When Love Of Profits Clashes With The Love Of The Prophet(1)

[janos]

[moeen yaseen]

OUR SITUATION IS DIRE, AND THERE’S NO NEED FOR PESSIMISM
by Paul Levy

Things in the world seem really grim right now. Many people feel like we are on the verge of World War III. These are clearly apocalyptic, end-times we are living in. Many people are hopelessly pessimistic about the state of human affairs, feeling like there is nothing we can do to make a difference. It feels to some like we are descending into hell. It feels to others like we are on the verge of global collapse. Something seems terribly wrong. It seems like we are creating a living nightmare for ourselves. It is as if our planet has fallen under a demon’s curse. It is crucial that we shed light on the nature of the darkness that has befallen our planet.

We need to understand the nature of the beast we are dealing with. One thing we can say for sure is that the darkness does not want us to become aware of it. To become conscious of how the darkness plays itself out in our world is the last thing the darkness wants, just like a vampire can’t stand the light of day. For to see the darkness is to take away its power over us, as it can no longer act itself out through our unconscious. Just like sunlight flooding into a room instantaneously evacuates the darkness in the room, when we shed the light of consciousness on the darkness that is both in our world and within ourselves, the power of the darkness is immediately dis-spelled.

The darkness that is appearing in the outer world is not separate from, but is co-related to, the darkness within ourselves. The darkness that is manifesting in the outside world is simultaneously triggering a resonant re-action deep inside of ourselves. To the extent we are unconscious of what the darkness is triggering inside of ourselves, it enlists us as one of its unwitting agents, as the darkness feeds on our unawareness of it.

If we become entranced by the very convincing display of outer darkness that is materializing in the world and fall prey to pessimism, we have fallen under the darkness’s spell and are then feeding, supporting and helping to create the very darkness in the world which we are reacting to pessimistically. Bewitched by our own darkness, we relate to it as if it is independent and outside of ourselves, thinking our pessimistic reaction is justified by the dark goings-on that are “objectively” happening in the outside world. In choosing to see pessimistically, we don’t realize that we are filtering our interpretation of events through a pessimistic lens which then provides us with overwhelming evidence to confirm our pessimism.

To become pessimistic about what is playing out on the world stage is to become an unwitting instrument through which the darkness further incarnates and extends itself into our world. To become caught in pessimism is to fall victim to an infinitely regressing feedback loop: we wouldn’t be so pessimistic if our world wasn’t manifesting so darkly, and our world wouldn’t be manifesting so darkly if we weren’t so pessimistic. To become fixated in the point of view of seeing things pessimistically is to unwittingly become an ally of the very darkness that is inspiring our pessimism. This is to have fallen into a self-generating, samsaric feedback loop that is self-fulfilling in nature and will undoubtedly destroy us.

Becoming pessimistic is a symptom that the darkness has insinuated itself into our very consciousness, and is manipulating our perceptions of the world so as to further propagate itself. Becoming depressed and pessimistic is what the darkness wants, as it thirsts for us to become seduced by its convincing display of seemingly overwhelming power so that we give up our own power to it as well and believe all is lost. Imagining ourselves dis-empowered, we dis-associate from our “True Self” as well as from each other, disconnecting from our individual and collective “brilliance” (which, interestingly, connotes “light”). To give up and believe there is nothing we can do is to unknowingly join forces with the darker power, becoming its secret agents, our secret being secret even to ourselves.

To be pessimistic is to be arguing for our own impotence and limitation. If we win an argument about the truth of our pessimism, the “prize” we win is that we are screwed. There is something wrong with this picture. There is clearly something flawed and even perverse about our logic if it leads to such a self-defeating result. This flaw is like a red flag that can inspire us to self-reflect and look at what we are actually doing when we invest in a pessimistic world-view. Pessimism is a symptom that we are investing in our own decline and ultimately our own suicide.

I am not saying that we should just put on a smiley-face and become “everything turns out for the best” optimists. To only identify, like some so-called “spiritual” people do, with the “celestial rainbow” point of view, believing that everything is perfect and not problematic is overly one-sided, as it is dis-associated from the part of our experience that is seemingly “damned,” “cursed,” and deeply problematic. To identify with only one side of a two-sided polarity like this is to be actively in denial of and contracting against its opposite. To only identify with the light in actuality supports and feeds the dark. Over-identifying only with the light, we marginalize the darkness, which secretly empowers it, as the darkness then becomes something of which we are afraid. We are then unwittingly investing our energy into the darkness by our one-sided identification with the light. We need to shed the light of awareness on how the darkness plays itself out both outside in the world as
well as inside of ourselves, as the darkness can potentially seduce us to be either overly optimistic or pessimistic. To fall into an extreme view like this is to ultimately be part of the problem, rather than embodying the solution.

I am not spouting some new age gibberish when I am urging us to not be pessimistic. I am simply pointing out that pessimism is not only unnecessary, but is actually dangerous, as it will help to actively create a self-fulfilling prophecy that will ultimately justify our pessimism. When I am saying not to be pessimistic, I am not marginalizing the darkness and saying that everything will turn out peaches and cream. I’m not talking about pretending the darkness isn’t really dark, and trying to imagine it out of existence by mindlessly affirming that everything is really OK, that everyone will live happily ever after. From one point of view, things are genuinely *. It is important not to marginalize that.

Our situation is extremely dire, while at the same time there is nothing to become pessimistic about. Being able to hold this paradox is the “crux” of the matter. This involves being able to hold these seemingly contradictory opposites together as both being true simultaneously. Our apocalyptic situation is very dire, while at the same time it is (potentially) the highest blessing: If we recognize what the darkness is revealing to us, it can (potentially) wake us up. Interestingly, the inner meaning of the word “apocalypse” is something hidden being revealed.

Our universe is manifesting as a genuine “coincidentia oppositorum,” a co-incidence of opposites, an auspicious coming together of the opposites where the opposites paradoxically reveal themselves to be both opposite and united at the same time. This holistic vision makes no sense and seems like pure nonsense as long as we are rigidly clinging to only one point of view and marginalizing another part of our experience. And yet, this more inclusive vision is itself the very expansion of consciousness which transforms the nature of our situation and empowers us to become genuine agents of change in the world.

Instead of identifying with one of the opposites and projecting out the other (which is to “split”), if we recognize that both of the seemingly contradictory opposites are true simultaneously, we have re-joined ourselves and retrieved our soul. Healing our split with the outside world and within ourselves, we are an active and activating participant in the birth of consciousness into human form. Stepping into the open-ended, embodied form of our wholeness, we become an agent of healing for the universe.

Shadows are an expression that light is nearby. Shadows are never found without light, which is to say that light and shadows are inseparably united into a deeper, more all-embracing whole. Paradoxically, hidden, in-coded inside the darkness is a light which (potentially) awakens (and is inseparable from) consciousness. Not being separate from the light, the darkness itself is an unmediated expression of and indivisible from the “light of consciousness” itself. This self-luminous light of awareness is a higher-order of light which embraces, unites and transcends the duality of light vs. darkness.

How our universe will unfold from this moment on depends upon whether or not we “consciously” re-cognize what the darkness is revealing to us as it acts itself out through us. The darkness itself is the revelation of the light, as it is the light revealing itself in the hidden form of darkness.

Shedding light on the darkness within us is a form of illumination. Once we become intimately related to and engaged with our own darkness, we become fluent in its language, coming to know how it behaves and operates within ourselves. We are then able to translate this familiarity with our own darkness in such a way so as to creatively illumine the darkness in the outer world. Once enough of us have made acquaintance with the darkness that exists within us, we are then able, like sunlight melting the morning dew, to collectively dis-spell the darkness that has seemingly enveloped our planet.

Paradoxically, it is only by coming to terms with the darkness within ourselves that we are able to step out of our trance-like addiction to pessimism and become full-bodied representatives of the all-embracing light of consciousness. Uniting in collective “lucidity” (which, etymologically, refers to “light”), we reciprocally co-inspire each other as we empower ourselves to create a more grace-filled universe to co-inhabit. A radical, evolutionary idea whose time has truly come!

Paul Levy is a spiritually-informed political co-activist. A pioneer in the field of spiritual awakening, he is a healer in private practice, assisting others who are awakening to the dream-like nature of reality. He is the author of The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis, which is available at his website www.awakeninthedream.com. Please feel free to pass this article along to a friend if you feel so inspired.
.

[Rory Winter]

Israel's Latest Massacre in Qana: Racist Jewish Fundamentalism a Factor
by Omar Barghouti | July 30, 2006
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5338.shtml


Israeli soldiers load missiles onto a military vehicle, as Israeli orthodox Jews dance to show their support for the troops, along the Israeli-Lebanese border, 26 July 2006. (MaanImages/Inbal Rose)

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora condemned Israel's massacre in Qana today as a "heinous crime" and called Israeli leaders "war criminals." Reacting to an earlier atrocity, he wondered: "Is the value of human life in Lebanon less than that of the citizens of other countries?"[1] The answer, at least as far as Israel is concerned, is an unambiguous "yes!" Israel's latest bloodbath, which claimed the lives of dozens of children and women hiding from the relentless bombing in what they hoped was a secure basement in Qana, betrays not only Israel's criminal disregard for the value of Arab human life, a typical colonial attitude towards natives, but also its increasingly fundamentalist perception of Gentiles in general as lesser humans.

Israel apologists who will try to spin this new massacre as yet another "mistake" must expect their audience to have an awfully short memory or a very low IQ. Israel has explicitly indicated in the past few days that it may resort to such atrocious measures, especially since its armed forces have failed to achieve any tangible military gains after 19 days of rolling massacres and wanton destruction across Lebanon. Israeli minister of justice, Haim Ramon, issued a stern warning only days ago that a large area in south Lebanon was regarded by his government effectively as a free-fire zone, advocating indiscriminate bombing of villages inside it to ease the so-far unsuccessful advance of the Israeli army.[2] "These places are not villages. They are military bases in which Hizbollah are hiding and from which they are operating," he said, adding that, since Israel had ordered Lebanese civilians to leave the area, "All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hizbollah."

Israel's biggest-selling paper, Yedioth Ahronoth, advocated raising the threshold of Israel's response to Katyusha rockets: "In other words: a village from which rockets are fired at Israel will simply be destroyed by fire."[3] It is worth noting that all available evidence points to the fact that no Katyusha was fired by the Lebanese resistance from Qana before the bombing.

Among Israel's staunch Zionist supporters in the West, the same "talking points" were parroted. Harvard academic Alan Dershowitz recently argued that "Hezbollah and Hamas militants [...] are difficult to distinguish from those 'civilians' who recruit, finance, harbor and facilitate their terrorism. Nor can women and children always be counted as civilians, as some organizations do. Terrorists increasingly use women and teenagers to play important roles in their attacks."[4] He concluded by saying, "The Israeli army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to leave those areas of southern Lebanon that have been turned into war zones. Those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit."

Thus the massacre in Qana.

Qana's name is associated with an earlier Israeli massacre. In 1996, during its military offensive codenamed "Grapes of Wrath," Israel's air force bombed a UN shelter in the village, slaying more than 100 civilians, mostly children, and inviting almost universal verbal condemnation but no real threats of sanctions or any other form of effective punitive measures from the international community. In the current Israeli war on Lebanon this is only the most recent episode in a series of smaller atrocities deliberately committed by the Israeli army against Lebanese civilians in an attempt to collectively "punish" them for the humiliating defeat its elite military units have so far experienced at the hands of the formidable Lebanese resistance, most noticeably in the legendary town of Bint Jbeil.

This intentional and coldly calculated Israeli policy of targeting innocent Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructure stems from a time-honoured, but hardly ever successful, Israeli doctrine of applying intense "pressure" against a civilian population in order to compel them, in-turn, to pressure the resistance into submitting to Israeli dictates, thereby doing Israel's bidding by proxy. It has been consistently used against the Palestinians ever since the Nakba of 1948, and is still applied now in the ongoing barbaric offensive and hermetic siege against Gaza. Israel may have plagiarized this doctrine from the legacies of previous oppressors, but it has refined it to a degree that it no longer raises any moral qualms in most of Israeli society, where it is widely accepted by the public as a right, even a duty in the fight for Israel's "security."

Such blatant racism, which may have been frowned upon in the past by many Jewish-Israelis as a pathological anomaly, is now quite popular in the Israeli mainstream, including among lawmakers, academics, journalists and, of course, military leaders. While it has become normal to read scathing -- occasionally valid -- critiques of the hateful and chauvinistic discourse "inherent" in Islamic and even Christian brands of fundamentalism, Jewish fundamentalism, which is among the key factors informing current Israeli apartheid policies and laws, remains a taboo subject that is rarely discussed or debated in the West. It is rooted in a long tradition of fanatic, yet popular, fundamentalist interpretations of Halakhah, or Jewish law, propagated by influential rabbis and internalized by a widely acquiescent Israeli society, secular and religious sectors alike. Even before the creation of Israel, the core concept in this fundamentalist worldview was publicly espoused by Rabbi Abraham Yitzhak Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Palestine, who said, "The difference between a Jewish soul and the souls of non-Jews ... is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle."[5]

The late Israeli academic and human rights advocate, Israel Shahak, traced the roots of Israeli public justification for killing Palestinians, for instance, to similar readings of the tenets of Halakhah. While the murder of a Jew is considered a capital offence in Jewish law, the murder of a Gentile is treated quite differently. "A Jew who murders a Gentile," Shahak reveals, "is guilty only of a sin against the laws of heaven, not punishable by court." Indirectly, but intentionally, causing the death of a Gentile is "no sin at all."[6] A booklet published in 1973 by the Central Region Command of the Israeli army subscribes to this same doctrine. In it, the Command's Chief Chaplain writes:

"When our forces come across civilians during a war or in hot pursuit or in a raid, so long as there is no certainty that those civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then according to the Halakhah they may and even should be killed ... Under no circumstances should an Arab be trusted, even if he makes an impression of being civilized ... In war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good.[7]

In 1996, the same year the first Qana massacre was committed, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh, a leader of the powerful Lubavitch Hassidic sect, echoed the same principle, rhetorically asking, "If a Jew needs a liver, can he take the liver of an innocent non-Jew to save [the Jew]?," answering, "The Torah would probably permit that. Jewish life has an infinite value. There is something more holy and unique about Jewish life than about non-Jewish life."[8] Moreover, Ginsburgh coauthored a book defending the 1994 massacre of Muslim worshippers in Al-Ibrahimi mosque (Patriarchs' Cave) in Hebron, in which he argued that when a Jew kills a non-Jew the act does not constitute murder according to the Halakhah, adding that the killing of innocent Palestinians as an act of revenge is a Jewish virtue.

During the first months of the current Palestinian initfada, it was common for Israeli army spokespeople to justify killing Palestinian children throwing stones by saying that they "threatened human life." (B'Tselem Report) Not soldiers' lives, not Israeli lives, but human life. One cannot escape the implication that the alleged sources of the threat are not exactly eligible to be called human in the army's common diction.

In this context, it is entirely justified to see Israel's second massacre in Qana as the rule, not the exception.

This often ignored menace of Jewish fundamentalism needs to be addressed as seriously as other forms of fanatic religious thought which sows racial hatred, animosity and war mongering. While adhering to moral principles alone will certainly not bring any of Qana's murdered children back to life or compensate any bereaved parent or loved one anywhere, perhaps insisting on the equal worth of all human lives, regardless of ethnicity or religion, and rejecting racism from any source, including from sanctimonious former victims, can help diminish the chances of such ruthless crimes recurring in the future. Irrespective of the Holocaust, or precisely because of it, Israel should not be allowed to get away with its racist, at-will flaunting of international law and its state terrorism against defenseless civilians. It is time to go beyond mere condemnation to properly channel irrepressible grief and simmering anger into morally sound acts of intervention. Just as it worked against apartheid South Africa, a comprehensive regime of boycott against Israel is urgently called for. People of conscience everywhere share the responsibility of stopping this unrestrained behemoth before it scorches everything in its blind quest for hegemony and colonial control.


Omar Barghouti is an independent political analyst based in Ramallah


Endnotes

[1] Jonathan Steele and Rory McCarthy. "Strike on bunker failed, says Hizbullah. The Guardian, July 20, 2006.

[2] Patrick Bishop. "Diplomats argue as all of south Lebanon is targeted." Telegraph, July 28, 2006.

[3] Harry de Quetteville. "You're all targets, Israel tells Lebanese in South." Telegraph, July 28, 2006.

[4] Alan Dershowitz. "'Civilian Casualty'? It Depends." Los Angeles Times, July 22, 2006.

[5] Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky. Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. Pluto Press, London, 1999. p. ix.

[6] Israel Shahak. Jewish History, Jewish Religion - The Weight of Three Thousand Years. Pluto Press. London, 2002. P. 75-76.

[7] Ibid. P. 76.

[8] Ibid. P. 43.


Latest articles on Electronic Lebanon:

Opinion/Editorial: Arab states must repudiate ties with Israel now (31 July 2006)
Human Rights/Development: Delivering the bombs that kill civilians in Lebanon (31 July 2006)
Diaries: Live from Lebanon: They Have No Wine (30 July 2006)
Human Rights/Development: Security Council deplores Israeli attack on Qana, urges all sides to grant access (30 July 2006)
Diaries: Live from Lebanon: A loyal Beirut heart (30 July 2006)
Human Rights/Development: Qana again: Israel's war on civilians (30 July 2006)
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Human Rights/Development: Israel Responsible for Qana Attack: Indiscriminate Bombing in Lebanon a War Crime (30 July 2006)
Opinion/Editorial: Israel's Latest Massacre in Qana: Racist Jewish Fundamentalism a Factor (30 July 2006)
Opinion/Editorial: How Do we Sleep While Beirut is Burning? (Part Two) (30 July 2006)
Diaries: Live from Lebanon: The recurring scenario of death at Qana (30 July 2006)
Diaries: Live from Lebanon: "And still, it continues ...": Lebanese bloggers react to massacre at Qana (30 July 2006)
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Diaries: Live from Lebanon: Chasing oil and coming home to another massacre (30 July 2006)
Human Rights/Development: Qana massacre provokes crowd attack on UN building (30 July 2006)

[Rory Winter]

Yesha Rabbinical Council: During time of war, enemy has no innocents

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3283720,00.html

The Yesha Rabbinical Council announced in response to an IDF attack in Kfar Qanna that "according to Jewish law, during a time of battle and war, there is no such term as 'innocents' of the enemy."

All of the discussions on Christian morality are weakening the spirit of the army and the nation and are costing us in the blood of our soldiers and civilians," the statement said. (Efrat Weiss)

[Rory Winter]

Irish refused bombs sent to Prestwick airport
EDDIE BARNES AND MURDO MACLEOD

BOMBS destined to be used by Israel are being flown via Scotland only because the Irish government refused to allow them to land on its soil.

Scotland on Sunday can reveal that after the conflict in Lebanon began three weeks ago, Ireland turned down a United States request for planes carrying 600lb so-called bunker busters to refuel at Shannon airport in Co Clare.

As a result, cargo planes carrying the bombs, which the Israeli army is using in its offensive against the Hezbollah, are being flown via Prestwick airport in Ayrshire.

The use of Prestwick triggered a furious diplomatic row last week after it emerged that the US had broken aviation rules by failing to notify Britain about the flights.

That row is intensifying this weekend as two further American planes carrying 'hazardous' material to Tel Aviv land at the airport.

In another controversial development, Scotland on Sunday has learned that Prestwick is negotiating to allow planeloads of US military personnel on their way to Iraq to stop there.

A well-placed source close to the negotiations said it was bidding to take flights away from Shannon, which is currently used as a stopover for the bulk of the 900 American soldiers who travel from the US to the Middle East every day.

The American airlines which transport the troops through Shannon are understood to be reviewing their use of the airport, following protests in Ireland which have resulted in some of the planes being vandalised. The source said: "It could soon be the case that the Irish will say that they don't want these flights and, as a consequence, then we will look to get them."

The latest revelations are set to crush hopes among British diplomats that the row over Prestwick would die down following President George Bush's apology to Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday.

One Irish official said that the bombs would never have been allowed on Irish soil.

The source said: "There is absolutely no way that we would allow munitions or weapons to be shipped through Shannon to a location where there is an actual war going on. We would not allow it. It is correct that we allow the US to transport troops to Shannon, but sending bombs to Israel is another matter and completely out of the question for us."

Opposition critics last night seized on the situation. Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond said: "It is highly significant that Shannon put its foot down and drew back from allowing the transport of bunker busters, which could become the tinder to escalate dramatically the Middle East conflict."

He added: "It is absolutely appalling that we should allow Prestwick to become a stopover to death and destruction."

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said the fact that more flights were now landing in Scotland was "adding insult to injury".

He said: "What price the president's apology now?

The British government should be pursuing an active policy of denying weapons of any kind to anyone in the Middle East who may be assisting the conflict in any way."

However, speaking from America, Blair defended the use of Prestwick: "We should just apply the rules in the appropriate way, which is what we are doing. What happens at Prestwick airport is not going to determine whether we get a ceasefire in the Lebanon.

"If what people are saying is that we should impose an arms embargo on Israel, or indeed on the US, I think that would be very curious indeed."

A spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority confirmed the authorities had approved an 'exemption' allowing the two new flights to land at Prestwick. The first, a Boeing 747 from Texas, landed at about 1pm yesterday for refuelling. A second flight is due to arrive today.

Residents and politicians in Ayrshire have voiced anger at the flights. The airport has been used by the US as a refuelling point for flights involved in the controversial 'extraordinary rendition' of terror suspects to countries where they are alleged to have been tortured.

A demonstration has been planned for today at Prestwick by anti-war campaigners.

Sources at Prestwick say that if the airport took on even more US military flights, it could employ a further 80 people in the area.

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1104532006

[moeen yaseen]

WHO's ARMING ISRAEL?

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BER2006073 0&articleId=2864

by Frida Berrigan and William D. Hartung

July 30, 2006
Foreign Policy in Focus

Much has been made in the U.S. media of the Syrian- and Iranian-origin weaponry used by Hezbollah in the escalating violence in Israel and Lebanon. There has been no parallel discussion of the origin of Israel's weaponry, the vast bulk of which is from the United States.


The United States is the primary source of Israel's far superior arsenal. For more than 30 years, Israel had been the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance and since 1985 Jerusalem has received about $3 billion in military and economic aid each year from Washington. U.S. aid accounts for more than 20% of Israel's total defense budget.

Over the past decade, the United States has transferred more than $17 billion in military aid to this country of just under 7 million people.

Israel is one of the United States' largest arms importers. Between 1996 and 2005 (the last year for which full data is available), Israel took delivery of $10.19 billion in U.S. weaponry and military equipment, including more than $8.58 billion through the Foreign Military Sales program, and another $1.61 billion in Direct Commercial Sales

During the Bush administration, from 2001 to 2005, Israel received $10.5 billion in Foreign Military Financing—the Pentagon's biggest military aid program—and $6.3 billion in U.S. arms deliveries. The aid figure is larger than the arms transfer figure because it includes financing for major arms agreements for which the equipment has yet to be fully delivered. The most prominent of these deals is a $4.5 billion sale of 102 Lockheed Martin F-16s to Israel.

Given the billions of dollars of aid it provides to Israel every year and the central role of U.S.-supplied weaponry in the Israeli arsenal, the United States has considerable leverage that it could use to promote a cease fire in the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah before more Israeli and Lebanese civilians are killed and displaced. President Bush needs to go beyond vague calls for “restraint” to demands for a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, bringing in other key actors in the region, including Iran and Syria.

Click here for the full World Policy Institute report.



TABLE I: U.S. WEAPONS SALES DELIVERIES TO ISRAEL
Year
FMS
DCS
Total

2001
$766,026,000
$4,019,000
$770,045,000

2002
$629,426,000
$1,427,000
$630,853,000

2003
$845,952,000
$16,455,000
$862,407,000

2004
$878,189,000
$418,883,000
$1,297,072,000

2005
$1,652,582,000
$1,110,223,000
$2,762,805,000

2001-2005 TOTALS
$4,772,175,000
$1,551,007,000
$6,323,182,000

Source: “Facts Book: Department of Defense, Security Assistance Agency,” September 30, 2005.
Key: FMS, Foreign Military Sales; DCS, Direct Commercial Sales. The Facts Books does not make future projections and thus data for 2006 and 2007 is not yet available.



TABLE II: MILITARY AID TO ISRAEL
Year
FMF
ESF
Supplementals
NADR-ATA
TOTAL

2001
$1,975,644,000
$838,000,000
--
--
$2,813,644,000

2002
$2,040,000,000
$720,000,000
--
$28,000,000
$2,788,000,000

2003
$2,086,350,000
$596,100,000
$1,000,000,000
--
$3,682,450,000

2004
$2,147,256,000
$477,168,000
--
--
$2,624,424,000

2005
$2,202,240,000
$357,120,000
$50,000,000
$210,000
$2,609,570,000

2006 (estimated)
$2,257,200,000
$273,600,000
--
$526,000
$2,531,326,000

2007 (requested)
$2,340,000,000
$120,000,000
--
$320,000
$2,460,320,000

TOTALS 2001-2007
$15,048,690,000
$3,381,988,000
$1,050,000,000
$29,056,000
$19,509,734,000

Source: “Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations,” Fiscal Years 2001-2007.
Key: FMF, Foreign Military Financing (direct military aid); ESF, Economic Support Fund (open-ended monetary assistance that can be used to offset military spending and arms purchases; Supplementals are special one-time grants meant as a complement to already allocated aid; NADR-ATA, Nonproliferation, Anti-Terrorism, Demining, & Related Programs.



William D. Hartung is author of "Tangled Web 2005: A Profile of the Missile Defense and Space Weapons Lobbies" and a senior research fellow at the New School, where Frida Berrigan is a senior research associate. Both are Foreign Policy In Focus scholars.

[moeen yaseen]

delete

[Rory Winter]

David Icke Newsletter, July 16th 2006
ONE LAW FOR ONE ... PROPAGANDA AGAINST THE OTHER ...



By David Icke
www.davidicke.com/headlines

I was watching CNN the other night and a report on the foreign policy 'crisis' faced by the Bush-puppet administration. They listed all the trouble-spots - Israel-Gaza, Israel-Lebanon, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, etc. - and claimed that rarely had a U.S. government faced so many major problems around the world.

Well, it depends on what you mean by 'problems'.

We are back to my old friend 'coordinates' here. If you don't have the right coordinates you don't have perspective. If you believe that the goal of American 'foreign policy' is to bring peace and freedom to the world - if that is your coordinate - then it does indeed seem like the United States is faced with enormous challenges.

But if you know that the U.S. government is merely a tool of a global secret society network - the Illuminati - and the idea is to create as much war and suffering as possible to destroy peace and freedom, you will understand that the chaos and conflict is anything but a 'problem'. Quite the opposite, it's all going according to plan.



Without the coordinates - knowledge of the Illuminati agenda and the techniques used to advance it - people have no chance of understanding world events

So let us go through some key coordinates here:

1.) The Illuminati use the technique I have dubbed problem-reaction-solution to 'justify' actions that would otherwise be widely opposed. For instance, without the lie about 'weapons of mass destruction' (an invented problem), they would never have been able to sell the 'solution' - the invasion of Iraq.

2.) The Illuminati want to seize control of the planet and crucial to that is to control the Middle and Near Eastern oil fields - Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and so on, plus the massive oil and gas reserves around the Caspian Sea.

3.) To do the above they need excuses to invade those countries if they will not, like Libya, come quietly with their hands up.

4.) Israel is an Illuminati-created and controlled state through its manufactured political movement called 'Zionism', which is not the same as Judaism nor being Jewish. Large numbers of Jewish people oppose Zionism (see below), which is a political claim for a Jewish homeland in Israel.

5.) The state of Israel was bombed and terrorised into existence by invaders coordinated and manipulated by the Illuminati House of Rothschild. The incumbent population, the Palestinians, were removed from power in their own country and forced into little more than slavery by their invading masters.

6.) The Illuminati want to bring the United States and allies into a war with China to create a massive global problem in need of a global solution - the creation of a world government and world army to stop it ever happening again (hence the focus on China's associate state, North Korea).

7.) Chaos = control; Harmony = freedom.

8.) The goal is for a planet controlled by a world government and army that would impose its will on a micro-chipped, constantly watched and controlled population, described brilliantly by George Orwell in his book, 1984.



Now we can look again at current events and see foreign policy 'problems' in a different light to the brain-dead at CNN.

I have highlighted in detail in my books the so-called neo-con organization, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), http://www.newamericancentury.org/ and the plan for global conquest that it produced in September 2000 called Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces, And Resources For A New Century
http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

This document called for:

*
U.S. military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein is in power: 'While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'
*
The U.S. to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'.
*
U.S. forces to be 'the cavalry on the new American frontier'.
*
Action to discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging U.S. leadership or aspiring to a larger regional or global role.
*
Permanent U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
*
Increased military pressure on China: 'It is time to increase the presence of American forces in South East Asia' which will lead to 'American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratisation in China'.
*
The 'creation of "U.S. Space Forces", to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent "enemies" using the Internet against the U.S.'.
*
'New methods of attack - electronic, "non-lethal", biological. These, it says, will be more widely available and combat is likely to take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can "target" specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.'
*
The development of a 'world-wide command-and-control system' to contain the 'dangerous' regimes of North Korea, Libya, Syria, and Iran.

The document highlighted the need for a 'New Pearl Harbor' without which the 'process of transformation' was likely to be 'a long one'. 9/11 came one year to the month after this document was published and nine months after those behind it came to power with Bush. Since then it has been used to justify the imposition of their agenda. Coincidence? Oh, please.


September 11th, the 'new Pearl Harbor' the neo-cons needed to implement their plans. Coincidence? No way.

Bush's State of the Union speech in January 2002, in which he dubbed Iraq, Iran and North Korea 'the Axis of Evil', was written by David Frum, one of the neo-cons closely connected with the Project for the New American Century and its interlocking organisations like the American Enterprise Institute. All of these groups are arms of the Illuminati.


David Frum ... coined the phrase 'Axis of Evil' - Iraq, Iran and North Korea - for his neo-con masters and the George Bush speech

The neo-con godfather is Leo Strauss, a German-born Jewish 'philosopher', who believed that people must be governed by a 'pious elite'. He must have missed the fact that they already were. This Internet article summaries the world according to Strauss and, therefore, the neo-cons:

'Strauss thought that the best way for ordinary human beings to raise themselves above the beasts is to be utterly devoted to their nation and willing to sacrifice their lives for it. He recommended a rabid nationalism and a militant society modelled on Sparta. He thought that this was the best hope for a nation to be secure against her external enemies as well as the internal threat of decadence, sloth, and pleasure. A policy of perpetual war against a threatening enemy is the best way to ward off political decay. And if the enemy cannot be found, then it must be invented.'

Exactly - for the full article see: http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.phpsection=library&page=drury_24_ 4


Leo Strauss

The Project for the New American Century personnel are highly significant to past and current events. It was established in 1997 by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. Kristol is editor of the Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard that campaigns for the neo-con agenda. He is a regular contributor to the Murdoch-owned Fox News, the most blatantly biased television channel anywhere in the 'Western' world. Robert Kagan is an American neoconservative 'scholar' and 'political commentator'. He graduated from Yale University in 1980, where he joined the infamous Illuminati Skull and Bones Society and he is a member of the Illuminati Council on Foreign Relations.



Kristol & Kagan

Both of these founders are Jewish with close ties to Israel and they are pushing an agenda for 'American' control of the Middle and Near East (and further) which is precisely what Israel wants to happen. Yet to highlight this crucial fact is to be called 'anti-Semitic' - the constant slur used by Illuminati fronts like the Anti Defamation League (ADL)to discredit those who point out the obvious unfairness and bias of this situation.

Well, * to the ADL and anyone else in the same category. It is a fact and it needs saying to get some perspective on what is happening here.

And it goes further. These are some of the other members of the Project for the New American Century:

Abrams, Elliot: A member of the National Security Council and top advisor on the Middle East. As Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs under Reagan, he was responsible for covering up war crimes committed by the U.S.-backed Contras. He was charged in connection with the Iran-Contra affair and pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Abrams was later pardoned by father Bush. The British media reported that Abrams was behind the attempted Chavez coup in Venezuela.

Armitage, Richard



Former Deputy Secretary of State and former board member of CACI, the private military contractor whose employees were responsible for torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Reagan Administration and Deputy Secretary of State to Colin Powell at the time of the Iraq invasion.

Bernstein, Robert L.: Professor at the National Defense University (a government facility). Worked at the Naval War College (government facility), and in the Defense Department.

Bolton, John R.



Senior Vice President of the American Enterprise Institute. Major player at the Pentagon at the time of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq and now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations calling for action against neo-con target countries, like Iran.

Boschwitz, Rudy: Presidential appointee to the Holocaust Memorial Council. One of the top fund-raisers for boy Bush in 2000.

[Rory Winter]

Continued ...

Bush, Jeb



Governor of Florida who banned convicted felons from voting in the 2000 presidential election, using an extremely inaccurate system to remove voting rights and allowed ineligible absentee ballots to be counted. The vote was rigged, in other words, to get his brother 'elected'.

Carlucci, Frank: Chairman of the father Bush Carlyle Group at the time of 9/11. He was Secretary of Defense during the Reagan administration, Deputy Director in the CIA and CIA agent and was accused of plotting the assassination of two African leaders.

Cheney, Dick



Secretary of Defense for father Bush and now Vice President to his son. Cheney was behind the appointments of Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, and Elliot Abrams to government. All are PNAC members. His wife Lynne is a senior fellow with the neo-con American Enterprise Institute and daughter Elizabeth became Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs. He was Halliburton CEO from 1995 to 2000, the company that has received billions in Iraq contracts not tendered to other companies.

Cohen, Eliot A.: Professor at Johns Hopkins University, member of the Council on Foreign Relations and formerly worked for Rumsfeld.

Khalilzad, Zalmay



Ambassador to Afghanistan and now Iraq. Accused by candidates in the Afghan elections of arranging President Hamid Karzai's victory. Worked for Paul Wolfowitz at the State Department from 1984 to1985. Advisor to oil giant Unocal for their proposed gas pipeline project through Afghanistan.

Libby, I. Lewis: Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the Vice President.
Worked for Paul Wolfowitz at the State Department and the Pentagon. Now under investigation for obstruction of justice.

Perle, Richard N.




Pentagon Policy Advisor (resigned February 2004) and member of the Defense Policy Board. On the advisory board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). Assistant Secretary of Defense under Reagan/Bush. FBI suspected Perle of spying for Israel in 1970 but he was not prosecuted. Extremely close to former Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for whom he worked as an 'advisor'.

Rumsfeld, Donald



Secretary of Defense and a key player in the 'War on Terror', the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the targeting of other nations. He was on the board of the European engineering giant, ABB, when it sold nuclear technology to North Korea and visited Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in 1983 to arrange for chemical and biological weapons shipments from the U.S. to Iraq.

Weinberger, Caspar W.: Secretary of Defense under Reagan. Indicted on felony charges for his role in supplying missiles to Iran, but pardoned by President Bush Sr, who was also involved!

Wolfowitz, Paul



Deputy Secretary of Defense at time of 9/11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. He was the real power in the Pentagon, not Rumsfeld. Now head of the World Bank.

Zakheim, Dov S.



Member of the advisory board for the American Jewish Committee, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Adjunct Scholar for the [Illuminati] Heritage Foundation. He was Under Secretary and Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Defense until 2004.

Zoellick, Robert B.: U.S. Trade Representative and member of President's Cabinet. Under Secretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs, then White House Deputy Chief of Staff in the Bush Sr. administration.

All of the above are either Jewish with fundamental ties to Israel or vehement supporters of Israel, often through membership of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). This calls itself a 'non-partisan' organisation, which is a sick joke after even a cursory glance at its website - http://www.jinsa.org/home/home.html.

For more PNAC names, see http://www.reasoned.org/e_PNAC2.htm, but the same theme applies.



So, in summary: The neo-con groups like the Project for the New American Century and the American Enterprise Institute are awash - utterly dominated - by supporters of Israel and they have orchestrated a U.S. government policy of invasion and threats to countries in the Middle and Near East that suits the agenda of Israel.

Can you imagine what would be said - and done - if it was found that a U.S. administration controlled by fundamentalist supporters of Islamic countries had orchestrated an American invasion of Israel??

But because it is Israel doing the manipulating - silence. Don't speak out and state the clear facts or you will be called an 'anti-Semite'. Well, they can call me what they like, I don't give a *, because unless these issues are faced these sick people will set the world ablaze.



Now perhaps we can understand why, when an atrocity is commited against Israel, the media calls it Islamic terrorism, but when staggering numbers of Palestinian or other Arab civilians are killed it is reported as Israel 'defending itself from' or 'retaliating to' terrorism. Why? Because the mainstream media is controlled by the same forces - like Murdoch - and so gives the neo-con line.

What chance do the Palestinian people have of fairness and justice when the major governments of the world and the major media sources are dictated to by the very force that is dropping bombs on them and killing their children? What chance have they ever had since their country was invaded and their nation turned into slaves?

None.

And it is about time someone said so without fearing the consequences in slurs and attacks from the purveyors of hate like the ADL.

[Rory Winter]

Continued ...

I ask people to put themselves in the position of the Palestinians for a moment. They had their country stolen from them by force and terrorism soon after the Second World War and they have been subjected ever since to grotesque and horrific suppression, constant violence and domination. The Israeli government and military can do virtually whatever they like to them while the pathetic 'World Community' looks the other way.

The first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, summed up their aims in 1937 when he said: 'We must expel Arabs and take their places.' Imagine if another people invaded your land and did this to you, refusing even to acknowledge the injustice. What would we do?

The Palestinians believe they are without hope and they feel understandable fury at what is happening to their land, their homes, their families and themselves. Why wouldn't they? And, given the scale of provocation, it is a wonder that their own violent response comes only from a small minority, not the vast majority of decent and intelligent Palestinian and Arabic people who just want peace and justice.

It is an old, old truth. Ignore injustice for long enough and violence will surely follow. The way to stop violence is to remove the injustice, not respond with even greater violence.



Israel and the United States government - of both parties - are one and the same, controlled by the Illuminati network, and that is why Israel can basically do what it likes while the Palestinians are condemned at every turn.

So when we look at the events of this week they seem less foreign policy 'problems' and more foreign policy goals. The Project for the New American Century, just one of the voice pieces for the agenda of racist hatred, called in 2000 for the conquest of Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria and so on.

With the nightmare unfolding by the day in Iraq, the public in America and Britain have no stomach for invading anyone else. Bush and Blair have also had their credibility shot by the blatant lies they told to justify the Iraq invasion. Thus, if the conquest agenda is to roll on in the Middle and Near East, another trigger is necessary to keep it moving.

Enter Israel, stage right and left, with the invasions of the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and the blame pointed at both Syria and Iran for supporting those who kidnapped three soldiers - acts which have unleashed Israeli firepower (paid for by U.S. 'aid') on civilian populations.

It was all planned long before any soldiers were taken hostage.


A family of ten, including eight children, died in this Israeli air strike in Lebanon in retaliation for two soldiers being kidnapped (but not by the family of ten, including eight children).

And have you noticed something? The Illuminati target the Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and North Korea and events happen at just the right time to support the agenda. Soldiers are kidnapped that lead to the invasion of Gaza and Lebanon, with blame for the kidnaps handed to Syria and Iran; an Iran 'election' is 'won' by a man who then says all the right things for the neo-con propaganda to exploit; and North Korea starts launching missiles.

This story, and the global conspiracy, is far, far bigger than almost anyone imagines.

To be continued ....

**********************************************************

Zionism In Their Own Words




'If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.'

-- David Ben-Gurion (Quoted on pp 855-56 in Shabtai Teveth's Ben-Gurion in a slightly different translation).



'This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.'

-- Golda Meir, Le Monde, 15 October 1971



'We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'

-- Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.




'[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs.'

-- Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the 'Beasts,"' New Statesman, June 25, 1982.



'(The Palestinians) would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls.'

-- Israeli Prime Minister (at the time) Yitzhak Shamir in a speech to Jewish settlers, New York Times April 1, 1988




'If we thought that instead of 200 Palestinian fatalities, 2,000 dead would put an end to the fighting at a stroke, we would use much more force....'

-- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, quoted in Associated Press, November 16, 2000.



'It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.'

-- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

'Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours...Everything we don't grab will go to them.'

-- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, Nov. 15, 1998.

'Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial.'

-- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 25 March, 2001 quoted in BBC News Online

Read more ... http://www.davidicke.com/content/blogcategory/30/48/

Also, read GLOBAL VISION 2002 at http://www.gv2000.com/forums/index.php

[Rory Winter]

Jewish Power
Written by Paul Eisen
Friday, 23 June 2006

The crime against the Palestinian people is being committed by a Jewish state with Jewish soldiers using weapons displaying Jewish religious symbols, and with the full support and complicity of the overwhelming mass of organised Jews worldwide. But to name Jews as responsible for this crime seems impossible to do.

The future is always open and nothing can ever be ruled out; but, for now, it’s hard to see how Israel can be stopped. After over fifty years, it is clear that Israel will only relinquish its eliminationist attitude to Palestinians and Palestinian life when it has to. This need not be through military action but it is hard to see how anything else will do. The conventional wisdom - that if America turned off the tap, Israel would be brought to its knees - is far from proven. First, it’s not going to happen. Second, those who believe it, may well be underestimating both the cohesiveness of Israeli society and the force of Jewish history which permeates it. Even more unlikely is the military option. The only force on earth which could possibly confront Israel is the American military, and, again, that is not going to happen.

Palestinian resistance has been astonishing. After over fifty years of brutal assault by what may well one day be seen as one of the most ruthless and irrational powers of modern times, and with just about every power on earth ranged against them, Palestinians are still with us, still steadfast, still knowing who they are and where they come from. Nonetheless, for the time being effective resistance may be over (though the possibility of organised non-violent resistance can never be ruled out), and, for now, the only strategy open may be no more than one for survival.

For us it is so much easier to deny this reality than to accept it, and doubtless the struggle will continue. How fruitful this will be no-one can say. Although the present seems hopeless, survival is still vital and no-one knows when new opportunities may arise. Anyway, to struggle against injustice is always worth doing. But what if the struggle becomes so delusional that it inhibits rather than advances resistance? What if the struggle becomes a way of avoiding rather than confronting reality? Those slogans “End the Occupation!” and “Two States for Two Peoples!” are now joined by a new slogan, “The One-State Solution!” This is every bit as fantastic as its predecessors because, just as there never was going to be an end to the occupation, nor a real Palestinian state, so, for now, there is no possibility of any “one state” other than the state of Israel which now stretches from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, and the only “solution” is a final solution and even that cannot be ruled out.

“Zionism is not Judaism; Judaism is not Zionism….”

The crime against the Palestinian people is being committed by a Jewish state with Jewish soldiers using weapons with Jewish religious symbols all over them, and with the full support and complicity of the overwhelming mass of organised Jews worldwide. But to name Jews as responsible for this crime seems impossible to do. The past is just too terrible. All of us know of the hatred and violence to which accusations against Jews have led in the past. Also, if we were to examine critically the role of Jews in this conflict, what would become of us and of our struggle? Would we be labelled anti-Semites and lose much of the support that we have worked so hard to gain?

The present, too, is full of ambiguities. Zionism is not Judaism; Judaism is not Zionism has become an article of faith, endlessly repeated, as is the assertion that Zionism is a secular ideology opposed, for much of its history, by the bulk of religious Jews and even now still opposed by true Torah Jews such as Neturei Karta. But Zionism is now at the heart of Jewish life with religious Jews amongst the most virulent of Zionists and Neturei Karta, despite their impeccable anti-Zionism, their beautiful words and the enthusiasm with which they are welcomed at solidarity rallies, etc., may well be a million miles from the reality of Jewish life.

And even if Zionism can still be disentangled from Judaism, can it be distinguished from a broader Jewish identity or Jewishness? So often Zionism is proclaimed to be a modern add-on to Jewish identity, another, albeit anachronistic, settler-colonial ideology simply adopted by Jews in response to their predicament. But, could it be that our need to avoid the accusation of anti-Semitism and our own conflicted perceptions and feelings, our insistence that Zionism and Jewishness are separate, has led us seriously to misunderstand the situation? Has our refusal to look squarely at the very Jewishness of Zionism and its crimes caused us to fail to understand exactly what we are up against?

Jews, Judaism and Zionism

Jews are complex; Jewish identity is complex and the relationship between Judaism the religion, and a broader, often secular, Jewish identity or Jewishness is very complex indeed. Jewishness may be experienced a long way from synagogue, yeshiva or any other formal aspect of Jewish religious life, yet is often still inextricably bound to Judaism. That is why secular Jews are able to proclaim their secularity every bit as loudly as they proclaim their Jewishness. Marc Ellis, a religious Jew, says that when you look at those Jews who are in solidarity with Palestinians, the overwhelming majority of them are secular – but, from a religious point of view, the Covenant is with them. For Ellis, these secular Jews unknowingly and even unwillingly may be carrying with them the future of Jewish life.

Jewish identity, connecting Jews to other Jews, comes from deep within Jewish history. This is a shared history, both real and imagined, in that it is both literal and theological. Many Jews in the west share a real history of living together as a distinct people in Eastern, Central and then Western Europe and America. Others share a real history of settlement in Spain followed by expulsion and then settlement all over the world, particularly in Arab and Islamic lands. But this may not be what binds all Jews, because for all Jews it is not a real, but maybe a theological, history that is shared. Most Palestinians today probably have more Hebrew blood in their little fingers then most western Jews have in their whole bodies. And yet, the story of the Exodus from Egypt is as real to many of them, and most importantly was as real to them when they were children, as if they, along with all Jews, had stood with Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai.

And histories like that don’t stop at the present. Even for secular Jews, though unacknowledged and even unrealized, there is a sense, not only of a shared history, but also of a shared destiny. Central to Jewish identity both religious and non-religious is the sense of mission centered on exile and return. How else to explain the extraordinary devotion of so many Jews, religious and secular, to the “return” to a land with which, in real terms, they have very little connection at all?

For many Jews, this history confers a ‘specialness’. This is not unique to Jews - after all, who in their heart of hearts does not feel a little bit special? But for Jews this specialness is at the centre of their self-identification and much of the world seems to concur. For religious Jews, the specialness comes from the supposed covenant with God. But for secular Jews, the specialness comes from a special history. In either case this can be a good, even a beautiful, thing. In much of Jewish religious tradition this specialness is no more than a special moral obligation, a special responsibility to offer an example to the world, and for so many secular Jews it has led them to struggle for justice in many places around the world.

At the heart of this Jewish specialness is Jewish suffering and victimhood. Like the shared history itself, this suffering may, but need not, correspond to reality. Jews have certainly suffered but their suffering remains unexamined and unexplained. The Holocaust, now the paradigm of Jewish suffering, has long ceased to be a piece of history, and is now treated by religious and secular alike, as a piece of theology - a sacred text almost - and therefore beyond scrutiny. And the suffering never ends. No matter how much Jews have suffered they are certainly not suffering now, but for many Jews their history of suffering is not just an unchallengeable past but also a possible future. So, no matter how safe Jews may be, many feel just a hair’s-breadth away from Auschwitz.

Zionism is at the heart of this. Zionism is also complex and also comes from deep within Jewish history with the same sense of exile and return. Zionism also confirms that Jews are special in their suffering and is explicit that Jews should ‘return’ to a land given to them, and only them - by God if they are religious, or by history if they are not - because they simply are not safe anywhere else on earth.

But so what? If Jews think that they are a people with a religious link to a land and have a deep wish to ‘return’, why should we care, so long as the land is not already populated by Palestinians? And if Jews feel that they are special and that God has made some kind of special arrangement with them, so what, so long as this does not lead them to demand preferential treatment and to discriminate against others? And if Jews feel that they have suffered like no-one else on the face of the earth, fine, so long as they do not use this suffering to justify the imposition of suffering on others and to blackmail morally the whole world into quiescent silence.

This is the problem with Zionism. It expresses Jewish identity but also empowers it. It tells Jews (and many others too) that Jews can do what Jews have always dreamed of doing. It takes the perfectly acceptable religious feelings of Jews, or if you prefer, the perfectly harmless delusions of Jews, and tries to turn them into a terrible reality. Jewish notions of specialness, choseness and even supremacism, are fine for a small, wandering people, but, when empowered with a state, an army and F16s become a concern for us all.

Zionism as Jewish empowerment in statehood changes everything. Israel is not just any state, it is a Jewish state and this means more than just a state for Jews. This Jewish state is built on traditions and modes of thought that have evolved amongst Jews for centuries – amongst which are the notions that Jews are special and that their suffering is special. By their own reckoning, Jews are “a nation that dwells alone” it is “us and them” and, in many cases, “us or them”. And these tendencies are translated into the modern state of Israel. This is a state that knows no boundaries. It is a state that both believes, and uses as justification for its own aggression, the notion that its very survival is always at stake, so anything is justified to ensure that survival. Israel is a state that manifestly believes that the rules of both law and humanity, applicable to all other states, do not apply to it.

Their own worst nightmare

It is a terrible irony that this empowerment of Jews has come to most resemble those empowerments under which Jews have suffered the most. Empowered Christianity, also a marriage of faith and power, enforced its ideology and pursued its dissidents and enemies with no greater fervor than has empowered Judaism. In its zeal and self belief, Zionism has come to resemble the most brutal and relentless of modern ideologies. But unlike the brutal rationality of Stalinism, willing to sacrifice millions for political and economic revolution, this Jewish ideology, in its zealotry and irrationality, resembles more the National Socialism which condemned millions for the attainment of a nonsensical racial and ethnic supremacy.

Of course there are differences but there are also similarities. National Socialism, like Zionism, another blend of mysticism and power, gained credibility as a means to right wrongs done to a victimized people. National Socialism, like Zionism, also sought to maintain the racial/ethnic purity of one group and to maintain the rights of that ethnic group over others, and National Socialism, like Zionism, also proposed an almost mystical attachment of that group to a land. Also, both National Socialism and Zionism shared a common interest – to separate Jews from non-Jews, in this case to remove Jews from Europe – and actively co-operated in the attainment of this aim. And if the similarity between these two ideologies is simply too great and too bitter to accept, one may ask what National Socialism with its uniforms, flags and mobilized youth must have looked like to those Germans, desperate after Versailles and the ravages of post-First World War Germany. Perhaps not so different from how the uniforms, flags and marching youth of pre- and post-state Zionism must have looked to Jews after their history of suffering, and particularly after the Holocaust.

This is, for Jews, their own worst nightmare: the thing they love the most has become the thing they hate the most. And for those Jews and others, who shrink from the comparison, let them ask themselves this: What would an average German, an enthusiastic Nazi even, have said in, say, 1938 had they been confronted with the possibility of an Auschwitz? They would have thought that you were stark, staring mad.

American Jews and Jewish America

At the heart of the conflict is the relationship between Israel and America. The statistics – billions in aid and loans, UN vetoes, etc., etc. need not be repeated here - American support for Israel seems limitless. But what is the nature of this support? For many, perhaps most, the answer is relatively simple. Israel is a client state of America, serving American interests or, more particularly, the interests of its power elites. This view is underpinned by the obvious importance of oil, the huge strategic importance of the region and the fact that, if Israel did not further the interests of those who control America, then we can be sure America would not support Israel. Also, there is no doubt that, in the IDF, America has found a marvellously flexible and effective force, easily aroused and let loose whenever any group of Arabs get a little above themselves.

But is this the whole story? Does Israel really serve America’s interests and is their relationship wholly based on the sharing of these interests? Consider how much in terms of goodwill from other nations America loses by its support for Israel, and consider the power and influence of the “Jewish”, “Zionist” or “pro-Israel” lobby, as when many an otherwise responsible lawmaker, faced with the prospect of an intervention in their re-election campaign from the Jewish lobby, seems happy to put his or her re-election prospects way in front of what is good for America.

The details of the workings of AIPAC and others, and the mechanics by which these groups exert pressure on America’s lawmakers and governors, have been dealt with elsewhere; we need only note that this interest group is undoubtedly extraordinarily effective and successful. Not just a small group of Jews supporting Israel, as its supporters would have us believe, these are powerful and committed ideologues: billionaires, media magnates, politicians, activists and religious leaders. In any event, the power of the Jewish lobby to make or break pretty well any public figure is legendary – not for nothing is it often referred to simply as “The Lobby”.

But again, there may be far more to the Israel/U.S. relationship than just a commonality of interest and the effectiveness of certain interest groups. That support for Israel must be in the interests of those who control America is certainly true, but who controls America? Perhaps the real relationship is not between Israel and America but between Jews and America.

The overwhelming majority of Jews in America live their lives just like any other Americans. They’ve done well and are undoubtedly pleased that America supports their fellow Jews in Israel but that’s as far as it goes. Nonetheless, an awful lot of Jews certainly do control an awful lot of America – not the industrial muscle of America - the steel, transport, etc., nor the oil and arms industries, those traditional money-spinners. No, if Jews have influence anywhere in America, it’s not over its muscle and sinew but over its blood and its brain. It is in finance and the media that we find a great many Jews in very influential positions. Lists abound (though you have to go to some pretty unpopular websites to find them) of Jews, prominent in financial and cultural life: Jews in banks; Jews in Forbes Magazine’s Richest Americans; Jews in Hollywood; Jews in TV; Jewish journalists, writers, critics, etc., etc.

Nor have Jews been slow in exploiting their position. Jews have not hesitated to use whatever resources they have to advance their interests as they see them. Nor does one need to subscribe to any conspiracy theory to note how natural it is for Jews in the media to promote Jews and their values as positive and worthy of emulation. When did anyone last see a Jew portrayed in anything other than a favourable light? Jews are clever, moral, interesting, intense, warm, witty, complex, ethical, contradictory, prophetic, infuriating, sometimes irritating, but always utterly engaging. Nor is it any wonder that Jews in influential positions are inclined to promote what they see as Jewish collective interests. Is it really all that incredible that Jewish advisers around the Presidency bear Israel’s interests at heart when they advise the President on foreign affairs?

But so what? So there are a lot of Jews with a lot of money, and a lot of Jews with a lot to say and the means to say it. If Jews by virtue of their ability and use of resources (as honestly gained as by anyone else) promote what they perceive as their own collective interest, what’s wrong with that? First, with some notable exceptions, the vast majority of Jews can, in good faith, lay hands on hearts and swear that they never take decisions or actions with collective Jewish interests in mind, certainly not consciously. And even if they did, they are acting no differently from anyone else. With a few exceptions, Jews have earned their advantageous positions. They came with nothing, played according to the rules and, if they use their influence to further what they perceive as Jewish interests, what’s so special about that? Do not the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Gun lobby, the Christian Evangelicals also not work to further their group interests?

The difference between Jews and other groups is that they probably do it better. Jews are, by pretty well any criteria, easily the most successful ethnic group in America and, for whatever reason, have been extraordinarily successful in promoting themselves both individually and collectively. And there would probably be nothing wrong with this were it not for the fact that these same people who exert so much control and influence over American life also seem to refuse to be held accountable. It is the surreptitiousness with which Jews are perceived to have achieved their success which arouses suspicion. Jews certainly seem cagey about the influence they have. Just breathe the words “Jewish power” and wait for the reaction. They claim it’s because this charge has so often been used as a precursor to discrimination and violence against them, but never consider the possibility that their own reluctance to discuss the power they wield arouses suspicion and even hostility.

But there is another claim, subtler and more worrying. This is that it doesn’t exist; that Jews do not wield power, that there is no Jewish lobby; that Jews in America do not exert power and influence to advance Jewish interests, even that there are no such things as Jewish interests! There are no Jewish interests in the war in Iraq, there are no Jewish interests in America; most amazing, there are no Jewish interests even in Israel and Palestine. There is no Jewish collective. Jews do not act together to advance their aims. They even say that the pro-Israeli lobby has actually not all that much to do with Jews, that the Jewishness of Israel is irrelevant and the Public Affairs Committees (PACs) which lobby so hard for Israel are in fact doing no more than supporting an ally and thus looking after America’s best interests even to the extent of concealing their true purpose behind names such as “American for Better Citizenship”, “Citizen’s Organised PAC” or the “National PAC” – none of which make one reference in their titles to Israel, Zionism or Jews. Similarly, Jews and Jewish organisations are said to be not so much furthering Jewish interests and values as American, or, even, universal interests and values. So, the major Holocaust Museum, styled as a “Museum of Tolerance”, focuses not only on anti-Semitism, but on every kind of intolerance known to mankind (except that shown by Jews to non-Jews in Israel and Palestine). Similarly, the Anti-Defamation League is but an organisation for the promotion of universal principles of tolerance and justice, not just for Jews but for everyone.

This conflation of Jewish interests with American interests is nowhere more stark than in present American foreign policy. If ever an image was reminiscent of a Jewish world conspiracy, the spectacle of the Jewish neo-cons gathered around the current presidency and directing policy in the Middle East, this must be it. But we are told that the fact that the Jewish neo-cons, many with links with right wing political groups within Israel, are in the forefront of urging a pro-Israel policy, is but a coincidence, and any suggestion that these figures might be influenced by their Jewishness and their links with Israel is immediately marginalised as reviving old anti-Semitic myths about Jewish dual loyalty. The idea that American intervention in Iraq, the one viable military counterweight to Israeli hegemony in the Middle East and therefore an inspiration to Arab and Palestinian resistance, primarily serves Israeli rather than American interests has also been consigned to the nether world of mediaeval anti-Semitic myth. The suggestion that those Jews around the president act from motives other than those to promote the interests of all Americans is just anti-Semitic raving. And maybe they’re right. Perhaps those who promote Jewish interests are in fact promoting American interests because, for now at least, they appear to be one and the same.

Jewish America

In Washington, D.C. is a memorial to a terrible tragedy. Not a memorial to a tragedy visited on Americans by a foreign power as at Pearl Harbour or 9/11, nor to a tragedy visited by Americans on Americans such the sacking of Atlanta. Nor is it a memorial of contrition to a tragedy inflicted by Americans onto another people, such as to slavery or to the history of racial injustice in America. It is to none of these. The Holocaust memorial is to a tragedy inflicted on people who were not Americans, by people who were not Americans, and in a place a very long way from America. And the co-religionists or, even, if you like, the co-nationals, of the people on whom the tragedy was visited and to whom the memorial is built make up around two percent of the American population. How is it that a group of people who make up such a tiny percentage of the overall American population can command such respect and regard that a memorial to them is built in the symbolic heart of American national life?

The Jewish narrative is now at the centre of American life, certainly that of its cultural and political elites. There is, anyway, much in the way that Americans choose to see themselves and their history which is quite naturally compatible with the way Jews see themselves and their history. What more fitting paradigm for a country founded on immigration, than the story of the mass immigration of Jews at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? For many Americans, the story of those Jews who came to their Goldenes Medina, their Golden Land, with nothing and, through hard work and perseverance, made it to the very top of American society, is also their story. And what could be more inspirational for a country, if not officially but still viscerally, deeply Christian than the story of the Jews, Jesus' own people and God's chosen people, returning to their ancient homeland and transforming it into a modern state. And for a nation which sees itself as a beacon of democracy in the world, what better international soul-mate than the state of Israel, widely held to be "the only democracy in the Middle-East"? Finally what greater validation for a country itself founded on a narrative of conquest and ethnic cleansing than the Biblical narrative of the conquest and ethnic cleansing of the Promised Land with the addition of the equally violent settlement of modern Palestine with its own ethnic cleansing and then "making the desert bloom"?

Most resonant, of course, is the notion of Jews as a suffering people. The fact that this “suffering people” is now enjoying a success beyond the dreams of any other ethnic group in America seems irrelevant. Also ignored is how American Jews have made it to the very top of American society whilst, every step of the way, complaining about how much they’re being discriminated against. Nonetheless, to America, Jews have an enduring and ongoing history of suffering and victimhood. But this history has rarely been examined or even discussed.

A Suffering People

That Jews have suffered is undeniable, but Jewish suffering is claimed to have been so enduring, so intense and so particular that it is to be treated differently from other sufferings. The issue is complex and cannot be fully debated or decided here but the following points may stimulate thought and discussion.

*

During even the most terrible times of Jewish suffering such as the Crusades or the Chmielnitzky massacres of seventeenth century Ukraine, and even more so at other times in history, it has been said that the average peasant would have given his eye-teeth to be a Jew. The meaning is clear: generally speaking, and throughout most of their history, the condition of Jews was often far superior to the mass of the population.
*

The above-mentioned Ukrainian massacres took place in the context of a peasant uprising against the oppression of the Ukrainian peasantry by their Polish overlords. As has often been the case, Jews were seen as occupying a traditional position of being in alliance with the ruling class in their oppression of the peasantry. Chmielnitzky, the leader of this popular uprising, is today a Ukrainian national hero, not for his assaults on Jews (there are even references to his having offered poor Jews to join the uprising against their exploitative co-religionists – the Jews declined) but for his championing of the rights of the oppressed Ukrainians. Again, the inference is plain: outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence, though never justified, have often been responses to Jewish behaviour both real and imaginary.
*

In the Holocaust three million Polish Jews died, but so did three million non-Jewish Poles. Jews were targeted but so were Gypsies, homosexuals, Slavs and Poles. Similarly, the Church burned Jews for their dissenting beliefs but then the church burned everyone for their dissenting beliefs. So again, the question must be asked: what’s so special about Jewish suffering?
*

The Holocaust, the paradigm for all anti-Semitism and all Jewish suffering, is treated as being beyond examination and scrutiny. Questioning the Holocaust narrative is, at best, socially unacceptable, leading often to social exclusion and discrimination, and, at worst, in some places is illegal and subject to severe penalty. Holocaust revisionist scholars, named Holocaust deniers by their opponents, have challenged this. They do not deny a brutal and extensive assault on Jews by the Nazi regime but they do deny the Holocaust narrative as framed by present day establishments and elites.
*

Specifically, their denial is limited to three main areas. First, they deny that there ever was an official plan on the part of Hitler or any other part of the Nazi regime systematically and physically to eliminate every Jew in Europe; second, they deny that there ever existed homicidal gas-chambers; third, they claim that the numbers of Jewish victims of the Nazi assault have been greatly exaggerated.

During even the most terrible times of Jewish suffering such as the Crusades or the Chmielnitzky massacres of seventeenth century Ukraine, and even more so at other times in history, it has been said that the average peasant would have given his eye-teeth to be a Jew. The meaning is clear: generally speaking, and throughout most of their history, the condition of Jews was often far superior to the mass of the population.

But none of this is the point. Whether those who question the Holocaust narrative are revisionist scholars striving to find the truth and shamelessly persecuted for opposing a powerful faction, or whether they are crazy Jew-haters denying a tragedy and defaming its victims, the fact is that one may question the Armenian genocide, one may freely discuss the Slave Trade, one can say that the murder of millions of Ibos, Kampucheans and Rwandans never took place and that the moon is but a piece of green cheese floating in space, but one may not question the Jewish Holocaust. Why? Because, like the rest of the Jewish history of suffering, the Holocaust underpins the narrative of Jewish innocence which is used to bewilder and befuddle any attempt to see and to comprehend Jewish power and responsibility in Israel/Palestine and elsewhere in the world.
Jewish Power

What is a Jew?

Israel Shamir, the Russian-born Israeli writer, advocates the right of all people, whatever their ethnicity or religion, to live together in complete equality between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. Shamir condemns the behaviour of Israel and of Diaspora Jews and calls for an end to their preferential treatment, but he also proposes an opposition to Judaism itself for which he stands accused of being anti-Jewish – a charge he does not deny but actually embraces.

Shamir proposes the existence of a Jewish ideology, or "Jewish paradigm" as he puts it, and proposes that it is the voluntary adherence to this “spirit” which makes a Jew into a Jew. For him, Jewishness is neither race nor ethnicity – there is, for Shamir, no such thing as a Jewish ‘tribe’ or ‘family’ - no biological or ethnic body from which there can be no escape. Further, this ideology, based on notions of choseness, exclusivity and even supremacism is, at least when empowered, incompatible with peace, equality and justice in Palestine or anywhere else for that matter.

No-one wants to oppose any Jews simply for being Jews, or even for what they believe, but only because of what they do. The problem is that since, according to Shamir, what Jews believe and even do is precisely what makes them into Jews, so opposition to Jewishness as an ideology surely comes dangerously close to opposition to Jews simply for being Jews. But for Shamir, Jews are Jews because they choose to be Jews. Someone may be born of Jews and raised as a Jew but they can if they wish reject their Jewish upbringing and become a non-Jew. And many have done just that including such famous escapees as Karl Marx, St. Paul, Leon Trotsky (and Shamir himself), etc. Opposition to Jews is not, therefore, like opposition to Blacks or to Asians or to other common racist attitudes since the object of the opposition is perfectly able to relinquish the ideology in question.

Shamir has never in any way called for any harm to be done to Jews or anyone else, nor for Jews or anyone else to be discriminated against in any way. Adherence to this Jewish ideology is, for Shamir, regrettable, but not, in itself, a matter for active opposition. Nor does this mean that Shamir is opposed to any individual Jew just because he or she is a Jew. What Shamir actively opposes is not “Jews” but “Jewry”. Analogous to say, the Catholic Church, Jewry consists of those organised Jews and their leaders who actively promote corrosive Jewish interests and values, particularly now in the oppression of the Palestinians.

One doesn’t have to be in complete agreement with Shamir to understand what he is talking about. Why should Jews not have a “spirit”; after all, such a concept has been discussed with regard to other nations?

“It is dangerous, wrong, to speak about the “Germans,” or any other people, as of a single undifferentiated entity, and include all individuals in one judgement. And yet I don’t think I would deny that there exists a spirit of each people (otherwise it would not be a people) a Deutschtum, an italianitia, an hispanidad: they are the sums of traditions, customs, history, language, and culture. Whoever does not feel within himself this spirit, which is national in the best sense of the word, not only does not entirely belong to his own people but is not part of human civilization. Therefore, while I consider insensate the syllogism, ‘All Italians are passionate; you are Italian; therefore you are passionate,” I do however believe it legitimate, within certain limits, to expect from Italians taken as a whole, or from Germans, etc., one specific, collective behavior rather than another. There will certainly be individual exceptions, but a prudent, probabilistic forecast is in my opinion possible.” -- Primo Levi

And for Jews it is, perhaps, even more appropriate. The place of Judaism as an ideology at the centre for all Jewish identity may be debated, but few would dispute that Judaism is at least at the historic heart of Jewishness and, whatever else may bind Jews together, it is certainly true that religion plays an important part. Second, for a group of people who have retained such a strong collective identity with no shared occupation of any land, language, nor even, in many cases, a culture, it is hard to see what else there could be that makes Jews into Jews. Surely for Jews, in the absence of other, more obvious factors, it is precisely such a spirit that has enabled them to retain their distinctive identity for so long and in the face of such opposition.

But if there is some kind of Jewish spirit or ideology, what is it? As far as Judaism, the religion, goes it seems fairly clear that there is an ideology based on the election of Israel by God, the special relationship Jews are supposed to have with God and the special mission allocated to Jews by God. So for observant Jews there is a special quality intrinsic to the covenant and to Judaism itself, though not all of them find it entirely appealing:

"There is a strain in Jewish thought that says there is a special Godly something or other that is passed down in a certain genetic line which confers a special quality on people and Jewishness is a special quality. I call that metaphysical racism." -- Rabbi Mark Solomon

But whilst easy to see such a common spirit in religious Jews – after all it is precisely that which makes them religious – it is so much harder to define it in secular Jews, those Jews who reject, often quite vociferously, all aspects of Jewish faith. They often claim that they don’t have an ideology, or that their ideology is one of, say, the left: not only not Jewish, but opposed to all religions including Judaism. Yet seemingly so free of all such ignorant superstition, these same people still call themselves Jews, still more often than not marry other Jews and still turn up to solidarity rallies only with other Jews and under Jewish banners. What is their ideology?

For my money it is much the same sense of specialness found in religious Jews but with a special reference to victimhood. “Yes, but only in the Hitlerian sense”, answered philosopher Maxime Rodinson when asked if he still considered himself a Jew. For many of these Jews it is their identity as a threatened and victimized people that makes them Jews. “Hitler said I was a Jew, so I may as well be a Jew” is one response or “To be a Jew somehow denies all those who ever persecuted Jews a victory– so I’m a Jew”. For these Jews, albeit estranged from Jewish religious and often community life as well, Emil Fackenheim’s famous post-Holocaust 614th commandment (to add to the other 613): Thou shall survive! is an absolute imperative. But whatever the motive, this self-identity runs very deep indeed. Amongst these Jews, no matter how left or progressive they may be, one may criticise Israel to the nth degree, poke fun at the Jewish establishment and even shamefully denigrate Judaism as a religion, but depart one iota from the approved text on anti-Semitism and Jewish suffering, and you are in deep trouble. For these rational folk, Jewish suffering and anti-Semitism is every bit as inexplicable, mysterious and therefore, unchallengeable as for any religious Jew.

Jewish secularism is often offered as evidence that there is no such thing as a Jewish identity gathered around any shared ideology. After all, if all Jews subscribe to the same basic ideology, then how come so many Jews so obviously don’t? And if all Jews essentially support the same interests, how come so many Jews so obviously don’t? But is it that obvious? Not only do secular Jews very often seem to subscribe to Jewish notions of specialness and victimhood, but also, in their attitudes to non-Jews in general, and Palestinians in particular, they are by no means all that different from religious Jews.

It is often quoted how many Jews are in solidarity movements with Palestinians and how many of these are secular. And it’s true: there are many Jews in sympathy with the Palestinians and the overwhelming majority are secular, and the main thrust of post-1967 virulent Zionism has come to be associated with the religious right. But this secular Jewish tradition, in fact, has been at the forefront of Zionism’s assault on the Palestinians. It was secular Labour Zionists who created the Zionist ideology and the pre-state Jewish-only society. It was secular Zionists - good, humanistic, left-wing kibbutzniks - who directed and carried out the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians, and the destruction of their towns and villages. It was secular Zionists who established the present state with all its discriminatory practices; and it was a largely secular Labour government that held the Palestinian citizens of Israel under military government in their own land for eighteen years. Finally, it was a secular, Labour government which conquered the West Bank and Gaza, and first built the settlements, and embarked on the Oslo peace process, coolly designed to deceive the Palestinians into surrendering their rights.

And even those secular Jews who do support Palestinian rights, on so many occasions, the solidarity they offer is limited by self interest. That these people, at least as much as anyone else, act out of their highest motives may be true. Many have been lifelong activists for many causes and many find their activism springs, consciously or unconsciously, from what they see as the highest ideals of their Jewishness. But nonetheless for many of them, solidarity with Palestinians means above all, the protection of Jews. They call for a Palestinian state on 22 per cent of the Palestinian homeland, but only to keep and protect the ‘Jewishness’ of the Jewish state. The Palestinian state they call for would inevitably be weak, dominated by the Israeli economy and under the guns of the Israeli military – surely they must know what this would mean!

At rally after rally, in speeches and on leaflets and banners, these Jews denounce the occupation: “Down with the occupation…down with the occupation…down with the occupation…” but not a word of the inherent injustice of a state for Jews only; perhaps a mention of the ill-gotten gains of 1948, but nothing of the right of return of the refugees, no restitution merely ‘a just solution’ taking account, of course, of Israel’s ‘demographic concerns’. “We are with you….we are with you….we are with you” they say “…...but..” Whether it be condemnation of some form of Palestinian resistance of which they disapprove, or some real or perceived occurrence of anti-Semitism, for these Jews there is always a “but.”

They should take a leaf from Henry Herskovitz. He is part of an organisation called Jewish Witnesses for Peace, which holds silent vigils outside synagogues on shabbat. Of course, all the other Jewish activists are shrieking at him that you mustn't target Jews for protest, that you must draw a distinction between Jews, Israelis and Zionists, that you'll only alienate the people we want to engage.... but he doesn't care. He knows that support from the Jewish mainstream, as Tony Cliff the Trotskyite used to say, “….is like honey on your elbow - you can see it, you can smell it but you can never quite taste it!” Henry also knows that to say that Jews in America individually and in their religious and community organisations should not be held accountable for what is happening is a lie and discredits all Jews before the non-Jewish world.

So these secular Jews often end up being just another round of Michael Neuman’s “veritable shell game” of Jewish identity. "Look! We're a religion! No! a race! No! a cultural entity! Sorry--a religion!" Because this is the key to maintaining Jewish power – if it’s indefinable, it’s invisible. Like a Stealth Bomber (you can’t see it on your radar but you sure know when you’ve been hit) Jewish power, with its blurred outlines and changing forms, becomes invisible. And if you can’t see it you can’t fight it. Meanwhile the assault on the Palestinians continues.

“The Jews”

The phrase is itself terrifying because of its past association with discrimination and violence against Jews, but Jews themselves have no problem with it. The notion of a Jewish People is at the centre of Jewish faith with Jews of all or no degrees of religious adherence over and over again affirming its existence. It is also at the heart of Zionism even in its most secular forms and is written into the foundational texts of the state of Israel. The concept even received international legal approval when the Jewish people were declared, by the West German state, to be the post-war residual heirs of intestate Jews. And yet it is an absolute article of faith for everyone, including those in the solidarity movement, that while we may criticize and confront Israel and Israelis, we may not criticize and confront the Jewish people and Jews. Unlike Israel and any other state, the Jewish People has no common policy and any attack on the Jewish people is, therefore, aimed at what they are and not at what they do.

But is speaking of the Jews doing this or doing that any more or less acceptable than speaking of, say, the Americans? If the American military lays waste a third world country, it is done by order of the government (a small group) with the full support of the ruling elites (another small group), the tacit support of a substantial segment of the population (a larger group), the silent denial of probably the majority of the population (a very large group) and the opposition of a tiny minority (a small group). Is it all that different with Jews?

The phrase is itself terrifying because of its past association with discrimination and violence against Jews, but Jews themselves have no problem with it. The notion of a Jewish People is at the centre of Jewish faith with Jews of all or no degrees of religious adherence over and over again affirming its existence. It is also at the heart of Zionism even in its most secular forms and is written into the foundational texts of the state of Israel. The concept even received international legal approval when the Jewish people were declared, by the West German state, to be the post-war residual heirs of intestate Jews. And yet it is an absolute article of faith for everyone, including those in the solidarity movement, that while we may criticize and confront Israel and Israelis, we may not criticize and confront the Jewish people and Jews. Unlike Israel and any other state, the Jewish People has no common policy and any attack on the Jewish people is, therefore, aimed at what they are and not at what they do. But is speaking of the Jews doing this or doing that any more or less acceptable than speaking of, say, the Americans? If the American military lays waste a third world country, it is done by order of the government (a small group) with the full support of the ruling elites (another small group), the tacit support of a substantial segment of the population (a larger group), the silent denial of probably the majority of the population (a very large group) and the opposition of a tiny minority (a small group). Is it all that different with Jews?

It may be. Unlike the United States, ‘the Jews’ are not a legally constituted body and they do not have an obvious and defined common policy. ‘The Jews’ do not have an officially designated leadership, nor do they inhabit one area of land, nor do they speak a common language or even share a common culture. Theoretically at least there seem to be so many differences as to render any comparison untenable. In practice this may not be the whole story.

It is true that ‘the Jews’ do not constitute a legally recognized body, but Zionism, with its claim to represent all Jews, has increasingly confused the issue. It is also true that the Zionists do not represent all Jews but they do represent the views of very many Jews indeed, and certainly the most powerful and influential Jews. And there is no doubt that the overwhelming majority of organized Jews are fully behind the Zionist project. That ‘the Jews’ do not have a formally designated leadership does not mean that they have no leadership - bodies again to which the overwhelming majority of organized Jews owe allegiance: the Israeli Government, the World Zionist Organization; numerous large and powerful Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, The Simon Wiesenthal Centre; lesser bodies such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews and similar organizations in every country in which Jews reside. Then there is the extensive network of Jewish bodies often linked, through synagogues to the whole spectrum of mainstream Jewish religious and community life. All these bodies with their vast and interconnected network do provide leadership; they do have clearly defined policies and they are all four-square behind Zionism and Israel in its assault on the Palestinians.

Does this constitute a definable Jewish collective engaged in advancing Jewish interests? Officially, perhaps not, but, effectively, when one notes the remarkable unanimity of intent of all these bodies, the answer may well be yes. They do not of course represent all Jews nor are all individual Jews responsible for their actions, but nonetheless ‘the Jews’ - organized, active and effective Jews - are as responsible for the pursuit of Jewish interests in Palestine and elsewhere as ‘the Americans’ in Vietnam, ‘the French’ in Algeria, and ‘the British’ in India.

So why should our response be different? Why should ‘the Jews’ not be as accountable as ‘the Americans’ and even ordinary Jews as accountable as ordinary Americans? Why do we not picket the offices of the Anti-Defamation League or The Conference of Presidents or the offices or even the homes of Abe Foxman, Edgar Bronfman and Mort Zuckerman in the U.S. and Neville Nagler in the U.K.? Why do we not heckle Alan Dershowitz in the U.S. and Melanie Phillips in the U.K.? What about the U.K. Chief Rabbi who in his time has had lots to say about Israel and Palestine? Why do we not take the struggle to every synagogue and Jewish community centre in the world? After all, every Shabbat a prayer is said for the state of Israel in every mainstream synagogue in the land, most of which are focal points for Zionist propagandizing and fundraising, so why should these Jews who choose to combine their prayers and their politics be immune while at prayer from our legitimate protests at their politics? And for those few Jews who are really prepared to stand up and be counted for their solidarity with Palestinians, why can we not still give to them due honour and regard as we did to those few Americans who opposed American imperialism and those white South Africans who opposed apartheid?

The answer is that we are frightened. Even knowing that Jews are responsible and should be held accountable, still we are frightened. We are frightened because criticism of Jews with its woeful history of violence and discrimination seems just too dangerous a position to take – it may open the flood-gates to a burst of Jew hatred. We are frightened that if we were to discuss the role of Jews in this conflict and in other areas and begin to hold Jews accountable, we might be labelled anti-Semites and lose support. And, perhaps most of all, we are frightened of the conflicted inner passions that confound us all whenever we come to look at these things.

Does speaking the truth about Jewish identity, power and history lead to Jews being led to concentration camps and ovens? Of course it doesn’t! It is hatred, fear and the suppression of free thought and speech which leads to these things – whether the hatred, fear and suppression is directed against Jews or by Jews. Anyway, despite efforts to convince us to the contrary, we do not live in the thirteenth century. Californians are unlikely to pour out of their cinemas showing Mel Gibson’s ‘Passion’ chanting “Death to the Jews!” And, at a time when Jews in Israel/Palestine, overwhelmingly backed by Jewish organisations in the west, are desecrating churches and mosques wholesale and brutally oppressing entire Christian and Muslim populations, we may be forgiven for finding it hard to get excited about graffiti daubed on some synagogue somewhere.

If we were to begin to engage with the role of Jews in this conflict, we may well be labelled anti-Semites and we may well, initially at least, lose support. The anti-Semite curse has long served as a frightener to silence all criticism of Jews, Israel and Zionism, and undoubtedly will be used to discredit our cause. But so what? They call us anti-Semites anyway so what’s to lose? Edward Said spent a lifetime picking his way through the Israel/Zionism/Judaism minefield and never once criticised Jews, and he was called an anti-Semite his whole life, right up to and even after his death. As a movement we have probably spent as much time being nice to Jews as we have speaking up for Palestinians, and for what? Where has it got us? We are not racists and we are not anti-Semites, so let them do their worst. We shall speak our minds.

For so long now Jews have told the world that black is white and not only that, but also if anyone should dare to deny that black is white they will be denounced as anti-Semites with all the attendant penalties. We are held in a moral and intellectual lock, the intention of which has been to silence all criticism of Israeli and Jewish power. In saying the unsayable we may set ourselves and others free. And think how it will feel the next time you are called an anti-Semite to say “Well, I don’t know about that, but I do have some very strong but legitimate criticisms to make of Jews and the way they are behaving….and I intend to speak out”?

And you never know; we may be pleasantly surprised. Israel Shamir, who has no trouble whatsoever in calling a Jew a Jew, was cheered spontaneously recently when he introduced himself from the floor at a London solidarity meeting. I saw it with my own eyes. His first English-language book has just been published; he corresponds freely and reciprocally with many highly respected figures and is on the boards of advisers of The Association for One Democratic State in Palestine and of Deir Yassin Remembered. Perhaps it’s all just a case of the Emperor’s new clothes. Perhaps we’re all just waiting for some innocent child to blow the whistle.

The situation facing the Palestinian people is truly terrible. Old political strategies have got us nowhere. We need a new and widened debate. It may be that a new and credible discourse which puts Jews and Jewishness at the critical centre of our discussions is part of that.

And one final point: In a previous piece, paraphrasing Marc Ellis I wrote:

“To the Christian and to the entire non-Jewish world, Jews say this: ‘You will apologise for Jewish suffering again and again and again. And, when you have done apologising, you will then apologise some more. When you have apologised sufficiently we will forgive you ... provided that you let us do what we want in Palestine.’

Shamir took me to task, “Eisen is too optimistic”, he said, “Palestine is not the ultimate goal of the Jews…..the world is.”

Well, I don’t know about that, but, if as now seems likely, the conquest of Palestine is complete and the state of Israel stretches from Tel-Aviv to the Jordan River, what can we expect? Will the Jews of Israel, supported by Jews outside of Israel, now obey the law, live peaceably behind their borders and enjoy the fruits of their victory, or will they want more? Who’s next?

Paul Eisen is the author of the controversial article 'The Holocaust Wars'. He can be contacted under mailto:dyr@eisen.demon.co.uk

The mission of ZioPedia is to become a one-stop repository of information on Zionism, its history, ideology, supporters and opponents. ZioPedia is a project of Sydney based Rebel Media Group.

http://www.ziopedia.org/content/view/380/55/

[Rory Winter]

May a thousand Hezbollahs bloom!



http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shamireaders/

Our friend Satya Sagar offers a frightening piece explaining that Israel/Palestine is a prototype of our collective global future, “because that is what those who run the world want”. Indeed I wrote in the Introduction to Galilee Flowers: “In these essays Palestine is perceived as a model of the world. There are forces at work here that strive to eliminate its native population, to destroy its churches and mosques, to ruin its nature.” We are encouraged by Satya’s call: “May a thousand Hezbollahs bloom to take up the challenge of preventing this from happening”.

Israel as Future of the Globe?
Satya Sagar

For all those who think that Israel is run by the most despicable, racist and repressive regime in the world here is some very bad news indeed.

Not only are the Israeli state and its ruthless methods here to stay they could also be, very frighteningly, a prototype of our collective global future.

Watching the unbelievable destruction wrought by the Israelis in Gaza and Lebanon a simple question very high on many minds must be ‘ How in hell does this artificially concocted child of European guilt and American ambition get away with all this again and again and again?’

The answer is that instead of being a strange historical aberration Israel may well be a model state that global elites want to establish to control the world in the days to come.

A world where the ruling classes live off the stolen resources and labour of those they contemptuously deem ‘lesser human beings’ in a system of institutionalized apartheid.

A world where the forces of the militarized State can routinely shoot anybody, even entire populations and call them ‘terrorists’ with complete impunity.

A world where the process of nation building automatically involves smashing the sovereignty of every other nation reducing their people to a faceless, nameless, helpless mass.

The question of why Israel’s brazen crimes against humanity have been tolerated by the so called ‘international community’ is not new at all, being one asked from the very day this nation was violently forged six decades ago. The legacy of Zionist terrorism, the numerous pogroms against the Palestinians, the systematic usurpation of their land, the routine bombing of civilians, the murder of peace activists--- any other fledgling nation even contemplating crimes on this scale would have been ostracized out of existence by now.

Many have attempted to answer this conundrum in many different ways. Israel is the bulldog of the US in the Middle-East – there to keep an eye on the region’s oil wealth, promote the sales of Western arms and intimidate Arab regimes into meek submission. And in all its actions Israel merely imitates its mentors in the United States, whose own list of crimes against humanity make that of its protégé pale into nothing.

For some others it is Israel, run by Jewish supremacists, that is manipulating the West for its own devious purposes. They are abetted in all this by Christian fundamentalists in the US who believe in some complicated bull about the role of Zionists in bringing about rapture, the return of Jesus Christ and Armageddon. (An end of the world hastened and brought about by these strange bed fellows themselves)

In yet another version the formation of Israel, aided and encouraged by Western powers, was a historical fobbing off of Europe’s abused Jewish masses onto the heads of the hapless Palestinian people- fulfilling the Nazi dream of getting Europe rid of the Jews. A cynical pitting of the victims of European racism against the victims of their colonialism.

There is no doubt of course that the history of Europe and post-Second World War geopolitics of the United States have a lot to do with the creation of Israel.

In many ways the State of Israel carries over into our era all the baggage of Europe from the turn of the 19th century with its simplistic understanding of race and biology, the crude equation of national interest with conquest of territory, the brutal trappings of the colonial state and worst of all the tryst with fascism that deeply shaped the worldview of Zionism. In the past six decades Israel’s behaviour, within its own region, has also mirrored the relentless American need for control over the world’s natural resources.

But all this focus on historical trends obscures the fact that in contemporary Israel today has become the template of a terrible global future. Here is where the accumulated burdens of the past, stoked to the right temperatures in the crucible of the present, are shaping the contours of a world yet to come.

Already, the aggressive Israeli ‘whatever the cost’ pursuit of self-interest - unfettered by any principles of civilized behaviour and contemptuous of all international law- has become the role model for governments in many other parts of the world. Every indicator points to this sad trend. The way the leaders of the world have openly acquiesced in the Israeli assault on the Palestinians and Lebanese in recent days is testimony to the fact that elites everywhere find this violence a useful exercise, not just in the context of the Middle-East itself but on their own home turf too.

Just take your eyes off for a minute from Israel and look around the globe and you can see what I mean. Look at the mini-Israels that governments everywhere are operating within their own national boundaries against the poor, the ethnic minorities, the historically marginalized or any population that can be enslaved at low cost. For the votaries of the hard state and the preservers of privilege everywhere Israel is the pioneering trendsetter in newer and more brazen ways of exercising illegitimate power.

That is why even as many governments condemn Israel in public, they are also slyly figuring out how best to incorporate elements of similar repression within the apparatus of their own states.

At one level is the exhortation to emulate Israel internationally. In India, after the mysterious Mumbai bomb blasts in early July that killed over 200 people there has been a clamour from the right wing to ‘do it like the Israelis’ and bomb whoever is responsible for the blasts wherever. That’s a call for bombing nothing less than four countries, given the officially aired suspicion that the mastermind behind the blasts is somewhere in Kenya, was trained in Pakistan, hatched the plot in Nepal and infiltrated into the country through Bangladesh.

Going by this logic, now that the Israeli bombing of Lebanon has already killed two Indians and injured several more that makes a strong case for India bombing Tel Aviv too. (That would be truly ironic as India is today the largest customer for Israeli weapons!) Imitating Israel, in anything it does, is a recipe for perpetual World War- something that suits the designs of some countries and their rulers perhaps but not of a majority of this planet’s residents.

At another level governments around the globe are using the excuse of the Israeli example to terrorise their own populations. While Israel certainly did not invent the concept of kidnapping, torture and assassination of its opponents it has done more than any other regime in the world to legitimize such behaviour internationally. (This has been possible of course because of its special hold over Western governments- particularly the US – who define what is ‘legitimate’ and what is not.)

Given the discontent produced by the forces of globalization throughout the world and the need of the elites for controlling the ‘rebellious masses’ Israel’s approach to law and order are a ‘valuable’ contribution towards maintenance of the unjust status quo everywhere. All you need to do is to close your eyes, shut your conscience out, pretend to be the Israeli government and imagine all your opponents – workers, farmers, students anyone- as Palestinians.

In that sense it is not just nation states but also corporations- which are the main shareholders of the Empire - that seek guidance from Israel for ideas on how to put down dissent and continue ruling the world. After all at the core of global capitalism lies a fierce authoritarian urge that seeks to monopolise everything that exists but is unable to do so because the little people of the world have fought and established, over the centuries, some basic norms and laws of human and social behaviour. If Israel keeps demolishing these ‘barriers’ and advances the forces of barbarism - it makes complete world domination by the moneyed that much easier.

What emerges then is that, given the importance of Israel to global elites, a solution to the Palestinian question can never really be achieved through a struggle that focuses exclusively on the politics of the Middle-East itself. Contrary to what Condoleezza Rice believes a lasting resolution of the issue will not come from eliminating the Hezbollah. Instead a just peace is possible only by promoting more organizations that are willing to take on the various global interests that are bent on making our entire world look like one large State of Israel.


Satya Sagar is a journalist, writer, video maker based in New Delhi.

[Rory Winter]

http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

[moeen yaseen]

Stop Being a Dupe! Know Your Actual Enemy
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

July 23, 2006

Some foolish people believe that Israel is behind the war against Lebanon. Some other people think that the U.S.A. is behind Israel's role in the war. Some point to the British government's plotting behind the war. Meanwhile, actually well-informed people know that it is the international financier circles of which Felix Rohatyn is a part, which are the actual forces steering the current plunge toward what is fairly described as "World War III."

Felix Rohatyn, who is currently a key agent of those foreign powers determined to destroy the U.S.A., has spoken plainly of his own role in this affair. He has stated, at a certain meeting last year, that he considers LaRouche a menace like President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a kind of menace which comes to the surface at times that the U.S. has a President who is a mental case as crudely incompetent as President George W. Bush, Jr. Rohatyn stated that he considers LaRouche the danger to be eliminated under these crisis-conditions.

What Rohatyn stated on that occasion, was that there are now financier conglomerations more powerful financially than any government. He insisted that these financier powers must run the world, and that governments must be reduced to the status of mere errand-boys for financial syndicates of that type. Rohatyn insisted that the world must be changed, such that those kinds of financier power actually run the world as a whole, permanently.

That was not only Rohatyn's stated opinion; that is his practice and that of his apparent rival, George Soros. The international financial circles which Rohatyn typifies, are currently destroying both the institutions of the sovereign nation-state itself, and also the large industrial and agricultural interests of national governments which are the greatest potential threat to the takeover of the entire world by a kind of world government created and run by gigantic blobs of Venetian-style financier-oligarchical usury.

In this situation, only a poor slobbering fool would actually believe that it is this or that nation-state which is behind the current drive toward global warfare of the type now spreading world-wide out of the strategic cockpit of Southwest Asia. It is the concert of financier-oligarchical power of which Rohatyn is merely a part, which is the actual entity behind the present spread of warfare throughout Southwest Asia and beyond. It is a concert of power which esteems itself, in its current practice, as in its opinion, as the permanent imperial government of a globalized world. It is this concert of power, which is centered, not inside the U.S.A., but in the global octopus of imperial financier power centered on the interlocking interests of French Synarchism and Anglo-Dutch financier cartelization. It is this concert of power, brought together around the British East India Company at the February 1763 Treaty of Paris, which has been the dominant imperial power in the world ever since the defeat of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte brought Napoleon's Banque de France into the status of an auxiliary of Anglo-Dutch Liberal financier-imperialism—as the case of the British auxiliary policeman Napoleon III merely illustrates the fact, and as the "Napoleon IV," and Margaret Thatcher flunky otherwise known as France's President François Mitterrand, typifies such traditions.

This is our enemy; this is the identity of our enemy's agents operating inside the U.S.A. and its institutions of government. This is the enemy which employs Rohatyn among its notable agents; this is the enemy who makes war for our destruction, here and abroad, today.

This is the enemy who is currently orchestrating the welling spread of nuclear-armed asymmetric warfare in Southwest Asia, the same enemy, operating from relevant centers in France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, who has launched Israel on its current, virtual national suicide-mission into Lebanon and its neighbors.

Read a fact sheet on the Synarchist financial oligarchy which is behind the war against Lebanon, as discussed


The Enemy Is Oligarchism
by Jeffrey Steinberg

In November 1940, the Coordinator of Information (COI), the predecessor to the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), prepared a classified report titled "Synarchie and the policy of the Banque Worms group." The three-page confidential document began, "In recent reports, there have been several references to the growing political power of the Banque Worms group in France, which includes amongst its members such ardent [Nazi] collaborationists as Pucheu, Benoist-Mechin, Leroy-Ladurie, Bouthillier, and representatives of the big French industrial organizations." The report continued, "The reactionary movement known as 'Synarchie' has been in existence in France for nearly a century. Its aim has always been to carry out a bloodless revolution, inspired by the upper classes, aimed at producing a form of government by 'technicians' (the founder of the movement was a 'polytechnician'), under which home and foreign policy would be subordinated to international economy. The aims of the Banque Worms group are the same as those of 'Synarchie,' and the leaders of the two groups are, in most cases, identical."

The COI report then went on to detail the political agenda of the international Synarchy, as of August 1940:

"(a) to check the 'Revolution Nationale' insofar as its development might entail the creation of a new social order [At the time, France was under the "social order" of the Nazis, following the Spring 1940 invasion and occupation—ed.];

"(b) to check any new social schemes which might tend to weaken the power of the international financiers and industrialists;

"(c) to work for the ultimate complete control of all industry by international finance and industry;

"(d) to protect Jewish and Anglo-Saxon interests."

The document went on to note that there is sympathy for this Synarchist scheme among some key Nazi circles in Germany including "both Goering and Dr. Funk [Walther Funk, who was Nazi Minister of Economics, president of the Reichsbank, and Nazi Germany's representative on the Bank for International Settlements, following Hjalmar Schacht—ed.]... It is alleged that certain industrial circles in Great Britain are also in sympathy with the movement. Some headway is claimed to have been made in securing the adhesion of big U.S. industry to the movement."

The document also identified Synarchist plans towards Great Britain: "To bring about the fall of the Churchill government by creating the belief in the country that a more energetic government is needed to prosecute the war ... and to bring about the formation of a new Government including Sir Samuel Hoare, Lord Beaverbrook and Mr. Hore-Belisha. (Note. The source has added that in the Worms group it is believed that those circles in Great Britain who are favorably disposed to their plans, are most critical of Mr. Churchill, Lord Halifax and Captain Margesson.); and through the medium of Sir Samuel Hoare to bring about an agreeement between British industry and the Franco-German 'bloc;' and to protect Anglo-Saxon interests on the continent."

The document concluded, "In regard to Germany, it is hoped ultimately to eliminate Hitler, Goebbels, and Himmler with his Gestapo, from the political scene, thus facilitating the formation of an Anglo-Franco-German economic bloc."

Another insightful snapshot of the trans-Atlantic Synarchist banking apparatus on the eve of World War II appeared, ironically, in Time magazine on July 3, 1939, under the headline, "Insider from Overseas." The article reported on the arrival in New York City of German banker Otto Jeidels, who was named a partner in the New York City branch of Lazard Frères & Co. According to Time: "Lazard Brothers & Co. of London is Aryan and aristocratic, a member of the Bank of England coterie, helps back the appeasment movement in London, favors the theory that concessions to Hitler will bring Dr. Schacht and his orthodox economics back to Berlin. It has a highly lucrative and increasingly important sideline in helping frightened European capitalists put their money into good safe American dollars. On the receiving end of this flood of gold from Europe is Lazard Freres of Manhattan, not entirely Aryan, not a Wall Street insider, still correspondent (but no longer a partner) of the highly political London and Paris Lazard banks. Lazard's of Manhattan underwrites securities and above all, does a big business in foreign exchange. Invaluable to this clearing house of new bullion and foreign capital will be Jeidels, who is a friend of Montagu Norman, has access to choice continental pipelines into Hitlerland.... In Germany there is a cynical saying that Schacht has managed to doublecross all save two of his intimates: one of the two is Hitler, the other is Jeidels. Schacht gave Jeidels the high sign in time for him to leave Germany with his family before the great pogrom of 1938 began.... Schacht was able to protect Jeidels because his contact with British Bank Boss Montagu Norman was useful to Hitler.... Until the spring of 1938, Jeidels functioned perfectly, as much of an insider as Hitler could let any Jewish banker be. He satisfied the British by keeping the debts unrepudiated, the Nazis by keeping them frozen, served as middleman between the Nazis and the British."

These two reports, one, a classified wartime U.S. intelligence dossier, and the other, a widely circulated news magazine story, represented two exemplary pieces from a voluminous archive of documents—public and classified—from the 1930-45 period, that detailed the role of the international banking and industrial cartel, known then—and still, today—as "the Synarchist International."

Wartime OSS Research and Analysis Branch Director William Langer detailed the role of the Synarchy in Vichy France in his 1947 book Our Vichy Gamble. Three years later, James Stewart Martin, a U.S. Justice Department Anti-Trust Division lawyer, who, from 1944-47, headed the de-cartelization unit of the U.S. occupation government in Germany, published his own stunning exposé of the same international Synarchist cartel in his 1950 book, All Honorable Men.

These and other contemporaneous accounts, reflected a deep understanding, within the FDR-led U.S. governing institutions of the time, that a top-down international financial oligarchy had been the chief sponsors of the Nazi and Fascist regimes that brought war and devastation to the Eurasian continent, in a failed effort to create a post-Westphalian world without sovereign nation-states, run by an international bankers dictatorship. But for Franklin Roosevelt's mobilization of the moral and industrial might of the United States, these Synarchists may very well have succeeded in bringing the planet to the abyss of a new Dark Age.

Then and Now
These penetrating wartime intelligence assessments of global Synarchy are of the greatest relevance today. In effect, the COI/OSS and related evaluations of the situation on the European continent were that an Anglo-Saxon and Franco-German cartel of international financiers and industrialists, who comprised a powerful faction financing and controlling the Nazi/Fascist axis, was steering European governments, through agents with little or no loyalty to their nations, but the greatest loyalty to the international Synarchy. As Langer quoted U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Biddle from London, "This group should be regarded not as Frenchmen, any more than their corresponding members in Germany should be regarded as Germans, for the interests of both groups are so intermingled as to be indistinguishable; their whole interest is focussed upon furtherance of their industrial and financial stakes."

It was this combination of international bankers, then, who had financed Mussolini and then Hitler, and had steered Eurasia on a path of war and near self-annihilation, in order to secure their own dominance over global economic and financial affairs, no matter what the outcome of the war.

This apparatus was aligned, in the United States, with the very JP Morgan and DuPont interests that had been foiled in their several coup d'état attempts against President Roosevelt. The more extended network of FDR enemies included the Brown Brothers Harriman interests—including Prescott Bush, Sr., the grandfather of the current President of the United States—that had openly bankrolled the Nazi Party, and the Dillon Reed and Sullivan and Cromwell Wall Street axis that had structured the international steel, coal, and petroleum cartels, which included such key Nazi institutions as IG Farben, the Keppler Circle, and the Cologne Stein Bank of Algemeine SS financier Kurt von Schröder. The head of Dillon Reed during the interwar period, William Draper, became chief of the economic division of the postwar U.S. occupation government in Germany, and crushed James Stewart Martin's effort, promoting Martin's resignation and his writing of All Honorable Men. As Martin discovered, the intention of the Synarchists was to assure the survival and prosperity of their cartel no matter what the outcome of the war.

Upon the death of Franklin Roosevelt, in April 1945, the Synachist vise-grip on the White House was soon, albeit temporarily, established, with the swearing in of Harry S Truman as President, and Truman's 1946 embrace of Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" declaration of war against FDR's wartime ally, the Soviet Union. By 1948, most of the French and German financiers at the heart of the wartime Synarchy were freed from jail, acquitted from charges of treason. The Banque Worms group emerged among the principal French financiers and stalwarts of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the post-war cultural warfare front at the heart of the trans-Atlantic "Red scare." Hjalmar Schacht, himself, acquitted at Nuremberg, resumed his role as a leading financial "wizard." André Meyer, the Paris Lazard banker who relocated to Manhattan's Lazard Brothers a year after Jeidels' arrival in New York, perpetuated the London-Paris-New York Synarchy, and soon designated Felix Rohatyn as his hand-picked successor, whom he considered "as my son." Thus, the Synarchy has maintained a continuity through to the present day. Through individuals like Felix Rohatyn and George Pratt Shultz, the Synarchy has penetrated both of the major U.S. political parties, and through this penetration, has planted Synarchist agents, witting and unwitting, into the pores of the Federal government, from the Oval Office to the halls of Congress, to the courts, and virtually every Cabinet agency.

The neo-conservative movement, with its roots in the philosophical tradition of Leo Strauss, Alexandre Kojève, and Carl Schmitt, is one major spore of the present-day Synarchist International. But in some respects, the case of George Shultz provides the most clinical profile of the Synarchy in action today.

The Economic Hit Men
In 2004, a book was published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., which caused a significant stir. John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man provided a first-hand account of the role of the present-day international cartel of banks and multinational corporations, which work in concert to loot the developing sector of its strategic raw-materials wealth and other national patrimony. The principal strategy employed by the Economic Hit Men (EHM), according to Perkins' first-hand account, was to build up massive debt by developing-sector governments, to trap them in a straitjacket of World Bank and IMF diktats, while multinational corporations such as Bechtel and Halliburton loot them blind, under the guise of "development."

Perkins identified George Shultz, former Bechtel president, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and Secretary of State, as the reigning Economic Hit Man—the Capo dei Tutti Capi of the very Synarchist apparatus that earlier brought the world to the brink of self-annihilation from 1922-45.

Whether or not Perkins was 100% accurate about Shultz's formal title as the reigning boss of the EHM, Shultz definitely represents the embodiment of the Synarchy. Shultz's ultimate allegiances are suggested by his close relationship to Jacob Rothschild of Great Britain, to whom he, along with Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett, delivered the California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger, for inspection and approval. Shultz is also one of the leading proponents in the United States of the radical free-trade dogmas of the Synarchists' Mont Pelerin Society. His University of Chicago mentor, W. Allen Wallis, was the founding treasurer of Mont Pelerin. Shultz is still a director of the Bechtel Group, chairman of the JP Morgan Chase International Council, a director of the Fremont Group and Accenture Energy, a company involved in mega-mergers and acquisitions in the oil and gas sector, with close ties to Anglo-American Corp.

Today, Shultz is not only the "godfather" of the Bush-Cheney Administration, having hand-picked the Vulcans, the team of initial George W. Bush tutors and Executive Branch moles, responsible for the Iraq War disaster. He, along with R. James Woolsey, revived the Committee on the Present Danger, to promote a post-Westphalia world of preventive wars, suited to the fulfillment of the Synarchist agenda. In partnership with Felix Rohatyn, Shultz has promoted the privatization of war, through the proliferation of Private Military Corporations (PMCs), which, they openly boasted at an October 2004 Middlebury College conference, represented a return to the "neo-feudal" system, represented by the 18th- and 19th-Century British East India Company.

Shultz and Rohatyn typify the mid-level Synarchist operative, who works within and around government institutions, on behalf of a thoroughly alien agenda and ideology. Their allegiances are to the Anglo-Dutch/Venetian system of usury, globalization, population reduction, and slavery.

December 1971
George Shultz was Labor Secretary, head of the Office of Management and Budget, and Treasury Secretary under President Richard Nixon. He personally pulled the plug on the Bretton Woods system of FDR. When Lyndon LaRouche labelled the dumping of Bretton Woods as the beginning of a descent into a fascist Hell, he was branded a "potential danger" to the newly launched global tyranny. In a December 1971 debate at Queens College in New York City, the last such event in which he would ever be invited to participate, LaRouche induced his opponent, Prof. Abba Lerner, to unmask himself as a proponent of Schachtian economics. Confronted by LaRouche with the evidence of the lawful consequences of ending the system of global fixed exchange rates, and opening the world's currencies to speculative manipulation, Lerner had blurted out, "If they had listened to Schacht, we wouldn't have needed Hitler."

If there is a phrase that best describes the current Synarchist agenda being promoted by the likes of Shultz and Rohatyn, it is: "Schacht without Hitler." And if anyone thinks that this is an improvement on the earlier experience with Nazism and Fascism, they are about to experience a rude awakening, if Synarchy is not stopped.

[Rory Winter]

Jihad and the Wolfowitzes of the World
Jihad Abu Az Zamman
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shamireaders/message/744

So, how did it really happen? How could a tiny paramilitary group such as Hezbollah manage to shake the almighty, American-supported Jewish state; something that the Arab states have relentlessly failed at doing for almost six decades?

In fact a similar question may be raised in reference to Iraqi insurgency. While it is rather evident that Saddam’s army was defeated by the overwhelming Anglo-American destructive power, Islamic resistance is winning the battle on the ground both in Iraq and Afghanistan. Neither America nor Britain seem able to come up with a reasonable excuse for the growing number of deadly attacks against their invasion forces.

Though the armies of Arab states are occasionally defeated in the battlefield, though too many Arab statesmen happen to follow the path drawn by Washington with resolute determination, Islamic resistance, which is not recognised in any national form, is there to fight back. Moreover, Islamic defiance is unbeatable. The Israelis have been watching the growing wall of Muslim resistance for over two decades. In Palestine it is the Hamas and in Lebanon it is the Hezbollah. In this theatre, Islamic militants deliver one blow after the other to Israel. Similarly, the American army is chased on a daily basis by insurgency both in Iraq and Afghanistan. As much as the far more powerful Soviets failed in Afghanistan, neither Israel, nor America nor Britain have the capability of responding effectively to the emerging Islamic guerrilla warfare.

Once and for all we better face it. Arabs are far from being at their very best if they are operating in the format of a ‘national state’. The Arab soldier may lack the necessary will to die for an idiotic flag. Both in the case of Saddam’s Iraq or Nasser’s Egypt, once within a conflict, a growing gap reveals itself between the charismatic, assertive, far over the top demagogue leader and some serious malfunctioning performance in the battlefield. Unlike the American, British, French, and Israeli soldiers who have proved throughout history to have some real tendency towards collective suicide for some empty promises shaped as ‘ideology’, the Arab platoon is slightly behind in exhibiting this kind of idiotic national patriotic militant zeal. He may as well be just too clever for those kind of deadly games.

Should it be a big surprise? Not at all. Nationalism is a European concept, it has very little to do with the Arab mentality, history and general affairs. National patriotism has never made serious headway into the Arab psyche. The division of Arabia and the Middle East into small national states with borders and flags has never been a natural evolvement of the indigenous Arab people themselves. Instead it was the outcome of some international political manoeuvring imposed upon Arabs by the superpowers. The slicing of the near east into small national states was intended to serve the interests of Western imperial forces. In practice it was Britain and France who drew up the borders of the Middle East already in 1916 (The Sykes-Picot Agreement) and it was America who joined in later just to reshape those borders to guarantee Israel’s safety as well as a constant oil supply.

With the lack of crude nationalist zeal, it isn’t a big surprise that Arab state armies fail to provide the goods in the battlefield. Yet, the Hezbollah, the Hamas and the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan are agonising the Western armies. They manage to do so just with light weaponry: without tanks, without cruise missiles, without satellites, without a navy. They win without airplanes and without the support of a superpower. All they have at their disposal is merely a belief, namely Jihad.

Looking at Iraq (or what is left of it), at Bin Laden (the myth), at the Hamas (the democratically elected Palestinian government) and the Hezbollah (the ultimate success story) it is rather clear. The Arab wins when and only when he fights as a Muslim, as a believer. Unlike the shallow Westerner soldier who gives his life for empty manmade slogans, the Muslim would give his life for a divine cause. I will spit it out: if there is any meaningful notion behind ‘Arab nation’ this notion is Islam. The Muslim takes orders from the Almighty Lord. I may admit that if I myself, being a secular had to choose between the call of a retarded American president and the Lord, I would obviously go for the latter.

However, it is rather obvious that the Wolfowitzes of this world fail to realise that Arab nationalism as defined in independent states is basically a myth. They mistakenly consider the Arab territorial landscape as a genuine national reflection of some real authentic ethnic aspiration as well as geo-political considerations. In fact, such a perception has nothing to do with reality. Lebanon and Syria are one country, at least in the eyes of very many Syrians and Lebanese. The north of Palestine is no different from Lebanon and the West Bank has been long considered a unified territory with Transjordan. When Lebanon is demolished by the Jewish state’s air might and around a third of its population is displaced, the Syrians would be the first to provide humanitarian support. When Gaza is murderously and indiscriminately bombarded by the IDF, the Hezbollah would be there to open a second front and to ease the pressure on their Palestinian brothers. When American and British expansionist forces insist upon robbing Iraqi oil, it is the Muslim brotherhood who would stop them rather than the Iraqi army. Arab resistance is in practice an exercise in Islamic brotherhood. For those who still fail to get the picture, Jihad goes far beyond any Western sense of local national patriotism. Jihad is cosmic, yet it is personal.

While the Wolfowitzes of this world would insist upon dominating the Arab world in the name of democracy and some other quasi liberal ideas, it is the Islamic freedom fighter who crosses lands and seas just to serve the American GIs with the ultimate performance of human devotion. While the Wolfowitzes of this world insist upon transforming Britain and America into an Israeli mission force, it is the Muslim brotherhood that gives us good reason to believe that eventually, when the time is ripe, peace will prevail.

For those amongst us who refuse to acknowledge what Islam is all about, I will mention that the Arabic ‘root’ of the word ‘Islam’ is Salama which originates from the words Peace and/or Submission, a submission to God and peace to all humanity.

Indeed Jihad itself is a word that bears further analysis. It stems from the Arabic root word J-H-D, which means ‘strive.’ Other words derived from this root include ‘effort,’ ‘labour,’ and ‘fatigue.’ Essentially Jihad is an effort to practice religion in the face of oppression and persecution. At its highest form it is fighting the enemy of Muslims and Islam. Certainly, Condi, Bush, Olmert and his Jewish state are the bitterest enemies of Islam. And yet, Islam defines the boundaries of Jihad.

The Quran tells us (Quran 2:190-193):
• Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loves not transgressors.
• And slay them wherever you catch them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith.
• But if they cease, Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.
• And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah; but if they cease, let there be no hostility except to those who practice oppression.

In short, unlike the brutal Israeli aggression and the murderous American zeal that know no limits, Islam restricts violence, furthermore, its aim is not domination, but peace. This will obviously happen when Israeli occupation is ended and Palestinians return to their land and home. This will happen when Zionised Anglo-American colonialism is totally defeated. This message is clear and not open to negotiation.

Looking at the Hezbollah, at the Hamas and the insurgent war in Iraq doesn’t leave much room for doubt. While many Arab nations have been defeated, Arab brotherhood, i.e., Islam is winning. If I were an Israeli who lived in occupied Palestine I would be rather worried. The excessive use of power and indiscriminate killing of Lebanese, Palestinians and UN peace keeping soldiers is the direct outcome of deep Israeli anxiety. The Zionist tactic is failing and they all know it. Their army doesn’t provide the goods anymore. By now, you may be able to guess why. Nationalism is foreign to Jews almost as much as it is foreign to Arabs. In fact, Zionism ceased being a local national movement a long time ago. Since the Balfour Declaration (1917) more and more Zionists operate as a Jewish Ethnic lobby promoting Jewish global interests. For more than a while Zionism is not interested solely in Eretz Israel i.e., ‘promised land’, instead, it intends upon transforming our universe into a ‘Promised Universe’. This idea is known as Neoconservatism and its largely Elder Zionist messengers who spread it are active in London (http://eustonmanifesto.org/), NYC and Washington (http://www.newamericancentury.org/).

But time is running out for Neocon philosophy as well as its practitioners. I do not know whether history repeats itself in general but somehow, as far as Jewish History is concerned, the same tale keeps rewriting itself: it is a story of an obsessive relentless will to power that always ends in tragic circumstances. It happened in the Middle Ages in Spain, it happened in17th century Poland and Ukraine (Bogdan Chmielnitzki), it happened in 20th century Europe and it seems as if something dramatic is about to happen in America.

When the American Jewish Committee (AJC) is manifestly engaged in dragging America into war in Iran all in the name of world Jewry http://www.ajc.org/atf/cf/{42D75369-D582-4380-8395-D25925B85EAF}/Al_Qa ida_Iran_Hizballah.pdf When the Wolfowitzes of this world happened to be the architects behind the criminal war in Iraq, one may find oneself wondering whether Jews themselves ever learn anything from their own history. I really prefer not to think about what is going to be the outcome of the current blunt Jewish war waging. Considering the emerging American defeat in Iraq and growing international isolation, it is just a question of time before a charismatic American figure points the finger at the Israeli lobby. Devastatingly enough, it isn’t only Jews, many of them totally innocent, who are going to suffer when that happens. By the time all the Wolfowitzes of this world realise that it is time to evade the American vengeance (what may evolve into a new Jewish tragedy namely Coca Colacaust), they will probably try to escape to Palestine, God Forbid.

Clearly, Zionists and their Jewish state are highly engaged in perpetrating a new world war, we have a good reason to believe that Olmert didn’t rule out the possibility that the current conflict in Lebanon may lead towards a further escalation with Syria and Iran. It obviously didn’t stop him. Why should it stop him? As soon as the Israelis started to drop bombs on Beirut Bush and Blair rushed to support Israel’s right to defend itself.

The Wolfowitzes of this world have different names for the conflict they themselves created. They often call it a cultural clash and they are pretty good in wrapping their naked murderous zeal with some quasi humanist reasoning. More than anything they love to present themselves as the messengers of democracy. Yet, if indeed their notion of democracy is anything like the ‘single- race Democracy’, practiced in their dearly beloved murderous Israel, it isn’t that surprising why their ideas do not gain ground anywhere.

Seemingly, for the sake of keeping their little racist Jewish state alive, the Wolfowitzes are happy to wage an all out war against Islam. So far Condi, Bush and Blair are showing support. The Wolfowitzes are over the roof but how to say it, half a million Lebanese have lost their homes as a result.

Somehow, the Wolfowitzes of this world always fail to internalise that human beings are morally orientated creatures. Indeed nations and people can live through some evil phases. Not that many years ago it happened in Germany, it now happens in America. Yet, human beings have something the Wolfowitzes lack. They have an ethical correction mechanism; humans regret their wrongdoing, they have a conscience. America lived through McCarthyism but recovered, it still tries to deal with its racist past and current racial discrimination, it has been dealing with its war crimes in Vietnam. America, no doubt will shake itself of its Zionist murderous phase. It just doesn’t have any other choice. When this happens the Wolfowitzes of this world will have to hide behind the rock and tree, and the rock and tree will say: “oh American, there is a Wolfowitz behind me, I am scared, take him away! Help, help!”

http://www.gv2000.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=42&pid=250#pid250

[Rory Winter]

One Picture, worth a Thousand Words ...

[Rory Winter]

A "Special Relationship," borne out of a Marriage in Hell




http://www.zmag.org/cartoons/by_artist.cfm?artist=12


Blair: "A frayed and waxy zombie programmed by the CIA to spout the language of the White House"

Sir Rodric Braithwaite, UK Ambassador to Moscow, 1988-92.

[Rory Winter]

Mr Blair should recognise his errors and go
By Rodric Braithwaite

Published: August 2 2006 19:27

A spectre is stalking British television, a frayed and waxy zombie straight from Madame Tussaud’s. This one, unusually, seems to live and breathe. Perhaps it comes from the Central Intelligence Agency’s box of technical tricks, programmed to spout the language of the White House in an artificial English accent.

There is another possible explanation. Perhaps what we see on television is the real Tony Blair, the man who believes that he and his friend alone have the key to the horrifying problems of the Middle East. At first he argued against a ceasefire in Lebanon. Then, after another Israeli airstrike killed dozens of Lebanese women and children, he finally admitted, in California – reluctantly, grudgingly and with a host of preconditions – that military force alone would not do the trick, and now seems to have told his people to look for something better.

The catastrophe in Lebanon is the latest act of a tragedy rooted in European anti-Semitism and in the expulsion of an Arab people from their ancestral home. Both sides claim the right to self-defence. Neither hesitates to use force to pursue aims it regards as legitimate. No single event is the proximate cause of the current mayhem – neither the Israeli onslaught on Lebanon, nor the Hizbollah rockets, nor the Israeli assassination of Palestinian leaders, nor the suicide bombings. The causes go back in almost infinite regression. In the desperate pursuit of short-term tactical gain, both sides lose sight of their own long-term interests.

The Israelis remember the Holocaust and the repeated calls from within the Muslim world for the elimination of their state, and they react strongly to real or perceived threats to their existence. Whether their government’s methods can achieve their ends is for them to judge. A liberal Israeli columnist has argued that “in Israel and Lebanon, the blood is being spilled, the horror is intensifying, the price is rising and it is all for naught” – a reminder that Israel remains a sophisticated and in many ways an attractive democracy.

But whatever our sympathy for Israel’s dilemma, Mr Blair’s prime responsibility is to defend the interests of his own country. This he has signally failed to do. Stiff in opinions, but often in the wrong, he has manipulated public opinion, sent our soldiers into distant lands for ill-conceived purposes, misused the intelligence agencies to serve his ends and reduced the Foreign Office to a demoralised cipher because it keeps reminding him of inconvenient facts. He keeps the dog, but he barely notices if it barks or not. He prefers to construct his “foreign policy” out of self-righteous soundbites and expensive foreign travel.

Mr Blair has done more damage to British interests in the Middle East than Anthony Eden, who led the UK to disaster in Suez 50 years ago. In the past 100 years – to take the highlights – we have bombed and occupied Egypt and Iraq, put down an Arab uprising in Palestine and overthrown governments in Iran, Iraq and the Gulf. We can no longer do these things on our own, so we do them with the Americans. Mr Blair’s total identification with the White House has destroyed his influence in Washington, Europe and the Middle East itself: who bothers with the monkey if he can go straight to the organ-grinder?

Mr Blair has seriously damaged UK domestic politics, too. His prevarication over a ceasefire confirms to many of our Muslim fellow citizens that Britain is engaged in a secular war against the Arab world and by extension, against the Muslim world. He has thus made it harder to achieve what should be a goal of policy for any British government – to build a tolerant multi-ethnic society within our own islands. And though he chooses not to admit it, he has made us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. These are not achievements of which a British prime minister should be proud.

But in spite of the disasters he has wreaked abroad, in spite of the growing scandal and incoherence of his performance at home, Mr Blair is still a consummate politician. How else can one explain the failure of his party to do the decent thing and get rid of him? Why else does it still appear as though he alone controls the timing and circumstances of his departure? One day we may feel sorry for Mr Blair for the damage he has done to his place in history and to himself. But that moment is not yet. For now, he should no longer attempt to stand upon the order of his going, but go. At once.

Sir Rodric Braithwaite, UK ambassador to Moscow 1988-92 and then foreign policy adviser to John Major and chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, is author of Moscow 1941 (Profile, 2006)

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3a7a368c-224d-11db-bc00-0000779e2340.html

[Rory Winter]

The neocons' next war

By secretly providing NSA intelligence to Israel and undermining the hapless Condi Rice, hardliners in the Bush administration are trying to widen the Middle East conflict to Iran and Syria, not stop it.

By Sidney Blumenthal


Richard Perle (Zuma Press photo) and Elliott Abrams (Reuters photo)

The National Security Agency is providing signal intelligence to Israel to monitor whether Syria and Iran are supplying new armaments to Hezbollah as it fires hundreds of missiles into northern Israel, according to a national security official with direct knowledge of the operation. President Bush has approved the secret program.

Inside the administration, neoconservatives on Vice President Dick Cheney's national security staff and Elliott Abrams, the neoconservative senior director for the Near East on the National Security Council, are prime movers behind sharing NSA intelligence with Israel, and they have discussed Syrian and Iranian supply activities as a potential pretext for Israeli bombing of both countries, the source privy to conversations about the program says. (Intelligence, including that gathered by the NSA, has been provided to Israel in the past for various purposes.) The neoconservatives are described as enthusiastic about the possibility of using NSA intelligence as a lever to widen the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas into a four-front war.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is said to have been "briefed" and to be "on board," but she is not a central actor in pushing the covert neoconservative scenario. Her "briefing" appears to be an aspect of an internal struggle to intimidate and marginalize her. Recently she has come under fire from prominent neoconservatives who oppose her support for diplomatic negotiations with Iran to prevent its development of nuclear weaponry.

Rice's diplomacy in the Middle East has erratically veered from initially calling on Israel for "restraint," to categorically opposing a cease-fire, to proposing terms for a cease-fire guaranteed to conflict with the European proposal, and thus to thwarting diplomacy, prolonging the time available for the Israeli offensive to achieve its stated aim of driving Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon. But the neocon scenario extends far beyond that objective to pushing Israel into a "cleansing war" with Syria and Iran, says the national security official, which somehow will redeem Bush's beleaguered policy in the entire region.

In order to try to understand the neoconservative road map, senior national security professionals have begun circulating among themselves a 1996 neocon manifesto against the Middle East peace process. Titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," its half-dozen authors included neoconservatives highly influential with the Bush administration -- Richard Perle, first-term chairman of the Defense Policy Board; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense; and David Wurmser, Cheney's chief Middle East aide.

"A Clean Break" was written at the request of incoming Likud Party Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and intended to provide "a new set of ideas" for jettisoning the policies of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Instead of trading "land for peace," the neocons advocated tossing aside the Oslo agreements that established negotiations and demanding unconditional Palestinian acceptance of Likud's terms, "peace for peace." Rather than negotiations with Syria, they proposed "weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria." They also advanced a wild scenario to "redefine Iraq." Then King Hussein of Jordan would somehow become its ruler; and somehow this Sunni monarch would gain "control" of the Iraqi Shiites, and through them "wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria."

Netanyahu, at first, attempted to follow the "clean break" strategy, but under persistent pressure from the Clinton administration he felt compelled to enter into U.S.-led negotiations with the Palestinians. In the 1998 Wye River accords, concluded through the personal involvement of President Clinton and a dying King Hussein, the Palestinians agreed to acknowledge the legitimacy of Israel and Netanyahu agreed to withdraw from a portion of the occupied West Bank. Further negotiations, conducted by his successor Ehud Barak, that nearly settled the conflict ended in dramatic failure, but potentially set the stage for new ones.

At his first National Security Council meeting, President George W. Bush stunned his first secretary of state, Colin Powell, by rejecting any effort to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. When Powell warned that "the consequences of that could be dire, especially for the Palestinians," Bush snapped, "Sometimes a show for force by one side can really clarify things." He was making a "clean break" not only with his immediate predecessor but also with the policies of his father.

In the current Middle East crisis, once again, the elder Bush's wise men have stepped forward to offer unsolicited and unheeded advice. (In private they are scathing.) Edward Djerejian, a former ambassador to Israel and Syria and now the director of the James Baker Institute at Rice University, urged on July 23, on CNN, negotiations with Syria and Iran. "I come from the school of diplomacy that you negotiate conflict resolution and peace with your enemies and adversaries, not with your friends," he said. "We've done it in the past, we can do it again."

Charles Freeman, the elder Bush's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, remarked, "The irony now is that the most likely candidate to back Hezbollah in the long term is no longer Iran but the Arab Shiite tyranny of the majority we have installed in Baghdad." Indeed, when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki came to Washington in the last week of July he preceded his visit with harsh statements against Israel. And in a closed meeting with U.S. senators, when asked to offer criticism of Hezbollah, he steadfastly refused.

Richard Haass, the Middle East advisor on the elder Bush's National Security Council and President Bush's first-term State Department policy planning director, and now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, openly scoffed at Bush's Middle East policy in an interview on July 30 in the Washington Post: "The arrows are all pointing in the wrong direction. The biggest danger in the short run is it just increases frustration and alienation from the United States in the Arab world. Not just the Arab world, but in Europe and around the world. People will get a daily drumbeat of suffering in Lebanon and this will just drive up anti-Americanism to new heights." When asked about the president's optimism, he replied, "An opportunity? Lord, spare me. I don't laugh a lot. That's the funniest thing I've heard in a long time. If this is an opportunity, what's Iraq? A once-in-a-lifetime chance?"

The same day that Haass' comments appeared Brent Scowcroft, the elder Bush's national security advisor and still his close friend, published an Op-Ed in the Washington Post written more or less as an open letter to his erstwhile and errant protégé Condoleezza Rice. Undoubtedly, Scowcroft reflects the views of the former President Bush. Adopting the tone of an instructor to a stubborn pupil, Scowcroft detailed a plan for an immediate end to the Israel-Hezbollah conflict and for restarting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, "the source of the problem." His program is a last attempt to turn the president back to the ways of his father. If the elder Bush and his team were in power and following the Scowcroft plan, a cease-fire would have been declared. But Scowcroft's plan resembles that of the Europeans, already rejected by the Bush administration, and Rice is the one offering a counterproposal that has put diplomacy into a stall.

Despite Rice's shunning of the advice of the Bush I sages, the neoconservatives have made her a convenient target in their effort to undermine all diplomatic initiatives. "Dump Condi," read the headline in the right-wing Insight Magazine on July 25. "Conservative national security allies of President Bush are in revolt against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying that she is incompetent and has reversed the administration's national security and foreign policy agenda," the article reported. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a member of the Defense Policy Board, was quoted: "We are sending signals today that no matter how much you provoke us, no matter how viciously you describe things in public, no matter how many things you're doing with missiles and nuclear weapons, the most you'll get out of us is talk."

A month earlier, Perle, in a June 25 Op-Ed in the Washington Post, revived an old trope from the height of the Cold War, accusing those who propose diplomacy of being like Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who tried to appease Hitler. "Condoleezza Rice," wrote Perle, "has moved from the White House to Foggy Bottom, a mere mile or so away. What matters is not that she is further removed from the Oval Office; Rice's influence on the president is undiminished. It is, rather, that she is now in the midst of and increasingly represents a diplomatic establishment that is driven to accommodate its allies even when (or, it seems, especially when) such allies counsel the appeasement of our adversaries."

Rice, agent of the nefarious State Department, is supposedly the enemy within. "We are in the early stages of World War III," Gingrich told Insight. "Our bureaucracies are not responding fast enough. We don't have the right attitude."

Confused, ineffectual and incapable of filling her office with power, Rice has become the voodoo doll that Powell was in the first term. Even her feeble and counterproductive gestures toward diplomacy leave her open to the harshest attacks from neoconservatives. Scowcroft and the Bush I team are simply ignored. The sustained assault on Rice is a means to an end -- restoring the ascendancy of neoconservatism.

Bush's rejection of and reluctance to embrace the peace process concluded with the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections. This failure was followed by a refusal to engage Hamas, potentially splitting its new governmental ministers from its more radical leadership in Damascus. Predictably, the most radical elements of Hamas found a way to lash out. And Hezbollah seized the moment by staging its own provocation.

Having failed in the Middle East, the administration is attempting to salvage its credibility by equating Israel's predicament with the U.S. quagmire in Iraq. Neoconservatives, for their part, see the latest risk to Israel's national security as a chance to scuttle U.S. negotiations with Iran, perhaps the last opportunity to realize the fantasies of "A Clean Break."

By using NSA intelligence to set an invisible tripwire, the Bush administration is laying the condition for regional conflagration with untold consequences -- from Pakistan to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Israel. Secretly devising a scheme that might thrust Israel into a ring of fire cannot be construed as a blunder. It is a deliberate, calculated and methodical plot.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/08/03/mideast/index_np.ht ml

[Rory Winter]

The Influence of Israel and it’s American Lobby over US Middle East Policy

Presented by Jeffrey Blankfort at the Islamic Human Right Commission Conference, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, July 2, 2006

The apparent ability of Israel, one of the world’s smallest countries, to shape the Middle East policies of the world’s remaining superpower has been a source of puzzlement, conjecture, and constant frustration on the part of those fighting for justice for the Palestinians and for the peoples of the region, as a whole.

One of the roots of this unique historical phenomenon may be found in the interpretation of a 120-year-old US Supreme Court decision that afforded corporations the same rights as individual American citizens.

One of those rights is the freedom of speech that is guaranteed by the 1st amendment to the US Constitution.

Thanks to the extraordinary degree of corruption that was manifest in American society in the late 19th century, financial contributions to political candidates came to be seen by the court as expressions of political speech and thus under the court’s protection.

This has resulted in the American political system becoming one of never-ending and ever more costly political campaigns, and, without question, the most corrupt among what are generally described as “advanced countries.” The Supreme Court’s decision, reaffirmed over the years, opened the door to well funded “special interests’ and their lobbies and has allowed them, through what amounts to legal bribery, to shape the foreign and domestic policies of the United States.

By 1907, the American author, Mark Twain would write that there was only one “native criminal class in America—Congress” and a decade later, the humorist Will Rogers would joke, “ America has the best Congress money can buy.”

In the beginning it was the railroads and the steel companies who paid the going price and then came the lumber, oil and construction companies, the weapons and automobile manufacturers, the airplane and communications industries, and what are euphemistically known as the health providers--the doctors, the hospitals and the pharmaceutical manufacturers who have made sure that Americans would be the only citizens in a developed country that have no national health service.

In the arena of foreign policy, no lobby has proved more powerful than that of the organized American Jewish community in support of Israel; what is generally referred to as the Israel Lobby and in the halls of Congress, simply as “the lobby.”

Its power is all the more impressive when one realizes the lobby represents no more than a third of America’s six million Jews.

The dedication and single-mindedness of that one third, however, stands in stark contrast to the lack of involvement by the overwhelming majority of Americans in a system for which they long ago lost faith and respect. This has made the lobby’s task much simpler than it might first appear. It is also why unconditional support for Israel will likely remain the only issue in which Democrats and Republicans submerge their hostilities and march in lock step together like trained circus animals. Not only do pro-Israel measures usually receive 400 votes of the 435 member House and up to 99 of a 100 in the Senate, but when it comes to foreign aid, Congress has frequently voted to grant Israel more money than a president has requested and to pass legislation favorable to the lobby over his opposition.

Since 1985 the amount of direct aid has fluctuated between $3 and $3.5 billion while unpublicized extras in the Pentagon budget have tended to raise that figure considerably higher.

The total today is estimated to be at least $108 billion.

This figure does not include the costs of $19 billion in loan guarantees to Israel since 1991, the billions of taxpayers dollars invested in Israeli government bonds by union pension funds, individual states and county and city governments, nor the billions in tax-exempt donations by American Jews to quasi governmental Israeli agencies and charities since Israel became a state.

The state of the US economy has never been a consideration. When funds have been unavailable for essential domestic programs, such as in 199l, when six out of ten U.S. cities were unable to meet their budgets and several states their payrolls, Israel received, over the first president Bush’s wishes, an additional $650 million in cash as part of the Gulf War emergency spending bill. In September 1992, after stubbornly resisting for a year Israel’s request for $10 billion in loan guarantees, but with a difficult election against Bill Clinton just two months away, Bush went along with Congress’s demand that Israel’s request be approved. It was too late to help him at the polls,

This is not only a tribute to the millions of dollars contributed to national political candidates by wealthy American Jews but a testament to the fear that AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel’s officially registered lobby, has instilled in members of Congress who have neither a personal interest in supporting Israel nor a sizeable Jewish constituency.

“If there was a secret ballot, aid to Israel would be cut severely,” a Congressman described as pro-Israel told the New Republic’s Morton Kondracke in 1989. “It’s not out of affection any more that Israel gets $3 billion a year. It’s from fear you’ll wake up one morning and find out than an opponent has $500,000 to run against you.”

The lobby, however, is more than AIPAC, which, alone, would be unable to exert such power. There are, in fact, more than 60 organizations, from small to large, engaged single-mindedly, in promoting Israel’s interests in the US while marginalizing, intimidating and silencing its critics. Its targets include Jews opposed either to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, such as myself and others who are simply outraged by Israel’s continuing occupation and theft of Palestinian land, and the deadly means with which both are carried out, held in check only by the mild restraints of the international community.

Some 52 of these organizations belong to Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations, which is supposed to the voice of American Jewry.

Along with AIPAC, the two largest and most influential of them are the Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, and the American Jewish Committee, or AJC. Representatives of the major organizations meet every month to plan strategy for that month. Nothing can be left to chance.

The ADL began in 1914 as an offshoot of the nation’s oldest Zionist organization, B’nai B’rith. Its mission was to defend Jews from anti-Jewish acts and words. It still does that, but anti-Jewish racism ceased to be a serious problem in the US years ago and the ADL’s chief task today is gathering information on critics of Israel, what it calls the “new anti-Semites” and smearing them in the public media.

Fourteen years ago, its information gathering went too far. A raid by the San Francisco police on ADL’s San Francisco office revealed that the organization was conducting a major private spying operation across the United States. In the San Francisco area alone, its agent had illegally compiled files on more than 600 organizations and 12,000 individuals, myself among them. These were not just Arab-American, Palestinian and Muslim groups, but Black, Latino, Asian, Irish, and trade unions, as well.

There was a special category for the anti-apartheid movement which given Israel’s ties with apartheid South Africa, was not surprising, but the ADL spy was also passing that information on to a South African intelligence agent along with reports on black South African exiles living in the area.

Pressure from influential local Zionists convinced city officials not to bring the ADL while the organization promised it would stop its spying activities. There is no reason to believe it has done so. Today, it works very closely with police departments across the country, educating them on so-called “hate crimes” and routinely sends groups US police officials on free trips to Israel to learn how to respond to “terrorist attacks.” This doesn’t bode well for what is left of America’s civil liberties.

The American Jewish Committee was founded by German Jews in 1906 and was firmly anti-Zionist until the events of the Second World War and the Jewish Holocaust led it to change its position. Today, it is the lobby’s unofficial foreign office, and until recently was largely content to work behind the scenes pressuring foreign governments in behalf of Israel. It began flexing its muscles more publicly two years ago when it opened an office in Brussels to lobby the European Union.

The AJC now has weekly meetings with a high official if not the chief of state of a EU member government and one can already see the effect. Over the past year the EU has moved away from its relative support for the Palestinians and adopted one position after another that reflect Israeli demands

A number of other important components of the lobby will not be found in the President’s conference, including 117 Jewish community relations councils, 155 Jewish federations, and several powerful “independent” Washington think tanks such as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a creation of AIPAC; the American Enterprise Institute, and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, founded after the attack on the World Trade Center..

When one adds to what I have mentioned so far, the Jewish religious bodies that also lobby for Israel, it should be obvious that there is no other ethnic or religious group that comes close to being so intensely organized, except, perhaps, the Christian Zionists, but the scope of their activities is relatively limited. This is but one of several things that distinguish the Israel Lobby from other powerful US special interest lobbies, apart from the fact that it represents the interests of a foreign country. All are important to understanding its success.

The first, of course, is its money. It is impossible to know exactly how much of it Jews contribute to American politicians, but it is far more than any other group.

The difficulty occurs because groups monitoring the data categorize contributions according to the financial sector of the donor, which, in the case of Israel, tends to disguise the goal of the contributor. For example, the Communications industry in the US is dominated by Jews, most of whom are known supporters of Israel. When they contribute to the Democrats or Republicans, however, that money is not attributed to the Israel Lobby, but to the Communications industry. This applies to the Banking and Wall Street Financial houses that are also largely Jewish, as well as to other sectors of the business world.

Haim Saban exemplifies this problem. An Egyptian-born Israeli-American billionaire and media owner, Saban, in 2002 gave the Democratic Party $12.3 million, $7.5 in one chunk. This was two million dollars more than the Exxon corporation gave the Republican Party over a 10-year period but rated no more than a few inches in the NY Times. Saban, a good friend of former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, has also made large contributions to AIPAC.

He also established the Saban Center on the Middle East at the Brookings Institute, turning that once independent think tank into another component of the lobby. Saban’s $12.3 million, however, was not considered to be Israel lobby funding.

What is considered as pro-Israel money is largely restricted to funds from some three dozen pro-Israel PACs or political action committees and their members. PACs are groups that are licensed to collect donations and pass them on to politicians supportive of the particular interests of the industry, trade union, or non-profit organization that formed the PAC. What distinguishes the pro-Israel PACs from the others is that they disguise their identity to avoid the prying eyes of the media and the public. They do this simply by not mentioning Israel in their name. Thus we have the Northern Californians for Good Government, St. Louisans for Good Government, the Desert Caucus, Hudson Valley PAC, and NATPAC, etc. This has led to them being referred to as “stealth PACs” by a former State Department official.

Moreover, unlike other PACs, they only contribute to candidates in other states.

For example, the Desert Caucus will send money to congressional candidates or an incumbent Senate or House members in Illinois or New Jersey, based solely on their positions on Israel. This has led critics of the lobby to portray them as Israel Firsters. That is meant to indicate that they are more concerned with the welfare of Israel than they are with that of their fellow Americans.

The way I measured pro-Israel political contributions was to go to the web site of Mother Jones magazine, a pro-Israel liberal monthly. In 1996 and 2000, it compiled lists of the top 400 individual donors to both political parties. What I found was that in 2000, 7 of the top 10 donors, 12 of the top 20, and at least, 125 of the top 250 were Jewish, most of which went to the Democrats. In other words, at least 50% and even higher among the larger contributors. It is an extraordinary figure you realize that Jews make up but 2.3 % of the American population.

The 50% overall figure corresponds to estimates from within the Democratic Party as well as Jewish organizations although some speculate the figure is as high as 70%.

The extent of these contributions, coupled with those from trade unions that are strongly pro-Israel at the leadership level and which have invested at least

$5 billion in Israeli government bonds, have made the Democratic Party, into what American law professor Francis Boyle recently called, “a front for AIPAC.”

While maintaining a formidable presence in the nation’s capitol, so much so that it is referred to in Congress simply as “the lobby,” AIPAC gathers its strength from its grass roots cadres and that of other Jewish organizations with which it networks in every state and major city in the United States. Its operations are carried out by a staff of 165, a healthy $47 million annual budget, and offices across the country. What affords it a special advantage is that it is considered a domestic lobby and not required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

This gives its lobbyists access such registration would prohibit, such as taking part in Congressional committee hearings, drafting or vetting legislation that concerns Israel or the Middle East, and placing its interns as volunteers in the offices of members of Congress where they serve as AIPAC’s eyes or, if you prefer it, spies.

Few AIPAC staff members actually lobby. Most provide research materials, talking points, and speeches for members of Congress or help prepare AIPAC’s Near East Report, a four-page bi-weekly that is essential reading on Capitol Hill. At a local level, in addition to contributing money, AIPAC members voluntarily provide their expertise to competing candidates in congressional elections, so whoever wins, Israel is assured of a supporter.

AIPAC’s annual conference in Washington each Spring is a major event of the political season. In 2005, 4,000 of its members attended along with 1000 student guests. The keynote address is usually given by the President, the Vice-President or the Secretary of State. This year it was Vice President Dick Cheney who was greeted with may rounds of applause and a standing ovation. As a tribute to the lobby’s power, approximately half the members of Congress attend, including the Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate and the House. Predictably, their speeches reflect their personal loyalty and of America’s unbreakable commitment to Israel. The names of the congress members who show up are publicized on AIPAC's web site, which enhances their status among major Jewish donors.

As important but rarely publicized are regional lunches and dinners that AIPAC holds across the country, to which local political leaders-- mayors, supervisors, city council members, police chiefs, district attorneys, school superintendents, etc, are invited. The speakers at these events will usually be a US Senator or a governor from another state. What is interesting is that the media is never invited nor informed of their appearance, neither where the event takes place nor in the speaker’s state.

As a follow-up, those favored public officials will soon find themselves invited on all-expense paid trips to Israel provided by local Jewish community relations councils, federations or other community organizations. There they meet the prime minister, defense minister and the IDF Chief of Staff, tour Israel and a West Bank settlement, and visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum. It is from such so-called “civil servants” that new members of Congress invariably emerge and so the personal relations established between them and influential Jewish community activists through these trips are mutually beneficial.

Politicians, from Congressional candidates to the president, frequently travel to Israel to gain the support of Jewish voters back home.

George W. Bush made his only trip to Israel before deciding to run for President in what was widely viewed as an effort to win pro-Israel voters' support. California Governor Arnold Shwarznegger and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a non-practicing Jew, did the same.

Once in Congress, members can be assured of more free trips to Israel arranged through the American Israel Education Fund, a foundation set up by AIPAC for that purpose. In 2005 alone, more than 100 members of Congress visited Israel, some several times.

It should be noted that few politicians think it necessary to make such a political trip to Mexico prior to or even after an election, despite the fact that Mexico is far more vital to the US economy and is the genuine homeland of many more millions of Americans. But then, there is no Mexican lobby with similar political or financial clout.

AIPAC does not contribute directly to congressional or presidential campaigns but it does advise its members and the pro-Israel community as to where their money can be the most effective, whether through individual contributions or through one of the PACs.

An important hallmark of AIPAC’s power is its ability to get the signatures of at least 70 U.S. senators on any letter it wishes to send to a U.S. president when they believe he is not acting in Israel’s best interests. One of the most notable was the letter of 76 of them addressed to President Gerald Ford on May 21, 1975 after Ford had suspended aid to Israel and was about to make a major speech re-assessing the US-Israel relationship and calling on Israel to return to the 1967 borders. The letter warned Ford against making any changes in the strong US-Israel relationship. Ford never gave the speech and no president has dared to make such a threat again.

Mitchell Bard, a former editor of AIPAC’s Near East Report, explains that the source of the lobby’s power is that “Jews have devoted themselves to politics with almost religious fervor.” Though the Jewish population in the United States is roughly six million, or a little over 2 % of the U.S. population, almost 90 percent live in twelve key electoral college states.

“These states alone,” writes Bard, “are worth enough electoral votes to elect the president. If you add the non-Jews shown by opinion polls to be as pro-Israel as Jews, it is clear Israel has the support of one of the largest veto groups in the country.”

Bard points out what has been obvious to political observers for years. Jewish political activism obliges members of Congress to consider what a mixed voting record on Israel-related issues may mean to their political future. There are no benefits for those who openly criticize Israel and “considerable costs in both loss of money and votes from Jews and non-Jews alike.” For a member of Congress, even to call for even-handedness towards both the Israelis and Palestinians is enough to be targeted for defeat.

Consequently, politicians at every level of government tend to be more responsive to the concerns of Jewish voters than to the larger segments of their constituencies who pay more attention to “reality” TV, soap operas, professional sports, and their mobile phones than they do to electoral politics.

While the fact “that the campaign contribution is a major key to Jewish power…[is] one of the worst-kept secrets in American Jewish politics,” as JJ Goldberg, noted in his book, “Jewish Power, it was not considered enough by Israel’s supporters in the years immediately following Israel’s establishment. What was thought necessary was for Jewish groups to create a supra-organizational structure that would work to ensure that no sector of American life would be immune from its influence.

Although this structure has evolved over time and while the scope of its activities have expanded and become more sophisticated, its modus operandi has remained largely unchanged.

This was revealed in a Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing in 1963, a time when U.S. financial assistance and political support for Israel was minimal compared to what it would become, and it was still possible for at least one elected legislator to publicly criticize Israel on the floor of Congress. The retaliation would come later. Thus, in May 1963, Sen. J.W. Fulbright, an Arkansas Democrat, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations initiated a series of hearings concerning the activities of foreign agents in the US to determine if more restrictive laws needed to be put in place.

Among the groups under investigation were those of the young Israel lobby, including the supra-organizational structure or umbrella group, the American Zionist Council (AZC), and AIPAC that at the time was little more than a one man organization.

At the time, the AZC was comprised of eight other groups; only two are major players today, the extreme right-wing Zionist Organization of America, and the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, better known as Hadassah. As the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs, AIPAC had been launched in 1951 as the lobbying arm of the American Zionist Council, but separated itself from the AZC in 1954 so as not to jeopardize the tax-exempt status of the other organizations by its lobbying efforts. It dropped “Zionist” from its name and became AIPAC in 1959. The separation was largely cosmetic. While AIPAC would focus its efforts on Congress, the other groups would take their lobbying for Israel along the length and breadth of American society.

This became clear from the program of a single committee of the AZC that was presented at the Senate hearing. It should be noted that at the time Israel was under no external danger and the Palestine Liberation Organization did not exist.

The Americam Zionist Council’s Committee on Information and Public Relations would carry “on a major part of its work through highly specialized subcommittees composed of professionals in specific areas of activity who volunteer their services…” Its targets for the 1962/63 budgetary year were magazines, and their editors; TV, radio and films;

Christian religious groups; academia, at every level; the daily press; book publishing and promotion; expanding its already active speakers bureau; liaison with organizations, both on the national and local levels, especially those with an international relations programs with special attention to “the Negro community;” “issuance of special material and guidance on controversial issues such as Arab refugees, Syrian-Israeli situation, etc.,” subsidizing trips to Israel for “individual public opinion molders to help provide them with an experience in Israel…and organizing tours “in which public opinion molders will participate [and] provide suitable arrangements in Israel for handling American visitors;… counteracting the opposition” (which was minimal at the time but they were taking no chances), “the monitoring and counteraction of all activities carried out here by the Arabs, American Friends of the Middle East and other hostile groups” and finally number twelve labeled “Miscellaneous,” which included “Answering requests for information and providing suitable literature for the many thousands of requests annually received.”

Those were their targets 44 years ago. Let’s see how far they have come,

The first item was magazines and cultivating their editors.

While a several of the most important magazines of that day are no longer published, those that exist today such as Newsweek, Time, US News & World Report, and the Weekly Standard are either Jewish owned or managed with Jews furnishing a substantial portion of their editorial staffs. While the fact that someone is Jewish does not necessarily mean he or she is an active Zionist, my observations, over the years, indicate that most are sympathetic to Israel and, at the very least, for their own self-interest, will know how to spin a story.

Television, Radio and Films were dominated by Jews then, but are more strongly in support Israel now, from ownership, to management, to news direction. This is a prime source of pro-Israel propaganda and influence.

Christian religious groups have been a challenge for the lobby as various denominations have, over the years, sought to take a balanced position on the Israel-Palestine conflict. This, for Zionists, is an act of “anti-Semitism.” By and large, however, the Zionists have made sure their relations to the most of the Christian denominations is one in which Christian guilt for centuries of Jewish persecution is never far from the table. Their biggest success has been with the addition of the Christian evangelicals to the ranks of the Zionist movement, which provides massive voter support in rural America where few Jews live.

Among the more liberal denominations, the Zionists have had to work overtime recently to keep the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Congregationalists, from approving or implementing plans that would have them divest from US companies profiting from the occupation.

Academia has long been a major battle ground between the Zionists and supporters of Palestine. In recent years, the battle over divestment and what can or cannot be taught about the Israel-Palestine conflict have been the main issues. The Zionists had already been extremely active before the present intifada but shortly after Israel was widely criticized for its attack on, Jenin in April 2002, 26 of the campus groups led by Hillel and off-campus organizations, led by AIPAC, the ADL and the AJC formed the Israel Campus Coalition. They have so far been able to turn back all attempts at divestment on the universirt campuses as they have in the churches.

In the battle over teaching content, the ADL had a head start. In the early Eighties, it became the first organization to publish a list of pro-Arab professors and activists and distribute it to their members and to the media. The most recent group, Campus Watch, went so far as to put their addresses on its web site until obliged to remove them.

In the academic arena, the AJC and Campus Watch have been pushing Congress to pass legislation that would require monitoring of Middle East studies in the universities to make sure that professors are not indoctrinating their students with anti-Israel or anti-US “propaganda.” Since this would clearly violate the 1st amendment and curtail the free speech of professors in the classroom, the legislation is stalled in the Senate.

Most recently, the lobby scored an important victory when it was able to prevent Yale university, the nation’s oldest, from hiring University of Michigan professor and Middle East expert, Juan Cole, even though Cole had been recommended by the university’s hiring committees. His crime? He is critical of Israel and of the lobby and a supporter of the Palestinians.

Conquering the daily press has been at times a contest, but the lobby has emerged a clear winner. With ownership of the two most influential papers in the country, the New York Times and the Washington Post historically in Jewish hands, with pro-Israel columnists for both of those papers syndicated in hundreds of other papers across the country, the pro-Israel position is the only one that America reads on both its editorial and op-ed pages.

The news, as well, is given a pro-Israel slant but this is not enough for the Zionist media monitoring groups, CAMERA and Honest Reporting. They accuse both papers of having an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian bias. This, of course, is nonsense, but it serves to keep them in line.

Any survey of book titles will reveal yet another success of the lobby. While there have been a plethora of books about Israel and Jewish culture, nothing has been more successful than promoting books about the Jewish holocaust and the output appears to be never-ending. Moreover, it is the rare American child that can go through public school without an intense study of the holocaust through the diary of Ann Frank. For them, that is the story of the Second World War. More time, in fact, is spent by American school children studying the holocaust than the genocide of the Native Americans and the three and a half centuries of slavery and the decades of racism that followed. Before they get out of college students will also have read and experienced the maudlin recriminations of Eli Wiesel against the non-Jewish world for not coming to the aid of the Jews. Wiesel is now a permanent fixture on the American cultural scene.

I’ll not go through all the rest of AZC’s program except to point out that its liaisons with the African-American community, and more recently with the emerging Latin-American population, have been of major importance to the lobby’s leadership. While left-wing Jews played important roles in America’s civil rights struggles, controlling the black political agenda and determining its leadership have long been major goals of the lobby. It has succeeded in achieving both. Contributions from wealthy pro-Israel Jewish businessmen provide key financial support for black churches and keeps their pastors quiet, while providing campaign funding and key data bases for aspiring black politicians insures their loyalty to their donors, if not to Israel. Those who refuse to genuflect to the lobby, which required their withholding of criticism when Israel was providing arms to apartheid South Africa, find themselves accused of “anti-Semitism” and targeted for political extinction.

What remains today is what I have called “the invisible plantation.” The only member of Congress not on that plantation at the moment is Cynthia McKinney from Atlanta, Georgia. They defeated her in 2002 for criticizing Israel and the war on Iraq but she battled back to regain her seat in 2004, much to the unhappiness of not only the lobby but also the Democratic Party.

They are gunning for her again in Georgia’s July 18 primary.

Finally, and what is most disturbing, what distinguishes the Israel Lobby from all the others is that it has no significant opposition.

In fact, it was only this spring, with the publication of a paper entitled The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy in the London Review of Books by Professors John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Steven Walt, of Harvard, that the subject of the lobby’s power and influence over US Middle East policy became an acceptable subject for public debate.

In their paper, the professors asserted, with considerable evidence, that US support for Israel over the years has not been in America’s national interest and the present war in Iraq was essentially initiated in Israel’s behalf and argued, effectively, against the notion of Israel serving as “strategic asset” of the US at the present time.

That the article had to come to light in London, after being rejected by the Atlantic magazine in the US, is a telling commentary on the degree to which discussion of the lobby has been a taboo subject in American political circles.

Those circles include not just the supporters of Israel and the politicians and the media over which they maintain their influence, but the American left and its leading icon, Prof. Noam Chomsky. While praising the two professors for having raised the issue, he proceeded to casually dismiss their thesis without addressing its key points.

This was no surprise. For more than 30 years, in countless books, speeches, and interviews, Professor Chomsky has maintained that Israel is a “strategic asset” of the US, that it serves as Washington’s “cop on the beat” in the Middle East, and that the lobby is not really a factor in Washington’s foreign policy deliberations. It only seems so, he insists, because its positions tend to agree with those of America’s ruling elites. It is also important to note that he strongly opposes any form of economic pressure being brought against Israel, be it, boycott, divestment, or South African type sanctions.

With so much invested in his position Professor Chomsky is not about to change his mind at this point. Nor, apparently, will other professors such as Stephen Zunes who have rigidly adopted his viewpoint.

But what is more important and unfortunate, that has also been the position taken by the anti-war and Palestine solidarity movements. Rather than welcoming the opportunity to criticize or even discuss the lobby’s role that has been afforded by the Mearsheimer-Walt paper, they have either ignored it or, like Chomsky and Zunes, insisted that the problem is not the lobby, but US imperialism (as if the two were mutually exclusive) which is an easy target but provides little foundation for concrete political action. The fact that the Palestine support movement in the United States has been an utter failure to this point in time, I believe, can be traced, in a large part, to its refusal to acknowledge the power of the Israel lobby and to challenge that power either locally and nationally.

It is interesting to note that in 1971, three years before Chomsky published his first book on the subject, Roger Hilsman, who had been a State Department official in charge of intelligence under the Kennedy administration wrote :

"It is obvious to even the most casual observer, for example, that United States foreign policy in the Middle East, where oil reigns supreme, has been more responsive to the pressures of the American Jewish community and their natural desire to support Israel than it has to American oil interests."

Stephen Green, whose ground-breaking research into State Department documents, was incorporated in his superb book, Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations with Militant Israel,” put it in a more nuanced way:

“Since 1953,” he wrote, “Israel, and friends of Israel in America, have determined the broad outlines of US policy in the region. It has been left to American presidents to implement that policy, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and to deal with tactical issues.”

The late Professor Edward Said did not mince words on the issue. In 2001, in his contribution to The New Intifada, entitled, appropriately, "America’s Last Taboo," he rhetorically asked: “What explains this [present] state of affairs? The answer lies in the power of Zionist organizations in American politics, whose role throughout the "peace process" has never been sufficiently addressed—a neglect that is absolutely astonishing, given the policy of the PLO has been in essence to throw our fate as a people into the lap of the United States, without any strategic awareness of how American policy is dominated by a small minority whose views about the Middle East are in some ways more extreme than those of Likud itself.

And on the subject of AIPAC, Said wrote:

“ [T]he American Israel Public Affairs Committee—AIPAC—has for years been the most powerful single lobby in Washington. Drawing on a well-organized, well-connected, highly visible and wealthy Jewish population, AIPAC inspires an awed fear and respect across the political spectrum. Who is going to stand up to this Moloch in behalf of the Palestinians, when they can offer nothing, and AIPAC can destroy a professional career at the drop of a checkbook? In the past, one or two members of Congress did resist AIPAC openly, but the many political action committees controlled by AIPAC made sure they were never re-elected... If such is the material of the legislature, what can be expected of the executive?”

Professor Said’s opinion, like the others, fell on largely deaf ears.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that in the absence of any organized public opposition and the abject default to it by those purporting to support the Palestinian cause, the Israel Lobby has had no trouble maintaining its control over the US Congress, and essentially US Middle East policy while making the political costs of any president that opposed it, a predictable defeat at the polls on election day.

Every president beginning with Richard Nixon has made at least a half-hearted effort to get Israel to leave the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, not for the benefit of the Palestinians, but to improve America’s regional interests and each has been thwarted by the lobby.

The exception was Jimmy Carter, a political outsider, who forced Menachem Begin to evacuate the Sinai in exchange for the Camp David peace treaty with Egypt and in 1978, to rub it in, ordered him to withdraw his troops from Lebanon after Israel’s first invasion of its northern neighbor.

The lobby was not pleased with Camp David and with Carter’s other efforts to pressure Israel and he paid for it at the polls in 1980 when he received only 48% of the Jewish vote, the lowest for any Democrat since they started keeping count.

Given the situation, I have described, the outlook for changing American policy in terms of providing even a modicum of justice to the Palestinians is not bright.

What is left for us to do is explain why and to challenge those on our side who stubbornly control the message to face the truth or get out of the way.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shamireaders/message/731

[Rory Winter]

Our Happy Bygone Days
By Israel Shamir
http://www.israelshamir.net/English/bygone.htm

"We lived in communist paradise and weren't aware of it." I have heard this sentence from many ex-citizens of the ex-USSR, from Russians and Tajiks, from Ukrainians and Balts, and I agreed with them wholeheartedly: Soviet Russia was a land of spiritual and educated men who loved their work, were proud of their country, despised money, were hospitable and kind. Stephen Gowans (Hail the Reds, http://www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans/reds.html ) has eloquently eulogised the lost paradise:

Over the seven decades of its existence, and despite having to spend so much time preparing, fighting, and recovering from wars, the Soviet Union managed to create one of the great achievements of human history: a great industrial society that eliminated most of the inequalities of wealth, income, education and opportunity that plagued what preceded it, what came after it, and what competed with it; a society in which health care and education through university were free (and university students received living stipends); where rent, utilities and public transportation were subsidized, along with books, periodicals and cultural events; where inflation was eliminated, pensions were generous, and child care was subsidized. By 1933, with the capitalist world deeply mired in a devastating economic crisis, unemployment was declared abolished, and remained so for the next five and a half decades, until socialism, itself, was abolished. The Communists produced social security more robust than provided even by Scandinavian-style social democracy, but achieved with fewer resources and a lower level of development and in spite of the unflagging efforts of the capitalist world to see to it that socialism failed. Soviet socialism was, and remains, a model for humanity - of what can be achieved outside the confines and contradictions of capitalism.

Over thirteen years ago Soviet Communism was done in, and Anglo-American Liberalism won its third great victory of the century. These were hard years for the Russians - life expectancy dropped drastically, industry collapsed and the great achievements of Soviet days were reversed. But life of an ordinary man became much worse in victorious Western Europe and the US as well, for the moneyed classes lost their great fear of a workers' revolt and alternative development. The social gains of the Western working class had been obtained thanks to this fear, and were taken back as Russia was turned into a middle-size country of little importance.

Stephen Gowans understood this; actually his essay is a complaint against 'gleeful' Howard Zinn and other Western leftists who provided the left flank of the anticommunist Cold War front. Howard Zinn is not alone at his refusal to admit collaboration with the enemy. A British Trotskyite Alan Woods has now published a verbose tripartite article (http://www.marxist.com/Theory/reply_shamir1.htm , a response to my Celia in the Woods, see on http://left.ru/inter/2004/shamir.html in English and on http://www.left.ru/2004/15/shamir114.html in Russian, on http://www.rebelion.org/ in Spanish) equally full of glee.

Woods mentions that his guru Trotsky "always stood for the unconditional defence of the USSR against imperialism and capitalism". But he and his kin rejected his advice. For him, Russian communists are 'Stalinists', and he gaily makes the following inquiry:

Let us begin with some awkward questions for our Stalinist opponents. The first question is: if we accept what you say, that the Soviet Union was a socialist paradise, then how come it collapsed?

The third question will be: if there was a genuine workers' democracy in the USSR, why did the Soviet workers not fight to defend the old regime? How does it happen that after over half a century of what Israel Shamir calls socialism, they could re-establish capitalism without a civil war?

These are valid questions, and they should be answered.

It is a sad truth that people's minds may be manipulated. The vast majority of men and women will act against their own best interests if convinced that 'this is right'. I witnessed this recently in an Israeli kibbutz -- a rich, stable, prosperous enterprise. The average kibbutz member's share of communal property was worth close to a million dollars. They went through the privatization and "income differentiation" scam and became paupers. Now many kibbutz members, yesterday's millionaires, survive by collecting leftovers in the fields. Their vast property went to a few well-placed families.

I asked kibbutz members: "The privatization was not forced on you. You accepted it, you voted for it. Why did you raise your hand for the scheme that was sure to ruin you?"

"We were told this was more progressive," they told me.

If that was the case for a few thousand of well-educated and prosperous Israeli kibbutzniks, it was even easier to convince millions of innocent Russians that "state ownership is detrimental to development" as this idea was broadcast by a million voices from the West. The Trots played a prominent part in this ideological warfare as they glibly quoted from Marx in convincing the Russians that what they had was not socialism or communism but "nomenklatura rule".

Communism in Russia lost the Cold War, as it lost the war for discourse; anticommunism became an integral part of every political or philosophical movement in Europe and the North America. Our Trotskyite friends formed the left wing of the anticommunist front, next to the Euro-communists of Berlinguer and the deconstructionist followers of Derrida. Eventually this united anticommunist front succeeded in undermining Soviet morale.

The anti-Stalinist campaign was a powerful ideological weapon in the war for discourse, for images of Lenin and Stalin were sacred to the Soviet people. Myopic Khrushchev thought he fights a war for Stalin's legacy against Stalin's ministers; but instead he undermined the sacred structure of Soviet Communism and damaged it irreparably.

Looking back, we understand that the major share of the Western leftists' complaints against Stalin and against the USSR were without merit.

♦' Russian cruelty' and 'GULAG horrors' were Euro-centric racist slurs. Indeed, the US has a bigger jail population than Russia ever did. In a recent article ("The Colonial Precedent" by Mark Curtis, The Guardian, Tuesday October 26, 2004) Woods can read all about your typical British brutality:

♦' "British forces killed around 10,000 Kenyans during the Mau Mau campaign, compared with the 600 deaths among the colonial forces and European civilians. Some British battalions kept scoreboards recording kills, and gave ?5 rewards for the first sub-unit to kill an insurgent, whose hands were often chopped off to make fingerprinting easier. "Free fire zones" were set up, where any African could be shot on sight. As opposition to British rule intensified, brutal "resettlement" operations, which led to the deaths of tens of thousands, forced around 90,000 into detention camps. In this 1950s version of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, forced labour and beatings were systematic and disease rampant." Indeed, peoples of the Soviet-led world never experienced anything similar to the devastation meted by the Anglo-American forces within confines of their empire.

♦' The GULAG positively pales in comparison with Israeli concentration camps for Palestinians; the biggest of them being the whole of Gaza Strip with its one million strong imprisoned population. 'Stalin's atrocities' could never compete with the US atrocities in occupied Germany, with nuclear bombardment of Hiroshima, with the fire-bombing of Tokyo or with millions of slain Vietnamese or Algerians.

♦' Soviet troops had foiled attempted coup d'etat in Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia. The Left bewailed it, but in the same period, the Americans fought pro-Communist insurgencies in Greece and Malaya, Nicaragua and Cuba, Indonesia and Cambodia. Mea culpa, I have to admit that as a young dissident I supported the Prague Spring when it was unfolding, but now I regret the Soviet Communists did not dare to do a "Tiananmen Square" in Moscow and arrest pro-American 'velvet putschists' in 1990s.

♦' The 'Afghanistan invasion' of 1980 was denounced by the West, from the Trots of Woods to the American President. But was this criticism justifiable? The Soviet troops came into Afghanistan at the express request of the Afghan president in order to stop a CIA-led insurgency. Here is a short except from an interview given by Zbigniev Brzezinski alluringly titled "How the US provoked the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan and starting the whole mess" (Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998):

♦' Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [From the Shadows], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

♦' Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

♦' Question: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

♦' Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

♦' Question: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

♦' Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea.

It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, in substance: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

♦' Practically every 'anti-Stalinist' and anti-Soviet claim can be countered.

People who denounced 'Russian cruelty' expressed in downing of the Korean airliner spent no tears over the fate of the Iranian Airbus gunned down by the Yanks. They regretted Sacharov's exile but ignored Vanunu's sentence.

In the Good Man from Sezuan (Der gute Mensch von Sezuan) by Bertolt Brecht, a good-natured whore is fleeced by her greedy acquaintances. In order to survive she invents a hard-nosed 'brother' who stops embezzlement and allows her to continue with good deeds. The USSR had this duality, too: its soft humanism was well protected by Stalin-built hard shell. The Western Left attacked the hard shell of Soviet Russia until the country was bereft of protection and collapsed.

The Western Left felt its belonging to the West more than its solidarity with the Left in the East. Alan Woods and his Trots were committed to Western supremacy. This is not by chance: his essay describes Russia as "backward" 16 times. He wrote: "Russia, an extremely backward country,.. frightful backwardness, .. backward, semi-feudal country like Russia, a backward, Asiatic, peasant country like Russia, backward agrarian Russia, terrible backwardness", etc. What is this if not typical Western arrogance, Euro-centrism of most brutal kind?

Russia, the country of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, of Lenin and Florensky was one of the most spiritually advanced countries. And communism is - if anything - a victory of the spirit. Woods and other Trots despised spirit and worshipped material progress, for only from this point of view could Russia be perceived as "backward".
Success and failure of communism in the East could not be explained within the confines of the vulgar-Marxist dogma. [Marx himself would have been able to understand it - the author of the Jewish Question, of Critique of Hegel's Philosophy, of Ode to the Virgin understood that Spirit is the alpha and omega of human development and he was quite disgusted with vulgar-materialist "Marxists".]

Communism won in the East - not because the East was backward, but because the East was the most spiritual part of the planet, less ruined by modernity and alienation. Communism was not successful in the West because the West was spiritually impoverished and subdued by latter-day Hobbesians.

In two words, the difference between the West and the East was not in amount of steel and electricity produced. The difference was philosophical and metaphysical. Carl Schmitt wrote that "all of the most pregnant concepts of modern doctrine are secularized theological concepts." And the doctrinal differences of the East and the West fit this description to the jot.

In the Anglo-American West, Hobbes, who based his vision of society on 'Man-to-man-is-wolf' approach, won the day. Men are united only by common enemy, he wrote. In a way, he was right: an enemy is the only thing that unites men, unless they are united by Christ, or, better said: unless you are united in Christ, you will be united in the Enemy. And this is not a mortal enemy, but Enemy, that unites people who accepted that "man-to-man-is wolf".

The East preserved its traditional spirituality, and that is why Communism won in Russia and China. Communism made little progress in caste-ridden India, for Chairman Mao was right: caste structure is as evil as imperialism, as it prevents unification of people in God.

The Russian Communists eventually solved their material problems and created a care-free society, where everyone's livelihood was assured. But in order to advance materially, they accepted some Modernist ideas; uprooting and alienation struck home. The USSR did not pay heed to Simone Weil's critique and to her call for a reversal of uprooting. Extreme materialists, the Soviet post-Stalinist leaders were convinced that as long as they produced enough material goods they could manage. The Church was suppressed; the Communists imported Christian morals in form of 'the Communist moral codex' but it was not sufficiently inspiring. The new sacrality of Lenin and Stalin was demolished by Khrushchev; and a desacralised society can't survive for long.

Practically speaking, Soviet Russia collapsed because its elites betrayed the people. Uprooting creates a chasm between the people and the elites; uprooted and alienated elites were ready to take their money and shift to the Riviera. They sold the wealth of Russia to US companies, impoverished the ordinary folks and ruined the country. This collapse should be a lesson for all of us: the communists should fight alienation and uprooting as their greatest enemy; they should not allow the enemy to de-sacralise their universe; they should not be ashamed of the hard-nosed brother of the good man of Sezuan.


II

The Jewish question played an important role in rise and collapse of the Russian communism. The Western Left had very strong Jewish connections. Some of them were tainted with Jewish nationalism and turned their pens and efforts against communism when they perceived that the Russian communism eventually became predominantly Russian. In order to justify their betrayal they had spread the black lie of "Russian anti-semitism".

This false narrative is carried out by the Trotskyite writer Alan Woods. I wrote in my article: "Were Jews persecuted as racial group under Stalin? Obviously not, for Stalin's daughter was married to a Jew; some of his best comrades and party leaders had Jewish wives (Molotov, Voroshilov) - or Jewish sons and daughters-in-law (Malenkov, Khrushchev). So much for racism. Were Jews discriminated against under Stalin? In 1936, at the pinnacle of Stalin's power, his government included nine Jews".

The best reply Woods could think of is "This is absolutely incredible. It is common knowledge today that Stalin was a rabid anti-Semite." A reference to "common knowledge" is not considered to be an argument. Indeed, it was a common knowledge in England that women do witchcraft and that the nobles have blue blood. Today it is common knowledge that the da Vinci code tells us that the Holy Grail is Mary Magdalene.

Woods is strong on common knowledge (read: western prejudice) but weak on facts. He writes: "The Bolshevik revolution gave freedom to the Jews". As a matter of fact, Jews were always free - even when the vast majority of Russians, Poles, Ukrainians were serfs. All limitations on Jewish rights were removed - not by Bolsheviks, but by the bourgeois February revolution. Woods writes: "After 1917, Lenin and the Bolsheviks even granted those Jews who wished to live in their own autonomous region, the area known as Birobidjan". Wrong again: this was done by 'a rabid anti-Semite' Stalin in 1934.

He writes: "In 1930 Stalin closed Yevslektsia, an official Soviet entity meant to expose anti-Semitic incidents". It was the other way around - Yevsektsia fought Jewish nationalism and was much hated by many Jews.

He writes: "On February 28, 1953 there were deportations to Siberia of a large number of Jews from Moscow. Plans were being made to commence mass deportations from other parts of the Soviet Union." This is another Jewish story of 'eternal persecution of Eternal People". There were neither deportations nor plans for deportations. The Russian historian Kostyrchenko proved in a research paper called Deportation or Mystification < http://www.lechaim.ru/ARHIV/125/kost.htm > that it was an urban legend promoted by a Jewish nationalist, professor Jacob Etinger of Hebrew University, a man who admitted his "deep hatred of Communism".

Woods writes: "Members of JAFC (Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee] were accused of being part of a Zionist-U.S. conspiracy against the Soviet Union… all accused of espionage, nationalist propaganda, and of seeking to establish a Jewish republic in the Crimea as a 'bridgehead' for American imperialism".

Does Woods know of any reason to doubt that they sought to establish a Jewish Crimea on the ruins of Tatar villages, a sister state to Israel established on the ruins of Palestinian villages? Publications in Russian post-Soviet and Israeli media indicate that the Jewish activists of JAFC supported expulsion of Tatars and envisaged the creation of a Jewish Crimean Republic. The mass immigration of Russian Jews to Israel in 1990s furnishes additional proof that Jewish nationalist propaganda was quite successful.

Woods writes: "[In 1953], Stalin ordered the arrest of all Jewish colonels and generals in the MGB, and a total of some 50 senior officers and generals were taken in to custody." Apparently "rabid anti-Semite" Stalin still had so many Jews in the top echelon of the feared State Security after 30 years of his rule! Woods admits that the State Security carried out severe repressions, and immediately he objects to Stalin's campaign against chiefs of the State Security.

For Woods, Jews are always innocent. Whether they are involved in excesses of the State Security or promote mass deportation of Tatars, whether they bend towards Zionism or ally with the US - they can't be touched. He writes: "Molotov's wife was Jewish. Stalin forced Molotov to separate from his Jewish wife, and she was exiled in 1949 by a direct vote of the Politburo, Molotov abstaining."

If he would read the memoirs of Golda Meir, the first Israeli ambassador in Moscow, he would learn that Polina Molotov embraced Golda, and tearfully called out: "Ich bin ein Yiddische tochter" (I am Jewish daughter). Such Jewish nationalist feelings were indeed dangerous for the Soviet state and made Mme Molotov quite unsuitable for her position of Deputy Member of Politburo. As I said previously, Woods is too tolerant of Jewish nationalism and too intolerant of the nationalism of 'backward' Russia. Stalin's Russia treated Jews as equals - not as superiors like the US. If Jewish nationalism were treated in England and the US as it was in Moscow in the days of Stalin, the citizens of Baghdad and Teheran, Basra and Ramallah would be able to sleep peacefully in their own homes.

Israel Shamir is an Israeli journalist based in Jaffa. His articles can be found on the site
www.israelshamir.net

[Rory Winter]

Israel is attacking Christian targets in Lebanon
http://waynemadsenreport.com/

Aug. 3, 2006 -- On July 30, WMR reported that CIA and Mossad agents in Lebanon, working with forces loyal to Israeli ally and convicted murderer Samir Geagea, were stirring up trouble among refugees streaming into northern Lebanon from the south of the country. Geagea, who was once allied with former pro-Israeli Prime Minister Gen. Michel Aoun, has lost the support of his one time ally. According to informed Lebanese sources, the one-time fervently anti-Syrian Aoun continues to honor the memorandum of understanding drawn up between him and his Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) and Hezbollah's Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Aoun controls the largest bloc of Maronite seats in the Lebanese parliament. After Hezbollah took two Israeli soldiers prisoners, Aoun said Hezbollah had engaged in a "pure military action," not a terrorist attack. Aoun also earned the ire of Israel and Washington by publicly calling for the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon to their original homes, something strongly resisted by Israel.

One of the reasons Israel is attacking Christian targets in Lebanon is to show its opposition to the tactical agreement between the FPM and Hezbollah. The attacks on Christian targets are a way to punish Israel's one-time allies. The FPM, as well as most other Lebanese political parties, are also acutely aware of Israeli and American involvement in a series of "false flag" assassinations of Lebanese politicians and journalists in order to stir up resentment against Syria. Israel and the United States can only rely on Geagea and Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze leader. One of the men arrested by Lebanese police for working with an Israeli assassination team involved in killing Lebanese politicians is a Lebanese Druze.

Aoun's MOU with Hezbollah is dangerous for Israel and the United States. Last November, Aoun was feted in Washington by neo-con members of the Bush administration and pro-Israel members of Congress for his leadership of the so-called "Cedar Revolution," the movement to chase Syria out of Lebanon after it was falsely accused of being behind the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. It was a tactical agreement between Hariri and Hezbollah, similar to that between Aoun and Hezbollah, that largely contributed to Jerusalem's and Washington's decision, and Saudi Arabia's acquiescence, to eliminate Hariri.

Aoun, as a one-time Israeli military ally, is well aware of Israel's tactics. Israeli military forces have discovered that entering Lebanon is not the cake walk it was during the Lebanese civil war. Aoun is also extremely knowledgeable about the pro-Israeli cells operating within the Bush administration and the neo-con think tanks and contrivances in Washington. These are the very same elements that supported the Cedar Revolution and include the American Enterprise Institute, where Michael Ledeen and Richard Perle nest; the neo-con supported US Committee for a Free Lebanon; Heritage Foundation; Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; Hudson Institute; Hoover Institution; Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).



February 3, 2006 meeting between Maronite leader and former Israel ally Gen. Michel Aoun (r.) and Hezbollah's Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah (l.).

[Rory Winter]

This occurred on the same day as two other's from Scotland were attacked. See bottom

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: w.vwl < tbdscotland@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: 04-Aug-2006 18:29
Subject: GPHRC activists attacked today
To: "glesca.forum@yahoo.co.uk" < glesca.forum@yahoo.co.uk>

Margaret & John from the Glasgow Palestinian Human Rights Campaign (www.gphrc.org) were injured today by the Israeli Army along with a Spanish activist after having turned their backs to head home after a brief demonstration in Bil'in. Full press release is here: http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/08/04/bilin-3/ and below. Please forward/distribute.




Today on Friday August 4, the people of Bil'in joined by Israeli and international supporters marched to the apartheid wall and attempted to cross the gate which separates villagers from their land. They bore Palestinian and Lebanese flags alongside black flags of mourning in memory of over 1,000 people who have been murdered in Gaza and Lebanon, including the horrific massacre in Qana this past week. They delivered words and posters bearing photos and messages rejecting the Israeli aggression which has caused one of the bloodiest months for the region. The demonstrators were pushed back by Israeli military violence: sound grenades, rubber bullets, and tear gas.

Demonstrators showed peaceful, but defiant, displays of the flags despite the cadre of armed military personnel, now able to hide behind newly constructed reinforcement fences. The occupation forces immediately advanced through the gate to take strategic positions overlooking the activists. At a distance of hundreds of meters, the soldiers began lobbed grenade-launched tear gas canisters, throwing concussion grenades, and firing rubber bullets. In the ensuing attack: Margaret, a 52 year-old participant from Scotland was shot in the back with a rubber bullet; Yasir, a participant from Spain was shot in the back with a rubber bullet; and John, a 53 year-old participant also from Scotland sustained facial injuries from a concussion grenade thrown directly at him.

Two large brush fires were ignited by grenade-launched tear gas. When villagers and activists attempted to return to put the fire out, the army advanced and renewed their attack of tear gas and rubber bullets on those who were clearly attempting to stop the rapidly spreading blaze. Nearly totally blinded and inhaling thick smoke, those attempting to extinguish the fire endured continued long-range bombardment of tear gas and rubber bullets by the soldiers hidden behind the fence. The fires were successfully extinguished in the end after 40 minutes, despite the attack.

Since the onset of the recent violence in Gaza and Lebanon, the people of Bil'in have maintained a weekly protest in support of those enduring continued Israeli attacks.


From: "Gordon Clubb" <gordonclubb666@hotmail.com>
To: gordonclubb666@hotmail.com , fish-bone@hotmail.co.uk, colin.hume@falkirkherald.co.uk, jock.penman@btopenworld.com , joycejaffa@hotmail.com, michaelnapier@blueyonder.co.uk, palsolcam@blueyonder.co.uk
Subject: Internationals beaten up by israeli police
Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2006 14:06:17 +0000

Here is a brief description of what happened to me and oliver on Tuesday in Jerusalem walking back to a peaceful protest from the UN office i saw that the Israelis had started attacking the crowd and my friend. When i asked them to calm down and tell them that we are internationals i was thrown about, punched and Oliver was kicked.

I tried to find out who was in charge to ensure that my american friend, who had been arrested with a Palestinian, would be okay. I was then grabbed from behind and thrown into the back of a van with Oliver. All four of us in the van were punched and kicked repeatedly and made to lie on the floor. They had kicked the American so hard that he was pissing blood later. They started hitting Oliver and i shouted at them to stop and i got hit as a result.

They made us face down. Oliver was saying that he was having an asthma attack and i said that he might die as a result; as a consequence both me and oliver got punched/kicked. The Palestinian in the back was also getting hit and so was the American. We drove away and it seemed to calm down. I had the Israelis hand on my shoulder with his gun digging into my stomach.

The Palestinian was about to be sick because of the pepper spray so they dragged him and the American out, kicking oliver because he was in the way. Whilst he was being sick they were both kicked repeatedly in the street. The American was later hit twice with a thick UN report by the policeman

We were driven to the police station where we were told to strip. We were made to face a wall outside in the sun and then they interrogated us.

[moeen yaseen]

Coup d'Etat in Washington and "The Dollar Paper Tiger", Fiery Dragon in Asia and the Pacific

by Andre Gunder Frank
www.globalresearch.ca
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/FRA406A.html

We bring to the attention of our readers this essay by Professor Andre Gunder Frank, one of the World's leading and most distinguished political economists.

Frank analyses the relationship between militarisation and the crisis of the US dollar as a World currency.

The essay provides a comprehensive perspective on the evolving New World Order, its structural weaknesses and contradictions.

More importantly, it enables us to understand the economic underpinnings of the Neocons "war on terrorism."

This essay consists of the following parts:

Coup d' État in Washington

Paper Tiger - The United States and the World

Fiery Dragon: China in East Asia

André Gunder Frank is currently an Associate of the Luxembourg Institute for European and International Studies, Luxembourg and Senior Fellow, World History Center, Northeastern University, Boston, Mass.

For details on André Gunder Frank`s writings, see http://rrojasdatabank.info/agfrank/index.html


Political Background

Recent events in Iraq that require no further elucidation here make this essay now more timely than when it was written.

For this essay is a combination of two related articles:

First, my earlier paper focusing on the 2000 [Election] Coup d'Etat. This paper related to the illegitimacy of the Bush government and the long standing agenda of the Cheney group which has made another Coup within the Bush Coup.

Secondly, my paper on the paper tiger, concerning the underlying Achilles heels vulnerability of American power that rests only on the paper dollar and the military Pentagon.

Vice President Gore’s major speech damning the policy of the Bush administration and calling the President himself incompetent, as he surely is, nonetheless judiciously avoided any direct mention of the illegitimacy of the president and his administration.

Bush's presidency was derived from a veritable coup d’ Etat, not in having lost the popular vote, but first in having also lost the vote in the key state of Florida and "won" it through fraud and violence.

And then they violated the fourteenth amendment of due process through the stacked vote in the Supreme Court and its refusal to let anybody abide by due process.

Moreover, not only did Dick Cheney manage the entire transition to and construction of the Bush administration, but as Vice President he has continued to run the President’s show from behind the scenes. That is so much so that after their joint three hour testimony to the 9/11 commission about their Iraqi malfeasance, the New York Times was moved to editorialize that it made evident that the President is no more than a puppet managed by the Vice-President.

And as we know and the coup part of this essay further documents, the Vice-President himself was captured and molded to its own ends of long standing by a team of the PNAC – Program for the New American Century – maniacal adventurers, led by "Wolfowitz of Arabia."

This illegitimacy of the President and his administration’s inauguration now takes further significance with the revelations that after having lied to the electorate, they have continued to lie and mislead the American public and the world regarding the State of the Nation and that of the world, as well as with regard to the devastating impacts of their foreign and domestic policies.

The documentation is overwhelming, but not even the tip of the iceberg is yet emerging that the Administration and President Bush himself have consistently lied and covered up about September 11, 2001.

They have lied about security and have deliberately weakened it and have themselves terrorized the American public, not to mention that they have torn the Bill of Rights to shreds and otherwise have violated the Constitution.

By sending the machine gun toting National Guard into every airport in the country, they are every day violating the Posse Comitatus Act that prohibits military participation in domestic civilian affairs that has stood since 1878. They have also violated a more recent law prohibiting the CIA from doing so as well. All this only to scare the public and Congress into accepting their unconstitutional Patriot Acts and other measures from the agenda of a small right minority.

And of course they have perpetrated monstrous lies about their war against Afghanistan and now against Iraq.

Thus, an illegitimate president who promised "gentle conservatism" has instead taken the most radical departure of militarizing American society at home, privatizing the US Military abroad, and antagonizing the rest of the world by his unilateral militarism and anti-environmentalism, not to mention his administration's befuddled ‘’justification."

His and his government’s verbal denunciation combined with de facto generation and sponsorship of terrorism is wearing thin and has in a totally irresponsible fashion led them and us into a Catch 22 damned if you do, damned if you don’t debacle.

The one in Iraq demonstrates one of several underlying vulnerabilities of American reliance on the Pentagon.

The Paper Tiger Dollar

As this essay argues, this military Achilles heel also further weakens the other one, which is based on the paper tiger dollar. That has declined in value against the Euro and the Yen since I first wrote about this threat and how it in turn would weaken the Pentagon that must be financed by devalued dollars, especially in its increasing ventures abroad.

At the same time, while the revelations and soul searching about American torture in Iraq – and now we know long since also in Afghanistan and Guantanamo - the US occupation in Iraq is proceeding relentlessly with its major agenda there: OIL and the economy.

The Cheney sponsored oil pipeline through Afghanistan that the Taliban was supposed to implement but was unable to guarantee, thus converting it from friend to enemy, is now in the hands of the new American appointed government in Kabul.

In Iraq, it is yet difficult to tell WHAT the US occupation is doing – nobody even bothers to look beyond the torture any more - about the oil and the economy, other than that they are being privatized and sold off at bargain basement prices to big American companies, with Vice President Cheney’s Haliburton in the lead. He still derives income from it, although his super-hawk friend Richard Perle resigned his high Defense Dept position so that his conflict of interest would ‘’not hurt the President’s re-election chances.’’

Meanwhile President Bush himself defends giving a near monopoly of contracts for ‘’re-building Iraq’’ to US near monopolies on the grounds that ‘’WE’’ put our lives on the line and so are we legitimately entitled to the economic rewards there from.

But more important, with the region’s second largest oil deposits in Iraq , what is the US really doing there on the world oil market and its efforts to control or break OPEC?

One thing is sure, and the oil section of the paper tiger part of this essay speaks to this issue: Iraqi oil is again being priced in US dollars and no longer in Euros as under Saddam Hussein.

In the meantime also, the dollar has indeed fallen significantly against the Euro and the Yen. This devaluation of the dollar would at least make US industrial and agricultural products more salable on the world market – if they were otherwise competitive . But the industrial ones are not and the agricultural ones thrive only thanks to the huge government subsidy, the same as in Western Europe and Japan.

On the other hand, a devalued dollar makes the US less attractive for the continued inflow of foreign capital from overseas savings on which the US economy and the American standard of living and way of life is so vitally dependent.

All presidential administrations have lied to the American public about the sources of their well being that are allegedly based on American efforts and skills promoted by healthy government domestic and foreign economic policies. But nothing could be further from the truth.

The Clinton boom years of the 1990s – after the 1989-92 recession - were based entirely on the suction and flight of capital first from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe who were forced into a depression far deeper than that of the 1930s and after the financial crisis of 1997 in Southeast Asia that was deliberately sponsored by Larry Summers, now President of Harvard but then at the World Bank and the US Treasury.

That resulted in declines of income by 40 and 50 percent and the deliberately managed misery and death of millions in East Asia – and the flight of their own and foreign speculative capital to the US safe haven of Treasury certificates (where it permitted a sudden but temporary balanced budget) and into Wall Street. There it fired the bull market that attracted Main Street to invest in Wall Street and made Mr. And Mrs. America feel rich and able to spend – also on $ 100 billion of excess imports of textiles and gadgets from China.

The Chinese in turn also sent the dollars they earned thereby back to Washington to buy Treasury certificates, so that the poor Chinese are by now the world’s largest creditors to the rich Americans.

More recently however, China has begun to import more itself, in particular from Southeast Asia and using it’s American earned US dollars to get at least something more that worthless Treasury certificates on which the US is bound to default, because it will be neither able nor willing to make good.

All depends on how long the rest of the world is still willing to put up with the US dollar as the world currency and what alternatives thereto there are. And this brings us back to the Pentagon as a shaky support for the dollar and the Iraq debacle as yet another chink in the rusty armor of confidence in the US in general and its money in particular.

And it leads us forward to examine the expanding role in the world of China, whose ten percent annual economic growth has been duplicating income every six years and making it a, and soon perhaps the, major player in the world economy.

What is the basis and security of the United States position and power in the world? The answer is the twin pillars of the Dollar and the Pentagon.

The dollar is a paper tiger – literally so, much more than when Mao applied this term to the US. The Pentagon’s strength and mobility is dependent on the dollar, which in turn is supported by US military might. But these two supporting towers of the US are also its two Achilles heels. Through them, like the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the entire US edifice can come crashing down in one morning – not by terrorism but through the operation of the world market economy and the foolish policies of the United States government itself.

With the end of the cold war in 1989 and the subsequent decline of Russia as a serious immediate contender, as well as the decline during the 1990s of the hype of JAPAN AS # 1 [Vogel 1979] two other regions, states and powers came into contention. They are the United States whose fortunes and prospects seemed to have declined after 1970 but recovered in the 1990s; and yet it is a paper tiger. The other is the rising Fiery Chinese Dragon In global terms, we could regard this as a process of continued shift of the world center of gravity west-ward around the globe, from East Asia/China to Western Europe, then across the Atlantic to the United States, and there then from the eastern to the western seaboard, and now onwards across the Pacific back to East Asia, as observed in my "Around the World in Eighty Years" [Frank 2000]. Let us inquire further into the so far last part of this historical process.

Coup d'Etat in Washington
Be wary of conspiracy theories, beware of real conspiracies, and be aware of a grab of power.

It has happened in Washington and its instigators are pursuing a policy of (several) faits accomplis that attracts ever more people to jump on the band wagon. The Busch administration has made a real Coup d’Etat and achieved its apparently unknowing acceptance by America and the World. Even Hitler and Mussolini came to power by electoral routes and Stalin and Latin American dictators had to resort to violence to make their coups d’etat. Busch and his small coterie required none of these to get to the seat of power.

The Coup

To begin with, Bush’s accession to the Presidency was in violation to the Constitution. It is not that he received a minority of the popular vote, because the Constitution provides for the President’s election by the Electoral College. But Bush received the Electoral College vote by fraud, for he lost the decisive popular and thereby electoral vote in Florida. His brother Jeb as Governor of Florida with the help of Mrs Harris as Secretary of State first deprived hundreds of thousands of African American and presumably Democratic voters of the vote through incarceration, intimidation, and other means.

The Republican Cuban Mafia sent its goon squads physically to prevent a recount in Broward County. Mrs. Harris did all she could, which was plenty, to interfere with recounts in other counties in Florida. The alleged recounts that were made were a sham. They only recounted votes that were NOT counted in the first count by voters who had been unable to punch holes all the way through the voting cards without leaving the infamous hanging chads. Yet much more importantly one either before the decision or afterwards when the newspapers did it again, NO one ever recounted the votes that HAD been for the Democrats but were discounted because voter mistakenly also punched a second hole on a confusing ballot. Yet even the third and most conservative candidate Pat Buchanon declared publicly that these duplicate votes in heavily Jewish and Democratic counties were surely not for him but for the Democratic Party candidate. These votes [or even half of them if they had been allotted also to other candidates] would have given a decisive majority of the popular vote and therefore of the Electoral College votes in Florida to the Democrats. Yet they were never counted or recounted for the Democrats.

In the end Bush was not elected, but was SElected in the Supreme Court by the decisive political swing vote of Justice Kennedy. The Supreme Court's appeal to the 14th amendment, which guarantees due process of Law to all, was ironically biased. For it was selectively applied without due process to squash the popular vote in Florida, but the same due process procedures were not applied to challenged votes in any other State. That in itself was already a de facto coup d’ Etat.

Then, several members of the House of Representatives called for a challenge of the Electoral College under Constitutional provisions that permit the Congress to do so if the challenge has the support of at least one member of both houses. Yet they were not joined by even a single Senator, who would have made the challenge legally effective. In other words, the Congress simply acquiesced to this power grab by the Bush administration through a Coup d’eat with the help of the Supreme Court but in clear violation to the Constitution.

That was the beginning of the violation of the Constitutional separation of powers and checks and balances. Since then, the Bush administration has carried these violations farther than any previous one in the history of the United States. Not even President Lincoln in the Civil War, nor President Roosevelt in the Second World War nor his previous attempt to stack the Supreme Court, ever grabbed and concentrated as much power for the executive branch while marginalizing the Legislative branch and the Judiciary.

Beware of Conspiracy Theories. But be aware that it was really Vice-President elect Dick Cheney who then put together the Bush Administration, selecting whom to place in which positions of power, especially in defense affairs. And beware of PNAC, the Project for a New American Century, which was already lobbying Washington with their plans for a "Pax Americana" in 1992, 1997, and 2000 among other notable dates.

PNAC issued a long report in September of 2000 entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century." Its statement of principles calls for a massive increase in military power, U.S. military domination of Eurasia to prevent the rise of hostile powers; and pre-emptive [not just pre-ventive] military action against states suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction. PNAC’s prescriptions have been converted into official US policy and praxis by the Bush Administration.

PNAC founding members and signatories of its statements include;

Cheney himself,

Lewis Libby, Cheney's top national security assistant and now the Vice-President’s chief-of-staff

Donald Rumsfeld, also a founding member, now Secretary of Defense

Paul Wolfowitz [of Arabia], now Deputy Defense Secretary and arguably the groups ideologue

Eliot Abrams, pardoned by Bush Sr. in the Iran/Contra scandal and now member of the National Security Council

John Bolton, Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security

Richard Perle, the most outspoken hawk in the Reagan administration who advocates dumping the United Nations, then chairman of the powerful Defense Policy Board, who was forced to resign one of his positions over a conflict of interest scandal,

Randy Scheunemann, President of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, who was Trent Lott's national security aide and who served as an advisor to Rumsfeld on Iraq in 2001

Bruce Jackson, now Chairman of PNAC and former vice president of weapons manufacturer Lockheed-Martin who headed the Republican Party Platform subcommittee for National Security where he called for – as had Wolfowitz for some years - the removal of Saddam Hussein

William Kristol, noted conservative writer for the Weekly Standard, a magazine owned along with the most hawkish Fox News Network owned by Ruppert Murdoch

Norman Podhoretz, editor of the right wing New Republic

and others, like Norman Kaplan and Douglas Feith.

The core group of the PNAC now hold the highest positions of policy making power in the Pentagon and much of it in the White House.

They have also planted one of their group in the State Department to keep an eye and check on Colin Powell who is the only major foreign policy player who is not a member of this inner sanctum.

An interesting sidelight is that Wolfowitz , Perle and Feith also went to Israel to serve as advisors to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, for whom they drew up a battle plan against the Palestinians. Behind them lies the strange ideological bed-fellow political alliance of two of the most powerful lobbies in the United States: Organized Zionism and Christian Fundamentalism. For good measure, throw in the Cuban Mafia as well.

Another matter to consider are some of the connections of these same people with the private sector. Two examples should suffice to give a general idea. Cheney was chairman of Halliburton Inc., which in turn owns Brown & Root and other habitual contractors of the Defense Department for major construction and/or petroleum projects around the world.

One of these companies was awarded a 1 Billion dollar contract to re-build the Iraqi oil fields in case they should be damaged in the war. Another, of which the now "Prime Minister" of Afghanistan was a former employee, namely UNOCAL, is first in line to build the proposed oil and gas pipeline across Afghanistan from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean. The Bush family and George W. Bush himself have long standing business relations with the Carlyle Group, which also represents the Bin Laden family (including Osama), with whom they have also maintained direct relations.

The White House and the Executive Branch generally has made full use of its new power to serve its economic and political allies. Those who made the largest campaign contributions have been handsomely rewarded with government hand-outs and regulations, or rather de-regulation. The Bush administration has issued at least 200 separate executive orders to roll back regulations enacted by previous administrations, even Republican ones, to protect the environment and/or Public Health and Safety. Executive Order has received a whole new meaning: Special interests write an order that is passed to the President for his signature, whereby mostly without knowing what he is doing he converts it into an Executive Order.

The Pentagon has petitioned the White House to exempt it from existing environmental protection regulations that hamper their disposal of spent munitions and other hardware and thereby interfere with ‘’national security. " The President deliberately appointed as Secretary of the Interior a person known for her ties to the timber and oil industries to whose exploitation she seeks to open thousands of acres of federally owned lands as well as the Alaska Wilderness for the construction of a new pipe-line – all in the interest of course of ‘’national security."

The Bill Of Rights and the Constitution

More serious still, the Bush administration has shredded the Bill of Rights, abrogated the Constitution, and even violated the age - old common law of Habeus Corpus, which prohibits the detention and holding of anybody against his will without due process of law.

Elsewhere in the Executive Branch, President Bush appointed and lent full support to Attorney General John Ashcroft who was already known for his racist and authoritarian inclinations. Although many Senators had doubts about his appointment, the Senate ratified it anyway. Since then, Attorney General Ashcroft and his staff have converted several arms of the Department of Justice into those of a police state. The Executive has encouraged and permitted the Attorney General and the Department of Justice Judiciary Branch to violate the Bill of Rights and the Constitution on multiple counts. For instance, the US Government already claims the right to monitor all e-mail and to bug telephone conversations without specific judicial permission.

The Bush Administration brought Admiral Pointdexter back into government after his participation in the Iran-Contra Scandal and lyiung about it to Congress. His new mission is a project, called Total Information Awareness Project (TIAP): to develop computers to monitor "vast quantities of data generated by US civilians in their daily lives: Academic transcripts, ATM receipts, prescription drugs, telephone calls, driving licences, airline tickets, parking permits, mortgage payments, banking records, emails, website visits and credit card slips" [The Guardian November 23, 2002].

In critique of all this and the Patriot Act, only the lone voice in Congress of Representative and presidential candidate Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) has asked

"How can we justify in effect canceling

- the First Amendment and the right of free speech, the right to peaceably assemble?

- the Fourth Amendment, probable cause, the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure?

- the Fifth Amendment, nullifying due process, and allowing for indefinite incarceration without a trial?

- the Sixth Amendment, the right to prompt and public trial?

-the Eighth Amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment?

- And Justice for All?"

The Constitution makes all the rights it guarantees extensive to anybody in the US, but the Attorney General has declared that non- citizens are not worthy of protection by the Constitution.

We do not know yet how much of a loss that is because the Department of Justice and its Immigration and Naturalization Service[INS] have also taken it upon themselves also to divest naturalized and even native-born American Citizens of their citizenship, again in clear violation of the Constitution.

And even those who remain citizens are under constant threat to have their rights violated without due process under the fourteenth amendment, or to be detained in violation of Habeus Corpus.

They are denied representation by legal counsel and trial in civil courts, as provided for by the Constitution. In particular, hundreds of thousands of American residents and Citizens of Arab descent or even of features that appear to individual agents of the Department of Justice or the police’s racial profiling as perhaps being Arab, or Muslim, or who knows what else have been called in for questioning. When they appeared in Los Angles, they were detained without charge. They now live in constant fear of the infamous knock on the door at 3AM that was made infamous by Hitler’s Gestapo and Stalin’s GPU. That is so if they are even favored by a knock on the door before a blast of gunfire of shooting first and asking questions later.

So far as we know of over 700 people who have remained in detention since September 2001; though there may be many more, since nobody knows or says where they are, or who they are, or what they are accused of. Indeed, only a dozen of these have ever been charged with anything. The others remain out of sight and out of mind except for their families who are not allowed even to secure legal representation for them. So do the innocent Afghani prisoners the US keeps in in Guantanamo and the countless ones still detained under horrible conditions in Afghanistan. How come there is no public outcry about any of these?

On the other hand, the same Executive Branch has divested the Judiciary of powers and the citizenry of judicial protection by illegally transferring powers of the Judiciary to itself. Perhaps only the most visible tip of the iceberg of this process is the Bush Administration and Pentagon declaration that it will bring normal civil suits before military tribunals that operate under rules of court marshal and other procedures of Military "Justice" that can order death sentences without appeal. Moreover, the accused do not know whereof, cannot chose legal counsel, and their conversation with whom can be overheard by the authorities. The prestigious very conservative publicist William Saffire refers to them as ‘’kangaroo courts" and observes that "no longer does the judicial branch and an independent jury stand between the government and the accused.

In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination "a full and fair trial."

The Land of the Free?

John Ashcroft has also issued instructions to the Department of Justice to resist as far as possible the delivery of documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

And the Executive itself has severely restricted the kind and number of documents of its own that it is prepared to make public. In other words, transparency and therefore control or even critique of the ever widening powers and their use by the Executive Branch is itself being severely restricted.

On the other hand, the Executive Branch has multiplied its own access to information. During the congressional debate on John Ashcroft's USA Patriot Act, an American Civil Liberties Union fact sheet on the bill's assaults on the Bill of Rights revealed that Section 215 of the act "would grant FBI agents across the country breathtaking authority to obtain an order from the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court . . . requiring any person or business to produce any books, records, documents, or items." That includes bookstores and public libraries being obliged to divulge who is reading what. This is now the law,

Alas, the Congress has been intimidated into passive acceptance of virtually everything and anything the Executive proposes and demands. It passed the Patriot Act that severely restricts civil liberties virtually without reading it.

The proposed Patriot Act # 2 has not even bee submitted to the Congress for study and yet the version leaked by the Press suggests that it proposes even more of a police state than the first one. When the Leader of the Democratic Majority in the Senate voiced only the mildest doubts about Bush’s military moves, he was immediately reprimanded by his Republican Majority Leader counterpart Lott, for ‘’how dare he criticize the President in time of war!" Both have been forced to resign since then, but for scandals unconnected to that one.

Moreover, the Executive has been more than secretive about the events and circumstances of September 11, 2001; and the Congress has not launched any serious inquiry of its own. Neither have the Media. There has not even been any public inquiry or disclosure into the failure of the Air Force or National Guard to scramble fighter aircraft to investigate the airliners that had clearly gone off course. That is every day routine standard operating procedure, but it was called off or at least not enacted during the 90 minutes that elapsed between the crash into the first World Trade Tower and the one into the Pentagon – that is IF the Pentagon was damaged by an aircraft which has been seriously questioned if only because no evidence has ever been made public for such an occurrence.

Nor has the government given any account of its receipt and disregard of multiple forewarnings from intelligence agencies among its allies in Pakistan, Russia, Germany, France, Israel. In other words, the very circumstances that allegedly require all these domestic and foreign responses by the Bush Administration are themselves wrapped in a shroud of self-imposed secrecy.

The violation of the Constitutional provisions for the separation of powers is particularly flagrant regarding the powers reserved to the Legislative Branch of the Congress and the Constitutional prohibition against military action in domestic civil affairs.

Bush also disregards the Constitutional provision that only Congress may declare war, and it violates the 1976 War Powers act that Congress passed to regulate that Constitutional provision after it had been grossly violated in the Vietnam War. The Bush administration has de facto-also abrogated the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act that prohibits military participation in the enforcement of civil law, and it violates the general Constitutional provision against the military action in domestic affairs.

Instead, the Bush Administration has visibly mobilized the Armed Forces and National Guard around all US airports and elsewhere, and the Pentagon is drawing up plans for its intervention in endless domestic affairs. It stands to reason that the machine gun toting military presence in the passenger areas of airports has not added one iota to security but serves only to terrorize the public into blind and passive acceptance of the violation of their civil rights there and elsewhere. Even the government has stated repeatedly that any other terrorist attack on the US is not likely to copy that of September 11, 2001 but to take totally different forms against which this military presence would offer no defense. Indeed, it would not have prevented that of September 11 either. The pretext that the country is at war is being used as cover for US government terror of its own at home and abroad; and the country is being militarized as never before, not even in war time.

The Pentagon is extending its actions in American Civil Affairs ever more, also by establishing a new office of Under Secretary of Defense for Homeland Security, which then created a northern command to coordinate military response to domestic threats. The Pentagon also has a new Under Secretary for Intelligence,

Stephen Cambone, who said the existing agencies will continue with their work but that his unit will ensure that they are meeting the intelligence needs and priorities laid out by the Pentagon, also at home. [Boston Globe June 8, 2003].

Pax Americana

The Pentagon is also expanding into previously unimagined places and roles overseas. There are now well over 100 US military bases around the world. and current US military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, Colombia, the former Yugoslavia, South Korea, the Philippines, and former Soviet states such as Georgia. The latest details, disclosed by the Wall Street Journal on June 10th 2003, include plans to increase U.S. forces in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa across the Red Sea from Yemen, setting up semi-permanent "forward bases" in Algeria, Morocco, and possibly Tunisia, and smaller facilities in Senegal, Ghana, and Mali that could be used to intervene in oil-rich West African countries, particularly Nigeria. Similar bases--or what some call lily pads--are now being sought or expanded in northern Australia, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, Kenya, Georgia, Azerbaijan, throughout Central Asia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Qatar, even Vietnam, and Iraq. [Needless to say that the construction of these military bases constitute lucrative multimillion contracts for US corporations including Bechtel and Halliburton. (Edtor)]

The new republics in former Soviet Central Asia and the former Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe are a particularly strong magnets for U.S. military presence, and a glance at the map will show that the US is systematically encircling China. Moreover, the Pentagon military missions are marginalizing the State Department diplomatic ones, with the senior military officer having more resources and greater influence than the US ambassador [Boston Globe, June 8 2003].

Even so, the Associated Press reports on February 24 that " senior U.S. officials have been quietly dispatched in recent days to the capitals of key Security Council countries where they are warning leaders to vote with the United States on Iraq or risk "paying a heavy price." Although this kind of blackmail has been SOP in all American administrations, the Bush Administration has carried the threat and practice to previously unheard of new heights. As President Bush declared in his State of the Union address "Those who are not with us, are against us" – and will pay a heavy price.

"We are in the process of taking a fundamental look at our military posture worldwide, including in the United States," said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on a recent visit to Singapore, where he met with military chiefs and defense ministers from throughout East Asia about U.S. plans there. "We're facing a very different threat than any one we've faced historically." But recall that this is the same Wolfowitz of Arabia talking who drew up his and PNAC’s plans to face this different threat already in his memos of 1992, 1997 and 2000.

The Law of the West

The Bush administration has also set aside centuries of International law. It wages illegal war, prohibited by numerous international treaties and by the United Nations Charter. Indeed it makes war without even declaring it, which even Hitler took the trouble to do.

The US armed forces wantonly violate Geneva conventions of crimes against humanity, genocide, weapons of mass destruction such as depleted uranium, cluster bombs, massive ‘’Daisy Cutter" bombs, destruction of civilian facilities to provide as power, water, and sanitation, and even neutral international waterways as when it deliberately blocked shipping on the Danube.

The Bush Administration (though Presidents Clinton and Bush Sr. also already earlier) have completely emasculated the United Nations instruments and procedures set up by the US and its allies after World War II to preserve the peace. Bush even had the gall to go to the UN and charge it with dereliction of duty and of its reputation by failing to give its stamp of approval for his War against Iraq – when the clear duty of the UN and especially of its Security Council is not to make war but to keep the peace.

His government and his lackey press mislead the public into believing that a Security Council resolution could legalize his war. The fact is that even with a SC resolution, his father’s War against Iraq in 1991 was in clear violation of Articles 2, 27, 41, 42, 43 and 53 of the UN Charter, among others.

The NATO states and President Clinton failed even to consult the UN before going to War against Yugoslavia. Then the present President waged War against Afghanistan without the slightest provocation from its government, without UN approval. And then it made War on Iraq in clear violation of the expressed desires of the UN membership. What this illustrates is the total abandonment of the UN as an institution and instrument for peace.

The demise of the UN as an International Body

After the US bombs a country into shambles, it then goes to the UN to ask it to pick up the pieces, or in plain English allegedly to legitimize the US military occupation of the country it had just destroyed.

But not only that, the violation of international law also constitutes ipso facto a violation of national law, because Senate ratification of an international treaty converts it into US law as well. Moreover, domestic democracy has been sacrificed to waging international war as well, as when NATO did so against Yugoslavia without even a single member country government troubling itself to ask its parliament or Congress for authorization to do so.

In a word, the US has replaced existing International law by new Law IN the West on the model of its own old Law OF the West. Then in the 19th century, vigilante lynch mobs formed ad hoc to go hang whomever they wanted; and now the US is imposing this Vigilante "Law" on the rest of the world by force. And as the vigilantes bought off or terrorized the sheriff and the judge to ‘’legitimize" themselves, so is the US, doing the same world wide in the real world, following the scripts of fictitious Spaghetti Western movies.

The Media
And what of the Fourth Estate – the Media?

They are strictly the mouthpiece of the Administration.

Note their behavior at White House, State Department, or Pentagon news conferences. All their questions are limited to technicalities about the implementation of Administration policies that are themselves accepted as cartes blanches.

Never ever has any representative of the US media posed a question that challenges the basis of the official policy in even the most timid way.

Indeed, not only what the press says or does not say reflects the policy and press- releases of the Administration. The very Media selection of what is or is not ‘’news,’’ e.g on the 6.30 pm Evening News of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, and shame on PPS for carrying the just as bad Jim Lehrer News Hour, is a simple reflection of what the White House or the State Department have declared to be ‘’news’’ that morning.

No matter how world shaking an event, if it has not shaken the piper, it does not merit mention by the media. But whatever the White House or the State Department declares to be news IS news. And even they have been obliged to make an agonizing reappraisal , albeit still only partial, of their own, after the revelations of torture of Iraqis has cast a shadow on their previous glowing reports about bringing democracy to them.

Their pieces in the press are little better. In a survey of op-eds in the Washington POST over four months, Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman found twice as many columns for as against the war, and in February 2003 the count was 24 in favor and 10 against, while the POST itself brought 9 editorials of its own to support the war. And that was regarding a war that had the highest popular opposition ever.The TV and radio talk shows are even more dominated by defenders of Administration policy. No matter that the Administration cooks, blends, massages and even simply invents the news; as is finally emerging regarding the non-existent weapons of mass destruction, which were the alleged reason for waging War against Iraq.

The Home of the Brave from 1984 to 2003

George Orwell would have to regard his dire predictions of Big Brother for 1984 as a benign Alice in a charming Wonderland version of Animal Farm. The latter is to be compared to the 2003 Bush and Ashcroft reality of double-think and new-speak in which, however, some are no longer equal than others, either at home or abroad, but still WAR IS PEACE – really – the President said so.

But the capacity of the United States to rule the world is more than questionable, especially after its 2003 debacle in Iraq.

Paper Tiger - The United States and the World
The US still has the world’s largest economy, which saw boom times during much of the 1990s, and it has unrivalled military power exceeding the total of the next dozen or more military powers combined. Moreover, the present Bush administration makes use of both of them in unilateral policies to impose its will on the rest of the world, friend and foe alike, to all of which Bush threw down the gauntlet of ‘’you are either with us or against us."

With means you do as we say, and against means you are under threat to be destroyed economically and politically, as well as militarily if we wish.

In case there be any doubt about our intentions and capabilities, Russia and Argentina are prime examples on the economic front as are Iraq through the boycott, Serbia and Afghanistan are so on the military front as well. The latter – but really both – are what President Bush father called THE NEW WORLD ORDER when he bombed Iraq in 1991. I termed it THIRD WORLD WAR in two senses, one that it takes place in THE THIRD WORLD and secondly that this war against the Third World constitutes a THIRD World War [Frank 1991].

The prosperity and welfare of the American people rests primarily on its position in the world today as Britain’s did in the nineteenth century. That observation is fundamentally different from the political and media hype about the sources of American exceptionalism that are supposedly in its genius, morality, productivity, and other characteristics that allegedly differentiate America from the rest of the world. On the contrary, America rests on two – maybe three- pillars:

1.The DOLLAR as the world currency whose monopoly privilege the US has to print at will, and

2. The PENTAGON with its unrivalled military capacities.

3. A third pillar perhaps is the government, educational and media fed IDEOLOGY that obscures these simple facts from public view. Moreover each supports the other: It costs dollars to maintain the Pentagon, its bases in 80 countries around the world, and the deployment of its military forces around the globe. Military expenditures are the prime causes of the twin American deficits, in the federal budget and in the balance of trade. Conversely, Pentagon strength helps sustain global confidence in the dollar.

But this same mutual reliance for strength, therefore, also constitutes two mutually related American Achilles heels.

The dollar is literally a Paper Tiger in that it is printed on paper whose value is based only on its acceptance and confidence in the same around the world. That confidence can decline or be withdrawn altogether almost from one day to the next and cause the dollar to lose half or more of its value.

Apart from cutting American consumption and investment as well as dollar-denominated wealth, any decline in the value of the dollar would also compromise US ability to maintain and deploy its military apparatus.

Conversely, any military disaster would weaken confidence in and thereby the value of the dollar. Indeed, at the 2003 World Economic Forum in Davos, the assembled world political and business elites expressed very serious fears that the mere deployment of the US military, e.g. against Iraq, would bring on a world depression. TIME Magazine this week reports on a comprehensive study of the US airline industry, which concludes that a war against Iraq would drive half of it into immediate bankruptcy. If so, what of still weaker non-American airlines? The insecurity that comes with military saber rattling and threats undermine confidence in the dollar and put brakes on investment. And no amount of ideology is sufficient completely to obscure that economic situation.

In fact, the world already is in depression, from which so far only the United States, Canada and Western Europe are partially exempt.

And the latter is so, because of the privileged position of the American economy within the global one, from whose mis-fortune Americans have been deriving the benefits of that position, which to repeat is essentially derived from the privilege of printing the world currency with which Americans can first buy up the production of the rest of the world at depressed prices and then have the same dollars be returned from abroad to be invested in Wall Street and US Treasury certificates for safe-keeping and/or higher earnings than are available elsewhere.

In the mid 1980s James Tobin [the inventor of the Tobin tax on financial transactions] and I were to my knowledge the only ones already to published predictions of DE-flation as the coming world economic danger. Economic policy makers however ignored these warnings and this risk [not really risk, but necessary consequence] while continuing their policies designed to fight IN-flation.

Nonetheless, since then commodity prices have fallen sharply and consistently and more recently industrial prices have fallen as well. Moreover in WORLD economic terms, high inflation in terms of their national currencies [pesos, rubles, etc.] and their sharp DEVALUATION against the DOLLAR world currency has been an effective de facto major DE-flation in the rest of the world. That has reduced their prices and made their exports cheaper to those who buy their currencies with dollars, primarily of course consumers, producers and investors in - and from ! - the United States. These additionally, which is hardly ever mentioned!, can and do buy up the rest of the world with dollars that ''cost'' only their printing and distribution, which for Americans have virtually no cost. [The $ 100 dollar bill is the world's most used cash currency on which runs the entire Russian economy, and there are two to now three times as many of them circulating outside as inside the US].

The American boom and welfare and then ''balanced'' federal budget 1992-2000 Clinton administration, contrary to its populist claims, only happened to coincide with this boom. The also same 8 year long prosperity of the United States was entirely built on the backs of the terrible depression, deflation and thus generated marked increase in poverty in the rest of the world. During this one decade, production declined by over half in Russia and Eastern Europe and life expectancy in Russia declined by 10 - ten - years, infant mortality, drunkenness, crime and suicide increased as never before in peacetime. Since 1997, income in Indonesia declined by half and generated its ongoing political crisis. That is dissipation of entropy generated in the US and its export abroad to those who are obliged to absorb it in ever greater DISorder. It would be difficult to find better examples – except the destruction of the entire society in Argentina, Rwanda, Congo, Sierra Leone, previously prosperous and stable Ivory Coast – not to mention the countries that have been visited by destruction through American military power

All this has among others the following consequences: in the US. it can export inflation that would otherwise be generated by this high supply of currency at home, whose low rate of inflation in the 1990s was therefore no miracle result of domestic ''appropriate'' Fed monetary policy.

The US has been able to cover its twin balance of trade and budget deficits with cheap money and goods from abroad. The US trade deficit is now running at over 500 billion dollars a year and still growing. Of that, 100 billion are covered by Japanese investment of their own savings in the US that saves nothing and which the Japanese may soon have to repatriate to manage their own banking and economic crisis – especially if an American war against Iraq causes a n even temporary spike the price of oil on whose import Japan is so dependent.

Another $ 100 billion comes from Europe in the form of various kinds of investment, including direct real investment, which could dry up as the European recession continues, the Europeans become exasperated with American policy, or they have any number of other reasons to reduce their dollar reserves and put them into their own Euro currency instead.

A third 100 billion is supplied by China, which first sells the US its cheap manufactures for dollars and then accumulates those dollars as foreign exchange reserves – thus in effect giving away its poor producers’ goods to rich Americans. China does this to keep its exports flowing and its industries going, but if it decided to devote these goods to expanding its own internal market more, its people would gain in income and wealth, and the United States would be out of luck. The remaining $ 200 billion of deficit are covered by other capital flows, including debt service from the poor Latin Americans and Africans who have paid off the principal of their debts already several times over and yet keep increasing the total amount owed by rolling it over at higher rates of interest. The idea of declaring US chapter 11 or 9 type insolvency is however finally catching on.

Thus, deflation / devaluation elsewhere in the world has like a magnet attracted speculative financial capital from the rest of the world - both American owned and foreign owned – into US Treasury certificates [ stopping up the US budget deficit] and into Wall Street. That is what fed and supported its 1990s bull market, which in turn has increased, supported and spread wider a speculative and illusory in increase in wealth for American and other stock holders and through this also illusory ''wealth effect'' has supported higher consumption and investment. The subsequent and present bear market decline in stock prices nonetheless is a still a profit boon for enterprises who issued and sold their stocks at bull market high and rising stock prices. For they are now buying back their OWN stocks at what for them are bargain basement low prices, which represent an enormous profit for them at the expense of small stock holders who are now selling these stocks at low and declining prices. The US ''prosperity'' now rests on the knife edge also of an unstable enormous domestic corporate and consumer [credit card, mortgage and other] debt.

Moreover, the US is also vastly over-indebted to foreign owners of US Treasury certificates, Wall Street stock and other assets, which can be called in by foreign central banks who have been keeping reserves in US dollars and other foreign owners of US debt. Indeed, it is the very US policy that has contributed so much to destabilization elsewhere in the world [e.g. through the destabilization of Southeast Asia that undermined the Japanese economy and financial system even more than it would otherwise have been] that now threatens and now soon makes much more likely that especially Japanese and European holders of US debt must cash it in to shore up their own ever more unstable instable economic and financial systems. The liabilities of the US to foreigners now equal two thirds of annual US GNP – and therefore can and will never be paid off. However any hick in rolling this debt over and over, can result in foreign attempts to get out as much money as they can – resulting in a crash of the dollar.

Another major consequence is that the US - and world! - economy is now in a bind from which it most probably can NOT extricate itself by resorting to Keynesian pump priming and much less to full scale macro-economic policy and support of the US and Western/Japanese economy, as the Carter and Reagan administrations did. Military Keynesianism, disguised as Friedman/Volker Monetarism and Laffer Curve Supply-Sideism, was begun by Carter in 1977 and put into high gear in 1979, when Carter the Fed was run by Carter appointee Paul Volker, who in October 1979 switched Fed monetary policy from high money creation / low interest price thereof to attempted low money creation / high interest [ to 20 percent monetary! ] to rescue the dollar from its 1970s tumble and attract foreign capital to the poor US. At the same time, Carter began Military Keynesianism in June 1979., which was then escalated further by President Reagan In that they then succeeded..

It is highly unlikely however that analogous policies could succeed again now. The US would need to invoke the same re-flationary policy again for itself and its allies, now. but it can not do so! The Fed has already lowered the interest rate so far that it cannot go much lower and is not likely to stimulate investment by doing so. On the other hand, raising the interest rate to continue to attract funds from abroad would risk choking off all domestic investment and working capital. Brazil tried that, admittedly with extravagant monetary interest rates at 60 percent to attract foreign capital, and ruined its domestic economy.

The US may [should? must ??] now attempt a repeat performance of the 1980s to spend itself and its allies [now minus Japan but plus Russia?] out of the present and much deeper world recession and threatening globe encompassing depression. The US would then again have to resort to massive Keynesian deficit [ using September 11 as a pretext for probably military] RE-flationary spending as the locomotive to pull the rest of the world out of its economic doldrums. However, the US is already the world consumer of last resort, but it can be so with the savings, investments and cheap imports from abroad, which themselves form part of the global economic problem.

Moreover, to settle its now enormous and ever growing foreign debt, the US may chose also to resort to IN-flationary reduction of the burden to itself of that debt and its also ever growing foreign debt service. But even the latter could - in contrast to the above summarized previous period- NOT avoid generating a further SUPER trade balance particularly if market demand falls further and pressure increases abroad to export to the US demand/er of last resort. But this time, there will be NO capital inflows from abroad to rescue the US economy. On the contrary, the now downward pressure to devalue the US dollar against other currencies would spark a

capital flight from the US, both from US Government bonds and from Wall Street where significant stock price declines generate further price declines and deflation in world terms even if the US attempts domestic inflation.

The price of oil is yet another fly in the political economic ointment, whose dimension and importance is inversely proportional to the health or illness of the ointment itself. And today that is quite sick and deteriorating already. The world price of oil has always been a two edged sword whose double cutting edges can be de-sharpened with the help of successful alternative economic and price policies. On the one hand, oil producing economies and states and their interests need a minimum price floor to produce and sell their oil instead of leaving it underground and also postponing further oil productive investment while waiting for better times. The US is a high cost oil producer. A high oil price is economically and politically essential also for important states like Russia, Iran and especially Saudi Arabia, as well as US oil interests. On the other hand, a low price of oil is good for oil importing countries, their consumers including oil consuming producers of other products, and supports state macro economic policy, eg in the US, where low oil prices are both good politics and good for the economy. These days, the high/low price line between the two seems to be around US$ 20 a barrel - at the present value price of the dollar! But nobody seems to be able to rig the price of oil at that level. The present conflict, long since no longer within OPEC, is primarily between OPEC that now sells only about 30 to 40 percent of the world supply and other producers that supply 60 percent, today especially Russia but also including the US itself as both a significant producer and a major market, although that is increasingly shifting to East Asia. Recession in both and the resultant decline in demand for oil drags its price downward. US strategy and wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. is to gain as much CONTROL of oil as it can and for now to share as little of it as it must with Russia in Central Asia, Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf regions. And that control, even if it cannot control the price of oil, is to be used as an important geo-political economic lever to manipulate against US oil import dependent allies in Europe and Japan and ultimately its strategic enemy in China.

For US Keynesian spending re-flation as well as in-flation can no longer put the floor under the price of oil needed today and tomorrow. No policy, but only recovery generated world market demand I- and/or limitations in the supply of oil -can now provide a floor to and prevent a further fall in the price of oil - and its deflationary pull on other prices. And further deflation in turn will increase the burden of the already vastly over-indebted US, Russian and East Asian, not to mention some European and Third World, economies.

Thus the political economy of oil is likely to add to further deflationary pressure. That would - indeed already does - again significantly weaken oil export dependent Russia. But this time it would also weaken US oil interests and their partners abroad, especially in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Indeed, the low price of oil during the 1990s has already transformed the Saudi economy from erstwhile boom to a bust. That has already generated middle class unemployment and a significant decline in income that has also already generated widespread dissatisfaction and now threatens to do so even more at precisely the time when the Saudi monarchy is already facing destabilizing generational transition problems of its own. Moreover a low oil price would also make new investment unattractive and postpone both new oil production and eliminate potential profits from laying new pipelines in Central Asia.

indeed, there is an even more immediate urgent need for the US to control Iraqi oil reserves, the second largest in the region and the most under-drilled with a large capacity to increase oil production and drive down prices. But that is not all or even the heart of the matter. Many people were surprised when President Bush added Iran and North Korea to his ‘’axis of evil." Though they may not be so surprised at American efforts to promote a coup and change of regime in Venezuela, which supplies about 15 percent of US imports. So what do these countries have in common, many people ask. Well, three of them have oil, but not North Korea. So what is its threat that puts it in Bush’s axis. Surely not geography or alliances [Iraq and Iran were mortal enemies, and North Korea does not play ball in their league.

The answer is simple and resolves not only that puzzle but what could otherwise appear as a rather confused and confusing US foreign policy:

[1.] Iraq changed the pricing of its oil from dollars to Euros in 2000.

[2] Iran threatens to do so.

[3] North Korea has changed to deal only in Euros.

[4] Venezuela has withdrawn some of its oil from dollar pricing and is instead swapping it for goods with other third world countries. Besides an old friend of mine, Venezuela’s Fernando Mires at OPEC headquarters in Vienna, proposed that all of OPEC should switch from pricing its oil in dollars to pricing it in Euros!

OPEC has recently re-examined his possibility and now Russia has as well. Nothing else, no amount of terrorism, could be more threatening to the US; for any and all of that would pull all support out from under the dollar as oil importers would no longer buy dollars but instead Euros to buy their oil. Indeed they would want also to switch their reserves out of the dollar and into the Euro. Iraq, prior to the invasion, already gained about 15 percent with its switch as the Euro rose against the dollar.

And besides, the Arab oil states who now sell their oil for paper dollars would be unlikely to continue turning around and spending them again for US military hardware. It is this horrific scenario that US occupation of Iraq is designed to prevent, with Iran next in line. Curiously, this oil-dollar-euro ‘’detail’’ is never mentioned by the US government or media. No wonder that major European states are opposed to Bush’s Iraq policy, which is supported only by the UK, which is a North Sea oil producer itself. Simple how one little piece of incidental information can make the other pieces of the entire jig-saw puzzle fall into place!

All of these present problems and developments now threaten to [will?] pull the rug out from under US domestic and international political economy and finance. The only protection still available to the United States still derives from its long since and still only two pillars of the ''NEW WORLD ORDER'' established by President Bush father after ''Bush's Gulf War" against Iraq and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. President Bush son is now trying to consolidate his father's new world order [no doubt with the latter still as a power behind the throne] beginning with the WAR AGAINST AFGHANISTAN and threatening once again against Iraq, and the Bush-Putin effort now also to construct a US-Russian Entente - or is it Axis.

The dollar pillar is now threatening to crumble, as it already did after the Vietnam War but has so far remained standing through three decades of remedial patch work.

But as we have seen, the US is now running out of further economic remedies to maintain the dollar pillar upright. It's only protection would be to generate serious inflation in the short run by printing still more US dollars to service its debt, which would then undermine its strength and crack the dollar pillar and weaken the support it affords still more.

That would leave only the US military pillar to support US political economy and society.

But it and reliance on it also entails dangers of its own. Visibly, that is the case for such countries as Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan and of course all others who are thereby deliberately put on notice to play ball by US rules in its new world order on pain of eliciting the same fate for themselves.

But the political blackmail to participate in the new world order on US terms also extends to US - especially NATO - allies and Japan. It was so exercised in the Gulf War [other states paid US expenses so that the US made a net profit from that war], the US war against Yugoslavia in which NATO and its member states were cajoled to participate, and then by the War against Afghanistan as part of President Bush's new policy pronouncement. He used the early Cold WAR terminology of John Foster Dulles that ''You Are Either With Us Or Against Us"] But US reliance on this, the then only remaining, strategy of military political blackmail can also lead the US to bankruptcy as the failing dollar pillar fails to support it as well; and it can come also to entail US ''OVERSTRETCH'' in Paul Kennedy terms and ''BLOWBACK' in CIA and Chalmers Johnson terms.

In summary and plain English, the US has only two assets left to rely on, both admittedly of world importance, but perhaps even so insufficient. They are the dollar and its military political assets. For the first, the economic chickens in the US Ponzi scheme pyramid of cards are now coming home to roost even in the United States itself.

The second pillar is now in use to prop up the new order the world over. Most importantly perhaps is the now proposed US/Russia entente against China instead of [or to achieve?] a US defense against a Russia/China [and India?] entente. The NATO War against Yugoslavia generated moves toward the latter, and the US War against Afghanistan promotes the former]. God/Allah forbid that any of these nor their Holy War against Islam blow us all up or provoke others to do so.

However that may be, US imperial political military blackmail may still blowback on the United States also, thus not out of strength but out of the weakness of a true Paper Tiger.

[Rory Winter]

The Yoke of Zion
By Israel Shamir

A small band of determined warriors takes on and fights off the mightiest army of the region: this is the stuff history is made of. Thermopylae, move over, Bint Jbeil comes in! Bishop Philip of Antioch compared the levelling of this small Lebanese town with the destruction of Stalingrad, but these cities are also comparable by courage of their defenders. Not often, not every generation merits to witness such a shining example of valour: for three long weeks a handful of Hezbollah warriors – two thousand by the most optimistic count – fought off to standstill ten, twenty, thirty times more numerous Israeli troops. Forty years ago, Israelis defeated three armies in one week, but now the invaders’ charm wore off, or passed over to the vanquished. In today’s somewhat feminine victim-centred narrative, suffering attracts more attention than masculine gallantry. Thus Qana massacre had overshadowed a greater going-on, that is the steadfast resistance of the Lebanese fighters. But Andromache’s sorrow should not obscure Hector’s courage: Hezbollah’s deeds deserve to be immortalised by poets.

Why the war? Leave small details to a future Plutarch; this is another round of battle for Palestine. Supported and supplied by their captive empire, the US, the Jews had all the weapons, all the ammunition, all the diplomatic support, when hubris-drunk they drove into disarmed and starved Gaza to kill off its last resisters and impose the Yoke of Zion. Their invasion was prepared by a year-long siege and incessant shelling; they were c***-sure they can devour Gaza at will. And indeed, all kept mum: the Egyptians traded the glory of the Ramadan War for greenbacks, sons of Hejaz and Nejd were too busy serving at the oil pump, and the princes of the Gulf cared but for their falcons. The Jews felt secure as they stooped to kill off Gaza: who will disturb the lion of Judah roaring at his prey? And a tiny force from the Mount Lebanon said: we will. They attacked the all-powerful Jews; thus the hobbit pierced the sinew of Nazgul when he stooped to kill. Israeli army roused from his prey turned north and lashed with all its might at the Hezbollah fighters. But they stood fast.

This was most unexpected. The Israelis were used to kill – or disperse - weaponless untrained Palestinians. Instead, the fighters of Sayyed Nasrallah dug in their heels into the bare hills of Bint Jbeil and gave battle. If they were destroyed quickly, Israeli generals would lead their victorious troops to Damascus and Teheran before turning back and despoiling Palestine of its priceless jewel, Haram al Sharif. It still can happen, but chances were diminished by the steadfastness of Hezbollah.

More important, Hezbollah refused to cease fire as long as Israel occupies the land of Lebanon. This daring step undermined the whole strategy of Zionists. They planned to occupy the South and wait there until the international (or NATO) force will enter and do their job for them. Hezbollah’s decision lacks one detail: cease fire must extend to Palestine, as well. It is inconceivable that Lebanon will lay arms down, while Gaza is besieged and Nablus is devoured.

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert said: “We have changed the Middle East”. I do not know whether all Middle East had changed, but in Israel we witness a great change. Until now, only a few just men and women of Israel called their government to desist in their aggression against Gaza and Lebanon. But the Katyusha rain changed minds of many. At first carried away by arrogance of their generals, now Israelis discovered the heavy price of war. Their first complaints on the army’s failure to deliver gave place to critique of the policy. They began to understand that time is not working for them.

The now-subservient regimes of neighbouring countries can fall any minute or remove the Yoke of Zion. Their rulers were led to believe in Jewish superiority, and that is why they chose to condemn ‘imprudent Hezbollah’. But now their people see that even a small force of determined fighters can beat the enemy, they find no justification for cowardly behaviour of their rulers. It can lead to revolution, for King Faruk was removed by young officers of Falujah fame disappointed by his weakness in 1948.

Neil MacFarquhar reports in the NYT (28.7.06): “At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments, starting with Saudi Arabia, slammed Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the United States and Israel took as a wink and a nod to continue the fight.

Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for more than two weeks, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements. The Saudi royal family and King Abdullah II of Jordan, who were initially more worried about the rising power of Shiite Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor, are scrambling to distance themselves from Washington.”

The report sees the popular opinion, “the Arab street” as the vehicle for change; but the change can come from above, too. The cruel bombardment of Beirut and of all Lebanon was supposed to frighten the Arab nations into obedience; instead, it convinced the rich and powerful Arabs that as long as the Jews run the writ in the Middle East, their riches and power can be taken from them anytime by will of a Jewish general. Beirut was peaceful, Beirut agreed to expel Syrians, Beirut was the most pro-Western state, and it did not save the city from Jewish – not even vengeance for there was nothing to avenge – but arbitrary heavy-handedness. The Arabs at power ask, whether the Jewish state can be a peaceful neighbour at all, or is it (as the Iranian President Ahmadinejad says) bellicose by its nature and had to be dealt with as once the Crusader Kingdom was.

Indeed, the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem existed longer than the Jewish state, and probably would last for centuries, but its innate aggressiveness and preparedness to serve as bridgehead for European invasions. The turning point in Crusaders’ fortunes took place some 850 years ago, at the Second Crusade which bore an uncanny resemblance to the Second Lebanese War. By that time, the Arab nations were inured in invincibility of the Crusaders; sheer arrogance of power led the Crusaders to march on Damascus, their peaceful, complacent and hedonist neighbour, the least belligerent among small independent and much-divided Arab states, a “Lebanon of 12th century”. At first, the Crusaders ran into guerrilla resistance of the then Hezbollah, and lost a lot of soldiers. When they besieged the city, the ruler of Damascus was forced to ask for help of his neighbour Nureddin, “Ahmadinejad of his day”; an army of Nureddin drew close and the Franks had to retreat in haste.

The Arab neighbours learned two things: (1) submission and complacency can’t guarantee their peace for the Crusader state is a Damocles’ Sword forever hanging above their heads; and (2) Crusaders can be defeated. Out of the Second Crusade, came Saladin, a nephew of Nureddin, who united Syria and Egypt and eventually defeated the Crusaders at Qurn Hittin. Now the same two lessons were delivered to the Arabs, by courtesy of IDF. Is a new Saladin on the way?

II

But the Jews may yet face another danger caused by their assertiveness. They relate to themselves the fiery prophesy of Rev. 19: 15 “Out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, with it he should smite the goyim, and he shall shepherd them with a rod of iron; and he is crushing with his feet the grapes of God’s wrath”. They take it so seriously that their massacre of Qana (120 butchered refugees) was named “the Grapes of Wrath”. These features are not the most endearing; and not only the Arabs may object to be shepherded by an iron rod.

The US pays heavily for the Jewish fun. A poor American may hate to think that he has no medical insurance but his government pays tribute to rich Israel. Average American filling his average car may dislike to pay for support of the Jewish state because before the Neo-Cohns got into power in the Administration, gas was much, much cheaper. A wealthy and worldly American may feel vexed that he is not welcome wherever he goes – from Paris to Istanbul - as he was before the Yoke of Zion.

An easy-going American may dislike that he can’t cuss a Jewish cop without reading about it in the New York Times. A believing American may be upset that he can’t mention Christ unless he is ready to be summoned to a court hearing. An honest American – or an European – may be annoyed by their hypocrisy. It is not enough that they push for war, they also blame others for it. It is not enough that they kill children in droves, they also preach on immense value of human life.

A religious Bible-thumping American may remember the prophecy of Ezekiel, 22 who said to the princes of Israel in the name of the Lord: “You have become guilty in your blood that you have shed; everyone among you, putting out his full force to shed blood” – that is the blood of innocent Palestinians and Lebanese; Ezekiel also prophesied the Zionist Gathering of Jews, and that it will lead to a major disaster to Zionists: “the house of Israel has become dross to me; therefore I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, and you shall be melted in its midst, and you shall know that I, the Lord, have poured out my fury upon you. The Israelis have used oppression, and committed robbery, and have wronged the poor and needy; indeed, they have oppressed the gentiles wrongfully, and therefore I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath; their own way have I rewarded upon their heads, said the Lord God.”

An American politician, maybe even an American president may get tired by these people’s endless need to demand sympathy or to protest an outrage; by necessity to watch out, by ideological censorship and party discipline, by their blackmailing habits, by their fat pockets and media hold, by Damocles Sword they hanged above his head.

Moreover, an American or a European who calls himself today “a Jew” may ponder whether he has much in common with the people whose poets call upon their soldiers: “Storm on Lebanon and Gaza, and plow it and sow it with salt, raze it down, let no human being remain alive/ Turn them into a desert, rubble, a valley of mess, unpopulated/ Save your nation and drop bombs / On villages and cities, their collapsing houses do shell / Kill them, shed their blood, turn their lives into living hell /”.

He may give a thought whether he wishes to be a secret weapon of Israel in words of Prime Minister Olmert who said: “Arab weapons, even when they hurt us, are nothing like the powerful, secret weapon we possess: The Jewish people… across the world, and the special feeling of love and mutual commitment that prevails between all Jews, regardless of where they are”. He may just stop to consider himself a Jew and melt into general populace, as millions did before him.

A Jewish friend of mine wrote: “I have asked a number of my friends in the US whether they think the Zionist mantra retains its power, and they agree it does not. The lobby does not, I think, have a bright future - that is why its agents have faced prosecution. Even if their lock on Congress persists for some time, their hold on American opinion must now diminish. I believe Lenny Brenner when he argues that young Jews are deserting Judaism and Zionism in droves.”

Israelis, i.e. dwellers of Palestine who consider themselves Jewish, may also contemplate whether they want to fight and support the ideological Yoke of Zion which brings them only hatred outside and poverty within. Instead of living in economic prosperity and in harmony with our neighbours, the Yoke of Zion turns us into impoverished cannon fodder.

And after all, Americans and Europeans may just get bored of these guys that endlessly preach to others and are never willing to hearken to others’ views. Even Germans may one day kick their masochist habit of endless repentance. And then the Yoke of Zion will be gone, for this Yoke is nothing but shared belief in Jewish superiority. And then, the perfectly harmless Jews will have to learn and become usual citizens of their countries, without a special access to presidents, bank coffers and TV screens.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shamireaders/message/760
SEE ALSO
http://www.gv2000.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=42&pid=282#pid282

[Rory Winter]

It's about annexation, stupid!
Written by Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD
Saturday, 05 August 2006

Officially, Israel's ground invasion of Lebanon is an act of self-defense against Hezbollah's threat, aimed at creating a security buffer zone until the arrival of a "multinational force with an enforcement capability". But increasingly, as the initial goal of a narrow strip of only a few kilometers has now been extended up to the Litani River deep in Lebanon, the real motives behind Israel's invasion are becoming crystal-clear.

It's about (de facto) annexation, stupid. This is a war to annex a major chunk of Lebanese territory without necessarily saying so, under the pretext of security buffer and deterrence against future attacks on Israel.

Already, since the Six Day War, Israel has annexed the Sheba Farms, considered part of the Syrian Golan Heights, although the government of Lebanon has long complained that the 25-square-kilometer area was a part of Lebanon. Now the Israeli army is sweeping the area south of the Litani River as a temporary occupation.

"We have no intention of extending our operation more than 70 kilometers north of our borders with Lebanon," stated Lieutenant-Colonel Hemi Lini on the Lebanese border on July 17, one week after the war's outbreak.

This would put Israel, assuming for a moment that the Israel Defense Forces' operations prove ultimately successful, in control of the Litani River, thus fulfilling Israel's founding fathers' dream, stretching back to Chaim Weizmann, head of the World Zionist Organization, who in 1919 declared the river "essential to the future of the Jewish national home".

Consequently, contrary to the pro-Israel pundits' reassurances that this war is not about occupation, all the tangible signs indicate the exact opposite, ie, the distinct possibility of a "war of acreage" whereby Israel would expand its territory, acquire a new strategic depth, and simultaneously address its chronic water shortage by exploiting the Litani.

Access to the Litani would translate into an annual increase of water supply by 800 million cubic meters. This in turn might allow Israel to bargain with Syria over the Golan Heights, source of a full one-third of Israel's fresh water. However, a more likely scenario is Israel's continued unwillingness to abide by United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338 calling for its withdrawal from the Syrian territories.

The entire Western media have settled on a naive perspective of the reasons for Israel's invasion of Lebanon, namely as a defensive measure against Hezbollah. Conspicuously absent is any serious consideration of a viable, alternative explanation while focusing on, in essence, the same ingredients as in the 1982 invasion: "deceit and misleading statements" by leaders, "inaccurate announcements" by the military spokesmen, and "gross exaggeration" of threats, to paraphrase a candid reflection of an Israeli general, Yehoshafat Harkabi.

Following this scenario, Israel has dropped leaflets throughout southern Lebanon warning the civilians to leave or risk their lives, as they would be considered "Hezbollah sympathizers" if they refused to leave. Reminiscent of Israel's annexation of Palestinian lands in 1948 and beyond, the present war is causing mass refugees, who in all likelihood will not return to their homes any time soon.

The geostrategic and water dimensions of Israel's quest to possess southern Lebanon notwithstanding, the question is, of course, whether or not the world community will tolerate such a development that would remake the map of the Middle East.

There are plenty of reasons to think that in light of the United States' complicit silence on Israel's violation of the territorial integrity of Lebanon, Israel will somehow manage to ride out the international criticisms and stick to its undeclared plan to annex southern Lebanon. However, what is less certain is that the combined efforts of Hezbollah and the rest of Lebanese society, not to mention other Arab contributions, will prevail over Israel's appetite for a decent part of Lebanon.

With the military balance disproportionately in Israel's favor, we can safely assume that the new Operation Litani will succeed and thus create a "new Middle East" with a "greater" and geographically expanded Israel and a shrunken or diminished Lebanon.

If so, then the chronology of events narrated by future historians will closely follow this line of thought: that Israel deliberately provoked Hezbollah into action, after a six-year hiatus, by pressuring Hezbollah's ally, Hamas, which was subjected to a campaign of terror, financial squeeze and intimidation.

The laying of such a trap by Israel would not have happened in a vacuum of strategic thinking on Israel's part. The fact that Hezbollah fell into the trap is a result of several factors, including an adventurist element lending itself to the "reckless" action of Hezbollah on July 11 with respect to crossing the Blue Line and attacking an Israeli patrol.

Since then, the Israelis have put on the mask of being reluctant warriors, delaying their troops' entry into south Lebanon and thus perpetuating Israel's self-image as disinterested in any imperial grand objectives. Yet the facts on the ground speak louder than words and, indeed, what fact is more important than Israeli leaders' announced intention to occupy up to the Litani River?

Again, what is understandably omitted in those announcements, adopted as the real reasons by CNN and other US networks, is Israel's predatory lust after Litani's water sources, as well as for new geographical and strategic depth. This in turn might explain the otherwise inexplicably blatant overreaction of Israel to a border incident with Hezbollah.

Instead of searching for answers in the Israeli collective psyche or in the context of action, we must probe the answer in the writings of Israel's founding fathers, including Theodor Herzl and David Ben-Gurion, commonly yearning for Israel's control of the Litani River. As a timely addition to their old wish, Israel today has a security-related explanation, justifying the territorial takeover in the near future in terms of the lessons of the present war, the main lesson being Israel's dire need to gain strategic depth to avoid rocket attacks.

Indeed, the verdict will soon be out in Israel about the precious lesson of Lebanon War II, that is, how to prevent future rocket attacks in the only feasible way, that is, direct control of southern Lebanon.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review. He is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.

Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved

[Rory Winter]

At Least 100,000 March Against US-Israeli Aggression, London, 5 August 2006





Click Link Below for more Reports, Pictures and Videos

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2006/08/at-least-100000-march-against-u s.html


Thousands protest in London against Israeli crimes in Lebanon; Britain, America and Israel are on one side and 160 countries are on the other side
06/08/2006

Thousands of people took to the streets of London Saturday demanding an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East. The demonstration passed the US embassy and Downing Street and London's Metropolitan Police said 15,000 people were on the protest, while the organizers, the left-wing Stop the War Coalition, claimed a turn-out around 100,000-strong.

The demonstrators massed opposite the Houses of Parliament. Stop the War spokesman John Rees said: "It's about telling the British and US governments that we want an unconditional ceasefire. We're the people who have the power to stop the Israelis in Lebanon.

"Their silence is permitting mass murder in Lebanon by the Israeli forces. Look at the casualties: it's eight to one." Salma Yaqoob, chairwoman of Stop the War in Britain's second city of Birmingham, said: "We're here to protest because of Israel's attack in Lebanon and the fact that Britain, America and Israel are on one side and 160 countries are on the other side."

Among the placards were ones branding US President George W. Bush "World's number one terrorist" and others reading "Freedom for Palestine" and "Hands off Lebanon". Demonstrators booed and chanted "George Bush, terrorist" and "murderers" as the rally passed the heavily-guarded US embassy, and some waved the green and yellow banners of Hezbollah.

http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=754&language=en

[Rory Winter]

Israel and US Looking for a Lebanon Pretext to Attack Iran
By Abbas Edalat (Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran), 5 August 2006 (source: CASMII)

The criminal war waged by Israel against Lebanon is the first stage of a regional war against Syria and Iran planned for months by the US and Israel with support from Tony Blair. Determined to widen the conflict by attacking Syria and Iran, the three aggressor countries Israel, the US and the UK, have firmly opposed and continue to oppose an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon [1].

It has now been revealed by Salon Media Group that the Bush Administration, dominated by the neo-conservatives, is sharing secret intelligence with Israel in order to concoct a pretext, based on Syrian and Iranian supply activities in support of Hezbollah, for bombing both these countries [2].

Since the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a military assault on Iran has been on the neo-conservatives' agenda and the US and Israel have both been preparing for precisely such an assault [3][4], with President Bush not even ruling out the use of nuclear weapons against the non-nuclear Iran [5].

For some three years, the case for an attack on Iran in the west was essentially focused on the US and Israeli unfounded allegations and a campaign of hysteria in the media that Iran has a covert nuclear weapons program. Despite the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no shred of evidence of a diversion of Iran's nuclear activities into a weapons program, the US has used massive economic and political pressure and successfully abused the IAEA to refer Iran to the UN Security Council earlier this year [6].

The recent mandatory UN Security Council resolution against Iran was adopted on August 1, 2006 to demand that Iran suspend all its uranium enrichment activities by the end of the month. It was designed by the US and the UK to destroy any chance of negotiations after Iran had in fact accepted the incentive package of the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany as a basis of negotiations [7]. It also preempted the substantive response of Iran to the package due on August 22. Iran has already rejected the resolution, which contradicts its inalienable rights under the Non Proliferation Treaty for a civilian nuclear technology.

Although, the resolution will no doubt be used by the US and Israel to try to justify their intended attack on the Iranian nuclear plants, the US diplomatic strategy to obtain a resolution based on article 42 of the UN charter to impose sanctions and legitimize the use of force against Iran has been defied strongly by China and Russia since February and remains in disarray.

It is this failure of the US diplomacy which prompted Israel to attack Lebanon with full support of the US and the UK under the pretext of the capture of its two soldiers. The aim is to cripple the pro Iran Hezbollah and to implicate Iran in starting the conflict and in providing arms to Hezbollah as a pretext for launching a military assault on an Iran, which would soon be in breach of a Security Council resolution.

Only the antiwar movement and the urgent united action of Iranian communities worldwide can prevent the imminent attack on Iran and thus a major conflagration in the Middle East and beyond.


[1] Wake Up Call to Iranian Communities Around the World:
War waged by Israel in Lebanon is prelude to war on Iran.
By Abbas Edalat, Foaad Khoshmood, Shahram Mostarshed, Daniel M Pourkesali, Rostam Pourzal, Nader Sadeghi, Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, Massy Homayouni,
31 July 2006

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfmSectionID=107&ItemID=10684

[2] The neocons' next war, By Sidney Blumenthal, 3 Aug 2006

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/salon027.html

[3] Israel readies forces for strike on nuclear Iran, Sunday Times on 11 Dec, 2005

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1920074,00.html


[4] The New Yorker, "The Iran Plans," Issue of April 17, 2006

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060417fa_fact


[5] Iran: Cooler heads urge Bush to talk, By Jim Lobe, Asia Times, 20 Apr, 2006

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HD20Ak01.html


[6] IAEA finds no evidence of Iranian nuclear-weapons plan,
CASMII Press Release, 2 Mar, 2006

www.campaigniran.org/casmii/page/p/CASMII-Statement-IAEA-finds-no-evid ence-of-Iranian-nuclear-weapons-plan


[7] Associated Press, "Iran calls Western incentives acceptable," July 16, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060716/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_nuclear.

End.

http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/page/p/Israel-and-US-Looking-for-a- Lebanon-Pretext-to-Attack-Iran-

[Rory Winter]

Atrocities in Gaza, Lebanon motivated by Talmudic mentality
Khalid Amayreh
Palestine Times
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/message/6003


"One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." (New York
Daily News, 28 February 1994, p. 6) When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert suggested on 22 June that Jewish lives were worth more than
Palestinian lives, he was actually making an ideological statement of
immense significance and symbolism. The plainly racist remarks—a
repugnant taboo in any Western country— encapsulate the entire
Zionist discourse toward non-Jews in general and Palestinians,
Lebanese and other Arabs and Muslims in particular. The pornographic
killing by Israel of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, as well as
the systematic wanton destruction by the Israeli air force of the
civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon can be viewed as an
honest translation of the Talmudic ideology, which more or less has
come to dominate Israeli thinking as the Israeli society continues to
drift menacingly to religious bigotry and chauvinism. In fact, one
can safely argue that Israel 's brazenly criminal behaviour with
respect to the Palestinian and Lebanese people have consistently been
a practical embodiment of the Talmudic perception of non-Jews. This
perception—racist to the hilt if not outright satanic—considers
non-Jews as beasts or at best lesser human beings.

Talmudic racism

There is no doubt that a rudimentary survey of Rabbinic commentaries
on the status of non-Jews according to Halacha (Jewish religious
law), of both present and past, reveals that a decisive majority of
Talmudic sages view goyim (the derogatory Hebrew term for non-Jews)
as either animals or sub-humans. A few months ago, when Israeli troops
vacated Jewish settlers from a West Bank settler outpost, an Israeli
Knesset member representing the National Religious Party (NRP)
lambasted the army for treating "human beings (Jews) the same way they
were treating Palestinians." The rabbi's remarks were reported by the
Israeli press and aroused no reactions whatsoever, reflecting rampant
racism in Israel . In 1994, when an American Jewish immigrant named
Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Arab worshipers as they were praying at
the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, militant Gush Emunim (block of the
faithful) Rabbi Moshe Levenger declared, "I am sorry not only about
dead Arabs but about dead flies." A few days after the massacre,
Goldstein was eulogized by the Rabbi of Kiryat Arba'a, Dov Lior, who
praised him as "full of love for fellow human beings."

According to Israel Shahak, author of Jewish History, Jewish
Religion—The Weight of Three Thousand Years, the term "human
beings" according to Halacha refers solely to Jews. Shahak's view
is vindicated by numerous Talmudic passages, such as the following:
"All Gentile children are animals." (Yebamoth, 98a.); The gentiles
are outside the protection of the Law and God has exposed their money
to Israel ." (Baba Kamma, 37-b.); "God created them in the form of
men for the glory of Israel . But Akum (non-Jews) were created for
the sole end of ministering unto them (the Jews) day and night. Nor
can they ever be relieved from this service. It is becoming to the
son of a king (an Israelite) that animals in their natural form, and
animals in the form of human beings should minister unto him.
(Midrasch talpioth, fol. 225d; "the sexual intercourse of a Goi is
like that of a beast." (Sanhedrin, 74-b, Tosephot.) Now, these
Talmudic injunctions, merely general examples, are not anachronistic
anomalies that have no relevance to Zionism as many Israeli
apologists and spokespersons would argue. In fact, they are being
applied, even in a brazen manner, in the West Bank and Gaza and
Lebanon . The exoneration of Israeli soldiers convicted of murdering
Palestinian children (like the soldier who murdered 13-year-old Iman
al-Hamas near Rafah in 2004 while on her way to school), in many ways
epitomizes the Israeli-Jewish perceptions of non-Jews. In short,
non-Jews, according to Talmudic teachings, are not men but beasts;
even the best of the Goyim should be killed; they are unclean
idolaters deserving of death; and the Jews are to rule over the
world served by the Goyim. This is the real explanation of why
Israeli soldiers and settlers are killing Palestinian and Lebanese
civilians at will without showing the slightest remorse. This is also
what made the Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz remark, "I sleep well
and have a clear conscience," soon after he ordered an F-16 fighter
to drop a 1-ton bomb on an apartment building in the middle of the
night in Gaza, killing 16 people, 11 of whom were children. This is
what drives Israeli pilots to annihilate entire families in Tyre and
Mirwaheen and then feel good about it.


Annihilation

The Talmud, upon which Orthodox or Rabbinic Judaism is based, doesn't
really distinguish between combatants and non-combatants in time of
war. In fact, rabbinic authorities teach that killing non-combatants,
including children of the enemy, is a mitzvah (good deed with which
one endears oneself to God) in war time. A few years ago, a leading
Israeli Torah sage urged the Israeli army not to refrain from killing
enemy children in order to save the lives of Israeli occupation
soldiers in the Gaza Strip. When this writer consulted with a number
of rabbis and scholars on whether the rabbi was a nutcase, I was told
that he represented the mainstream within Orthodox Judaism. Many
Orthodox rabbis consider the international conventions incriminating
the deliberate killing of civilians and the destruction of civilian
homes and property, such as the Fourth Geneva Convention, as
"Christian morals" not binding on Jews. On 12 July, the right-wing
Israeli newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, had this caption on its
internet site: "Yesha Rabbis call for extermination of the enemy."
The report quoted the rabbinic council of Jewish settlements in the
West Bank as calling on the Israeli army "to ignore Christian morals
and exterminate the enemy in the north and south." Obviously, the
term "Christian morals" here refers to laws of war which prohibit the
killing of innocent civilians. This totally satanic thinking doesn't
emanate from Zionism's secular traditions, which are no less evil,
but rather from the Talmud itself. For example, a prominent Talmudic
figure, Shimon Ben Yohai, openly called for the extermination of
non-Jews. (His tomb in northern Palestine is a major pilgrimage
site for many Jews.)


Hatanya

If a Jewish sect or movement can be described as "Nazi," it is the
Chabad movement, which openly advocates annihilation of non-Jews in
Palestine on the model of the Biblical Book of Joshua. Chabad is not
a marginal movement. In both Israel and the U.S. it has been able to
amass a lot of wealth and acquire considerable influence. The
movement, with which thousands of Israeli soldiers and high-ranking
officers are affiliated, views non-Jews as animals or infra-human
beings. According to its famous book, Hatanya, as quoted by Israel
Shahak, all non-Jews are totally satanic creatures in whom there is
absolutely nothing good. Even a non-Jewish embryo is qualitatively
different from a Jewish one. Indeed, the very existence of a non-Jew
is inessential, whereas all creation was made solely for the sake of
the Jews. In conclusion, there is a broad conformity between Israeli
behaviour in Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territories and
Talmudic teachings with respect to non-Jews. The fact that at least
50% of high-ranking Israeli army officers are indoctrinated in the
Talmud does explain, at least in part, Israel' s genocidal onslaughts
on civilians in both the Gaza Strip and Lebanon . More to the point,
it is highly likely that this Talmudic trend of thinking and
behaviour will continue to grow and eventually come to define
Israel's entire discourse toward the peoples of the Middle East and
non-Jews in general.

===

comment from Israel Adam Shamir:
www.israelshamir.net


Talmud-Shmalmud, indeed! A most modern Israeli Tel Aviv poet,
outspoken gay liberal, a socialist and socialite, a man of cafes and
literary attachments (I worked with him in Al Hamishmar newspaper)
Ilan Sheinfield wrote recently:

"Demolish not only the roof, but the foundations as well, you have
come far indeed, your toil has not been in vain / Storm on Lebanon and
Gaza, and plow it and sow it with salt, raze it down, let no human
being remain / Turn them into a desert, rubble, a valley of mess,
unpopulated / As we did want peace, we did yearn for peace, and our
own houses we had desecrated ... Save your nation and drop bombs / On
villages and cities, their collapsing houses do shell / Kill them,
shed their blood, turn their lives into living hell / Till they will
never try again to destroy us, until we will hear mountains explode /
Bulldozed by your heels, and their wails and shrieks, and their graves
corrode."

You can read about it on
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/746268.html by witty Hendelzaltz.
And yes, it sounds better in Hebrew...

PS Actually Sheinfield used the classic poem by Byalik all Israeli
kids learn at school. So Qana massacre is just a fulfilment of their wish.
Shamir

[moeen yaseen]

The Lebanon Crisis II
by Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi

http://www.shaykhabdalqadir.com/content/...72006.html
http://www.gv2000.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=42&page=last

Allah the Exalted says in the Qur’an in Surat an-Naml (27:69-81):


Say: ‘Travel about the earth
and see the final fate of the evildoers.’

Do not grieve over them
and do not let the plots they make distress you.

They say, ‘When will this promise be fulfilled
if you are telling the truth?’

Say: ‘It may well be that some of
what you are anxious to hasten
is right on your heels.’

Allah shows favour to mankind
but most of them are not thankful.

Certainly your Lord knows what their hearts keep hidden
and what they divulge.

Certainly there is no hidden thing in either heaven or earth
which is not in a Clear Book.

Certainly this Qur’an narrates to the tribe of Israel
most of the things about which they differ.

Certainly it is guidance and a mercy for the muminun.

Certainly your Lord will decide between them
with His just judgement.
He is the Almighty, the All-Knowing.

So put your trust in Allah.
You are clearly on a path of truth.

You will not make dead men hear
and you will not make deaf men hear the call
when they turn their backs in flight.

You will not guide blind men out of their error.
You will not make anyone hear except for those
who have iman in Our Signs and so are Muslims.

This is not just a Lebanon Crisis. Better said, it is an Israeli Crisis. Best, and most truly said, it is the World Crisis that is the dreadful culmination of that capitalist crisis whose first stage was the quite arbitrary division of the world into Nation-States after the unnatural and suicidal orgy of World War I, and whose second stage was the politically absurd creation of a carved-out State of Israel alongside those disastrous carvings that had in the earlier stage created the pseudo-nations of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yugoslavia. What we are now witnessing is the end of that age.

The present world crisis began with the collapse of Yugoslavia. Its demise heralded the beginning of the end of Woodrow Wilson’s American and masonic dream of a global world democracy, perhaps to end up speaking the jewish-invented world language of Esperanto and all worshipping the one-god pseudo-religion invented by a former Shi‘a family, Bahaism, with its world headquarters in Haifa, Israel.

Yugoslavia was not just the continental shift of frontier-change. It was the volcanic eruption of a genocide at Srebrenica which was both unprevented and unpunished. It was the end of the fantasy of world government, and thus the end of the UNO. Its leadership after the diplomat Pérez de Cuéllar came from those lower orders that were to increasingly dominate the world stage. Firstly, it seemed we had an Egyptian taxi-driver, Boutros Boutros‑Ghali, and then a London bus-conductor, Kofi Annan. From the Bosnian genocide to the Lebanese genocide, there has in fact been a world-wide erosion of the absurd Nation-State system, brought to an end not only from internal crises but from the very globalisation of that financial system in which is now vested all political power.

So it has been that between these two events, frontier crises have occurred across Africa, Indonesia, and the Indian Subcontinent. Remember, that the unprevented slaughter in Rwanda was because the helpless international body was prevented from dividing the Hutu from the Tutsi into two nations, because the world bankers refused to permit it, since they claimed it would have been impossible to split their massive debt into two parts! The straight lines drawn through the desert sands in the Sahel have resulted in the French paratroopers’ unrecorded genocide of the Tuareg aristocracy in Mali, and the current nightmare of the Darfur region.

The collapse of the Nation-State system, forced to its relentless end-game, remember, by the globalised financial system of currency trading and supra-national corporate instruments, has finally happened with what is now looked upon as the Lebanon Crisis. As I indicated (Lebanon Crisis I), the war against Lebanon was the indication that Israel was a failed State. The Lebanese President, in an eloquent TV interview, confirmed that the economic success of Lebanon lay alongside the bankruptcy crisis of Israel, and that it had always been the destruction of Lebanon that was intended. He quoted an Israeli General as saying, ‘We will put Lebanon back 20 years!’

Israel as a State has long escaped critical analysis, protected as it is by two intellectual defence systems. Firstly, the significant control that Israel has over press and television in Europe and the USA. In Paris, for example, Figaro, the Right-Wing daily, has been bought by the Rothschilds, and Liberation, the Left-Wing weekly, has been bought by Dassault (formerly Bloch). And this very morning a jewish commentator is chairing discussions on BBC TV, while a former State Department spokesman of Clinton with a cleft palate explains the affair on Sky Television.

Secondly, the clouded anti-rational ambience that attacks the slightest criticism of the jewish ethos as Anti-Semitism. The good sense of the original term, to defend the jews from persecution, soon lost its rational foundation when in America they insisted on defining two social vices, Anti-Semitism and racism, due to a jewish insistence not to be lumped in with blacks! The worst insult of an American jew is to call someone a ‘Schwarzer’.

It is important to remember that this distorted self-perception of modern jews and Israeli citizens is a very different one from that of the generation of concentration camp survivors, indeed for jewish intellectuals it must be a matter of bitter reflection that these same survivors have often spoken out as defenders of the Palestinians.

A radical change in self-perception which results in a person seeing the world in terms which they have created but which make no sense to their fellow human beings is designated as a psychosis. In the light of the on-going behaviour of the Israeli State, its ruling Generals, its in-back financial elite, and its politicians, we can state with certainty that we are now confronting what can justly be called the Israeli Psychosis. The Israeli, per se, is out of touch with the common reality of the human species. This is identifiable not only in its leadership, but by the astonishing record of psychiatric breakdown among the Israeli military and by the half-demented behaviour of the Israeli citizens under the almost totally ineffective rain of Katusha rockets. Ask any elderly German of Berlin or Hamburg, or any young Bosnian of Sarajevo, and they will with one voice tell of the heroic and stoic behaviour under massive fire. More immediately, look at the courage and control of the Lebanese, where one mosque received more explosive power than was dropped on Hiroshima – and compare it to the hysteria in Haifa.

But the most disturbing of all is not even that the Israelis imagine we take seriously their claim that they are fighting Hizbollah while destroying a great city like Beirut, and even, to destroy their tourism, the universal treasure of the ancient city of Baalbek. The worst element of this crisis is that Israel is dictating to the world how it intends to behave, and the world, its international institutions, its national governments, its statesmen and media can exert no power over this psychotic entity. One commentator, trying to coming to terms with this, said, ‘How can we stop the third greatest military power in the world?’ It is this which must give thinking people pause. Why, and how is it that a tiny country with a population the size of Togo can hold the world to ransom? How can the world’s leaders bow their heads when the Israelis scream at Lebanon’s failure to implement a United Nations Resolution reining in Hizbollah, when that same State entity has for decades ignored the notorious UN Resolution ordering the jewish State to withdraw to its 1948 frontiers?

The most urgent conclusion that we are forced to arrive at with the present crisis, is, that a country with a mass psychosis appears to be free to invade a country, destroy its infrastructure, and indiscriminately bomb its people, killing hundreds of children – as well as all that, possessing a nuclear arsenal while belonging to no nuclear treaty agreement. It is no longer theoretical that they could use nuclear weaponry. They are both outside the law and outside the bounds of reason. The necessary agreement with Iran on nuclear weapons must be preceded by the disciplining of this rogue State, otherwise the end result is obviously inevitable.

Despite all this, the blame cannot fall on Israel. Its people, driven by a historical destiny in its way more horrible than that of its grandfathers in the concentration camps, find themselves again, no longer in city ghettos but in a national ghetto with a wall around it exactly as their grandfathers knew in Warsaw. Outside that wall, they are hated not with the psychological and mental hatred of the Germans and Russians, but by all their neighbours, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and the poor Palestinians in their stateless enclave.

What we are witnessing is the end of an age and the beginning of the end, therefore, of that greatest of modern disasters, party-political democracy. The true secularism of the modern world is not the separation of religion from the State, but the separation of the financial system from the authority of government. The existence of a political governance elected by universal franchise is the indication of an absolute power system of financial wealth and market control which not only is beyond State control, but itself has the means to command the State. This is not conspiracy theory, this is the direct result of an identifiable systemic pattern whose evidence is on the one hand a ‘democratic’ political leadership which is utterly helpless, and on the other hand a financial power system put in place by no known electoral system, and whose names we do not even know. We know ‘the richest men in the world’, but they are mere star-players. The great wealth is enmeshed in a series of interlocking Corporations, Holding Companies and subsidiaries. It is the power‑wielders at the top of this pyramidic system that hold substantive power. Recently, a banker tried to find out who were the ‘owners’ of the Monsanto Corporation. With his own expertise he found himself faced with a model of Monsanto whose lines of command disappeared into a series of other Corporations, academic Foundations and Research Centres.

The world has been stunned by the accepted helplessness of so-called world leaders over the Lebanon issue. The mythical G8 Conference (mythical, because they do not command the markets they claim to police), instead of staying together in St. Petersburg to punish this tiny State’s rebellion against International Law, simply dispersed in haste. So it is that a phenomenological study of the post-1945 world system reveals that it has ended in the tragic and bloody destruction of Srebrenica and now Lebanon. It follows from this that an existential study of that world’s political elite must find them to be the hopelessly inadequate products of that same failed political system.

The truth of the matter is we are being ruled from beneath. The rats are governing the zoo. The Marxist analysis, still taught in Western universities by State-installed professors, still usefully pumps out a viewpoint that assures the new generation will not be able to see our present dilemma. The Marxist doctrine produced both Lenin and Stalin. It exalted the Proletariat and then dredged up from what Gorky called ‘The Lower Depths’ a leadership that, while it was from the under-class, soon required dictatorship to rule.

The situation we all find ourselves in seems to bring us to an inevitable halt. The reason is that we think that that particular President or Prime Minister is no good. We then think he should be replaced by his opponent. It is not his niceness, it is not even his weakness. The reality is that political leadership has come from beneath us, but even when placed on high is still governed from those beneath him, that is, the dismal elected representatives.

In the aristocratic system, leading families, who considered themselves the guardians of their people, responsible for them and to them, raised their sons to serve the people and maintain the peace. ‘Noblesse oblige’.

How can intelligent and educated people accept to be governed by people beneath them? Governance demands respect.

Russia: Putin was a below-stairs functionaire of the Lubianka KGB prison. He did not do the torturing. He handled the paperwork. He heard the screams. He took over from an alcoholic to become the Tsar of Russia, sleeping in the bed of Catherine the Great.
Britain: Blair, a nonentity who could survive no Corporation’s psychiatric clearance test. By the chance element of structural procedure he took over from an alcoholic, who in turn, by chance, had taken over from a leader so foolish that even the electorate rejected him. Insecure, he appointed an utterly inexperienced Lord Chancellor then set about destroying five hundred years of legal tradition.
The USA: Bush, son of a former head of the USA’s International Secret Police. A cowardly draft-dodger, and an unreconstructed alcoholic and cocaine‑user. Has difficulty with sentence construction.
Germany: Angela Merkel. Without experience, she has accepted the return of Germany to one-party State rule. Due to her insecurity has become a transvestite.

And so on. This inadequacy of a leadership produced by the current political system of structuralist chance is best exemplified by the Secretary of State from the USA. Her transvestism has not conferred on her either dignity or gravity. There is something demeaning and unacceptable in her trying to represent the authority of a powerful nation. What, we must ask, was she grinning at when she sat at table among the Lebanese and Israeli leadership? National leaders cannot help feeling that she would be better as the manageress of a Bakersfield diner, ordering ‘bacon and two eggs, sunny side up’. The objection is not that she is a woman, Madeleine Albright proved an anomalous success due to her superior culture and the natural authority of a matron.

None of the political class would survive for five minutes at the top of the Corporation system which carefully vets its leadership for functionability and existential poise.

Carl Schmitt, the greatest legalist of the last century, indicated that the crisis of modern times meant the end-game of the present system, and he foretold that there would be a new Nomos to emerge in the ruins of the old order. That Nomos will not happen overnight. That Nomos is inevitable. Heidegger saw it, the last century’s greatest philosopher, and insisted it would not be christian. Jünger saw it, Germany’s greatest writer in the 20th century, and he told me that he saw it may be Islam. He said to me, ‘We,’ meaning Western society, ‘have only met the Messenger (may Allah bless him and grant him peace), for we know the culture and the history of the Muslims, but we have not had the encounter with Allah. When the people know about Allah, then Islam will conquer.’ It is the proper teaching of Tawhid that the Muslim modernists have abandoned. Suicide bombing is the indication that many Muslims no longer trust that the Mercy of Allah will rescue them from their situation, by His Power. The modernists tried to hitch their wagon to the train of Western systems, and failed to see it was already plunging over the cliff.

In the present crisis, the Muslim ‘ulama have been shamefully silent. In Dubai, with its follies of wealth, the ‘ulama have been shouted into silence by its ignorant rulers. In Egypt, they are simply tortured and killed. In Tunisia they are mostly in prison. Many have bought the wahhabi deviation which has removed the Second Shahada, and thus find themselves in strange alliance with the invented religion of the Shi‘a. In this contradictory position can be found the rebel force in Iraq, the Ikhwan al-Muslimun, and the Jama’at al-Islamiyya world-wide.

At the moment we are suspended in the classical definition, ‘One world dying – another powerless to be born.’ In the meantime we must prepare over the coming decade to raise a new generation among which will be found a new leadership – the best of men, not the worst. It will be the task of the rightly-guided Shaykhs of Instruction within the great Naqshabandi and Qadiri Tariqas. Only they can teach Futuwwa – the aristocratic principle within the Muslim Community. With them will come new life.

Allah the Exalted says in Surat an-Naml (27:93):

Say: ‘Praise be to Allah.
He will show you His Signs
and you will recognise them.
Your Lord is not unaware of what you do.’