Now he is funding a "Christian" group, apparently to counter Iran's imaginary nuclear weapons program:
Yesterday, a new organization’s “promoted” (read: sponsored) tweet popped up on my timeline. It came from The Philos Project, a group dedicated to promoting “Christian engagement in the Middle East.” The tweet read: “Iran is known to sponsor #terrorism. Iran wants a nuclear bomb. What could possible go wrong? #StopIran.” A quick glance at the website reveals a heavy emphasis on rehashing fear-mongering clichés about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
So who is behind The Philos Project? It isn’t registered as a legal entity of any sort in New York State. Someone must be paying the bills, but who? The domain name, which was registered last May, offers the first clue. A woman named “Michele Packman” is listed as the “registrant name.”
Googling her name reveals that Packman is the director of operations and human resources at Singer’s family office. A little more research reveals that the Paul E. Singer Foundation is described as a “core funder “ of the Philos Project on the website of the Jewish Funders Network International Conference, an event scheduled to be held later this month in Tel Aviv.
Singer, a director at the Republican Jewish Coalition, is a huge donor to various groups that promote a hawkish line on Iran policy. Between 2008 and 2011, he contributed $3.6 million to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hard-line neoconservative think tank whose scholars have variously advocated for “crippling sanctions,” “economic warfare,” and bombing Iran. The hedge fund mogul has also supported the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank whose scholars, including Richard Perle and Danielle Pletka, led the charge into Iraq and have been no less aggressive in regard to Iran. In addition, Singer has supported the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs—he was listed in the group’s “Chairman’s Circle” as recently as 2012. The group’s current director, Michael Makovsky, recently compared President Obama to Neville Chamberlain. Singer has also served on the board of Commentary magazine, the publication that has more-or-less defined hard-line neoconservative orthodoxy since the late 1960s.
Allow me to say this about that:
(1) The only real "relationship" between Israel and the US is that the former is sucking the life blood out of the latter.
(2) The only real "relationship" between Judaism and Christianity is that the former thinks the latter is a dangerous cult which should be eradicated.
(3) The sort of "business" which made Mr. Singer wealthy, running a hedge fund, is completely legal but in my view morally abhorrent. Hedge funds provide the illusion of fiscal safety for the wealth oligarchs have accumulated by preying on the rest of us.
(4) It's not illegal for the rich to advocate their personal foreign policy agenda through groups like these, but why should we allow the one percent to override the will of We The People just because they're rich?
(5) Any realistic assessment of Israel's "economic miracle" would conclude that it was based in large part on land theft, shady dealings in global monetary markets, widespread theft of intellectual property, apartheid vis-à-vis the Palestinian people, and regular huge infusions of cash from the US government. I don't agree that we should celebrate such a thing, even if some rich guy thinks we should.
(6) I aspire to be a good Christian, and I don't want to have anything to do with this new group. I encourage you to shun it, too.
(6) I aspire to be a good Christian, and I don't want to have anything to do with this new group. I encourage you to shun it, too.
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