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An interview with Aamir Khan about his new film, “Peepli Live,” which explores the deadly consequences of India’s shift to a neo-liberal economic model.

A tangible consequence of India’s shift to a neo-liberal economic model has been the flood of suicides among farmers. The vast majority of the world’s second most populated country still farms for a living, but are caught between deep debt and the erratic nature of seasonal change. Lured by the promise of greater production, farmers are pressured into mortgaging their farms to purchase genetically modified seeds, pesticides, and fertilizer from American companies like Monsanto. Since GM seeds are patented by Monsanto, their repeated use each year requires constant licensing fees that keep farmers impoverished. One bad yield due to drought or other reasons, plunges farmers so deep into debt that they resort to suicide. One study estimates that 150,000 farmers have killed themselves in the past ten years.

A new feature film written and directed by Anusha Rizwi and produced by Bollywood megastar Aamir Khan, called Peepli Live, tackles head on this grim topic. The story is set in an Indian village named Peepli where one young debt-burdened farmer named Natha is talked into taking his own life after he learns that his family will be financially compensated through a government program created to alleviate the loss of farmers taking their own lives. What unfolds is a dark comedy of errors when a media circus descends on the tiny village, followed by corrupt politicians wanting to make use of the planned tragedy. Khan’s credits as an actor and producer include Lagaan, the 2001 Oscar-nominated film about Indian resistance to the British occupation. His latest film 3 Idiots released last year became the highest grossing film in Indian film history.

Text of Sonali Kolhatkar’s interview follows (with video and more information about Khan’s film at the bottom of the article):

Sonali Kolhatkar: The film Peepli Live tackles a number of issues in rural India which aren’t always portrayed in Bollywood films. How important was it for you to make such a film about an issue that’s not very well known especially outside India?

Aamir Khan: I feel that Peepli Live is not really a film about farmer suicides [but] that farmer suicides are a backdrop because the film doesn’t really go into the issues that farmers are facing or why this epidemic really has been spreading for so many years now. It’s a film that’s more about the growing divide between urban and rural India and how as a society we are concentrating all of our energies, our resources, our wealth towards cities and are ignoring our villages and the rural parts of India which is where the bulk of our population lives. As a result our villages are not life-sustaining in a healthy manner. And that in turn results in a lot of migration from villages to cities. So in villages we don’t have schools often, medical facilities, even basic stuff like water and electricity. I think this is what the issue in the film really is.

On a certain level it’s also a film about survival. While it’s a satire about civil society today and takes a humorous view of the administration, the political scenario, the media, or civil society in general, it’s also on a certain level a story about survival. Each one of us: politician, journalist, civil servant, or a district magistrate, or even Budhia (a character in Peepli Live), who’s a farmer, a villager – each one of us in our own environment, in our own situation, is doing what he or she thinks needs to be done in order to survive.

Kolhatkar: How is Peepli Live different from mainstream Bollywood fare?

Khan: It’s not a mainstream Bollywood film. It’s just a story that I loved and a script that I read which Anusha Rizwi has written and directed and I just loved what she wrote. I found it very funny and moving and also heartbreaking. And also sensitizing in a lot of ways because I have lived all my life in a city. Often I’m not aware of how life in rural India is. So I just loved the script and I wanted to be part of it. I could see straight up that this is not a film that is going to be easy to market or even to convince the market to accept as a film. But it’s something that excited me, moved me, and engaged me.

So I just went ahead and produced it. I was aware of the challenges I have in front of me. And it’s also a film that I believe has the potential to engage a world audience. It’s a film that I think would connect with audiences from different cultures. And that’s what we’re trying to do – we’re trying not only to reach out to our traditional audiences for Indian film but to audiences who may have never watched an Indian film before. Or may have just watched Slumdog Millionaire (laughs). Actually Indian film, or Bollywood, as it’s popularly known, doesn’t make any one kind of film. Yes, the bulk of them are musicals, and the bulk of them have larger-than-life story-telling and have a lot of hope and romance in them. But a number of them now for the last few years have been films which are really off-beat and don’t fall into that category.

Kolhatkar: So Bollywood is evolving in your opinion?

Khan: Well I think everything is changing constantly. So I think cinema in India is also changing. I think audiences are changing. I think younger film makers are coming in who have different voices and have different things to say. And over the last ten years if you look at the films that have really succeeded and have gone down well with audiences, a number of them have been films which don’t fall into that description of what is conventionally known as mainstream Bollywood.

Kolhatkar: Farmer suicides are a huge issue in India and even though it’s a backdrop for your film, it’s a very grim subject. But Peepli Live addresses this is an almost comedic or satirical manner. Why was this approach effective?

Khan: This is a question more for Anusha (Rizwi) who’s written the film. I don’t know why she chose a satirical view of what is happening. But I think it’s more engaging that way. Anusha was a journalist before she made this film and she, I guess, through her experiences in the field, has come up with a lot of what is in the film and a lot of what is in the script. So I think her choice of it being a satire is because it connects more easily with people. But while you’re laughing you’re also feeling bad. You’re thinking, “should I be laughing at this,” you know? “I don’t think I should be laughing at this, but it’s funny.” And, it’s also very thought-provoking on a lot of levels. So personally I really like what she wrote and I think when I saw the film after its first cut – because I was not there when they were shooting it and I was only involved after the first cut stage – I was really happy to see what she has done.

It’s not an easy film to execute. And she hasn’t been to film school and she hasn’t really assisted any film makers to learn from them. It’s so amazing to see someone like her execute so well on screen what she has written. It’s a very layered script with a lot of characters. There’s a lot of chaos in the film at many times and while there often is a lot of chaos in a film shoot it’s usually behind the camera. And to create chaos in front of the camera and make it look natural is not easy. So when I saw the film I felt that what you’re watching is actually happening and she’s has hidden cameras capturing what is happening. So I thought she’s done a wonderful job – I’m really happy with her work.

Kolhatkar: The film most skewers Indian politicians and Indian media. How realistic are the caricatures presented in Peepli Live of the corrupt politicians and overzealous media?

Khan: In my opinion it’s a fairly accurate portrayal of what happens. Having said that I’d like to point out as well that it’s not the only point of view. A satire takes one point of view – it’s not a 360 degree view of politics or the people in media, or the people in administration (civil servants). There are a lot of civil servants, politicians, and those in the media who are trying to do a lot of good work and are very positive in their approach.

Kolhatkar: One of them is the young journalist, Rakesh, a character in Peepli Live, who is very hopeful. I’m wondering if he is a symbol of India’s young journalists.

Khan: He is the only character in the film that really has a conscience as it turns out. As I was saying earlier that while what is shown in the film is fairly accurate and happens everyday in India – it’s a fairly good window into rural life in India – but at the same time, I’d like to add that a satire takes one point of view. Of course there are journalists who are doing great work, and there are some politicians who are doing good work and are really sincere. But that point of view is not shown in this film. This film takes a satirical point of view. While what is shown is accurate, it is one aspect and not the whole.

Kolhatkar: There are no big-name stars in Peepli Live and I understand many of them are theater actors. How were they recruited? Were non-actors also recruited to play the roles of villagers?

Khan: I’m really happy with the casting that Anusha and her husband Mehmood, the casting director and co-director, have done. They really chose to go real with the casting which I thoroughly supported. A lot of the actors are actually villagers and tribals (indigenous people) who are from central India. And a lot of them are part of a theater group called Naya Theater. This is a group that was started by Habib Tanvir, a really amazing theater personality who has worked in Indian theater all his life. Unfortunately he passed away six months ago. But he was running this theater group in which he worked only with villagers and Adivasis (tribal or indigenous people) from Central India. And they did all kinds of things like adapting Shakespeare into their local languages and dialects. So a lot of them are very well trained actors. They may have never acted in a film before but they come from a strong theater background. I think the directors of the film, Anusha and Mehmood, also wanted there to be no known faces so that it looks real. So most of the cast is from a rural background.

Kolhatkar: One of the characters in the film is an elderly farmer who silently toils throughout the story. Is he a metaphor for the typical Indian farmer who is ignored and silenced in the mainstream media?

Khan: Yes you’re right. He really stands for a whole lot of people who in a very sincere and uncomplaining manner try to deal with what is dealt out to them in life and don’t really have a voice in what’s happening around them and are almost invisible to us. That’s how he’s treated in most of the film. So he represents that entire section of people.

Kolhatkar: Let’s talk about the film’s music. One particular song in the film called ‘Mahangai Dayain’ is played by the villagers of Peepli and recently was the center of some controversy after real-life local Indian politicians requested to use the song in their campaigning?

Khan: Well what is shown in the film is happening in real life I guess (laughs). The words to the song are: “my husband earns a lot of money but inflation eats it all away.” And it’s actually wasn’t in the film to begin with. But when Anusha was shooting in the village in Bidwai, she heard the local musicians singing this song. They had written this song themselves and it’s part of their music. When she heard this song she really liked it. So this is their voice and she asked them if she could use it in the film. And she got Raghu-bhai (one of the lead actors in the film) who is a very good singer to learn the song and sing it. They actually learned the song that night in the village under the tree and it’s recorded live on location, not in a studio, with spoons and thalis (steel dinner plates) and home-made musical instruments. And that’s a song that has really resonated strongly with a lot of India[ns] because it’s a coincidence that at the time that we were about to release the music of the film there were these huge price increases in India. The opposition parties called for a national “bandh” which is sort of a general strike for a day all across the country in protest of these price increases. And that day all the news channels actually carried the song as an anthem of what was happening around us. And so that made the song very popular. What’s amazing is that this is a song created by the villagers as part of their lives. This is what affects them – it’s their voice which you can hear.

Kolhatkar: So you hope that the film goes a long way toward bringing the stories of silenced farmers to not only urban India but to a worldwide audience?

Khan: Yes, I am hoping that the film sensitizes a whole lot of us like it did to me when I first read the script. As a society we have to be aware of inequalities and try and fight against them. I think that this is a film that I’m hoping will have an impact. It’s not often that films have an immediate impact but I’m hoping that this film has an impact and starts people thinking in the right direction.

Kolhatkar: There is only one hint in the film about the complicity of corporate America when one of the politicians’ characters in the film mentions the American company “Sonmanto” in an obvious reference to the agri-giant Monsanto corporation. Given that farmer suicides are directly linked to neo-liberal economic pressures from the West, particularly the US, how important is it that the film is viewed by an American audience?

Khan: I think it’s important that all of us should be aware of this, not only Americans. It’s important for all of us to be aware how our actions are affecting other people. When Peepli Live was screened at Sundance where we had a predominantly American audience, we got some pretty interesting responses, one of them being that not only did they find the film to be a great window into rural India but they felt that it resonated with them. One [member of the audience] gave the example of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans and how the [Bush] administration reacted and the observation made was that even in that case the people affected were from less privileged sections of society. Which is why nothing was done for very long and even the funds that were collected for them, a lot of that didn’t reach [the people affected]. So these are things that happen all across the world, even in “first-world” countries. And the other aspect that you were talking about is how each of our actions has an impact .We have to be aware of how each of our actions affects other people and on a very basic level – I know this is over-simplifying things – we should try not to adversely affect people with our actions.

Kolhatkar: The media as portrayed in your film Peepli Live is amusing and even shocking. I’m wondering how you think Indian media is going to receive your film and the commentary that the film makes on them?

Khan: I believe that all of us are human beings first. I’m an actor, you’re a journalist, and someone else might be a politician. At the core of it we’re all human beings first and I think that that’s how I think people would receive the film. I think the film is accurate so no one should have a complaint from that point of view. I think that we as a creative group that has made the film are very clear that we’re taking one point of view and that it’s not a holistic point of view. So not every media person is like that. But this is one of the realities today of life in Indian society. And also importantly I think that Anusha Rizwi as a writer and director is not being judgmental on anyone. She’s not taking any sides and I think that’s an important aspect of the film. It’s important for people to receive this in a positive way for it to have an impact. And I think that’s one of the things that this film does achieve in my opinion.

For example you have Natha’s son [in the film] saying “Dad when are you going to die because uncle says that when you die I’m going to become a contractor.” And Natha says “what do you mean? Your dad’s dying and you want to be a contractor?” The son says, “No no, I want to be a cop!” So this is not how every child would react and this is not how we would expect a child to react whose father is about to die. You’d expect him to say “Dad I don’t want you to die.” But here we have a kid who’s in a bit of a hurry about his dad dying. So it is a black comedy, it is a dark view of things. And it’s not the only view and I’m sure the media’s mature enough to realize that.

Kolhatkar: I’d like to talk a little bit about your own career and why you gravitate toward films with a socio-political message. You’ve made a number of films either as an actor or producer or both, that are not simply standard Bollywood fare like Lagaan, Rang De Basanti, Mangal Panday, etc (many of which have been about the historical resistance to the British occupation). Why are such films important to you?

Khan: Well I move towards material that excites me, stuff that I believe in. And creative people whose voices I believe in. So, it’s important for me to be happy in what I’m doing. When I come across a script that touches me, moves me, engages me, makes me laugh or cry, that’s what I want to be part of. I think for me film-making is a number of things: you’re entertaining people, you’re also engaging their minds. And importantly, it’s one or two years of my life. And so, the process is as important as the end result. So I have to be happy and excited about what I’m doing.

Kolhatkar: Your last film 3 Idiots became the highest grossing Bollywood film of all time in India, breaking many records, and winning a huge number of awards. Although it’s extremely entertaining it also has a social message at its heart about the intense pressures that Indian parents put on their children to be highly educated professionals in technical fields. It’s not often that such a topic is tackled in Indian film is it?

Khan: Yeah, I think that Raju [Hirani] is a fantastic film maker but in this case he also picked up [on] a topic that I think a lot of people, not only in India but all across the world, [see in] our lives. And I think the core message of Three Idiots is “don’t chase success, chase excellence. And do what makes you happy, because if it makes you happy you’ll probably be good at it. And success will follow up somewhere behind. But don’t make your decisions based on what you think will make you successful because that might just make you really unhappy as well.” And, I think that core message really hit home in a big way with a lot of audiences. And again it’s a very funny film. It’s a film that is very entertaining but also is a film that rings true with a lot of people.

I’ve been very fortunate to work with a lot of talented people and films like Taaray Zameen Par which is about childcare, primary education, and learning disabilities and Three Idiots, which is about higher education — these films have been so satisfying to be a part of because not only have they been huge successes but more than that these are films that have actually changed lives. I have met so many people and so many have written to me about how the way they look at their kids has changed. And parents have changed the way they look at education, and kids have begun feeling differently about themselves. And that’s a very rare achievement for a film to have such a strong and immediate impact on society. And it’s so satisfying to see that. It’s really amazing.

Kolhatkar: Given how influential Bollywood actors are in India (just as Hollywood actors are here in the US), do you think it’s important for celebrities such as yourself to influence people in a positive manner or should movie stars never talk about social issues? I’m sure I can guess your answer but not all celebrities use their celebrite in a responsible manner.

Khan: I think my answer is fairly obvious. I think celebrities should, to the best of their abilities, use the kind of influence they have with people in a positive way and that’s always great and that’s what ought to be done and ought to happen. But having said that, I think each to his own. Celebrities are also human beings and I think we should understand if a certain person wants to stay away from stuff. Fair enough.

I really feel that each one of us, no matter which section of society we belong to, has to engage socially and politically in our own way. And each one can do it to a different extent. But each one of us CAN do it. And I think that’s what’s important. All of us should be aware of that and should engage in a positive way. That’s what I believe.

Kolhatkar: Bollywood flims have not always gotten too much recognition outside of South Asia, and the Gulf Arab States. But they do break through into the West occasionally, like your film Lagaan which was recognized by the Academy Awards — only the third ever Indian film to be nominated for Best Foreign Film. Do you think it’s important for the West to recognize the largest film industry in the world?

Khan: Well I think it would be nice if people around the world watched our films and enjoyed them but I don’t think we should load the West with this responsibility of having to watch our films and enjoy them. I don’t think that’s fair. And I don’t think that film-makers in India really have looked toward making films which are meant to engage a world audience. Because we have such a large and healthy audience of our own and we are very happy and busy engaging them and making films for them.

But I think every once in a way we do come across films that can break through. For example when I read the script of Peepli Live I immediately thought that here is a film that I really want to make first of all. Secondly it is a film that may have limited appeal in mainstream Indian cinema. But I’m going to try and push that. But I also believe it has the potential to engage world audiences. And so, with that in mind we’re trying to reach out to audiences across the world with this film. It’s not a big entertainer. It’s certainly not “Inception” or “Spiderman.” But it’s a film that is a human story which will connect with people.

So I think every now and then when there is material that organically has the potential to appeal to a world audience, it would be great if they would watch it!

Kolhatkar: You come from a family steeped in the tradition of Hindi film. Your father Tahir Hussein (who recently passed away) was a prolific film maker in India. What sort of mark do you hope to leave on Indian cinema, and indeed on international film making?

Khan: I’m not sure about that. I don’t know whether I think in these larger terms. I just want to be able to do work that I’m happy doing, that’s all. And I’m really happy with the kind of love and respect I’ve gotten over the last twenty years that I’ve been working [in film]. And I’m hoping that I’m able to do work which is good, which is challenging, which actually helps me to grow as a person and as an artist, and creative person.

Kolhatkar: Finally what lies in your future? I understand that you have a film coming up directed by your wife, Kiran Rao. Can you tell us more about that and any other projects of social or political significance or that are designed to appeal to an international audience?

Khan: Well Peepli Live is going to be released on August 13th. And then the next film after that is Dhobi Ghaat which I’ve produced and I’m also acting in it. Dhobi Ghaat is written and directed by Kiran [Rao], my wife, and it’s set in Mumbai. It’s about these four characters whose lives kind of touch each other. And the fifth character in the film is the city of Mumbai. It’s a kind of “slice of life” film. Half of it is in English and half is in Hindi. So, we’ve been honest to the characters. People who would naturally be speaking in English are speaking in English and same for Hindi. And the third film that I have in the pipeline is a film called Delhi Belly, which is a comedy. This is actually a story about three kids living in Delhi and how they get into trouble with the mafia and the underworld and they don’t know why. It’s a bit like Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels in its genre. It’s not that story but it’s that kind of film I guess. Again it’s a very unusual film for Indian cinema because it’s entirely in English. I think it’s one of the few times that an English [language] film will be coming out of India. All the films that have no hopes of working are the ones that I end up producing [laughs].

Peepli Live opens in theaters across the US on August 13, 2010. More information at www.peeplilivethefilm.com. Sonali Kolhatkar is the host and executive producer of Uprising, a morning drive-time show that broadcasts on KPFK, Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles. A weekly syndicated version of Uprising airs on over a dozen stations nationwide. Find out more at www.uprisingradio.org.

By Sonali Kolhatkar

“The truth is that all men [and women] having power ought to be mistrusted”.

James Madison, American president, 1809-1817.

In a nation prides itself of being a “tolerant” and a “fair go” for all Australians , one expects the candidates campaigning for Prime Minister position will be concerned with the Australia’s complicity in illegal imperialist wars, equality and the environment. Sadly, both candidates are playing the race card, because racism is deeply-entrenched in white Australia.

Both, Julia Gillard, the Labor Party installed Prime Minister, and Tony Abbott, the leader of the Opposition Liberal Party migrated from Britain to Australia in search of “better live”. Gillard was from Wales and Abbott from England. You expect them to take a stand against racism and injustice. It was not to be. Both, Gillard and Abbott are the product of one of the most racist societies in the world. They moved to a society founded on systemic racism and violence. Gillard is campaigning on the “right kind of migrants” and Abbott is campaigning on John Howard’s racist card, “we will stop the boats”. Both phrases are the result of deeply-entrenched racism that has become part of the Australian culture.

When Ed Husic, an Australian from a Muslim background, nominated to run for Labor in the West Sydney seat of Chiefly, the Liberal Party largest cabbage bag, David Barker, attacked all Muslims and Islam. “We don’t want Muslims in our parliament”, said the cabbage bag. Although he was disendorsed by the Liberal Party, Barker was not condemned for his outrageous racist behaviour and anti-Semitism. It should be said that the attack on Muslims during elections is not an anomaly, but rather the culmination of an increasingly anti-Muslim trend in Australia.

Abbott’s and Gillard’s elections campaign’s rhetoric on population growth “comfortable” Australia is designed to appease racist Australian bigots and win votes. As former Labor Party leader, Mark Latham rightly observed: “It is not and immigration debate, it’s no debate”. Gillard’s position on “population” growth is “clever politics but it’s a fraud. It’s a fraud of the worst order”. It is fraud because there is no policy in place for a long-term development of a sustainable Australia. Both, Gillard and Abbott have been blaming migrants for overcrowding, failing infrastructure and lack of services. As Peter McDonald, a professor of Demography at the Australian National University rightly observed: “Migrants are being used as a scapegoat for the failure of government planning”. It is populism designed to appease racist voters, using a small number of desperate refugees fleeing U.S.-led Western wars as a tool to promote xenophobia.

Scapegoating few desperate refugees has become a ticket to success. It is the politic of scaremongering used by the One Nation racist party and now integrated in the politics of both, the Labor and the Liberal parties. The percentage of refugees arriving by boats to Australia is between 2 to 4 per cent of all “unauthorised” arrivals. The majority (95 per cent) of them are genuine refugees.

It is important to remember that, there are more than 60,000 illegal immigrants in Australia, mostly from Britain, New Zealand, U.S., Europe, South Africa India and China. According to Bob Brown, leader of the Australian Greens: “There are another 17,000 who came in the last three years, queue jumpers legally, because they had either business connections, they’ve been in charge of companies with more than 50 people, or they’ve got $250,000 in their back pocket and they can get here at the front of the queue. But if you’re poor and you don’t come from an English-speaking background or a European background, you have much more difficulty getting to the country”. They are living freely in Australia, receiving services and paying less in taxes. They are not incarcerated, like refugees, in isolated detention centres and prisons in remote Australia.

The majority of the so-called “asylum seekers” are Chinese arriving at Australian airports with one-way tickets. According to Patricia Cruise, a former immigration officer with the Department of Immigration, it is the flood of dubious applications from Chinese who claim “asylums” on false pretence after they fly to Australia. “They are well organised in terms of migration agents, tour operators, fraudulent documents which are readily available in china and also in Sydney”, she added. They turned Australia’s fine education system into an immigration racket, and forced low-income Australians into shoddy rental housing controlled by mafia-like landlords. It is a well-organised racket and most politicians know it, but it doesn’t pay dividends.

Furthermore, there is really no difference between Labor and Liberal. Both parties are white male-dominated right-wing parties, and their policies have converged long time ago. Neither party is offering anything that will serve the interests of the nation and the people of Australia. Their only interest is in wining power and preserving the political status quo. The elections campaign is a show about instilling fear and promoting divisions.

Furthermore, the Australian Greens Party is like all Greens parties around the world. Far from being an alternative progressive movement, the Greens Party is a collection of opportunists and outright white extremists. While there some honest people in the Greens, political power and decisions rest with a few people at the top. They have an “attack response group” to threaten and frighten off their critics. The Australian Greens have been working in coalition with Labor on major policies. They are “in bed with Labor on major issues. The so-called “secret backroom preferences deal” with Labor in this elections is just one example of the Greens dishonesty and betrayal.

It is utterly false to argue that Australia has changed to a “progressive” and “forward-looking” society. Australia hasn’t changed. The country still accustomed to treating Aborigines like dogs and Australians from non-Anglo-Saxon minorities as second-class citizens. It is a racist and backward society. Racism formed the foundation of Anglo-Australia and was forged into the Australian national character, and remains so today alive and thriving throughout Australian culture. A male-dominated society is not going to change because the Prime Minister is a woman.

The rise of Gillard is the result of a quota system in the Labor Party that is dominated by white males. She was installed as PM – to seduce the public – by few “faceless men”, helped by her disloyalty and dishonesty to her colleagues. She was illegitimately installed as Prime Minister. The elections are not a substitute for legitimacy.

There is nothing serious about Gillard’s “Moving-forward” campaign catch cry. Australia doesn’t move forward, it moves backwards. The road to move forward has been deliberately blocked. Like all politicians, Gillard uses deception to manipulate voters. As Suvendrini Perera, a Senior Research Fellow at Curtin University in Western Australia rightly observed: “Beneath the facade of a thoroughly modern, optimistic and relentlessly ‘forward-moving’ Prime Minister is a campaign that returns us to the ‘race election’ threatened by John Howard in the 1990s”. Abbott, on the other hand is not moving anywhere; he will continue with the Liberal’s old ideology.

The one major issue missing in the elections campaign is Australia’s complicity in the Afghanistan bloodbath. According to official count, a total of twenty Australian soldiers have been killed and more than 160 have been wounded in the U.S.-led war on Afghanistan since 2001. Plying by the U.S. rule, the war on Afghanistan is a taboo for both, Labor and Liberal. Gillard and Abbott are competing with each other to serve U.S. imperialist agenda. Gillard said before the elections campaign: “Our objective is clear: to combat the threat of international terrorism, to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a training ground for terrorists launching attacks against us and our allies”. Gillard added: “That is why coalition forces are in Afghanistan under a United Nations mandate and with the Afghan government’s full support”. It is a lie.

The invasion of Afghanistan is an illegal act of aggression in violation of UN Charter and international law. The Afghan government is an illegitimate U.S.-installed puppet government. Australia’s complicity in Afghanistan is not about “rebuilding” Afghanistan, “democracy”, or “assisting” the Afghan people; it is about enhancing U.S. imperialist agenda. In addition, the majority of the Afghan people want an end to the military Occupation of their nation. There is no justification of self-defence or “fighting terrorism” in Afghanistan, as many politicians and academics claim. Under international law, the U.S.-NATO war on Afghanistan is a war crime.

On Iran, as requested by the U.S. – without a debate or the slightest hesitation – Australia approved new sanctions against Iran, similar to those adopted by the U.S. and Canada. Labor legislator, the pro-Israel Zionist Labor politician, Michael Danby, said: “History teaches us that going soft on hard-line dictators is a recipe for catastrophe. The Labor government under Prime Minister Julia Gillard will not shirk its historic responsibility to stand with Israel at its hour of maximum danger”. Gillard, of course, has an unquestionable “loyalty” to Israel.

On a visit to Israel, Gillard was praised by Israeli leaders for her defence of Israel during Israel’s murderous attacks on Gaza where 1,400 innocent Palestinian women and children were massacred. “You stood almost alone on the world stage in support of Israel’s right to defend itself,” said Israeli minister Isaac Herzog in welcoming Gillard to Israel. Her visit (with her partner, Tim Mathieson) has been organised by the pro-Israel Zionist lobby group, the Australia-Israel Cultural Exchange. While in Israel, Gillard met with leaders of the Israeli fascist regime. Like her predecessors, Gillard is following the Zionist rules of ‘We pay and You do what We say’. Even Gillard’s partner is employed as a “sales consultant” – despite having no property experience – by a Zionist and Labor Party benefactor, Albert Dadon of Ubertas Group.

It is noteworthy mentioning that Australian political cycle is closely resembling America’s. There are only minor differences between the two major parties in America (Democrats and Republicans) and Australia (Labor and Liberal). The electoral systems of both countries are nearly identical; they provide “an illusion of democracy”. As Ted Mack, the former independent mayor of North Sydney, accurately put it; In Australia, “neither the Senate nor the House of Representatives voting system reflects the will of the people”. ( Sydney Morning Herald , , 20 August 2010). The people will be conned by the elections.

It is no surprise that Gillard has adapted “Yes we will”, Barack Obama’s election catch cry “Yes we can” which was a concoction of Sí se puede (Spanish for “Yes, it can be done”), the motto used by the oppressed United Farm Workers in 1974 in Phoenix, Arizona. Further, it wasn’t a coincidence that Australians re-elected John Howard and Americans re-elected George Bush in 2004. Howard showered people with the illusion of becoming rich in “comfortable” Australia. Labor is using the same tactics, bribing voters with the illusions of wealth and happiness. Australians, of course, are obsessed with money and material possessions.

In his seminal De la démocratie en Amérique (Of Democracy in America), the French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville observed that: “As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?” De Tocquevill’s observation of Americans is very true of Australians today. According to the fourth Australian Work and Life Index, ‘more than one-fifth of Australians spend 48 hours or more at work each week, and 60 per cent do not take holidays’. Like American, despite their material wealth Australians are becoming increasingly unhealthy and unhappy. Like America, Australia becoming an increasing unequal and divided society.

As some 14 million Australians are preparing to take part in the world’s most sham elections, they are unaware that their votes do not really count, because ultimately have very little or no choice . So, it doesn’t matter who will be Australia ‘s Prime Minister tomorrow, all politicians ought to be mistrusted.

By Ghali Hassan

21 August, 2010

Countercurrents.org

Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.

 To A One-Term President

What should a poor warmongering Neoconservative do? This political grouping includes WASPS such as former CIA director James Woolsey and former UN ambassador John Bolton, but at its core is politically active and extremely wealthy Jewish former Democrats who broke with their party in the 1980s to become war hawks in Republican administrations, and most of whom are rooted in Rightwing Zionism as exemplified in the thought of prominent fascist theorist Vladimir Jabotinsky. (They are almost mirror images of the general American Jewish community, 79 percent of which voted for Barack Obama, which is skittish about foreign wars and liberal on social issues).

The Neoconservative faction is in the political wilderness in the United States. Eager to play the role in Iran that the enormous floods have played in Pakistan, of paralyzing and destroying much of a thriving country, eager to reduce the shining city of Isfahan to rubble and displace its population into massive tent cities, they find their path blocked at every turn.

Always much happier when the militant and aggressive Likud Party is in power in Israel, they are nevertheless impatient with what they see as the timidity of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, compared to the reckless warmongering of the previous Kadima Party and its Labor ally (who managed to set back the Lebanese economy a decade in 2006 and to reduce the large penal camp of Gaza to further misery and rubble).

Despite being willing to stop in at an occasional cocktail party, President Obama could not care less what the Neoconservatives say, want or do. Few have been appointed from their ranks to high and influential positions in the Obama administration, in contrast to W.’s, where they held the 8 key positions that allowed them to help push the US into a decade of rampaging wars. The American public, having been tricked by their fallacious arguments and cynical propaganda into the Iraq War, does not want to hear from them. They no longer get much television time. Their main project of today, an aggressive war on Iran, is a non-starter with the current White House, its generals, intelligence officials, and most importantly with a public already unemployed, beggared and indebted to the tune of $13 trillion, in part because of the Neocons earlier mad adventures– a public that has also lost over 4000 dead and tens of thousands wounded and permanently disabled warriors over a pack of Neocon lies.

But being a Neocon means never having to say you are sorry, or that you were wrong, and it means never giving up on the dressing up of illegal and aggressive wars as Necessary and Right and Bright Shining Cities on a Hill that will Make the World Safe for “Democracy” and more importantly for Apartheid Israel.

Thus, in 1998 at the height of their impotence, the Neocons got up a hawkish letter with the support of the Republicans in Congress, insisting that President Clinton go to war against Iraq. It was absurd and monstrous. Iraq had been reduced to a poor weak fourth-rate power, its economy devastated, its children dying in droves, by US and UN sanctions pushed by the Neocons and their allies. Only five years later, under a different administration, they got their wish.

The Neocons’ life experience, then, is that aggressive warfare is never really off the table. Even a liberal internationalist like Obama can be pressured, and if he will not yield, be weakened and wounded and the way paved for a leader more pliable to their plans. A war that they pine for the way a teenager pines for a first love, a mass grave they dream of the way a retiree dreams of a Hawaiian resort, an orgy of destruction visited on ancient wonders that they dream of the way a world-class architect dreams of constructing a new city– all these things are really at most just 5 years away if the right political moves are made.

They have more assets than is visible on the surface. They have perhaps half of America’s 400 billionaires on their side. They have the enormous military-industrial complex on their side. They have the Yahoo complex of besieged lower middle class White America on their side. They have the Israel lobbies on their side. They have important segments of the Oil and Gas lobbies on their side. They have the whole American tradition of permanent war on their side. They should not be underestimated.

It is not so hard to get up a war. You position the war as inevitable. As Right. As Necessary. You reimagine the poor weak ramshackle enemy as a science fictional superpower, months away from possession of a Neutron Bomb that could Destroy the Universe. It has to be done. We are in danger.

Although not exactly himself a Neocon (he says he is for a two-state solution and says he is on the fence about an Iran war), Cpl. Jeffrey Goldberg of the Israeli army, where he was a prison camp guard during the first Intifada or Palestinian uprising, and who masquerades as a journalist over at the Atlantic, has fired a shot in the building campaign for destroying Iran. This war propagandist deliberately spread the bald-faced lie that Saddam had close ties to al-Qaeda, and goes on insisting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction capabilities in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary. He is either dishonest or so blindered by ideology that it comes to the same thing. Goldberg says he is “ambivalent” about an “American” attack on Iran in “2010.” But these are weasel words. What would be different in 2011? In fact, this way of speaking puts a time limit on “ambivalence,” after which conviction presumably kicks in. His ambivalence, he says, extends to whether Israel should attack Iran unilaterally, though he is convinced by his ‘interviewing’ that it likely will. It reminds me of all the caveats and ambivalences in Ken Pollack’s book ‘Gathering Storm,’ which was used by warmongers nevertheless to help get up the Iraq War.

Goldberg knows that Obama is not actually going to war against Iran. Despite what he says, Bibi Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, is for all his bluster far too personally indecisive to take such a major step (and certainly not without an American green light; Bibi thinks Clinton had him undermined and moved out of office for obstructing the Oslo accords, and does not want to risk the same fate for causing trouble for Obama in Iraq and Afghanistan). How Goldberg could miss this truism in Israeli politics is beyond me.

Goldberg is trying to make an Iran war seem highly likely if not inevitable, if not now then in the near future (say, within 5 years?).

But contrary to Goldberg’s conclusions, Gareth Porter finds that high Israeli intelligence and military figures entertain the severest doubts about a war on Iran. Could Goldberg really not find these voices that Porter dug up so effortlessly?

The Iran war hawks also almost certainly underestimate Iran’s conventional weapons capability of foiling any Israeli air strike.

There is no room for ‘ambivalence’ here, especially of the Pollack sort that actually leads straight to war. The stupidity of an air raid on Iran is easy for the clear-eyed to see. There is no evidence Iran has a nuclear weapons program as opposed to a civilian nuclear energy program. The centrifuge technology being used can be dispersed and an air strike is likely to be only a minor setback in the program. And, Iran is a major country of 70 million with extensive petroleum and gas resources. It has means of replying to any attack that can be subtle and effective. Mahan Abedin showed here recently how there can be no ‘limited war’ against Iran.

Obama’s plans for a decisive and timely withdrawal from Iraq would be completely ruined by an attack on Iran, which would reactivate the Shiite militias at a time when the US military is weak and open to attack. Obama would not have that achievement to run on in 2012. The Iranians can behind the scenes be major spoilers for the Afghanistan War, which already is not going well for Obama.

A Netanyahu attack on Iran would reduce Barack Obama to a one-term president, which may be what Goldberg and his fellow conspirators are really aiming for. That success would after all allow them to keep to the 5-year timetable for another Asian land war.

By Juan Cole

16 August, 2010

Juancole.com

Several articles have been published regarding the global problems of 2010. The summer has been one of global discontent. Here is a summary of the issues:

1. The recession of 2008 just does not want to disappear and there continues the talk of a double dip recession. Is the recent US Fed decision to buying treasury debts yet another sign of an impending economic collapse or a chess move towards another war to mend the economy? In spite of the massive stimulus from the G-7 countries, predominantly the USA, there are dark economic clouds hovering above. The world is taking on far more debts than its ability to repay back to the society. Greed is rampant and the 5% rich are becoming super rich and the 80% poor becoming super poor as a result of the recession. In between are the 15% middle class going nowhere.

2. The US Gulf disaster that killed 11 oil workers on 20 April does not need any introduction. Nearly 5 million barrels of oil leaked into the Gulf over 3 months. It has been the worse oil disaster in US history that diverted the attention of the Obama administration and lawmakers from other pressing issues concerning the American public. Moreover, the lawmakers have been busy trying to shore up support for re-elections in the 2 November Congress and Senate elections.

3. Iran remains an important issue for the US administrations in the White House, Congress and Senate. The fourth round of sanctions against Iran were successfully passed in the United Nations. The US Congress overwhelmingly (408-8) passed a new round of sanctions against foreign companies trading with Iran. The sanctions passed 99-0 in the Senate. On 22 July, the US Congress proposed House Resolution 1553 reaffirming the US support for Israel and the right of this small country to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate “nuclear threats” posed by Iran. If passed, it’ll become a declaration of war against Iran. An articled published on Global Research titled “Iran Encircled: Two US Congressional Resolutions, One World War” http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20401 is excellent detailed reading. Appropriate words of the author are “we’re now witnessing the legalization and industrialization of another war, one which will set the entire region ablaze”.

4. In the early hours of 1 June, Israel’s IDF attacked peace activists carrying relief supplies for Gaza on board the Mavi Marmara killing unarmed civilians in cold blood. Israel and the US were quick to thumb their noses at Turkey and reject an international commission to investigate the horror. Turkey, a member of NATO and an ally of Israel, has hunkered down for the present but it is licking its deep wounds. This act of Israel stinks of arrogance and exposes America’s financial subservience to this tiny nation which has become a global irritation akin to the ant in the elephant’s ear.

5. The July-August floods in Pakistan have killed 1600 people and effected over 10% of the nation’s population of 170 million. It has devastated large parts of the country and threatens a fragile economy. When the floods recede, the true proportion of the calamity in terms of deaths, displacement, health and economy will be clearly known. Presently, the focus is on how to deal with the floods. This calamity follows on the heels of another little known disaster that happened in the northern area of Gilgit when, in early January, a massive landslide on the Hunza river caused the formation of an artificial lake causing 50,000 people to be moved to camps and cutting off the main link between Pakistan and China. As if all these calamities are not enough, US drone attacks have killed hundreds of innocent civilians in a cooked up war on terrorism. Pakistan is nation with 75% poor people and 5-7%rich businessmen and politicians having ownership of 90% national wealth. This horrendous calamity comes on the heels of an earthquake only 5 years ago that killed 85 thousand inhabitants and left over 150,000 shelter less and without food and water in northern Pakistan. Instead of opening up their palms, the corrupt politicians and business community continues to lament their own meagre losses.

6. Moscow is simmering in record high summer temperatures of 380C as compared to the normal summer highs of 24-270C. Temperatures have soared to 420C in Ukraine. The toll from the heat wave, forest fires and acid smog in Moscow has climbed to 700 deaths per day. Moscow city mortuaries are overwhelmed with 1400 dead bodies. There have been reports of over 600 fires across Russia. Carbon monoxide and other poisonous pollutants are at least 3-5 times higher than safe level.

7. On 6 August, a 260 square kilometre iceberg, 600 feet thick, about four times the size of Manhattan and weighing 5 billion tonnes has broken off or calved from the Petermann glacier, one of the two remaining glaciers in Greenland. Though of no immediate threat, the calving has opened up serious debates about global warming. According to University of Delaware, such a massive iceberg that stores freshwater could keep the American taps flowing for 4 months. Also, according to Canada’s Globe and Mail of 10 August, the massive floe could damage oil rigs and other marine industry as it makes its way down the Newfoundland coast.

The hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic has another 3 months before it ends. Global warming or not, the sea temperatures are rising and with that the threats of major hurricanes are increasing. Late August to mid-October are the worse periods for deadly category 4 and 5 hurricanes. Katrina, one of the 6 deadliest hurricanes, struck the US in late August 2005.

This is the summer that Mother Nature has begun to issue strong global warnings in various languages. Our politicians should be listening to these warnings and give up war preparations and instead work towards peace. The world’s greedy businessmen should stop amassing horrendous wealth which would benefit no one should nature decide to stop issue warnings and instead deal catastrophic blows. The global inhabitants should start to pay attention to environmental issues, conserve energy and prevent wastage. If the politicians and the business communities and we, as individuals, continue to go on the existing ways, it might become too late to go in the reverse mode. Mother nature does not allow any quick reversing. The Divine message is fix your problems or they’ll get fixed by nature.

By Gulam Mitha

On August 25, Yale University ended a three day global anti-Semitism “crisis” conference promoting the notion that Israeli criticism is “anti-Semitic,” no matter how justified.

Boola boola, for shame, mighty Yale displaying the same type anti-Islamic hatred virulent throughout America, raging daily in headlines over the proposed New York City Islamic cultural center, falsely called a mosque, but does it matter?

What matters is racism, hate-mongering, and persecuting Muslims for political advantage – on display at Yale for a three day propaganda hate fest. Imagine what’s taught in its classrooms.

The Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA)

Calling itself “dedicated to the scholarly research of the origins and manifestations associated with antisemitism globally, as well as other forms of prejudice, including racisms, as it relates to policy,” YIISA presented its “Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity conference, at a time the supposed “crisis” is more rhetoric than reality.

Yet its mission statement states:

“Anti-Judaism (or) Antisemitism is one of the most complex and, at times, perplexing forms of hatred, (emerging) in numerous ideological(ly) based narratives and the constructed identities of belonging and otherness such as race and ethnicity, nationalisms, and anti-nationalisms.” In modern globalized times, “it appears that Antisemitism has taken on new complex and changing forms that need to be decoded, mapped and critiqued.”

What’s needed is debunking the relationship between legitimate Israeli criticism and anti-Semitism and notion of a serious anti-Jewish crisis when none, in fact, exists.

Last October 29, Reuters reported that:

“Anti-Semitic attitudes in the United States are at a historic low, with 12 percent of Americans prejudiced toward Jews, an Anti-Defamation League (ADL) survey found,” based on September 26 – October 4 polling with a plus or minus 2.8% margin of error.

ADL said its level matched 1998’s as the lowest in the poll’s 45-year history. Yet in his 2003 book, “Never Again? The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism,” national director, Abraham Foxman, said he’s:

“convinced we currently face as great a threat to the safety of the Jewish people as the one we faced in the 1930s – if not a greater one,” contradicted by Cato Institute research fellow Leon Hadar (in the January 2004 Chronicles), saying that public opinion polls “indicate (racial and religious forms of) anti-Semitism (have) been in steep decline in most of Western Europe.” The same holds for America, putting a lie to Yale’s “crisis” and need for a conference to hawk it.

Badly needed are efforts to expose and denounce anti-Islamic rhetoric, actions and persecutions of people for their religion and/or ethnicity, but don’t expect Yale to hold it or discuss it in classrooms.

YIISA stacked its conference with pro-Israeli zealots, omitting voices for sanity and the right of Palestinians to live free of occupation in their own land or in one state affording everyone equal rights, an apparent blasphemous notion at Yale and many other US and Canadian campuses, firing even distinguished tenured professors for supporting the wrong religion or people too vigorously.

Opening conference remarks were made by YIISA Director, Dr. Charles Small, Yale’s Deputy Provost, Frances Rosenbluth, Rabbi James Ponet, director of Yale’s Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life, and Aviva Raz Schechter, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director for Combatting Antisemitism.

They all, of course, presented one-sided, pro-Israeli views, underscoring the notion that Israeli criticism is anti-Semetic, when, in fact, it’s principled, honest and more needed now than ever to expose and halt an Israeli/Washington partnership to conquer, divide and control the Middle East by force, stealth, deceit, intimidation, occupation, and political chicanery, common tools used by rogues and imperial marauders.

Hebrew University Professor Menahem Milson was the first of several keynote speakers. He’s also Chairman of the extremist Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI), whose board and advisors include a rogue’s gallery of pro-Israeli right-wing zealots, including:

— Oliver “Buck” Revell, former FBI Executive Assistant Director in charge of criminal investigative, counterterrorism and counterintelligence;

— Elliot Abrams, former Reagan and Bush administration official and convicted Iran-Contra felon, later pardoned by GHW Bush; and

— Steve Emerson, a notorious anti-Islamic bigot, well-known for using unscrupulous tactics to accuse innocent Muslims of terrorism and instill “Islamofascist” fear over the public airwaves.

Its board of advisors includes:

— Ehud Barak, former Israeli Prime Minister and current Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister;

— Bernard Lewis, Princeton Professor Emeritus of near eastern studies, known for his anti-Islamic views;

— James Woolsey, neocon former CIA director;

— John Bolton, former neocon war hawk Bush administration UN ambassador, recess-appointed because Congress was too embarrassed to do it;

— Rabid Zionist Elie Wiesel, a man Professor Norman Finkelstein calls “vain, arrogant, gullible, naive about international affairs, (and defender of) the worst excesses of previous Israeli governments;”

— John Ashcroft, former Bush administration Attorney General, the man who indicted Lynne Stewart, famed human rights lawyer now imprisoned on bogus charges for doing her job honorably, what Ashcroft never did;

— Michael Mukasey, another Bush administration Attorney General, as bad as Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales; and

— many other disreputable members, known for their pro-Israeli bias, including Richard Holbrooke, a proponent of imperial wars, who stepped down temporarily to become Obama administration Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Other YIISA presenters included (among others):

— Itamar Marcus, a West Bank settler movement leader, connected to the New York-based Central Fund of Israel, raising money for it in America out of a Sixth Avenue/36th Street fabric store near Times Square;

— Canadian politician Irwin Cotler, who attacked the Goldstone Commission report viciously and unfairly;

— Harvard Professor of Yiddish Literature and Comparative Literature Rush Wisse, a pro-Israeli zealot this writer once had the displeasure of debating briefly by email;

— Barak Seener, Greater Middle East Section Director for the UK-based Henry Jackson Society, who believes Israeli Arabs are a fifth column threat to the state;

— Anne Bayesfsky, right-wing pro-Israeli supporter, senior fellow at the neocon Hudson Institute, associated with UN Watch devoted to attacking anti-Israeli criticism, and member of the Israel-based Ariel Center for Policy Research, a Likud Party-affiliated group supporting hardline writers in the Middle East, North America and Europe;

— Mark Dubowitz, Executive Director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, whose leaders and advisors include Newt Gingrich, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, James Woolsey, the senator from AIPAC, Joe Lieberman, neocon writer Charles Krauthammer, former Reagan assistant Defense Secretary Richard Perle, and Jeane Kirkpatrick, Reagan’s UN ambassador, among others;

— Anne Herzberg, NGO Monitor’s legal advisor, a notorious pro-Israeli group; and

— Samuel Edelman, board of director member of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, another Israeli advocacy organization.

Noticeably absent were notable figures from the Palestinian community as well as US truth and justice scholars and analysts who base their views on facts YIISA wants suppressed. There was no James Petras, Ilan Pappe, Jeff Halper, Joel Kovel, Norman Finkelstein, Rashid Khalidi, Phyllis Bennis, Uri Avnery, Neve Gordon, Nurit Peled-Elhannan, Ramzy Baroud, or any of the thousands of equal justice advocates listed on a so-called “Shit List,” including this writer given three unsympathetic paragraphs.

Instead, numerous speakers discussed provocative topics, including:

— Radical Islam and Genocidal anti-Semitism;

— Christianity and anti-Semitism;

— The Islamization of Anti-Semitism;

— The Internet and the Proliferation of Anti-Semitism;

— Law, Modernity, and Anti-Semitism;

— the Central Role of Palestinian Anti-Semitism in Creating the Palestinian Identity;

— Islamism and the Construction of Jewish Identity;

— Global Anti-Semitism and the Crisis of Modernity;

–Genocidal Anti-Semitism: Ahmadinejad’s Regime as a Case Study;

— Contemporary Anti-Semitism and the Delegitimization of Israel;

— Discourse of Contemporary Anti-Semitism;

— Confronting and Combating Contemporary Anti-Semitism in the Academy;

— Anti-Semitism in the Aftermath of the Holocaust;

— Lawfare, Human Rights Organizations and the Demonization of Israel;

— The Islamist Islamization of Anti-Semitism;

— the Iranian Threat;

— Social Theory and Contemporary Anti-Semitism

— Discourses of Anti-Semitism in Relation to the Middle East;

— the Media and the Dissemination of Hatred;

— Global Anti-Semitism;

— An Uncertain Sisterhood: Women and Anti-Semitism;

— Hannah Arendt and Anti-Semitism: A Critical Appraisal;

— Approaches to Anti-Semitism;

— Models for Combating Anti-Semitism: The Case of the United Kingdom;

— Understanding the Impact of German Anti-Semitism and Nazism;

— 400 Years of Anti-Semitism: From the Holy Office to the Nuremberg Laws;

— Embracing the Nation: Anti-Semitism and Modernity

— Anti-Semitism and the United States;

— Variations of European Anti-Semitism;

— Anti-Semitic Propaganda in Europe;

— Self-Hatred and Contemporary Anti-Semitism;

— Discussions in the Study of Anti-Semitism; and

— YIISA Director Small’s concluding remarks.

Final Comments

On August 25, Mondoweiss co-founder Philip Weiss discussed the conference, quoting Charlotte Kates (writer, organizer, and National Lawyers Guild Middle East Subcommittee Co-Chair) saying:

the people invited “who attack Palestinian scholars’ academic freedom find conferences such as this to be perfectly acceptable and legitimate.”

Weiss added that it’s not “possible to understand this conference without understanding the prominence of Zionist donors in prestige institutional life.” He also quoted journalist/author Ben White, specializing in Israeli/Palestine issues, saying:

“What is the role of Yale/academia in this kind of exercise?” It’s particularly galling and hypocritical that “fighting anti-Semitism – an anti-racist struggle – is being openly appropriated by far-right Zionist groupings, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, lobbyists like the NGO Monitor, and Orientalist ‘Arab/anti-terror experts.”

It’s especially disturbing that Yale lent its name to a three day hate fest, supporting:

— wrong over right;

— state terrorism over human rights and equal justice;

— colonizers over the colonized;

— what Edward Said called “the familiar (America, the West, us over) the strange (the Orient, East, them);” and

— Jewish “exceptionalism” over a “lesser malevolent” Islam.

Shamefully, presentations excluded discussions about:

Islam’s common roots with Judaism and Christianity, its tenets based on:

— love, not hate;

— peace, not violence;

— good over evil;

— charity, not exploitation; and

— a just and fair society for people of all faiths.

Also not addressed was the right of Palestinians to live freely like Jews. Yale apparently disagrees, why students against hate and bigotry should enroll elsewhere to be taught truths excluded from Yale’s curriculum.

Written by Stephen Lendman

Posted: 01 September 2010 11:07

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

Those who embrace violence, whether in the form of acts of terrorism or acts of war, are necrophiliacs. They worship death. They sacrifice life, including at times their own, for the heady intoxication that comes with becoming an angel of destruction. And in the wake of their fury and violence they not only leave grief, pain and suffering, but they perpetuate new cycles of revenge and murder like bad karma. These killers are presented to us in many forms. They come packaged as patriots and heroes, wearing rows of medals like David Petraeus or Stanley McChrystal, or they stumble onto the stage as bearded villains wearing suicide belts. But they are all killers. They all drink the same, dark elixir of death. They all partake of the same drug. They all take life in the name of high national or religious ideals. And they are all the scourge of the human race.

Zak Ebrahim, with whom I spoke in Philadelphia, knows intimately the old, sad tale of retribution, violence and revenge. His father is El Sayid Nosair, who, on Nov. 5, 1990, in New York City, assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane , the head of the Kach Party, labeled by the United States, Canada and the European Union as a terrorist organization. The party was outlawed by the Israeli government in 1988 for inciting racism. Kahane’s armed followers, whom I often encountered heavily armed at improvised roadblocks in the occupied Palestinian territories, were responsible for the murders and beatings of dozens of unarmed Palestinians. They held rallies in Jerusalem where they chanted “Death to Arabs!” And to many Palestinians, as well as many Muslims in the Arab world, Ebrahim’s father, currently in ADX Florence Supermax Prison in Florence, Colo., is celebrated as a hero. But to his son, who was then 7, he became something else. He became the father who disappeared because murder for a cause was more important than a life with his wife and three small children. And if anyone understands the line demarcating seductive ideologies of death and the fragility and sanctity of systems of life, it is Ebrahim.

His father, like many other immigrants arriving in the United States as young adults, struggled. When he first lived in Pittsburgh, a woman who was thinking of converting to Islam accused him of rape. The charges were eventually dropped due to lack of evidence. But it made him wary and distrustful of American culture. The family moved to Jersey City, N.J., where Nosair’s cousin offered him a job. A few months later he was severely electrocuted. He was unable to work for weeks. He fell into a deep depression.

“He spent a lot of his time sitting next to his radiator in the living room with his Koran and praying,” Ebrahim said. “Those two things, which were things he had not expected when he immigrated, led him towards a group he felt more comfortable with, which was Muslims. Unfortunately, that led him to Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman .”

Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric who was implicated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was the leader of a radical mosque in Jersey City. He is serving a life sentence at the Butner Medical Center, which is part of the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, N.C. The 1993 attack killed six people, including a pregnant woman, and injured hundreds more.

“I remember him as being a very normal, Egyptian Muslim father,” said Ebrahim, 27, in fluent, unaccented English. “He was very funny, always trying to make us laugh. We lived in a happy home. My parents didn’t argue. He was never violent with us. But over the course of that last year, when he started going to the Masjid Al-Salaam mosque in Jersey City, he drifted away from us. He was spending more and more time with this group of Muslim men. My mother noticed that he was starting to become initially a little more fundamentalist and then he announced he wanted to go to Afghanistan to fight in the Afghan war. He brought my grandfather here from Egypt to try and convince him to take the family back to Egypt with him so that he could go fight there. My mother was very much against him leaving to fight in this war.”

Nosair’s father strictly forbade his son to go to Afghanistan and told him his duty was to remain at home and support his family.

“He was spending more and more time at the mosque,” said Ebrahim, who was born Abdulaziz El-Sayed Nosair but changed his name after the Kahane assassination. “The mosque had a small store on the second floor of the building that sold Islamic materials, Korans and posters, which they used to raise funds for the war in Afghanistan. I am not sure when the turning point was, but when his father told him your family is your responsibility, you need to stay here and take care of them, and he was left with this need to make a change, to help his fellow Muslims, or however he saw it, he decided to go a different route. He decided to target people in the United States.”

Shortly before the assassination, Nosair, who repaired air conditioners in New York City’s courts, took his young son to a shooting range in Long Island. The range, it turned out, was under surveillance by the FBI. The father and son practiced firing automatic rifles.

“I was forced to understand at a very young age, after my father went to prison, that using violence to solve a situation only makes it worse,” Ebrahim said. “This was made clear to me because so many people were killed in retribution after Kahane’s murder, including Kahane’s son, who was killed with his wife and some of his children. The assassination solved nothing. It was only used as a tool to further fanaticize extremist groups.”

As a boy Ebrahim traveled with his mother, sister and brother to spend three days and two nights in a small residence at Attica State prison with his father.

“You could rent movies,” he said. “There was a little playground. It was three days of feeling like a normal family out of 362 other days. We would pretend to be a family for a couple of days. We would be happy. Then we could go back home to Jersey City, poor and without a father.”

“I think he was coerced into doing this by cunning people who were skilled at turning disaffected Muslims into extremists, although he is finally responsible for what he did,” Ebrahim said of his father’s descent into terrorism. “Most of the men involved in the assassination and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center were taken advantage of. They were tools. They were used. These men had very little understanding of what they were doing, even though many of the men were highly educated. I knew Mohammed Salameh, who was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He wanted to marry my sister. The years after my father went to prison Salameh only made it clearer that he wanted to marry my sister. He said it would be a great honor. But I saw that he was very young and very naive. A lot of people who come to this country are looking for ways to feel they belong and things that remind them of back home. It is amazing what you can get people to do when they feel part of a group.”

Life in the wake of the Kahane assassination became very difficult for the family. Donations and money from Osama bin Laden to pay for his father’s defense, led by the radical lawyer William Kunstler, eventually ran out. Ebrahim, his mother, sister and brother fell into abject poverty. The principal at the Cliffside Elementary School told the family that Ebrahim and his young brother would no longer be allowed to attend school. The children, for a time, received scholarships to a private Islamic school in Jersey City. The family, having difficulty supporting itself, would move 22 times over Ebrahim’s childhood; for a while they lived in Egypt. The appearance of a physically abusive stepfather, once his mother divorced Nosair, added to the trauma. Ebrahim kept his father’s identity hidden until this year, telling friends and acquaintances his father had died of a heart attack.

“My mother wore not only the hegab but the nekab, which covers the face,” he said. “And she was constantly being attacked on the street [in the U.S.] although people did not know who she was. It was amazing how many times immigrants with thick accents were telling my mother to go back to her country and she was born in Pittsburgh. People would call her ‘ninja’ or ‘ghost.’ After the World Trade Center bombing, when we went outside she was often targeted.”

Ebrahim has not seen his father for 15 years. They have not communicated for more than a decade. He said he is dedicating his life to speaking out as an advocate for nonviolence. He has a website at www.zakebrahim.com.

“We talked on the phone regularly after he went to prison, at least once a week or once every two weeks,” he said. “It became very tedious. I was having a hard time at school and home. I was being bullied very badly at school and abused by my stepfather. The conversations with my dad about making all my prayers and being good to my mother got old. It was the same conversation over and over again. If he cared about what was going on in my life he should have stuck around for it.”

“We dropped off the radar,” he said of his mother and two siblings. “We changed our names when we moved to Egypt. We did not want anyone to know we were over there. My father is a household name in Egypt. We ended all contact with him. For years he has been trying to get back in touch with us.”

“If we sat down together I am not sure what we would talk about,” he said. “I have spent so much time trying to protect myself from being hurt by him that I have reduced the importance of one day having a grown-up conversation with him. Perhaps this is my defense mechanism. It is easier for me not to put too much importance on the answers to questions I might put to him. He has spent 20 years in prison and well over 10 years not having contact with his children. I wonder if this makes him regret his decision, but who knows. A lot of people who commit those acts in the name of religion consider themselves martyrs.”

“I came from an extremist background,” he said. “I was exposed to the things Americans fear most about Islam. But I promote peace. I am not a fanatic. We must embrace tolerance and nonviolence. Who knows this better than the son of a terrorist?”

By Chris Hedges

21 September, 2010

Truthdig.com

Copyright © 2010 Truthdig, L.L.C.

BEFORE THE victory of feminism, there was a popular Israeli song in which the boy asks the girl: “When you say No, what do you mean?”

This question has already been answered. Now I am more and more tempted to ask: “When you say Zionism, what do you mean?”

That is also my answer when asked whether I am a Zionist.

When you say Zionist, what do you mean?

LATELY, ASSOCIATIONS for the defense of Zionism have been springing up like mushrooms after rain. Poisonous mushrooms.

All kinds of American Jewish multi-millionaires – many of them Casino kings, brothel moguls, money launderers and tax evaders – are financing “patriotic” Israeli groups in Israel, to fight the holy war for “Zionism”.

The assault takes place along all the fronts. Jewish organizations aim at cleansing the universities of post-Zionists. They threaten to induce other donors to withhold their donations, they terrorize presidents and rectors and frighten professors and students.

Americans may be reminded of the sinister era of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who blighted the life of thousands of intellectuals and artists, pushing many of them into exile or suicide. Europeans might be reminded of the days when “Aryan” professors informed on their treasonous colleagues, and students in brown shirts threw their Jewish colleagues out of the windows.

This is only one sector of the broad offensive. One group has proudly announced that it is teaching hundreds of professional Zionists how to cleanse Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia, of post-Zionist items and plant Zionist ones in their stead.

THE TERM “post-Zionism” is starring in the propaganda of all the dozens – and perhaps hundreds – of the associations financed by the Las Vegas multi-millionaires and their likes in the United States in order to restore the Zionist glory of old.

Why this term, of all others? They mean the leftists, but those who attack the “leftists” are liable to be called “rightists”. However, the members of the extreme right want to be seen as belonging to the patriotic center. Nor is it nice or enlightened to speak out against “liberal” or “progressive” professors. “Post-Zionists” is the Israeli equivalent of the “Reds” of Senator McCarthy or the “Jews” of his predecessors in Germany.

BUT WHAT is “post-Zionism”? Why not simply “anti-Zionism”?

As far as I know, I was the first to use this term. That was in 1976. I was testifying in a libel case that my friends and I had lodged against a publication that had accused the “Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace”, that we had just founded, of being “anti-Zionist”. In trying to explain my view to the judge, I said that Zionism was a historic movement, with both light and shadow, which had fulfilled its role with the establishment of the State of Israel. From then on, Israeli patriotism has taken its place. “Post-Zionism” means that with the founding of the state, a new historic era began. A “post-Zionist” can admire the achievements of Zionism or criticize them. He is not by definition an anti-Zionist.

The judge accepted my arguments and found in our favor. She awarded us handsome compensation. Now I am the only living Israeli who has a judicial confirmation that he is not an anti-Zionist – much as only a person released from a psychiatric hospital has an official confirmation that he is sane.

Since then, the term “post-Zionist” has acquired wide currency in academic circles. It has also acquired many shades of meaning, according to the people who use it.

But in the mouths of our new mini-McCarthys, it has become a simple denunciation. A post-Zionist is a traitor, an Arab-lover, a lackey of the enemy, an agent of the sinister world-wide conspiracy to destroy the Jewish State.

SHLOMO AVINERI, a respected professor of philosophy, recently published an article in which he fervently argued that Israel is a Jewish state and must remain so. The article has already stirred up a vivid debate.

I have received some protests from people who mistakenly thought that it was I who wrote the piece. That happens from time to time. Years ago the respected British weekly, The Economist, printed my name instead of his, and next week published “an apology to both”.

But the difference is considerable.  Avineri is an eminent professor, a student of Hegel, an expert on Zionist history, a former Director General of the Israeli Foreign Office, and a devout Zionist. I, as is well-known, am not a professor, I never even finished elementary school, I never was a government spokesman and my attitude towards Zionism is very complex.

In his article, Avineri argued passionately that Israel is a Jewish state “as Poland is a Polish state and Greece is a Greek state”.  He was responding to a Palestinian citizen of Israel, Salman Masalha, who had asserted that there cannot be a “Jewish state”, much as  – he says – there cannot be a “Muslim state” or a “Catholic state”.

How can one compare, Avineri cried out. After all, the Jews are a people! Israel belongs to the Jewish people, whose religion is Judaism.

Logical, isn’t it?

BY NO means. The analogy does not fit.

If Poland belongs to the Poles and Greece to the Greeks, Israel belongs to the Israelis. But the Israeli government does not recognize the existence of an Israeli nation. (The courts have not yet decided upon the petition by some of us to be recognized as belonging to the Israeli nation.)

If Avineri had demanded the recognition that Israel belongs to the Israelis as Poland belongs to the Poles, I would have applauded. But he argues that Israel belongs to the Jews. This immediately raises some basic questions.

For example: Which Jews? Those who are Israeli citizens? Clearly, this is not what he means. He means the “Jewish people” dispersed all over the world, a people whose members belong to the American, French, Argentine nations – and, yes, also to the Polish and Greek nations.

How does a person become an American? By acquiring American citizenship. How does a person become French? By becoming a citizen of the French republic. How does a person become a Jew?

Ah, there’s the rub. According to the law of the State of Israel, a Jew is somebody whose mother is Jewish, or who has converted to the Jewish religion and not adopted any other religion. Ergo: the definition is purely religious, like that of a Muslim or a Catholic. Not at all like that of a Pole or a Greek. (In Jewish religion, it’s only the mother, not the father, who counts in this respect. Perhaps because one cannot be quite sure who the father is.)

There are in Israel hundreds of thousands of people who have immigrated from the former Soviet Union with their Jewish relatives, but are not Jewish according to the religious definition. They consider themselves Israelis in every respect, speak Hebrew, pay taxes, serve in the army. But they are not recognized as belonging to the Jewish people, to which, according to Avineri, the state belongs. Like the million and a half Israeli citizens who are Palestinian Arabs. The state does not belong to them, even though they enjoy – at least formally – full civil rights.

Simply put: the state belongs, according to Avineri, to millions of people who do not live here and who belong to other nations, but does not belong to millions of people who live here and vote for the Knesset.

WHO HAS decided that this is a Jewish state? Avineri and many others assert that the character of the state was decided upon by the resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations of November 29th, 1947, which partitioned the country between a “Jewish state” and an “Arab state”.

Not true.

The UN did not decide upon a state which belongs to all the Jews in the world, any more than upon a state that belongs to all the Arabs in the world. The UN commission which investigated the conflict between the Jews and the Arabs in the country then called Palestine decided (very sensibly) that the only possible solution was to allot to each of the two national communities a state of its own. Nothing more.

In short: the words “Jewish” and “Arab” in the UN resolution have nothing to do with the character of the two states, but only define the two communities in the country that were to establish their states. They have no other meaning.

BUT A professor who comes to this conclusion would be hounded as a “post-Zionist” who must be expelled from his university. According to our little McCarthys, even the debate is absolutely verboten. Verboten to think. Verboten to write. Strictly verboten to speak. In every university there would be Zionist overseers to receive reports about the lectures of professors, check their publications, report what they hear from students who inform on other students, and safeguard ideological purity. Much like the “politruks” – political commissars – in the Soviet Union. Much like the cadres of the “cultural revolution” in China, when thousands of professors and other intellectuals were sent to labor camps or remote villages.

But the results of their labors may be very different from what they expect. Instead of making the term “post-Zionism” a synonym for treason, they may make the term “Zionism” a synonym for fascism, gladdening the hearts of all those around the world who preach a boycott of the “Jewish state”. When the Israeli universities are cleansed of non-conformist thinkers, it will indeed be easy to boycott them.

When you say Zionism, do you mean the humanist vision of Theodor Herzl or Avigdor Lieberman’s Jewish fascism?

Written by Uri Avnery

Posted: 25 August 2010 13:08

A growing grassroots movement is using the techniques of the anti-apartheid movement to challenge U.S. support for Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.

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When Israeli commandos launched their assault on the unarmed flotilla of ships carrying hundreds of humanitarian aid workers and 10,000 tons of supplies for the besieged Gaza Strip, killing at least nine activists and injuring scores more, part of the operation was “Made in the USA.”

Decades of uncritical U.S. financial, military, and diplomatic support has ensured that Israel’s military power—nuclear and conventional—remains unchallengeable. A U.S. pattern of using UN Security Council vetoes to protect Israel from accountability has ensured that Israel can essentially do whatever it likes with those U.S.-provided weapons, regardless of what U.S. or international laws may be broken.

Israel has long relied on the numerous U.S.-made and U.S.-financed Apache and Blackhawk war helicopters in its arsenal—it’s a good bet those were in use in the May 31st assault in international waters. Use of U.S.-provided weapons is severely limited by our own laws: The Arms Export Control Act (AECA) prohibits any recipient from using U.S. weapons except for security within its own borders, or for direct self-defense. And no amount of Israeli spin can make us believe that an attack by heavily-armed commandos jumping onto the decks of an unarmed civilian ship in international waters has anything to do with self-defense.

So yes—our tax dollars and our politicians’ decisions play a huge part in enabling not only the flotilla attack but Israel’s violations of human rights overall. But increasingly, across the country, people and organizations are standing up to say no to U.S. support for those policies of occupation and apartheid.

The main strategy is known as “BDS”—boycott, divestment, and sanctions. Based on the lessons of the South African anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s, BDS brings non-violent economic pressure to bear in order to end Israeli violations of international law. In 2005, a coalition of Palestinian civil society organizations issued a call for a global campaign of BDS. The call was based on the understanding that the Palestinian struggle for human rights, equality, and the enforcement of international law needed international support—and civil society organizations would have to step in, given that the traditional Palestinian leadership hadn’t created a strategy for mobilizing such support.

The strength of the BDS call was its recognition that while a unified global campaign was needed, conditions are different in every country. So in Europe, the focus began on individual boycotts of consumer goods produced in Israeli settlements. In countries like Brazil and India, the emphasis was on military sanctions, pressuring governments to stop buying Israeli armaments. And in the U.S., the initial focus was on divestment.

In fact, the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation, the largest coalition of organizations working on the issue, had been working on divestment even before the 2005 Palestinian call. The movement began in earnest following the 2003 death of Rachel Corrie, a young U.S. peace activist killed as she tried to block the demolition of a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip by Israeli troops. Corrie was run over by an armored bulldozer manufactured by Caterpillar, which became the first target of the divestment efforts.

Since that time, BDS work in the U.S. has increased dramatically. In addition to Caterpillar, the campaign is now targeting Motorola (the company’s Israeli affiliate provides special communications systems for Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank) and Ahava (a cosmetics company that uses mud from the Dead Sea, harming the fragile environment as well as expropriating Palestinian land).

Across the U.S., churches, university campuses, municipal governments, and many more institutions are debating divestment and boycott resolutions. The Presbyterian Church is debating how to include an anti-occupation approach within its socially responsible investment policies. On June 15, the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church voted to divest from three corporations that profit from the occupation of Palestine. And in spring 2010, Hampshire College became the first university to divest from companies supporting occupation—a moment of special resonance because Hampshire was also the first U.S. college to divest from South Africa in the 1980s. When the issue was debated in Berkeley’s student senate, more than 4,000 people mobilized to support divestment.

The U.S. Campaign is also working to end U.S. military aid to Israel, calling for the enforcement of U.S. laws already prohibiting Israel’s illegal use of U.S. weapons. Really, it’s a call for sanctions from below. Who really thinks that giving $30 billion of our tax money in military aid to Israel—already militarily powerful and nuclear-armed—as promised by George Bush and now being implemented by President Obama over the next ten years, is a good use of those funds in this time of economic crisis? BDS is a strategic effort to change U.S. policy to support human rights, equality, and an end to the occupation rather than continued military build-up.

In the first 24 hours after the attack on the Gaza aid flotilla, the Obama administration limited itself to expressions of concern and regret for the loss of life, along with a polite request to Israel for “clarifications.” But maybe the international outcry that followed the attack, joined by the rising BDS movement in the U.S., will mark the beginning of a shift in U.S. policy.

In the first days and weeks after the flotilla attack, BDS actions across the United States took on new energy and achieved new results. In California, hundreds of activists formed a picket line at dawn at the Port of Oakland where an Israeli cargo ship waited, urging dock workers not to unload the ship in protest of the flotilla assault. Workers of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) refused to cross the picket line, a labor arbitrator immediately upheld their right to refuse to unload the ship, and the shipping company abandoned the effort. The ILWU workers joined counterparts in a number of other countries, including Sweden, South Africa, Norway, and Malaysia, who have all announced their refusal to unload Israeli ships.

The powerful example of the BDS movement that helped end apartheid in South Africa is a constant source of inspiration. Current BDS campaigns have learned key lessons and grounded much of their work in the accomplishments—and, indeed, the challenges and even failures—of that earlier, seminal version.

A generation ago, South African apartheid appeared to be an equally impossible-to-change political reality. Considering that history, is it so unlikely that Washington could tell Israel that we would rather keep those $30 billion here at home to create 600,000 new green union jobs, rather than support a foreign military force’s ability to kill humanitarian workers trying to break an illegal blockade in order to bring desperately needed supplies to a besieged population?

21 August, 2010

Yes! Magazine

Phyllis Bennis wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a nationl, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Phyllis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and author of Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer. She serves on the steering committee of the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation.

YES! Magazine encourages you to make free use of this article by taking these easy steps. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Things which don’t go away. Things the American government and media don’t let go of. And neither do I.

They’re leaving as heroes. I want them to walk home with pride in their hearts,” declared Col. John Norris, the head of a US Army brigade in Iraq. 1

It’s enough to bring tears to the eyes of an American, enough to make him choke up.

Enough to make him forget.

But no American should be allowed to forget that the nation of Iraq, the society of Iraq, have been destroyed, ruined, a failed state. The Americans, beginning 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed wantonly, tortured … the people of that unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives … More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile … The air, soil, water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children to pick them up … an army of young Islamic men went to Iraq to fight the American invaders; they left the country more militant, hardened by war, to spread across the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia … a river of blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may never be put back together again.

“It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003,” reported the Washington Post on May 5, 2007.

No matter … drum roll, please … Stand tall American GI hero! And don’t even think of ever apologizing. Iraq is forced by the United States to continue paying reparations for its own invasion of Kuwait in 1990. How much will the American heroes pay the people of Iraq?

Perhaps the groundwork for that heroism already exists … February 15, 2003, a month before the US invasion of Iraq, probably the largest protest in human history, between six and ten million protesters took to the streets of some 800 cities in nearly sixty countries across the globe.

Iraq. Love it or leave it.

PanAm 103

The British government recently warned Libya against celebrating the one-year anniversary of Scotland’s release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Libyan who’s the only person ever convicted of the 1988 blowing up of PanAm flight 103 over Scotland, which took the lives of 270 largely Americans and British. Britain’s Foreign Office has declared: “On this anniversary we understand the continuing anguish that al-Megrahi’s release has caused his victims both in the U.K. and the U.S. He was convicted for the worst act of terrorism in British history. Any celebration of al-Megrahi’s release would be tasteless, offensive and deeply insensitive to the victims’ families.”

John Brennan, President Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser, stated that the United States has “expressed our strong conviction” to Scottish officials that Megrahi should not remain free. Brennan criticized what he termed the “unfortunate and inappropriate and wrong decision” to allow Megrahi’s return to Libya on compassionate grounds on Aug. 20, 2009 because he had cancer and was not expected to live more than about three months. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement saying that the United States “continues to categorically disagree” with Scotland’s decision to release Megrahi a year ago. “As we have expressed repeatedly to Scottish authorities, we maintain that Megrahi should serve out the entirety of his sentence in prison in Scotland.” 2 The US Senate has called for an investigation and family members of the crash victims have demanded that Megrahi’s medical records be released. The Libyan’s failure to die as promised has upset many people.

But how many of our wonderful leaders are upset that Abdel Baset al-Megrahi spent eight years in prison despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence that he had anything to do with the bombing of flight 103? The Scottish court that convicted him knew he was innocent. To understand that just read their 2001 “Opinion of the Court”, or read my analysis of it at killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm.

As to the British government being so upset about Libya celebrating Megrahi’s release — keeping in mind that it strongly appears that UK oil deals with Libya played more of a role in his release than his medical condition did — we should remember that in July 1988 an American Navy ship in the Persian Gulf, the Vincennes, shot down an Iranian passenger plane, taking the lives of 290 people; i.e., more than died from flight 103. And while the Iranian people mourned their lost loved ones, the United States celebrated by handing out medals and ribbons to the captain and crew of the Vincennes. 3 The shootdown had another consequence: It inspired Iran to take revenge, which it did in December of that year, financing the operation to blow up PanAm 103 (carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine –- General Command).

Why do they hate us?

Passions are flying all over the place concerning the proposed building of an Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from 9/11 Ground Zero in New York. Even people who are not particularly anti-Muslim think it would be in bad taste, offensive. But implicit in all the hostility is the idea that what happened on that fateful day in 2001 was a religious act, fanatic Muslims acting as Muslims attacking infidels. However — even if one accepts the official government version of 19 Muslims hijacking four airliners — the question remains: Why did they choose the targets they chose? If they wanted to kill lots of American infidels why not fly the planes into the stands of packed football or baseball stadiums in the midwest or the south? Certainly a lot less protected than the Pentagon or the financial center of downtown Manhattan. Why did they choose symbols of US military might and imperialism? Because it was not a religious act, it was a political act. It was revenge for decades of American political and military abuse in the Middle East. 4 It works the same all over the world. In the period of the 1950s to the 1980s in Latin America, in response to continuous hateful policies of Washington, there were countless acts of terrorism against American diplomatic and military targets as well as the offices of US corporations; nothing to do with religion.

Somehow, American leaders have to learn that their country is not exempt from history, that their actions have consequences.

Afghanistan

In their need to defend the US occupation of Afghanistan, many Americans have cited the severe oppression of women in that desperate land and would have you believe that the United States is the last great hope of those poor ladies. However, in the 1980s the United States played an indispensable role in the overthrow of a secular and relatively progressive Afghan government, one which endeavored to grant women much more freedom than they’ll ever have under the current government, more perhaps than ever again. Here are some excerpts from a 1986 US Army manual on Afghanistan discussing the policies of this government concerning women: “provisions of complete freedom of choice of marriage partner, and fixation of the minimum age at marriage at 16 for women and 18 for men”; “abolished forced marriages”; “bring [women] out of seclusion, and initiate social programs”; “extensive literacy programs, especially for women”; “putting girls and boys in the same classroom”; “concerned with changing gender roles and giving women a more active role in politics”. 5

The overthrow of this government paved the way for the coming to power of an Islamic fundamentalist regime, followed by the awful Taliban. And why did the United States in its infinite wisdom choose to do such a thing? Mainly because the Afghan government was allied with the Soviet Union and Washington wanted to draw the Russians into a hopeless military quagmire — “We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War”, said Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser. 6

The women of Afghanistan will never know how the campaign to raise them to the status of full human beings would have turned out, but this, some might argue, is but a small price to pay for a marvelous Cold War victory.

Cuba

Why does the mainstream media routinely refer to Cuba as a dictatorship? Why is it not uncommon even for people on the left to do the same? I think that many of the latter do so in the belief that to say otherwise runs the risk of not being taken seriously, largely a vestige of the Cold War when Communists all over the world were ridiculed for following Moscow’s party line. But what does Cuba do or lack that makes it a dictatorship? No “free press”? Apart from the question of how free Western media is, if that’s to be the standard, what would happen if Cuba announced that from now on anyone in the country could own any kind of media? How long would it be before CIA money — secret and unlimited CIA money financing all kinds of fronts in Cuba — would own or control most of the media worth owning or controlling?

Is it “free elections” that Cuba lacks? They regularly have elections at municipal, regional and national levels. Money plays virtually no role in these elections; neither does party politics, including the Communist Party, since candidates run as individuals.7 Again, what is the standard by which Cuban elections are to be judged? Most Americans, if they gave it any thought, might find it difficult to even imagine what a free and democratic election, without great concentrations of corporate money, would look like, or how it would operate. Would Ralph Nader finally be able to get on all 50 state ballots, take part in national television debates, and be able to match the two monopoly parties in media advertising? If that were the case, I think he’d probably win; and that’s why it’s not the case. Or perhaps what Cuba lacks is our marvelous “electoral college” system, where the presidential candidate with the most votes is not necessarily the winner. If we really think this system is a good example of democracy why don’t we use it for local and state elections as well?

Is Cuba a dictatorship because it arrests dissidents? Thousands of anti-war and other protesters have been arrested in the United States in recent years, as in every period in American history. Many have been beaten by police and mistreated while incarcerated. And remember: The United States is to the Cuban government like al Qaeda is to Washington, only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. (This is documented by Cuba in a 1999 suit against the United States detailing $181.1 billion in compensation for victims: the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding or disabling of 2,099 others. The Cuban suit has been in the hands of the Counter-Terrorism Committee of the United Nations since 2001, a committee made up of all 15 members of the Security Council, which of course includes the United States, and which may account for the inaction on the matter.)

As casually and as routinely as calling Cuba a dictatorship, the mainstream media drops the line into news stories that “Hezbollah [or Hamas, or FARC, etc.] is considered a terrorist group by the United States”, stated as matter-of-factly as saying that Hezbollah is located in Lebanon. Inclusion on the list limits an organization in various ways, such as its ability to raise funds and travel internationally. And inclusion is scarcely more than a political decision made by the US government. Who is put on or left off the State Department’s terrorist list bears a strong relation to how supportive of US or Israeli policies the group is. The list, for example, never includes any of the anti-Castro Cuban groups or individuals in Florida although those people have carried out literally hundreds of terrorist acts over the past few decades, in Latin America, in the US, and in Europe. As you read this, the two men responsible for blowing up a Cuban airline in 1976, taking 73 lives, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada, are walking around free in the Florida sunshine. Imagine that Osama bin Laden was walking freely around the Streets of an Afghan or Pakistan city taking part in political demonstrations as Posada does in Florida. Venezuela asked the United States to extradite Posada five years ago and is still waiting.

Bosch and Posada are but two of hundreds of Latin-American terrorists who’ve been given haven in the United States over the years. 9 Various administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have also provided close support of terrorists in Kosovo, Bosnia, Iran, Iraq, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere, including those with known connections to al Qaeda. Yet, in the grand offices of the State Department sit learned men who list Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism”, along with Syria, Sudan and Iran. 10 That’s the complete list.

“Hall of Shamer: Clemens Indicted” — page one headline in large type about fabled baseball pitcher Roger Clemens charged with lying to Congress about his use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. 11 Of all the things that athletes put into their bodies to improve their health, fitness and performance, why are steroids singled out? Doesn’t taking vitamin and mineral supplements give an athlete an advantage over athletes who don’t take them? Should these supplements be banned from sport competition? Vitamin and mineral supplements are not necessarily any more “natural” than steroids, which in fact are very important in our body chemistry; among the steroids are the male and female sex hormones. Moreover, why not punish those who follow a “healthy diet” because of the advantage this may give them?

By William Blum

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org