Age of Hooper (The): A Future Obama Advisor speaks at the ADC Conference

November 10, 2008

A Future Obama Advisor speaks at the ADC Conference

Here is part of a video I took during the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Conference in DC, June 2007. There were three speakers at the morning conference: Robert Malley, Sarah Roy (an anti-Israel academic), and Alif Safieh (a Palestinian diplomat).

One of the speakers, Robert Malley, has come into the news lately as a "senior foreign policy adviser" for the upcoming Obama administration. He is speaking about the current state of the Palestinian National Movement, and is advising them regarding their future strategies and how to package their message for US consumption.

Link:

There's some interesting stuff here ... he seems to speak highly of Arafat at times, and is anxious for Fatah and Hamas to come together under a single program and work together. Near the end he speaks somewhat darkly of the reasons why Congress votes the way it does, viz.: "... for all the reasons, and we know the reasons ...", and what a "solution" to the problem would be, viz.: "I think most of us in this room know what a solution would look like if there is going to be a viable and fair solution, we could get into the details, but I don't think that's a mystery anymore ..."

Interesting stuff; careful, at times both straddling and revealing, and a window possibly into some of the thinking we can expect from the Obama White House on this topic. In fairness to Mr. Malley (and to myself) I'm posting Mr. Malley's entire presentation, along with some Q & A. I think he's slightly less guarded during the Q & A. Maybe that's just me. No sense inviting any "out-of-context" defenses, though. So here it is, for the record if for no other reason.

**** Update ****

If you're having trouble with the video try reloading the page and hitting "play" again. I apologize for the problem ... I had to use Sevenload because of the length and they seem to be having some bandwidth issues.

Posted at 08:37 PM in Israel | Permalink

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What is the Age of Hooper?

'The builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend; they made a new house with the stones of the old castle; year by year, generation after generation, they enriched and extended it; year by year the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness; until, in sudden frost, came the Age of Hooper; the place was desolate and the work all brought to nothing; Quomodo sedet sola civitas. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." ..... Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

March 2009

Books I Recommend

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

Paul M. Johnson: Modern Times Revised Edition: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties
A sober and sobering review of the 20th Century and the monsters it created.
P. G. Wodehouse: The Code of the Woosters
Perfect.
Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited
Everything started going wrong and this world became a world of midgets. Still, redemption may be around the corner.
Conor Cruise O'Brien: The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism
One of the most comprehensive, fair-minded, and illuminating histories of Israel and the Zionist movement that created it.
Bruce Catton: A Stillness at Appomattox
A taste: "The men of this army left books and letters behind them, and in these there is remarkable testimony that the men who marched away from winter quarters that morning took a last look back and saw a golden haze which, even at the moment of looking, they knew they would never see again. They tell how the birds were singing, and how the warm scented air came rolling up the river valley, and how they noticed things like wildflowers and the young green leaves, and they speak of the moving pageant which they saw and of which they themselves were part. "Everything," wrote a youth from Maine, "was bright and blowing." It would never be like this again, and young soldiers in a land that would honor them and then tolerate them and finally forget them, would look back on this one morning and see in it something that came from beyond the rim of the world."