Archives: Articles

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.

Document Actions

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

 

 

Australia ‘s explicitly racist policies against Indigenous Australians and refugees have been slammed by a recent Report from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in Geneva. The human rights-abusing Rudd-Gillard Labor Government violated the  Australian 1975 Racial Discrimination Act in relation to Northern Territory Indigenous Australians, Afghan refugees fleeing the Afghan Genocide and Tamil refugees fleeing the Tamil Genocide in Sri Lanka . Australia ‘s own Race Discrimination Commissioner says the next federal government must amend the constitution to make impossible further such racist suspension of   Australia ‘s Racial Discrimination Act. In 2006 the conservative Liberal-National Party Coalition Government under PM John Howard implemented, with bipartisan support from the Labor Opposition, a quasi-military so-called Intervention in the Northern Territory in response to the Northern Territory Government’s publication of the “Little Children are Sacred” Report about sexual abuse of Aboriginal children. In reality the “Little Children are Sacred” Report found (p57) that “it is not possible to accurately estimate the extent of child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory’s Aboriginal communities”, but nevertheless the Indigenous Community was specifically and extensively singled out  and defamed in this respect in the Mainstream media and Parliament. In contrast, the massive sexual abuse of Australia children as a whole was of course ignored, even though the “Little Children are Sacred” Report reported that 34% of Australian women and 16% of men have been subject to sexual abuse as children. (see p235, the “Little Children are Sacred” Report: http://www.inquirysaac.nt.gov.au/pdf/bipacsa_final_report.pdf ). Further, the Howard Government implemented only two out of ninety-seven of the Report’s recommendations. The quasi-military Northern Territory Intervention initially involved over 600 uniformed Australian soldiers. The Major Party-supported Federal Parliamentary legislation specifically and in a race-specific fashion excluded Northern Territory Indigenous Australians (Aborigines, Aboriginals) from the provisions of the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act that had been passed by the reformist Whitlam Labor Government. The Liberal–National Party and Labor Party (aka the Lib-Labs) who voted for the Intervention secured about 90% of the vote in the 2007 elections that yielded a massive victory to Labor. Thus the Northern Territory Intervention measure was supported by an overwhelming democratic majority of Australians (noting that voting is compulsory in Australia ). In the 2010 federal elections that yielded a hung parliament, support for the Lib-Labs totalled 82% – a further demonstration of the overwhelming politically correct racism (PC racism) in Australia, a condition involving the assertion that “we are not racists” while supporting egregious and deadly race-based policies. The race-based  Northern Territory Intervention meant that Indigenous Australians were prohibited form using, buying, selling, transporting, trading, seeing or consuming things available to all other Australians; their welfare payments were taken over by the Government; services available to all other Australians were made conditional on long-term surrender of land rights; and Indigenous Australians could be removed from homes, Community and Sacred Land on the say so of White officials without recourse to legal protection. All this is egregious racism  that is quite analogous to that in US- , UK- , Apartheid Israel- and Apartheid Australia-backed Apartheid South Africa and in US- , UK- and Apartheid Australia-backed Apartheid Israel today. The big difference is that whereas the racist South African Apartheiders openly expressed their hatred and contempt for their non-European subjects and the Apartheid Israelis openly express their genocidal contempt and hatred for Indigenous Palestinians, the politically correct racist (PC racist) Apartheid Australians endlessly declare their sympathy and love for their down-trodden Indigenous brothers and sisters. Some amendment to this racist legislation was made recently by the Rudd-Gillard Labor Government – but at the cost of extending this ugly human rights abuse to more Australians. Further, the human rights-abusing Labor Government  in 2010 extended this violation of the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act to include suspension of the asylum claims of imprisoned Afghan refugees fleeing the Afghan Genocide and of Tamil refugees fleeing the Tamil Genocide in Sri Lanka i.e. contemptible suspension of the human rights of these desperate refugees for reasons of political expediency in the face of looming elections. Not all Australians are party to these racist abominations – in the recent federal elections about 12% of Australians voted for the anti-war, pro-environment, pro-human rights Greens, and 6% voted informally (defacing their ballot or voting incorrectly), with about  82% of Australians nevertheless voting for the pro-war, pro-coal, pro-Zionist, war criminal,  climate criminal, human rights abusing, politically correct racist (PC racist), neocon Lib-Labs. The PC racist majority of Australians seem to think that convenient perception is reality and that if they  ignore horrendous reality then the Awful Truth will simply go away – but it won’t and the World is watching. Thus a new Report from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in Geneva slams Australia ‘s racist and human rights-abusing treatment of Indigenous Australians and refugees and one of the authors has said that such racial discrimination has become “embedded” in the Australian way of life. The UN CERD committee criticised what it called the “unacceptably high level of disadvantage and social dislocation” of Indigenous Australians and race-based, inhumane treatment of Afghan and Tamil refugees (see “UN says racism “embedded” in Australia”, ABC News, 28 August 2010: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/28/2996007.htm ). The Australian Race Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes has commented thus on the UN Report: “The actions that needed to be taken in the Northern Territory could have been done on a non-discriminatory basis. So what the committee is recommending to Australia is not only we completely remove the suspension – which we haven’t yet done – but we entrench in the constitution a provision so that never again can race discrimination law be suspended in Australia…We need to do much better in terms of having a national multicultural policy, which we haven’t had for almost 15 years, which includes an anti-racism strategy. I think the problem for Australia is that we try to pretend that racism isn’t there. What we need to do is face the facts that there are elements of racism in this country and take some positive action to address it” (see “ Australia pretending racism isn’t there”, ABC News, 29 August 2010: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/29/2996351.htm ). Australian denial of racist Australian policies at home and abroad comes at a very high human price. It is estimated that 9,000 Indigenous Australians die avoidably every year out of an Indigenous population of 0.5 million (see “Aboriginal Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/ ). In the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories post-invasion violent deaths and non-violent avoidable deaths from deprivation total 2.5 million and 4.5 million, respectively – carnage that merits the terminology Iraqi Genocide and Afghan Genocide, respectively, with genocide here defined as per Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention (see “Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ and “Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ ). ). Indeed the crude death rate in South Africa (in units of deaths per 1,000 of population per year) declined steadily under the racist Apartheid regime from 20.3 in 1950-1955 to a minimum of 8.4 in 1990-1995 but then rose dramatically in post-Apartheid South Africa from 9.9 (1995-2000) to 15.1 (2005-2010), this being substantially due to post-Apartheid governmental incompetence and the spread of HIV/AIDS (UN Population Division: http://esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp?panel=2 ). In contrast, Apartheid Australia has been involved in all post-1950 US Asian wars, wars that have been associated, so far, with avoidable deaths totalling 24 million, the breakdown being 1 million (Korea), 13 million (Indo-China), 4.4 million (Iraq, 1990-2010), 4.5 million ( Afghanistan , 2001-2010) and 0.8 million global opiate drug-related deaths (3,000 in Australia) since 2001 due to US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry.  Indeed Australia has a  secret genocide history – there are 22 holocausts and genocides in which Australia has been or still is complicit (see “ Australia ‘s secret genocide history”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/australia-s-secret-genocide-history ). Sanctions and Boycotts were used successfully against Apartheid South Africa and must be also applied to ‘look the other way”, PC racist Apartheid Australia to help stop the racist carnage in which it is complicit – the Aboriginal Genocide (9,000 Indigenous Australian excess or avoidable deaths annually), the Iraqi Genocide (about 60,000 excess deaths annually) and the Afghan Genocide (440,000 excess deaths annually). Silence kills and silence is complicity – please inform everyone you can. currently teaches science students at a major Australian university. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has recently published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contribution “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007): http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ). He has just published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/ 29 August, 2010 Countercurrents.org  Written by Dr Gideon Polya Posted: 01 September 2010 11:42

 

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

 

Since September 11, 2001, fear has been the main engine of change in the United States. Who would have thought that across the US, where people boast that it is the home of the free and the land of the brave, people would gladly surrender their freedom and liberty because they so fear terrorism?

Who would have thought that the US would allow, much less pay for, the National Security Agency to intercept and store 1.7 billion emails, phone calls and other communications – every single day – and pay for 30,000 people to listen in on phone conversations in the name of fighting the fear of terrorism?

Who would have thought that people across New York City, where people are proud of their diversity, would fear construction of a mosque and community center downtown?

Who would have thought that people across the US, where people argue that they helped bring down the wall that separated East and West Germany, would so fear their neighbors to the South that they support construction of a wall of separation with Mexico?

Who would have thought that some of the highest lawyers in the land would write memos illegally authorizing the torture of people in the name of making the US safe?

Who would have thought that Democrats would compete with Republicans to try to keep the globally shameful Guantanamo prison open so that people inside the US

would not have to fear having living near prisons with alleged terrorists in them?

Who would have thought that people in New York City, a place where people admire their own toughness, would fear having criminal trials of alleged terrorists in their city

Who would have thought that in the US, where people take pride in the constitutional independence of the judiciary, those judges would turn down the case of Maher Arar, who was captured in the US and flown out to a Syrian prison to be tortured, because they fear that even looking at the case would interfere with national security?

Who would have thought that the people of the US would fear to have Uighurs, members of persecuted ethnic minority who struggled for their freedoms against China, allowed to live even temporarily in the US?

Who would have thought that the people of the US would so fear the possibility of the Taliban ruling Afghanistan and the false possibility of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that we would send our sons and daughters to die by the thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Who would have thought that there once was a US president who said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance…”?

You tell me what happened to the land of the free and the home of the brave since September 11, 2001.

Bill is Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He can be reached at quigley77@gmail.com

WRITTEN BY BILL QUIGLEY

POSTED: 08 SEPTEMBER 2010 11:4

Countercurrents.org

A veteran’s perspective makes it clear that two major points must be made in response to President Obama’s announcement regarding combat troops leaving Iraq.

First, there is no such thing as “non combat troops.” It is a contradiction in terms. It is internally inconsistent. It is illogical. It is simply not true.

Ask any of the millions of men and women who went through basic training and they can tell you that every U.S. troop anywhere in the world was indoctrinated and trained in the basics of combat. While in Iraq, the transition from mechanics or communications back to combat-ready soldier takes but an order. “Non-combat troops” is simply the latest in a long line of military euphemisms meant to obscure painful reality.

“And now, fellow Americans, let us begin a new era of candor and honesty about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Specifically, I’m referring to the true costs of war – something that must be considered if we are to judge if continued war is worth it.

You have seen that the cost to taxpayers of these wars has exceeded one trillion dollars, nearly all of which has been considered ‘off budget,’ appropriated by extraordinary or ‘supplemental’ spending bills. It may be hard to believe, but large though that figure may be, it is only the smaller portion of what we will spend in total.

We are already investing unprecedented amounts in Veterans Administration staff and facilities to try and cope with the millions of men and women who have cycled through a war zone deployment – and of course many have been through multiple deployments.

Our experience thus far tells us to expect literally hundreds of thousands of cases of PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injuries – injuries that are often difficult to diagnose at first and difficult to treat. These are, of course, in addition to the many thousands of visibly wounded who, at great expense, must go through rehabilitation and a lifetime of support in order to function to their fullest. Thousands more will require years, perhaps decades, of long-term care because their injuries have left them so broken they require round-the-clock attention.

But since we are initiating an era of candor, we go farther – and by that I mean the cost to families, communities and society as a whole. Volumes have literally been written on this point, but let me leave you with a brief example you can easily expand for yourself.

We have already heard of the abnormally high rate of suicides among returning veterans. The real number is undoubtedly higher since some will always remain a mystery. We’ve heard also of a growing tide of domestic violence that leaves families broken and terrorized.

Beyond the draining medical, psychological and emotional costs to the individuals directly involved, imagine the cost to the communities where this occurs: whole battalions of police, fire, EMT, courts, probation officers, social workers and sadly, prison guards will be needed to deal with the true costs of war. It is uncomfortable to admit, but this is indeed one area of the economy I can guarantee will grow significantly.

Then there is an exponentially greater cost borne by the people of Iraq and Afghanistan – greater in every way: emotionally, economically, in human suffering, in destroyed opportunities, in shattered lives and minds, in hearts that will remain forever broken. We can do precious little to repair much of that kind of damage. But I can tell you this, my fellow Americans, we must at least pay the bill to rebuild the roads, water and sewer plants, hospitals, schools and residences we have destroyed.

It is not pleasant to describe such things and indeed, these costs will continue to weigh heavily on our nation well into our grandchildren’s generation. But we cannot pretend otherwise.”

This is the message that should come from the White House tonight if truth were indeed the coin of the realm. We won’t hear it, but that will make it no less true.

By Mike Ferner

Mike Ferner is the president of ” Veterans for Peace”. Ferner is also author of “Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran For Peace Reports from Iraq,” (Praeger/Greenwood, 2006)

 

John Pilger says that while the dangers of Rupert Murdoch’s dominance are understood, the role played by the respectable media, such as the New York Times and the BBC, notably in the promotion of colonial wars, is at least as important

Britain is said to be approaching its Berlusconi Moment. That is to say, if Rupert Murdoch wins control of Sky he will command half the television and newspaper market and threaten what is known as public service broadcasting. Although the alarm is ringing, it is unlikely that any government will stop him while his court is packed with politicians of all parties.

The problem with this and other Murdoch scares is that, while one cannot doubt their gravity, they deflect from an unrecognised and more insidious threat to honest information. For all his power, Murdoch’s media is not respectable. Take the current colonial wars. In the United States, Murdoch’s Fox Television is almost cartoon-like in its warmongering. It is the august, tombstone New York Times, “the greatest newspaper in the world”, and others such as the once-celebrated Washington Post, that have given respectability to the lies and moral contortions of the “war on terror”, now recat as “perpetual war”.

In Britain, the liberal Observer performed this task in making respectable Tony Blair’s deceptions on Iraq. More importantly, so did the BBC, whose reputation is its power. In spite of one maverick reporter’s attempt to expose the so-called dodgy dossier, the BBC took Blair’s sophistry and lies on Iraq at face value.

This was made clear in studies by Cardiff University and the German-based Media Tenor. The BBC’s coverage, said the Cardiff study, was overwhelmingly “sympathetic to the government’s case”. According to Media Tenor, a mere two per cent of BBC news in the build-up to the invasion permitted anti-war voices to be heard. Compared with the main American networks, only CBS was more pro-war.

So when the BBC director-general Mark Thompson used the recent Edinburgh Television Festival to attack Murdoch, his hypocrisy was like a presence. Thompson is the embodiment of a taxpayer-funded managerial elite, for whom political reaction have long replaced public service. He has even laid into his own corporation, Murdoch-style, as “massively left-wing”. He was referring to the era of his 1960s predecessor Hugh Greene, who allowed artistic and journalistic freedom to flower at the BBC. Thompson is the opposite of Greene; and his aspersion on the past is in keeping with the BBC’s modern corporate role, reflected in the rewards demanded by those at the top. Thompson was paid £834,000 last year out of public funds and his 50 senior executives earn more than the prime minister, along with enriched journalists like Jeremy Paxman and Fiona Bruce.

Murdoch and the BBC share this corporatism. Blair, for example, was their quintessential politician. Prior to his election in 1997, Blair and his wife were flown first-class by Murdoch to Hayman Island in Australia where he stood at the Newscorp lectern and, in effect, pledged an obedient Labour administration. His coded message on media cross-ownership and de-regulation was that a way would be found for Murdoch to achieve the supremacy that now beckons.

Blair was embraced by the new BBC corporate class, which regards itself as meretorious and non-ideological: the natural leaders in a managerial Britain in which class is unspoken. Few did more to enunciate Blair’s “vision” than Andrew Marr, then a leading newspaper journalist and today the BBC’s ubiquitous voice of middle-class Britain. Just as Murdoch’s Sun declared in 1995 it shared the rising Blair’s “high moral values” so Marr, writing the Observer in 1999, lauded the new prime minister’s “substantial moral courage” and the “clear distinction in his mind between prudently protecting his power base and rashly using his power for high moral purpose”. What impressed Marr was Blair’s “utter lack of cynicism” along with his bombing of Yugoslavia which would “save lives”.

By March 2003, Marr was the BBC’s political editor. Standing in Downing Street on the night of the “shock and awe” assault on Iraq, he rejoiced at the vindication of Blair who, he said, had promised “to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right” and as a result “tonight he stands as a larger man”. In fact, the criminal conquest of Iraq smashed a society, killing up to a million people, driving four million from their homes, contaminating cities like Fallujah with cancer-causing poisons and leaving a majority of young children malnourished in a country once described by Unicef as a “model”.

So it was entirely appropriate that Blair, in hawking his self-serving book, should select Marr for his “exclusive TV interview” on the BBC. The headline across the Observer’s review of the interview read, “Look who’s having the last laugh.” Beneath this was a picture of a beaming Blair sharing a laugh with Marr.

The interview produced not a single challenge that stopped Blair in his precocious, mendacious tracks. He was allowed to say that “absolutely clearly and unequivocally, the reason for toppling [Saddam Hussein] was his breach of resolutions over WMD, right?” No, wrong. A wealth of evidence, not least the infamous Downing Street Memo, makes clear that Blair secretly colluded with George W Bush to attack Iraq. This was not mentioned. At no point did Marr say to him, “You failed to persuade the UN Security Council to go along with the invasion. You and Bush went alone. Most of the world was outraged. Weren’t you aware that you were about to commit a monumental war crime?”

Instead, Blair used the convivial encounter to deceive, yet again, even to promote an attack on Iran, an outrage. Murdoch’s Fox would have differed in style only. The British public deserves better.

By John Pilger

September 27, 2010 “Truthdig” — Nemesis was the Greek goddess of retribution. She exacted divine punishment on arrogant mortals who believed they could defy the gods, turn themselves into objects of worship and build ruthless systems of power to control the world around them. The price of such hubris was almost always death.

Nemesis, related to the Greek word némein, means “to give what is due.” Our nemesis fast approaches. We will get what we are due. The staggering myopia of our corrupt political and economic elite, which plunder the nation’s wealth for financial speculation and endless war, the mass retreat of citizens into virtual hallucinations, the collapsing edifices around us, which include the ecosystem that sustains life, are ignored for a giddy self-worship. We stare into electronic screens just as Narcissus, besotted with his own reflection, stared into a pool of water until he wasted away and died.

We believe that because we have the capacity to wage war we have the right to wage war. We believe that money, rather than manufactured products and goods, is real. We believe in the myth of inevitable human moral and material progress. We believe that no matter how much damage we do to the Earth or our society, science and technology will save us. And as temperatures on the planet steadily rise, as droughts devastate cropland, as the bleaching of coral reefs threatens to wipe out 25 percent of all marine species, as countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh succumb to severe flooding, as we poison our food, air and water, as we refuse to confront our addiction to fossil fuels and coal, as we dismantle our manufacturing base and plunge tens of millions of Americans into a permanent and desperate underclass, we flick on a screen and are entranced.

We confuse the electronic image, a reflection back to us of ourselves, with the divine. We gawk at “reality” television, which of course is contrived reality, reveling in being the viewer and the viewed. True reality is obliterated from our consciousness. It is the electronic image that informs and defines us. It is the image that gives us our identity. It is the image that tells us what is attainable in the vast cult of the self, what we should desire, what we should seek to become and who we are. It is the image that tricks us into thinking we have become powerful—as the popularity of video games built around the themes of violence and war illustrates—while we have become enslaved and impoverished by the corporate state. The electronic image leads us back to the worship of ourselves. It is idolatry. Reality is replaced with electronic mechanisms for preening self-presentation—the core of social networking sites such as Facebook—and the illusion of self-fulfillment and self-empowerment. And in a world unmoored from the real, from human limitations and human potential, we inevitably embrace superstition and magic. This is what the worship of images is about. We retreat into a dark and irrational fear born out of a cavernous ignorance of the real. We enter an age of technological barbarism.

To those entranced by images, the world is a vast stage on which they are called to enact their dreams. It is a world of constant action, stimulation and personal advancement. It is a world of thrills and momentary ecstasy. It is a world of ceaseless movement. It makes a fetish of competition. It is a world where commercial products and electronic images serve as a pseudo-therapy that caters to feelings of alienation, inadequacy and powerlessness. We may be locked in dead-end jobs, have no meaningful relationships and be confused about our identities, but we can blast our way to power holding a little control panel while looking for hours at a screen. We can ridicule the poor, the ignorant and the weak all day long on trash-talk shows and reality television shows. We are skillfully made to feel that we have a personal relationship, a false communion, with the famous—look at the outpouring of grief at the death of Princess Diana or Michael Jackson. We have never met those we adore. We know only their manufactured image. They appear to us on screens. They are not, at least to us, real people. And yet we worship and seek to emulate them.

In this state of cultural illusion any description of actual reality, because it does not consist of the happy talk that pollutes the airwaves from National Public Radio to Oprah, is dismissed as “negative” or “pessimistic.” The beleaguered Jeremiahs who momentarily stumble into our consciousness and in a desperate frenzy seek to warn us of our impending self-destruction are derided because they do not lay out easy formulas that permit us to drift back into fantasy. We tell ourselves they are overreacting. If reality is a bummer, and if there are no easy solutions, we don’t want to hear about it. The facts of economic and environmental collapse, now incontrovertible, cannot be discussed unless they are turned into joking banter or come accompanied with a neat, pleasing solution, the kind we are fed at the conclusion of the movies, electronic games, talk shows and sitcoms, the kind that dulls our minds into passive and empty receptacles. We have been conditioned by electronic hallucinations to expect happy talk. We demand it.

We confuse this happy talk with hope. But hope is not about a belief in progress. Hope is about protecting simple human decency and demanding justice. Hope is the belief, not necessarily grounded in the tangible, that those whose greed, stupidity and complacency have allowed us to be driven over a cliff shall one day be brought down. Hope is about existing in a perpetual state of rebellion, a constant antagonism to all centers of power. The great moral voices, George Orwell and Albert Camus being perhaps two of the finest examples, describe in moving detail the human suffering we ignore or excuse. They understand that the greatest instrument for moral good is the imagination. The ability to perceive the pain and suffering of another, to feel, as King Lear says, what wretches feel, is a more powerful social corrective than the shelves of turgid religious and philosophical treatises on human will. Those who change the world for the better, who offer us hope, have the capacity to make us step outside of ourselves and feel empathy.

The role of knowledge and art, as the ancient Greeks understood, is to create ekstasis, which means standing outside one’s self to give our individual life and struggle meaning and perspective. The role of art and scholarship is to transform us as individuals, not entertain us as a group. It is to nurture this capacity for understanding and empathy. Art and scholarship allow us to see the underlying structures and assumptions used to manipulate and control us. And this is why art, like intellectual endeavor, is feared by the corporate elite as subversive. This is why corporations have used their money to deform universities into vocational schools that spit out blinkered and illiterate systems managers. This is why the humanities are withering away.

The vast stage of entertainment that envelops our culture is intended to impart the opposite of ekstasis. Mass entertainment plays to the basest and crudest instincts of the crowd. It conditions us to have the same aspirations and desires. It forces us to speak in the same dead clichés and slogans. It homogenizes human experience. It wallows in a cloying nostalgia and sentimentalism that foster historical amnesia. It turns the Other into a cartoon or a stereotype. It prohibits empathy because it prohibits understanding. It denies human singularity and uniqueness. It assures us that we all have within us the ability, talent or luck to become famous and rich. It forms us into a lowing and compliant herd. We have been conditioned to believe—defying all the great moral and philosophical writers from Socrates to Orwell—that the aim of life is not to understand but to be entertained. If we do not shake ourselves awake from our electronic hallucinations and defy the elites who are ruining the country and trashing the planet we will experience the awful and deadly retribution of the gods.

By Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges is former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and author of the bestseller “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” reports on Bush’s plan for Iran, and how a callous war, conceived by zealots, will lead to a disaster of biblical proportions.

 

It happened twenty-eight years ago – 16 September 1982. A massacre so awful that people who know about it cannot forget it. The photos are gruesome reminders – charred, decapitated, indecently violated corpses, the smell of rotting flesh, still as foul to those who remember it as when they were recoiling from it all those years ago. For the victims and the handful of survivors, it was a 36-hour holocaust without mercy. It was deliberate, it was planned and it was overseen. But to this day, the killers have gone unpunished.

Sabra and Shatila – two Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon – were the theatres for this staged slaughter. The former is no longer there and the other is a ghostly and ghastly reminder of man’s inhumanity to men, women and children – more specifically, Israel’s inhumanity, the inhumanity of the people who did Israel’s bidding and the world’s inhumanity for pretending it was of no consequence. There were international witnesses – doctors, nurses, journalists – who saw the macabre scenes and have tried to tell the world in vain ever since.

Each act was barbarous enough on its own to warrant fear and loathing. It was human savagery at its worst and Dr Ang Swee Chai was an eye witness as she worked with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society on the dying and the wounded amongst the dead. What she saw was so unimaginable that the atrocities committed need to be separated from each other to even begin comprehending the viciousness of the crimes. [1]

People tortured. Blackened bodies smelling of roasted flesh from the power shocks that had convulsed their bodies before their hearts gave out – the electric wires still tied around their lifeless limbs.

People with gouged out eye sockets. Faces unrecognisable with the gaping holes that had plunged them into darkness before their lives were thankfully ended.

Women raped. Not once – but two, three, four times – horribly violated, their legs shamelessly ripped apart with not even the cover of clothing to preserve their dignity at the moment of death.

Children dynamited alive. So many body parts ripped from their tiny torsos, so hard to know to whom they belonged – just mounds of bloodied limbs amongst the tousled heads of children in pools of blood.

Families executed. Blood, blood and more blood sprayed on the walls of homes where whole families had been axed to death in a frenzy or lined up for a more orderly execution.

There were also journalists who were there in the aftermath and who had equally gruesome stories to tell, none of which made the sort of screaming front page headlines that should have caused lawmakers to demand immediate answers. What they saw led them to write shell-shocked accounts that have vanished now into the archives, but are no less disturbing now. These accounts too need to be individually absorbed, lest they be lumped together as just the collective dead rather than the systematic torture and killing of individual, innocent human beings.

Women gunned down while cooking in their kitchens. [2] The headless body of a baby in diapers lying next to two dead women. [3] An infant, its tiny legs streaked with blood, shot in the back by a single bullet. [4] Slaughtered babies, their bodies blackened as they decomposed, tossed into rubbish heaps together with Israeli army equipment and empty bottles of whiskey. [5] An old man castrated, with flies thick upon his torn intestines. [6] Children with their throats slashed. [7] Mounds of rotting corpses bloated in the heat – young boys all shot at point-blank range. [8]

And most numbing of all are the recollections of the survivors whose experiences were so shockingly traumatic that to recall them must have been painful beyond all imaginings. One survivor, Nohad Srour, 35 said:

“I was carrying my one year-old baby sister and she was yelling “Mama! Mama!” then suddenly nothing. I looked at her and her brain had fallen out of her head and down my arm. I looked at the man who shot us. I’ll never forget his face. Then I felt two bullets pierce my shoulder and finger. I fell. I didn’t lose consciousness, but I pretended to be dead.”[9]

The statistics of those killed vary, but even according to the Israeli military, the official count was 700 people killed while Israeli journalist, Amnon Kapeliouk put the figure at 3,500. [10] The Palestinian Red Crescent Society put the number killed at over 2,000.[11] Regardless of the numbers, they would not and could not mitigate what are clear crimes against humanity.

Fifteen years later, Robert Fisk, the journalist who had been one of the first on the scene, said:

“Had Palestinians massacred 2,000 Israelis 15 years ago, would anyone doubt that the world’s press and television would be remembering so terrible a deed this morning? Yet this week, not a single newspaper in the United States – or Britain for that matter – has even mentioned the anniversary of Sabra and Shatila.”[12]

Twenty-eight years later it is no different.

The political developments

What happened must be set against the background of a Lebanon that had been invaded by the Israeli army only months earlier, supposedly in ‘retaliation’ for the attempted assassination of the Israeli Ambassador in London on 4 June 1982. Israel attributed the attempt to Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) then resident in Beirut. In reality, it was a rival militant group headed by Abu Nidal. Israel wanted to oust the PLO from Lebanon altogether and on 6 June 1982, Israel began its devastating assault on the Lebanese and Palestinian civilian population in the southern part of Lebanon. Lebanese government casualty figures numbered the dead at around 19,000 with some 30,000 wounded, but these numbers are hardly accurate because of the mass graves and other bodies lost in the rubble. [13]

By 1 September, a cease-fire had been mediated by United States envoy Philip Habib, and Arafat and his men surrendered their weapons and were evacuated from Beirut with guarantees by the US that the civilians left behind in the camps would be protected by a multinational peacekeeping force. That guarantee was not kept and the vacuum then created, paved the way for the atrocities that followed.

As soon as the peacekeeping force was withdrawn, the then Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon moved to root out some “2,000 terrorists” he claimed were still hiding in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. After totally surrounding the refugee camps with tanks and soldiers, Sharon ordered the shelling of the camps and the bombardment continued throughout the afternoon and into the evening of 15 September leaving the “mopping-up” of the camps to the Lebanese right-wing Christian militia, known as the Phalangists. The next day, the Phalangists – armed and trained by the Israeli army – entered the camps and proceeded to massacre the unarmed civilians while Israel’s General Yaron and his men watched the entire operations. More grotesquely, the Israeli army ensured there was no lull in the 36 hours of killings and illuminated the area with flares at night and tightened their cordon around the camps to make sure that no civilian could escape the terror that had been unleashed.

Inquiries, charges and off scot-free

Although Israel’s Kahan Commission of Inquiry did not find any Israeli directly responsible, it did find that Sharon bore “personal responsibility” for “not ordering appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger of massacre” before sending the Phalangists into the camps. It, therefore, lamely recommended that the Israeli prime minister consider removing him from office. [14] Sharon resigned but remained as Minister without portfolio and joined two parliamentary commissions on defence and Lebanese affairs. There is no doubt, as Chomsky points out “that the inquiry was not intended for people who have a prejudice in favour of truth and honesty”, but it certainly gained support for Israel in the US Congress and among the public. [15] It took an International Commission of Inquiry headed by Sean MacBride to find that Israel was “directly responsible” because the camps were under its jurisdiction as an occupying power. [16] Yet, despite the UN describing the heinous operation as a “criminal massacre” and declaring it an act of genocide [17], no one was prosecuted.

It was not until 2001 that a law suit was filed in Belgium by the survivors of the massacre and relatives of the victims against Sharon alleging his personal responsibility. However, the court did not allow for “universal jurisdiction” – a principle which was intended to remove safe havens for war criminals and allow their prosecution across states. The case was won on appeal and the trial allowed to proceed, but without Sharon who by then was prime minister of Israel and had immunity. US interference led to the Belgian Parliament gutting the universal jurisdiction law and by the time the International Criminal Court was established in The Hague the following year, the perpetrators of the Sabra and Shatila massacre could no longer be tried because its terms of reference did not allow it to hear cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide pre-dating 1 July 2002. Neither Sharon nor those who carried out the massacres have ever been punished for their horrendous crimes.

The bigger picture

The length of time since these acts were carried out should be no impediment to exposing the truth. More than 60 years after the Nazi atrocities against the Jews in Europe, the world still mourns and remembers and erects monuments and museums to that violent holocaust. How they are done, to whom they are done and to how many does not make the crimes any more or less heinous. They can never be justified even on the strength of one state’s rationale that another people ought to be punished, or worse still, are simply inferior or worthless beings. It should lead all of us to question on whose judgment are such decisions made and how can we possibly justify such crimes at all?

The atrocities committed in the camps of Sabra and Shatila should be put in the context of an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. The MacBride report found that these atrocities “were not inconsistent with wider Israeli intentions to destroy Palestinian political will and cultural identity.” [17] Since Deir Yassin and the other massacres of 1948, those who survived have joined hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing a litany of massacres committed in 1953, 1967, the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the 2002 Jenin massacre, and the most recent, the 2008/2009 atrocity committed on the people of Gaza. Thus were the victims and survivors of the Sabra and Shatila massacre gathered up in the perpetual nakba of the slaughtered, the dispossessed, the displaced and the discarded – a pattern of ethnic cleansing perpetrated under the Zionist plan to finally and forever extinguish Palestinian society and its people.

This is why we must remember Sabra and Shatila, twenty-eight years on.

By Sonja Karkar

16 September, 2010

Sonja Karkar is editor of Australians for Palestine

Footnotes:

[1] Dr Ang Swee Chai, “From Beirut to Jerusalem”, Grafton Books, London, 1989

[2] James MacManus, Guardian, 20 September 1982

[3] Loren Jenkins, Washington Post, 20 September 1982

[4] Elaine Carey, Daily Mail, 20 September 1982

[5] Robert Fisk, “Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War”, London: Oxford University Press, 1990

[6] Robert Fisk, ibid.

[7] Robert Fisk, ibid.

[8] Robert Fisk, ibid.

[9] Lebanese Daily Star, 16 September 1998

[10] Amnon Kapeliouk, “Sabra & Chatila – Inquiry into a Massacre”, November 1982

[11] Schiff and Ya’ari,, Israel’s Lebanon War, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1984,

[12] Robert Fisk, Fifteen Years After the Bloodbath, The World turns its Back, shaml.org, 1997

[13] Noam Chomsky, “The Fatal Triangle” South End Press, Cambridge MA, p.221

[14] The Complete Kahan Commission Report, Princeton, Karz Cohl, 1983, p. 125 (Hereafter, the Kahan Commission Report).

[15] Chomsky, ibid. p.406

[16] The Report of the International Commission to Enquire into Reported Violations of International Law by Israel during Its Invasion of the Lebanon, Sean MacBride, 1983 (referred to as the International Commission of Inquiry or MacBride report)

[17] United Nations General Assembly Resolution, 16 December 1982

[18] MacBride report, ibid. p.179

 

 

 

 

Though much about his background and public service warrants criticism, he also deserves praise rarely given properly, this article offering some and the writer’s personal reflections on his commencement address to my June 14, 1956 graduating class, a message not heard now by US leaders – erudite, incisive and timely. More on it below.

Some Background

Had an assassin not taken his life, his health surely would have, some around him saying “from a medical standpoint, (he) was a mess.” Indeed so, having been hospitalized more than three dozen times in his life and given last rites on three occasions.

At age 2 years, 9 months, he nearly died of scarlet fever. He contracted measles, whooping cough and chicken pox the same year, and as a child, was susceptible to upper respiratory infections and bronchitis. In 1935, he suffered jaundice, had a history of sports-related injuries because of his weak physique, and his mother remembered him as “a very, very sick little boy.” In the 1930s, he began taking steroids for colitis, later developing complications, including a duodenal ulcer, back pain, digestive trouble, and underactive adrenal glands known as Addison’s disease.

He had a host of other problems as well, including a bout of malaria as a naval officer in the Pacific. At age 43, the 1960 presidential campaign exhausted him because he overdid it for a man of his health and stamina. In 1947, his Addisonism was diagnosed, at the time told he had one year to live, and was given his last rites shortly afterward. Yet as senator and president, his health problems were hidden, an observer calling it “one of the most cleverly laid smoke screens ever put down around a politician(‘s)” physical well-being.

His Assassination

Much about it has been written and speculated, some of the best from James Douglas in his 2008 book titled, “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters,” debunking mainstream myths and much more. From a wealth of information he uncovered, he showed how threatening Kennedy was to the military-industrial complex and had to go, “the CIA’s fingerprints….all over the crime and the events leading up to it.”

The notion of a lone gunman is ludicrous, the evidence clearly implicating a national security state coup against one of its own deemed unreliable. Though to some degree a cold warrior, he changed, was chastened by the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and refused another. He also fired CIA Director Allen Dulles, his assistant General Charles Cabell, and once said he wanted “to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds,” reason enough to kill him.

Worst of all was his growing opposition to imperial wars, specifically in Southeast Asia. Though he initially sent troops and advisors, he changed, in 1961 opposing advice to send more to Laos, telling Averell Harriman, his Geneva Conference representative: “Did you understand? I want a negotiated settlement in Laos. I don’t want to put troops in.”

The same year, he opposed using nuclear weapons in Berlin and Southeast Asia and once called Pentagon generals “crazy” for suggesting them, perhaps with Curtis LeMay (1906 – 1990) in mind, a zealot who wanted to nuke the Soviets while we had the edge, even at the cost of a few US cities.

Kennedy also wouldn’t attack or invade Cuba during the 1962 missile crisis, saying throughout it he “never had the slightest intention of doing so.”

He swung to peace, away from war, telling an American University audience in 1963 that nuclear weapons should be abolished, the Cold War ended, followed by a “general and complete disarmament,” and America no longer using its might to force Pax Americana on the world. Shortly afterward he signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty with the Soviets, and in October 1963 (about a month before his assassination), he signed National Security Action Memorandum 263, calling for removing 1,000 US troops from Vietnam by year’s end and the remainder by December 1965.

Douglas wrote how, as president, he underwent a spiritual transformation from cold warrior to peacemaker, knowing it put him at odds with the Pentagon, CIA, most members of Congress, and nearly all of his advisors. As a result, he understood his vulnerability, perhaps by coup or assassination, a condition he nonetheless accepted and paid for with his life.

Besides turning toward peace and more, he also signed Executive Order (EO) 11110 on June 4, 1963 to:

— amend EO 10289 (dated September 17, 1951) designating and empowering the Treasury to perform certain “functions of the President without the approval, ratification, or other action of the President;” and

— perhaps bypass the Fed and empower the president to issue currency; it constitutionally empowered the federal government to create and “issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury.”

Though not verified, some believe he then ordered the Treasury Secretary to issue nearly $4.3 billion worth of United States notes, perhaps to replace Federal Reserve Notes. Whether or not he wanted to end the Federal Reserve System (and return money creation power to Congress as the Constitution mandates) is speculation, but perhaps fearing it, besides the above cited reasons and more, led to his assassination five months later.

In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson said: “Silver has become too valuable to be used as money.” In late 1963, after he became president, US notes were withdrawn from circulation, and noted Fed critic and author of “The Creature from Jekyll Island,” G. Edward Griffin, wrote on page 569 of his book:

“There was a third point, however, which everyone seemed to overlook. The Executive Order 11110 did not instruct the Treasury to issue Silver Certificates. It merely authorized it to do so if the occasion should arise. The occasion never arose. The last issuance of Silver Certificates was in 1957….six years before the Kennedy (EO). In 1987, (it) was rescinded by (EO) 12608 signed by Ronald Reagan.”

Without mentioning EO 11110, he did it by amending EO 10289, rescinding the Treasury’s right to issue silver-backed notes.

Had Kennedy lived and served a second term, imagine the possibilities. Ending the Vietnam war alone would have been a powerful legacy.

Kennedy’s June 14, 1956 Commencement Speech

Given outdoors on a blistering hot/humid day, he began expressing “pleasure to join with my fellow alumni in this pilgrimage to the second home of (my) youth,” noting the difference between academia’s purpose to advance knowledge and his own “where the emphasis is somewhat different,” saying:

“Our political parties, our politicians are interested, of necessity, in winning popular support – a majority; and only indirectly truth is the object of our controversy,” often sacrificed for political advantage.

The “political profession needs to have its temperature lowered in the cooling waters of the scholastic pool. We need both the technical judgment and the disinterested viewpoint of the scholar, to prevent us from becoming imprisoned by our own slogans. Therefore, it’s regrettable that the gap between the intellectual and the politician seems to be growing.”

No wonder, he added, that politicians are so scorned, quoting James Russell Lowell’s mid-19th century satiric attack on Caleb Cushing, a celebrated Attorney General and congressional member, calling him “true to one party, that is himself.” It’s as true today than then.

Kennedy’s entire talk was full of scholarly references and quotes, including Lord Melbourne to a youthful historian Thomas Macauley about the differences between scholars and politicians. Another from philosopher Sidney Hook, saying “Many intellectuals would rather die than agree with the majority, even on the rare occasions when the majority is right.”

Yet he reminded the audience that today’s politicians and intellectual climate have a common ancestry, America’s early leaders, also distinguished for their writing and intellect, including Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Franklin, and John Adams among others.

“Books were their tools, not their enemies. Locke, Milton, Sydney, Montesquieu, Coke, and Bollingbroke were among those widely read in political circles and frequently quoted in political pamphlets. Our political leaders traded in the free commerce of ideas with lasting results both here and abroad.”

A contemporary of Jefferson called him “A gentleman of 32, who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance a minuet, and play the violin.” He was also a statesman and third US president.

“Daniel Webster could throw thunderbolts at Hayne on the Senate floor and then stroll a few steps down the corridor and dominate the Supreme Court as the foremost lawyer of his time. John Quincy Adams, after being summarily dismissed from the Senate for a notable display of independence, could become Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard and then become a great Secretary of State” as well as president.

“The link between the American scholar and American politician” lasted over a century. In the 1856 campaign, Republicans had “three brilliant orators – William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Those were the carefree days when the eggheads were all Republicans.” One of their own became president on March 4, 1861, denied a second term by his April 1865 assassination, challenging the establishment and existing order also his undoing.

Kennedy quoted John Milton, Bismark, Goethe and others, his erudition on display for those attending, a man with an intellect who used it. He reminded the audience that politicians and intellectuals “operate within a common framework – a framework we call liberty. The lock on the door of the legislature, the Parliament, or the assembly hall – by order of the King, the Commissar, or the Fuehrer – has historically been followed or preceded by a lock on the door of the university, the library, or the print shop.”

Where freedom is endangered, he said, politicians and intellectuals “should be natural allies, working more closely together for the common cause against the common enemy.” They both must decide whether to be “an anvil or a hammer….whether (they are) to give to the world in which (they were) reared and educated the broadest possible benefits of (their) learning” for society’s benefit, or do it solely for their own. “As one who is familiar with the political world, I can testify” to the challenge we face.

He opted against handing over political and public life to experts “who ignore public opinion. Nor would I adopt from the Belgian constitution of 1893 the provision giving 3 votes instead of 1 to college graduates; or give Harvard a seat in the Congress as William and Mary was once represented in the Virginia House of Burgesses.”

But he urged politicians and intellectuals to work together, warning that we don’t “need scholars or politicians like Lord John Russell, of whom Queen Victoria remarked, he would be a better man if he knew a third subject – but he was interested in nothing but the constitution of 1688 and himself. What we need are men who can ride easily over broad fields of knowledge and recognize the mutual dependence of our two worlds.”

He ended quoting what an English mother once wrote the Provost of Harrow, saying “Don’t teach my boy poetry; he is going to stand for Parliament.”

“Well, perhaps she was right – but if more politicians knew poetry and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live on this commencement day of 1956.”

Aged 39, he scarcely had more than seven years left before America’s dark forces killed him, a lesson his successors never forgot. Neither should we knowing the rogues that followed and their agendas, worst of all post-9/11, putting the nation on a fast track toward despotism unless cooler heads can stop them.

By Stephen Lendman

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 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/.

 

The blessed month of Ramadan is upon us. To a Muslim no other month is as meritorious as this particular month is when the reward of every good deed done is multiplied several times. It is not difficult to understand why the Prophet Muhammad (S) said that fasting is like a curtain against the Hellfire. It is also the month when the Qur’an was sent down as a guide to mankind – with clear signs for guidance and judgment between right and wrong. As instructed in the Qur’an every able bodied Muslim who is not ill or on a journey is obligated to fast the entire month from dawn to dusk (2:185). In that practice, Muslims are also reminded that it is something that was also prescribed to people who came before them so that they may learn self-restraint (2:183). Thus, teaching self-restraint is the essence of fasting.

Probably at no other time in America is this message more relevant than this Ramadan. Truly, it has been a very difficult month for most Muslim Americans who are viciously attacked both verbally and physically by the anti-Muslim bigots and chauvinists. Last week a Bangladeshi-American taxi cab driver was stabbed severely by a young white Christian student who not too long ago was an embedded photo-journalist with the American forces in Afghanistan . The published reports also suggest that the attacker was affiliated with a group that had supported the construction of a Muslim cultural center in Lower Manhattan . If this report is true then it is perhaps not difficult to understand what religiously intolerant messages spewed out by bigots — Christian ministers like Franklin Graham and John Hagee, and Republican politicians like Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and Rudy Giuliani — can do to anyone.

For the GOP, i.e., the Republicans Islamophobia is the new anti-communism. As a result of such onslaught on Islam, many Muslim houses of worship are vandalized and discrimination against Muslims is at an all time high. On August 28 equipment at the construction site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro in Tennessee was set on fire. In June, someone broke the sign at the future site of the center. Previously, the words “Not Welcome” were spray-painted on the sign. On the ninth anniversary of 9/11, a Christian church wants to burn the Qur’an.

A recently published Pew Research Center poll reported that more Americans now have unfavorable than favorable views of Islam by 38 percent to 30 percent. In 2005, it was reversed: 41 percent had favorable views, 36 percent unfavorable. Republicans voiced negative views of Muslims by more than 2-1, with 54 voicing unfavorable views and 21 percent giving positive ones. Obviously, America is failing in its role as a nation that values religious tolerance.

In spite of such hateful barrages, Muslims should practice self-restraint and avoid any heated discussion that can be counterproductive. They have the noble examples of their beloved Prophet Muhammad (S) and his companions to follow.

The tenth year of the Prophetic mission of Muhammad (S) was a sad one. He had lost his wife – Khadija (R) and uncle – Abi Talib who had tried to protect him for years against the pagans. To make things worse, Abu Lahab , an uncle of the Prophet and an ardent enemy of Islam, had now become the chief of the clan; and the Prophet was ill-treated as never before. On one occasion a passer-by leaned over his gate and tossed a piece of putrefying offal into his cooking pot; and once when he was praying in the courtyard of his house, a man threw over him a sheep’s uterus filthy with blood and excrement. On another occasion, when the Prophet (S) was coming from the Ka’bah , a man took a handful of dirt and threw it in his face and head. When he returned home, one of his daughters washed him clean of it, weeping while the Prophet (S) reassured her, “Weep not, little daughter, Allah will protect your father.”

It was then that he decided to seek help from the Thaqif, the people of Ta’if – a decision that eloquently reflected the apparent gravity of his situation in Makkah. Accompanied by his disciple, Zaid ibn Haritha , Muhammad (S) came to Ta’if. On his arrival, he went straight to the house of three brothers who were the leaders of Thaqif at that time, the sons of ‘Amr ibn Umayyah. When the Prophet (S) invited them to Islam and asked them to help him against his opponents, they abused him verbally. So the Prophet rose to leave them, perhaps intending to try elsewhere in Ta’if; but when he had left them they stirred their slaves and retainers to insult him and shout at him, until a crowd of people were gathered together against him who started pelting stones at him. His feet started bleeding. Zaid himself was injured with a head injury. The Prophet could not walk any longer. But the unbelievers put him on his feet and again resumed throwing stones at him. Ultimately, the Prophet (S) was forced to take refuge in a private orchard. Once he had entered it the crowd began to disperse, and, tethering his camel to a palm tree, he made for the shelter of a vine and sat in its shade.

When he felt himself to be in safety and at peace, Muhammad (S) prayed : “O God, unto You do I complain of my weakness, of my helplessness, and of my lowliness before men. O Most Merciful of the merciful, You are the Lord of the weak. And You are my Lord, Unto whose hands will you entrust me, unto some far off stranger who will ill-treat me? Or unto a foe whom You have empowered against me? I care not, so You be not wroth with me. But Your favoring help – that were for me the broader way and the wider scope! I take refuge in the Light of Your Countenance whereby all darknesses are illumined and the things of this world and the next are rightly ordered, lest You make descend Your anger upon me, or lest Your wrath beset me. Yet is it Yours to reproach until You are well pleased. There is no power and no might except through You.”

After he had made the supplication, Muhammad (S) looked up. He saw a cloud providing shade to him and in that cloud was seated the Angel Jibril (Gabriel). Jibril said, “Allah has heard what your community has said and He had also witnessed what the people of Ta’if had done to you. He has sent you the Angel who is entrusted with the mountains. Whatever you command, he will carry it out.”

The Angel who is entrusted with the mountains approached Muhammad (S) and said, “O Muhammad, I am the Angle of Mountains. I am at your command. If you command me I shall destroy this town by smashing it with the Mountain Akhshab.”

At this moment of trial, what the Prophet of mercy had to say simply surprised the Angel. The Prophet (S) said, “ I beg forgiveness for them. Even if these people do not accept Islam , I do hope from Allah that there will emerge from there a people submissive unto Him who will not associate any partners to Him. ”

No man has ever uttered such words for those who caused so much suffering. But such was the person Muhammad (S) . No wonder that he is described in the Qur’an as the Rahmatal-lil ‘alameen — the mercy to the entire universe (21:107)!

In later years, when asked by his wife A’isha (R) if there was ever a more troubling moment in his life than that of Uhud, the Prophet (S) replied, “I had the most troubling time in Ta’if .”

It was all too natural for the Prophet of Islam to forgive all his tormentors on the day of the conquest of Makkah some ten years later. After entering the city of his birth from where he was forced to flee, Muhammad (S) performed the ritual tawaf (encircling of the Ka’bah) on his camel, surrounded by the Muslims. When he had finished, he said, ‘There no divinity except Allah and He has no partner. Men and women of Quraysh be not proud for all are equal; we are all the sons of Adam , and Adam was made of dust.’ Then he recited this verse to them:

In the Name of Allah , the Beneficent, the Merciful

O mankind! Lo! We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes so that you may know each another. Surely the noblest of you, in the sight of Allah , is the best in conduct. Lo! Allah is All-knowing, All-aware. (Qur’an xlix.13)

After this he said to them: ‘O Quraysh , what do you think I am going to do to you?’ The people thought carefully before answering because they knew that according to the laws of war they could all be taken prisoners. They also knew, however, that the Prophet Muhammad (S) was generous, so they replied, ‘You will treat us as a kind nephew and a generous brother would.’ To this he replied with the words used by the Prophet Joseph when his brothers came to Egypt : ‘God forgives you and He is the Most Merciful of the merciful.’ Later the Prophet (S) went to the hill of Safa and there the crowd followed him and surged forward, taking his hand one by one, to declare their faith in Islam. He then turned to the Ka’bah and, pointing his staff at the three hundred and sixty-five idols, which were placed there, recited from the Qur’an :

In the Name of Allah , the Beneficent, the Merciful

… Truth has come and falsehood has vanished away.

Lo! Falsehood is ever bound to vanish.

(Qur’an 17:81)

At this, each idol fell over onto its face. Together with his followers the Prophet (S) then proceeded to purify the Ka’bah, after which he ordered Bilal (RA), the Abyssinian companion, to climb on top of it and perform the call to prayer.

Since then the call to prayer has been heard five times a day in Makkah. The Ka’bah has served the purpose for which it was built by Abraham thousands of years ago — as a sanctuary for the worship of Allah, our Creator, and Makkah continues to be the spiritual center of Islam . That nascent faith of Islam has now grown to become the faith of some 1.6 billion people in our planet. No fear-mongering and xenophobia will be able to stop a faith that is global and growing fast.

(Speech delivered at the Ramadan celebration in the Trinity Church , Swarthmore College , Pennsylvania on August 28, 2010 . The stories are extracted from the author’s upcoming book – The Book of Devotional Stories in Islam, pub. A.S. Noordeen, Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia .)

By Dr. Habib Siddiqui