offs between delegation and control, and generating new dilemmas by making it possible to operate unmanned platforms from a distance, first for reconnaissance and surveillance, then also for punishment and decapitation missions. While they do not represent the first application of a machine as a proxy in warfare (cruise missiles served a similar purpose), these new weapons are also providing an incomparable degree of discretion (low visibility, also domestically) and deniability, especially before the international community.³

Most importantly, some are now easily accessible on commercial markets and relatively simple to operate, further breaking the traditional monopoly of states over weaponry and the legitimate use of force and opening up new ‘spaces’ for new types of warfare. They have already been employed in (counter-)terrorism and (counter-)insurgency operations overseas but could easily be deployed in urban environments – and potentially loaded with chemical, biological or radiological agents. In fact, access and intent are crucial in all these cases, lowering the barrier for their use and widening their scope.

For their part, cyberspace-based weapons – when used for sabotage (cyberattacks) and subversion (disinformation and destabilisation campaigns) rather than espionage – go even further in coercing and disrupting while preserving discretion and deniability, as they operate in a purely man-made and poorly regulated environment that relies entirely on technology to work. Digital weapons can indeed achieve strategic effects comparable to warfare without resorting to direct physical violence, whereas most experts consider cyber ‘war’ in a narrow sense to be a far-fetched scenario. As opposed to nuclear weapons, digital weapons are not for deterrence but for actual and even constant use, and they can be operated by states as well as proxies and private organisations without geographic or jurisdictional constraints: attribution is difficult and retribution risky.⁴

The media space has become an additional battlefield, constituting as it now does a transnational global public sphere where perceptions of right and wrong, victory and defeat (so-called ‘audience effects’)⁵ are shaped and consolidated at lightning speed. Social media may not have been militarised – although servicemen do use them too, making them vulnerable to hostile campaigns – but have certainly been weaponised. ‘Open source warfare’ is the name of this new game,⁶ in which individual citizens and consumers often act as more or less unwitting auxiliaries. In fact, while cyber-enabled sabotage requires high levels of know-how but relatively little manpower, cyber-enabled subversion is much simpler to design but requires a critical mass of users to spread narratives. The combination of all these technologies in a comprehensive strategy with tactical variations has been conceptualised as ‘hybrid’ warfare – or, when it remains below the level of armed conflict, just malicious activity.⁷

Finally, at least so far, space proper has remained relatively immune from these trends, thanks both to the provisions of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and to the risks intrinsically associated with the possible use of force, for example, debris. Technological developments up there have been focused on facilitating activity down here – mainly satellite communications for broadcasting and navigation – for both public and now increasingly also private actors, with all the resulting democratisation effects. The most capable states have indeed partially militarised space, and now ever more states (also thanks to technological change) are capable of entering the game. Yet while there are no well-tested protocols or rules of engagement for military activity up there, the weaponisation of space-based assets still seems an unlikely scenario.⁸

Intelligent machines and their scope

Enter artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and autonomy (quantum computing may still lie a bit farther on the horizon, although it may prove no less disruptive). The concept of AI dates back to the early 1950s but technological progress was very slow until the past decade. Then three main changes occurred: the miniaturisation of processors boosted computing power; the spread of mobile and connected devices favoured the generation of an enormous amount of data; and, finally, the application of new types of algorithms exploiting leaps forward in machine learning (and in particular neural networks) increased the overall capabilities of machines.⁹

In the domain of public health and diagnostics, such as cancer research, these technological developments are already proving their worth and their benefits are uncontested. In the field of security and defence, however, the jury is still out: the prospect of fully autonomous weapon systems, in particular, has raised a number of ethical, legal and operational concerns.

‘Autonomy’ in weapon systems is a contested concept at international level, subject to different interpretations of its levels of acceptability. The resulting debate triggered, among other things, the establishment of a group of governmental experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) at the United Nations in 2016. However, this group has not yet come to agreed conclusions. This is in part due to the current strategic landscape and the ‘geopolitics’ of technology, whereby some states developing these systems have no interest in putting regulations in place, while they believe they can still gain a comparative advantage over others. Yet it is also due to the fact that ‘autonomy’ is a relative concept.

Few analysts would contest that, in a compromised tactical environment, some level of autonomy is crucial for an unmanned platform to remain a viable operational tool. Moreover, automatic weapon systems have long existed (for example, landmines) and automated systems are already being used for civilian and force protection purposes, from Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system to sensor-based artillery on warships. With very few exceptions, current weapon systems are at best semi-autonomous. Moreover, they tend to be extremely expensive and thus hardly expendable.

Technological and operational factors still limit the possible use of LAWS: while engaging targets is getting ever easier, the risk of miscalculation, escalatory effects and lack of accountability – all potentially challenging established international norms and laws of armed conflict – seem to favour meaningful human control. Yet the temptation to exploit a temporary technological advantage through a first strike also remains, and not all relevant actors may play by the same ethical and legal rules.

In addition, beyond the traditional military domain, recent spectacular breakthroughs in voice and face recognition (heavily reliant on AI) may further encourage subversion, while the design of ever more sophisticated adaptive malware may promote more sabotage. Those states who can determine the infrastructure and standards behind such activities will gain a strategic advantage.

However, mirroring what already happens in medical research, AI can also be used for detection, pattern recognition and simulation purposes – all potentially crucial in the domains of counter-terrorism, civil protection and disaster response as well as arms control (monitoring and verification). Tailored AI applications can indeed provide better intelligence, situational awareness, analysis and, arguably, decision-making. AI can also be used for practical applications already common in the business sector, like more efficient logistics or predictive maintenance for equipment, which all play a very important role in the military.

Furthermore, most experts highlight an important distinction within the AI domain. Accordingly, narrow AI refers to single-purpose systems, that is, machines that may perform unique tasks extremely well in one realm but are almost useless in unfamiliar scenarios or for other applications. By contrast, general AI refers to the capability to conduct a plurality of multidimensional activities without being explicitly programmed and trained to do so – a capability that is believed to be still a long way off.

For the foreseeable future, the range of potential military applications of ‘narrow’ AI appears quite attractive. However, investments will depend on the readiness to take financial risks with limited public budgets and will probably be weighed against other modernisation and operational priorities. Here, too, technology can be both a boon and a bane, and it is not unlikely that the historical pattern whereby labour-replacing technologies encounter more opposition than enabling ones will be replicated.¹⁰

In the past, international efforts to control the proliferation, production, development or deployment of certain military technologies (from chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear agents to landmines, from blinding lasers to missile defence systems) were all, to various degrees, driven by four distinct but potentially overlapping rationales: ethics, legality, stability and safety. The possible military use of AI has raised concerns on all four grounds. In the past, again, apparently inevitable arms races in those new fields have been slowed or even halted through some institutionalisation of norms – mostly achieved after those technologies had reached a certain degree of maturity and often advocated, inspired and even drafted by communities of relevant experts (from government and/or academia).

As a general-purpose technology, however, AI is quite peculiar, and so are the expert communities involved in its development and applications.¹¹ Yet it is encouraging to note that a significant number of countries (for instance, in the framework of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and companies like IBM, Microsoft and Google have recently come forward to advocate a shared code of conduct for AI – or even publicly articulated own principles, as has the Pentagon, for example – especially regarding its military and ethical ramifications.

In other words, the risk of an arms race in these emerging technologies undeniably exists, along with a more general concern – expressed by the likes of Henry Kissinger, Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk – about possible unintended consequences of an indiscriminate use of AI. Yet so does the hope that such technologies may still be channelled into less disruptive applications and end up in the same category as poison gas or anti-satellite weapons – in which the most powerful states will abstain from attacking each other, at least militarily, while weaker states or non-state actors may still attack but to little effect.

22. Για “ξελαμπικάζ”, όπως πάντα!..

Κραυγή αγωνίας για τον Ερασιτέχνη από τον Νίκο Μπαλτά: «Κάνω έκκληση σε όλους τους Ολυμπιακούς»

ΘΕΜΗΣ ΣΙΝΑΝΟΓΛΟΥ

Τρίτη, 05 Μαϊος 2020

Κραυγή αγωνίας για τον Ερασιτέχνη από την πιο γνωστή μορφή που είναι παρών σε όλα τα σπορ των «ερυθρολεύκων». Είναι μορφή, τον βλέπεις παντού σε όλα τα σπορ του Ολυμπιακού, είναι στον σύλλογο πολλές δεκαετίες, ακόμα και προ Νταϊφά, παιδί της Λέσχης στο Πασαλιμάνι. Είναι ο Νίκος Μπαλτάς. Εκφράζει την αγωνία του για τον Ερασιτέχνη.

Γιατί πας σε όλα τα σπορ του Ολυμπιακού;

Έχω ένα τεράστιο δέσιμο με τον Ερασιτέχνη, είμαι από τους λίγους που έχω παραμείνει στον Ερασιτέχνη από πριν γίνει ο σύλλογος ΠΑΕ! Πριν από τον Νταϊφά! Το ποδόσφαιρο ήταν η τρέλα μας, από το ποδόσφαιρο έγινε Θρύλος ο Ολυμπιακός, αλλά όλα τα σπορ του συλλόγου τα αγαπάμε. Πάντα ήμουν κοντά, πάντα με αγνότητα. Μέχρι και με τον Κουλούρη είχα σκοτωθεί για το σκάνδαλο Μπουμπλή, παρ’ ότι ήμουν συνδικαλιστής του ΠΑΣΟΚ και πάντα με τον Ανδρέα. Αλλά ο Ολυμπιακός πάνω απ’ όλα.

Από πότε είσαι κοντά στον Ολυμπιακό;

Από το 1963 όταν ήρθα στον Πειραιά από τον Άγιο Νικόλαο της Κρήτης. Το πρώτο πράγμα που έκανα ήταν να πάω στο Ολυμπιακό Κολυμβητήριο στο Ζάππειο ~γιατί ήμουν κολυμβητής και λάτρευα από τότε τον Ολυμπιακό~ και μετά πήγα στον «ναό», το παλιό «Καραϊσκάκης».

Πού μένεις;

Στα Καμίνια. Δεν ξεκόλλησα από τα Καμίνια τόσα χρόνια επειδή ήθελα να μένω κοντά στον «ναό».

Γιατί έφυγες από την Κρήτη;

Γιατί τα μετεμφυλιακά χρόνια στην επαρχία ήταν δύσκολα. Ήμουν πάντα δημοκρατικός άνθρωπος. Μέχρι και με τον Σαλιαρέλη, στη συνεδρίαση της επιτροπής για την αύξηση του μετοχικού κεφαλαίου στον Ολυμπιακού όπου συμμετείχα εκλεγμένος από τη γενική συνέλευση, εκφράζοντας με την ψήφο μου το 30% των μικρομετόχων, ήρθα σε κόντρα. Γιατί απαίτησα να φύγει ο Πλεύρης που τον είχε βάλει ο Σαλιαρέλης δικηγόρο για την αύξηση μετοχικού κεφαλαίου. Πήρα το μικρόφωνο και είπα: «Ο κ. Πλεύρης δεν είναι καν δεξιός, εκφράζει την 4η Αυγούστου»! Και μου είπε ο Σαλιαρέλης: «Κύριε Μπαλτά, δεν το περίμενα από εσάς που είστε δημοκρατικός άνθρωπος». Και σηκώθηκε κι έφυγε ο Πλεύρης! Τα έγραφε η «Εξόρμηση». Από την Κρήτη έφυγα γιατί ήμουν ορφανός και ήρθα στα 16 μου στον Πειραιά για να σπουδάσω. Τα χαράματα δούλευα οικοδομή στα μωσαϊκά και μετά πήγαινα στη σχολή εργοδηγός-ηλεκτρολόγος. Συμμετείχα σε όλους τους κοινωνικούς αγώνες, ξηλώναμε τα πεζοδρόμια οι οικοδόμοι για το 7άωρο…

Τι είναι ο Ολυμπιακός για εσένα;

Μετά την οικογένειά μου είναι πάνω απ’ όλα, με αυτό ζω και αναπνέω! Ειδικά τα τελευταία χρόνια έχουμε ζήσει αδιανόητες χαρές σε όλα τα σπορ με τίτλους και στην Ελλάδα και στην Ευρώπη. Εγώ έχω ζήσει τη φτώχεια στον Ερασιτέχνη όταν πριν ακόμα γίνει ΠΑΕ, που τρέχαμε να βρούμε λεφτά για το ρεύμα στη Λέσχη. Ήμασταν τα παιδιά της Λέσχης, όλη μέρα εκεί, εγώ δεν ήξερα καφενείο. Ο Σεραφείμ Ευαγγελίου στο «ΦΩΣ» ~μεγάλη πένα τότε~ μάς αποκαλούσε «τα παιδιά της Λέσχης». Βοηθούσαμε αφιλοκερδώς σε ό,τι μας ζητούσε η διοίκηση. Και ο συγχωρεμένος ο Λεωνίδας, ενώ είχαμε κόντρες, με εκτιμούσε, γι’ αυτό μου ζήταγε να είμαι ο γραμματέας στις γενικές συνελεύσεις.

Βλέπω κάτι φωτογραφίες παλιές με ελληνικές και σέρβικες σημαίες.

Ως συνδικαλιστής όταν βομβαρδιζόταν το Βελιγράδι τους είχαμε πάει 22 νταλίκες με τρόφιμα από εδώ τα συνδικάτα. Δύο φορές που πήγα εκεί τα τελευταία χρόνια με τον Ολυμπιακό, στο μπάσκετ και στο ποδόσφαιρο, με τίμησαν οι εκεί συνδικαλιστές γιατί ξέρουν τι κάναμε. Πράγματα που δεν γράφονται κάναμε… Ξέχασα να σου πω ότι επί Γουλανδρή πρωτοέγινα μέλος στον Ολυμπιακό, όταν άνοιξε στο κοινό τον Ολυμπιακό ο Γουλανδρής, διότι πριν ήταν μόνο οι «Αθάνατοι». Και έγινα πάρεδρο μέλος. Μετά πήρα και μετοχές, αρκετά λεφτά για το εισόδημα που είχα. Πάντα για την τρέλα μου με την ομάδα, χωρίς να κερδίζω κάτι. Διότι μέσα από τον Ολυμπιακό πολλοί κέρδισαν… Είναι μαγαζί-γωνία ο Θρύλος. Θέλω να αναφέρω ορισμένα ονόματα που ξέρω ότι πρόσφεραν πολλά στην ιστορία του συλλόγου.

Πες μου.

Ο Μιχάλης ο Κρικίδης, σκληρός εργάτης, κράτησε τον Ολυμπιακό σε εποχές δύσκολες. Ο Λινάρδος που άνοιγε τη Λέσχη. Οι αδελφοί Ρούσσοι. Ο Γιώργος Ναούμ. Οι αδελφοί Κλώτσα έβαλαν μεγάλη πλάτη λίγο πριν από τον Κόκκαλη. Και ο Ευθυμίου.

Είσαι πάντα στο κάγκελο στα σπορ του Ολυμπιακού. Γιατί το κάνεις αυτό;

Δεν βρίζω. Αυτοσχεδιάζω διάφορα συνθήματα στήριξης στην ομάδα. Και λέω διάφορα δηκτικά προς τους αντίπαλους. Η Λαμπρούση, που φεύγει ~και πικραίνομαι~, όταν πήραμε το Ευρωπαϊκό στο βόλεϊ μέσα στην Τουρκία ήρθε και έπεσε στην αγκαλιά μου και μου είπε ότι φώναζε τα συνθήματά μου μέσα εκεί!

Πες τα αγαπημένα σου συνθήματα που φωνάζεις.

«Θρύλε Θεέ μου, Ολυμπιακέ μου, Θρύλος είναι και Θεός, ένας και μοναδικός, δοξάστε τον»! Αυτό είναι δικό μου. «Πρωταθλητής Ευρώπης ο Ολυμπιακός, χωρίς κολυμβητήριο ο σύλλογος αυτός». Μου έχουν φέρει μέχρι και την αστυνομία σε γήπεδα!

Γιατί;

Τη μία φορά έστειλε αστυνομικό ο Μελισσανίδης για κάτι που φώναζα για εκείνον. Και λέει ο αστυνομικός «τον κυρ Νίκο μωρέ θα συλλάβω;». Και την άλλη φορά ένας σπίκερ στο πόλο έστειλε αστυνομικό γιατί ήμουν από πάνω του και φώναζα και κάλυπτα τη φωνή του την ώρα της μετάδοσης! Και μπήκε μπροστά ο Πάβιτς να με προστατεύσει!

Ανησυχείς για οικονομικό πρόβλημα στον Ερασιτέχνη Ολυμπιακό;

Σαλτάρισα που διάβασα ποιες παίκτριες φεύγουν από την ομάδα βόλεϊ. Γενικώς για τον Ερασιτέχνη τρέμω, τρέμω, τρέμω. Είναι λογικό να έχουμε πρόβλημα. Η ποδοσφαιρική ομάδα, από την οποία παίρνει ποσοστό από τα εισιτήρια ο Ερασιτέχνης, έχει χάσει τόσα ματς χωρίς κόσμο. Διαρκείας εισιτήρια δεν θα υπάρξουν, κάτι απαραίτητο για τον Ερασιτέχνη, αφού έτσι εξασφαλίζει την κάρτα φιλάθλου και τα χρήματα. Οι άλλοι σύλλογοι διαλέγουν ένα τμήμα μόνο να ενισχύσουν, ενώ ο Ολυμπιακός είχε παγκόσμιας κλάσης παίκτες και παίκτριες σε όλα τα σπορ. Ο ΠΑΟΚ έβαζε μεγάλο μπάτζετ μόνο στο αντρικό βόλεϊ. Ο Παναθηναϊκός με τον Γιαννακόπουλο μόνο στο αντρικό βόλεϊ. Η ΑΕΚ έδωσε τεράστιο μπάτζετ μόνο στο χάντμπολ. Διάλεγαν ένα τμήμα μόνο για να χτυπήσουν τον Ολυμπιακό, που είχε μεγάλο μπάτζετ σε όλα.

Τι προτείνεις;

Κάνω έκκληση σε όλους τους φιλάθλους του Ολυμπιακού να ανανεώσουμε την κάρτα μέλους μας και ας μην έχει διαρκείας το ποδόσφαιρο το καλοκαίρι. Και ας μην παίρνουμε εισιτήρια στα ποδοσφαιρικά ματς. Ο Ολυμπιακός πρέπει να μείνει όρθιος, να μη γονατίσει!

Ο Σαλιαρέλης ζει και ξέρω ότι δεν μπορείς να πεις πολλά. Πες μου μία μόνο ιστορία.

Έγινε προσπάθεια αύξησης μετοχικού κεφαλαίου στην ΠΑΕ δύο φορές και απέτυχε. Την τελευταία μέρα, αργά το μεσημέρι που έκλειναν οι τράπεζες, συνεδρίαζε η επιτροπή αύξησης μετοχικού κεφαλαίου ~είχα δώσει και πολλά λεφτά για να διπλασιάσω τις μετοχές μου, 55.000 δρχ. είχα δώσει τότε μετρητά για να διπλασιάσω τις μετοχές μου ως μικρομέτοχος, κρατώντας την αναλογία. Και μας πετάει ο Σαλιαρέλης στο τραπέζι μία επιταγή 100 εκατ. δρχ.! Τρελαθήκαμε.

Πού τη βρήκε;

Αυτό αναρωτιόμασταν κι εμείς… Η επιταγή όμως ήταν «βαλέρ». Που σημαίνει ότι την άλλη μέρα το πρωί μπορούσε να την ακυρώσει. Εκεί ήρθα σε κόντρα μαζί του, ενώ οι άλλοι έκαναν μούγκα, τον φοβούνταν. Παίρνω τον λόγο και του λέω δημοσίως: «Συγγνώμη, αλλά ατυχήσατε. Ο νόμος λέει μετρητά»! Εκεί παίρνει θάρρος ο Ευθυμίου και λέει: «Αργύρη, συγγνώμη, εγώ δραχμοποίησα 17 εκατομμύρια δραχμές και τα κατέθεσα σήμερα». Να μην πολυλογώ, θα είχε βουτήξει τον Ολυμπιακό ο Σαλιαρέλης με τους Μπανασάκηδες… Μετά ήρθε ο Κόκκαλης και καθαρίσαμε.

Ποιον παίκτη του Παναθηναϊκού θαύμαζες πιο πολύ;

Κατ’ αρχάς, ο Παναθηναϊκός είναι ο μισητός αντίπαλος ιστορικά και έχει κάνει πολλές βρομιές, τα ξέρουν οι παλιοί. Δύο φορές τους έχουμε σώσει από υποβιβασμό. Όμως μπορεί να πει κανείς για τον Λουκανίδη κάτι; Και ο Δομάζος. Ιερά τέρατα του ελληνικού ποδοσφαίρου. Ο Δομάζος ήταν και Ολυμπιακός μικρός, μας ξέφυγε, όπως και ο «κούνελος» ο Παπαεμμανουήλ, έμενε στη γειτονιά μου στα Καμίνια. Να σου πω μια ιστορία για τον Κούδα;

Ό,τι θες.

Τον πατέρα του Κούδα τα παιδιά της Λέσχης του Ολυμπιακού τον στήριξαν όταν άνοιξε το μαγαζί στον Πειραιά. Και περισσότερο από όλους τον είχε στηρίξει ο Μιλτιάδης Μαρινάκης. Ο πατέρας του σημερινού προέδρου. Να μη λέμε τι και πώς με λεπτομέρειες…

Έχεις μετανιώσει για κάτι;

Ναι. Το μελανό μου σημείο. Το ότι πήρα το μικρόφωνο στη γενική συνέλευση και έβγαλα ένα πύρινο λόγο υπέρ του να μην κατέβουμε να παίξουμε στο μπαράζ με την ΑΕΚ το 1979. Γιατί με είχε καλέσει στο γραφείο του ο Λεωνίδας και μου είχε πει να τον στηρίξω σε αυτήν την απόφαση. Μας είχε σφάξει ο διαιτητής Παμπορίδης στο Ηράκλειο, είχαν γίνει βρομιές εις βάρος μας. Και ήταν λάθος μου, διότι τα χρόνια περνάνε, ο κόσμος ξεχνά, και το μόνο που μένει είναι οι τίτλοι. Και ας είναι ένας τίτλος στα χαρτιά. Ενώ ήταν κόντρα όλοι οι φίλοι μου στη Λέσχη, στήριξα το να μην κατεβούμε. Σε μία συνέλευση που γινόταν χαμός, ήταν 300 άτομα, και ο «Ατίλιο» έπαιζε τη σάλπιγγα πάνω στο παράθυρο της αίθουσας! Και κάτι ακόμα να σου πω…

Πες μου.

Ενώ ήμουν με τον Ανδρέα συνδικαλιστής, στην κόντρα που είχα με τον Κουλούρη για το θέμα του Μπουμπλή, τα πανό των Ολυμπιακών εγώ τα έγραφα! Εναντίον της παράταξής μου! Και τα έχω τα πανό φυλαγμένα σπίτι μου! Ο Χρήστος Πουλιόπουλος μού λέει ότι πρέπει να τα πάω στο Μουσείο του Ολυμπιακού γιατί είναι μέρος της ιστορίας.

Άλλο αξέχαστο σκηνικό;

Κλαίγαμε έξω από το «Κάβο Ντόρο» στην Καστέλλα, εμείς, ο Μιλάνος, ο Στρουμπούλης που προσπαθούσαν να ξαναφέρουν τον Δεληκάρη πίσω… Υπήρχαν παίκτες τότε που ήθελαν να φύγει ο Δεληκάρης από τον Ολυμπιακό…

Ανησυχείς για υποβιβασμό του Ολυμπιακού; Δεν υπάρχουν στοιχεία βέβαια.

Σε καμία περίπτωση. Στο χωριό μου λένε ότι το ζωντανό όταν πεθαίνει τινάζει το πόδι του. Έπαθαν στραπάτσο στον ΠΑΟΚ με την πολυϊδιοκτησία και την Ξάνθη και θέλουν να κολλήσουν και εμάς τη ρετσινιά. Ποιος ΠΑΟΚ, μωρέ! Ο ΠΑΟΚ των 3 πρωταθλημάτων; Από πότε έγινε αντίπαλός μας; Από τότε που πήρε την ΕΠΟ; Μιλάμε για Ολυμπιακό με 45 πρωταθλήματα. Ο ΠΑΟΚ δεν έχει παίξει στη ζωή του μια φορά στο Τσάμπιονς Λιγκ. Πάω μέχρι και στην κολύμβηση και μου έδωσε ο αρχιπροπονητής του Ολυμπιακού ο Γέμελος τη φανέλα με τους 59 τίτλους. Και είπε στους αθλητές: «Του χρόνου ο παππούς θα πάρει και το 60». Και πράγματι μου έδωσε τη φανέλα και με τους 60 τίτλους! Η πολιτεία τι κάνει όμως, είναι δυνατόν ο άρχων της κολύμβησης και του πόλο να μην έχει κολυμβητήριο;

Άλλο;

Ξέρω ότι έγινε προσπάθεια άλωσης του Ολυμπιακού στο παρελθόν από τον Παναθηναϊκό! Προσπάθησαν να μας κάνουν υποκατάστημά τους… Ο Ολυμπιακός όμως γιγαντώθηκε ξανά, και τώρα είναι γίγαντας, παρά τη λάσπη και τη συκοφαντία. Ο Μαρινάκης θα τα καταφέρει, θα προσφέρει κι άλλα στον σύλλογο. Για το τέλος, θέλω να ζητήσω συγγνώμη από όσους παλιούς ξέχασα τα ονόματά τους. Δεν υπάρχει Ολυμπιακόμετρο αγάπης και προσφοράς. Και κλείσε έτσι σε παρακαλώ: Είχαμε την τύχη να έχουμε μεγάλους προέδρους που ήταν οπαδοί. Γουλανδρής, Νταϊφάς, Κόκκαλης, Μαρινάκης. Και Λεωνίδας Θεοδωρακάκης, Κουντούρης. Είμαι περήφανος που στην ιστορία μας υπάρχει ο Νίκος Γόδας, που ζήτησε να τουφεκιστεί με τη φανέλα του Ολυμπιακού.

• Ευχαριστώ τον Νίκο Μαυρωνά για την ιδέα και τον Χρήστο Πουλιόπουλο για τις φωτογραφίες.

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