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Jan 16, 2009

                                 Palestinian Civil Society

Calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights

                                      9 July 2005

One year after the historic Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which found Israel’s Wall built on occupied Palestinian territory to be illegal, Israel continues its construction of the colonial Wall with total disregard to the Court’s decision. Thirty eight years into Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights, Israel continues to expand Jewish colonies. It has unilaterally annexed occupied East
Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and is now de facto annexing large parts of the West Bank by means of the Wall.

Israel is also preparing - in the shadow of its planned redeployment from the Gaza Strip - to build and expand colonies in the West Bank. Fifty seven years after the state of Israel was built mainly on land ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian owners, a majority of Palestinians are refugees, most of whom are stateless. Moreover, Israel's entrenched system of racial discrimination against its own Arab-Palestinian citizens remains intact.

In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law, and Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions;

Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid and in the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression,

We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.


These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:

1.
Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;


2.
Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and


3.
Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.


Endorsed by so far over 170 organisations:

The Palestinian political parties, unions, associations, coalitions and organizations
below represent the three integral parts of the people of Palestine: Palestinian
refugees, Palestinians under occupation and Palestinian citizens of Israel.

List includes:

Unions, Associations, Campaigns

1. Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine

(coordinating body for the major political parties in the Occupied Palestinian Territory)

2. Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizen's Rights (PICCR)

3. Union of Arab Community Based Associations (ITTIJAH), Haifa

4. Forum of Palestinian NGOs in Lebanon

5. Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU)

6. General Union of Palestinian Women (GUPW)

7. General Union of Palestinian Teachers (GUPT)

8. Federation of Unions of Palestinian Universities’ Professors and Employees

9. Consortium of Professional Associations

10. Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees (UPMRC)

11. Health Work Committees – West Bank

12. Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC)

13. Union of Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC)

14. Union of Health Work Committees – Gaza (UHWC)

15. Union of Palestinian Farmers

16. Occupied Palestine and Syrian Golan Heights Advocacy Initiative (OPGAI)

17. General Union of Disabled Palestinians

18. Palestinian Federation of Women's Action Committees (PFWAC)

19. Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)

20. Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign

21. Union of Teachers of Private Schools

22. Union of Women's Work Committees, Tulkarem (UWWC)

23. Dentists' Association – Jerusalem Center

24. Palestinian Engineers Association

25. Lawyers' Association

26. Network for the Eradication of Illiteracy and Adult Education, Ramallah

27. Coordinating Committee of Rehabilitation Centers – West Bank

28. Coalition of Lebanese Civil Society Organizations (150 organizations)

29. Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), Network of Student-based Canadian
University Associations

 

 

Refugee Rights Associations/Organizations

1. Al-Ard Committees for the Defense of the Right of Return, Syria


2. Al-Awda Charitable Society, Beit Jala

3. Al Awda - Palestine Right-to-Return Coalition, U.S.A

4. Al-Awda Toronto

5. Aidun Group – Lebanon

6. Aidun Group – Syria

7. Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Center, Aida refugee camp

8. Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Internally Displaced (ADRID), Nazareth

9. BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, Bethlehem

10. Committee for Definite Return, Syria

11. Committee for the Defense of Palestinian Refugee Rights, Nablus

12. Consortium of the Displaced Inhabitants of Destroyed Palestinian Villages and Towns

13. Filastinuna – Commission for the Defense of the Right of Return, Syria

14. Handala Center, 'Azza (Beit Jibreen) refugee camp, Bethlehem

15. High Committee for the Defense of the Right of Return, Jordan

(including personal endorsement of 71 members of parliament, political parties and unions in Jordan)

16. High National Committee for the Defense of the Right of Return , Ramallah

17. International Right of Return Congress (RORC)

18. Jermana Youth Forum for the Defense of the Right of Return, Syria

19. Laji Center, Aida camp, Bethlehem

20. Local Committee for Rehabilitation, Qalandia refugee camp, Jerusalem

21. Local Committee for Rehabilitation of the Disabled, Deheishe refugee camp, Bethlehem

22. Palestinian National Committee for the Defense of the Right of Return, Syria

23. Palestinian Return Association, Syria

24. Palestinian Return Forum, Syria

25. Palestine Right-of-Return Coalition (Palestine, Arab host countries, Europe, North
America)

26. Palestine Right-of-Return Confederation-Europe (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland,
Sweden)

27. Palestinian Youth Forum for the Right of Return, Syria

28. PLO Popular Committees – West Bank refugee camps

29. PLO Popular Committees – Gaza Strip refugee camps

30. Popular Committee – al-'Azza (Beit Jibreen) refugee camp, Bethlehem

31. Popular Committee – Deheishe refugee camp, Bethlehem

32. Shaml - Palestinian Diaspora and Refugee Center, Ramallah

33. Union of Women's Activity Centers – West Bank Refugee Camps

34. Union of Youth Activity Centers – Palestine Refugee Camps, West Bank and Gaza

35. Women's Activity Center – Deheishe refugee camp, Bethlehem

36. Yafa Cultural Center, Balata refugee camp, Nablus

 

Organizations

1. Abna' al-Balad Society, Nablus

2. Addameer Center for Human Rights, Gaza

3. Addameer Prisoners' Support and Human Rights Association, Ramallah

4. Alanqa' Cultural Association, Hebron

5. Al-Awda Palestinian Folklore Society, Hebron

6. Al-Doha Children’s Cultural Center, Bethlehem

7. Al-Huda Islamic Center, Bethlehem

8. Al-Jeel al-Jadid Society, Haifa

9. Al-Karameh Cultural Society, Um al-Fahm

10. Al-Maghazi Cultural Center, Gaza

11. Al-Marsad Al-Arabi, occupied Syrian Golan Heights

12. Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, Gaza

13. Al-Nahda Cultural Forum, Hebron

14. Al-Taghrid Society for Culture and Arts, Gaza

15. Alternative Tourism Group, Beit Sahour (ATG)

16. Al-Wafa' Charitable Society, Gaza

17. Applied Research Institute Jerusalem (ARIJ)

18. Arab Association for Human Rights, Nazareth (HRA)

19. Arab Center for Agricultural Development (ACAD)


20. Arab Center for Agricultural Development-Gaza

21. Arab Education Institute (AEI) – Pax Christie Bethlehem

22. Arab Orthodox Charitable Society – Beit Sahour

23. Arab Orthodox Charity – Beit Jala

24. Arab Orthodox Club – Beit Jala

25. Arab Orthodox Club – Beit Sahour

26. Arab Students' Collective, University of Toronto

27. Arab Thought Forum, Jerusalem (AFT)

28. Association for Cultural Exchange Hebron - France

29. Association Najdeh, Lebanon

30. Authority for Environmental Quality, Jenin

31. Bader Society for Development and Reconstruction, Gaza

32. Canadian Palestine Foundation of Quebec, Montreal

33. Center for the Defense of Freedoms, Ramallah

34. Center for Science and Culture, Gaza

35. Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Ramallah- Al-Bireh District

36. Child Development and Entertainment Center, Tulkarem

37. Committee for Popular Participation, Tulkarem

38. Defense for Children International-Palestine Section, Ramallah - DCI/PS

39. El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe

40. Ensan Center for Democracy and Human Rights, Bethlehem

41. Environmental Education Center, Bethlehem

42. FARAH – Palestinian Center for Children, Syria

43. Ghassan Kanafani Society for Development, Gaza

44. Ghassan Kanafani Forum, Syria

45. Gaza Community Mental Health Program, Gaza (GCMHP)

46. Golan for Development, occupied Syrian Golan Heights

47. Halhoul Cultural Forum, Hebron

48. Himayeh Society for Human Rights, Um al-Fahm

49. Holy Land Trust – Bethlehem

50. Home of Saint Nicholas for Old Ages – Beit Jala

51. Human Rights Protection Center, Lebanon

52. In'ash al-Usrah Society, Ramallah

53. International Center of Bethlehem (Dar An-Nadweh)

54. Islah Charitable Society-Bethlehem

55. Jafra Youth Center, Syria

56. Jander Center, al-Azza (Beit Jibreen) refugee camp, Bethlehem

57. Jerusalem Center for Women, Jerusalem (JCW)

58. Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC )

59. Khalil Al Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah

60. Land Research Center, Jerusalem (LRC)

61. Liberated Prisoners' Society, Palestine

62. Local Committee for Social Development, Nablus

63. Local Committee for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled, Nablus

64. MA'AN TV Network, Bethlehem

65. Medical Aid for Palestine, Canada

66. MIFTAH-Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy,
Ramallah

67. Muwatin-The Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy

68. National Forum of Martyr's Families, Palestine

69. Near East Council of Churches Committee for Refugee Work – Gaza Area

70. Network of Christian Organizations – Bethlehem - NCOB

71. Palestinian Council for Justice and Peace, Jerusalem

72. Palestinian Counseling Center, Jerusalem (PCC)

73. Palestinian Democratic Youth Union, Lebanon

74. Palestinian Farmers' Society, Gaza

75. Palestinian Hydrology Group for Water and Environment Resources Development-Gaza

76. Palestinian Prisoners' Society-West Bank


77. Palestinian Society for Consumer Protection, Gaza

78. Palestinian University Students' Forum for Peace and Democracy, Hebron

79. Palestinian Women's Struggle Committees

80. Palestinian Working Women Society for Development (PWWSD)

81. Popular Art Centre, Al-Bireh

82. Prisoner's Friends Association – Ansar Al-Sajeen, Majd al-Krum

83. Public Aid Association, Gaza

84. Ramallah Center for Human Rights Studies

85. Saint Afram Association – Bethlehem

86. Saint Vincent De Paule – Beit Jala

87. Senior Citizen Society – Beit Jala

88. Social Development Center, Nablus

89. Society for Self-Development, Hebron

90. Society for Social Work, Tulkarem

91. Society for Voluntary Work and Culture, Um al-Fahm

92. Society of Friends of Prisoners and Detainees, Um al-Fahm

93. Sumoud-Political Prisoners Solidarity Group, Toronto

94. Tamer Institute for Community Education, Ramallah

95. TCC – Teacher's Creativity Center, Ramallah

96. Wi'am Center, Bethlehem

97. Women's Affairs Technical Committee, Ramallah and Gaza (WATC)

98. Women's Studies Center, Jerusalem (WSC)

99. Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counseling, Jerusalem (WCLAC)

100.Yafa for Education and Culture, Nablus

101.Yazour Charitable Society, Nablus

102.YMCA-East Jerusalem

103.Youth Cooperation Forum, Hebron

104.YWCA-Palestine

105.Zakat Committee-al-Khader, Bethlehen

106.Zakat Committee-Deheishe camp, Bethlehem

Call by Palestinian Civil Society for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (English).pdf

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Posted: Jan 16, 2009 8:30am
Jan 16, 2009


“This is much worse than apartheid. The Israeli measures, the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic. We never had jets attacking our townships. We never had sieges that lasted month after month. We never had tanks destroying houses.
We had armoured vehicles and police using small arms to shoot people but not on this scale.”

—Ronnie Kasrils after a 2004 visit to the Palestinian territories, quoted in Chris McGreal, Mail & Guardian, October 24, 2006

“Apartheid was all about land. Apartheid was about keeping the best parts of the country for the whites and sending the blacks to the least habitable, least desirable parts of the country. And one sees that all the time here, particularly with the wall, now, which is really a land grab. One sees Palestinians dispossessed of their homes by bulldozers. One can draw certain parallels with respect to South Africa that, during the heyday of apartheid, population relocation did result in destruction of
property, but not on the same scale as the devastation in Gaza in particular, [or in] the West Bank.”

—John Dugard, South African lawyer and UN human rights monitor, quoted in Chris McGreal, Mail & Guardian, October 24, 2006.

“The end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the past century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure—in particular the divestment movement of the 1980s. Over the past six months a similar movement has taken shape, this time aiming at an end to the Israeli occupation....These tactics are not the only parallels to the struggle against apartheid. Yesterday’s South African township dwellers can tell you about today’s life in the occupied territories….If apartheid ended, so can the occupation, but the moral force and international pressure will have to be just as determined.”

—Archbishop Desmond Tutu, The Nation, July 15, 2002

 “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.”

—Former South African President Hendrick Verwoerd, Rand Daily Mail, November
23, 1961

Quotes by Israeli Individuals and Organizations on the Apartheid Analogy

“The US Jewish Establishment’s onslaught on former President Jimmy Carter is based on him daring to tell the truth which is known to all: through its army, the government of Israel practices a brutal form of Apartheid in the territory it occupies. Its army has turned every Palestinian village and town into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp.”

—Former Israeli Minister for Education and Israeli Prize laureate Shulamit Aloni, Yediot Acharonot, December 20, 2006.

“Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same are and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality. This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, as is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa.”

—Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, Land Grab: Israel’s Settlement Policy in the West Bank, May 2002

 “It goes without saying that ‘cooperation’ based on the current power relationship is no more than permanent Israeli domination in disguise, and that Palestinian self-rule is merely a euphemism for Bantustanization.”

—Former mayor of Jerusalem Meron Benvenisti, Intimate Enemies, 1995

 “To a Jew, to concede the predominance of a racial world view of subjugating Palestinians is difficult to accept. But, unfortunately, the fact of the absence of a racial ideology is not sufficient because the realities that have emerged in some ways are clearly reminiscent of some of the important trappings of an apartheid regime.”

—Israeli lawyer Daniel Seidemann, quoted by Chris McGreal, “Brothers in arms: Israel’s secret pact with Pretoria,” Mail & Guardian, October 24, 2006

http://www.endtheoccupation.org/downloads/AAFQuotes.pdf

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Posted: Jan 16, 2009 8:18am
Nov 11, 2008

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Posted: Nov 11, 2008 2:43am
Apr 1, 2008

Chapter From Douglas Reed's Controversy of Zion

(finished in 1956, not published until 1978)

Pages 132 - 137



For the sake of orderly sequence this narrative has been carried through to Napoleon's Sanhedrin; the answers given by it closed the third, and opened the fourth period in the story of Zion, which began with the public renunciation of separate-nationhood and ended, ninety years later, with the public re-affirmation of separate-nationhood in its extremest form.

     Before it continues into that fourth phase, the narrative now must move back twenty years to the start of the world-revolution, and consider what part, if any, was played by "the Jews" in that.

     The 19th Century, in the West, differed from the preceding eighteen centuries of the Christian era there in the emergence of two movements with a converging aim, which by the century's end dominated all its affairs.

     The one movement, Zionism, aimed at reassembling a dispersed nation in a territory promised to it by the Jewish god [Jehovah]; the second movement, Communism, aimed at the destruction of separate nationhood as such.

     Thus these two movements appeared at first sight to be fixedly opposed to each other, for the one made nationalism its religion, even its god, and the other declared war to the death on nationalism. This antagonism was only apparent, and in truth the two movements ran on parallel tracks, not head on towards a collision on the same line. For the god who promised land to the nation to be gathered-in also promised to set it "above all people that are upon the face of the earth" and to destroy all other nations "with a mighty destruction until they be destroyed".

     The world-revolution, which pursued the second of these aims, thus fulfilled the condition set for the first of them; either by accident or by design, it too was doing the will of Jehovah.

     That being so, the historian's task is to find out, if he can, what relationship existed between the organizers of Zionism and those of the world-revolution. If there was none, and the parallelism of purpose was coincidental, then history was evidently having a little joke with the West.

     If a relationship can be shown, the pattern of the last 170 years prefigures the shape of coming events; in that case the world-revolution has been the handmaiden of Zion.

     These 170 years have probably been the most profligate and least creditable in the history of the West. At the start of the 19th Century it had behind it seventeen centuries of Christian achievement; the world had never before seen man so much improve his own state and his conduct to others; even warfare was becoming subject to a civilized code, and the future seemed certain to continue this upward process.

     By the middle of the 20th Century much of this achievement had been lost; a large area of the West had been surrendered to Asiatic barbarism; the question whether the remaining West and its faith could even survive clearly hung in the balance and probably would be answered during the closing decades of the century.

     The period which saw this deterioration was that of the rise of the Judaist power to a peak of influence in the affairs of the West which hardly any European potentate or pontiff, doctrine or dogma had ever attained. The picture of this swelling might, spreading over Europe like an eastern thundercloud, is given in two quotations from the beginning and end of the 19th Century. In 1791 the great German historian Johann Gottfried von Herder, looking back on the hundred years behind him, wrote:

"The ruder nations of Europe are willing slaves of Jewish usury. . .

"The Jewish people is and remains in Europe an Asiatic people alien to our part of the world, bound to that old law which it received in a distant climate, and which according to its own confession it cannot do away with. . . "

It is indissolubly bound to an alien law that is hostile to all alien peoples."

     The newspaper reader of 1807, when he learned of the Sanhedrin's ardent avowals of non-nationhood, would presumably have dismissed von Herder as a "bigot" (or even an "antisemite"), but the years and events have show that he, like many before him, was but a scholar speaking truth. A hundred years later, in 1899, another, Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, looked back on what Herder had written and recorded the further, continuing usurpation of power:

"A great change has taken place: the Jews play in Europe, and wherever European influence extends, a different part from that which they played a hundred years ago; as Viktor Hohn expresses it, we live today in a 'Jewish age'; we may think what we like about the past history of the Jews, their present history actually takes up so much room in our own history that we cannot possibly refuse to notice them. . .

"The 'alien' element emphasized by Herder has become more and more prominent. . .

"The direct influence of Judaism on the 19th Century appears for the first time as a new influence in the history of culture; it thus becomes one of the burning subjects of the day. This alien people has become precisely in the course of the 19th Century a disproportionately important and in many spheres actually dominant constituent of our life. . .

"Herder said that 'the ruder nations of Europe were willing slaves of Jewish usury'. Today Herder could say the same of by far the greatest part of our civilized world. . .

"our government, our law, our science, our commerce, our literature, our art, practically all branches of our life have become more or less willing slaves of the Jews and drag the federal fetter, if not yet on two, at least on one leg. . .

"The direct influence of Judaism on the 19th century thus becomes one of the burning subjects of the day. We have to deal here with a question affecting not only the present, but also the future of the world and cultural sphere, we would have one more example of negative destructive power."

     Such was the development in a hundred years from von Herder to Chamberlain. The last three sentences are a brilliant prognosis, for Chamberlain had not seen the proofs, which our century has brought, of the truth of what he said; namely, that fantastic feat of international stage-management on the grand scale in October 1917 when Communism (the destroyer of nationhood) and Zionism (the creator of the dominant nation) triumphed at the same instant!

     In the sixty years which have passed since Chamberlain wrote the process observed by him and Herder has gathered pace and power. The question no longer simply "affects the future of the world"; it is with us every day and we have no present that is not shaped by it; it has already altered the nature of the world and of man's lot in it.

     "Our governments", in the half-century that has elapsed, have become such "willing slaves" of the Judaic master-sect that they are in fact the bailiffs or agents of a new, international ruling-class, and not true governors at all.

     The West has come to this dilemma through the pressure of two millstones, Communism and Zionism, the nation-destroying world-revolution and the new, nation-creating, ruling-class.

     The one has incited the mob; the other has gained mastery over rulers.

     Are the organizers of both the same? This book seeks to answer the question in its remaining chapters. What is clear is that each stage in the ruination of the West, during these 170 years, has been accompanied by successive stages of "the return" to the promised land. That is an indication of common managership too strong to be set aside unless it can be conclusively disproved. To the "heathen" masses of Christendom the process which began with the emergence of the world-revolution in 1789 has been merely one of sound and fury, signifying nothing; but the student perceives that in majestic rhythm it fulfils The Law and The Prophets of Judah.

     The 19th Century was one of conspiracy, of which the things we witness in the 20th Century are the results. Conspiracy bred Communism and Zionism, and these took the future of the West in a pincer-like clutch.

     What were their origins? Why did they germinate in darkness until they broke ground together in the 19th Century? Had they a common root?

     The way to answer that question is to examine the roots of each separately and find out if they join, and the purpose of this chapter and the next is to trace the root-idea of world-revolution.

     The French revolution was the world-revolution in action, not a revolution in France. From the moment of the event in France no doubt remains on that score. Before then people might indulge notions about suffering peasants, stung to sudden uprising by arrogant aristocrats and the like, but diligent study of the background of the French revolution dispels such illusions. It was the result of a plan and the work of a secret organization revealed before it occurred; it was not merely a French outburst produced by French causes.

     The plan behind it is the plan of Communism today; and Communism today, which is the world-revolution in permanence, has inherited the organization which evolved the plan.

     The French revolution of 1789 is the one that provides the key to the mystery. It forms the link between the English one of 1640 and the Russian one of 1917 and reveals the whole process as a planned and continuing one which, having passed through these three stages, clearly will reach its final orgasm at some moment not far distant, probably during this century.

     That climax, foreseeably, will take the shape of an attempt to consummate and complete the world-revolution by setting up a world-government under the control of the organization which has guided the revolutionary process from its start. This would establish the sway of a new ruling-class over the submerged nations. (As Dr. Kastein would say, it would "determine the fate of the whole world").

     This picture, which only slowly emerged as three centuries passed, is today clear in its historical perspective, where each of the three great revolutions is seen in the light thrown on it by the next:

     (1) The English revolution appeared at the time to be a spontaneous English episode, directed only against the pretensions, at that moment, of a particular royal house, the Stuarts, and a particular form of religion, called "Popery". No contemporary dreamed of considering it as the start of a world-movement against all religion and all legitimate government. (The ruling sect of Jewry supplied the revolutionary dictator with funds and by means of this, traditional "abetting" part the Jewish leaders became chief beneficiaries of the revolution; if they had any part in the original instigation of it, this cannot be show, nor has any evidence of a long-term, master-plan behind the revolution survived).

     (2) The nature and course of the French revolution, however, puts the English one in a different light. It was not, and even at the time did not seem to be, a native French episode caused merely by French conditions. On the contrary, it followed a plan for universal revolution discovered and made public some years before; and the secret organization then exposed had members in many countries and all classes. Therefore its most characteristic acts (regicide and sacrilege), though they repeated those of the revolution in England, were seen not to be spontaneously vengeful deeds, committed in the heat of a moment, but actions deliberately symbolic of a continuing plan and purpose: the destruction of all religion and all legitimate government, everywhere.

     Inevitably, this revelation leads to the surmise that the English revolution too may have been prepared by this secret organization with the aim of destroying all nationhood. (In the French revolution, as in the English one, the Judaist sect emerged as a chief beneficiary; the general emancipation of Jews, which came of it, was used by it as a cover for its conspiratorial work during the ensuing decades. Original Judaist instigation is not shown by any evidence now available.)

     Thus the French revolution, unlike the English one, demonstrably was the product of a major conspiracy, with worldwide aims and deep roots. From this instant, the nature of the plan was plain, but the conspirators, wherever they were unmasked, seemed to be horde of individuals with no bond of union between them save that of the arsonist's lust for destruction. The purpose was beyond doubt, but the identity of the organizers was still mysterious. This half-clarified scene was depicted in famous words by a classic authority on the subject, Lord Acton:

"The appalling thing in the revolution is not the tumult but the design. Through all the fire and smoke we perceive the evidence of calculating organization. The Managers remain studiously concealed and masked but there is no doubt about their presence from the first".

     The French revolution, then, revealed a design behind revolution, and it was the design of a set purpose in a worldwide field. What had seemed planless at the time of the English revolution now was seen to be, or had become the result of a plan and a pattern, and the conspiracy clearly was of such strength and age that its complicity in the earlier revolution had to be allowed for. However, this second revolution still left "the managers" masked, so that only half of the mystery had been solved (Lord Acton died in 1902 and thus did not see the third revolution.)

     (3) The revolution in Russia, again, opened room for new theories about the French and English revolutions. Its acts of regicide and sacrilege were as unmistakable an identity-card as the Muslim's greeting is a token of his faith; by them it informed all who wished to hear that it was still working to "the design" of worldwide destruction first revealed by the French revolution. Moreover, the secret, for a hundred years called "a lie", was no longer even denied: from 1917 on the world-revolution was avowedly permanent, avowedly worldwide in purpose, and the erstwhile secret conspiracy became a political party, operating in all countries under orders from a central headquarters in Moscow.

    Thus the Russian revolution threw a brighter light on the French one, clarifying its outlines and origins. However, in the matter of the "studiously concealed" and "masked" managers, the Russian revolution threw an entirely different light on the two earlier ones, or at the least it opened up conjectures about their possible origins which none had previously spent much thought upon.

    The "managers" of the revolution in Russia were nearly all Eastern Jews.

     On this occasion the significant, symbolic acts of regicide and sacrilege were committed by Jews and a law was enacted which in effect forbade all discussion of the part played by Jews, or by "the Jewish question", in these events or in public affairs at all.

   Thus vital questions were answered and what was a great mystery in 1789 became plain in 1917. The great benefit which today's student derives from the French revolution is the proof, supplied by it, of the existence of a design for world-revolution, and of an organization which pursued that destructive ambition.

     Its existence and activity made the 19th Century the century of the grand conspiracy. A sense of evil things stirring in dark places, like the sounds which a prisoner in a dungeon awaits at night, disquietened men and nations. This was the feeling imparted by conspiracy to the enpested air around. From the moment of the French revolution men intuitively knew that they lived with conspiracy in their midst; in our day, which has suffered its effects, we can at least see with what we have to deal, if we look, and may say that it is the devil that we know.

     Perhaps the greatest disservice that Napoleon did was, by his campaigns and glittering exploits to distract men's thoughts from the much greater danger that menaced them: the world-revolution and its secret "managers". But for him they might have paid more attention to the conspiracy, for they had the proof of its existence. [end of chapter]

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Posted: Apr 1, 2008 4:21am
Mar 11, 2008
by Barbara Kulaszka

In recent years, more and more attention has been devoted to the supposed danger of
"Holocaust denial." Politicians, newspapers and television warn about the growing
influence of those who reject the Holocaust story that some six million European Jews
were systematically exterminated during the Second World War, most of them in gas
chambers.

In several countries, including Israel, France, Germany and Austria, "Holocaust
denial" is against the law, and "deniers" have been punished with stiff fines and prison
sentences. Some frantic Jewish community leaders are calling for similar government
measures in North America against so-called "deniers." In Canada, David Matas,
Senior Counsel for the "League for Human Rights" of the Zionist B'nai B'rith
organization, says: (note 1)

The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews, including two million children.
Holocaust denial is a second murder of those same six million. First their lives were
extinguished; then their deaths. A person who denies the Holocaust becomes part of
the crime of the Holocaust itself.

Often overlooked in this controversy is the crucial question: Just what constitutes
"Holocaust denial"?

Six Million?

Should someone be considered a "Holocaust denier" because he does not believe -- as
Matas and others insist -- that six million Jews were killed during World War II? This
figure was cited by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945-1946. It
found that "the policy pursued [by the German government] resulted in the killing of
six million Jews, of which four million were killed in the extermination institutions."
(note 2)

Yet if that is so, then several of the most prominent Holocaust historians could be
regarded as "deniers." Professor Raul Hilberg, author of the standard reference work,
The Destruction of the European Jews, does not accept that six million Jews died. He
puts the total of deaths (from all causes) at 5.1 million. Gerald Reitlinger, author of
The Final Solution, likewise did not accept the six million figure. He estimated the
figure of Jewish wartime dead might be as high as 4.6 million, but admitted that this
was conjectural due to a lack of reliable information.

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Human Soap?

Is someone a "Holocaust denier" if he says that the Nazis didn't use Jewish fat to
make soap? After examining all the evidence (including an actual bar of soap supplied
by the Soviets), the Nuremberg Tribunal declared in its Judgment that "in some
instances attempts were made to utilize the fat from the bodies of the victims in the
commercial manufacture of soap." (note 3)

In 1990, though, Israel's official "Yad Vashem" Holocaust memorial agency "rewrote
history" by admitting that the soap story was not true. "Historians have concluded that
soap was not made from human fat. When so many people deny the Holocaust ever
happened, why give them something to use against the truth?," said Yad Vashem
official Shmuel Krakowski. (note 4)

Wannsee Conference?

Is someone a "Holocaust denier" if he does not accept that the January 1942
"Wannsee conference" of German bureaucrats was held to set or coordinate a program
of systematic mass murder of Europe's Jews? If so, Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda
Bauer must be wrong -- and a "Holocaust denier" -- because he recently declared:
"The public still repeats, time after time, the silly story that at Wannsee the
extermination of the Jews was arrived at." In Bauer's opinion, Wannsee was a meeting
but "hardly a conference" and "little of what was said there was executed in detail."
(note 5)

Extermination Policy?

Is someone a "Holocaust denier" if he says that there was no order by Hitler to
exterminate Europe's Jews? There was a time when the answer would have been yes.
Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg, for example, wrote in the 1961 edition of his study,
The Destruction of the European Jews, that there were two Hitler orders for the
destruction of Europe's Jews: the first given in the spring of 1941, and the second
shortly thereafter. But Hilberg removed mention of any such order from the revised,
three-volume edition of his book published in 1985. (note 6) As Holocaust historian
Christopher Browning has noted: (note 7)

In the new edition, all references in the text to a Hitler decision or Hitler order for the
"Final Solution" have been systematically excised. Buried at the bottom of a single
footnote stands the solitary reference: "Chronology and circumstances point to a
Hitler decision before the summer ended." In the new edition, decisions were not
made and orders were not given.

A lack of hard evidence for an extermination order by Hitler has contributed to a
controversy that divides Holocaust historians into "intentionalists" and
"functionalists." The former contend that there was a premeditated extermination
policy ordered by Hitler, while the latter hold that Germany's wartime "final solution"
Jewish policy evolved at lower levels in response to circumstances. But the crucial
point here is this: notwithstanding the capture of literally tons of German documents
after the war, no one can point to documentary evidence of a wartime extermination

17



order, plan or program. This was admitted by Professor Hilberg during his testimony
in the 1985 trial in Toronto of German-Canadian publisher Ernst Zündel. (note 8)

Auschwitz

So just what constitutes "Holocaust denial"? Surely a claim that most Auschwitz
inmates died from disease and not systematic extermination in gas chambers would be
"denial." But perhaps not. Jewish historian Arno J. Mayer, a Princeton University
professor, wrote in his 1988 study Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The 'Final
Solution" in History': ... From 1942 to 1945, certainly at Auschwitz, but probably
overall, more Jews were killed by so-called 'natural' causes than by 'unnatural' ones."
(note 9)

Even estimates of the number of people who died at Auschwitz --allegedly the main
extermination center -- are no longer clear cut. At the postwar Nuremberg Tribunal,
the Allies charged that the Germans exterminated four million people at Auschwitz.
(note 10) Until 1990, a memorial plaque at Auschwitz read: "Four Million People
Suffered and Died Here at the Hands of the Nazi Murderers Between the Years 1940
and 1945." (note 11) During a 1979 visit to the camp, Pope John Paul II stood before
this memorial and blessed the four million victims.

Is it "Holocaust denial" to dispute these four million deaths? Not today. In July 1990,
the Polish government's Auschwitz State Museum, along with Israel's Yad Vashem
Holocaust center, conceded that the four million figure was a gross exaggeration, and
references to it were accordingly removed from the Auschwitz monument. Israeli and
Polish officials announced a tentative revised toll of 1.1 million Auschwitz dead.
(note 12) In 1993, French Holocaust researcher Jean-Claude Pressac, in a much-
discussed book about Auschwitz, estimated that altogether about 775,000 died there
during the war years. (note 13)

Professor Mayer acknowledges that the question of how many really died in
Auschwitz remains open. In Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? he wrote (p. 366):

... Many questions remain open ... All in all, how many bodies were cremated in
Auschwitz? How many died there all told? What was the national, religious, and
ethnic breakdown in this commonwealth of victims? How many of them were
condemned to die a 'natural' death and how many were deliberately slaughtered? And
what was the proportion of Jews among those murdered in cold blood among these
gassed? We have simply no answers to these questions at this time.

Gas Chambers

What about denying the existence of extermination "gas chambers"? Here too, Mayer
makes a startling statement (on page 362 of his book): "Sources for the study of the
gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable." While Mayer believes that such
chambers did exist at Auschwitz, he points out that

most of what is known is based on the depositions of Nazi officials and executioners
at postwar trials and on the memory of survivors and bystanders. This testimony must

18



be screened carefully, since it can be influenced by subjective factors of great
complexity.

Höss' Testimony

One example of this might be the testimony of Rudolf Höss, an SS officer who served
as commandant of Auschwitz. In its Judgment, the Nuremberg International Military
Tribunal quoted at length from his testimony to support its findings of extermination.
(note 14)

It is now well established that Höss' crucial testimony, as well as his so-called
"confession" (which was also cited by the Nuremberg Tribunal), are not only false,
but were obtained by beating the former commandant nearly to death. (note 15) Höss'
wife and children were also threatened with death and deportation to Siberia. In his
statement -- which would not be admissible today in any United States court of law --
Höss claimed the existence of an extermination camp called "Wolzek." In fact, no
such camp ever existed. He further claimed that during the time that he was
commandant of Auschwitz, two and a half million people were exterminated there,
and that a further half million died of disease. (note 16) Today no reputable historian
upholds these figures. Höss was obviously willing to say anything, sign anything and
do anything to stop the torture, and to try to save himself and his family.

Forensic Investigations

In his 1988 book, Professor Mayer calls for "excavations at the killing sites and in
their immediate environs" to determine more about the gas chambers. In fact, such
forensic studies have been made. The first was conducted in 1988 by American
execution equipment consultant, Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. He carried out an on-site
forensic examination of the alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and
Majdanek to determine if they could have been used to kill people as claimed. After a
careful study of the alleged killing facilities, Leuchter concluded that the sites were
not used, and could not have been used, as homicidal gas chambers. Furthermore, an
analysis of samples taken by Leuchter from the walls and floors of the alleged gas
chambers showed either no or minuscule traces of cyanide compound, from the active
ingredient of Zyklon B, the pesticide allegedly used to murder Jews at Auschwitz.
(note 17)

A confidential forensic examination (and subsequent report) commissioned by the
Auschwitz State Museum and conducted by Institute of Forensic Research in Krakow
has confirmed Leuchter's finding that minimal or no traces of cyanide compound can
be found in the sites alleged to have been gas chambers. (note 18)

The significance of this is evident when the results of the forensic examination of the
alleged homicidal gas chambers are compared with the results of the examination of
the Auschwitz disinfestation facilities, where Zyklon B was used to delouse
mattresses and clothing. Whereas no or only trace amounts of cyanide were found in
the alleged homicidal gas chambers, massive traces of cyanide were found in the
walls and floor in the camp's disinfestation delousing chambers.

19



Another forensic study has been carried out by German chemist Germar Rudolf. On
the basis of his on-site examination and analysis of samples, the certified chemist and
doctoral candidate concluded: "For chemical-technical reasons, the claimed mass
gassings with hydrocyanic acid in the alleged 'gas chambers' in Auschwitz did not
take place ... The supposed facilities for mass killing in Auschwitz and Birkenau were
not suitable for this purpose ..." (note 19)

Finally, there is the study of Austrian engineer Walter Lüftl, a respected expert
witness in numerous court cases, and former president of Austria's professional
association of engineers. In a 1992 report he called the alleged mass extermination of
Jews in gas chambers "technically impossible." (note 20)

Discredited Perspective

So just what constitutes "Holocaust denial"? Those who advocate criminal
persecution of "Holocaust deniers" seem to be still living in the world of 1946 where
the Allied officials of the Nuremberg Tribunal have just pronounced their verdict. But
the Tribunal's findings can no longer be assumed to be valid. Because it relied so
heavily on such untrustworthy evidence as the Höss testimony, some of its most
critical findings are now discredited.

For purposes of their own, powerful special interest groups desperately seek to keep
substantive discussion of the Holocaust story taboo. One of the ways they do this is by
purposely mischaracterizing revisionist scholars as "deniers." But the truth can't be
suppressed forever: There is a very real and growing controversy about what actually
happened to Europe's Jews during World War II.

Let this issue be settled as all great historical controversies are resolved: through free
inquiry and open debate in our journals, newspapers and classrooms.

Notes

1.
Globe and Mail (Toronto), Jan. 22, 1992.
2.
Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal
(IMT "blue series"), Vol. 22, p. 496.
3.
IMT "blue series," Vol. 22, p. 496.
4.
Globe and Mail (Toronto), April 25, 1990; See also: M. Weber, "Jewish
Soap," The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1991.
5.
Canadian Jewish News (Toronto), Jan. 30, 1992.
6.
See: Barbara Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die: Report of the
Evidence in the Canadian 'False News' Trial of Ernst Zundel (Toronto:
Samisdat, 1992), pp. 192, 300, 349.
7.
"The Revised Hilberg," Simon Wiesenthal Annual, Vol. 3, 1986, p. 294.
8.
B. Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die (Toronto: 1992), pp. 24-25.
9.
A. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The 'Final Solution' in History
(Pantheon, 1988), p. 365.
10. Nuremberg document 008-USSR.; IMT "blue series," Vol. 39, pp. 241, 261.
11. B. Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die (Toronto: 1992), p. 441.
12. Y. Bauer, "Fighting the Distortions," Jerusalem Post (Israel), Sept. 22, 1989;
Auschwitz Deaths Reduced to a Million," Daily Telegraph (London), July 17,
20



1990; "Poland Reduces Auschwitz Death Toll Estimate to 1 Million," The
Washington Times, July 17, 1990.

13. J.-C. Pressac, Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz: La machinerie du meurtre de
masse (Paris: CNRS, 1993). See also: R. Faurisson, "Jean-Claude Pressac's
New Auschwitz Book," The Journal of Historical Review, Jan.-Feb. 1994, p.
24.
14. IMT "blue series," Vol. 22, p. 485; Nuremberg document 3868-PS (USA-819),
in IMT "blue series," Vol. 33, pp. 275-279.
15. Rupert Butler, Legions of Death (England: 1983), pp. 235-237; C. Hitchens,
"Whose History is it?," Vanity Fair (New York), Dec. 1993, p. 117.
16. See: R. Faurisson, "How the British Obtained the Confession of Rudolf Höss,"
The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1986-87, pp. 389-403.
17. A deluxe edition of The Leuchter Report is available from the IHR for $20.00,
plus $2.00 shipping.
18. The complete text of this report was published in English in The Journal of
Historical Review, Summer 1991.
19. G. Rudolf, Gutachten ueber die Bildung und Nachweisbarkeit von
Cyanidverbindungen in den 'Gaskammern' von Auschwitz (London: 1993).
See: The Journal of Historical Review, Nov.-Dec. 1993, pp. 25-26.
20. "The 'Lüftl Report'," The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1992-93.
21
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Posted: Mar 11, 2008 4:24am
Jan 15, 2008
"Why are there Israeli- but not Mexican-American Dual Nationals?"
Well, here's my take on this.

by Dan Eden.

Unless we are Native American Indians, all Americans have their origins in some other country. Both of my parents were from England. They were proud to be "British" but they were most proud of achieving their American citizenship. Sure, we had pictures of the Queen and nick-nacks with the Union Jack on them. My mother even celebrated the traditional 4 o'clock tea time and was good at making Yorkshire Pudding. In the late 60's my older brother served in the US Army and did his tour in Viet Nam. When it came down to "allegiance," we were all patriotic Americans. Period.

The word "allegiance" means that we promise loyalty. It also carries with it the expectation that this loyalty will be exclusive and unrestrained. In the case of a declared war or real threat or conflict, for example, our allegiance to America should preclude any other interest, be it another country or political ideology.

When they took their oath to become American citizens, my parents had to pledge their "allegiance" exclusively to America and renounce their allegiance to "any and all foreign governments." That included Great Britain, one of our strongest allies.

Before Viewzone asked me to research the meaning of "dual citizenship," I had never heard of the term. How could someone be a citizen of two countries at the same time? But I was just ignorant. Dual nationalities and citizenships are quite common.

From my internet research, I learned that in 1997, a French Canadian with a U.S. passport ran for mayor of Plattsburgh, N.Y. He argued that the incumbent spoke French too poorly to be running a city so close to Quebec. He lost. Also in 1997, a retired top American official for the U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) ran for president of Lithuania. He was inaugurated in February to a burst of fireworks!

In 1996, Dominicans from New York not only could vote in the Dominican Republic's presidential elections for the first time, they could vote for a fellow New Yorker. Multiple nationalities have become so commonplace that some analysts fear the trend is undermining the notion of nationhood, particularly in the place with the most diverse citizenry on Earth: the United States.

Debate over the issue intensified in the late 1990s, when Mexico joined the growing list of poor nations that say it's OK for their nationals to be citizens of the countries to which they have migrated. Under the law that took effect in 1998 Mexicans abroad -- most of them in the United States -- will be able to retain Mexican citizenship even if they seek U.S. citizenship. And naturalized Americans of Mexican descent will be able to reclaim their original citizenship. The Mexican government stopped short, for now, of giving expatriates the right to vote.

Security Issues

Since citizenship carries with it a responsibility to be exclusively loyal to one country, the whole concept of dual citizenship and nationality raises questions about which of the dual citizenships have priority. This is extremely important when the two countries have opposing interests. It can be a deadly problem when a dual citizen is in a high position within our American government.

Can one imagine a Japanese citizen serving in the Pentagon during WWII? Or how about a citizen of the Soviet Union holding a cabinet position in the White House during the Cold War?

Today's conflicts are centered in the Middle East. America needs to balance foreign policies towards oil producing Arab nations with our goal being peace and stability in the region. This places a burdon on our government to be even-handed in our dealings with the Arab world and Israel. While the Iraq War was waged on lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction and revenge for 911, the real reason has emerged as a well designed global plan to improve the power and leverage of Israel. Added to this policy is yet another potential blow to American interests and security -- the impending War with Iran. This war will be waged for the security of Israel and will be paid for by the blood of American soldiers and the hard-earned money of American citizens whose quality of life is inversely tied to the cost of petrolium.

Recently, in their much lauded paper, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Harvard professor, Stephen Walt, and University of Chicago professor, John Mearsheimer, focused attention on the strong Israeli lobby which has a powerful influence over American foreign policies (see BBC article). They detail the influence that this lobby has exerted, forming a series of international policies which can be viewed as in direct opposition to the interests and security of the American people. These acts and policies are more often than not carried out by US government appointees who hold powerful positions and who are dual American-Israeli citizens. Since the policies they support are often exclusively beneficial to Israel, often to the detriment of America, it has been argued that their loyalties are misdirected.

A few classic examples can be cited here.

Jonathan Jay Pollard was an American-Israeli citizen who worked for the US government. He is well known because he stole more secrets from the U.S. than has any other spy in American history. During his interrogation Pollard said he felt compelled to put the "interests of my state" ahead of his own. Although as a U.S. Navy counter-intelligence specialist he had a top-secret security clearance, by "my state" he meant the state of Israel.

Literally tens of thousands of Americans holding U.S. passports admit they feel a primary allegiance to the state of Israel. In many instances, these Americans vote in Israeli elections, wear Israeli uniforms and fight in Israeli wars. Many are actively engaged both in the confiscation of Palestinian lands and in the Israeli political system. Three examples come to mind:

One is Rabbi Meir Kahane, who founded the militant Jewish Defense League in the U.S. in the 1960s, then emigrated to Israel where, eventually, he was elected to the Knesset. Until he was shot and killed at one of his U.S. fund-raising rallies in 1990, the Brooklyn-born rabbi shuttled between Tel Aviv and New York, where he recruited militant American Jews for his activities in Israel against Palestinians. He claimed to be a "dual citizen" of America and Israel.

Another Jewish American, James Mahon from Alexandria, Virginia, reportedly was on a secret mission to kill PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat when he was shot in 1980 by an unknown assailant. When he was shot, Mahon held an American M-16 in his hand and a U.S. passport in his pocket.

Then there was Alan Harry Goodman, an American Jew who left his home in Baltimore, Maryland, flew to Israel and served in the Israeli army. Then, on April 11, 1982, armed with an Uzi submachine gun, he walked, alone, to Al-Aqsa, Jerusalem's most holy Islamic shrine, where he opened fire, killing two Palestinians and wounding others. Both the U.S. and Israeli governments played down the incident, as did the media.

Most recently, US Navy Petty Officer, Ariel J. Weinmann, while serving at or near Bahrain, Mexico, and Austria, "with intent or reason to believe it would be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation (Israel), [attempted] to communicate, deliver or transmit classified CONFIDENTIAL and SECRET information relating to the national defense, to a representative, officer, agent or employee of a foreign government." Weinmann was apprehended on March 26 after being listed as "a deserter by his command," according to the US Navy. The information he gathered was supplied to Israel.

The examples of Kahane, Mahonm, Goodman and Weinmann raise the question of when a U.S. citizen ceases to be, or should cease to be, a U.S. citizen. U.S. Law at one time clearly stated that an American citizen owed first allegiance to the United States. A U.S. citizen should not fight in a foreign army or hold high office in a foreign country without risking expatriation. What the heck happened?

The 1940 Nationality Act

Section 401 (e) of the 1940 Nationality Act provides that a U.S. citizen, whether by birth or naturalization, "shall lose his [U.S.] nationality by...voting in a political election in a foreign state."

This law was tested many times. In 1958, for instance, an American citizen named Perez voted in a Mexican election. The case went to the Supreme Court, where the majority opinion held that Perez must lose his American nationality. The court said Congress could provide for expatriation as a reasonable way of preventing embarrassment to the United States in its foreign relations.

But then something very odd happened.

In 1967 an American Jew, Beys Afroyim received an exemption that set a precedent exclusively for American Jews. Afroyim, born in Poland in 1895, emigrated to America in 1912, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1926. In 1950, aged 55, he emigrated to Israel and became an Israeli citizen. In 1951 Afroyim voted in an Israeli Knesset election and in five political elections that followed. So, by all standards he lost his American citizenship -- right? Wrong.

After living in Israel for a decade, Afroyim wished to return to New York. In 1960, he asked the U.S. Consulate in Haifa for an American passport. The Department of State refused the application, invoking section 401 (e) of the Nationality Act -- the same ruling that had stripped the American citizen named Perez of his U.S. citizenship.

Attorneys acting for Afroyim took his case to a Washington, DC District Court, which upheld the law. Then his attorneys appealed to the Court of Appeals. This court also upheld the law. The attorneys for Afroyim then moved the case on to the Supreme Court. Here, with Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, Lyndon Johnson's former attorney and one of the most powerful Jewish Americans, casting the swing vote, the court voted five to four in favor of Afroyim. The court held that the U.S. government had no right to "rob" Afroyim of his American citizenship!

The court, reversing its previous judgment as regards the Mexican American, ruled that Afroyim had not shown "intent" to lose citizenship by voting in Israeli elections. Huh?

While Washington claims it has a "good neighbor" policy with Mexico, the U.S. does not permit Mexicans to hold dual nationality. The US makes them become either U.S. or Mexican -- you can't be both. But the U.S., in its special relationship with Israel, has become very sympathetic to allowing Israeli-Americans to retain two nationalities and allowing U.S. citizens not only to hold public office in Israel, but to hold US government positions as well! No other country holds this special exception to our laws of citizenship.

So, you might ask, are there any other dual Israel-American citizens who hold US government positions that could compromise American security? Yes. Consider the following list that I obtained on the web:



Michael Mukasey
Recently appointed as US Attorney General. Mukasey also was the judge in the litigation between developer Larry Silverstein and several insurance companies arising from the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Michael Chertoff
Former Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, at the Justice Department; now head of Homeland Security.

Richard Perle
One of Bush's foreign policy advisors, he is the chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. A very likely Israeli government agent, Perle was expelled from Senator Henry Jackson's office in the 1970's after the National Security Agency (NSA) caught him passing Highly-Classified (National Security) documents to the Israeli Embassy. He later worked for the Israeli weapons firm, Soltam. Perle came from one the above mentioned pro-Israel thinktanks, the AEI. Perle is one of the leading pro-Israeli fanatics leading this Iraq war mongering within the administration and now in the media.

Paul Wolfowitz
Former Deputy Defense Secretary, and member of Perle's Defense Policy Board, in the Pentagon. Wolfowitz is a close associate of Perle, and reportedly has close ties to the Israeli military. His sister lives in Israel. Wolfowitz came from the above mentioned Jewish thinktank, JINSA. Wolfowitz was the number two leader within the administration behind this Iraq war mongering. He later was appointed head of the World Bank but resigned under pressure from World Bank members over a scandal involving his misuse of power.



Douglas Feith
Under Secretary of Defense and Policy Advisor at the Pentagon. He is a close associate of Perle and served as his Special Counsel. Like Perle and the others, Feith is a pro-Israel extremist, who has advocated anti-Arab policies in the past. He is closely associated with the extremist group, the Zionist Organization of America, which even attacks Jews that don't agree with its extremist views. Feith frequently speaks at ZOA conferences. Feith runs a small law firm, Feith and Zell, which only has one International office, in Israel. The majority of their legal work is representing Israeli interests. His firm's own website stated, prior to his appointment, that Feith "represents Israeli Armaments Manufacturer." Feith basically represents the Israeli War Machine. Feith also came from the Jewish thinktank JINSA. Feith, like Perle and Wolfowitz, are campaigning hard for this Israeli proxy war against Iraq.

Lawrence (Larry) Franklin
The former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst with expertise in Iranian policy issues who worked in the office of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and reported directly to Feith's deputy, William Luti, was sentenced January 20, 2006, "to more than 12 years in prison for giving classified information to an Israeli diplomat" and members of the pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Franklin will "remain free while the government continues with the wider case" and his "prison time could be sharply reduced in return for his help in prosecuting" former AIPAC members Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, [who] are scheduled to go on trial in April [2006]. Franklin admitted that he met periodically with Rosen and Weissman between 2002 and 2004 and discussed classified information, including information about potential attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. Rosen and Weissman would later share what they learned with reporters and Israeli officials." (source: sourcewatch.com).

Edward Luttwak
Member of the National Security Study Group of the Department of Defence at the Pentagon. Luttwak is reportedly an Israeli citizen and has taught in Israel. He frequently writes for Israeli and pro-Israeli newspapers and journals. Luttwak is an Israeli extremist whose main theme in many of his articles is the necessity of the U.S. waging war against Iraq and Iran.

Henry Kissinger
One of many Pentagon Advisors, Kissinger sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle. For detailed information about Kissinger's evil past, read Seymour Hersch's book (Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House). Kissinger likely had a part in the Watergate crimes, Southeast Asia mass murders (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos), Installing Chilean mass murdering dictator Pinochet, Operation Condor's mass killings in South America, and more recently served as Serbia's Ex-Dictator Slobodan Milosevic's Advisor. He consistently advocated going to war against Iraq. Kissinger is the Ariel Sharon of the U.S. Unfortunately, President Bush nominated Kissinger as chairman of the September 11 investigating commission. It's like picking a bank robber to investigate a fraud scandal. He later declined this job under enormous protests.

Dov Zakheim
Dov Zakheim is an ordained rabbi and reportedly holds Israeli citizenship. Zakheim attended Jew's College in London and became an ordained Orthodox Jewish Rabbi in 1973. He was adjunct professor at New York's Jewish Yeshiva University. Zakheim is close to the Israeli lobby.

Dov Zakheim is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and in 2000 a co-author of the Project for the New American Century's position paper, Rebuilding America's Defenses, advocating the necessity for a Pearl-Harbor-like incident to mobilize the country into war with its enemies, mostly Middle Eastern Muslim nations.

He was appointed by Bush as Pentagon Comptroller from May 4, 2001 to March 10, 2004. At that time he was unable to explain the disappearance of $1 trillion dollars. Actually, nearly three years earlier, Donald Rumsfeld announced on September 10, 2001 that an audit discovered $2.3 trillion was also missing from the Pentagon books. That story, as mentioned, was buried under 9-11's rubble. The two sums disappeared on Zakheim's watch. We can only guess where that cash went.

Despite these suspicions, on May 6, 2004, Zakheim took a lucrative position at Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the most prestigious strategy consulting firms in the world. One of its clients then was Blessed Relief, a charity said to be a front for Osama bin Laden. Booz, Allen & Hamilton then also worked closely with DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is the research arm of the Department of Defense.

Judicial Inc's bio of Dov tells us Zakheim is a dual Israeli/American citizen and has been tracking the halls of US government for 25 years, casting defense policy and influence on Presidents Reagan, Clinton, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. Judicial Inc points out that most of Israel's armaments were gotten thanks to him. Squads of US F-16 and F-15 were classified military surplus and sold to Israel at a fraction of their value.



Kenneth Adelman
One of many Pentagon Advisors, Adelman also sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle, and is another extremist pro-Israel advisor, who supported going to war against Iraq. Adelman frequently is a guest on Fox News, and often expresses extremist and often ridiculus anti-Arab and anti-Muslim views. Through his racism or ignorance, he actually called Arabs "anti-Semitic" on Fox News (11/28/2001), when he could have looked it up in the dictionary to find out that Arabs by definition are Semites.
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Vice President Dick Cheney's ex-Chief of Staff. As chief pro-Israel Jewish advisor to Cheney, it helps explains why Cheney is so gun-ho to invade Iran. Libby is longtime associate of Wolfowitz. Libby was also a lawyer for convicted felon and Israeli spy Marc Rich, whom Clinton pardoned, in his last days as president. Libby was recently found guilty of lying to Federal investigators in the Valerie Plame affair, in which Plame, a covert CIA agent, was exposed for political revenge by the Bush administration following her husband's revelations about the lies leading to the Iraq War.

Robert Satloff
U.S. National Security Council Advisor, Satloff was the executive director of the Israeli lobby's "think tank," Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Many of the Israeli lobby's "experts" come from this front group, like Martin Indyk.

Elliott Abrams
National Security Council Advisor. He previously worked at Washington-based "Think Tank" Ethics and Public Policy Center. During the Reagan Adminstration, Abrams was the Assistant Secretary of State, handling, for the most part, Latin American affairs. He played an important role in the Iran-Contra Scandal, which involved illegally selling U.S. weapons to Iran to fight Iraq, and illegally funding the contra rebels fighting to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government. He also actively deceived three congressional committees about his involvement and thereby faced felony charges based on his testimony. Abrams pled guilty in 1991 to two misdemeanors and was sentenced to a year's probation and 100 hours of community service. A year later, former President Bush (Senior) granted Abrams a full pardon. He was one of the more hawkish pro-Israel Jews in the Reagan Administration's State Department.

Marc Grossman
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He was Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Human Resources at the Department of State. Grossman is one of many of the pro-Israel Jewish officials from the Clinton Administration that Bush has promoted to higher posts.

Richard Haass
Director of Policy Planning at the State Department and Ambassador at large. He is also Director of National Security Programs and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He was one of the more hawkish pro-Israel Jews in the first Bush (Sr) Administration who sat on the National Security Council, and who consistently advocated going to war against Iraq. Haass is also a member of the Defense Department's National Security Study Group, at the Pentagon.

Robert Zoellick
U.S. Trade Representative, a cabinet-level position. He is also one of the more hawkish pro-Israel Jews in the Bush (Jr) Administration who advocated invading Iraq and occupying a portion of the country in order to set up a Vichy-style puppet government. He consistently advocates going to war against Iran.

Ari Fleischer
Ex- White House Spokesman for the Bush (Jr) Administration. Prominent in the Jewish community, some reports state that he holds Israeli citizenship. Fleischer is closely connected to the extremist Jewish group called the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidics, who follow the Qabala, and hold very extremist and insulting views of non-Jews. Fleischer was the co-president of Chabad's Capitol Jewish Forum. He received the Young Leadership Award from the American Friends of Lubavitch in October, 2001.

James Schlesinger
One of many Pentagon Advisors, Schlesinger also sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle and is another extremist pro-Israel advisor, who supported going to war against Iraq. Schlesinger is also a commissioner of the Defense Department's National Security Study Group, at the Pentagon.

David Frum
White House speechwriter behind the "Axis of Evil" label. He lumped together all the lies and accusations against Iraq for Bush to justify the war.

Joshua Bolten
White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Bolten was previously a banker, former legislative aide, and prominent in the Jewish community.

John Bolton
Former UN Representative and Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. Bolton is also a Senior Advisor to President Bush. Prior to this position, Bolton was Senior Vice President of the above mentioned pro-Israel thinktank, AEI. He recently (October 2002) accused Syria of having a nuclear program, so that they can attack Syria after Iraq. He must have forgotten that Israel has 400 nuclear warheads, some of which are thermonuclear weapons (according to a recent U.S. Air Force report).

David Wurmser
Special Assistant to John Bolton (above), the under-secretary for arms control and international security. Wurmser also worked at the AEI with Perle and Bolton. His wife, Meyrav Wurmser, along with Colonel Yigal Carmon, formerly of Israeli military intelligence, co-founded the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri),a Washington-based Israeli outfit which distributes articles translated from Arabic newspapers portraying Arabs in a bad light.

Eliot Cohen
Member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle and is another extremist pro-Israel advisor. Like Adelman, he often expresses extremist and often ridiculus anti-Arab and anti-Muslim views. More recently, he wrote an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal openly admitting his rascist hatred of Islam claiming that Islam should be the enemy, not terrorism.

Mel Sembler
President of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. A Prominent Jewish Republican and Former National Finance Chairman of the Republican National Committee. The Export-Import Bank facilitates trade relationships between U.S. businesses and foreign countries, specifically those with financial problems.

Steve Goldsmith
Senior Advisor to the President, and Bush's Jewish domestic policy advisor. He also served as liaison in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (White House OFBCI) within the Executive Office of the President. He was the former mayor of Indianapolis. He is also friends with Israeli Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert and often visits Israel to coach mayors on privatization initiatives.

Adam Goldman
White House's Special Liaison to the Jewish Community.

Joseph Gildenhorn
Bush Campaign's Special Liaison to the Jewish Community. He was the DC finance chairman for the Bush campaign, as well as campaign coordinator, and former ambassador to Switzerland.

Christopher Gersten
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and Families at HHS. Gersten was the former Executive Director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Husband of Labor Secretary.

Mark Weinberger
Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Public Affairs.

Samuel Bodman
Deputy Secretary of Commerce. He was the Chairman and CEO of Cabot Corporation in Boston, Massachusetts.

Bonnie Cohen
Under Secretary of State for Management.

Ruth Davis
Director of Foreign Service Institute, who reports to the Office of Under Secretary for Management. This Office is responsible for training all Department of State staff (including ambassadors).

Daniel Kurtzer
Ambassador to Israel.

Cliff Sobel
Ambassador to the Netherlands.

Stuart Bernstein
Ambassador to Denmark.

Nancy Brinker
Ambassador to Hungary

Frank Lavin
Ambassador to Singapore.

Ron Weiser
Ambassador to Slovakia.

Mel Sembler
Ambassador to Italy.

Martin Silverstein
Ambassador to Uruguay.

Lincoln Bloomfield
Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs.

Jay Lefkowitz
Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

Ken Melman
White House Political Director.

Brad Blakeman
White House Director of Scheduling.

I don't know about you, but dual citizenship is fine with me for an ordinary citizen. But if you hold an official position that demands that you put American interests above all else -- if you should look transparent and fair to the rest of the world regarding your formation of Middle East foreign policies, then this is a dangerous trend. Even if there were no pro-Israeli agenda, the fact that decision makers have a bias or an allegiance to one of the parties involved in the current conflict should have raised red flags long before now.



If you think we're being unfair here, ask yourself: How you would react to the Head of Homeland Security if he or she were a dual national with citizenship in Iran, Lebanon or Saudi Arabia? Ask yourself why you don't feel the same about Israeli dual citizenship. Then you will understand how powerful the Israeli lobby has been in "adjusting" your acceptance of their special status.

Hey, I could be way off on this. Let's hear from you.

UPDATE: December 4, 2007

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff reports that Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz has been rewarded with a new position in the Bush administration which will allow him to oversee classified intelligence and inform policies on WMD issues.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has offered Wolfowitz, a prime architect of the Iraq War, a position as chairman of the International Security Advisory Board, a prestigious State Department panel, according to two department sources who declined to be identified discussing personnel matters. The 18-member panel, which has access to highly classified intelligence, advises Rice on disarmament, nuclear proliferation, WMD issues and other matters. "We think he is well suited and will do an excellent job," said one senior official.

[Editor's comment: You couldn't make this stuff up!]

http://www.viewzone.com/dualcitizen.html
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Posted: Jan 15, 2008 2:14am
Nov 22, 2007

Cut Israel Off
 



 

It is long past time for American politicians to quit carrying water for the state of Israel and its powerful U.S. lobby. Congress' craven obedience to the lobby is a disgrace.

America's strategic interests in the Middle East lie with the Arab countries. Israel is a strategic and economic liability. The U.S. government's slavish support of Israel brands us as a hypocrite and is responsible for most of the hostility toward the U.S.

Americans have been brainwashed into believing that it's the Arabs, and the Palestinians in particular, who don't want peace. That is a big lie. The Palestinians made an enormous concession when they agreed to settle for a state on 18 percent of Palestine. Saudi Arabia proposed several years ago a peace plan in which all of the Arab countries would recognize Israel in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. The Israelis rejected it out of hand, just as they reject Arab efforts to have the Middle East a nuclear-free zone.

Israel's goal is and always has been to take all of Palestine and to get rid of the Palestinians. The Israelis employed ethnic cleansing in 1948 and again in 1967 to make hundreds of thousands of Palestinians refugees. For 40 years, the Israelis have refused to give back the Palestinian and Syrian lands they seized in war. They have blatantly violated international law by building settlements on occupied land, and by violating the airspace of other sovereign countries.

Palestinians are the victims, not the villains, in this case. The Israelis make their lives miserable in the hope they will give up and leave. At the same time, the Israelis, in cahoots with the American government, maintain a charade of proposed peace talks. They of course never come to fruition. The Israeli government is not about to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state. If they give the Palestinians anything, it will be a patchwork of enclaves completely surrounded and controlled by Israel. Having created 700,000 Palestinian refugees, the Israelis have from the beginning refused to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses, all of which Israel confiscated on the specious grounds that they were "abandoned property."

Without U.S. aid, which now is conservatively estimated to total $108 billion (think of the infrastructure and schools that amount could build in the U.S.), and without the U.S. wielding its veto every time the United Nations tries to act, none of this would be possible.

It is not just the Muslim world that hates our pro-Israel foreign policy, for sound reasons that it is unjust and cruel. Europeans and others around the world are contemptuous of America's slavelike obedience to a small foreign power. It has gotten to the point that to be seen as an ally of the United States is viewed negatively.

The Arab and Muslim people, with the exception of al-Qaeda, don't hate America or Americans. It is the pro-Israel foreign policy and, of course, our invasions of two Muslim countries that they hate. Virtually all of the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda generated in this country has its source in the Israeli lobby and in Israel itself.

Thanks to the unconstitutional largess of the cowardly Congress, Israel is a rich country and one of the world's leading military powers. It doesn't need American aid. It is time to quit dancing to the tune of a lobby with dual loyalties and to pursue America's interests.

Americans are being betrayed by their own politicians, and it's time to treat those scoundrels with the contempt they deserve.

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Posted: Nov 22, 2007 3:16am
Nov 20, 2007
College Students Revolt ! Brainwashing ....time to get dirty again...
A Real Terrorist Is On The Loose
Humanity And Mother Earth Are In Danger
By Ali Baghdadi
Countercurrents.org
A speech at Northeastern University, Chicago
11-19-7

"I am greatly honored to be speaking to you. I must tell you from the start that I will not beat around the bush{s}. I am not here to entertain you or to please you. Truth sometimes hurts. You are adults. You can take it.

I am a Palestinian, an Arab and a Muslim. That means I belong to the people that the United States government has designated as enemy. I belong to the camp of the "bad guys", who are punished, murdered, tortured and even raped. But I am also an American. I belong to the camp of the "good guys", who are doing the murder, torture and rape, who are waging what President George W. Bush calls a crusade, against my people, the "terrorists". Israel is an integral member of this camp. As a matter of fact, the American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC), a Zionist-Jewish lobby in Washington, is leading this camp.

My wife for forty three years is an American. My six children and eleven grandchildren know no other country on Earth except the United States of America. Two of my kids have served in the military, and were honorably discharged.

Let me put it this way. I do belong to the people who hate you. Ironically, I also belong to the people, who are hated, not only by Arabs and Muslims, but by almost the rest of the world, including Europeans. The United States is hated not only by Muslim masses, but also by Arab rulers who enjoy Washington's military and political support. Yes, America is hated by its "loyal friends", King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia, King Abdallah II of Jordan, President Mubarak of Egypt, and al-Maliki of Iraq, among many others. They hate, because the White House humiliates them, despises them and pushes them around. George W. Bush has given them one choice. Either you are with us, or with the "terrorists", their own people. They are unwilling to face the destiny of those who challenge the American empire. Unlike Saddam Hussein, they chose to be living cowards and traitors, instead of becoming great martyrs loved and honored by the Arab and Muslim people. The fact remains that, when their service is no longer needed, their master will trash them, will flush them into the sewage of history. America has no permanent friends, only interests. Today, anti-Americanism throughout the world is the norm, not the exception. [
http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/parochialism.htm ]

During a two day visit to my city of birth, Jerusalem, and as my family and I were attempting to enter the Holy Sepulcher, the holiest church in Christianity, Palestinians told me, point blank, straight to my face, that they hate me; that they hate all Americans; that I am one of them, an enemy to Arabs and Muslims. The fact that I have been defending Arab and Muslim causes, particularly the Palestinians, for forty seven years, made no difference. I do understand. [
http://www.rense.com/general52/aga.htm]
A day earlier, at the Jordan River entry point to my native lands, Palestine (Israel), I was treated by the Israeli authorities quite differently. Though none of us meet the profile of a Muslim "terrorist, my son and I have no beard, and my grandson is too young to have a beard; though my wife is blond, has a low profile and peaceful disposition; though my wife, daughter and granddaughter had no headscarf; and though we all carried U.S. passports; we waited for seven hours in front of the passport control window before we were allowed in. In the eyes of the Israeli authorities, we are all Palestinians, not Americans. We are all potential terrorists.

I don't blame the Palestinians, my fellow countrymen and women for hating me. President Jimmy Carter describes the Tel-Aviv government as the worst occupational regime. Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu speak of Israel as worse than the former apartheid government of South Africa. The present South African government agrees.
In the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians are murdered daily. They are being starved to death. They all live in a prison. Their homes and agricultural lands are bulldozed. Their olive and citrus trees are uprooted. More than 550 Israeli military checkpoints are scattered all over the West Bank alone. A trip between two villages that normally takes fifteen minutes last for five to seven hours. Palestinian babies die at military checkpoints while their mothers are on their way to a hospital to deliver. Palestinians drinking water is stolen and diverted to Jewish swimming pools in illegal settlements built on their confiscated lands. Their economy is in shambles. The little of what they clench unto of their remaining land is actually a living hell. More than 60% of the work force is unemployed. Palestinian children are seen searching in Jewish garbage dumps for food to eat. Recently, Palestinian students who had come home to visit were not permitted to return to their universities abroad. [
http://www.welfarestate.com/flight990/]

Three weeks ago, despite protest made by the United Nations, the world community and international human rights organizations, food, electricity and fuel to Gaza were cut in half, by Israeli government, as a mass punishment, because the Palestinians chose Hamas as their representative, in an election that was described by former President Carter, as free and democratic. President Bush, who told us that his invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq is prompted by his desire to spread democracy, labels the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, as a terrorist organization with which the United States will not deal.[
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/CRASH/TWA/twa.html ] Even Israeli military disagrees with Bush's claim. According to a Nov 11, 2007 news report published by Haaretz, a leading Israeli newspaper, Israeli paratroopers testified that "in all parameters, we are facing an army, not gangs." [ http://www.palestine-encyclopedia.com/EPP/TOC.htm ]

The Zionist controlled U.S. mass media allege that Israel is not morally or legally obliged to cater to needs of Palestinians who are blockaded, who are under occupation, and all their air, sea and land entry points are controlled by Israeli forces.[
http://www.rense.com/politics5/delta.htm] Israel continues to disavow responsibility for the human catastrophe Palestinians are facing, in violation of international law.

No wonder that my family and I saw, by the Damascus Gate to the Old City of Jerusalem, Palestinian crowds who were not allowed to pray at al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock mosques, shouting, pleading upon the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad, to fire Iranian missiles towards their Israeli occupied city, out of no concern for their own lives. No wonder why, after experiencing the intolerable living conditions of Palestinians, my children and my grandchildren in my company, stood helplessly by, and expressed approval and support, despite the heavy presence of trigger happy Israeli soldiers. No wonder why, during the 1991 war of aggression[
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5611] ordered by Bush senior, against Iraq, West Bank Palestinians danced on the roofs of their homes and cheered Saddam?s missiles lighting the skies on their way to Tel-Aviv and Haifa. No wonder why, after they were forcefully driven out of over 550 towns and villages in 1948, and the remaining 22% of their lands occupied in 1967, did Palestinian youths, males and females, find no alternative but to explode themselves amongst Israeli soldiers. Palestinians have no army. They have no tanks, no jet fighters, no apache helicopters, and no weapons of mass destruction, but their enemy does and uses. [ http://gsb.biblecommenter.com/obadiah/1.htm]

Iraq as a country has been completely destroyed. Its seven thousand year civilization has been shattered. Its infrastructure has been ruined.[
http://www.truthattack.org/] Its industrial machinery, 750 billion dollars worth, was disassembled and sold as scrap to neighboring countries. Its water, air and land have been poisoned. It resources are being robbed. Since Bush's "mission accomplished" [ http://www.public-action.com/SkyWriter/WacoMuseum/death/death.html ]declaration on aircraft carrier The Lincoln in the Gulf, 1.2 million men, women and children have been murdered, a death toll that rivals Rwanda genocide. This brings the total number of Iraqis losing their lives from a combination of the two wars led by Bush the father and the son, and including the 13 years of illegal sanctions imposed on the country, to 3.5 million. Iraqi widows number over 3 million. Iraqi orphans exceed 5 millions. 70% of Iraqi children suffer traumatic stress syndrome due to death and destruction they are exposed to daily.[ http://www.geocities.com/mazanga9/IDF/IDFSnipingSharpshootingPhoto1.htm] Though Iraqis are known to be proud, educated and hard working people, thousands of mothers and children are forced into prostitution to survive. According to the U.N., Iraqi refugees, including the internally displaced, reached 4.4 million, two millions in Syria alone.[ http://www.apfn.net/Messageboard/02-26-05/discussion.cgi.32.html]

A month ago, in an interview that appeared on 60-Minutes CBS TV, a U.S. field commander said that the military is authorized[
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/special.html ] to bomb and kill civilians if a suspected Taliban fighter was in their midst, provided that the number of those civilians is less than thirty. If the number of unarmed civilians was higher, the approval of the U.S. Secretary of Defense or the President would become necessary. I am almost certain that those two men have never said no to the murder of Muslims and destruction of Muslim countries.

Even the Afghani leader, Hameed Karazai, a puppet and a traitor, stated on the same program that he had complained to the U.S. President and had asked him "to stop bombing us". Remember that Karazai is the White House man. Until he was handpicked by Bush and Cheney to become president of Afghanistan, the man was employed by Unical, an oil giant, here in the United States.[
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2007/11/09/red-state-update-ron-paul-ron-paul-ron-paul-video/ ]

You must have heard a question that Americans often ask, "Why do they hate us?"
In a speech given to the Congress, George W. Bush answered, because they hate our freedoms. We are told that they hate us because we are rich. They envy us because we stand for democracy and freedom. They resent us because we are the most powerful nation. They are jealous of our achievements and accomplishments. They are loners like Timothy McVeigh. They are intolerant; and their religion is primitive, irrational and violent. Certainly, these statements are insults to the intelligence of the American people.

Americans, particularly the Christian Zionists,[
http://www.cufi.org/site/PageServer?pagename=learn_teachings ] ignore the fact that Arab Christians share Muslim sentiments. They also hate America. [ http://thomasmoresociety.org/thomas_more_society_attorneys.htm]

"Why do they hate us?" Americans should have known why. Americans have allowed the Israeli Jewish lobby to hijack U.S. government in the service of the Israeli policy of aggression and expansionism. No Republican or Democrat candidate can win without the blessings and approval of this lobby. We have been pouring billions of dollars into aid to insure Israel's military superiority over all Arab armies. We protect Israel in the United Nation, despite its refusal to implement U.N. resolutions, and its disrespect to international law. We have also allowed Israel to be the only state in the Middle East that possesses nuclear weapons aimed at all major Arab and Muslim cities. In addition, this illegal and genocidal war was waged on behalf the Zionist state, to prevent Iraq of becoming a threat and a challenge to its military power and dominance.
[
http://www.rense.com/general79/musron.htm]
Israel invaded southern Lebanon in July of 2006. Israeli-U.S. F-15 and F-16 fighters dropped over 1.25 million American cluster bombs on the civilian population. Lebanese cities and villages were bombarded, day and night. The infrastructure, including highways, roads, and bridges south of Beirut, was destroyed. Food, water and fuel storages were hit. Apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, clinics and houses of worship were leveled to the ground. One million Lebanese refugees were compelled to flee, with little food or water. It took 33 days of killing and destruction by the Israeli army, which is described as the fourth most powerful army in the world, before the U.S. agreed to a U.N. resolution for a cease fire.

Notably, Americans who volunteered to go to Lebanon to help were there only to rescue the surviving animals.

Five weeks ago, many of the residents of southern California, who escaped the deadly fires that resulted in over a half million displaced individuals, left almost everything behind, but brought with their animals, their dogs, cats and even fish.[
http://www.vialls.com/]

Love for animals is not confined to Americans. It is universal. I do love animals.
Again, I must tell you the truth. Americans show unusual love and mercy towards animals. Those who are cruel to animals are punished and jailed if convicted. But what is really disturbing is the fact that the great majority doesn't show similar love and mercy towards people, towards fellow men and women. Death and destruction has been an integral part of Western culture and Western history.

I am not a psychologist or a psychiatric. However, I do know that that is sick. It is also sickening. It makes me vomit.

Despite tight censorship, Americans saw the destruction of Baghdad, and images of the assault on the city of Falujah, which was nearly razed to the ground. They saw the devastation of the entire city. They saw Iraqi corpses blackened with Napalm and phosphorus bombs, which are outlawed. They heard cheers and laughs of U.S. soldiers as they bring down mosques and minarets. They saw the marines shooting unarmed, wounded and harmless civilians that had taken refuge in houses of worship. Though the number of active Iraqi resistance fighters is no more than 20,000, the U.S. army fired 1.5 billion small arms rounds in one year, more bullets than can be manufactured. The very little of what Americans have seen is enough to demand a Nuremberg-like trial for the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State and their advisors, as well as top generals in the Pentagon.

U.S. citizens have failed to do their part. They have been silent, and silence is complicity. They are not prepared to dedicate a fraction of the time wasted on stupid TV programs to learn a little about world affairs and the serious crimes against humanity that their government is actually committing.

Americans are generally indifferent and heartless. Americans see wars as action movies, computer games, exciting and entertaining. The 2,000 pounds bombs and ballistic missiles raining down on Baghdad were fireworks. Victims are numbers and their murder is collateral damage.

The question that puzzles me is, "How many more nations should be invaded and destroyed; how many more cities should be torched and devastated; how many more millions should be massacred; how many more widows and orphans should be left without a supporter; how many more Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons we are going to build; how many more innocents we are going to torture; how many more international laws and conventions our country will be violating, before the American conscience can be awakened and become functional?"

Our "State of the Union" is gloomy and disgraceful. It is true that there are honorable, caring and courageous American men and women, Christians, Jews, atheists and others, who strongly protest U.S. policy. It is true that there are Americans who challenge the benefiters of war. Unfortunately, they are in the tiny minority.
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Posted: Nov 20, 2007 3:51am
Jun 21, 2007
Dictionaries define "yellow journalism" variously as irresponsible and sensationalist reporting that distorts, exaggerates or misstates the truth. It's misinformation or agitprop disinformation masquerading as fact to boost circulation and readership or serve a larger purpose like lying for state and corporate interests. The dominant US media excel in it, producing a daily diet of fiction portrayed as real news and information in their role as our national thought-control police gatekeepers. In the lead among the print and electronic corporate-controlled media is the New York Times publishing "All The News That's Fit To Print" by its standards. Others wanting real journalism won't find it on their pages allowing only the fake kind. It's because this paper's primary mission is to be the lead instrument of state propaganda making it the closest thing we have in the country to an official ministry of information and propaganda.

Singlehandedly, the Times destroys "The Myth of the Liberal Media" that's also the title of Edward Herman's 1999 book on "the illiberal media," the market system, and what passes for democracy in America Michael Parenti calls "Democracy For the Few," in his book with that title out earlier this year in its 8th edition.

In his book, Herman writes about the "propaganda model" he and Noam Chomsky introduced and developed 11 years earlier in their landmark book titled "Manufacturing Consent." They explained how the dominant media use this technique to program the public mind to go along with whatever agenda best serves wealth and power interests. So imperial wars of aggression are portrayed as liberating ones, humanitarian intervention, and spreading democracy to nations without any. Never mind they're really for new markets, resources like oil, and cheap exploitable labor paid for with public tax dollars diverted from essential social needs.

In "The Myth of the Liberal Media," Herman explains the "propaganda model" focuses on "the inequality of wealth and power" and how those with most of it can "filter out the news to print, marginalize dissent (and assure) government and dominant private interests" control the message and get it to the public. It's done through a set of "filters" removing what's to be suppressed and "leaving only the cleansed (acceptable) residue fit to print" or broadcast electronically. Parenti's "Democracy For the Few" is democracy-US style the rest of us are stuck with.

Books have been written on how, going back decades, the New York Times betrayed the public trust serving elitist interests alone. It plays the lead and most influential media role disseminating state and corporate propaganda to the nation and world. In terms of media clout, the Times is unmatched with its prominent front page being what media critic Norman Solomon calls "the most valuable square inches of media real estate in the USA" - more accurately, anywhere.

Examples of Times duplicity are endless showing up every day on its pages. The shameless Judith Miller saga is just the latest episode of how bad they can get, but she had her predecessors, and the beat goes on since she left in disgrace. Through the years, the Times never met a US war of aggression it didn't love and support. It was never bothered by CIA's functioning as a global Mafia-style hit squad/training headquarters ousting democratically elected governments, assassinating foreign heads of state and key officials, propping up friendly dictators, funding and training secret paramilitary armies and death squads, and now snatching individuals for "extraordinary rendition" to torture-prison hellholes, some run by the agency and all taking orders from it.

CIA, as Chalmers Johnson notes, is a state within a state functioning as the president's unaccountable private army with unchecked powers and a near-limitless off-the-books secret budget we now know tops $44 billion annually. It menaces democratic rule, threatens the Republic's survival and makes any notion of a free society impossible as long as this agency exists. Not a problem at New York Times. It worked closely with CIA since the 1950s allowing some of its foreign correspondents to be Agency assets or agents. It no doubt still does.

The Times is also unbothered by social decay at home, an unprecedented wealth disparity, an administration mocking the rule of law, a de facto one party state with two wings and a president usurping "unitary executive" powers claiming the law is what he says it is making him a dictator. It practically reveres the cesspool of corrupted incestuous ties between government and business, mocking any notion of democracy of, for, or by the people. That's the state of the nation's "liberal media" headquartered in the Times building in New York.

The New York Times v. Hugo Chavez

This article focuses on one example of Times duplicity among many other prominent ones equally sinister and disturbing - its venomous agitprop targeting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez this writer calls the leading model democratic leader on the planet even though he's not perfect, nor is anyone else. That's why after "Islamofascist terrorists" he's practically "enemy number one" on the Times hit list and Washington's. Besides Venezuela being oil rich, Chavez is the greatest of all threats the US faces - a good example that's spreading. His governance shows how real social democracy works exposing the fake American kind.

That's intolerable to the masters of the universe and their leading media proponent, the New York Times. It always plays the lead media role keeping the world safe for wealth and power. So on June 6, it hauled out former Peruvian president and first ever indigenous Andean one in the country's history - Alejandro Toledo (2001 - 2006). His electoral campaign promised a populist vision for Peruvians, to create new jobs, address dire social needs of the country's poor, and end years of corruption and hard line rule under Alberto Fujimori, now a wanted man on charges of corruption and human rights abuses.

Toledo was little better, failing on all counts pushing the same repressive neoliberal policies he was elected to end. He was in tow with Washington's agenda of privatizations, deregulation, IMF/World Bank diktats, debt service, and overall contempt for the essential social needs of his people. He was also tainted with corruption, and during his tenure violence was used against protest demonstrators, criminal suspects in prisons were beaten and tortured, and dozens of journalists were threatened or attacked for criticizing local politicians or him.

No problem for the New York Times that published his June 6 op ed piece titled "Silence = Despotism." In it, he said "Political democracy will take root in Latin America only when it is accompanied by economic and social democracy (under) political systems....free and fair for all." As Peru's president, he thwarted efforts to do what he now says he champions. Toledo continued saying "our citizens" must be heard, and if free speech is silenced in one country, "silence could spread to other nations" pointing his hypocritical finger squarely at Hugo Chavez.

Venezuelans, he says, "are in the streets (today) confronting repressions. Courageous students raise the flags of freedom, refusing to mortgage their future by remaining silent." He quickly gets to the point citing Hugo Chavez's refusal to renew RCTV's Channel 2 VHF license saying "This is about more than one TV station. President Chavez has become a destabilizing figure throughout the hemisphere because he feels he can silence anyone with opposing thoughts (by) silencing them through repression or government decrees." He then called on other Latin American leaders to confront "authoritarianism" and "stand up for continent-wide solidarity" citing his own presidency and how "it never occurred to (him) to silence (critical) media outlets (or) nationalize them."

Toledo's tainted record as president belies his shameless pieties on the Times op ed page. He did more than try silencing critics. He stayed mute when they were attacked or when two or more of them were killed. The New York Times knows his record even though it suppressed the worst of it while he was in office. Yet it gave him prominent space to denounce Hugo Chavez's social democracy and legal right not to renew the operating license of a TV channel for its repeated illegal seditious acts. RCTV was a serial abuser of its right to use the public airwaves. It was then guilty of supporting and being complicit with efforts to foment insurrection to overthrow Venezuela's democratically elected government.

Toledo ignored this saying, as Peru's president, he was "always....respectful of opinions" differing from his own. He would "never agree with those who prefer silence instead of dissonant voices. Those....who embrace liberty and democracy must stand ready to work in solidarity with the Venezuelan people." He failed to say which ones he meant, surely not the 70% or more backing Chavez. And by failing to denounce RCTV's lawlessness, he showed he condoned it. He also forgot his successor as president, Alan Garcia, lawlessly silenced two Peruvian TV stations and three radio stations, apparently for supporting a lawful strike Garcia opposes.

The New York Times has an ugly record bashing Hugo Chavez since he was elected with a mandate to make participatory social democracy the cornerstone of his presidency. That's anathema to Washington and its chief media ally, the New York Times. Since 1999 when he took office, it hammered Chavez with accusations of opposing the US-sponsored Free Trade of the Americas (FTAA) without explaining it would sell out to big capital at the expense of his people if adopted.

Following his election in December, 1998, Times Latin American reporter Larry Roher wrote: (Latin American) presidents and party leaders are looking over their shoulders (worried about the) specter....the region's ruling elite thought they had safely interred: that of the populist demagogue, the authoritarian man on horseback known as the caudillo (strongman)."

The Times later denounced him for using petrodollars for foreign aid to neighbors, equating promoting solidarity, cooperation and respecting other nations' sovereignty with subversion and buying influence. It criticized his raising royalties and taxes on foreign investors, never explaining it was to end their longtime preferential treatment making them pay their fair share as they should. It bashed him for wanting his own people to benefit most from their own resources, not predatory oil and other foreign investors the way it was before Chavez took office. No longer, and that can't be tolerated in Washington or on the pages of the New York Times.

When state oil company PDVSA became majority shareholder with foreign investors May 1 with a minimum 60% ownership in four Orinoco River basin oil projects, the Times savaged Chavez. It condemned his "revolutionary flourish (and his) ambitious (plan to) wrest control of several major oil projects from American and European companies (with a) showdown (ahead for these) coveted energy resources...." Unmentioned was these resources belong to the Venezuelan people. The Times also accuses Chavez of allowing "politics and ideology" to drive US-Venezuelan confrontation "to limit American influence around the world, starting in Venezuela's oil fields."

It calls him "divisive, a ruinous demagogue, provocative (and) the next Fidel Castro." It savored the 2002 aborted two day coup ousting him calling it a "resignation" and that Venezuela "no longer (would be) threatened by a would-be dictator." It reported he "stepped down (and was replaced by (a) respected business leader" (Pedro Carmona - president of Fedecamaras, the Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce).

Unmentioned was that Carmona was hand-picked in Washington and by Venezuelan oligarchs to do their bidding at the expense of the people. He proved his bona fides by suspending the democratically elected members of the National Assembly and crushing Bolivarian Revolutionary Constitutional reforms, quickly restored once Chavez was reinstated in office. Carmona fled to Colombia seeking political asylum from where Venezuela's Supreme Court now wants him extradited on charges of civil rebellion. Unmentioned also was that the Times had to dismiss one of its Venezuelan reporters, Francisco Toro, in January, 2003 when Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) revealed he was an anti-Chavista activist masquerading as an objective journalist.

Back to the present, the Times claims Chavez is moving to consolidate his dictatorial powers by shuttering RCTV's Channel 2 and silencing his critics. It portrays him as a Latin American strongman waging class warfare with socialist rhetoric. It asks how long Venezuelans will put up with the destruction of their democratic freedoms? It points to "evidence Mr. Chavez's definition of the enemy has been enlarged to include news media outlets....critical of his government....extending his control beyond political institutions (alone)." This marks a "shift from the early years of his presidency, when he (also) faced vitriolic criticism" from the media.

The Times speculates how brutal he'll become silencing critics and quelling protests wondering if he'll use proxies to do it. It then questions whether Chavez overstepped enough to marshall large-scale opposition to him to push him past the tipping point that will inevitably lead to his loss of credibility and power. Might this be a thinly disguished Times effort to create the reality it supports by wishing for it through the power of suggestion.

Times business columnist Roger Lowenstein is on board to make it happen. He claims, with no substantiation, Chavez "militarized the government, emasculated the country's courts, intimidated the media, eroded confidence in the economy and hollowed out Venezuela's once-democratic institutions." Turn this on its head to know the truth Lowenstein won't report - that Chavez militarized nothing. He put his underutilized military to work implementing Venezuela's Plan Bolivar 2000 constructing housing for the poor, building roads, conducting mass vaccinations, and overall serving people needs, not invading and occupying other countries and threatening to flatten other "uncooperative" ones.

Venezuela's courts function independently of the democratically elected President and National Assembly. The media is the freest and most open in the region and the world with most of it corporate owned as it is nearly everywhere. Further, business is booming enough to get the Financial Times to say bankers were having "a party," and the country never had a functioning democracy until Hugo Chavez made it flourish there.

Times Venezuelan reporter Simon Romero is little better than Lowenstein or others sending back agitprop disguised as real journalism in his Venezuelan coverage, including RCTV closure street protests. He made events on Caracas streets sound almost like a one-sided uprising of protesters against Chavez with "images of policemen with guns drawn" intimidating them. He highlighted Chavez's critics claiming "the move to allow RCTV's license to expire amounts to a stifling of dissent in the news media." He quoted Elisa Parejo, one of RCTV's first soap opera stars, saying "What we're living in Venezuela is a monstrosity. It is a dictatorship."

He quoted right wing daily newspaper El Nacional as well portraying the RCTV decision as "the end of pluralism" in the country. Gonzalo Marroquin, president of the corporate media-controlled Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), was also cited saying Chavez wants to "standardize the right to information (indicating) a very bleak outlook for the whole hemisphere." He invented corporate-cooked polling numbers showing "most Venezuelans oppose Mr. Chavez's decision not to renew RCTV's license." In fact, the opposite is true and street demonstrators for and against RCTV's shuttering proved it. Venezuelans supporting Chavez dwarfed the opposition many times over. But you won't find Romero or any other Times correspondent reporting that. If any try doing it, they'll end up doing obits as their future beat.

Back in February, Romero was at it earlier. Then, he hyped Venezuela's arms spending making it sound like Chavez threatened regional stability and was preparing to bomb or invade Miami. Romero's incendiary headline read "Venezuela Spending on Arms Soars to World's Top Ranks." It began saying "Venezuela's arms spending has climbed to more than $4 billion in the past two years, transforming the nation into Latin America's largest weapons buyer" with suggestive comparisons to Iran. The report revealed this information came from the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) making that unreliable source alone reason to question its accuracy and what's behind it.

The figure quoted refers only to what Venezuela spends on arms, not its total military spending. Unmentioned was that the country's total military spending is half of Agentina's, less than one-third of Colombia's, and one-twelfth of Brazil's according to Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation figures ranking Venezuela 63rd in the world in military spending. The Center also reported Venezuela's 2004 military budget at $1.1 billion making Romero's $4 billion DIA figure phony and a spurious attempt to portray Chavez as a regional threat needing to be counteracted. At that level, he's also outspent by the Pentagon 500 to one, or lots more depending on how US military spending and homeland security readiness are calculated, including all their unreported or hidden costs.

On June 12, Venezuela Analysis.com reported, in an article by "Oil Wars," the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) indicated Venezuela's military spending for 2006 was $1.9 billion. The report's author voiced skepticism so compared this number to Venezuela's Ministry of Defense expenditures for that year in its "Memoria y Cuenta." It's figure was $1,977,179,179 thousand Bolivars that converted to US dollars comes to $919,618,000. To that must be added another $1.09 billion the Ministry of Defense got from Venezuela's FONDEN, or development fund. Adding both numbers together, of course, shows the country's 2006 military spending at $2 billion.

Based on The Independent Institute's Senior Fellow Robert Higgs' calculation of US defense spending for FY 2006 of $934.9 billion, it still means the Pentagon outspends Venezuela's military by around 500 to one. Higgs includes the separate budgets for the Department of Defense, Energy, State, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Treasury's Military Retirement Fund, other smaller defense-related budgets plus net interest paid attributable to past debt-financed defense outlays. Even then, he omitted off-the-books budgets and secret intelligence ones for CIA and NSA.

Back to the Times' Romero and it's clear his reporting smells the same as Iraq's WMDs and Iran's legal commercial nuclear program being threat enough to warrant sanctions and a US military response. Romero is right in step with Bush administration World Bank president neocon nominee Robert Zoellick. He took aim at Hugo Chavez from Mexico City June 16 with warnings Venezuela is "a country where economic problems are mounting, and as we're seeing on the political side it's not moving in a healthy direction."

Romero reports similar agitprop and did it May 17 in his article titled "Clash of Hope and Fear as Venezuela Seizes Land." He began saying "The squatters arrive before dawn with machetes and rifles, surround the well-ordered rows of sugar cane and threaten to kill anyone who interferes. Then they light a match to the crops and declare the land their own." He continued saying "Mr. Chavez is carrying out what may become the largest forced land redistribution in Venezuela's history, building utopian farming villages for squatters, lavishing money on new cooperatives and sending army commando units to supervise seized estates in six states."

Violence has accompanied seizures, says Romero, "with more than 160 peasants killed by hired gunmen in Venezuela (and) Eight landowners have also been killed...." Since Chavez took office, there have been peasant and other violent deaths, but most of them have been at the hands of US-Colombian government financed paramilitary death squads operating in Venezuela.

Romero stays clear of this while making his rhetoric sound like an armed insurrection is underway in Venezuela forcibly and illegally seizing land from its rightful owners. What's going on, in fact, is quite different that can only be touched on briefly to explain. Hugo Chavez first announced his "Return to the Countryside" plan under the Law on Land and Agricultural Development in November, 2001. The law set limits on landholding size; taxed unused property; aimed to redistribute unused, mainly government-owned land to peasant families and cooperatives; and expropriate uncultivated, unused land from large private owners compensating them at fair market value. So, in fact, the government seizes nothing. It buys unused land from large estates and pays for it so landless peasants can have and use it productively for the first time ever benefitting everyone equitably.

Nowhere in his article did Romero explain this although he did acknowledge prior to 2002, "an estimated 5 per cent of the population owned 80 per cent of the country's private land." By omitting what was most important to include, Romero's report distorted the truth enough to assure his readers never get it from him. Nor do they from any other Times correspondent when facts conflict with imperial interests. That's what we've come to expect from the "newspaper of record" never letting truth interfere with serving wealth and power interests that includes lying for them. Shameless reporting on Venezuela under Hugo Chavez is one of many dozens of examples of Times duplicity and disservice to its readers going back decades.

Former Times journalist John Hess denounced it his way: I "never saw a foreign intervention that the Times did not support, never saw a fare....rent....or utility increase that it did not endorse, never saw it take the side of labor in a strike or lockout, or advocate a raise for underpaid workers. And don't get me started on universal health care and Social Security. So why do people think the Times is liberal?" And why should anyone think its so-called news and information is anything more than propaganda for the imperial interests it serves?

Robert McChesney and Mark Weisbrot explained it well in their June 1 CommonDreams.org article on "Venezuela and the Media" saying: "the US media coverage (with NYT in the lead) of Venezuela's RCTV controversy (and most everything else) says more about the deficiencies of our own news media than it does about Venezuela. It demonstrates again (it's more) willing to carry water for Washington (and the corporate interests it serves) than to ascertain and report the truth of the matter." At the Times, truth is always the first casualty, but especially when the nation's at war.

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2007/06/record-of-newspaper-of-record.html
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Posted: Jun 21, 2007 7:19am
Jun 14, 2007

Noam Chomsky is MIT Institute Professor Emeritus of linguistics and has been a leading political and social critic of US imperial policy for over 40 years. He's also one of the world's most influential and widely cited intellectuals on the Left. He's the author of many hundreds of articles and publications as well as dozens of books including his latest one and subject of this review - "Interventions."

The introductory Editor's Note explains that post-9/11 Chomsky began writing short, roughly 1000 word, concise articles distributed by The New York Times Syndicate as op-eds. They were widely picked up overseas but rarely in the US and only in smaller regional or local papers. They never appeared in the New York Times that circulated them worldwide but not to its own readers. It shows how the Times and all the corporate media suppress views contrary to dominant mainstream thinking. They're verboten in a nation where A.J Liebling once said "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."

Imperfect as the European press is, Chomsky's essays appeared in the International Herald Tribune and London Guardian and Independent among others. Even one of Mexico's leading national newspapers, La Jornada in Mexico City, frequently publishes Chomsky's articles.

"Interventions" is a collection of 44 op-ed pieces, post-9/11, from September, 2002 through March, 2007. Included is one written specifically for the New York Times in February, 2004 titled "A Wall is a Weapon." Chomsky added notes at the end of each one briefly expanding on and updating what he wrote earlier up to the book's recent publication. In all his political writings, including the op-eds in "Interventions," Chomsky has always been a fierce critic of US foreign and domestic policy and the dominant US media's practice of "manufacturing consent" for it assuring criticism never exceeds what political elites allow. It means there's never enough of it, what's most needed, or anything diverging from general consensus views corporate America and Washington-based rulers of the world agree on.

Chomsky confronts these rulers in "Interventions" as he's always done in his writings and public appearances. As the Editor's Note says: "Chomsky believes that the freedom to challenge power is not just an opportunity, it's a responsibility." He does it as effectively in concise essays on selected issues as in expanded versions in more extended articles and books. Chomsky is also an optimist believing people can change things saying "One of the clearest lessons of history....is that rights are not granted; they are won" but not by being passive or timid. On the broad range of issues in "Interventions," Chomsky isn't timid, and that's why his views aren't allowed in the dominant corporate-controlled media because speaking truth to power and the public just might catch on.

"Interventions" - 44 Op-Ed Essays Critical of Bush Administration Foreign and Domestic Policies

This review covers a healthy sampling of Chomsky's book dealing mostly with foreign policies but also some domestic ones in a post-9/11 world. It's under an administration former President Jimmy Carter recently called "the worst in history (because we) endorsed the concept of pre-emptive (in fact, preventive meaning illegal aggression) war....even though our own security is not directly threatened." In an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Carter elaborated further, like no other former president ever did. He almost sounded like Noam Chomsky from what he said about George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The UK leader's equally culpable and shortly leaving office in disgrace with a public approval rating lower than George Bush's.

Chomsky's first essay is titled "9/11: Lessons Unlearned" in which he addresses George Bush's question: "Why do they (Arabs/Muslims) hate us?" Fifty years ago Dwight Eisenhower's National Security Council explained it's because we support Middle East despots and "oppos(e) political or economic progress" wanting only control of the region's vast oil reserves. It's no different today with people everywhere respecting our freedoms but hating our policies, especially toward them. With good reason, they view the US as a "terrorist regime," which it is.

Feelings on the Arab street stem for Washington's longtime one-sided support for Israel's repressive policies toward Palestinians. It fueled a six-decade conflict because Israel, with US backing, wants it kept unresolved until it achieves the goal noted Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, and other courageous observers explain - to ethnically cleanse, by any means, all parts of Palestine Israelis want for themselves leaving Palestinians the right to move elsewhere or live only on cantonized worthless scrub land Israel doesn't value.

Twelve horrendous years of harsh Iraqi economic and political sanctions also fueled extreme Arab and Muslim anti-US sentiment now far worse since March, 2003. It boils over daily in the country and around the world reflected in Canadian General Andrew Leslie's comment made in summer, 2005. Explaining why the Afghan war will be long, he said: (because) "every time you kill an angry young man (or his family), you're creating 15 more who will come after you." He might have finished his thought that the way to stop them killing us is stop killing them.

Before the March, 2003 invasion alone, the toll on Iraqis was horrific. Twelve years of inhumane, unjustifiable sanctions caused the deaths of as many as 1.5 million victims of US genocidal policy and likely close to another million since then. They were aimed at removing Saddam it took an illegal aggression and occupation to achieve. It proved a recruiting bonanza for all sorts of resistance evident throughout Iraq today and around the world targeting America and our allies. It won't stop till repressive policies do beginning with the illegal occupations of Iraq and Palestine. Until then, the worst may be yet to come.

It proves what what former Israeli military intelligence chief, Yesoshaphat Harkabi, said 25 years ago on how to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's as true today in Israel and applies to Iraq and everywhere else. "To offer an honorable solution to the Palestinians (or other repressed peoples) respecting their right to self-determination: That is the solution of the problem of terrorism. When the swamp disappears, there will be no more mosquitos." It goes without saying respecting peoples' human and civil rights everywhere is a good way to end wars, too, and justifiable resistance they and illegal occupations spawn.

The current Iraq war dominates much of the book including the early March, 2003 article before it began titled "The Case Against the War in Iraq." In it, Chomsky explained the Bush administration's National Security Strategy's belligerent "imperial grand strategy" intentions to control the world by force and reign supreme through a policy of "preventive war." The Nuremberg Tribunal called that "the supreme international crime" against peace with guilty Nazis convicted of it hanged. Warnings this agenda could lead to terrorist attacks far worse than 9/11 weren't allowed to interfere with the administration's imperial ambitions. That was their policy in 2003. It remains unchanged now, whatever the consequences.

Chomsky continued his analysis in his late March, 2003 essay "Now That the War Has Begun." In it, he explained what's evident now - that "There is no reason to doubt the near-universal judgment that the war in Iraq will only increase the threat of terror and development and possible use of weapons of mass destruction, for revenge or deterrence." With the US now an international pariah, hated and condemned by ordinary people nearly everywhere, it may only be a matter of time before the WMD threat, in fact, happens. It won't be pleasant when it does if it takes the form of a "dirty bomb" making a large US city uninhabitable forever from radiation contamination.

Chomsky continues saying "the stakes of the war and its aftermath almost couldn't be higher (with one possibility being) destabilization in Pakistan (making) 'loose nukes' (available) to the global network of terrorist groups (and) other possibilities, no less grim." But he notes a promising sign from the unprecendented world opposition to war in Iraq before it began that's continued since but not with enough intensity to stop the horrific conflict now in its fifth year. It's longer in duration than WW II with no signs it's ending after the pathetic Democrat-led Congress surrendered to the Bush administration's demands. Defying growing public sentiment, it passed the largest ever supplemental funding bill ($120 billion) in the nation's history with more assured for the asking - at least so far.

Chomsky noted in March, 2003 what's still true today - that the US is pursuing "new and dangerous paths over near-unanimous world opposition." Instead of responding to threats by addressing legitimate grievances, the Bush administration chose permanent aggressive wars and a policy of constructing "even more awesome instruments of destruction and domination." It guarantees responses to them, if used, will be unpleasant at least and awesome and horrific if worst case predictions come true.

In his August, 2003 "Road Map to Nowhere" piece, Chomsky addresses the long-festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He quoted Oxford University Middle East scholar Hussein Agha and former Clinton administration Arab-Israeli affairs special assistant Robert Malley saying "the outlines of a solution have been basically understood for some time now" and entail "a territorial divide on the international border, now with a 1 - 1 land swap." Chomsky explains it never happened nor will it because Israel, with US backing, rejects it even in modest form.

Rhetoric aside, "road maps" and other past peace initiatives have all been cruel hoaxes going nowhere nor will any now barring a huge change in policy only mass world condemnation and forceful action with teeth can achieve. In deference to Chomsky's contrary view, it must include boycotts, divestment, political and economic sanctions, and isolation of Israel from the community of civilized states. It's not a fit member of them as long as it continues pursuing barbaric policies best characterized as slow-motion genocide with the US equally culpable in Iraq and Afghanistan and for providing Israel unlimited aid.

Chomsky notes "a just peace could come" citing Northern Ireland as a recent example and South Africa another, although no one should assume those countries now resemble paradise as facts on the ground prove otherwise. It's especially true in South Africa where noted journalist John Pilger's new book "Freedom Next Time" explains how life there today is harder than under apartheid. It's because "Thatcherism" and New World Order Washington Consensus neoliberalism moved in making things worse. It happened under Nelson Mandela's presidency who signed on to it telling Pilger "You can put any label on it you like....but, for this country, privatization (deregulation and free market capitalism) is the fundamental policy."

In October, 2003, Chomsky wrote about "The United States and the United Nations," that's little more than a wholly-owned subsidiary of the nation where it's been headquartered on Manhattan's east side since 1952. Whenever the US can't bully or co-opt the world body, it just ignores it doing what it wants like waging illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Only the Security Council can authorize them or Article 51 of the UN Charter allowing the "right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member....until the Security Council (acts) to maintain international peace and security."

The Bush administration has contempt for international law using it only when it serves its imperial interests and condemning or ignoring it otherwise as "quaint and obsolete." At an early March, 2003 news conference, George Bush made his position clear saying "when it comes to security (meaning US imperial interests) we really don't need anyone's permission." So when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington's position is unbending - "The United States must end up in effective control (of these countries using) some facade of democracy if that proves feasible." It means "democratic" elections can go ahead as long as the lord and master of the universe controls things no matter how they turn out.

And that's exactly how it is now in Iraq and Afghanistan from US-orchestrated "demonstration elections." They installed puppet governments having no say over their own affairs except what Washington allows. As Chomsky puts it: "Washington must be in charge, not the United Nations, not the Iraqi (or Afghan) people," and that's the way, in fact, it is today in both countries.

Indeed, it will be in Iraq if the puppet parliament passes the US-drafted new "Hydrocarbon Law." It's a blueprint for plunder, giving foreign investors (US and UK Big Oil mainly) a bonanza of resources, leaving Iraqis a sliver for themselves. Oil giants, like Exxon-Mobil and BP Amoco, will get exclusive control of 63 of the country's 80 known oil fields plus all newly discovered deposits. Even worse, Big Oil will get long-term contracts up to 35 years and be free to expropriate all revenues, investing none of them in Iraq's economy. Foreign investors will also have no obligation to partner with Iraqi companies, hire local workers, respect union rights, or share new technologies. Iraqis only get the right to take it, or else.

Iraqi oil workers aren't taking it. They went on strike for three days over a range of issues. Prime Minister al-Maliki then shamelessly issued arrest warrants for Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU) leaders sending his military to surround the workers. He then had to back down June 8 when an Iraqi general in charge disobeyed his orders, demanded his government "sort it all out," or he'd resign and join the strikers. In response, IFOU suspended the strike saying it will be resumed and expanded in a week unless an agreement is reached. Washington and Big Oil aren't happy, but this issue is far from resolved.

In November, 2003, Chomsky wrote about "Dilemmas of Dominance" noting in George Bush's "axis of evil" North Korea and Iran (unlike Iraq since 1991) aren't defenseless. It's a lesson to all other potential US-targeted nations. "If you want to defend yourself from us, you had better mimic North Korea and pose a credible military threat" because the Kim Jong-il regime may have nuclear weapons while Iran does not, claims no intent to develop them, but no one in the West knows for sure.

Iran's importance, however, lies in its having the world's third or fourth largest proved oil reserves (depending on who's measuring what reserves) while North Korea is "one of the poorest and most miserable countries in the world," except for one other thing. It has great geostrategic importance within Northeast Asia (including China, Japan, South Korea and resource-rich Siberia in Russia's East). It's now "the world's most dynamic economic region, with close to 30% of global gross domestic product," compared to 19% for the US, plus "half of global foreign exchange reserves."

"The US and Europe now trade more with Northeast Asia than with one another," and Washington's concern is that integrated regions like Europe and Northeast Asia may choose an independent course from Washington. Today, that may be more likely given the state of things under George Bush with worldwide alienation growing in the face of aggressive US policies getting harder to accept or endorse.

Chomsky also wrote about "Saddam Hussein Before the Tribunal" in December, 2003 before this writer did it in November, 2006 in an article called "A Trial Giving Kangaroos A Bad Name." It covered the 11 month travesty of justice ending November 5 with his conviction already decided before proceedings began.

He then addressed "Saddam Hussein and Crimes of State" in January, 2004 citing the "long, tortuous association between (Saddam) and the West" and how embarrassing it would be for that relationship to come out at trial, so it didn't. Even at Nuremberg (Chomsky calls "the least defective" post-conflict tribunal), war or other crimes were only what losing sides did, never winning ones under a long-standing policy of victor's justice meaning none at all.

So voices of UN humanitarian coordinators Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponek could never be publicly heard explaining why they resigned in protest. In 1998, Halliday said he "had been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over one million individuals, children and adults," and that 5000 Iraqi children were dying needlessly every month. That's inconsequential to the Bush administration in its openly stated National Security Strategy (NS policy. It's a scheme to "dismantle much of what remained of the system of world order" and rule by force "with Iraq as a demonstration project." It tells the world we mean business, so stand aside or you're next.

Chomsky also covered Israel's Annexation/Apartheid wall in an article called "A Wall as a Weapon" with Israel (with US financial and political backing) continuing to build it in defiance of international law. The World Court in the Hague ruled 14 - 1 construction must end at once, the existing portion already built must be dismantled, and affected Palestinians must be compensated for their losses. Israel flouts the decision.

He also wrote about "The United States: Terrorist Sanctuary" with Washington notorious for granting safe haven to ousted tinpot despots and "a rogues' gallery of people whose actions qualify them as terrorists." That's never a problem, however, when their crimes aided this country's imperial agenda. Two noted examples Chomsky cites are Orlando Bosch, and Bosch accomplish Luis Posada Carriles. They masterminded the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 (among their many terrorist acts) killing 73 on it, but never answered for it and now live freely in the US.

Chomsky also wrote on "Iraq: The Roots of Resistance" explaining US intelligence knew well in advance "Washington's most formidable foe (would be) the resentment of ordinary Iraqis....hostile to the American occupation." The Bush administration ignored the warning feeling that price was minor compared to its greater goal to establish permanent military bases in a client state "at the heart of the world's major energy sources."

Chomsky addressed "Who Is to Run the World and How" in June, 2004 noting former Carter administration National Security Advisor Zbiigniew Brzezinski writing "America's security role in the (Middle East) region (meaning military dominance) gives it indirect but politically critical leverage on the European and Asian economies" (also dependent on) energy exports from the region." That would keep those regions from opting for a course independent from us, so controlling Iraq's oil and reorganizing the Middle East under US control prevents that from happening. Uppermost for US policy makers is preventing successful defiance of US policy. Costly wars spawning terrorist fallout is of lesser importance and a price worth paying for unchallengeable imperial dominance, provided we can get and keep it. That's very much in doubt today, however, with things falling apart in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Chomsky addresses a crucial domestic issue in "Democracy Building Must Begin at Home" in August, 2004 and in October in "The Disconnect in American Democracy." He did it with the presidential elections approaching and things in disarray on the ground in Iraq and soon to be in Afghanistan as well. He observed the campaign pointed up "the severe democratic deficit in the world's most powerful (nominally democratic) state" where true democracy is more illusion than reality. He noted how detached the candidates were in their common agenda from issues mattering most to ordinary people. They pay little more than lip service to vital concerns like health care ranking at the top with costs exploding and 47 million people having no insurance because they can't afford any.

Bush and Kerry got to run with enough funding by "similar concentrations of private power" controlling everything. That includes picking the candidates and, practically openly since 2000, which one wins, decided in advance making a mockery of the whole system. Investigative journalist, Greg Palast, covered it in his 2006 book, "Armed Madhouse," and his 2003 one, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." In them, he showed how elections today are more like auctions than a serious exercise of democracy. He documented how the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen and 2008 is already shaping up for more of the same.

Chomsky explains changing things when they're not right is the way it's always been. It has to be from the grassroots that against long odds ended slavery, and won rights for labor, women and minorities. It also helped end the Vietnam war through mass energized opposition on the streets to it. So even though Chomsky urges voters to make "sensible choices" at the polls (limited as they are), the "main task is to create a genuinely responsive democratic culture, and that effort goes on before and after electoral extravaganzas, whatever their outcome."

Two articles in November and December, 2004 help unmask the benevolent facade we present to the world, no longer needing Chomsky to do it two and half years later. The first is titled "We Are Good" and the second the "Imperial Presidency and Its Consequences." The first essay observes "the fundamental principle (in international relations) that 'we are good' - 'we' being the government....benevolent, seeking peace and justice" even though, in practice, the opposite is true. However, the Bush agenda of permanent war "carr(ies) an appreciable risk of ultimate doom" according to some straregic analysts like John D. Steinbruner and Nancy Gallagher. They wrote in the summer 2004 issue of "Daedalus," the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Chomsky says isn't given to hyperbole.

The administration's contempt for international law, scorched earth war agenda, and future intent to use nuclear weapons, like they're just king-sized hand grenades, means the fate of the human species and most everything else some day may be up for grabs. Chomsky observes that "the world is in awful shape today" although better off for an "unwillingness to tolerate aggression." It's because the Bush administration's "conception of presidential sovereignty (the imperial presidency) is so extreme (it's drawn) unprecendented criticism from the most sober and respected journals."

It's based on the "unitary executive theory of the presidency." Lawyer, academic and author Jennifer Van Bergen wrote about it at length in her January 9, 2006 FindLaw Legal News and Commentary article titled "The Unitary Executive: Is the Doctrine Behind the Bush Presidency Consistent with a Democratic State?" Her conclusion is unequivocally no. The "doctrine violates the separation of powers" fundamental to our system. It puts the chief executive above the law, in effect, making him a dictator.

George Bush usurped this power claiming the law is what he says it is and proved it around 800 times (more than all past presidents combined) attaching "signing statements" to congressional legislation. In doing so, he illegally annulled provisions in them because nothing in the Constitution allows such practice. Chomsky asks how can we best respond to a situation so dire? He notes our "legacy of great privilege and freedom" saying we have a choice - abandon all hope or "further a democratic culture in which the culture plays some role in (political and economic) policies." Saying these are hardly radical ideas, he stresses history shows "rights are not granted; they are won" by going for them from the grassroots.

In April, 2005, Chomsky addressed "The Universality of Human Rights." He cited the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the "modern standard" including Article 25 in it stating - "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control (with) Motherhood (and children born in or out of wedlock)....entitled to special care and assistance."

Needless to say, the Bush administration rejects these rights by its policies alone. Earlier, undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs, Paula Dobriansky, while serving under Ronald Reagan and G.H.W. Bush, refuted what she called the "myth (that) economic and social rights constitute human rights," even though the majority population feels otherwise. Surveys clearly show popular preferences favor sharp cuts in military spending along with large increases for education, health care, medical research, job training, conservation, renewable energy and other essential social programs enhancing life. The current power structure wants no public involvement in policy choices pointing to what Chomsky calls a "growing democratic deficit."

In 1973, banker David Rockefeller (grandson of oil tycoon and mega-corporate predator John D.), Zbigniew Brzezinski and others founded the Trilateral Commission that included notable members like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. It's purpose was to counter a "crisis of democracy" from the 1960s. That meant too much of it as sectors of the population (called "special interests") became active politically while these rulers of the world expect them to remain inert. So action was needed to restore them to their proper status - quiescent, letting "the people who own the country....run it" (for their own benefit). Those were Founding Father John Jay's words, our first Supreme Court Chief Justice, showing his contempt for ordinary people. Today, things are so extreme under George Bush even Jay might be shocked enough to think we went too far and say change is needed to soften things.

He and the other Founders would likely be alarmed by Chomsky's April, 2005 essay called "Dr. Strangelove Meets the Age of Terror" with the title alone pretty scary. The subject addressed is a real nuclear threat with the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) "never....weaker or its future less certain" according to Thomas Graham, former US special representative for arms control, nonproliferation and armament. He warned in the April, 2005 issue of "Current History" if the treaty fails, a "nuclear nightmare world" may become reality. His concern is that Bush administration policy is the main threat. It effectively renounced NPT and its crucial Article VI pledging nuclear nations make "good faith" efforts to eliminate these weapons because having them heightens the risk they'll be used endangering the planet. However, it's even worse than that as the Bush administration:

-- claims the right to develop new type nuclear weapons, not work to eliminate ones we have;

-- ignores NPT intending to test new weapons developed;

-- ended the protection of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty;

-- rescinded and subverted the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention;

-- spends more on the military than the rest of the world combined with large future increases planned;

-- refuses to consider a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty preventing more nuclear bombs being added to present stockpiles already dangerously too high; and

-- claims the right to wage preventive wars under the doctrine of "anticipatory self-defense" using first strike nuclear weapons.

As a result, former NATO planner, Michael McGuire, thinks a "nuclear exchange is ultimately inevitable," and Harvard international relations specialist, Graham Allison agrees with a "consensus in the national security community (that a) dirty bomb (attack is) near-certain" given current policy and the fact that fissionable materials aren't secured.

Chomsky also wrote about "The Social Security Non-Crisis." It was about the Bush administration concocting a propaganda blitz in 2005 (no longer heard lately) of an impending phony Social Security "fiscal crisis" to convince the public to let Wall Street sharks control their financial future. Meanwhile, he noted, a real Medicare crisis looms with medical costs spiraling out of control and the US having the most unfair, inefficient system in the industrialized world. Reforming it through more efficient, lower cost national health care is off the table because insurers and Big Pharma won't tolerate any public benefit harming their right to run the system their way earning huge profits from it.

Then, there's Chomsky's take on "The Bush Administration during Hurricane Season." In it, he noted "a long-gathering storm of misguided policies and priorities preceded the tragedy, citing a pre-9/11 FEMA report. It listed the three most likely catastrophes to strike the country - a terrorist attack in New York, an earthquake in San Francisco, and a major hurricane striking New Orleans with the latter becoming an urgent FEMA priority in 2005. Elaborate plans and a successful simulated hurricane drill were conducted, but the war, budget cuts, other preventive measures and overall Bush administration indifference meant the Katrina disaster was inevitable.

Four Chomsky essays deal with Latin America, the first in December, 2005 called "South America at the Tipping Point." In it, he says "From Venezuela to Argentina, the hemisphere is falling out of control, with left-center governments almost all the way through. Even in Central America....the lid is barely on."

The view from mid-2007 looks different with only Venezuela and hopefully Ecuador (still a work in progress under new President Rafeal Correa, barely six months in office) very much embracing a left-center social democratic agenda. In contrast, Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia have mostly followed Washington Consensus neoliberal dictates. That's in spite of their distancing themselves from US one-way FTAA trade deals and IMF and World Bank crushing debt slavery from their Faustian-imposed rules assuring debtor nations always get a raw deal.

But Chomsky noted in 2005 indigenous populations were more active and influential, especially in Ecuador and Bolivia. Today they're still active there and in other Latin countries but have modest influence, at best. He also observed internal integration was strengthening, including South-South interaction with Venezuela in the lead responsible for most positive results in how it deals with its neighbors and other world trading partners like China.

In March, 2006, Chomsky's op-ed piece was called "Asia, the Americas, and the Reigning Superpower." In September he wrote "Latin America Declares its Independence," and in December his article was titled "Alternatives for the Americas." In these, he noted Washington's concern that Europe, Asia and Latin America might move toward more independence away from US dominance, and, to a degree, there are some hopeful signs, it's happening. Middle East misadventurism consumes the Bush administration, unable to admit what every sensible political analyst knows - the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are lost. In addition, the longer we stay embroiled, the worse things get and more likely US world influence will wane encouraging other nations to become more independent, less fearful of the consequences.

Central to policy everywhere is energy, and aims to control it create the possibility of shifting alliances and more potential nightmares for Washington. Crucially ahead is who lines up with whom, and one relationship Washington fears is greater India-China cooperation. Add Venezuela, Russia and Iran to the mix and Washington's fears will be huge if those ties become strong and solidified enough to counter US dominance. Throw in a couple of other Middle East and Central Asia producers, and it spells potential big trouble for Washington planners.

Another Washington fear is if Latin states ever, in fact, unite in a "continent community similar to the European Union." It would give them far more clout together than any single regional state could have on its own, even one as large and important as Brazil. Washington has long dominated Latin America it dismissively calls its "backyard." It's done it through "violence....economic strangulation," and brutal exploitation through installed or co-opted governments profiting as junior partners in the savage exploitation of their own populations for profit, the way it's been for 500 years going back to conquistador rule.

Today, Hugo Chavez is a symbol of change and courage standing up to the ruling hegemon. That makes him the single greatest threat Washington faces - a good example that's spreading enough to cause alarm in the Capitol. Since taking office in February, 1999, the US tried and failed three times to oust him by different means. The current Washington-orchestrated made-for-media street protests over the RCTV Channel 2 shuttering may indicate a fourth attempt is now underway. Chavez apparently thinks so accusing the Bush administration and internal opposition of planning a "soft coup with a slow fuse." He compares it to the same US scheme used in Ukraine's 2004-05 Orange Revolution and Georgia's Rose one in 2003. Both times, leaders allied with Russia were deposed and replaced with ones favoring the West.

Chavez is standing firm and is actively moving ahead with his socially democratic agenda while solidifying ties with regional neighbors and other states. He seeks integrated alliances (a "prerequisite for genuine independence" from Washington) and relations with other countries based on cooperation, solidarity, complementarity and respect for each nation's sovereignty. He wants it to be free from the strangling control Washington imposes in its relations with the Global South, especially in Latin America it feels it owns. The confrontational lines are drawn with the spirit of democracy alive in Latin America, headquartered in Venezuela, and the Bush administration determined to crush it.

It's one reason Washington seeks bilateral deals in the region and elsewhere and just signed one last December with India. It's called the United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act, the name itself reeking in Orwellian Newspeak. The act is another blow to NPT effectively authorizing India's nuclear weapons development along with other nuclear-related assistance enough to cause nuclear weapons specialist Gary Milhollin alarm. The deal violates "cardinal principle(s)" established to reduce nuclear weapons proliferation and delivery systems for them. They undermine the barriers to nuclear war and "may hasten the day when a nuclear explosion destroys a US city."

Hedging its bets to "become equidistant between the US and China," India agreed to a similar deal with the Asian giant the US fears most as a future challenger to its supremacy. It's because of China's size and fact it's unintimidated by US dominance. But while Washington gambles with our future, the potential threat from an eventual nuclear holocaust get greater. The Bush administration is giving India "a free pass around nuclear controls," says nuclear threat expert Michael Krepon. It means "other states will be lining up to profit from proliferation," export controls are now off the table, and the safety of NPT enforcement is null and void. It points to a potential frightening future ahead thanks to reckless US policy putting geopolitics and corporate profits ahead of common sense security.

In June, 2006 Chomsky wrote on "Disarming the Iran Nuclear Showdown." He observed "The urgency of halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and moving toward their elimination, could hardly be greater. Failure to do so is very likely to lead to grim consequences (and) a near meltdown (a year ago and now) seems....imminent over Iran('s)" commercial nuclear enrichment program. It conforms to NPT standards while countries like India, Pakistan and Israel are nuclear outlaws. Under George Bush, so is the US, by far the worst one of all.

Washington, with help from the West it bullies, demands Iran stop its program in contrast to its strong support for it under the Shah before 1979. Today, it's different with Washington wanting NPT's Article IV strengthened. It grants non-nuclear states the right to produce fuel for commercial nuclear energy use. Chomsky believes that because of today's technological advances, tightening Article IV "would have to ensure unimpeded access for nonmilitary use" but prevent it from being for weapons. That's not easy as nuclear expert Helen Caldicott explains. She calls operating commercial nuclear reactors atom bomb factories as a single 1000 megawatt reactor produces 500 pounds of plutonium annually, while a mere 10 pounds can produce a bomb powerful enough to devastate a large city.

Despite the heated Western rhetoric targeting Iran's nuclear program and its claimed interference in Iraq, only one country poses a real threat to what Chomsky calls "the end of biology's only experiment with higher intelligence" and most everything else. He means the US, especially in the age of George Bush. So Washington is in the lead pointing fingers at phony nuclear threats from other countries while never admitting it's the greatest one of all. It's the only country with a publicly stated policy to freely use these first strike weapons under its doctrine of "anticipatory self-defense" meaning preventive illegal aggression international law bans.

Chomsky revisted Iran in March, 2007 in his essay titled "The Cold War Between Washington and Tehran." He noted Iran and Syria are enemies because they "failed to subordinate themselves to Washington's basic demands. Iran by far (is) the most important" because of its vast oil reserves we want control over the way things were after the CIA-led coup ousted democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. It reinstated the US-backed Shah Reza Pahlavi's generation-long fascist reign of terror. It lasted until the 1979 Iranian revolution deposed him, setting up a confrontation between Iran and this country ever since. It now threatens to erupt in open war, possibly a nuclear one.

Iran's importance goes beyond oil as its "influence in the 'crescent' challenges US control" there. Chomsky notes "By an accident of geography, the world's major oil resources are in largely Shiite areas of the Middle East: southern Iraq, adjacent regions of Saudi Arabia and Iran, with some of the major reserves of natural gas as well." He continues explaining "Washington's worst nightmare would be a loose Shiite alliance controlling most of the world's oil" independent of the US. If such a bloc ever emerges and links with the Asian Energy Security Grid and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in China, US power in the world will be seriously and potentially permanently undermined.

The Bush administration will do everything possible to prevent this, but Chomsky doubts it will attack Iran. World leaders and three-fourths of the US public are strongly opposed. So is the Baker Commission representing a more conciliatory position, but no less hard line on controlling the world's energy resources.

While not able to withstand overwhelming US power, Iran is three times the size of Iraq and no pushover. It would be crushed in a head-to-head confrontation with Washington but could put up a fight and inflict some heavy damage in the process not likely to go down well at home. It would also inflame the Middle East far more than already. Iran can also "respond in other ways," Chomsky notes, "inciting even more havoc in Iraq" and throughout the region. The public is already fed up with endless wars, demands they end, so anything is possible on US streets and the next election if George Bush starts another one with his toughest opponent so far.

Instead of war, Chomsky thinks Washington may try destabilizing Iran from within stirring up trouble and "secessionist tendencies" from much of the population that isn't Persian, including in oil-rich areas like Khuzestan on the Gulf that's largely Arab. It's also urging harsher sanctions wanting to isolate and "strangle Iran economically" that won't likely work because China and Russia won't buy it and Europe only will part way. For years, Iran sought a negotiated settlement to long-standing differences, but Washington always rebuffed diplomatic efforts because it demands unconditional surrender to its agenda. Iran, under its present leadership won't ever buy that, and why should it, or any other nation.

Following Israel's brutal, illegal assault on Lebanon last summer (planned months in advance with US backing), Chomsky wrote about "Viewing Lebanon as if through a Bombsight." He noted in August, 2006 "a fragile truce remains in effect," but it may be near a tipping point now in the wake of days of savage fighting pitting the US-backed Fouad Sinora's Lebanese army against non-Palestinian Fath al-Islam fighters holed up in the northern Lebanese Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of soldiers, fighters and innocent civilians have been killed and many thousands displaced risking this will spread to other parts of the country reigniting a civil war like the one that raged from 1975 - 1990. It tore apart a country tormented as well by repeated Israeli assaults and invasions including the infamous 1982 one killing 18,000 or more Lebanese and many Palestinians living there.

A year ago Chomsky wrote about the "US-Israeli invasion of Lebanon, with only a cynical pretense to legitimacy" because there was none. The reason for it had nothing to do with the phony one given about the capture of two Israeli soldiers. Never mentioned was that for decades Israel made a practice of "kidnapping and killing civilians in Lebanon or on the high seas, Lebanese and Palestinians, holding them in Israel for long periods, sometimes as hostages, sometimes in secret torture chambers like Camp 1391."

Israel's summer, 2006 assault on Gaza was also planned well in advance just waiting for a convenient pretext to unleash that happened to be the capture of one Israeli corporal, hardly reason to declare war. Just like in Lebanon, Israel's reaction was unjustifiable and savagely extreme, but as long as the US backed and funded it, Western and Arab world complaints were barely audible before ending altogether. It left targeted Lebanese and Palestinians devastated to this day and now victims of new fighting.

Israel and the US want to destroy Hezbollah and Hamas, but it's no secret they helped create them both to use against other past enemies like Yasser Arafat and the PLO in the 1980s until he was co-opted by the Oslo Accords in 1993 to become Israel's enforcer. Today, conflict continues in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), Lebanon is teetering on the edge of the unknown, and Chomsky notes "new generations of bitter and angry jihadis" likely are being created the way Israeli Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz's said they would be. What else could warrior states like the US or Israel expect, "view(ing) the world through a bombsight."

But Saad-Ghorayeb warned a year ago what's as true today, stated in slightly different terms. US and Israel's unending wars on Iraqis, Afghans, Palestinians, Lebanese and any other designated Arab or Muslim targets may cause "all hell (to) be let loose (from) the Shiite community....seething with resentment" and determined to get revenge violently. And Sunnis may join them if the Muslim world unites against the US, Israel, and the West. As Chomsky puts it: "viewing the world through a bombsight will bring further misery and suffering, perhaps even in 'apocalyptic terms.' "

The book's final essay was written in July, 2006 called "The Great Soul of Power." In it, Chomsky deals with two themes borrowed from the life and work of the late Palestinian American scholar and activist Edward Said - the "culture of empire (and) responsibility of intellectuals." He condemns "obedient intellectuals" for what Hans Morgenthau called "conformist subservience to those in power." He notes a "clear doctrine....reign(ing) in Western journalism and almost all scholarship, even among critics of policies - 'American exceptionalism' (or) the thesis that the United States is unlike other great powers, past and present, because it has a 'transcendent purpose:' 'the establishment of equality and freedom in America' and....throughout the world."

Policy must then conform to "interests," but not those of the population. It means the "national interest" or those of the privileged who dominate society running things. In America and the West, the major influence is "internationally oriented business corporations," no surprise. In contrast, public opinion has "little or no significant effect on government officials" beholden solely to wealth and power.

"Interventions" ends with Chomsky explaining how hard it is striking "a proper balance between citizenship and common purpose, on the one hand, and communal autonomy and cultural variety on the other." These questions should be "high on the agenda of people who do not worship at the shrine....of power." These are people, including Chomsky's readers, wanting to "save the world from the destructive forces" threatening our survival. They want to change it believing "a more civilized society can be envisioned and even brought into existence." Why not, if enough committed people become dedicated to achieving it.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5953

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Posted: Jun 14, 2007 4:33am

 

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