{"id":4535,"date":"2008-10-23T11:39:38","date_gmt":"2008-10-23T16:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=4535"},"modified":"2008-10-25T10:56:15","modified_gmt":"2008-10-25T15:56:15","slug":"adam-shatz-short-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=4535","title":{"rendered":"Adam Shatz: Short Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adam Shatz, London Review of Books, 9 October 2008<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

If you live in an American swing state you may have received a copy of \u2018Obsession\u2019 in your Sunday paper. \u2018Obsession\u2019 isn\u2019t a perfume: it\u2019s a documentary about \u2018radical Islam\u2019s war against the West\u2019. In the last two weeks of September, 28 million copies of the film were enclosed as an advertising supplement in 74 newspapers, including the New York Times<\/em> and the Chronicle of Higher Education<\/em>. \u2018The threat of Radical Islam is the most important issue facing us today,\u2019 the sleeve announces. \u2018It\u2019s our responsibility to ensure we can make an informed vote in November.\u2019 The Clarion Fund, the supplement\u2019s sponsor, doesn\u2019t explicitly endorse McCain, so as not to jeopardise its tax-exempt status, but the message is clear enough, and its circulation just happened to coincide with Obama\u2019s leap in the polls.<\/p>\n

The Clarion Fund is a front for neoconservative and Israeli pressure groups. It has an office, or at least an address, in Manhattan at Grace Corporate Park Executive Suites, which rents out \u2018virtual office identity packages\u2019 for $75 a month. Its website, clarionfund.org, provides neither a list of staff nor a board of directors, and the group still hasn\u2019t disclosed where it gets its money, as required by the IRS. Who paid to make \u2018Obsession\u2019 isn\u2019t clear \u2013 it cost $400,000. According to Rabbi Raphael Shore, the film\u2019s Canadian-Israeli producer, 80 per cent of the money came from the executive producer \u2018Peter Mier\u2019, but that\u2019s just an alias, as is the name of the film\u2019s production manager, \u2018Brett Halperin\u2019. Shore claims \u2018Mier\u2019 and \u2018Halperin\u2019, whoever they are, are simply taking precautions, though it isn\u2019t clear against what. The danger (whatever it is) hasn\u2019t stopped Shore \u2013 or the director, Wayne Kopping, a South African neocon \u2013 from going on television to promote their work.<\/p>\n

[Read the article<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adam Shatz, London Review of Books, 9 October 2008 If you live in an American swing state you may have received a copy of \u2018Obsession\u2019 in your Sunday paper. \u2018Obsession\u2019 isn\u2019t a perfume: it\u2019s a documentary about \u2018radical Islam\u2019s war … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-1b9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4535"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4544,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4535\/revisions\/4544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}