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The war in Afghanistan—where the enemy is elusive and rarely seen, where the cultural and linguistic disconnect makes every trip outside the wire a visit to hostile territory, where it is clear that you are losing despite the vast industrial killing machine at your disposal—feeds the culture of atrocity. The fear and stress, the anger and hatred, reduce all Afghans to the enemy, and this includes women, children and the elderly. Civilians and combatants merge into one detested nameless, faceless mass. The psychological leap to murder is short. And murder happens every day in Afghanistan. It happens in drone strikes, artillery bombardments, airstrikes, missile attacks and the withering suppressing fire unleashed in villages from belt-fed machine guns.

Military attacks like these in civilian areas make discussions of human rights an absurdity. Robert Bales, a U.S. Army staff sergeant who allegedly killed 16 civilians in two Afghan villages, including nine children, is not an anomaly. To decry the butchery of this case and to defend the wars of occupation we wage is to know nothing about combat. We kill children nearly every day in Afghanistan. We do not usually kill them outside the structure of a military unit. If an American soldier had killed or wounded scores of civilians after the ignition of an improvised explosive device against his convoy, it would not have made the news. Units do not stick around to count their “collateral damage.” But the Afghans know. They hate us for the murderous rampages. They hate us for our hypocrisy.

The scale of our state-sponsored murder is masked from public view. Reporters who travel with military units and become psychologically part of the team spin out what the public and their military handlers want, mythic tales of heroism and valor. War is seen only through the lens of the occupiers. It is defended as a national virtue. This myth allows us to make sense of mayhem and death. It justifies what is usually nothing more than gross human cruelty, brutality and stupidity. It allows us to believe we have achieved our place in human society because of a long chain of heroic endeavors, rather than accept the sad reality that we stumble along a dimly lit corridor of disasters. It disguises our powerlessness. It hides from view the impotence and ordinariness of our leaders. But in turning history into myth we transform random events into a sequence of events directed by a will greater than our own, one that is determined and preordained. We are elevated above the multitude. We march to nobility. But it is a lie. And it is a lie that combat veterans carry within them. It is why so many commit suicide.

“I, too, belong to this species,” J. Glenn Gray wrote of his experience in World War II. “I am ashamed not only of my own deeds, not only of my nation’s deeds, but of human deeds as well. I am ashamed to be a man.”

When Ernie Pyle, the famous World War II correspondent, was killed on the Pacific island of Ie Shima in 1945, a rough draft of a column was found on his body. He was preparing it for release upon the end of the war in Europe. He had done much to promote the myth of the warrior and the nobility of soldiering, but by the end he seemed to have tired of it all:

But there are many of the living who have burned into their brains forever the unnatural sight of cold dead men scattered over the hillsides and in the ditches along the high rows of hedge throughout the world.

Dead men by mass production—in one country after another—month after month and year after year. Dead men in winter and dead men in summer.

Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous.

Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come almost to hate them.

These are the things that you at home need not even try to understand. To you at home they are columns of figures, or he is a near one who went away and just didn’t come back. You didn’t see him lying so grotesque and pasty beside the gravel road in France.

We saw him, saw him by the multiple thousands. That’s the difference.

There is a constant search in all wars to find new perversities, new forms of death when the initial flush fades, a rear-guard and finally futile effort to ward off the boredom of routine death. This is why during the war in El Salvador the death squads and soldiers would cut off the genitals of those they killed and stuff them in the mouths of the corpses. This is why we reporters in Bosnia would find bodies crucified on the sides of barns or decapitated. This is why U.S. Marines have urinated on dead Taliban fighters. Those slain in combat are treated as trophies by their killers, turned into grotesque pieces of performance art. It happened in every war I covered.

“Force,” Simone Weil wrote, “is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates.”

War perverts and destroys you. It pushes you closer and closer to your own annihilation—spiritual, emotional and finally physical. It destroys the continuity of life, tearing apart all systems—economic, social, environmental and political—that sustain us as human beings. In war, we deform ourselves, our essence. We give up individual conscience—maybe even consciousness—for contagion of the crowd, the rush of patriotism, the belief that we must stand together as a nation in moments of extremity. To make a moral choice, to defy war’s enticement, can in the culture of war be self-destructive. The essence of war is death. Taste enough of war and you come to believe that the stoics were right: We will, in the end, all consume ourselves in a vast conflagration.

A World War II study determined that, after 60 days of continuous combat, 98 percent of all surviving soldiers will have become psychiatric casualties. A common trait among the remaining 2 percent was a predisposition toward having “aggressive psychopathic personalities.” Lt. Col. Dave Grossman in his book “On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society,” notes: “It is not too far from the mark to observe that there is something about continuous, inescapable combat which will drive 98 percent of all men insane, and the other 2 percent were crazy when they go there.”

During the war in El Salvador, many soldiers served for three or four years or longer, as in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, until they psychologically or physically collapsed. In garrison towns, commanders banned the sale of sedatives because those drugs were abused by the troops. In that war, as in the wars in the Middle East, the emotionally and psychologically maimed were common. I once interviewed a 19-year-old Salvadoran army sergeant who had spent five years fighting and then suddenly lost his vision after his unit walked into a rebel ambush. The rebels killed 11 of his fellow soldiers in the firefight, including his closest friend. He was unable to see again until he was placed in an army hospital. “I have these horrible headaches,” he told me as he sat on the edge of his bed. “There is shrapnel in my head. I keep telling the doctors to take it out.” But the doctors told me that he had no head wounds.

I saw other soldiers in other conflicts go deaf or mute or shake without being able to stop.

War is necrophilia. This necrophilia is central to soldiering just as it is central to the makeup of suicide bombers and terrorists. The necrophilia is hidden under platitudes about duty or comradeship. It is unleashed especially in moments when we seem to have little to live for and no hope, or in moments when the intoxication of war is at its highest pitch. When we spend long enough in war, it comes to us as a kind of release, a fatal and seductive embrace that can consummate the long flirtation with our own destruction.

In his memoir “Wartime,” about the partisan war in Yugoslavia, Milovan Djilas wrote of the enticement that death held for the combatants. He stood over the body of his comrade, the commander Sava Kovacevic, and found:

“… dying did not seem terrible or unjust. This was the most extraordinary, the most exalted moment of my life. Death did not seem strange or undesirable. That I restrained myself from charging blindly into the fray and death was perhaps due to my sense of obligation to the troops or to some comrade’s reminder concerning the tasks at hand. In my memory, I returned to those moments many times with the same feeling of intimacy with death and desire for it while I was in prison, especially during my first incarceration.”

War ascendant wipes out Eros. It wipes out delicacy and tenderness. Its communal power seeks to render the individual obsolete, to hand all passions, all choice, all voice to the crowd.

“The most important part of the individual life, which cannot be subsumed in communal life, is love,” Sebastian Haffner wrote in “Defying Hitler.” “So comradeship has its special weapons against love: smut. Every evening in bed, after the last patrol round, there was the ritual reciting of lewd songs and jokes. That is the hard and fast rule of male comradeship, and nothing is more mistaken than the widely held opinion that this is a safety valve for frustrated erotic or sexual feelings. These songs and jokes do not have an erotic, arousing effect. On the contrary, they make the act of love appear as unappetizing as possible. They treat it like digestion and defecation, and make it an object of ridicule. The men who recited rude songs and used coarse words for female body parts were in effect denying that they ever had tender feelings or had been in love, that they had ever made themselves attractive, behaved gently. …”

When we see this, when we see our addiction for what it is, when we understand ourselves and how war has perverted us, life becomes hard to bear. Jon Steele, a cameraman who spent years in war zones, had a nervous breakdown in a crowded Heathrow Airport after returning from Sarajevo.

Steele had come to understand the reality of his work, a reality that stripped away the self-righteous, high-octane gloss. When he was in Sarajevo he was “in a place called Sniper’s Alley, and I filmed a girl there who had been hit in the neck by a sniper’s bullet,” he wrote. “I filmed her in the ambulance, and only after she was dead, I suddenly understood that the last thing she had seen was the reflection of the lens of the camera I was holding in front of her. This wiped me out. I grabbed the camera, and started running down Sniper’s Alley, filming at knee level the Bosnians running from place to place.”

A year after the end of the war in Sarajevo, I sat with Bosnian friends who had suffered horribly. A young woman, Ljiljana, had lost her father, a Serb, who refused to join the besieging Serb forces around the city. A few days earlier she had to identify his corpse. The body was lifted, water running out of the sides of a rotting coffin, from a small park for reburial in the central cemetery. Soon she would emigrate to Australia—where, she told me, “I will marry a man who has never heard of this war and raise children that will be told nothing about it, nothing about the country I am from.”

Ljiljana was young. But the war had exacted a toll. Her cheeks were hollow, her hair dry and brittle. Her teeth were decayed and some had broken into jagged bits. She had no money for a dentist; she hoped to have them fixed in Australia. Yet all she and her friends did that afternoon was lament the days when they lived in fear and hunger, emaciated, targeted by Serb gunners on the heights above. They did not wish back the suffering. And yet, they admitted, those may have been the fullest days of their lives. They looked at me in despair. I had known them when hundreds of shells a day fell nearby, when they had no water to bathe in or wash their clothes, when they huddled in unheated flats as sniper bullets hit the walls outside.

What they expressed was disillusionment with a sterile, futile and empty present. Peace had again exposed the void that the rush of war, of battle, had filled. Once again they were—as perhaps we all are—alone, no longer bound by a common struggle, no longer given the opportunity to be noble, heroic, no longer sure of what life was about or what it meant. The old comradeship, however false, had vanished with the last shot.

Moreover, they had seen that all the sacrifice had been for naught. They had been, as we all are in war, betrayed. The corrupt old Communist Party bosses, who became nationalists overnight and got them into the mess in the first place, had grown rich off their suffering and were still in power. Ljiljana and the others faced a 70 percent unemployment rate. They depended on handouts from the international community. They understood that their cause, once as fashionable in certain intellectual circles as they were themselves, lay forgotten. No longer did actors, politicians and artists scramble to visit during the cease-fires—acts that were almost always ones of gross self-promotion. They knew the lie of war, the mockery of their idealism, and struggled with their shattered illusions. And yet, they wished it all back, and I did, too.

Later, I received a Christmas card. It was signed “Ljiljana from Australia.” It had no return address. I never heard from her again. But many of those I worked with as war correspondents did not escape. They could not break free from the dance with death. They wandered from conflict to conflict, seeking always one more hit.

By then, I was back in Gaza and at one point found myself pinned down in still another ambush. A young Palestinian 15 feet away was fatally shot through the chest. I had been lured back but now felt none of the old rush, just fear. It was time to break free, to let go. I knew it was over for me. I was lucky to get alive.

Kurt Schork—brilliant, courageous and driven—could not let go. He died in an ambush in Sierra Leone along with another friend of mine, Miguel Gil Moreno. His entrapment—his embrace of Thanatos, of the death instinct—was never mentioned in the sterile and antiseptic memorial service held for him in Washington, D.C. Everyone tiptoed around the issue. But those of us who had known him understood he had been consumed.

I had worked with Kurt for 10 years, starting in northern Iraq. Literate, funny—it seems the brave are often funny. He and I passed books back and forth in our struggle to make sense of the madness around us. His loss is a hole that will never be filled. His ashes were placed in Sarajevo’s Lion Cemetery, for the victims of the war. I flew to Sarajevo and met the British filmmaker Dan Reed. It was an overcast November day. We stood over the grave and downed a pint of whiskey. Dan lit a candle. I recited a poem the Roman lyric poet Catullus had written to honor his dead brother.

By strangers’ costs and waters, many days at sea,

I come here for the rites of your unworlding,

Bringing for you, the dead, these last gifts of the living

And my words—vain sounds for the man of dust.

Alas, my brother,

You have been taken from me. You have been taken from me,

By cold chance turned a shadow, and my pain.

Here are the foods of the old ceremony, appointed

Long ago for the starvelings under the earth:

Take them: your brother’s tears have made them wet: and take

Into eternity my hail and my farewell.

It was there, among 4,000 war dead, that Kurt belonged. He died because he could not free himself from war. He had been trying to replicate what he had found in Sarajevo, but he could not. War could never be new again. Kurt had been in East Timor and Chechnya. Sierra Leone, I was sure, meant nothing to him.

Kurt and Miguel could not let go. They would have been the first to admit it. Spend long enough at war, and you cannot fit in anywhere else. It finally kills you. It is not a new story. It starts out like love, but it is death.

War is the beautiful young nymph in the fairy tale that, when kissed, exhales the vapors of the underworld.

The ancient Greeks had a word for such a fate: ekpyrosis.

It means to be consumed by a ball of fire. They used it to describe heroes.

By Chris Hedges

19 March 2012

@ TruthDig.com

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

While most Australians rightly believe that Australia is a multicultural nation, in reality multiculturalism is encouraging divisions, discrimination and racism. Australia needs an inclusive multicultural policy to dismantle “white” dominance and unite Australians.

Since the early 1970s, Australia has embraced multiculturalism and prides itself of being a multicultural nation. After abandoning the “white Australia ” policy, Australia has become one of the most culturally-diverse countries on the planet . However, multiculturalism, as a government policy, is promoted not because it is good, but because it serves the ideology of the ruling class, enforces white dominance and protects white privilege. Hence, Australia ‘s white Anglo-Saxon elites have an interest in investing and maintaining a marginalised “ethnic” or “other”.

Furthermore, there is a tendency among white Australian elites that Australia must remain a white Anglo-Saxon society controlled by a wealthy white ruling class. This is despite the fact that 44 per cent of Australians are born overseas, or have an overseas-born parent. Only whites (preferably Anglo-Saxons) are Australians and only whites have access to good jobs and justice. Multiculturalism is an anti-culture that identifies white Europeans as “Australians” and the rest as the “ethnic Australians” without identity. Ethnic Australians are told to “assimilate”, but cleverly divided, weakened and put in “their places”, in segregated communities.

Successive Australian governments, particularly under the Liberal/National Coalition, have failed to promote racial harmony and provide programs to help disadvantaged Australians and new immigrants obtain employment and integrate into the Australian community. “We are not an economically equal society by any means. There are sizeable pockets of considerable social disadvantages to be found in every state, especially among Indigenous communities and in older industrial and regional areas”, writes Wayne Swan, the Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer. ( The Monthly , March 2012). Australian multiculturalism did little to eliminate racism and discrimination against minorities, including Indigenous Australians.

In the so-called “fair go” Australia , the gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ is growing exponentially. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show that the wealthiest 20 per cent of Australian households have increased their average net worth by 15 per cent since 2005-06. The poorest 20 per cent saw only a 4 per cent rise . As the income gap between the rich and the poor grows wider, Australians are increasingly ghettoized.

According to a recent research in the Australian Economic Review (vol. 45, pp. 29-49); Australian-born parents (i.e., white Anglo-Saxon Australians) are more likely to send their children to well-funded private schools “where the share of their like type is higher” rather than to public schools to avoid exposing them to “unfamiliar cultures”. It is alleged that “there is an over-dominance of some cultures in public schools, which is denigrating the quality of education”. ( The Age , 21 March 2008 ).

It is Important to note that, most ordinary (civilised) Australians believe in an egalitarian and truly multicultural Australia that treats all its citizens equally regardless of skin colour, religion and ethnic backgrounds. However, racism and discrimination are deeply-entrenched in white Australian elites . Indeed, about 85 per cent of Australians believe that racism is a problem in Australia .

While it is unlawful in Australia to discriminate against people because of their skin colour, religion or ethnic backgrounds, most Australian institutions practice racism and discrimination. The education system, the media, the justice system and the police are fuelled by racist practices. Of course, in public, the ruling elites pretend to serve the community, but under the skin, they are truly bigots. In fact, racism is so entrenched in white Australia to the extent that an Australian from a non-Anglo-Saxon background has far less chance to be selected for employment (e.g. at a university) in Australia than a white English, a Dutch or an American holding no residency status and has no right to work in Australia. Nepotism and corruption are rampant and carefully nurtured to enforce white dominance and privilege in the nation’s most important institutions. Tens of thousands of unemployed professionals, including doctors, PhDs, engineers and teachers are driving taxis and doing low-paid odd jobs, despite serious shortages of these professions in Australia . Muslim Australians and new immigrants are denied the opportunity to work and serve the community because of their religion and non-Anglo-Saxon ethnic backgrounds.

A survey on racial and ethnic discrimination in Australia conducted by the Research School of Economics at the Australian National University (ANU) released in June 2009 found that there is substantial evidence of racial discrimination in employment. The study found that Australians from non-Anglo-Saxon backgrounds had greater difficulty of finding employment than those Australians with Anglo-Saxon background. According to the study, people with a Middle Eastern names and background (a.k.a. Muslims) had to send 127 per cent more applications for a waiter’s position than their Anglo-Saxon contenders. ( PDF ). As a result, unemployment among Australians from non-Anglo-Saxon backgrounds is significantly higher.

Of course, there are those Indigenous and “ethnic” Australians who passed through the net and become the face of Australia ‘s shallow multiculturalism. Their presence is nothing more than a PR designs to help in deflecting accusations of racism and discrimination. They are often paraded in front of TV cameras obsequiously dismissing any accusation of racism to promote Australia ‘s (fake) image of a multicultural and “tolerant society”.

The Indian author Arundhati Roy liked this to the forgiving of the Thanksgiving turkey in America : “A few carefully bred turkeys — the local elites of various countries, a community of wealthy immigrants … the occasional Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice … are given absolution and a pass to Frying Pan Park . The remaining millions lose their jobs, are evicted from their homes, have their water and electricity connections cut, and die of AIDS. Basically they’re for the pot. … So who can say that turkeys are against Thanksgiving? They participate in it”. (The Hindu , 18 January 2004 ). The same holds true in Australia . The like of Warren Mundine, Marcia Langton, Pino Migliorino, Stepan Kerkyasharian, Penny Wong and Noel Pearson come to mind.

Racism in Australia is systemic. It is well managed subtle kind of racism than elsewhere. Australia has a Multicultural Minister and several government-funded agencies and organisations, such as the Anti-discrimination Commission, Equal Opportunity Commission and the Human Rights Commission that act as enforcers of racism, legitimising discrimination and dismissing any criticism and racism-related complaints. There is no bill of right and v ery few Australians know that Indigenous Australians are not recognised in the Australian Constitution. Everyone knows his/her place. No one dares to complain. “If you don’t like it”, you are told “go back to your own country”.

As Oscar Humphries, the editor of the London-based art magazine ‘ Apollo’ who grow up in Sydney writes : “My own experience, having attended school [in Australia] until the age of 11, and then lived there during my early 20s, is that underneath the blocky ‘mateship’ of a certain type of Australian male there is a seam of racism. This racism is not only applied to indigenous Australians, but also to, for instance, the Lebanese [Muslim Australians] and Greek immigrants who live there”. ( The Telegraph . 29 June 2011 ). Since 9/11, Muslim Australians continue to live under siege, often harassed and bullied by ASIO and the police.

Most recently, a right-wing politician, Teresa Gambaro from the so-called Australian “Liberal” Party, a collection of right-wing bigots and dirty fascists, accused – after “hearing reports” – non-white (a.k.a. Muslims) immigrants of failing to wear deodorants and integrate into the community.. It is not true that new immigrants have failed to integrate into “Australian culture” and ‘lifestyle”. Most non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants left their simple ways of life at home and have adapted well in Australia , doing all kind of dirty jobs. It is evident that Gambaro herself has not adapted well in Australia and remains an illiterate indulging in old racial stereotypes that contaminated the brains of most bigots in the Liberal Party.

Gambaro is the daughter of poorly-educated Italian immigrants. After fleeing the impoverished and war-ravaged Italy to Australia , Gambaro’s father worked as a farm labourer and a fishmonger – who stunk for many years – before he established his seafood restaurant in Brisbane . Gambaro’s rise in Australian politics is not because she cares about Australia or has a dubious university degree, but because she is white European. Her only contribution to multiculturalism is to greet new immigrants with hostility in order to advance her political interest because racism is a vital tool to dehumanise the “other” and manipulate public opinion.

We all know that, Australian politic is exclusively white territory, and only white Australians have the right to be in the Australian Parliament and participate in democratic debate. It is a privilege position to be in. It provides wealth and power and enough influence to advance the interests of relatives and friends. There is no democracy in Australia . What is called “democracy” is a quarrel between two corporate groups (parties) of wealthy white elites serving their own interests and the interests of their wealthy handlers. The people are duped and misled by politicians and the capitalist (corporate) media and forced into a delusional believe that real change can come from electing a different corporate group (candidate) of wealthy elites.

Like in most Western countries, the Australian media (outlet of the capitalist media) constantly demonises non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants, Indigenous and Muslim Australians, inciting racism and promoting divisions. Ethnic divisions are exploited and used by the media as an opportunity to promote fear. The media in Australia is a small pond of vicious white sharks. About 75 per cent of the printing media are controlled by the neo-fascist Murdoch Press, a pro-Israel Zionist and anti-Muslim propaganda organ. Australian major TV channels (ABC, 7, 9 and 10) are the cesspool of Britain and U.S. rubbish. They have no shame when it comes to demonising and bashing non-Anglo-Saxon Australians and new immigrants, particularly Muslim immigrants. Australia ‘s media are dominated by white Anglo-Saxon bigots . There are no places for Australians from non-Anglo-Saxon backgrounds only in stereotypical roles.

Meanwhile, the self-described multicultural TV station, “Special Broadcasting Services” (SBS), has become the main demoniser of Muslims. It is often called the “ethnic” station. The station is financed by the pro-Israel Zionist lobby and managed by faceless white Anglo-Saxon executives. It is an anti-Muslim, racist and warmongering propaganda outlet. Its anti-Muslim agenda is hidden behind a façade of dark-skinned, unprofessional newsreaders and second-hand journalists. Like all capitalist media outlets, SBS alleges to be “independence”, but in reality, it is a dirty byproduct of CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera, Fox News and CBS propaganda. Its aim is to deepen the ethnic divide, tear communities apart and deny Australians from non-Anglo-Saxon backgrounds a collective voice. People are misled to have a strong “ethnic” identity, which isolates them and decreases their sense of belonging to the Australian community .

Having said all that, it is important to acknowledge that there are worse places in the world than Australia . Australia is not Europe or the U.S. , where racism is condone and promoted by right-wing governments and neo-fascist parties. When it comes to dealing with ethnic minorities, Europe ‘s history, of course, is littered with crimes against minorities. For instance, some European countries, including France , Switzerland and Holland send Roma Gypsies and Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazis back to Germany . Today, Europe has become a bastion of Islamophobia. Muslim immigrants and refugees bear the brunt of Europe ‘s neo-fascist policies . Of course, Australia ‘s current policy of dealing with desperate (mostly Muslim) refugees is a Nazi-like inhumane policy and should to be condemned.

Moreover, unlike Europe , Australia lacks the neo-fascist, far-right Islamophobes who practice “direct action” to expel immigrants in Europe . Crimes against Muslims and newly-arrived non-European immigrants are committed on daily basis. Many innocent people (mostly Muslims) and refugees have been murdered by neo-fascists in Europe , including Germany , Belgium , France and Britain . European political leaders, such as the neo-fascist Nicholas Sarkozy in France , David Cameron in Britain and Angela Merkle in Germany have attacked Muslim immigrant rights using multiculturalism as a cover. In other words, multiculturalism is used as a code word for Muslim. The promotion and exploitation of Islamophobia by Western leaders serve as a cheap vote winner among their racist electorate. Indeed, Sarkozy is campaigning for re-election on an anti-immigrants and anti-Muslim racist platform. The on-going attacks on multiculturalism by European leaders are seen as a justification for Western governments’ involvement in U.S.-Israeli criminal wars in the Middle East , West Asia ( Afghanistan ) and Africa ( Libya ). This is why both Nicholas Sarkozy and David Cameron declared during their violent aggression against Libya that multiculturalism is dead in their respective countries. Like the U.S. , most Europe is multicultural regions, but also condones racism and discrimination against certain minorities.

In the U.S. , Americans are segregated by centuries-old racist ideology and racist laws. As a result, the U.S. is one of the most unequal societies in the world with extreme and growing inequality ( Extreme Poverty in the United States, 1996 to 2011 ). Anti-immigrants’ sentiment is spreading like wild fire across the U.S. Thousands of “undocumented” immigrants have been imprisoned or deported and their children were taken away from them and put in foster homes. There are hundreds of extremist and anti-immigrants hate groups, including 170 Neo Nazi and 152 Ku Klux Klan groups ( The ‘Patriot’ Movement Explodes ). Australia is not Europe or the U.S. , not yet.

Australia still has to dismantle its white Australia policy and eradicate racism and discrimination to nurture a truly multicultural Australia . There is no such thing as Australians and “ethnic” Australians. One is either Australian or not. The only way forward is an egalitarian Australia for all Australians regardless of racial and ethnic backgrounds. An inclusive multiculturalism will unite Australians and make Australian strong.

By Ghali Hassan

Ghali Hassan is an independent political analyst living in Australia .

By Sunday evening in Gaza, a weekend of relentless Israeli bombing has left 18 people dead and dozens wounded. Israeli propaganda insists that the attacks are about preventing “terrorism” and stopping “rockets.”

But in fact, Israel provoked this violence and according to some Israeli commentators its goals are to escalate pressure for war with Iran and to drag Hamas away from diplomacy and back into violence.

Sunday’s victims of the Israeli bombing included Ayoub Useila, 12, of Jabalya refugee camp, whose seven year-old cousin was injured, and Adel al-Issi, 52, a farmer near Gaza City. Others suffered horrifying injuries, as recounted by doctors at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital.

On Monday, another 5 people were reported killed, and dozens more injured, bringing the reported total of dead to 23.

Israel launches attack on Friday

The Israeli assault began on Friday, when Israeli forces carried out the extrajudicial executions of Zuhair Al-Qaisi and Mahmoud Al-Hannani of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), whom Israel alleged were “masterminds” of an attack near Eilat last year. Except, as Max Blumenthal demonstrated, this is untrue, as even Israel previously acknowledged.

This weekend’s attacks have followed a typical pattern. Israel launches a lethal attack knowing full well that Palestinian resistance factions will respond. It then uses the response—dozens of rockets falling on Israel rarely causing injuries or damage—as the very pretext for continued bombing. Israel also claims to have shot down several dozen incoming missiles using its US-subsidized “Iron Dome” anti-missile system.

On Twitter, the Israeli military spokesperson even praised Israel for its “restraint” as if Israel hadn’t started the violence itself on a completely false pretext:

#IDF “Spox: No other country in the world would have allowed 130 rockets in 48 hours and shown such restraint”#IsraelUnderFire

Recall that after the Eilat attack last August, Israel launched a ferocious assault on Gaza, also on false pretexts, killing 14 people including a 2-year old child, a 13-year-old boy and a doctor.

Extrajudicial murder

Beyond the propaganda, informed Israeli commentators, even those supporting the action, acknowledge that Israel chose to initiate the current escalation of violence:

In the Jerusalem Post, Yaakov Katz wrote:

When the IDF decided on Friday afternoon to assassinate the leader of the Popular Resistance Committees in the Gaza Strip, it knew what it was getting itself into.

Assessments ahead of the decision to bomb the car carrying Zuhair Qaisi predicted that around 100 rockets could be fired into Israel during each day of the round of violence expected to erupt. This was a price the government felt it was capable of paying.

In other words, Israel was prepared to carry out an extrajudicial execution, a war crime, knowing that there would be retaliation. Israel’s routine policy of executing Palestinians in occupied territories without charge or trial, based on flimsy allegations made by the killers themselves, is a major violation of international humanitarian law and makes a mockery of Israel’s claim to be a “democracy” by any possible measure.

Even in China, Iran, and the United States, all prolific users of the death penalty where no doubt many innocent people have been put to death, authorities at least go through the formality of a trial. Not so in Israel, where in the past decade hundreds of Palestinians have been sentenced to death in secret and then executed in their beds, on the street, while riding in cars, or even when confined to wheelchairs, along with hundreds of bystanders.

Of course now, the Obama administration has openly adopted Israeli-style extrajudicial execution even of its own citizens—just another example of the “shared values” US and Israeli leaders are always eager to proclaim.

Israeli commentators cut through the official propaganda

In Haaretz, Gideon Levy undercut the official propaganda, that extrajudicial executions—“targeted killings”—are ever justified, let alone in this instance:

Who started it? The IDF and the Shin Bet security service did. The impression is that they carry out the targeted killings whenever they can, and not whenever it is necessary.

When are they necessary? Do you remember the debate on targeted killings sometime in the distant past? Then, it seemed the targets had to be “ticking time bombs” en route to carry out their attacks. In any event, such a vague standard no longer applies. In 2006, in his last court ruling handed down before his retirement, then Supreme Court President Aharon Barak barred such killings when they were meant to be “a deterrent or punishment.”

The latest target killed was Zuhair al-Qaissi, the secretary general of the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza. IDF sources said he was responsible for the terrorist attack on the Egyptian border last August – which would make his killing an act of “deterrence or punishment.” But to be on the safe side, it was also noted that he had “led and directed plans to carry out a terror attack within Israel, which was in its final stages of preparation.”

This convoluted announcement by the IDF spokesman was enough to get the Israeli public to accept this latest regular dose of targeted killing with automatic understanding and sympathy. And who knows what the late al-Qaissi had planned? Only the Shin Bet does, so we accept his death sentence without unnecessary questions.

Also in Haaretz, Zvi Bar’el cast further doubt on the Israeli claim that the executed PRC men posed a threat that would justify the Israeli attack:

It is hard to understand what basis there is for the assertion that Israel is not striving to escalate the situation. One could assume that an armed response by the Popular Resistance Committees or Islamic Jihad to Israel’s targeted assassination was taken into account. But did anyone weigh the possibility that the violent reaction could lead to a greater number of Israeli casualties than any terrorist attack that Zuhair al-Qaisi, the secretary-general of the Popular Resistance Committees, could have carried out?

“Mowing the lawn”

Perhaps the most chilling explanation of why Israel was bombing Gaza came, again, from Yaakov Katz in The Jerusalem Post:

the IDF is using this as an opportunity to do some “maintenance work” in Gaza and to mow the lawn, so to speak, with regard to terrorism, with the main goal of boosting its deterrence and postponing the next round of violence for as long as possible.

So 12 year-old Ayoub Useila is not even an animal. He’s just part of a “lawn” of faceless nameless Palestinians, to be bombed into submission as routinely as an Israeli settler on stolen West Bank land maintains his suburban-style yard and swimming pool.

Hamas “completely uninvolved”

Katz continues:

This is essentially the situation in the Gaza Strip since Operation Cast Lead ended in January 2009.

Every few months, something happens, setting off a round of violence that usually lasts a few days until it suddenly ends just like it began. Once it is an antitank missile attack against an Israeli school bus and the next time a targeted killing of a top terrorist.

Either way, the scenario is pretty much played out the same way. The main difference today is that Hamas is completely uninvolved in the sense that its operatives are not firing rockets into Israel. On the other hand, Israel does believe that Hamas could be doing more to stop the fire into Israel.

Katz himself had already acknowledged that Israel set off the round of violence by its assassination of the PRC activists but then he goes on to admit that Hamas isn’t even involved. Hamas, the usual bogeyman and justification for Israel’s aggression on Gaza “is completely uninvolved in the sense that its operatives are not firing rockets into Israel.” That’s quite an admission.

Indeed it has been reported that leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad are completely uninterested in escalating violence with Israel and are committed to a “ceasefire.” That would be consistent with their long-term policies which are to retaliate against Israeli aggression but not to seek out confrontation.

“The escalation in Gaza is good for Israel”

So given all this, why has Israel decided to kill people in Gaza for no discernible reason? According to Bar’el in Haaretz it has everything to do with Israel’s effort to build support for an attack on Iran:

Advocates of a strike on Iran couldn’t have hoped for a more convincing performance than the current exchange of fire between Israel and Gaza. “A million Israelis under fire” is only a taste of what is expected when Iran’s nuclear project is completed. When that happens, seven million Israelis will be under the threat of fire and nuclear fallout.

This is what happens when “only” the Islamic Jihad fires Grad rockets, when Hamas stays out of the fight, and when the “miraculous system” that prevents missiles from falling on kindergartens still works. Under the threat of a nuclear Iran, miracles won’t help, and people in Tel Aviv will also be forced to hide in bomb shelters or escape to Eilat.

Here’s the proof: There is no alternative to striking Iran and there is no better time than the present, when the weather permits and world diplomacy is preoccupied with Syria. For Israelis, there is no better proof that no harm will come to them as a result of an attack on Iran than the performance of the Iron Dome anti-rocket system, which has demonstrated a 95% rate of effectiveness. The escalation in Gaza is good for Israel – that is, for that part of Israel that wants to strike Iran.

It is hard to understand what basis there is for the assertion that Israel is not striving to escalate the situation. One could assume that an armed response by the Popular Resistance Committees or Islamic Jihad to Israel’s targeted assassination was taken into account. But did anyone weigh the possibility that the violent reaction could lead to a greater number of Israeli casualties than any terrorist attack that Zuhair al-Qaisi, the secretary-general of the Popular Resistance Committees, could have carried out?

Bar’el sees at least one other compelling reason why Israel chose violence once again: the ‘threat’ from Hamas’ ever more determined turn to reliance on diplomacy over armed struggle—which Bar’el attributes in part to Hamas’ need to maintain good relations with Egypt:

This dependence on Egypt has managed in the past to produce extended ceasefires which have proven themselves in recent months, especially after the signing of the reconciliation agreement with Fatah, which produced Khaled Meshal’s declarations that Hamas would restrict itself to nonviolent forms of struggle against Israel.

However, it seems that the change in Hamas not only hasn’t convinced Israel, but even stands in the way of its “no partner” policy and could sabotage its efforts to head off the creation of a Palestinian unity government, which would lead to renewed efforts at the UN to secure an independent Palestinian state.

Thus, Hamas must be dragged toward military activity against Israel, and nothing is easier, at least in Israel’s estimation, than to launch a “unilateral” attack against a wanted non-Hamas man, to wait for the response to come, and hope that Hamas joins in.

So far, it hasn’t happened. Hamas still prefers the diplomatic channel and has carried on intensive diplomatic contacts over the past two days with Egypt’s Supreme Military Council. Israel apparently needs to wait for another opportunity.

What that “opportunity” will be no one yet knows, but what is sure is that innocent people will pay with their lives.

Facts behind Israel’s rocket propaganda

Whenever you hear Israel’s tired hasbara refrain about rockets, rockets, rockets, remember to ask the question Yousef Munayyer recently asked: Why don’t Israel’s spokespeople ever tell us how many rockets, missiles and bullets Israel has fired on Gaza?

Of course the answer is because it is by orders of magnitude greater in both number and explosive power than anything Palestinian armed groups have or ever could muster against Israel. There are some data, however.

In one 18-month period between September 2005 and May 2007 in which Palestinian armed groups fired 2,700 rockets toward Israel killing four people, Israel fired 14,617 heavy artillery shells into Gaza killing 59 people, including at least 17 children and 12 women. Hundreds more were injured and extensive damage caused.

This data comes from a 2007 Human Rights Watch reported titled Indiscriminate Fire, which states in addition that:

A subsequent artillery attack on November 8 [2006] killed or mortally wounded 23 and injured at least 40 Palestinians, all civilians.

The report adds:

Human Rights Watch has been unable to find any report or claim that those killed or injured by artillery fire included persons believed to be combatants, and the IDF has not responded to a Human Rights Watch request about whether any Palestinians killed or injured by artillery fire into the Gaza Strip were combatants or believed to be combatants. Israeli artillery strikes in 2006 also left many unexploded shells strewn on the ground that constitute a continuing hazard to lives and livelihoods.

That report dates from 2007, but in the years before and since, thousands more Palestinian civilians were killed and injured in Israeli attacks, by what must be tens of thousands of Israeli munitions. This included the 2008-2009 assault called “Operation Cast Lead” and Israeli fire has been an almost daily occurrence since its end claiming many innocent lives.

And Operation Cast Lead itself was launched on the false pretext—echoed ad nauseam by media—that Palestinians were firing unprovoked barrages of rockets into Israel leaving it no choice to attack in “self-defense.” That too was a lie as Israel’s own official figures showed at the time.

As Munayyer notes, citing UN statistics:

In 2011, the projectiles fired by the Israeli military into Gaza have been responsible for the death of 108 Palestinians, of which 15 where women or children and the injury of 468 Palestinians of which 143 where women or children. The methods by which these causalities were inflicted by Israeli projectiles breaks down as follows: 57% or 310, were caused by Israeli Aircraft Missile fire, 28% or 150 were from Israeli live ammunition, 11% or 59 were from Israeli tank shells while another 3% or 18 were from Israeli mortar fire.

That is why Israeli official propaganda has to be so distorted and selective

By Ali Abunimah

12 March 2012

@ Electronic Intifada

Ali Abunimah is Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, and author of One Country: A Bold-Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Israeli airstrikes killed two Islamic Jihad militants and three civilians on Monday, bringing the death toll since Friday to 23 people, medics and Ma’an’s correspondent said.

An airstrike on Monday afternoon in Beit Lahiya killed Muhammad al-Hasoumi, 65, and his daughter, 30, medical spokesperson in Gaza Abu Salmiya said.

Earlier, hospital officials said a 15-year-old schoolboy was killed in a separate air strike during the day on Monday. Nayif Shaaban Qarmout was killed in Beit Lahiya, north Gaza, Ma’an’s correspondent said.

Witnesses said that the 15-year-old was playing with friends in a play ground near his school when an Israeli missile hit the area.

Five others were injured and taken to Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

Early Monday, two Islamic Jihad militants, Raafat Abu Eid, 24, and Hamadah Salman Abu Mutlaq, 24, were killed in Khan Younis, Ma’an’s correspondent said. Abu Eid was killed when an airstrike targeted a vehicle he was traveling in.

Two other militants sustained injuries and a female passerby was also injured in the attack.

Abu Mutlaq, 24, was killed near a mosque in a village east of Khan Younis after warplanes fired at him. Three others were injured and taken to hospital for treatment.

Earlier, Israeli airstrikes had hit two homes in the northern Gaza Strip, injuring 33 civilians, most of whom were women and children, Abu Salmiya said.

Most sustained moderate injuries, with one critically injured, and were transferred to hospital.

A 17-year-old girl and another man were also injured as Israeli missiles struck a home in Gaza City, Abu Salmiya said.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said aircraft had carried out six strikes on Monday. At least 20 rockets have been fired at Israel on Monday, she said.

The army targeted “a weapons storage facility and four rocket launching sites in the northern Gaza Strip, as well as a rocket launching site in the southern Gaza Strip,” a statement said.

Israel’s army denied, however, that there had been any military activity in the northern Gaza Strip at the time of 15-year-old Nayif Shaaban Qarmout’s death.

Gaza’s Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said late Sunday that neighboring Egypt was working to stop the violence and was consulting with militant factions but added that Israel would have to first stop its air strikes.

The latest round of violence flared on Friday when an Israeli airstrike killed two militant leaders in Gaza.

Israel accused them of planning a cross-border attack via Egypt, although an Egyptian official said Sunday that the Sinai is “fully under control.”

“This is an attempt by Israel to give justification for the offensive against Gaza,” he said.

On Sunday, PLO official Hanan Ashrawi strongly condemned Israel’s latest military escalation.

“The Israeli government has acted with impunity for its unilateral violations for far too long. The illegal, cruel siege of the Gaza Strip, along with all other violations of international law must come to an end.”

The PLO official called on the international community to take serious measures to halt Israel’s policy of extrajudicial executions and the continued killing of innocent civilians.

By Ma’an News Agency

12 March 2012

@ Maannews.net

I’m getting a bit tired of the “deranged” soldier story. It was predictable, of course. The 38-year-old staff sergeant who massacred 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, near Kandahar this week had no sooner returned to base than the defence experts and the think-tank boys and girls announced that he was “deranged”. Not an evil, wicked, mindless terrorist – which he would be, of course, if he had been an Afghan, especially a Taliban – but merely a guy who went crazy.

This was the same nonsense used to describe the murderous US soldiers who ran amok in the Iraqi town of Haditha. It was the same word used about Israeli soldier Baruch Goldstein who massacred 25 Palestinians in Hebron – something I pointed out in this paper only hours before the staff sergeant became suddenly “deranged” in Kandahar province.

“Apparently deranged”, “probably deranged”, journalists announced, a soldier who “might have suffered some kind of breakdown” (The Guardian), a “rogue US soldier” (Financial Times) whose “rampage” (The New York Times) was “doubtless [sic] perpetrated in an act of madness” (Le Figaro). Really? Are we supposed to believe this stuff? Surely, if he was entirely deranged, our staff sergeant would have killed 16 of his fellow Americans. He would have slaughtered his mates and then set fire to their bodies. But, no, he didn’t kill Americans. He chose to kill Afghans. There was a choice involved. So why did he kill Afghans? We learned yesterday that the soldier had recently seen one of his mates with his legs blown off. But so what?

The Afghan narrative has been curiously lobotomised – censored, even – by those who have been trying to explain this appalling massacre in Kandahar. They remembered the Koran burnings – when American troops in Bagram chucked Korans on a bonfire – and the deaths of six Nato soldiers, two of them Americans, which followed. But blow me down if they didn’t forget – and this applies to every single report on the latest killings – a remarkable and highly significant statement from the US army’s top commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, exactly 22 days ago. Indeed, it was so unusual a statement that I clipped the report of Allen’s words from my morning paper and placed it inside my briefcase for future reference.

Allen told his men that “now is not the time for revenge for the deaths of two US soldiers killed in Thursday’s riots”. They should, he said, “resist whatever urge they might have to strike back” after an Afghan soldier killed the two Americans. “There will be moments like this when you’re searching for the meaning of this loss,” Allen continued. “There will be moments like this, when your emotions are governed by anger and a desire to strike back. Now is not the time for revenge, now is the time to look deep inside your souls, remember your mission, remember your discipline, remember who you are.”

Now this was an extraordinary plea to come from the US commander in Afghanistan. The top general had to tell his supposedly well-disciplined, elite, professional army not to “take vengeance” on the Afghans they are supposed to be helping/protecting/nurturing/training, etc. He had to tell his soldiers not to commit murder. I know that generals would say this kind of thing in Vietnam. But Afghanistan? Has it come to this? I rather fear it has. Because – however much I dislike generals – I’ve met quite a number of them and, by and large, they have a pretty good idea of what’s going on in the ranks. And I suspect that Allen had already been warned by his junior officers that his soldiers had been enraged by the killings that followed the Koran burnings – and might decide to go on a revenge spree. Hence he tried desperately – in a statement that was as shocking as it was revealing – to pre-empt exactly the massacre which took place last Sunday.

Yet it was totally wiped from the memory box by the “experts” when they had to tell us about these killings. No suggestion that General Allen had said these words was allowed into their stories, not a single reference – because, of course, this would have taken our staff sergeant out of the “deranged” bracket and given him a possible motive for his killings. As usual, the journos had got into bed with the military to create a madman rather than a murderous soldier. Poor chap. Off his head. Didn’t know what he was doing. No wonder he was whisked out of Afghanistan at such speed.

We’ve all had our little massacres. There was My Lai, and our very own little My Lai, at a Malayan village called Batang Kali where the Scots Guards – involved in a conflict against ruthless communist insurgents – murdered 24 unarmed rubber workers in 1948. Of course, one can say that the French in Algeria were worse than the Americans in Afghanistan – one French artillery unit is said to have “disappeared” 2,000 Algerians in six months – but that is like saying that we are better than Saddam Hussein. True, but what a baseline for morality. And that’s what it’s about. Discipline. Morality. Courage. The courage not to kill in revenge. But when you are losing a war that you are pretending to win – I am, of course, talking about Afghanistan – I guess that’s too much to hope. General Allen seems to have been wasting his time.

By Robert Fisk

17 March 2012

@ The Independent

Letter from René González to his Seriously Ill Brother Roberto, 24 February 2012

My Brother for life,

I never thought I would have to write this letter. We share the same lack of enthusiasm for letter writing, a fact clearly demonstrated during our respective internationalist missions and – more conclusively – in the unique experience of the last 20 years. In other words, only conditions as extraordinary as the present ones induce me to write.

Under normal conditions, these things should said be face to face, and a lot of them wouldn’t even need to be said at all. You have enough on your plate with this pitched battle against a disease that is trying to devour you, without on top of that having to face a human ailment that is much more lethal: hatred.

The hatred that stops me from reciprocating all the efforts, with that well-deserved hug we Five would like to give you.

The hatred that does not let me laugh with you at the each of the happenings that spring from your immense courage.

The hatred that obliges me to guess, by the sound of your breathing on the telephone, the fluctuating fortunes of the battle you are waging.

The hatred that causes me the anguish of not being able to share in the caring for all those who love you; and which stops me from being there to support Sary and the boys.

The hatred that deprives me of seeing our nephews and nieces grow up; they have become men and women in the last few years. How proud you must be of your children!

The hatred that prevents me from simply embracing my brother. That obliges me to follow from an absurd and distant confinement a process of which I should be part, like anyone else who has served a prison sentence, in itself quite long enough and imposed precisely out of hatred; but for him, still insufficient.

What can one do against so much hatred? What we have always done, I suppose: love life and fight for it, both for our own and for that of others. Confront every obstacle with a smile on our lips, an apt witticism, and with that optimism instilled in us from childhood. Press on, tough it out, never give in, always together shoulder to shoulder, however hard they try to isolate me from family and friends, to punish all of us in that way.

Today I’ve been remembering those great days from your time as a sportsman. You in the pool and us up in the stands, shouting your name as you swam. Our voices reached you intermittently, when you raised your head to breathe. You told us how sometimes you heard your whole name, other times just the beginning or the end. So we trained ourselves to wait ’till your head was out of the water and then all shout your name in unison. You couldn’t see us, but the din we made told you we were with you, even if we couldn’t intervene directly in the fierce struggle taking place in the swimming pool.

History is now repeating itself. While you are committing all your efforts to this struggle, I am here cheering you on, now together with the family that you had not then yet built. Although you can’t see me, you know I’m there, together with yours, who are also mine. You know that this brother, from his strange exile, from the sorrow of forced separation, under the most absurd conditions of supervised freedom, based on the dignity of his status as a Cuban patriot (like you) and on the affection nurtured by the ties of kinship and shared experience that unite us, is and always will be with you. Every time you raise your head, you’ll be able to hear me shouting, together with my nephews and nieces.

Breathe, brother, breathe!!

Your brother who loves you,

René

(Cubaminrex/Cubadebate)

Source: Cuba News

The campaign launched around Kony 2012, a 30-minute video targeting the leader of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, is aimed at furthering US military intervention on the African continent under the guise of humanitarianism.

The video has been viewed on YouTube tens of millions of times, and its depiction of the suffering of the people, and particularly the children, of Uganda as the result of the protracted military conflict between the LRA and the US-backed government of President Yoweri Museveni has no doubt struck a chord with many, particularly younger people with little knowledge of the complex history of the region and the many interests involved.

The campaign’s message has been greatly amplified by a series of celebrities, ranging from Oprah Winfrey to George Clooney, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Rhianna and four of the Kardashians, all of whom have tweeted their support. It has likewise received virtually uncritical promotion from the mass media, with television anchors in the US comparing it to the use of social media during the mass revolts that shook Tunisia and Egypt last year.

In reality, there is absolutely nothing radical or oppositional about Kony 2012, whose explicitly stated aim is to drum up popular support for the continuation and escalation of one of the first direct military interventions by the Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) on the African continent.

In October of last year, the Obama administration announced its decision to send 100 combat-equipped US military “advisers,” most of them special forces troops, into Central Africa with the stated aim of hunting down and either capturing or killing Kony and other leaders of the LRA.

While Invisible Children claims its campaign is for Kony to be delivered to the International Criminal Court for trial, the US government has refused to be a party to the ICC and has made no mention of the court in relation to its military operations in Central Africa.

A March 7 open letter to President Barack Obama, issued in conjunction with the release of the video, praises the Democratic president for his “leadership on this issue.”

“Your decision to deploy U.S. military advisors to the region in October of 2011 was a welcome measure of further assistance for regional governments in their efforts to protect people from LRA attacks,” the letter states.

It continues, “However, we fear that unless existing U.S. efforts are further expanded, your strategy may not succeed.” It touts the US military as the sole force capable of providing “tactical airlift” together with “cross-border coordination.” It cautions against any “premature” withdrawal of US special operations troops and urges the administration to utilize recently approved Pentagon funding “to provide enhanced mobility, intelligence, and other support for ongoing operations.”

The heads of three organizations signed the letter: Invisible Children, the maker of the Kony 2012 video; the Enough Project, a subsidiary of the Democratic-oriented think tank, the Center for American Progress; and Resolve, a human rights group connected to Catholic missionary organizations.

Behind this campaign is an unholy alliance between the Christian right in the US, which has chosen Uganda as something of a laboratory for its reactionary social and political outlook, and sections of well-heeled liberals who have become a new constituency for imperialist intervention waged on the pretext of upholding human rights and protecting civilians.

The White House last week came out publicly in support of the Kony 2012 campaign, with spokesman Jay Carney stating that Obama “congratulates” all those who responded to this “unique crisis of conscience” and vows to continue the US intervention.

Underlying the sudden and peculiar turn by Washington towards a “human rights” crusade against the Lord’s Resistance Army are very definite economic and geo-strategic interests. These are bound up with the recent discovery of substantial oil reserves precisely in the area where the hunt for the LRA is being staged and increasingly fractious competition between Washington and Beijing for geo-political influence in resource-rich Africa. AFRICOM and military intervention have become crucial instruments for the US in combating the wave of Chinese investments in infrastructure projects aimed at facilitating the extraction of African oil and mineral wealth.

What is peculiar about the intervention against the LRA is that it has been launched under conditions in which the militia group has already been reduced to a few hundred fighters and driven out of Uganda. While it conducted brutal attacks that claimed many civilian lives and was responsible for abducting large numbers of children for use as child soldiers a decade ago, its operations have been sharply curtailed in recent years and its atrocities far overshadowed by the mass killing carried out in the resource wars being waged in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Museveni’s Ugandan troops and affiliated militia groups are among those responsible for the loss of nearly 6 million lives since the mid-1990s.

The Kony 2012 video portrays Uganda as it was a decade ago, thereby generating false propaganda for the US military intervention. At the same time, it casts the struggle between the Ugandan government and the LRA as a morality play, pitting “good” against “evil.”

While the LRA has committed massacres and crimes against the region’s civilian population, it is hardly unique in this regard. It is a product in the final analysis of the divide-and-rule methods utilized by British colonialism, which generated inter-ethnic conflicts that independence and a rising native ruling class only continued to foster.

With the coming to power of Idi Amin in 1971, power shifted to the traditionally oppressed north of the country and away from the south, which had been favored by the British. The Acholi, one of the main northern ethnic groups, dominated the country’s military, which continued to exercise significant power even after Amin’s ouster in 1979.

In 1986, however, the country’s military ruler, Gen. Tito Okello, was brought down and the Acholi-dominated army disbanded after Museveni and his National Resistance Army, which preceded Kony in the use of child soldiers, swept to power.

It was out of Museveni’s ruthless suppression of resistance in the north that the LRA emerged. This repression led to the forced relocation of much of the north’s Acholi population into “protective villages,” effectively concentration camps in which people were deprived of their land and agriculture and many thousands died from hunger and disease.

Even the Museveni regime has criticized the film’s distortions. “It is totally misleading to suggest that the war is still in Uganda,” Fred Opolot, a spokesman for the Ugandan government, told the Telegraph. “I suspect that if that’s the impression they [Invisible Children] are making, they are doing it only to garner increasing financial resources for their own agenda.”

While no doubt the Ugandan regime is critical for its own reasons, tied to its own interests and concerns that an image of Uganda as a war zone will interfere with the corrupt privatization and investment schemes that have enriched a narrow elite at the expense of the masses of people, the government spokesman has a point.

According to Invisible Children official Jason Russell, the group sold some 500,000 $30 “action kits,” consisting of T-shirts, bracelets, stickers, posters and buttons, in just the first week since the posting of the video, translating into $15 million in revenue.

As Invisible Children freely admits, the bulk of this money does not go to aid the impoverished population of Uganda. Barely one third of its spending last year supported programs in Central Africa, while 20 percent covered salaries and expenses and 43 percent was used for “awareness programs.”

Invisible Children’s previous funding sources also merit critical examination. Among its biggest donors is the National Christian Foundation and the Christian Community Foundation, two grant-making groups that provide financial backing to key organizations of the Christian right, such as Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, which promote anti-abortion and anti-gay legislation and religion in school, as well as the Discovery Institute, which advocates teaching “intelligent design,” or creationism.

Some of these same religious right groups have been deeply involved in fostering anti-gay hysteria in Uganda, including the pushing of legislation that would make homosexual acts an offense punishable by death.

Invisible Children’s Jason Russell was a featured speaker last November at Liberty University, the evangelical Christian school in Lynchburg, Virginia. The school was founded by the extreme right-wing demagogue and Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell, a defender of segregation and South Africa’s apartheid regime who became a significant force within the Republican Party.

The Kony 2012 campaign represents a cynical attempt to manipulate public opinion in the interests of US intervention. It seeks to exploit the idealism of young people in order to distract them from the fundamental source of the tragic conditions facing masses of people in Africa—the heritage of colonial oppression and continued imperialist domination. And it proposes the US government and the US military as the solution to human rights abuses, as if the war crimes from Vietnam to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya had never happened.

By Bill Van Auken

14 March 2012

@ WSWS.org

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers question the presumption that the U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan is necessary for American or Afghan peace.

Tragedies like the Kandahar killing spree which massacred 16 Afghan civilians in their sleep ( including 6 children and 3 women )  are tragedies repeated in any war, including the U.S. war in Afghanistan. This failed military strategy that is designed for U.S. power and economic interests is being sold to the U.S. electorate through the mainstream media doublespeak of ‘withdrawal’ and ‘negotiations’, but is quietly being pursued in what President Obama and President Karzai called ‘progress’ towards the signing of the U.S Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement . The Agreement will entrench U.S. military presence in Afghanistan till 2024 and beyond and is based on the same militarism that has resulted in the pathological urinating on Afghan corpses by U.S. soldiers , the morbid keeping of severed finger-trophies by the Kill Team , the accidental burning of the Quran and many other ‘unforgiveable’ tragedies.

The U.S./Afghanistan/Pakistan military strategy has failed beyond human repair, and should not be continued under the guise of the U.S./Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement. It wastes U.S. tax payer money only to fuel anti-U.S. sentiments which worsen both U.S. and Afghan security.

“These killings only serve to reinforce the mind-set that the whole war is broken and that there’s little we can do about it beyond trying to cut our losses and leave,” said Joshua Foust, a security expert with the American Security Project.

In Afghanistan, this military strategy has caused the death of more than 3000 civilians in 2011 alone and, in Pakistan, it has cost the lives of 40,000 civilians; would U.S. citizens have been able to tolerate the equivalent of having September 11’s every year for 10 years?

This war has understandably caused anger, post-death traumatic stress, grief and vengeful feelings among Afghans, Pakistanis, the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other opponents of U.S. foreign policy, as well as tit-for-tat, commensurate feelings among U.S. and international soldiers.

Wars escalate ‘terror’ acts.

These sentiments boiling in the quagmire of Afghan corruption, poverty, unemployment and a dire humanitarian situation ( Afghanistan is the worst place on earth for mothers and children, with children dying from basic challenges like chronic malnutrition and the winter cold) will unfortunately erupt into more ‘terrorist’ responses in retaliation for losing loved ones.

Najeeb Azizi, a Kabul-based Afghan analyst, told Al Jazeera that the Afghan people are getting a very bad message, “ if the US military remains in Afghanistan beyond 2014 and their attitude and behaviour remains the same – of killing innocent civilians – what will be the consequences , and how will the Afghan people respond to it?”

Reuters reported a Kandahar shop owner Haji Najiq saying , “We have benefited little from the foreign troops here but lost everything – our lives, dignity and our country to them. The explanation or apologies will not bring back the dead. It is better for them to leave us alone and let us live in peace .””The Americans said they will leave in 2014. They should leave now so we can live in peace,” said Mohammad Fahim, 19, a university student.

It is interesting to note that a December 2009 survey conducted by a private U.S. contractor about Kandahar military offensives revealed that 94 percent of Kandaharis surveyed supported negotiating with the Taliban over military confrontation and that 1000 to 2000 Kandahari elders had told President Karzai in a meeting on April 4 th 2010 that they were not happy with General McChrystal’s plans for the Kandahar military offensive . Against all democratic principles, the people’s requests for peace negotiations instead of a massive military offensive were rejected.

On the ground in Kabul, we sense much anger and sorrow among ordinary Afghans in the street, just as we sensed in travelling to meet youth from Parwan and Kapisa. In Kapisa, 8 Afghan shepherd boys were killed by a NATO airstrike . Three more civilians were killed in a NATO air raid the day before our visit.

Opposed to the mainstream media’s portrayal of violent, Afghan ‘terrorists’, the 30 million Afghan populace is showing remarkable restraint, as has been called for by the Afghan Interior Ministry.

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers call for U.S. and Afghan citizens to be calm, non-violent, brave and kind to one another, as the world discusses how to end the Afghan war.

Global citizens ought to focus on the root problems of severe economic inequalities and the 1%-driven corruption that Afghanistan and the world faces, and reason with the Obama/Karzai administration and other Powers not to waste tax-payers’ ‘blood and treasure’ on wars that will never be won, on wars that are certain to see a repetition of Kandahar-type killing sprees.

3 a .m.

Walk a mile with loaded weapons.

Will I be killed?

Enter Afghan homes.

See sleeping Afghan children, women and men.

Shoot!……..!

Set the dead on fire…

In particular, the Kandahar killing spree is a call to debate the US Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement and its basis of war against terrorism.

It is a call to question the lazy global presumption that military strategies are necessary for conflict resolution and defense, and therefore for peace.

Thankfully, Egyptians have questioned this presumption by rejecting military rule.

In late November 2011, ordinary Egyptians re-amassed in Tahrir Square. “The people want the fall of the marshal,” protesters chanted, referring to General Tantawi. Banners read : “This land belongs to Egyptians. It is not for sale and does not need any guardians.” And, “All Egyptians demand an Egypt run by civilians.” They do not think that the military can bring them the freedom they have wanted for 40 years.

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, like Egyptians and people ‘Protester’ movementsacross the world today, believe that military strategies, like that of the U.S. Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement, cannot address the primary challenges Afghans themselves have identified: corruption and poverty (in the context of the 1% versus 99% socioeconomic inequalities).

Of parallel importance, while Iraqis also share the same problems of corruption etc as Afghans, the Iraqi parliament, with ground pressure from Iraqi public anger over the U.S. occupation, rejected the U.S. government’s conditional proposal to extend the U.S./ Iraq Status of Forces Agreement ( SOFA ) beyond 2011.  The Iraqis refused to compromise on the conditional demand of U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, that U.S. military trainers should enjoy immunity in Iraqi courts.

The Karzai government also had 2 crucial conditional demands for the signing of the Strategic Partnership: an end to the night raids and a handover of U.S.-run detention facilities.

But learning from their failure to clinch the Iraqi SOFA , the U.S. government has separated the two Afghan demands from the Strategic Partnership Agreement, maneuvering to achieve their overarching aim of maintaining a long term military presence in Afghanistan.  The Afghan government has played along with the U.S. government despite their apparently adamant demands for sovereignty and a separate U.S. – Afghanistan agreement for the transfer of detention facilities has now been signed .

Also, whereas the Iraqi SOFA was put to the Iraqi Parliament, it is not clear if the Strategic Partnership Agreement will be finalized by the Afghan Parliament, as the National Security Advisor to President Karzai had announced .

The Afghan Parliament has condemned the ‘inhumane’ Kandahar killings, but their demand for a public trial has been rejected by the Pentagon . To appease Afghan public anger, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has already pre-condemned the accused soldier to possible execution if convicted , regardless of the soldier’s history of three previous tours of duty in Iraq which could possibly have wrecked him enough not to have been deployed in Afghanistan anyway.

So why would Afghans want to sign the Strategic Partnership Agreement? Why didn’t the Iraqis want to sign theirs?

Is a long-term foreign military presence and strategy in Afghanistan helpful for U.S., Afghan or global security?

Counter-intuitively but quite clearly, as we had described in our previous article on the Strategic Partnership Agreement ,  the reverse is true. If the agreement is signed, it will be detrimental to Afghan, regional and global security as many players have already announced their opposition, including Mullah Omar of the Taliban who opposes long term bases in Afghanistan , Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of Hizb-e-Islami who said that the establishment of permanent  US bases in Afghanistan would mean the war never ends , the rising Pakistan political star Imran Khan who said that there will be no peace as long as the U.S. is in Afghanistan , and the Shanghai Co-operation Organization comprising Russia, China, and the Central Asian countries who called for an ‘independent, neutral’ Afghanistan (read: free of foreign occupation).

Iran’s opposition merits separate mention. The Iranian Foreign Minister said that legalizing foreign bases would run counter to Afghanistan’s and the international community’s position which focusses on peaceful solutions and that continued U.S. military presence would cause radicalism and terrorism to continue in the region.

U.S. citizens should be aware that while the mainstream media harp on U.S. troops withdrawing from Afghanistan, there will not be a complete withdrawal. The Obama administration plans to keep up to 20,000 mainly Special Ops troops in Afghanistan with the signing of the U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement. U.S. citizens should realize that this agreement will be sealed with at least 4.1 billion U.S. dollars of their tax money annually . Importantly, the agreement is against the interests of U.S. national security for all the opposition it has already elicited and may very well inspire another September 11 th tragedy in the U.S. or elsewhere; one of the reasons Osama Bin Laden gave for September 11 th was the presence of U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia.

President Obama should heed the wishes of U.S. citizens, 60% of whom correctly believe that the war is not worth its cost in life and expense , according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

For Afghans, it will compromise their sovereignty, a sovereignty which the Iraqi parliament preserved in rejecting the parallel US/Iraq Status of Forces Agreement. It will create for Afghans the chronic un-happiness that the Japanese have had with the U.S. military base in Okinawa or others have had over the more than 700 U.S. military bases in the world .

The U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement is the same military strategy that has led to the Kandahar killing spree and that will lead many more Afghan mothers to grieve for years to come.

“Even if the Taliban return to power our elders can work things out with them. The Americans are disrespectful. The Americans are not here to assist us they are here to kill us,” said Najibullah, 33, a house painter in Kabul, ” I hope there is no long-term partnership between our countries.”

“This killing of civilians is a clear sign that the war is against the people of Afghanistan,” said Haji Azim, a Kandahar resident. “If there are terrorists and Taliban in Afghanistan, then they have been created by the Americans.”

A grieving mother in Kandahar, holding a dead baby in her arms, said, “They killed a child. Was this child the Taliban? Believe me, I haven’t seen a 2-year-old member of the Taliban yet.”

This Afghan mother is questioning the global war against terrorism, asking us who the Talib/terrorist is, her 2 year old sleeping child or the U.S. military whose soldier killed her child along with 15 others.

We the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers join her in grieving and questioning. We call for all to stop killing, to be calm, non-violent, brave and kind to one another, as we discuss how to end the Afghan war. We prefer the decisions of our Egyptian and Iraqi friends, that is, we wish for non-military, diplomatic strategies, not military strategies that have destroyed our land over the past 4 decades. We believe that nonviolent international relations are what all of humanity yearns for, and we look for a world in which violent acts like the Kandahar killing spree are resolved in peaceful ways.

For Afghan mothers at least, we should question the military strategy that will be perpetuated in the U.S./ Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement.

“It is better for them to leave us alone,” said Kandahari Haji Najiq, “and let us live in peace.”

By The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers

14 March 2012

@ Warisacrime.org

Kairos Palestine Responds to Michael Oren

Bethlehem, 17 March 2012 — Kairos Palestine, a group of Palestinian Christians who co-authored the document “A Moment of Truth,” denounces Michael Oren’s recent op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal (9 March 2012). In this inaccurate and manipulative text, Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the US, blames the plight of Palestinian Christians on oppression at the hands of Palestinian Muslims — rather than at the hands of the illegal Israeli occupation itself, as is our reality.

We add our voices to several other recently published responses that have emphasized this reality and the ways in which Oren’s op-ed attempts to mask it. Indeed, contrary to his assertions, Christian persecution is caused mainly by the occupation that systematically degrades all Palestinians, restricts our movement, confiscates our land, devastates our economy, and violates our rights — including the very basic right to a decent life.

We are particularly troubled by Oren’s attribution of migration within the Palestinian Christian community to ill-treatment by Palestinian Muslims. This damaging analysis wilfully ignores the underlying political oppression that afflicts Christians and Muslims alike. In the case of Bethlehem, for instance, it is in fact the rampant construction of Israeli settlements, the chokehold imposed by the separation wall, and the Israeli government’s confiscation of Palestinian land — largely Christian-owned land in the Bethlehem area — that has driven many Christians to leave. At present, a mere 13% of Bethlehem-area land is left to its Palestinian inhabitants.

Oren’s article also reveals a disturbing conception of democracy itself, especially as he insists on emphasizing Israel’s democratic character. In attempting to highlight ways in which Israel supposedly seeks to protect the survival and encourage the prosperity of the Christian community, Oren implies the Israeli state’s lack of interest in ensuring the same for Muslims. Democracy is not selective. Any democratic state that bothered to implement its own ideals — and, moreover, any ambassador to such a state — would be ashamed of such an evidently distorted attitude toward its inhabitants and their rights.

We are equally amazed by Oren’s ludicrous boast that Israel, “in spite of its need to safeguard its borders from terrorists, allows holiday access to Jerusalem’s churches to Christians.” Indeed, one of occupation’s chief outrages is the fact that anyone would need a permit to visit the city to begin with: restricted freedom of movement is among the fundamental injustices constricting our lives. Furthermore, permits are not granted to everyone (including on religious holidays); even when granted, the Israeli military may void them at any time.

We also question the timing of Oren’s article and its dogged attempt to portray the state of Israel as tolerant of Christians — an assertion whose fallaciousness we experience on a daily basis. Oren begins his text with a description of Hamas graffiti on the walls of a Bethlehem church in 1994. But he certainly doesn’t mention the Hebrew graffiti (“death to Christians,” “Jesus is dead,” and “price tag,”[1]) sprayed on the walls of churches in Jerusalem just a few days ago, and again last month. The writing, so to speak, is on the wall, and it will take much more than Oren’s whitewashing to mask the hostility to which Palestinian Christians — and all Palestinians — are subjected in the contemporary reality of occupation.

At every level, Oren’s finger-pointing must be analyzed with an eye to the root causes he refuses to expose. For one thing, when he mentions the Church of the Nativity being inhabited and looted by gunmen, he neglects to mention the Israeli tanks shooting at the church from the outside. For another, while he goes on about present-day religious tension, he neglects to say that Christians and Muslims lived together for the past 1500 years without major problems — and that, upon the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, we lost more than 100,000 Christians virtually overnight. And the strongest, deepest roots of all — the roots of empire and colonialism? These, too, go unacknowledged. The US invasion of Iraq, for instance, has done graver damage to Christian-Muslim relations across the world than anything that appears in Oren’s article.

As Kairos Palestine, we refuse to be marginalized in the way Oren defines our marginalization; we refuse to be pitted against our Palestinian Muslim neighbours and friends; and we refuse to let our collective oppression be manipulated in a way that fragments us, obscures us, or masks the oppression’s true cause, which is the Israeli occupation.

By Kairos Palestine

[1]           The phrase price tag refers both to acts of violence committed by extremist Israeli settlers as revenge for measures taken against the settlement enterprise and to the settler group itself that performs such acts. Over 90 percent of Israeli police investigations into racist violence enacted by settlers against non-Jews, both Christians and Muslims, are ultimately closed without prosecution.

Introduction: A Week of National Humiliation:

From March 4th to March 9th, 2012, 13,000 militant Israel Firsters, took over “political Washington”[1] and imposed a foreign regime’s (Israel) political agenda to the rousing applause and appreciation of their captive vassal US legislators and executives who crowded the halls and platforms groveling for the imperious nods of their visiting Israeli overlords[2]. The annual meeting of the American (sic) Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is the most outrageous public display of Zionist-Jewish power as it shapes US foreign policy. The sole purpose of AIPAC is to ensure Israel’s unchallenged military and political power over a huge region from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. Over three quarters of the US Congress members paraded themselves before the AIPAC, as well as President Obama and Vice President Biden and any high ranking Cabinet members in any way related to US foreign policy (Secretary of State Clinton, Secretary of Defense Panetta included). They all loudly parroted the political agenda and military priorities that the AIPAC has imposed on the United States.

AIPAC: A launch pad for Israeli Leaders

The AIPAC gathering is clearly not a meeting of “just another lobby”: It is the launch pad used by Israel’s top political and military leaders to drag the US into another major war in the Middle East – this time against Iran[5]. Shimon Peres, Israel’s President opened the conference, setting the militarist tone and political framework for US President Obama who followed, slavishly echoing the language and substance of the Israeli leader[6]. The following day the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, spoke, and forcefully laid out the line for a US war against Iran 7]with thousands of prominent and respectable Jewish Americans, Israel Firsters, leaping to their feet dozens of times in fanatic support for a US war – a war, in which few, if any, of them, their children, relatives or friends will suffer loss of life or limb[8]. This was the same Bibi Netanyahu who once opined that the 9-11 attack on the US benefited Israel because it linked the US closer to Israeli interests.

Not since the War of 1812, which saw the British occupation and burning of Washington, has the US capital been so utterly humiliated by a foreign power. Unlike the British crown, which then negotiated a peace settlement, allowing the US to regain its sovereignty and capital, the Israeli leaders and their rabid “fifth column” demand a military agreement, in which Israel dictates the terms under which the US goes to war with Iran.

Israeli leaders have not secured the submission of the US because of Israel’s military, economic or political superiority: They have a puny economy, a fraction of the US nuclear weapons and have few allies and even less public approval in the international community. But they do have at least a half million fanatical, unconditional Zionist militants in the United States, including thousands of loyal multi-millionaires and billionaires who fund the campaign of both Democrat and Republican parties[9]. AIPAC is the vanguard of Israel’s shock troops in the US. Highly disciplined and organized, AIPAC lobbyists invade the offices of every Congressperson armed with a legislative script carefully prepared by and for the State of Israel[10]. They have secured the full commitment of most members of Congress for Israel’s agenda waving both dollar signs and stars (of David). As past history has amply demonstrated, Congressional staff or legislators who dare hesitate or ask for time to reflect, rapidly find themselves on the receiving end of AIPAC’s political bullying and threats which usually secure acquiescence. Refusal to capitulate to AIPAC means the end of a political career in Washington.

The Israeli (and therefore AIPAC’s) agenda is to pursue an unprovoked war, either initiated by the US or as part of a US-backed Israeli sneak attack, against the sovereign Islamic Republic of Iran[11]. Iran is targeted today because the other opponents of Israel’s colonization of Palestine have been destroyed in previous Zionist-backed US wars, namely Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and the ongoing proxy war against the Assad regime in Syria[12].

Today Israeli leaders insist that Iran should be violently denied what over 120 other nations practice freely: the legal enrichment of uranium for medical, commercial and scientific purposes. Past Israeli propaganda, echoed by the 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations, falsely claimed Iran possessed nuclear weapons or … was in the process of manufacturing them and therefore posed an ‘existential’ threat to Israeli. Even the mere ‘capacity’ to enrich uranium for medical purposes (many times below the level needed for a weapon) is presented as a major threat to the Jewish State. Meanwhile, the 27 US intelligence agencies (in their yearly ‘findings’) and even the US-influenced International Atomic Energy Agency have found no such evidence of an ongoing weapons program – thus the need for bizarre terms like ‘existential threat’.

Israel’s high command has now come up with a new flimsy pretext for war. Iran’s potential (through its advanced scientific and technical manpower and research centers) for acquiring a ‘nuclear weapon capability’ may constitute a sufficient cause for war[13]. In other words, Israel has ordered its 13,000 AIPAC militants, to demand every US Congress person vote for a war resolution on the basis of Iran’s current uranium enrichment program geared to medical uses and on its sophisticated scientific and intellectual potential! Meanwhile, the Mossad has launched a not-so-secret program of terrorist assassinations of Iranian scientists – in their homes, offices and universities; with nary a protest from the ‘Zionized’ US press.

Israel’s Willing Executioners

Netanyahu’s newest criterion for war (Iranian capability) has the blind support of the major Jewish organizations in the US[14]. American Zionists are the willing executioners promoting an aggressive, unprovoked, military attack against the homeland (and homes) of 75 million Iranians. Let us be clear, there are naked genocidal impulses permeating some of the pronouncements of leading US Jewish religious leaders. The executive vice president of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America, Rabbi Herring, suggested that Israel should consider “the use of tactical nuclear weapons in areas that aren’t so populated or in the open desert …to show the Iranians that their lives are on the line, that Israel won’t go quietly”.[15] The rabbi did not specify whether population centers of a quarter of a million inhabitants or less qualify under his definition of “not so populated” and therefore are suitable targets for this educational display of thermo-nuclear destruction, “just to show the Iranians”…. Let us keep in mind that among the Zionist fundamentalists, “not a few organizational leaders … wanted to use tactical nuclear weapons right now”[16].

When Netanyahu gave the command to the AIPAC delegates to invade the US Congress and secure a war commitment on the basis of Iran’s ‘capacity’ (for uranium enrichment), there was no debate and no dissention among the ‘shock troops’ – only blind unanimous approval among Jewish American citizens for their foreign master. These respectable Jewish-Americans marched lock-step in platoons right up to the Congress members on their lists, canned arguments in one hand and Israeli-ghost-written legislation in the other. They boast of having rounded up a substantial majority of elected US representatives – for war!

If Israel’s power in the US depends on AIPAC’s tight control over the US Congress, the lobby, for its part, depends on the power of the wider Zionist power configuration permeating strategic political and administrative offices, political party structures and the electoral process itself. This, in turn, depends on Zionist media influence linked back to economic and financial power. The democratic and representative process has been totally crushed under this narrow-focused juggernaut for war on behalf of Israel.

AIPAC’s Congressional and Executive Collaborators

While much has been made of the influence AIPAC exercises over the US Congress and Executive via ‘lobbying’, better termed intimidation and pressure tactics, a great part of its success is based on the larger Zionist matrix of power operating within the government, civil society and the economy. When AIPAC lobbyists approach Congress members with Israeli-dictated foreign policy priorities in hand, they coordinate and are given a major platform by the forty-plus elected Zionist legislators who, just happen, to occupy strategic positions, such as the chairpersons of Congressional committees dealing with foreign policy, especially policy related to the Middle East. In other words, AIPAC’s conquest of Congress is ‘by invitation’. The relation is ‘reciprocal’. AIPAC and the 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations and various fundraisers mobilize money and activists to help elect the reliable Zionists to office. Once in place, they openly collaborate in writing pro-Israel legislation and ensuring that ‘majorities’ vote the ‘right way’[17].

Mark Dubowitz, executive director of “Foundation for Defense of Democracies” helped write the latest (Iran) sanctions bill … (Financial Times March 6, 2012, pg. 9). The “Foundation” is better known as an unconditional and unquestioning promoter of Israel’s agenda. Dubowitz is one of many un-elected ‘legislators’ who write and promote laws at Israel’s behest. The legislation to impose sanctions on Iran, authored by Dubowitz, is designed to brutalize and starve 75 million Iranian citizens into submission to further Israel’s goal of unquestioned supremacy in the Middle East.

AIPAC’s operations are not confined to Congress or to the electoral process. From the Reagan Administration to the Obama Administration, AIPAC has supplied committed Zionists to key positions in the Treasury, State Department, National Security Council and the President’s inner circle of advisors on the Middle East[18]. AIPAC pressure ensures the appointment of Zionists to the executive branch and has led to the creation of special administrative posts designed specifically to pursue Israel’s agenda. A good example of AIPAC’s success is the post of Undersecretary of Treasury for Terrorism and Intelligence. The position was first held by Stuart Levey, a Zionist zealot, whose whole purpose was to design and implement US (and later EU) sanctions against Iran. His replacement, David Cohen, a clone also from AIPAC, is the author of legislation pushing for punitive sanctions against Syria[19].

Dennis Ross, widely known as ‘Israel’s lawyer’ and a former AIPAC leader, was appointed senior adviser to Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, was the architect of US support for Israel’s starvation blockade and criminal bombing of Gaza (1999), the murderous invasion of Lebanon (2006). He has provided ‘cover’ for Netanyahu’s massive building of Jews only settlements on occupied Palestinian lands and his cynical ‘peace negotiations’ ploy[20].

Jeffrey Feltman, the current AIPAC front man in the State Department, is the key official in charge of Middle East affairs, especially Lebanon, Syria and Iran[21]. Obama’s own inner circle of advisers is dominated by unconditional Israel supporters, including David Axelrod as chief confidant and the former Presidential Chief of Staff, dual US-Israeli citizen and current Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel[22]. What is striking is the constant cycle from leadership and activity in Zionist (Israeli-front) organizations, entry into powerful government post, return to one or another pro-Israel think tank, ‘civic organizations’, electoral office or lucrative private practice – all promoting the interests of Tel Aviv.

AIPAC and the 52 Grassroots Organizations

AIPAC’s power in Washington depends on the activism of hundreds of thousands of American Zionists affiliated with organizations under the 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (MAJO). While there is considerable overlap of membership, MAJO leaders openly serve as a transmission belt for Israel: transmitting the political line from Tel Aviv to their membership, including activist doctors, dentists and stock brokers in New York, Miami, Kansas City, Los Angeles and San Francisco and all points north, south, east and west. When AIPAC has ‘trouble’ securing an elected representative’s sign-on to legislation for sanctions against whichever country is currently targeted by Israel, the reluctant legislator becomes a prime target for local Zionist notables and ‘fund raisers’, who pay them a ‘visit’ to persuade, if possible, threaten retaliation, if necessary. If a legislator still refuses to hew to Israel’s line, or considers service to a foreign power to be harmful to United States, he/she will soon find that AIPAC has raised millions of dollars to fund a campaign of slander and electoral defeat[23].

Along with these upper middle class ‘grass roots’ activists there are the numerous highly politicized Zionist mega-millionaires and billionaires, like Adelson, Saban and scores of others, who make no bones about being fanatical Israel Firsters and donate millions to Congresspeople willing to subordinate US interests to Israel’s quest for Middle East supremacy[24].

Besides this legal corruption of the political process, there is the issue of illegal espionage and thuggery on AIPAC’s part, most recently evidenced by the ongoing law-suit by one of two former top AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen caught spying for Israel (passing classified documents on US military policy towards Iran). Rosen, who was acquitted in a highly manipulated ‘trial’, maintains that AIPAC routinely encouraged its officials to secure confidential US government documents for Israel[25].

And then there are the prominent free-lance Zionists, who engage in vicious, highly publicized, political thuggery, physical assaults and blackmail against critics of Israel[26]. The most prominent defamers, like Abraham Foxman of the Anti (sic) Defamation League, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz, manipulate legions of respectable and wealthy thugs to pressure schools, universities and other employers to censor and fire critics of Israel. These Zionist organizations far exceed the reach and effective blacklisting of an earlier generation of witch hunters, like Senator Joseph McCarthy, who were rank amateurs in comparison. The recent antics of Israel-Firster Andrew Adler, editor of the Atlanta Jewish Times, whose call for the Israeli Mossad to assassinate President Obama[27] led merely to his resignation as editor after several weeks of nervous outrage (but no federal investigation or charges).

What is striking here is that while most respectable Zionists dissociate themselves from AIPAC spies and verbal assassins, the power of the Israel Firsters ensures that such goons and thugs are rarely charged for their crimes and have never gone to jail[28].

The wider impact of Zionist influence and thuggery is evident in the timorous self-censorship of the majority of Americans who privately express fear and loathing at the confrontational, strident and abusive Zionist-Americans pushing a foreign agenda.[29]

Israel, Zionism and the Mass Media

The mass media is a key political resource, which the pro-Israel power configuration exploits to the full. Not a single major print, television, film or radio outlet is willing to provide a balanced account of the Israel-Palestine conflict[30]. Israel’s dispossession of thousands of Arab families from their homes and the daily terrorist Zionist settler and military assaults against Palestinians protesting land seizures go unreported[31]. The hundreds of nuclear weapons in Israel’s arsenal are never mentioned while the Jewish State’s hysterical claims that non-nuclear Iran represents an existential threat are repeated and magnified, ad nauseam. The leaders of the 52 know their Goebbels: A lie repeated often enough becomes an accepted truth.

Zionism and Leveraging Power

What is crucial in understanding the Zionist Power Configuration’s stranglehold over our government is how it leverages power. For example, a tiny minority falsely claims to speak for all American Jews, who represent about 3% of the US population. However, based on this claim, they mobilize and raise funds to elect the committed Zionists who hold about 10% of the seats in the US Congress and Senate. These representatives, in turn, enjoy the support of a tiny cadre of super rich Zionists, whose promotion allows them to gain control over key committees dealing with Middle East policy and security.

Domestic security has been deeply influenced by the Zionist-Israeli agenda: Former US Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Homeland Security Tzar Michael Chertoff have been among the most prominent officials orienting US domestic security to focus on critics of Israel and the entrapment of Muslim citizens in bizarre webs of phony terrorist plots, while real domestic security has suffered and civil rights have been shredded. The over-representation of Zionists on the US Supreme Court (3 out of 9) and the careful selection of recent justices, like Justice Sotomayor, underscore the profound nature of the process as it extends to the judiciary.[32]

The Zionist Power Configuration controls the Mid-East policies of both Democratic and Republican Party and their Presidential nominees through their Congressional and political party power bases. The US President, in turn, is leveraged, in order to secure key policy appointments for Zionists in the State Department, Treasury and Pentagon. Their leverage in the foreign policy establishment allows Zionist officials to put pressure on allies and clients in the United Nation and European Union to support policies, such as Israel’s boycott and punishment of the elected Hamas government in Gaza and the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Leverage is how Israel, an infinitely small and insignificant state with less than 1% of world GNP, exports and market shares and occupying .001% of the world’s territory, can play such a disproportionate role in the reconfiguration of power in the Middle East. Through its American-Zionist influentials, Israel has manipulated the US into a quagmire of wars in the Middle East, costing the world’s consumers of oil untold billions of dollars and pushing the world economy into recession.

Israel’s “Petroleum Tax”: War Threats and the Price of Gas

During the first 3 months of 2012, the price of oil rose 15% (over 30% since the summer 2011) largely due to Israel’s war mongering and threats to launch an offensive war against Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Peres and Foreign Minister Lieberman have all repeatedly demanded the US bomb Iran, or failing that, they warn, Israel would launch its own offensive war against the Iranian people and drag the US into another war.

Almost all oil experts and political analysts agree that the spike in oil prices is a result of Israel’s war mongering, as major international oil speculators bet that an Israeli assault on Iran will provoke a major disruption in production and transportation of petroleum in the Middle East and provoke a global shortfall[33].

The 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations have added to the war hysteria by echoing and embellishing on Israel’s claims of an Iranian nuclear threat (or Iran’s “growing capacity” to threaten Israel in the future)[34].

During the first three months of this year alone, the increased price of gasoline – or more accurately Israel’s war tax on the American consumers and drivers costs an additional 60 cents a gallon, or $9 dollars more to fill a 15 gallon tank. This represents the tribute the Zionist power configuration has imposed on the American consumers in their push for a new war on Israel’s behalf. No US politician would dare discuss this issue, let alone speak up and tell the Zionist chattering classes and their “beloved leaders” to stop pimping for war or else risk the cutting off of Israel’s $3 billion dollar annual handout from the US taxpayers.

Leading economists have stated that the price hike in petroleum (caused by a bellicose Israel) is stunting growth and pushing the US and EU back into recession … costing millions more job losses[35]. If we add the consumer losses caused by high gas prices to the losses in world economic output, the mere war chants of Netanyahu, Lieberman, Peres and the AIPAC will cost the global economy hundreds of billions over the course of the year.

Any mention of Israel’s gas tax on the American family’s budget will elicit outraged accusations of anti-Semitism from respectable Zionists and ugly threats from their thug accomplices. When Obama performed his infamous annual belly crawl to pleasure the AIPAC delegates and their Israeli guests, in the midst of cheers over his re-affirmation of America’s unconditional loyalty to the state of Israel, he also quietly asked Israel to lower the war cries at least until after the November elections because of its effects on the price of gasoline on the American voter[36].

The high price of oil is damaging Obama’s chances for re-election. The American electorate may not understand the real cost of Obama’s submission to Israel and may not be aware of Israel’s gas tax, but they are holding their putative President responsible for their pain at the pump! There is only one thing that Obama cherishes more than Zionist support and that is the votes of an economically squeezed American electorate, who are turning against him in droves as the price of gasoline soars.

Conclusion

The week of March 4 to 11, 2012 will go down in history as a week of national humiliation; a time when legions of fanatical American Zionists took over Washington; when the entire Cabinet, led by President Obama, groveled before the officials of a foreign state – in the heart of Washington DC. When the President and Prime Minister of Israel directed their foreign legionaires to march on the US Congress and shove their flimsy pretexts for war with Iran into the faces of cringing legislators, the simplistic and idiotic message was: Bomb Iran because it may soon have … a nuclear ‘capacity’. If asked what constitutes capacity, they quote their beloved leaders in Tel Aviv, including the semi-literate (former nightclub bouncer) Foreign Minister Avi Lieberman, the morally corrupt Bibi Netanyahu and the quietly diabolic Shimon Peres that Iranians can ‘enrich uranium’ – a capacity long held by 125 other countries.

It is with supreme arrogance that the followers of AIPAC and the 52 Presidents penetrate the US government in order to serve a foreign government. None bother to hide their past, present or future affiliations with the state of Israel. They are backed by prestigious Zionist academics, whose tendentious justifications for war have already sent tens of thousands of US soldiers to an early grave or to the wards of military and veteran hospitals and clinics across the country: They have sold us the argument that by serving the interests of the State of Israel we serve the United States. From this, it only follows that to break the law and act as an unregistered agent for a foreign power, to transfer highly classified government documents to Mossad agents at the Israeli embassy and to threaten Americans who criticize or oppose Israel is a patriotic act[37]. Naval analyst Jonathan Pollard, the convicted US master-spy for Israel, is widely celebrated in Israel as an honorary Colonel in the IDF and a hero; the leaders of the major Zionist organizations are again pressuring Obama to release this traitor.

The documented performance of the leading Zionists in public office in the United States over the past two decades has been an unmitigated disaster. The self-proclaimed best and brightest have led the country into the worst economic and military catastrophes in a century. It was Alan Greenspan, as head of the Federal Reserve, who de-regulated the financial sector and optimized conditions for the mega-swindles and speculative frenzy bringing down the entire financial system. It was his replacement, Ben Bernacke, who pushed for trillions of US tax-payer dollars in bail-out funds to save his cronies on Wall Street and set them back on course, in the last 2 years, to repeat their speculative orgy – and allow such tribal compatriots as Stephen Schwartzman to reap $213 million in earnings in 2011[38].

It was Fred Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Libby, Abrams and Ross, as well as their less prominent lieutenants, who pushed the US into wars on Israel’s behalf in Afghanistan and Iraq, all the while confidently predicting ‘low cost, quick victories’ (even slam-dunks). Never has such a cohort of Ivy League mediocrities collectively produced so many disastrous policies in such a brief historical time while never being held in any way, shape or form responsible or accountable for their performance. It is obvious that these policy disasters did not result from faulty intellect or lack of an elite education. Their apparent ignorance of historical, political, economic and military realities was a result of their blinding Zionist loyalties to the Israeli state whose real interests they embraced. This lack of accountability guarantees that this process will continue until the US, as a republic, is destroyed for the masses of its misled citizens.

In order to justify a war against Israel’s regional adversaries, these blind mediocrities have distorted the realities of Arab nationalism. It was with supreme tribal arrogance and racism that they assured themselves that Arabs could never sustain prolonged resistance to their imperial juggernaut. They believed precisely what their tribal religion/ideology told them: They were a chosen people (genetic studies aside). They were the most financially successful investors or speculators. They attended and taught at the most prestigious universities. When, on occasion, a leading Zionist philanthropist, like Bernard Madoff, fell afoul—and actually went to jail– it was because, like his fellow tribalists, Milken, Boesky and Pollard — he didn’t buy his one way ticket to Israel soon enough.

When a country, like the United States, is in decline, it is not because of external competition: Declining competitiveness is only a symptom. It is because of internal rot. Decline results when a nation is betrayed by craven leaders, who crawl and humiliate themselves before a minority of thuggish mediocrities pledged to a foreign state without scruples or moral integrity.

By James Petras & Robin Eastman Abaya

16 March 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

James Petras latest book is The Arab Revolt and the Imperialist Counterattacks(Atlanta: Clarity Press 2011) 2nd edition.

[1] For full coverage of the daily activities and the uncritical reportage of the major media see the Daily Alert , the official mouthpiece of 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations, especially March 4 – 6, 2012.

[2] See the AIPAC video reports and the list of speakers. http://www.aipac.org , 3/2/2012 and subsequent reports.

[3] White House press release of Obama’s declaration that US subordinate relation to Israel is “sacrosanct”, March 4,/20/12.

[4] The reference is to Noam Chomsky whose laughable effort to downplay the influence of the Zionist power configuration is widely rejected and is once again refuted by the most superficial observation of the proceedings, pledges and prostrations of all top US policy makers at the AIPAC meeting.

[5] Netanyahu’s public pronouncements and AIPAC speech were duly recorded, amplified and supported by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and especially the Washington Post (2/6/2012). He explicitly called on the US to militarily attack Iran on behalf of Israel, on the basis of Teheran’s ‘capacity’ to make a nuclear weapon. According to Netanyahu “we can’t afford to wait much longer …” Prime Minister’s Office 3/5/12.

[6] New York Times, 3/5/12.

[7] Prime Ministers Office as quoted in the Daily Alert, 3/6/12.

[8] AIPAC video daily reports, 3/6/12.

[9] For example, just one of the numerous Zionist billionaires, the casino tzar, Sheldon Adelson has already contributed “tens of millions of dollars” to influence the current Presidential elections. Haaretz, 2/29/12. Haim Saban, another Israel-Firster billionaire, bought the principle Spanish language TV outlet in the US, UNIVISION, and then proceeded to promote sensationalist Israeli propaganda about an Iranian-Islamist “takeover” of Latin America.

[10] AIPAC press releases, 3/7/12 – 3/10/12.

[11] A survey of the Daily Alert , from March 4 to March 9, reveals there is not one single article that discusses the alternative of a diplomatic settlement with Iran, while over a dozen articles feature calls for war.

[12] For documentation and details on the decisive role of Zionist policy makers in launching the US war against Iraq see my The Power of Israel in the United States (Atlanta: Clarity Press 2006).

[13] New York Times, 3/1/12

[14] The 52 Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations repeatedly endorsed Netanyahu’s pretext for war. See Daily Alert, 3/6/2012

[15] Quoted in http://Mondoweiss.net, 3/2/12.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Key Zionist Congressional operatives include Representatives Berman, Cantor, Harman, Lieberman, Ros- Lehtinen, and Levin as well as their Christian side-kicks, like McConnell and Pelosi among others who appeared at the AIPAC war fest. AIPAC promotional flyer 3/2/12.

[18] See The Power of Israel in the United States (op cit.)

[19] See “On Bended Knees: Zionist Power in American Politics” in James Petras, War Crimes in Gaza and the Zionist Fifth Column (Clarity, Atlanta 2010.

[20] The Power of Israel in the United States, op cit.

[21] Though Ross has formally resigned, he is still a key Obama adviser on the Middle East. See Haaretz 1/27/12,

[22] One of the key Zionist operatives is Jeffrey Feltman, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. He played a crucial role in support of Israel ‘s bombing of Lebanon in 2006, during his term as Ambassador, calling Hezbollah a “terrorist organization”. He dictated policy to the US client ruler Fouad Siniora. Feltman twice served in Israel. He was stationed in Gaza where he collaborated with the occupying Israeli Defense Forces. He worked with uber-Zionist US Ambassador Martin Indyk backing Israel’s position in the phony “Peace Process” from 2000 to 2001. Other Zionists in key positions include Jack Lew, current Chief of Staff to President Obama; David Plouffe senior adviser, Dan Shapiro, Ambassador to Israel; Steven Simon, Head of Middle East/North Africa Desk at the National Security Council; and Eric Lynn, Middle East policy advisor. Jewish Virtual Library a Division of the American-Israeli Enterprise 2012.

[23] Prominent Zionists, who served in strategic positions in the foreign policy realm of the Obama regime, included Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff to the President, David Axelrod, Senior Advisor; James Steinberg Deputy Secretary of State; and Richard Holbrooke Special Envoy to Pakistan/Afghanistan (deceased).

[24] Several studies estimate that Jews make up about 25% of the Forbes 400 richest Americans; over half are contributors to Israel or Zionist organizations or causes. J.J. Goldberg in his book on Jewish power estimates that 45% of Democratic fundraising comes from pro-Israel Jews. (Jewish Power: Inside the Jewish Establishment, Reading: Addison-Wesley 1996)

[25] Steve Rosen, a top policy director of AIPAC, along with his colleague, Keith Weissman admitted to handing over confidential documents to the Israeli embassy. Rosen later filed suit against AIPAC for firing him and Weissman and refusing to pay their legal fees; he claimed that the Lobby frequently condoned its employees’ receipt and illegal transfer of classified US government information citing numerous AIPAC documents to back-up his case. The Jewish Daily Forward, 12/15/2010.

[26] The owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, Andrew Adler, urged Netanyahu to order the Israeli secret spy service, the Mossad, to assassinate President Obama, Haaretz 1/21/12. Rabbi Michael Lerner, a moderate Zionist critic of Israel, has been subject to four attacks on his home in the past two years, while accused of being a ‘self-hating Jew’ by Zionist fanatics. Mainstream Zionist organizations dissociate themselves from physical violence, while slanderously labeling opponents and critics of Israel as “anti-semites”, which has created precisely the political climate that encourages the less balanced among their audience to violent activity. Leading Zionist ideologues have been extremely active in inducing colleges and universities to fire critics of Israel, as was the case in the failure of DePaul University to renew the contract of a widely published scholar like, Norman Finklestein. Professors Walt and Mearsheimer, authors of an erudite study of The Israel Lobby, were subject to vitriolic attacks by American Zionist leaders, including A. Foxman of the Anti (sic) Defamation League as well as a superficial critique by left-Zionist Noam Chomsky. The racist rantings of uber-Zionists like David Horowitz and Pamela Geller helped to detonate the Islamophobic and Zionophilic mass murderer, Anders Breivik, in Norway.

[27] See the Atlantic Jewish Times editorial 1/20/12.

[28] The editor of the Atlantic Jewish Times who called for Obama’s assassination was not charged with any federal security offense. The confessed Zionist spy, Colonel Ben-Ami Kadish, who stole secret US nuclear weapon plans for Israel, did not spend a single day in jail although he paid a $50,000 fine for handing over scores of documents to Israel. (See Grant Smith Foreign Agents, Institute for Research Middle East Policy (IRMEP) Washington 2008. On AIPAC spying see IRMEP 2/6/12.

[29] Not to be ignored, the rarified atmosphere in high level scientific research journals has been politicized – most outrageous is the censorship of a genetic-immunologic study (by a leading international team of scientists) showing the close genetic relationship, if not identity between Levantine Jews and Palestinians. University libraries around the world were advised to ‘tear-out’ (eyes closed) the offending study from the pages of the journal, Human Immunology, lest such data might undermine the racist ‘raison d’etre’ for an exclusively Jewish State. (see Journal axes gene research on Jews and Palestinians, Robin McKie, Guardian-Sunday Observer (London), November 25, 2001 and Hum. Immunol. 62 (9): 889–900.)

[30] A review of new reports and editorials of the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, published by the Daily Alert during the AIPAC conference, reveals a close alignment with the extremist militarist position of the Israeli regime and AIPAC leaders See Steve Lendman ‘New Times Promoting War on Iran’ 3/3/12.

[31] During the month of February 2012, the Israeli Army and armed paramilitary Jewish settlers carried out 145 attacks on Palestinians, killing and wounding dozens, demolishing homes, seizing thousands of acres of land and uprooting scores of families: The Wall and Settlements Information Center, Palestinian Authority 3/1/12. Neither the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post reported on these Israeli crimes against Palestinian civilians.

[32] Among Chertoff’s current clients are the manufacturers of the intrusive and nationally detested ‘body scanners’ used at US airports. He was also instrumental in the release and repatriation of a dozen Israeli Mossad agents arrested in New York and New Jersey within 24 hours of the 9/11 terrorist attack. Three of the nine justices,Ginsberg, Breyer and Kagan, are Zionists unwilling to challenge the Executive usurpation of war powers and promotion of torture and rendition. The others are all affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. Not a single Protestant-affiliated Justice (numerically the majority religion in the US) has been appointed to the Supreme Court since the 1990 appointment of respected constitutional scholar, David Souter (by George Bush the First), because of their ‘unreliability’ (code-word for upholding the Bill of Rights and Constitution). The recent appointment of Justice Elena Kagan, whose lackluster academic career did not deter uber-Zionist Laurence Summers from appointing her Dean of the Harvard Law School, uderscores the mediocre criteria used in the high judiciary. The most recent appointment of Sonya Sotomayor to replace the brilliant (and Zionistically ‘unreliable’) J.P. Stevens, was promoted heaviliy for the Supreme Court on the basis of her strong ties to Israel, starting with her first (of many) ‘leadership’ tours to Israel (see The Jewish Chronicle – Life story Israel trips tie Sotomayor to Jews, Ron Kampeas – May 26, 2009).

[33] Financial Times 3/6/12, p. 9.

[34] Howard Kohr AIPAC executive director, during his vitriolic war mongering speech at the conference exceeded even Netanyahu’s explicit call for an immediate military attack on Iran. See AIPAC daily report, 3/16/12.

[35] Most experts agree that the oil price increase has stymied ‘economic recovery’ and if it continues to rise will plunge the world back into deep recession.

[36] Obama’s speech to the AIPAC meeting pointedly called on the Israeli leaders to tone down on their military rhetoric, clearly linking rising oil prices to Israeli war mongering.

[37] See Grant Smith, ‘AIPAC Directors Use of Classified Missile Data, Harmed National Security – US State Department’, Business Wire 2/6/12.

[38] Financial Times 3/1/12, p. 17.