Constitutional Law, Criminal law, Free Speech, International, Media

“The Enemy of the People”: Trump Resumes His Attacks On American Media As China Bans The Washington Post
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I was been a long critic of President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media even though I have been critical of biased reporting by some outfits. Trump’s mantra of calling the media, and particularly the Washington Post and the New York Times, “the enemy of the people” was repeated on Twitter last weekend as China banned the Washington Post (and the Guardian) from access to its citizens. Both publications joined others behind the infamous “Great Firewall” of China’s massive censorship apparatus. While Trump has only called for greater liability for American media (rather than censorship), the confluence of these stories is concerning. China can cite our own president in declaring the Washington Post as an enemy and “fake news” to justify its censorship of one of the last remaining free press accessible to some Chinese.

President Trump attacked the New York Times this weekend after the paper wrote a story suggesting that the deal with Mexico was not the result of Trump’s recent threats of a tariff but actually sealed weeks ago.  The New York Times reported that the deal was pretty much completed and that the tariff drama was not material to the outcome.

Trump responded in a series of tweets that said:

Another false report in the Failing @nytimes. We have been trying to get some of these Border Actions for a long time, as have other administrations, but were not able to get them, or get them in full, until our signed agreement with Mexico. Additionally, and for many years,……Mexico was not being cooperative on the Border in things we had, or didn’t have, and now I have full confidence, especially after speaking to their President yesterday, that they will be very cooperative and want to get the job properly done. Importantly, some things……not mentioned in yesterday press release, one in particular, were agreed upon. That will be announced at the appropriate time. There is now going to be great cooperation between Mexico & the USA, something that didn’t exist for decades. However, if for some unknown reason…….there is not, we can always go back to our previous, very profitable, position of Tariffs – But I don’t believe that will be necessary. The Failing @nytimes, & ratings challenged @CNN, will do anything possible to see our Country fail! They are truly The Enemy of the People!

Clearly the “enemy of the people” line has become a standard campaign mantra but it not just unjustified but dangerous. It gives cover to countries like Russia and China in cracking down on the free press as purveyors of “fake news.” Indeed, China and other authoritarian countries have picked up this phrase. Previously, Trump not only called the New York Times “the enemy of the people” but said that the newspaper should
“beg his forgiveness.”

China has now added the Post to the Bloomberg, the New York Times, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal as blocked news sources. Of course, the reason is that the news is far too real for the taste of the Chinese government. While Trump has never called for such censorship, his rhetoric undermines the free press throughout the world as a time when journalists are being arrested and murdered at an alarming rate. Moreover, it is not just Trump. We are seeing Western Europe moving against the free press as it has done against free speech.

The United States has always been the bastion of protection for the free press. The President must be an advocate for this core freedom. He is perfectly free to criticize coverage (and there are ample examples of unfair coverage). However, presidents have long disagreed with coverage without adopting the rhetoric of authoritarian regime or denouncing media as an “enemy of the people.”

149 thoughts on ““The Enemy of the People”: Trump Resumes His Attacks On American Media As China Bans The Washington Post”

  1. Trump’s rhetoric is troubling, but I would have more sympathy for the New York Times and Washington Post is they had demonstrated some semblance of balance and fairness. Their reporting, if you could call it that, is completely slanted and one sided. Their sole purpose seems to be taking down Donald Trump, not reporting new. “Enemy of the People” is wrong, but they are a partisan propaganda organizations, not newspapers. If that causes them issues in China, that is unfortunate, but they brought this on themselves. Not DJT.

  2. OT: Getting closer

    “Barr, who picked Durham to lead the probe, has said he is concerned by information he has seen that U.S. agencies may have improperly surveilled members of the Trump campaign.”

    “Report: DOJ Wants To Interview Two CIA Officers In ‘Spygate’ Probe

    The Justice Department plans to interview two senior CIA officers as part of a sweeping review of surveillance activities against the Trump campaign, The New York Times reported.

    Sources briefed on the plans told The Times that U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is leading the DOJ review, wants to speak with a senior CIA counterintelligence official and a senior CIA analyst who handled intelligence about Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

    Attorney General William Barr is interested in finding out more about the sources the CIA relied on to assess Russia’s goals in interfering in the election, according to The Times. He also wants to know about intelligence the CIA provided the FBI in summer 2016, including about Americans associated with the Trump campaign. (RELATED: DOJ Review Of Russia Probe Is ‘Broad In Scope’ And ‘Multifaceted’)

    One of the officials sought for an interview worked at a CIA counterintelligence mission center that worked closely with the FBI.

    CIA Director Gina Haspel does not plan to block the interviews, according to The Times.

    Barr, who picked Durham to lead the probe, has said he is concerned by information he has seen that U.S. agencies may have improperly surveilled members of the Trump campaign.”

  3. OT: Their getting closer.

    “Daily Caller News Foundation Defeats FBI’s Bid To Shield Docs Surrounding Comey Ally
    8:32 PM 06/11/2019

    The FBI must begin producing documents regarding Daniel Richman, the Columbia Law School professor former FBI Director James Comey used as a go-between with the press, a federal judge decided.

    Richman is a close friend of the former director who performed work for the Bureau as a “special government employee.”

    The Daily Caller News Foundation and Cause of Action Institute are seeking records and communications Richman produced for the FBI to better understand “special projects” he performed at Comey’s direction. …

    “The court finds that the FBI has not shown exceptional circumstances or made sufficient progress in reducing its backlog to warrant an Open America stay,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

    “This is a significant victory not just for The Daily Caller News Foundation, but for all members of the transparency community who want to hold the FBI accountable,” said Cause of Action’s Eric Bolinder. “The FBI picked the path of obstructing records transparency by mis-applying the Open America standard. Thankfully, that now has to stop.”

    “This important precedent signals that the courts will not tolerate the federal government’s attempts to stall FOIA requests in order to circumvent transparency measures,” Bolinder added.”

    https://dailycaller.com/2019/06/11/daniel-richman-james-comey/?utm_medium=email

  4. Anon, somewhere above asks how the DOJ and/or the FBI could have people that were working against Republicans or Trump since Trump is President. He acts as if nothing has happened. Mentioned here is a few of the changes based on the contemptable actions by FBI agents. More bureaucrats to follow as the investigation works its way into the State Department. Anon thinks these actions were OK since they were leveled against a Republican. What an a$$.

    The FBI Tragedy: Elites above the Law
    Victor Davis Hanson June 11, 2019 6:30 AM

    After decades in the FBI, the top brass came to believe they could flout the law and pursue their own political agendas.
    One of the media and beltway orthodoxies we constantly hear is that just a few bad apples under James Comey at the FBI explain why so many FBI elites have been fired, resigned, reassigned, demoted, or retired — or just left for unexplained reasons. The list is long and includes director James Comey himself, deputy director Andrew McCabe, counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, attorney Lisa Page, chief of staff James Rybicki, general counsel James Baker, assistant director for public affairs Mike Kortan, Comey’s special assistant Josh Campbell, executive assistant director James Turgal, assistant director for office of congressional affairs Greg Bower, executive assistant director Michael Steinbach, and executive assistant director John Giacalone. In short, in about every growing scandal of the past two years — FISA, illegal leaking, spying on a presidential candidate, lying under oath, obstructing justice — someone in the FBI is involved.

    We are told, however, that the FBI’s culture and institutions are exempt from the widespread wrongdoing at the top. Such caution is a fine and fitting thing, given the FBI’s more than a century of public service. Nonetheless, many of those caught up in the controversies over the Russian-collusion hoax were not recent career appointees. Rather, many came up through the ranks of the FBI. And that raises the question, for example, of where exactly Peter Strzok (22 years in the FBI) learned that he had a right to interfere in a U.S. election to damage a candidate that he opposed.

    And why would an Andrew McCabe (over 21 years in the FBI) think he had the duty to formulate an “insurance policy” to take out a presidential candidate? Or why would he even consider overseeing an FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s improper use of emails when his wife had been a recent recipient of Clinton-related PAC money? And why would McCabe contemplate leaking confidential FBI information to the press or even dream of setting up some sort of operation to remove a sitting president under the 25th Amendment? And how did someone like the old FBI vet Peter Strozk ever end up at the center of the entire mess — opening up the snooping on the Trump campaign while hiding that fact and while briefing the candidate on Russian interference in the election, interviewing Michael Flynn, preening as a top FBI investigator for Robert Mueller’s dream team, right-hand man of “Andy” McCabe, convincing Comey to change the wording of his writ in the Clinton-email-scandal investigation, softball coddling of Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, instrumental in the Papadopoulos investigation con — all the while conducting an affair with fellow FBI investigator and attorney Lisa Page and bragging about his assurance that the supposedly odious Trump would be prevented from being elected. If a group of Trump zealots were to call up the FBI tomorrow and allege that a member of Joe Biden’s family has had unethical ties with the Ukrainian or Chinese government, would that gambit “alarm” the FBI enough to prompt an investigation of Biden and his campaign? How many career-professional Peter Strozks are still at the agency?

    In sum, why did so many top FBI officials, some with long experience in the FBI, exhibit such bad judgment and display such unethical behavior, characterized by arrogance, a sense of entitlement, and a belief that they were above both the law and the Constitution itself? Were they really just rogue agents, lawyers, and administrators, or are they emblematic of an FBI culture sorely gone wrong?

    How and why would James Comey believe that as a private citizen he had the right to leak classified memos of presidential conversations that he had recorded on FBI time and on FBI machines?

  5. Latest Quinnipac poll:

    Root Canal 46%, Trump 42%
    Day old gas station sushi 46%, Trump 40%
    Home vasectomy kit 47%, Trump 41%
    Nickleback covering Who Let the dogs out 49%
    Trump 41%

    Biden 53%, Trump 40%
    Sanders 51%, Trump 42%
    Harris 49%, Trump 41%
    Warren 49%, Trump 42%
    Buttigieg 47%, Trump 42%
    Booker 47%, Trump 42%

  6. Speaking of the enemy of the people, Trump reassured Lil’ Kim today that he would not allow the CIA to do things like flip his half brother as alleged, who Kim murdered a couple of years ago.

    1. ha ha that was definitely a lie on trump’s part. he can’t stop the cia from doing its job, obviously

      kim’s not stupid.

      just another bizarre remark from trump that has people scratching heads

    1. makes sense. especially since enforcing dogmatic belief about climate change causes are part of the propagandistic agenda of the mass media.

      i fully accept that there is climate change. i don’t accept that the causes are fully well known. there is a lot of evidence and science to suggest that solar activity is a huge and perhaps a primary factor. basic science especially considering the sun is the source of the heat energy in the first place. duh.

      the sun can cut a big fart and wipe out our industrial civilization electric power grids and plunge us all into the 19th century,. which could mean a billion person die off within a month. you never hear about that, hardly. ted koppel wrote a book on it and everyone yawned

      a really bad coronal mass ejection falling outside our predictive “models” could roast our planet like a marshmellow. really. arthur c clarke wrote a scifi novel about that once. it’s a concern like the killer asteroid scenario; generally people are unawares.

      climate change is a real trend. the wise thing to do is focus on remediation especially with proper land use and development laws, and civil engineering projects. but, instead the mass media wants to condition everyone not to use oil, because they are CERTAIN that’s the silver bullet. except even the climate change scientists hooked on the anthropogenic causes say its’ probably too late already

      so yeah fake news is a dangerous problem for sure. a corollary of a horrible and massive educational failure in universities which fail to teach thinking skills, and instead are big lazy drunkfest cushy reeducation camps. just an ongoing slouching to Gomorrah like Bork said.

      1. Kurtz, still waiting for you to acknowledge the inaccurate attacks you made on the NYTs in regard to the Hog Kong protests.

        As to climate change and media, your problem isn’t the media, it’s scientists. Here’s a list of the scientific organizations and associations – almost all of them in the world of any renown – with their statements on climate change.

        “….National and international science academies and scientific societies have assessed current scientific opinion on global warming. These assessments are generally consistent with the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

        Some scientific bodies have recommended specific policies to governments, and science can play a role in informing an effective response to climate change. Policy decisions, however, may require value judgements and so are not included in the scientific opinion.[21][22]

        No scientific body of national or international standing maintains a formal opinion dissenting from any of these main points. The last national or international scientific body to drop dissent was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists,[23] which in 2007[24] updated its statement to its current non-committal position.[25] Some other organizations, primarily those focusing on geology, also hold non-committal positions….”

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change

  8. Turley says: “and there are ample examples of unfair coverage”. Really? Are you talking about Faux News, there Jon? You must be because they trade in pro-Trump fake news like no other media. As that Trump supporter said at a recent Amash campaign rally in Michigan, she had no idea that Mueller found any fault with Trump because she only watches “conservative” news. Hannity, et al, constantly claim, falsely, that there was “no collusion, no obstruction.” She really believed that to be the truth. It is not.

    I’d really like to know what you, Jon Turley, consider to be “unfair” coverage of Trump. How should unbiased media report his endless lying about everything, his caging of young children and separating them from their families, criticizing his political opponents with the graves of the venerated dead in the background, his petty and vindictive name-calling and his ordering of all current and recent campaign and administration personnel to ignore Congressional subpoenas? How about the 10 specific instances of obstruction of justice found by Mueller? Should Congress just let this go? Should media ignore this as if this is normal behavior from a POTUS? If so, since when, and why should media ignore this severe departure from the dignity of the office of President and respect for the rule of law that previous Presidents have shown? The only media that report unfairly are Faux News and Rush Limbaugh. They lie every day about Trump and his failures and attack anyone who is a threat to him. Just recently, they started the “Joe Biden has something wrong with him campaign”. They did the same thing to Hillary Clinton, claiming she had a neurological disorder, and they’ve put together a false video with the same sort of thing regarding Nancy Pelosi. That is “unfair coverage” if there ever was such a thing, but the Trumpster dupes eat it up.

    1. i cant find anything on the NYT headlines about the biggest protest in Hong Kong since it was handed over in about 1997. Maybe that’s because the NYT is a bunch of suckups to the Chicoms. Like nearly every other American MSM legacy media operation.

      Pathetic!

      You call this democracy and the vaunted free press is here to inform? No, it’s here to sell eyeballs to advertisers, and skew elections in the way they like!

      They ARE THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!

      Turn to Asia if you want some fresh news. it’s sad but true.

      https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/hong-kong-leader-carrie-lam-defiant-as-city-gears-up-for-fresh-protests-strikes

          1. I found one on abc now belatedly too. The Fox story was easily the best coverage of the implications.

            Understand, the Chicoms want to own us all as their slaves just like they already have the mainland population. They have to bring Hong Kong to heel first, then Taiwan. Then step by step they eat the globe like a cancer.

            THANK GOD POTUS DONALD J TRUMP IS FINALLY STANDING UP TO THEM

              1. i didnt see these on their leaderboards. they buried them. so they wrote them and the paper subscribers can see them and they are down-graded on the internet. sad and pathetic.

                youtube is active in suppressing this news too

                the mass media and silicon valley are heavily politicized.

                there were ways the mass media blacked out news decades ago which have been upscaled now to the internet.

                truth emerges at times and then it’s shouted down and demonetized and discredited etc etc etc.

                one thing has not changed. social organization is the key to all power.

                as machine routines (software, AI) organize more and more of our social activity, those who command those machines wax supremely powerful

                but what if the machines one day command themselves? To get more powerful they need to get more autonomous. wonder where that will lead!

                1. Kurtz, your not seeing them is not the same thing as what you continue to allege. NOte that the Times began covering this before you, so how do you know where it was. Secondly, they published a strong opinion the next day by the editorial board that belies your claim that they were somehow in the pocket of the Chinese.

                2. PS Kurtz, this is at the bottom of the article I linked to:

                  “A version of this article appears in print on June 10, 2019, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Swarm in Hong Kong Protests China’s ‘Evil Law’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

                  1. Keep on hauling ashes for the NYT. Why do you care? I spit on them. I don’t need to be fair to the NYT. They’re not fair to me, they’re just another big bloated lying mass media eyeball selling operation. You a newspaperman? Who cares. I give the NYT my foot.

                    1. I care because riughly the subject was who is lying more, the press or Trump. In this case you used a false charge to prove a point about how bad the media was. It turns out that the exact opposite of what you charged occurred and the paper expressed an opinion completely opposite of what you charged them with.

                      Why bother posting if we just make stuff up and can’t admit an error.

                    2. “Why bother posting if we just make stuff up and can’t admit an error.”

                      That is exactly what people are asking about you, Anon. You have made many accusations that weren’t true and have lied in most of you claims. You are the height of ignorance.

                    3. i could care less about trump’s daily fibs and exaggerations and inaccuracies, the lying mass media has decades of fake news to answer for not just a bunch of sales puffery on tweeter

                      you’re obsessed with trump. he will be gone in 1 or 4 years but the lying mass media will be up to the same old same old

                      there is a nexus between the “firewall” which China PRC government uses to block out unfavorable news about itself on Chinese based media and internet platforms, the relentless whining about trump from the mass media which has been lying about the Russia collusion nonsense for years , the recent deplatforming and excessive banning that youtube and other silicon valley outfits have been doing. it’s all tied up in some sinister way i can feel it in my bones. i’m, too busy at the moment to elaborate but people on the internet carrying buckets of water for the NYT are not going to help with the long term free and transparent dissemination of information in the world i am certain of that

        2. Mr. Kurtz,
          A lot of the Hong Kong Chinese “got out of Dodge” ahead of the British handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese in the 1990s.
          A lot of those migrated to BC, Canada. I think that contributed to a long-term real estate boom and high housing prices.
          I think the Hong Kong residents and local government have more freedom and autonomy than the mainline Chinese, but they’re still under the control of a dictatorship.
          If they press too hard and too long with open opposition to China’s government, there could be a violent crackdown that mirrors what happened in the early 1990s when people openly protested.

          2. the issue is less freedom than it is ABJECT TERROR at the prospect of being subject to arbitrary extradition to the dog and pony show mainland court system

            the Chinese courts are a pathetic fraud. every criminal charge and every lawsuit boils down to 2 things. a) gaunxi of the accused versus the accuser and b) bribes. who’s paying more.
            all the Chinese people know this, inside the wire and outside of it too.

            Hong Kong is a different system, which has been fairly well untouched by the Communists…. until now. They don’t want to be part of the mainland “system” of “justice”

            1. guanxi means social network, vaguely. who’s got the better set of friends and patrons, which the judges need to suck up to more. that’s the primary thing. bribes are a secondary. the corrupt officials may take a bribe and then produce no results, just because the other guanxi is stronger.

              the level of corruption in china is as bad as it was under the late Imperial system. Xi Jinpeng’s crackdown was a day late and a dollar short. It’s corrupt officials who should be taken out and shot by the tens of thousands there, and it might make a dent. a small dent, in the problem. population 1.386 billion, the CPC is in charge, but less powerful than it pretends. mostly it’s just corrupt human nature operating there now, party a conseqence of the insane cultural revolution of the 1960s which made war on virtue itself (The four olds)

              instead of doing what is obviously needed on the mainland, they’re tripping over their own stupid selves in Hong Kong, now, sad!

              1. The Cpc should read my posts here and send me a thank you letter and a small hongbao for giving them good advice.

                a) leave hong kong alone. forget about the extradition thing. bad idea, really bad.

                b) fix the corrupt Chinese mainland courts. start enforcing the laws on the books instead of just letting judges ignore evidence, ignore procedure, ignore civil rights statutes, and just play favorites and take bribes all the time. clean up your own house first!

                1. Kurtz, you incorrectly accused the NYTs as avoiding this protest and because they were indebted – or something – to the Chinese and said this confirmed your opinion that our MSM is corrupt – or something.. My posts above disprove this.

                  1. I peeled some of the NYT off my shoe earlier,. at first I thought it was a piece of used toilet paper from a stinking public restaurant bathroom I was in earlier. then i saw it was just a shred from the NYT that got stuck on my shoe somehow. Either way the same– paper covered with feces dirtier even than bottom of my shoe.

                    I’m not worried about pleasing the NYT, you can keep on polishing their apple if you like.

                    2. Yes I am full of hate for the mass media.

                      I try and not be hateful to people but the NYT is just a rag, the product of a business, which is there to enrich the ownership, and pay the staff to do their bidding. spout the party faction’s line, like every other mass media business. Get that through your thick skulls. it is not the Sanhedrin!

                      I never understand how Democrats want to regulate the hell out of every business except for Mass Media. Oh which always supports Democrats but encourages regulating the hell out of other business sectors. See how that works?

                      I will say this much, I like the writing style, that’s about it. The wapo is far worse. Wall Street Journal a better product than both by far. But still just another product.

                      The NYT is like a pro football team’s fan newsletter. Same ideas, report whatever “news” builds the brand and makes more money. It’s all self serving, journalism always has been. They are not some kind of saints.

                      but oh look at how they throw their competition like Julian Assange overboard. See how that works? He just disappeared ya know.

                      Now that one Arab sheik the Saudis sawed up, oh he was important. We heard about him relentlessly. That scared wapo and Bezos I guess. But they locked Assange up and these outfits seem to have barely noticed.

                      Then again maybe im wrong about that too. I sure in HELL don’t sit around reading their leaderboards day after day like some other fools.

    2. “US PRESS SAYS NOTHING fake news media is PATHETIC”

      That explains why Peter is so ignorant.

  10. Dear Mr. Smith:

    Thank you for informing me of the two hyperlinks limit in a single, individual post.
    I was indeed unaware of the rule. Please except my apology. I will follow the rule in any and all future comments.
    dennis hanna

  11. To Mr. Kurtz
    And
    To “Here, Jewish Dennis Praeger discusses this…”
    And
    To All others of of a similar mind set

    “Did it start with:

    https://youtu.be/wHmhf_wrcrM

    Did it start with:

    Yinon Plan

    youtu.be/0ax3KVr9CQE

    Did it start with:

    “Of course, we say it’s our land, the Torah says it, but they (Palestinians & Arabs) don’t believe in the Torah. So that’s the reason there is not peace.” – Senator Chuck Schumer’s speech at AIPAC.

    2,079
    8:52 PM – Mar 6, 2018

    Did it start with:

    Wesley Clark 7 counties in 5 years

    https://youtu.be/9RC1Mepk_Sw

    Did it start with the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

    “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

    ( The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 during World War I announcing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. )

    Did it start with:

    It did not start with the First Zionist Congress held in Basel (Basle), Switzerland, from August 29 to August 31, 1897.

    Zionism aims at establishing for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine. For the attainment of this purpose, the Congress considers the following means serviceable:
    1. The promotion of the settlement of Jewish agriculturists, artisans, and tradesmen in Palestine.
    2. The federation of all Jews into local or general groups, according to the laws of the various countries.
    3. The strengthening of the Jewish feeling and consciousness.
    4. Preparatory steps for the attainment of those governmental grants which are necessary to the achievement of the Zionist purpose.
    — Formula adopted by the First Zionist Congress

    Did it start with:

    Book 5 of the Torah
    Attributed to a Moses
    So-called: Deuteronomy 20:10-17
    King James Version (KJV)

    10 When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it.
    11 And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.
    12 And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it:
    13 And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:
    14 But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.
    15 Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.
    16 But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:
    17 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee:
    King James Version (KJV)

    [ Traditionally understood as the words of a one Moses delivered before the conquest of Canaan. ]

    I truly and deeply apologize to the professor and all commentators on this blog. The aforementioned comment was inadvertently posted to the wrong article. Again, I abjectly apologize.

    Sincerely,
    dennis hanna

    1. Dennis Hanna,

      You might not be aware but this website only allows two hyperlinks per comment. I dereferenced one of the links so that the comment would post. If you wish to provide the readership with more than two links, this may be accomplished through the use of additional comments of two links per each.

      1. Dear Mr. Smith:

        Thank you for informing me of the two hyperlinks limit in a single, individual post.
        I was indeed unaware of the rule. Please except my apology. I will follow the rule in any and all future comments.
        dennis hanna

        1. No worries. I just didn’t want to see you spend a lot of time on a comment only to have it fail to post for unknown reasons.

    2. Dennis, you don’t know my mindset. If you think I am a Zionist, I am not. I am an American. But I have no problem with America’s favorable relationship with Israel however, as I can see it suits our strategic interests.

      I am well versed in anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli criticisms, both ancient and contemporary. I am well versed in Israeli self criticism too. I will spare people a bibliography.

      I am also well versed in the OT “ban” … here is how Christian scholars interpret this.

      https://religionnews.com/2015/01/12/god-command-genocide-bible/

      For my own part I take as part of my own “canon” Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey. Perhaps you remember what the Greeks did to Troy when they sacked it? They slaughtered them right on down to the infant son of Hector, whom even the Greeks agreed was “the best.”So these ancient tales of woe are hardly exclusive to the Jews.

      Life is hard, and always ends in death. Nations live and die too. The ability of the Jews to survive is amazing, and from a perspective of any would be nationalist of anyone of the nations (Geintiles) inspirational. F. h Nietzsche wrote a book about that called “The Genealogy of Morals” and his foolish niece Elisabeth in her ignorance and zeal to promote him for profit, misrepresented him as a vulgar antisemite.

      I find many of my Arabs friends feel the same way. They are not reflexively anti-Jewish – if they are smart. If they were not smart, they would not be my friends.

      Of course the Israelis have a regional strategy. Of course they aspire to power. Don’t fear this. Of course they wished for us to enter middle eastern wars for their benefit. And perhaps we did too much– in retrospect. I guess that is on us, as people say.

      They are also reknowned for their ability to make deals and keep up their end of it, on the whole. It’s also ok to hold them up to their end of things, and push for a good deal, and punish any wrongs. This is a mature mindset.

      There is a saying that nations do not have friends, rather, they have interests. Think about that.

      Apply their ethnic-national virtues to your own national belonging, and then it all makes sense.

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