Spy for Israel Loses Supreme Court Appeal [Pollard]

AP ^ | 3/20/6

[SmithL]

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court refused Monday to give Jonathan Pollard, now serving a life sentence for spying for Israel, access to records that could bolster his case for a presidential clemency.

Pollard's lawyers wanted the justices to reopen his case, so that they could pursue secret documents the government submitted to the judge who sentenced Pollard in 1987.

Pollard sold military secrets to Israel while he worked at the Defense Department's Pentagon headquarters. He was arrested in 1985 and pleaded guilty. The Supreme Court had already refused to let the former Navy intelligence analyst withdraw the guilty plea.

The latest Supreme Court case was not about spying, but about government authority to keep records used in court sealed from the public.

A federal appeals court said last summer that it had no authority to review requests for the documents which Pollard contends will help his bid for presidential clemency.

[Sometimes A River]

No, moron.

From your profile page: I'm a Bible-believing Christian

[Shalom Israel]

The rule is this: anyone who uses the word "meme" in casual conversation or political discourse is a liberal. Or a kook.

I sympathize: I hated semioticians before semiotics was fashionable. However, I plead innocence on this use of a word I also generally despise: the idea being conveyed here is that Mr. Acts did not betray himself by the use of a specific word or phrase, but rather of making a statement that only makes sense against the backdrop of certain assumptions and ideas.

So for the first time, your rule has mislead you--but the ecxeption is rare enough that you can keep using it; I use a similar rule myself.

[Shalom Israel]

From your profile page: I'm a Bible-believing Christian

For someone who chose a bible verse as his nick, you're interestingly ignorant of scriptures. I'm using the term "moron" in its strict technical sense, to describe someone of extremely low intelligence.

Homework: find all the passages in which Christ, Paul or another prophet calls someone a "fool". Interpret in light of the sermon on the mount. I'll help you out if you get stuck.

[BeHoldAPaleHorse]

"Broker"? Don't "brokers" sell more than one item in their career?

Yes, they do. And Pollard sold at least 850,000 pages of documents, over half of which were classified Top Secret. He then agreed to a plea bargain in which he was to cooperate fully with American authorities in identifying what documents went to Israel. He then proceeded to renege on that agreement.

You are conflating Pollard's guilty plea with the entirety of his activities.

[Sometimes A River]

You're really a great witness!!

[Shalom Israel]

And Pollard sold at least 850,000 pages of documents...

BS. That's been debunked long ago. That number was arrived at by counting every page of a document, if Pollard gave Israel so much as one sentence from it. They also added in the page count of any document that was referenced by a document procured by Pollard.

His total delivery to Israel consisted of eleven bundles of papers, each of which fit in a briefcase. To take almost a million pages would require an 18-wheeler.

You are conflating Pollard's guilty plea with the entirety of his activities.

You are conflating the activities of Aldritch Ames and Robert Hanssen with those of Pollard, along with some plain-old exaggerations known to be untrue.

[cicero's_son]

The reason the rule works so well is because the word betrays the user's intellectual framework.

For liberals, there is no absolute truth. There are only competing "memes," which--through the alchemy of language--insinuate themselves into human brains in the form of religion, ideology, and various forms of false consciousness masquerading as common sense.

Conservatives, on the other hand, acknowledge and seek absolute, transcendent Truth. Therefore, the very idea of "memes," which I gather are akin to linguistic viruses, are either anathema or...beside the point. There is only Truth and unTruth. Ideas must be evaulated in terms of how True they are.

Anyway, that's just a longwinded way of saying that your attempt to dismiss an opponent's argument by calling it an "anti-Semitic meme" is obfuscatory.

And your use of liberal verbal strategies makes me, at least, suspicious of your motives.

[William Terrell]

Welcome to reality. Is it nice where you've been? There are any number of cases where an individual is never freed, even after ironclad exculpatory evidence. That is of course even easier to perpetrate when the documents on which the conviction was based are "classified".

If I'm not mistaken, such a writ as Habeas Corpus filed by a next friend has the flexibility to clear it up. If not, some other extraordinary remedy, or even a plain suit. There is always a remedy in the American justice system. It may be expensive, but it's there.

Courts can open classified documents and consider the contents without sharing them with a plaintiff, if the classified documents are alleged to have a bearing on a complaint. Consider the case of Michael New and Bubba's classified EO's.

[Shalom Israel]

You're really a great witness!!

Suffering fools gladly is not a job requirement.

[Sometimes A River]

You just prove yourself with every post!

[BeHoldAPaleHorse]

That number was arrived at by counting every page of a document, if Pollard gave Israel so much as one sentence from it. They also added in the page count of any document that was referenced by a document procured by Pollard.

Which was made necessary because he refused to assist in a damage assessment that was a necessary condition of his plea bargain. The assumption was that if he checked it out, he sent it.

His total delivery to Israel consisted of eleven bundles of papers, each of which fit in a briefcase.

He was taking pictures of many of the documents. He specifically denied having done so, despite the FBI seizing large amounts of exposed film with images of documents on them. He was taking so much material, he had to use a handtruck each time he visited the repository. His apartment was full of documents. The agents investigating the case ended up with seriesly stuned beebers.

[William Terrell]

Gosh, you are paranoid.

Let me make this simple. Who can fault a nation, any nation, for taking measures to protect its security? Isn't this the very issue you advance in favor of Pollard?

There is a Israel lobby in the Congress, isn't there? You know there is. What are they doing, if not protecting the security of Israel? What is the purpose of a lobby? To manipulate, isn't it?

I don't see your objection to anyone saying that. And I certainly don't see it is "anti-semetic". That term is used an awful lot to stifle debate.

The poster obvious has issues with Israel. I do, too. That certainly doesn't expand to an assumption that he hates, what did you call it, Joooos? Is he not allowed to have issues with Israel? If not, why not?

Will you call me "anti-semetic", now?

[Sometimes A River]

Will you call me "anti-semetic", now?

Yes, he will.

Sad to see more and more "conservatives" resorting to attacks liberals use, like calling someone racist, bigot, etc., when they disagree with them.

You do make a good point. It is in Israel's best interest that the US invade Iran, get rid of their nuclear program, etc.I just don't think that's our problem.

And saying Israel should rely on their own power for their own security, and not to rely on others is not "anti-semitic."

[Ax]

Sharon Scranage was NOT spying for Guyana. She was a low-level employee at the Station in Accra. She was a country girl who fell under the spell of a Ghanian Intelligence Officer and ultimately compromised some sensitive information from the Station.

[Shalom Israel]

The reason the rule works so well is because the word betrays the user's intellectual framework. For liberals, there is no absolute truth. There are only competing "memes"...

Right. That isn't my framework however. I'm merely struggling to find a word that successfully captures the idea of "a unit of information, including not only what is said but enough assumptions to make the statement intelligible."

A bad example is if someone refers to ZOG. Of course one knows immediately that he's an antisemite who believes the Protocols are real, and who believes that Jews control the world. But in this case the word itself suffices to convey that information, because hardly anyone even knows the word who isn't an antisemitic conspiracy kook.

Another example is the word "meme" itself, but again that's a piece of jargon that most people don't know, so the word itself is enough information.

A slightly better, but still not great, example, is the word "Zionist." It has fallen into such disuse that honest-to-goodness Zionists hardly use it much anymore. But Arabs use it all over the place; for them it's a synonym for "Jew", but usefully (for them) gives the impression that they don't hate all Jews, only the "bad" Jews known as "Zionists." Very often, anyone who uses the word will turn out to be acting under the influence, to a greater or lesser extent, of anti-Israeli propaganda originating with the Pali movement itself.

What makes that a better example is that the word "Zionist" itself carries none of that baggage directly. If you use it, you might in fact be a Zionist. Or you might be a hisorian, discussing Zionism. Context will identify those two cases reliably. The remaining cases are exceedingly likely to show taint of Pali propaganda, and you'll spot elements of it in the context--for example, the speaker will almost certainly invoke various revisionist historical claims advanced by the Palis themselves. It isn't the word itself; it's a package of information larger than the word. The mere fact that they're using the word, for example, suggests that they spend time in intellectual circles where the word is more common than it is in the rest of the community--namely, amongst Arabs.

Anyway, that's just a longwinded way of saying that your attempt to dismiss an opponent's argument by calling it an "anti-Semitic meme" is obfuscatory.

Negative. Mr. Acts stated that "Israeli blood is more precious than American blood" to many Freepers. I inquired, "What blood," and he replied, "The blood they want us to spill in Iran."

That statement, in a thread about Jonathan Pollard, is unintelligible: since he refers to blood that "they want us to shed," it has clearly not been shed yet. In what sense can one be outraged about unshed blood, as if it were in fact already shed? There are only two ways the statement can make sense: first, if one believes that the future shedding of blood is certain; second, if one believes that one's protagonist shares Israel's alleged desire to shed American blood in Iran.

If the former, then the person is saying that Israel somehow has the power to make its wishes reality--in other words, that Israel can indeed cause America to go to war with Iran.

If the latter, one is at least asserting that Israel has a wish that goes against America's interests, and that many Freepers share that wish and the concommittant disregard for America's interests. However you slice it, that's a powerful assertion that Israel is pursuing a malevolent policy with respect to the United States.

But that isn't everything contained in his statement. What does "the blood Israel wants us to shed" mean? He seems to think there's something we both know about, and that it involves shedding blood in Iran. Clearly, he's referring to Iran's current nuclear rumblings, and the American counter-rumbings which suggest that Iran may be the next target in the WoT.

In other words, America is taking a warlike stance against Iran... and Mr. Acts doesn't attribute this to the fact that Iran is a scary hotbed of terrorists with nuclear ambitions. He doesn't indicate that the United States has a real stake in containing the threat of Iran. Rather, he insinuates that the US has no interest in Iran, apart from Israel's interest. After all, if our invasion of Iran is inevitable in our own interest anyway, then why grumble that other nations are glad to see us do it?

The bottom line: the statement by Mr. Acts is only comprehensible if you realize that it rests on the assumption that (1) Israel has an interest in America invading Iran, (2) America doesn't have an interest of its own in invading Iran, and yet (3) the shedding of American blood in Iran is likely despite the lack of American national interest in doing so.

See what you made me do? You made me go into a long-winded analysis of his statement, to capture precisely why he agrees with Cindy Sheehan, David Duke, Ahmedinajad, and others, that the US is heading toward war in Iran, against its own interests, because Israel is somehow tricking us into it.

It's much shorter to say, "This brand of antisemite is easy to spot," and leave it at that. If you want a fuller explanation, I'd say, "He is echoing today's standard antisemitic talking points precisely." But then you'd point out that this is only implied by his statement. Which leads us to struggle for a word to describe the complete informational content of his statement, going beyond the precise words.

Which leads us to my ill-fated decision to use the word "meme", for lack of any other word to capture this notion. I'm looking for something in the territory of "implication," "implicature," "assumption," etc.

[ColdSteelTalon]

I never really knew what he told to Israel. Does anybody know and can explain?

[Shalom Israel]

Sad to see more and more "conservatives" resorting to attacks liberals use, like calling someone racist, bigot, etc., when they disagree with them.

I disagree with practically everyone on this thread, but I've only called you an antisemite, as is apparent to anyone actually paying attention. There's a reason for that.

[Sometimes A River]

Of course.

And im anti-chinese because the Chinese are "they."

I'm also anti-British, because the British are "they" as well.

I'm also an anti-semite because I believe our foreign policy should be taken with our own considerations trumping all others.

[Shalom Israel]

I'm also an anti-semite because I believe our foreign policy should be taken with our own considerations trumping all others.

No. You're an antisemite because you believe that (1) America has no interest in invading Iran, (2) Israel does have an interest in our invading Iran, and (3) by some voodoo, we're going to invade Iran, against our best interests, because Israel wants us to.

Textbook jewish conspiracy theory.

[Sometimes A River]

When did I ever say any of those things.

And, is it not in Israel's best interest that we do invade Iran?