Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic
Chalmers Johnson
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/27/1454229


In his new book, CIA analyst, distinguished scholar, and best-selling
author Chalmers Johnson argues that US military and economic overreach
may actually lead to the nation's collapse as a constitutional
republic. It's the last volume in his Blowback trilogy, following the
best-selling "Blowback" and "The Sorrows of Empire." In those two,
Johnson argued American clandestine and military activity has led to
un-intended, but direct disaster here in the United States. [includes
rush transcript]

Chalmers Johnson is a retired professor of international relations at
the University of California, San Diego. He is also President of the
Japan Policy Research Institute. Johnson has written for several
publications including Los Angeles Times, the London Review of Books,
Harper's Magazine, and The Nation. In 2005, he was featured
prominently in the award-winning documentary film, "Why We Fight."

Chalmers Johnson joined me yesterday from San Diego. I began by asking
him about the title of his book, "Nemesis."

Chalmers Johnson, Author, scholar and leading critic of US foreign
policy. Retired professor of international relations at the University
of California, San Diego. He is also President of the Japan Policy
Research Institute. His new book is "Nemesis: The Last Days of the
American Republic."

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RUSH TRANSCRIPT
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AMY GOODMAN: Today, we spend the hour with the former CIA consultant,
distinguished scholar, best-selling author, Chalmers Johnson. He's
just published a new book. It's called Nemesis: The Last Days of the
American Republic. It's the last volume in his trilogy, which began
with Blowback, went onto The Sorrows of Empire. In those two, Johnson
argued American clandestine and military activity has led to
unintended but direct disaster here in the United States. In his new
book, Johnson argues that US military and economic overreach may
actually lead to the nation's collapse as a constitutional republic.

Chalmers Johnson is a retired professor of international relations at
the University of California, San Diego. He's also president of the
Japan Policy Research Institute. He's written for a number of
publications, including the Los Angeles Times, The London Review of
Books, Harper's magazine and The Nation. In 2005, he was featured
prominently in the award-winning documentary, Why We Fight. Chalmers
Johnson joined me yesterday from San Diego. I began by asking him
about the title of his book, Nemesis.

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Nemesis was the ancient Greek goddess of revenge,
the punisher of hubris and arrogance in human beings. You may recall
she is the one that led Narcissus to the pond and showed him his
reflection, and he dove in and drowned. I chose the title, because it
seems to me that she's present in our country right now, just waiting
to make her -- to carry out her divine mission.

By the subtitle, I really do mean it. This is not just hype to sell
books -- "The Last Days of the American Republic." I'm here concerned
with a very real, concrete problem in political analysis, namely that
the political system of the United States today, history tells us, is
one of the most unstable combinations there is -- that is, domestic
democracy and foreign empire -- that the choices are stark. A nation
can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can't
be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman
Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, like the old
Roman Republic, it will lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.

I've spent some time in the book talking about an alternative, namely
that of the British Empire after World War II, in which it made the
decision, not perfectly executed by any manner of means, but
nonetheless made the decision to give up its empire in order to keep
its democracy. It became apparent to the British quite late in the
game that they could keep the jewel in their crown, India, only at the
expense of administrative massacres, of which they had carried them
out often in India. In the wake of the war against Nazism, which had
just ended, it became, I think, obvious to the British that in order
to retain their empire, they would have to become a tyranny, and they,
therefore, I believe, properly chose, admirably chose to give up their
empire.

As I say, they didn't do it perfectly. There were tremendous atavistic
fallbacks in the 1950s in the Anglo, French, Israeli attack on Egypt;
in the repression of the Kikuyu -- savage repression, really -- in
Kenya; and then, of course, the most obvious and weird atavism of them
all, Tony Blair and his enthusiasm for renewed British imperialism in
Iraq. But nonetheless, it seems to me that the history of Britain is
clear that it gave up its empire in order to remain a democracy. I
believe this is something we should be discussing very hard in the
United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Chalmers Johnson, you connect the breakdown of
constitutional government with militarism.

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the signs of the breakdown of
constitutional government and how it links?

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Well, yes. Militarism is the -- what the social side
has called the "intervening variable," the causative connection. That
is to say, to maintain an empire requires a very large standing army,
huge expenditures on arms that leads to a military-industrial complex,
and generally speaking, a vicious cycle sets up of interests that lead
to perpetual series of wars.

It goes back to probably the earliest warning ever delivered to us by
our first president, George Washington, in his famous farewell
address. It's read at the opening of every new session of Congress.
Washington said that the great enemy of the republic is standing
armies; it is a particular enemy of republican liberty. What he meant
by it is that it breaks down the separation of powers into an
executive, legislative, and judicial branches that are intended to
check each other -- this is our most fundamental bulwark against
dictatorship and tyranny -- it causes it to break down, because
standing armies, militarism, military establishment,
military-industrial complex all draw power away from the rest of the
country to Washington, including taxes, that within Washington they
draw it to the presidency, and they begin to create an imperial
presidency, who then implements the military's desire for secrecy,
making oversight of the government almost impossible for a member of
Congress, even, much less for a citizen.

It seems to me that this is also the same warning that Dwight
Eisenhower gave in his famous farewell address of 1961, in which he,
in quite vituperative language, quite undiplomatic language -- one
ought to go back and read Eisenhower. He was truly alarmed when he
spoke of the rise of a large arms industry that was beyond
supervision, that was not under effective control of the interests of
the military-industrial complex, a phrase that he coined. We know from
his writings that he intended to say a
military-industrial-congressional complex. He was warned off from
going that far. But it's in that sense that I believe the nexus -- or,
that is, the incompatibility between domestic democracy and foreign
imperialism comes into being.

AMY GOODMAN: Who was he warned by?

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Members of Congress. Republican memb--

AMY GOODMAN: And why were they opposed?

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Well, they did not want to have their oversight
abilities impugned. They weren't carrying them out very well. You must
also say that Eisenhower was -- I think he's been overly praised for
this. It was a heroic statement, but at the same time, he was the
butcher of Guatemala, the person who authorized our first clandestine
operation and one of the most tragic that we ever did: the overthrow
of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 for the sake of the British
Petroleum Company. And he also presided over the fantastic growth of
the military-industrial complex, of the lunatic oversupply of nuclear
weapons, of the empowering of the Air Force, and things of this sort.
It seems to be only at the end that he realized what a monster he had
created.

AMY GOODMAN: Chalmers Johnson, author of Nemesis: The Last Days of the
American Republic. We'll come back to him in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: As we return to my interview with Chalmers Johnson -- his
new book, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic -- I asked
him to talk about the expansion of US military bases around the globe.

CHALMERS JOHNSON: According to the official count right now -- it's
something called the Base Structure Report, which is an unclassified
Pentagon inventory of real property owned around the world and the
cost it would take to replace it -- there are right now 737 American
military bases on every continent, in well over 130 countries. Some
apologists from the Pentagon like to say, well, this is false, that
we're counting Marine guards at embassies. I guarantee you that it's
simply stupid. We don't have anything like 737 American embassies
abroad, and all of these are genuine military bases with all of the
problems that that involves.

In the southernmost prefecture of Japan, Okinawa, site of the Battle
of Okinawa in 1945, there's a small island, smaller than Kawaii in the
Hawaiian islands, with 1,300,000 Okinawans. There's thirty-seven
American military bases there. The revolt against them has been
endemic for fifty years. The governor is always saying to the local
military commander, "You're living on the side of a volcano that could
explode at any time." It has exploded in the past. What this means is
just an endless, nonstop series of sexually violent crimes, drunken
brawls, hit-and-run accidents, environmental pollution, noise
pollution, helicopters falling out of the air from Futenma Marine
Corps Air Base and falling onto the campus of Okinawa International
University. One thing after another. Back in 1995, we had one of the
most serious incidents, when two Marines and a sailor abducted, beat
and raped a twelve-year-old girl. This led to the largest
demonstrations against the United States since we signed the security
treaty with Japan decades ago. It's this kind of thing.

I first went to Okinawa in 1996. I was invited by then-Governor Ota in
the wake of the rape incident. I've devoted my life to the study of
Japan, but like many Japanese, many Japanese specialists, I had never
been in Okinawa. I was shocked by what I saw. It was the British Raj.
It was like Soviet troops living in East Germany, more comfortable
than they would be back at, say, Oceanside, California, next door to
Camp Pendleton. And it was a scandal in every sense. My first reaction
-- I've not made a secret of it -- that I was, before the collapse of
the Soviet Union, certainly a Cold Warrior. My first explanation was
that this is simply off the beaten track, that people don't come down
here and report it. As I began to study the network of bases around
the world and the incidents that have gone with them and the military
coups that have brought about regime change and governments that we
approve of, I began to realize that Okinawa was not unusual; it was,
unfortunately, typical.

These bases, as I say, are spread everywhere. The most recent
manifestation of the American military empire is the decision by the
Pentagon now, with presidential approval, of course, to create another
regional command in Africa. This may either be at the base that we
have in Djibouti at the Horn of Africa. It may well be in the Gulf of
Guinea, where we are prospecting for oil, and the Navy would very much
like to put ourselves there. It is not at all clear that we should
have any form of American military presence in Africa, but we're going
to have an enlarged one.

Invariably, remember what this means. Imperialism is a form of
tyranny. It never rules through consent of the governed. It doesn't
ask for the consent of the governed. We talk about the spread of
democracy, but we're talking about the spread of democracy at the
point of an assault rifle. That's a contradiction in terms. It doesn't
work. Any self-respecting person being democratized in this manner
starts thinking of retaliation. Nemesis becomes appropriate.

AMY GOODMAN: Chalmers Johnson, there have been major protests against
US military bases. Recently in Vicenza in Italy, about 100,000 people
protested. Ecuador announced that it would close the Manta Air Base,
the military base there. What about the response, the resistance to
this web of bases around the world?

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Well, there is a genuine resistance and has been for
a long time. As I say, in the case of Okinawa, there's been at least
three different historical revolts against the American presence.
There's collaboration between the Japanese government and the Pentagon
to use this island, which is a Japanese version of Puerto Rico. It's a
place that's always been discriminated against. It's the Japanese way
of having their cake and eating it, too. They like the alliance with
America, but they do not want American soldiers based anywhere near
the citizens of mainland Japan. So they essentially dump them or
quarantine them off into this island, where the population pays the cost.

This is true, what's going on in Italy right now, where there is
tremendous resistance to the CIA rendition cases. That is, kidnapping
people that we've identified and flying them secretly to countries
where we know they will be tortured. There's right now something like
twenty-five CIA officers by name who are under indictment by the
Italian government for felonies committed by agents of the United
States in Italy. And, indeed, we just did have these major
demonstrations in Vicenza. The people there believe that with the
enlargement of the base that is already there -- I mean, this is,
after all, the old Palladian city, a city of great and famous
architecture, that they would become a target of terrorism, of
numerous other things.

We see the resistance in the form of Prime Minister Zapatero in Spain,
that he promised the people that after he came to power, he would get
out of Iraq, and he was one of the few who did deliver, who does
remember that if democracy means anything, it means that public
opinion matters, though in an awful lot of countries, it doesn't
actually seem to be the case. But he has reduced radically the
American military presence in Spain.

And it continues around the world. There is a growing irritation at
the American colossus athwart the world, using its military muscle to
do as it pleases. We see it right now, that people of the Persian Gulf
are not being asked whether or not they want anywhere between two and
four huge carrier task forces in the fifth fleet in CENTCOM's navy in
the Persian Gulf, and all of which looks like preparation for an
assault on Iran. We don't know that for certain by any manner of
means, but there's plenty enough to make us suspicious.

Then you look back historically, probably there is no more
anti-American democracy on earth than Greece. They will never forgive
us for bringing to power the Greek colonels the in the late '60s and
early '70s, and, of course, also establishing then numerous American
military enclaves in Greece until the colonels themselves finally
self-destructed by simply going too far.

And the cases are ubiquitous in Latin America, in Africa today.
Probably still the most important area, of course, of military
imperialism is the opening up of southern Eurasia, after it became
available to foreign imperialistic pressure with the collapse of the
Soviet Union.

Many important observers who have resigned their commissions from the
Pentagon have made the case that the fundamental explanation for the
war in Iraq was precisely to make it the new -- to replace the two old
pillars of American foreign policy in the Middle East. The first
pillar, Iran, collapsed, of course, with the revolution in 1979
against the Shah, who we had installed in power. The second pillar,
Saudi Arabia, had become less and less useful to us, because of our
own bungling. We put forces, military forces, ground forces, an air
force, in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War in 1991. This was
unnecessary, it was stupid, it was arrogant. It caused antagonism
among numerous patriotic Saudis, not least of whom, one was our former
asset and colleague, Osama bin Laden -- that Saudi Arabia is charged
with the defense of the two most sacred sites in Islam: Mecca and
Medina. We ought to be able to do this ourselves without using infidel
troops that know absolutely nothing about our religion, our country,
our lifestyle, or anything else. Over time, the Saudis began to
restrict the use of Prince Sultan Air Base outside Riyadh. We actually
closed down our major operations headquarters there just before the
invasion of Iraq and moved it to Qatar.

And then we chose Iraq as the second most oil-rich country on earth,
and as a place perfectly suited for our presence. I think many people
have commented on it, Seymour Hersh notably, but I think, importantly,
one of the reasons we had no exit plan from Iraq is that we didn't
intend to leave. And certainly the evidence of it is the now series of
at least five very, very large, heavily reinforced, long double
runways, five air bases in Iraq, strategically located all over the
country. You can never get our ambassador, the Department of Defense,
the President, or anybody to say unequivocally we don't intend to have
bases there. It's a subject on which Congress never, ever opens its
mouth. Occasionally, military officers -- the commander of Air Force
in CENTCOM has repeatedly, in his sort of off-hand way, when asked,
"How long do you think we'll be here?" and he usually says, "Oh, at
least a decade in these bases." And then, we continue to reinforce them.

Now, then, we've tried to build bases in Central Asia in the Caspian
Basin oil-rich countries that were made independent -- not in any
sense democracies -- made independent by the collapse of the Soviet
Union in 1991. We have now been thrown out of one of them for too much
heavy-handed interference. And the price of our stay in Kyrgyzstan has
quadrupled, much more than that actually. It's gone from a few million
dollars to well over $100 million. But we continue to play these
games, and they are games, and the game is property called imperialism.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Chalmers Johnson. Now, Chalmers Johnson,
you were a consultant for the CIA for a period through Richard Nixon,
starting with Johnson in 1967, right through 1973. And I'm wondering
how you see its use has changed. You talk about, and you write in your
book about the Central Intelligence Agency, the president's private army.

CHALMERS JOHNSON: I say, at one point, we will never know peace until
we abolish it, or, at any rate, restrict what is the monster that it's
grown into. The National Security Act of 1947 lists five functions. It
creates the Central Intelligence Agency. It lists five functions for
it. The purpose, above all, was to prevent surprise attack, to prevent
a recurrence of the attack, such as the one at Pearl Harbor. Of these
five functions, four are various forms of information-gathering
through open sources, espionage, signals intelligence, things of this
sort. The fifth is simply a catchall, that the CIA will do anything
that the National Security Council, namely the foreign affairs
bureaucracy in the White House attached directly to the president
orders it to do.

That's turned out to be the tail that wags the dog. Intelligence is
not taken all that seriously. It's not that good. My function inside
the agency in the late '60s, early '70s was in the Office of National
Estimates. My wife used to ask me at times, "Why are they so highly
classified?" And I said, "Well, probably and mostly, simply because
they're the very best we can do, and they read like a sort of lowbrow
foreign affairs article." They're not full of great technical detail
and certainty nothing on sources of intelligence.

But as the agency developed over time, and as it was made clear to the
president, every president since Truman, made clear to them shortly
after they were inaugurated, you have at your disposal a private army.
It is totally secret. There is no form of oversight. There was no form
of congressional oversight until the late 1970s, and it proved to be
incompetent in the face of Iran-Contra and things like that. He can do
anything you want to with it. You could order assassinations. You
could order governments overthrown. You could order economies
subverted that seemed to get in our way. You could instruct Latin
American military officers in state terrorism. You can carry out
extraordinary renditions and order the torture of people, despite the
fact that it is a clear violation of American law and carries the
death penalty if the torture victim should die, and they commonly do
in the case of renditions to places like Egypt.

No president since Truman, once told that he has this power, has ever
failed to use it. That became the route of rapid advancement within
the CIA, dirty tricks, clandestine activities, the carrying out of the
president's orders to overthrow somebody, starting -- the first one
was the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953. It's from
that, the After Action Report, which has only recently been
declassified, that the word "blowback" that I used in the first of my
three books on American foreign policy, that's where the word
"blowback" comes from. It means retaliation for clandestine activities
carried out abroad.

But these clandestine activities also have one other caveat on them:
they are kept totally secret from the American public, so that when
the retaliation does come, they're unable ever to put it in context,
to see it in cause-and-effect terms. They usually lash out against the
alleged perpetrators, usually simply inaugurating another cycle of
blowback. The best example is easily 9/11 in 2001, which was clearly
blowback for the largest clandestine operation we ever carried out,
namely the recruiting, arming and sending into battle of the
Mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union during the 1980s.
But this is the way the CIA has evolved.

It's been responsible for the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile
and bringing to power probably the most odious dictator on either side
in the Cold War, namely General Augusto Pinochet; the installation of
the Greek colonels in the late `60s and early '70s in Greece; the
coups, one after another, in numerous Latin American countries, all
under the cover of avoiding Soviet imperialism carried out by Fidel
Castro, when the real purpose was to protect the interests of the
United Fruit Company, and continued to exploit the extremely poor and
essentially defenseless people of Central America.

The list is endless. The overthrow of Sukarno in Indonesia, the
bringing to power of General Suharto, then the elimination of General
Suharto when he got on our nerves. It has a distinctly Roman quality
to it. And this is why I -- moreover, there is no effective oversight.
There are a few, often crooked congressmen, like Randy "Duke"
Cunningham, who are charged with oversight. When Charlie Wilson, the
congressman, long-sitting congressman from the Second District of
Texas, was named chairman of the House Intelligence Oversight
Committee during the Afghan period, he wrote at once to his pals in
the CIA, "The fox is in the henhouse. Gentlemen, do anything you want to."

AMY GOODMAN: Chalmers Johnson has just finished his trilogy. The first
was Blowback, then Sorrows of Empire, now Nemesis: The Last Days of
the American Republic. We'll be back with the conclusion of the
interview in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We return to the conclusion of my interview with Chalmers
Johnson. Professor Johnson is a noted expert on Asia politics. He has
authored a number of books on the Chinese revolution, on Japanese
economic development. In his thirty years in the University of
California system, Johnson served as chair of the Center for Chinese
Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. I asked him to talk
about China's role as a growing world power.

CHALMERS JOHNSON: I'm optimistic about China. I think that they have
shown a remarkable movement toward moderation. I believe that the
public supports them, because they've done something that the public
wanted done and was extremely fearful about, namely the dismantling of
a Leninist economy without reducing the conditions that occurred in
Yeltsin's Russia, that China has -- it's unleashed its fantastic
growth potential and is moving ahead with great power and insight.

There are many things that we do not like in the way this is
developing, particularly the fear of China by the American
neoconservatives. They have no alternative but to adjust to this. It's
the same kind of adjustment that should have been made in the 20th
century to the rise of new sources of power in Germany, in Russia, in
Japan. The failure by the sated English-speaking powers -- above all,
England and the United States -- to adjust led to savage and
essentially worthless wars. But the Americans are again continuing to
harp on China's growth, where, in fact, I've been impressed with the
ease with which China has adjusted to the interests of countries that
do not necessarily like China at all -- Indonesia, for example, Vietnam.

They are contiguously egging on the Japanese to be antagonistic toward
China, which was the scene of their greatest war crimes during World
War II, for which they have never adequately either responded or paid
compensation. I wonder what foolishness is this. A war with China
would have the same -- it would have the same configuration as the
Vietnam War. We would certainly lose it.

The glue, the political glue of China today, the source of its
legitimacy, is increasingly Chinese nationalism, which is passionately
held. As the Hong Kong joke has it, China just had a couple of bad
centuries, and it's back.

We have not been watching it with quite the hawk eyes we were during
the first months of the Bush administration, when, after a spy
incident in which the Chinese forced down one of our reconnaissance
planes that was penetrating their coastal areas in an extremely
aggressive manner -- if it had been a Chinese plane off of our coast,
we would have shot it down; they simply forced it down, it was a loss
of an airplane and one of their own pilots -- that, you'll recall,
George Bush said on television that he would, if the Chinese ever
menaced the island of Taiwan, he would use the full weight and force
of the American military against China. This is insanity, genuine
insanity. There's no way that -- I mean, if the Chinese defeated every
single American, they'd still have 800 million of them left, and you
simply have to adjust to that, not antagonize it, and I believe
there's plenty of ample evidence that you can adjust to the Chinese.

AMY GOODMAN: Chalmers Johnson, in January, the Chinese launched their
first anti-satellite test, and I wanted to segue into that to the
militarization of space.

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Well, precisely, I have a chapter in Nemesis that
I'm extremely proud of called "The Ultimate Imperialist Project: Outer
Space." It's about the congressional missile lobby, the fantastic
waste of funds on things that we know don't work. But they're not
intended to work. They're part of military Keynesianism, of
maintaining our economy through military expenditures. They provide
jobs in as many different constituencies as the military-industrial
complex can place them.

We have arrogantly talked about full-spectrum dominance of control of
the globe from outer space, the domination of the low and high orbits
that are so necessary. We've all become so dependent upon them today
for global positioning devices, telecommunications, mapping, weather
forecasting, one thing after another. In fact, the Chinese, the
Russians, the Europeans have been asking us repeatedly for decent
international measures, international treaties, to prevent the
weaponization of space, to prevent the growing catastrophe of orbiting
debris that are extremely lethal to satellites, to -- as Sally Ride,
one of the commanders of our space shuttle, she was in an incident in
which a piece of paint, or in orbit -- that's at 17,000 miles an hour
in low-earth orbit -- hit the windshield of the challenger and put a
bad dent in it.

Now, if a piece of paint can do that, I hate to tell you what a lens
cap or an old wrench or something like that -- so there's a whole
bunch of them out there. At the Johnson Space Center, they keep a
regular growing inventory of these old pieces of, some case, weaponry,
some case, launch vehicles for satellites, things of this sort. They
publish a very lovely little newsletter that talks about how a piece
of an American space capsule from twenty years ago rear-ended a shot
Chinese-launched vehicle and produced a few more debris. It's a
catastrophe.

But instead, we've got -- there's no other word for it -- an arrogant,
almost Roman, out-of-control Air Force that continues to serve the
interests of the military-industrial complex, the space lobby, to
build things that they know won't work.

AMY GOODMAN: What is a space Pearl Harbor?

CHALMERS JOHNSON: A space Pearl Harbor would mean, they believe, what
the Chinese did in January, when they tested an anti-satellite weapon
against one of their old and redundant satellites. Satellites do burn
out. There's no way to repair them, so they simply shot it down with a
rocket. This explosion produces massive amounts of debris, whizzing
around the earth in low-earth orbit. If you put it higher into orbit,
you would start killing off the main satellites on which, well,
probably this television broadcast is going to depend on, too. And
there's no way to ever get rid of things that are orbiting in
high-earth orbit. Low-earth orbit, some of them will descend into the
atmosphere and burn up.

But the Air Force has continuously used this so-called threat of our
being blinded by -- because we have become so reliant on global
positioning systems. Our so-called "smart bombs" depend on them, that
we've -- they're not very smart, and it's not as good a global
positioning system as the peaceful one the Europeans are building
called Galileo. They use it to say we must arm space, we must have
anti-satellite weapons in space, we have rebuffed every effort to
control this, and finding out the Chinese have called our bluff.

AMY GOODMAN: Where does Fort Greely, Alaska, fit into this, the silos?

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Well, that is, there's three ways to shoot down an
alleged incoming missile. This is the whole farce of whether there is
a defense against a missile. I guarantee you there is no defense at
all against the Topol-M, the Russian missile that goes into orbit
extremely rapidly -- it goes into its arch extremely rapidly. It has a
maneuvering ability that means that it's undetectable.

We're basically looking at very low-brow weapons that would be coming
from a country like North Korea, in which we have three different ways
of trying to intercept them. We used to only try to do with one under
the Clinton administration. Under the enthusiasm of the current
neoconservatives, we have three ways. One, on blastoff, this is
extremely difficult to do, but we're trying to create a laser, carried
in a Boeing 747, that would hit one. You've got to be virtually on top
of the launch site in order to do so. It's never worked. It probably
doesn't work, and it's just expensive.

The much more common one would be to down the hostile missile, while
it is in outer space, from having given up its launch vehicle and is
now heading at very high speed toward the United States. This is what
the interceptors that have been put in the ground at Fort Greely,
Alaska, and a couple of them at Vandenberg Air Force Base in
California, are supposed to do. They have never once yet had a
successful intercept. The radar is not there to actually track the
allegedly hostile vehicle. As one senior Pentagon scientist said the
other day, these are really essentially scarecrows, hoping that they
would scare off the North Koreans.

This is a catastrophic misuse of resources against a small and failed
communist state, North Korea. There is no easier thing on earth to
detect than a hostile missile launch, and the proper approach to
preventing that is deterrence. We have thought about it, worked on it,
practiced it, studied it now for decades. The North Koreans have an
excellent reputation for rationality. They know if they did launch
such a vehicle at Japan or at the United States, they would disappear
the next day in a retaliatory strike, and they don't do it.

It's why, in the case of Iran, the only logical thing to do is to
learn to live with a nuclear-armed Iran. It's inevitable for a country
now surrounded by nuclear powers -- the United States in the Persian
Gulf, the Soviet Union, Israel, Pakistan and India. The Iranians are
rationalists and recognize the only way you're ever going to dissuade
people from using their nuclear power to intimidate us is a threat of
retaliation. So we are developing our minimal deterrent, and we should
learn to live with it.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Chalmers Johnson, you have just completed your
trilogy. Your first book, Blowback, then Sorrows of Empire, and now
finally Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. What is your
prediction?

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Well, I don't see any way out of it. I think it's
gone too far. I think we are domestically too dependent on the
military-industrial complex, that every time -- I mean, it's perfectly
logical for any Secretary of Defense to try and close military bases
that are redundant, that are useless, that are worn out, that go back
to the Civil War. Any time he tries to do it, you produce an uproar in
the surrounding community from newspapers, television, priests, local
politicians: save our base.

The two mother hens of the Defense Facilities Subcommittee of the
Senate Armed Services Committee, the people committed to taking care
of our bases are easily Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Dianne
Feinstein of California, the two states with the largest number of
military bases, and those two senators would do anything in their
power to keep them open. This is the insidious way in which the
military-industrial complex has penetrated into our democracy and
gravely weakened it, produced vested interests in what I call military
Keynesianism, the use and manipulation of what is now three-quarters
of a trillion dollars of the Defense budget, once you include all the
other things that aren't included in just the single appropriation for
the Department of Defense.

This is a -- it's out of control. We depend upon it, we like it, we
live off of it. I cannot imagine any President of any party putting
together the coalition of forces that could begin to break into these
vested interests, any more than a Gorbachev was able to do it in his
attempted reforms of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.

AMY GOODMAN: Is there anything, Chalmers, that gives you hope?

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Well, that's exactly what we're doing this morning.
That is, the only way -- you've got to reconstitute the constitutional
system in America, or it is over. That is that empires -- once you go
in the direction of empire, you ultimately lead to overstretch,
bankruptcy, coalitions of nations hostile to your imperialism. We're
well on that route.

The way that it might be stopped is by a mobilization of inattentive
citizens. I don't know that that's going to happen. I'm extremely
dubious, given the nature of conglomerate control of, say, the
television networks in America for the sake of advertising revenue. We
see Rupert Murdoch talking about buying a third of the Los Angeles
Times. But, nonetheless, there is the internet, there is Amy Goodman,
there are -- there's a lot more information than there was.

One of the things I have experienced in these three books is a much
more receptive audience of alarmed Americans to Nemesis than to the
previous two books, where there was considerable skepticism, so that
one -- if we do see a renaissance of citizenship in America, then I
believe we could recapture our government. If we continue politics as
in the past, then I think there is no alternative but to say Nemesis
is in the country, she's on the premises, and she is waiting to carry
out her divine mission.

AMY GOODMAN: Chalmers Johnson, his new book is Nemesis: The Last Days
of the American Republic. It's the last volume in his Blowback
trilogy, following the best-selling Blowback and The Sorrows of Empire.


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The New Refugees: IDF expelling West Bank Palestinians
by Amira Hass
Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/806054.html


Until Enaya Samara, who has been living in forced exile for the past
eight months returns to her village near Ramallah, and until Someida
Abbas, who was banished from his home 10 months ago accompanies his
children to kindergarten again, it will not be possible to believe the
defense establishment's promise to change its policy. So long as
American, Brazilian and German citizens whose name is not Cohen but
Abdullah, are refused entry at the borders, we will know that the
policy is still in effect - the policy of causing tens of thousands of
Palestinian families to break up, or to leave their homes and
emigrate. This is not a new policy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Since 1967, Israel has been carrying out demographic manipulations
which should actually be called expulsion. Military edicts have caused
some 100,000 people to lose their status as permanent residents in the
occupied territories and to remain exiles in the countries to which
they went to study or work. These manipulations have turned 240,000
people who were born in the West bank and Gaza and left the
territories because of the 1967 war, and another 60,000 who were
abroad when it broke out, to become new refugees.

All of them left behind families in the territories, but Israel
prevented the vast majority from reuniting again in their homeland.
(During those years, Israel was actively promoting the right of Jews
in the USSR to emigrate and reunite with their families in Israel).
After 1994, Israel made it possible for several thousand Palestinian
families to unite every year; in other words, it granted their
children the status of permanent residency. But the quota it fixed was
always less than the real needs, and since 2001, Israel has even
frozen the family unification process and barred Palestinians who are
citizens of Arab countries (particularly Jordan and Egypt) from coming
to visit.

Until 2006, Palestinians with Western citizenship (Europeans and
Americans) were able to avoid this comprehensive policy. In the 1990s,
they were considered a welcome population (investors, businessmen,
academics working in international organizations such as the World
Bank). Even if most of them did not get permanent residency, Israel
permitted them to live here and visit regularly. This was also the
case with Western spouses of Palestinian residents. Until someone in
the political echelons decided that this "positive discrimination" (as
opposed to citizens of Jordan and Egypt) was intolerable. And from the
start of 2006 their entry has been blocked.

It is not clear who the decision-maker is. The coordinator of
government activities in the territories told Western diplomats it was
the Interior Ministry that made the decision. Interior Ministry
officials say it was a joint decision with the Defense Ministry.

Be that as it may, whoever made the decision did not take into account
that this was a blow to the strongest circles among the Palestinians -
those who speak English, have access to the U.S. State Department, to
important journalists, and to the Israeli and international business
worlds. They found a way to get together and protest, unlike the tens
of thousands of women who have Jordanian citizenship and hide in fear
in the West Bank because Israel does not recognize their right to live
with their husbands and children.

The change of policy toward Palestinians with Western citizenship was
brought to the attention of MK Ephraim Sneh even before he became
deputy defense minister. Already then, Sneh was of the opinion that
there was no point in changing the policy and that doing so would be
harmful to Israel's interests. In a conversation with Haaretz, he
sounded sincere in promising that this policy toward the Americans and
Europeans had been canceled and that his bureau was working on new
regulations that would "make things simpler rather than making them
more complicated, and would alleviate rather than aggravate" the
situation. (However, it was possible to understand from this that the
regulations would not legalize the stay of thousands, particularly
adults and children who remained even though their visas were no
longer valid).

But the joy is premature: During the past two weeks, officials
continued to prevent the entry even of those who are married and have
children here and those who came on a visit. Are these merely
"left-overs of the previous situation," as Sneh put it, or does it
testify also to the fact that Sneh is not the sole decision-maker, as
was evident with his position on removing the roadblocks?

On the Israeli scene, army commanders (some of them settlers) act
together with politicians, jurists and academics who are terrified of
the demographic balance. The Green Line does not exist for them. They
thought up the Citizenship Law, which crassly expanded the
discrimination against Israeli Arabs and intervenes in their right to
have a family life. Why do they not act the same across the Green Line
where the military edict is in force? And if Sneh ceases being deputy
defense minister, who can guarantee that a deputy from the Kadima
party will not cancel the cancelation?

More than ever before, the Israeli system today denies the fact that
it is repression and discrimination, an integral part of every
occupation, that create the security threat. The most it is prepared
to do is make "improvements" and mete out "favors," but it will not
recognize rights.

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The American military-industrial complex makes China's business-
oriented People's Liberation Army look like a corner shop.


US military expands into Africa
By Simon Tisdall
February 12, 2007
Guardian UK
http://216.242.66.6/read_news.php?newsid=MTIyNjk=


The American military-industrial complex that so troubled Dwight
Eisenhower in 1961 has morphed into a boom business with truly global
reach. It makes China's business-oriented People's Liberation Army
look like a corner shop. This week's US decision to create a new
Pentagon command covering Africa, known as Africom, has a certain
unlovely military logic. Like Roman emperors of old, Washington's
Caesars arbitrarily divide much of the world into Middle Eastern,
European and Pacific domains. Now it is Africa's turn. Practical more
than imperial considerations dictated the White House move. With Gulf
of Guinea countries including Nigeria and Angola projected to provide
a quarter of US oil imports within a decade, with Islamist terrorism
worries in the Sahel and Horn of Africa, and with China prowling for
resources and markets, the US plainly feels a second wind of change is
blowing, necessitating increased leverage.

Africom's advent also follows a pattern of extraordinary military
expansion under President George Bush, not all of which is explained
by 9/11. The American military-industrial complex that so troubled
Dwight Eisenhower in 1961 has morphed into a boom business with truly
global reach. It makes China's business-oriented People's Liberation
Army look like a corner shop. The Pentagon's total budget requests for
the fiscal year ending September 2008 have swollen to $716.5bn. That
is more than double Clinton-era spending. In contrast, Russia will
spend $31bn on defence this year and China, according to the
International Institute for Strategic Studies, an estimated $87bn.

With Bush as head of the police academy, the US is becoming, de facto,
the self-appointed global policeman it said it never wanted to be. In
Africa as elsewhere, this could have the unintended effect of creating
US-secured regions that are safe for rival countries to do business in
- and exploit. Beijing, for example, has cause to be thankful.
Sino-African trade, boosted by the grand continental progress of
President Hu Jintao this week, has risen from about $3bn in 1995 to
$55.5bn last year, according to the independent Power and Interest
News Report. And Chinese political cooperation is also growing, not
only with "rogue regimes" such as Sudan and Zimbabwe but with more
mainstream governments, potentially undercutting US- promoted
governance and democracy standards.

At the same time, there are arguably too strict limits on what the new
command will actually do. Africom will advance "our common goals of
peace, security, development, health, education, democracy and
economic growth", Mr Bush said. But officials say that will not
involve the stationing of extra combat troops. Nor will it mean US
soldiers reinforcing stretched UN and African Union peacekeeping
forces in Congo, Somalia or Darfur. In practice much of Africom's work
is likely to involve oversight of already extensive, US-funded African
capacity-building programmes, including good governance-related
assistance schemes and training of security forces. In many ways it
may be modelled on the Horn of Africa taskforce set up in Djibouti
after 9/11.

Like smaller US military units working in Rwanda, Botswana and
Liberia, the taskforce undertakes humanitarian and infrastructure
projects including, recently, the collation of Somali folk tales. But
like Africom, the Djibouti base's raison d'etre remains American
security and counter-terrorism, as seen in its training of Ethiopian
troops and its air and sea support for the recent Ethiopian
intervention in Somalia against Islamist militants. By coordinating
and expanding similar operations, such as US special forces in Algeria
and the 10-country Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership,
Africom marks the official arrival of America's "global war on terror"
on the African continent. It is a wonder it took so long.

===

Somalian government troops fire into crowd, at least five killed:
Nasteex Dahir Farah, Associated Press
Sunday, February 11, 2007
http://snipurl.com/1a03h


KISMAYO, Somalia — A march that drew thousands in support of
peacekeepers ended in violence Sunday when an explosion went off as
the army chief prepared to address the rally and government troops
fired into the crowd in response. At least five people were killed.

Thousands had marched through Kismayo, 400 kilometres southwest of the
capital, Mogadishu, to support a proposed peacekeeping mission for
Somalia. "Somali people need the help of Africans," they chanted.
"Somalia's stability needs to be restored."

It was not immediately clear what caused the explosion, which happened
as the army chief, Gen. Abdi Mahdi, was to address the rally at the
city's Freedom Park.

Somali government soldiers patrol the streets of Mogadishu, Monday,
Feb. 5, 2007. Somalia's capital has seen spiraling violence since
government forces and their Ethiopian backers took it over from an
ousted Islamic movement.

Mohamed Sheikh Nor/AP Photo


Government troops fired into the crowd and then opened fire on the
streets of Kismayo, but it was not clear just who they were targeting.
Ethiopian and Somali government troops sealed off the park after the
explosion.

An Associated Press reporter saw two dead at Freedom Park, but it was
not clear whether they died in the explosion or from gunfire. An
Associated Press reporter counted at least 22 wounded at Kismayo's
general hospital.

Col. Abdirazaq Af Gudud, a senior army official who did not take part
in the rally, said three soldiers died in the explosion.

The army chief was among the wounded, said Gudud. Five other officials
also were injured, including the commander of the Somali national
army's 3rd Battalion and the police chief for southwestern Somalia.

Kismayo, Somalia's third-largest city, was the last major city held by
the radical Islamic movement that took over much of the country's
south last year before being forced out by Somali government troops
and Ethiopian forces in December and January.

The African Union has proposed a peacekeeping mission to help
Somalia's struggling transitional government stabilize Somalia,
particularly after Ethiopia withdraws its forces.

The Islamic movement, which still has support in Mogadishu, has vowed
to wage an Iraq-style insurgency, and attacks in the capital have
occurred almost daily over the last month.

Late Saturday, troops fought gunmen at a key government building in
Mogadishu, said Mohamed Iyow Gedi, a witness to the fighting. Five
people were wounded, staff at Medina Hospital said.

Hours after the gunbattle at Villa Baidoa, government soldiers sealed
off the area around the building and went house to house Sunday
searching for suspects, witnesses said.

Earlier Saturday, two areas of Mogadishu were hit by mortar attacks
that killed at least five people and wounded 10, witnesses said.

Deputy Defence Minister Salad Ali Jelle said the attacks was the work
of remnants of the Islamic movement.

During a pro-Islamist rally Friday, a masked man who gave his name
only as Abdirisaq said his group, the Popular Resistance Movement in
the Land of the Two Migrations, was responsible for attacks on
government buildings and Ethiopian troops.

Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991, when
warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on one
another, throwing the country into anarchy.

The transitional government was formed with UN help in 2004 amid the
general chaos, but had been largely ignored by all sides until the
western-backed Ethiopian invasion brought its leaders to power.

===

Mogadishu residents flee city:
Mustafa Haji Abdinur
Mon, 12 Feb 2007
http://iafrica.com/news/worldnews/626067.htm


Hundreds of people fled the Somali capital Mogadishu on Monday after
two people were killed in the latest barrage of rebel rocket attacks
and guerrilla-style raids.

There was heavy shelling near the Villa Somalia residence of President
Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed in southern Mogadishu, where artillery fire lit
up the night sky.

At least two people were killed in the attacks that demolished
residential houses.

People fled the southern Mogadishu suburbs that came under attack with
many leaving the capital altogether.

"We have been expecting peace and prosperity after the past 16 years
but not flames of gunfire and fresh bloodshed," said southern
Mogadishu resident, Abdullahi Sheikh Hassan.

"We have to look for safety for ourselves and for our children," he added.

Traumatised residents

Other battle-weary residents echoed similar views after the shelling.

"A family was sleeping when a house was blown up by a heavy shell, I
cannot tell what kind of weapon it was but it destroyed the house,
killing a father and his son," said Jeri Hassan, a neighbour of one of
the houses attacked.

Witnesses said gunmen also fired grenades into Madina police station
in the capital, triggering a gun battle.

Attacks have steadily intensified since joint Somali-Ethiopian forces
ousted an Islamist movement from the capital last month.

The new assault came hours after a bomb exploded in the southern port
of Kismayo on Sunday, about 500 kilometres south of Mogadishu, killing
four people and injuring several others.

Among the injured was the recently appointed Somali military chief
General Adbi Mohamed, who was addressing scores of residents.

Country threatening to slide back to war

With Somalia dangerously teetering between a slide back to war or
limping forward towards efforts to build a functioning state after
more than a decade of chaos, the international community is struggling
to raise funds and troops for a peacekeeping force.

The African Union has managed to raise half of the required 8000
peacekeepers expected to be deployed to bolster the Yusuf's feeble
government.

The AU Commission met in Addis Ababa on Monday to discuss the "speedy"
deployment of the badly needed force.

The Somali government is based in the backwater town of Baidoa, about
250 kilometres (155 miles) north of Mogadishu.

Yusuf, a former warlord, and Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi have
failed to make good their pledge of relocating to the capital, one of
the most dangerous cities in the world.

The defeated Islamists have vowed to attack and kill peacekeepers, a
spectre that dampens hopes of an international deployment, which has
been delayed since 2005 for fear of further confrontation and
insufficient funds.

Patchwork of fiefdoms

A previous 1993-1995 peace mission ended disastrously after UN and US
troops fled the country, paving the way for the rise of warlords who
sub-divided the nation into a patchwork of fiefdoms.

Though the warlords were defeated by the Islamists in June, they have
been regrouping in the capital while maintaining a low profile.

In addition, the surging violence calls into question Yusuf's pledge
to convene a national reconciliation conference in a bid to end the
conflict.

Somalia, home to 10 million people, has had no effective central
authority since the 1991 ousting of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

Since then, more than 14 internationally-backed attempts to restore a
functional government have failed, compounding the misery caused by
numerous natural disasters.

===

Somalia: Food shortages in the south as insecurity increases :
http://snipurl.com/1a03l

NAIROBI, 12 February 2007 (IRIN) - Families in Somalia's Middle Juba
region in the south are consuming seeds meant for planting because of
food shortages, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Somalia reports.

A recent trip to the region by a team from the International Committee
of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported a "highly alarming humanitarian and
livelihood situation", said OCHA Somalia. The report estimated that
"20,000 families need urgent assistance" in the districts of Jamaame,
Lower Juba region, and in Jilib, Middle Juba.

Many "families reported that due to lack of food they had eaten seeds
distributed for post-flood recessional planting … There is evidence to
suggest that the region, including Buale and Jilib [Middle Juba] to
Jamaame [Lower Juba], is in a similar humanitarian and livelihood
situation," the agency said. An inter-agency response, it added, was
under way.

In Badhade District in Lower Juba, an estimated 2,000 households have
been reported to need aid urgently. "The families were affected by the
recent conflict in the region, and have either been displaced or have
become more vulnerable as a result," said OCHA.

Badhade is close to the area where fighting continues between Union of
Islamic Courts (UIC) remnants and Ethiopian-supported government
soldiers, who have been pursuing them since the UIC was forced out of
the capital, Mogadishu, and much of southern Somalia in late December
2006. It is also close to an area that has been bombed by American jets.

An estimated 1.1 million people are already facing a humanitarian
crisis in southern Somalia, which has recently been ravaged by
drought, floods and conflict.

Meanwhile, in Mogadishu, a father and his six-year-old son were killed
when an artillery shell hit their house on Sunday in the Huriwa
district, a local resident said. A civil society source told IRIN that
"the security situation is so bad many neighbourhoods in the city have
begun to set up their own security".

In the southern port city of Kismayo, five people were killed and at
least 21 wounded when a bomb was thrown into a pro-government rally.

"Most of the dead were civilians but at least six senior government
officials, including the deputy chief of the army, Gen Abdi Mahad, and
Gen Ahmed Mahamud, the chief of police for southern Somalia, were
injured," said a local resident, who was at the rally.

He said the attack had "heightened tensions in Kismayo", which had
been peaceful and so far escaped the increasingly frequent attacks in
Mogadishu.

Isma'il Muhammad Qalinle, a Kismayo businessman, told IRIN that
government forces were arresting scores of people, "but they are
arresting innocent people. They know who did this. They know the clan
that was behind it and it should be named, instead of going after
innocent people," he added.

Qalinle said Kismayo was in the grip of inter-clan tension "that has
been building up since the government started to allocate positions,
which some clans have seen as unfair", he added.

However, Salad Ali Jeele, the Somali Deputy Minister of Defence, told
IRIN the government was investigating the incident in Kismayo, "and
anyone found to have been involved would be brought to justice, no
matter what".

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US general issues warning: politics must not interfere with 100-year
"war on terror"
By Bill Van Auken
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/dec2006/gene-d19.shtml


One of the Pentagon's senior uniformed strategists warned last week
that the "global war on terror" will go on for another 50 to 100 years
and voiced concern that "politics" not be allowed to interfere with
the protracted struggle.

The remarks were made by Brig. Gen. Mark O. Schissler, an Air Force
commander and the Defense Department's deputy director for the "war on
terrorism." He made them in an exclusive interview with the Washington
Times, the right-wing daily owned by the Unification Church of Rev.
Sun Myung Moon.

"We're in a generational war," he told the paper. "You can try and
fight the enemy where they are and where they're attacking you, or
prevent them and defend your own homeland," he said. "But that's not
enough to stop it."

The Washington Times went on to report, "Gen. Schissler said he is
concerned that Washington politics is weakening the will of the nation."

"I don't care about the politics," he told the newspaper. "I care
about people understanding the facts of what our enemy is thinking
about, what's our strategy to defeat them, and for [Americans] to
understand that it will take a long fight, mostly because our enemy is
committed to the long fight." He added, "They're absolutely committed
to the 50-, 100-year plan."

"One of my concerns is how to maintain the American will, the public
will over that duration," the general said. He described this task as
"very difficult."

Difficult indeed. How is the "public will" to wage global warfare for
the next century to be maintained, particularly when "politics" gets
in the way?

Given the political context of Schissler remarks, his warnings have
unmistakable and chilling implications.

Barely six weeks ago, the Bush administration, which initiated the
"war on terror" and proclaimed Iraq to be its most important front,
suffered a stunning defeat at the polls. The Republican Party's loss
of both houses of the US Congress was the result of mass popular
opposition to the Iraq war.

This opposition has only deepened in the intervening weeks, as a
series of opinion polls have demonstrated. A CBS News poll, for
example, found that just 4 percent of Americans believe that terrorism
is the most important problem confronting the country. The same poll
found that a record 35 percent believe that the war in Iraq is the
principal problem, with 71 percent saying the war is going badly and
only 9 percent believing that the US is very likely to succeed in Iraq.

A USA Today poll found that two-thirds believe that the costs of the
US succeeding in Iraq outweigh the benefits. A clear majority wants
all US troops withdrawn from the country within the next year, while
74 percent say all combat troops should be withdrawn by March 2008.

Not only is the American public unwilling to support a century of wars
of aggression, it has reached the conclusion that the
three-and-a-half-year-old war in Iraq should never have been launched
and should be brought to a speedy end. This is the threat to the
"American will" about which Gen. Schissler is so concerned.

This supposed "will" to wage war—what could better be described as a
temporary and forced acquiescence—was achieved through political
deception and intimidation, by terrorizing the population with the
supposed threat of attack in the wake of the September 11, 2001 tragedy.

As all of the pretexts used to promote the war—weapons of mass
destruction, Baghdad-Al Qaeda ties, etc.—were exposed as lies, and as
the war itself turned into an ever-more bloody debacle, claiming the
lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and either killing or
wounding 25,000 US troops, the demand for withdrawal of US forces from
Iraq was embraced by millions of Americans, including many in uniform.

The issue posed is not really sustaining the "will" to wage a 100-year
war, but suppressing the mass opposition to war that has already found
powerful political expression.

Among masses of American working people, there never was a will to
wage wars of aggression. That outlook reflected the aims and schemes
developed within the corporate and financial elite that rules America.
This ruling layer has utilized the "global war on terror," in which
Gen. Schissler is a senior strategist, as the pretext for carrying out
a military campaign aimed at imposing US domination over the oil-rich
regions of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia as part of American
capitalism's pursuit of global hegemony.

In the aftermath of the 2006 midterm elections, it has become
increasingly apparent that this ruling elite has no intention of
bowing to the actual will of the people, as reflected at the polls, by
bringing an end to the war and withdrawing US troops from Iraq. It is
driven by its own economic necessity to offset a declining position on
the world market by means of military force. And it fears that a
withdrawal from Iraq will expose the underlying weakness of American
imperialism, raising the danger of revolutionary crises both at home
and abroad.

In his interview with the Washington Times, Schissler said that the
century-long struggle he foresees will be waged against extremists
determined to establish a global "caliphate" stretching from Spain to
Indonesia. While there are, no doubt, a small number of radical
Islamists who believe in such a crackpot scheme, this supposed threat
has nothing to do with the military interventions now being carried
out by Washington in the regions possessing the largest reserves of
petroleum in the world.

The attempt to cast the wars being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq in
religious terms has become an increasingly common refrain within the
most right-wing sections of the political establishment in Washington,
as well as within the military command. There is no doubt that this
depiction of events is aimed at solidifying a base of support for war
among a layer of Christian fundamentalists.

The most notorious example of this attempt to drum up a
religious-based "will" to wage war came to light in 2003 with press
reports of speeches delivered by Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, the
deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, to audiences
assembled by the Christian right.

Boykin repeatedly told audiences that the war was being waged by a
"Christian army" and a "Christian nation" against Islamic forces
aligned with Satan. He proclaimed that his own confidence in victory
over a Muslim foe was based on the knowledge that "my God was bigger
than his . . . my God was a real god and his was an idol." He likewise
declared that George W. Bush was "appointed by God," despite having
failed to win the majority of the votes in 2000, and indicated that he
saw himself as answerable only to God's commands.

While the general's anti-Islamic bigotry and profoundly
anti-democratic remarks provoked outrage, the Republican right and the
Bush administration leapt to his defense. The general himself asked
that a Pentagon inspector general investigate the controversy. The
result was a report that avoided the content of Boykin's remarks,
delivering only the mildest rebuke for his failure to assert that they
were his personal opinion and to clear them first with superiors.

General Boykin remains to this day the senior uniformed officer in
military intelligence and a top policy-maker in the "war on terror,"
overseeing assassination squads, illegal abductions and torture.

Schissler is not known to have delivered any similar
religious-political diatribes. His service record posted on the
Defense Department's web site does, however, include the notation that
in 1998, while climbing the promotional ladder to the Pentagon's inner
circle, the Air Force officer found time to complete a master's degree
in "pastoral studies."

The politically protected ravings of Boykin as well as the expressions
of concern by Schissler that "politics"—that is, the real will of the
people—not be allowed to interfere with the official will to wage war
are indicative of the right-wing and authoritarian tendencies that are
being nurtured by American militarism and colonial-style occupation.

In the end, imposing upon the American people the "will" to sustain a
100-year war could be achieved only by dictatorial means similar to
those utilized by the Nazis in their attempt to generate the "will" of
the German people to sustain a 1,000-year Reich.

The danger posed by such right-wing tendencies is not that they have
any substantial base of popular support, but that they emerge under
conditions of deepening social and political polarization in which the
opposition of American working people to war and repression can find
no genuine expression within the political establishment and its
two-party system.

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Disappearances new form of abuse: HRCP
By Jamal Shahid
http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top3.htm&date=20070209


ISLAMABAD, Feb 8: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has
accused the government and its security apparatus of exercising a
`horrific pattern' of forced disappearances of its opponents, and
described it as a `new form of human rights abuse' in the country.

The commission's annual report for 2006 launched on Thursday described
the forced disappearances `a highly disturbing trend', which was
increasing at an alarming rate. Citizens across the country were being
picked up by intelligence agencies and taken to be detained in secret
locations while some had been handed over to the US, the report said.

Spread over 340 pages, the report details the rights issues in 18
separate categories, ranging from law and administration of justice to
law and order situation, rape and other atrocities against women,
rights of children, restrictions of political participation, rights of
labour, and issues of health and environment.

However, the report's real emphasis was on the deteriorating situation
in Balochistan and Waziristan, the use of military to curb political
and religious militancy, and abduction and disappearance of opponents,
mainly from the violence-hit areas.

According to the report, the trend of organised disappearances started
around 2001 and since then at least 400 persons had gone missing.
However, the commission feared the figure was only `the tip of the
iceberg'.

The report said people suspected of being involved in attacks on the
president, the Baloch nationalist struggle and those struggling for
the rights of Sindhi people were frequently targeted. The largest
number of disappearances, it said, was reported in Balochistan.

Prolonged and illegal detention and torture and humiliation of the
detainees were growing problems, the report said.

Condemning the breakdown of law and order, the HRCP chairperson Asma
Jahangir said that most of the disappeared were not suspected
militants but government opponents. "Torture of the missing persons is
the rule rather than exception."

She said that the HRCP had filed a petition on behalf of the families
of the missing persons. "But many are too frightened to come forward
and talk about their relatives kidnapped by intelligence agencies."

HRCP's secretary-general Iqbal Haider said that despite public
protests and demand by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, the whereabouts
of hundreds of missing people still remained unknown.

Sketching a depressing picture of the "unfortunate state of affairs",
Mr Iqbal said there was no mechanism or institution to redress human
rights abuses.

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Why Israel Overestimates Iran
By Danny Kampf
Wednesday, February 7 2007
http://www.dailycolonial.com/go.dc?p=3&s=3787


There's been much blathering in Washington as of late about what
should be done with a nuclear Iran. The current thinking seems
dominated by two not-so-opposing factions: The hawks and the hawks
light. Not surprisingly, this heavy handed chorus has managed to
reduce the public debate into a question of whether we want to use
air-strikes or boots on the ground when, and not if, we hit Iran. Why?
Because it is taken as a fact that a nuclear armed Iran will move to
strike Israel.

Since Tehran made its intentions to acquire nuclear weapons so
obviously apparent to the rest of the world, referrals to Iran as an
"existential threat" have become fairly ubiquitous in the Israeli
press. This final assertion never seems to be challenged in the media,
and it is repeated ad nauseam as a justification for military action
against Iran. Yet it is wildly over exaggerated.

The only way Iran could pose an "existential" threat to Israel in any
way that would differentiate itself from the current, apparently
non-existential threat is if Iran nuked Israel. But why would Iran
want to commit national suicide? If it ever launched a nuclear attack
on Israel (the Middle East's sole nuclear power) that is exactly what
it would be doing. Presumably, the same logic for nuclear deterrence –
the universally acknowledged principle of mutually assured destruction
– that applies to every other nuclear-armed nation in the world would
similarly apply to Iran as well. There is no reason to think that Iran
would somehow wield this power with a totally unprecedented disregard
for the destruction a retaliatory strike would bring upon its own country.

But Iran is different, we are told, and not susceptible to the
politics of realism because Ahmadinejad and the mullahs are religious
fanatics who care less about this life than they do about the next
one. Through this lens, a mushroom cloud looks less like the end of
existence and more like a gateway to heaven. Plus, it doesn't hurt
that Ahmadinejad never seems to miss an opportunity to call for
Israel's destruction. So why shouldn't this threat be taken at face
value? The fact is that Tehran's leaders, pious as they are, are
ultimately being disingenuous.

Throughout their personal histories, Ahmadinejad and his allies must
have been confronted with countless opportunities to throw their lives
away in defense of Islam. Yet all of them are still around. Why is
that? Is it because they weren't devout enough? Is it because they're
just waiting for the right time to cast down their lives in the name
of Allah? Or is it because they, like all men of their ilk, harbor
political ambitions that distinctly require them to be alive to come
to fruition?

I'm not saying that Ahmadinejad is not a devoted believer in his
particularly medieval brand of metaphysics; it's just that somewhere
deep down inside, Ahmadinejad and the mullahs who hold his reins know
that they are as wedded to life as they are to ideology, and that
given a tug-of-war between the two, they are more than willing to deal
with the cognitive dissonance required to come down on the side of the
former.

It is not the case that Iran doesn't threaten Israel at all, it is
just that this is not a threat of "existential" importance. Few like a
bellicose neighbor, and no one likes a bellicose neighbor with nukes.
But let's get real; even with nuclear weapons, Iran just doesn't have
the capacity to credibly threaten Israel's existence.


Danny Kampf is a sophomore majoring in political science. A
self-admitted liberal, Kampf is increasingly exploring the politics of
moderation and realism. Taking issues one-at-a-time, his interests lie
in trying to divorce himself from ideology in favor of pragmatic
solutions. His two biggest influences are Fareed Zakaria and Andrew
Sullivan. He is the quintessential self-hating liberal.

===

Iranian Mortar Rounds Found in Iraq?
by Steven D
Mon Feb 12th, 2007
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2007/2/12/8822/67192


The Telegraph (UK) is reporting that 81 mm mortar shells of Iranian
manufacture were captured by Iraqi police January 13, 2007. A
photograph of one of the the shells is shown with the markings "81 MM"
and "3-2006" on it. Here's the photograph:

What's wrong about this picture? Several things. The absence of dating
using the Iranian calendar for one thing. The use of the Roman
alphabet for the markings on the shell, rather than the use of Farsi,
for another. You see, in the past, Iranian armaments that have been
captured or found had markings on them which were printed in Farsi
(which uses a form of the Arabic alphabet) such as these from 1997:

...However, a significant portion of newer ordnance originated in
Iran, as indicated by Farsi markings stenciled onto it. This included
large quantities of G-3 assault rifles, landmines, and mortar
ammunition. [...]

No. 4 Pedal Mines (Iran—green plastic with Farsi writing, shoe mines)
[...]

[M]ost of the equipment the SAF captured from Eritrean Islamic Jihad
in the Togan area of northeastern Sudan in April 1997 bore Farsi
writing and was Iranian-made, from boots to light weapons.

Isn't that odd? Iranian armaments, including mortar shells, have
markings in the Farsi language on them when discovered in the Sudan in
1997, but Iranian arms alleged to have killed 170 US soldiers in Iraq
have no Farsi markings on them when captured in 2007. Even odder, most
US troop deaths (by far) have occurred in the Sunni areas of Iraq
(e.g., Anbar province, around Tikrit, West Baghdad), but these Iranian
arms are supposedly being delivered to Shi'a militias. What could
possibly explain this seemingly counterintuitive inconsistency? It
couldn't possibly be a disinformation campaign by the Pentagon (like
the one employed by the US Military in the run-up to the Iraq
invasion) targeted at generating support for a military strike against
Iran among the American public, could it?

The strategy is clear. Define a target as evil. Find some kind of
connection with weapons of mass destruction---chemical, biological,
nuclear---or just to low-tech "terrorism," draw some sort of Hitler
parallel and get strategically placed press people on board. Plant the
stories, then cite them as though they were troubling news to you.
Then cite "intelligence"---this mystical reservoir of wisdom
restricted to the elite (rather like the gnosis of ancient mystery
religions)---trusting that the foolish masses will accept it on faith,
at least until the job's all done and the noble lies are inevitably
exposed. You can always scapegoat the intelligence community for any
errors. It can't, by its very nature, resist that scapegoating.
Like Fox News, I only report. I'll let you come to your own conclusions.

===

ISRAELI REALISM ON IRAN BELIES THREAT RHETORIC
Gareth Porter
Inter Press Service
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36369


WASHINGTON, Jan 30 (IPS) - When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
declared last week at the Herzliya conference that Israel could not
risk another "existential threat" such as the Nazi holocaust, he was
repeating what has become the dominant theme in Israel's campaign
against Iran -- that it cannot tolerate an Iran with the technology
that could be used to make nuclear weapons, because Iran is
fanatically committed to the physical destruction of Israel.

The internal assessment by the Israeli national security apparatus of
the Iranian threat, however, is more realistic than the government's
public rhetoric would indicate.

Since Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in August
2005, Israel has effectively exploited his image as someone who is
particularly fanatical about destroying Israel to develop the theme of
Iran's threat of a "second holocaust" by using nuclear weapons.

But such alarmist statements do not accurately reflect the strategic
thinking of the Israeli national security officials. In fact, Israelis
began in the early 1990s to use the argument that Iran is irrational
about Israel and could not be deterred from a nuclear attack if it
ever acquired nuclear weapons, according to an account by independent
analyst Trita Parsi on Iranian-Israeli strategic relations to be
published in March. Meanwhile, the internal Israeli view of Iran,
Parsi told IPS in an interview, "is completely different."

Parsi, who interviewed many Israeli national security officials for
his book, says, "The Israelis know that Iran is a rational regime, and
they have acted on that presumption." His primary evidence of such an
Israeli assessment is that the Israelis purchased Dolphin submarines
from Germany in 1999 and 2004 which have been reported to be capable
of carrying nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

It is generally recognised that the only purpose of such
cruise-missile equipped submarines would be to deter an enemy from a
surprise attack by having a reliable second strike capability.

Despite the fact that Israel has long been known to possess at least
100 nuclear weapons, Israeli officials refuse to discuss their own
nuclear capability and how it relates to deterring Iran.

Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Francona, a former Pentagon
official who visited Israel last November, recalls that Israeli
officials uniformly told his group of eight U.S. military analysts
they believed Iran was "perfectly willing to launch a first strike
against Israel," if it obtained nuclear weapons.

But when they were asked about their own nuclear capabilities in
general, and the potentially nuclear-armed submarine fleet in
particular, Francona says, the Israelis would not comment.

In fact, Israeli strategic specialists do discuss how to deter Iran
among themselves. An article in the online journal of a hard-line
think-tank, the Ariel Centre for Policy Research, in August 2004
revealed that "one of the options that has been considered should Iran
publicly declare itself to have nuclear weapons is for Israel to put
an end to what is called its policy of 'nuclear ambiguity' or 'opacity'."

The author, Shalom Freedman, said that in light of Israel's
accumulation of "over 100 nuclear weapons" and its range of delivery
systems for them, even if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons within
a few years, the "tremendous disproportion between the strength of
Israel and an emergent nuclear Iran should serve as a deterrent."

Even after Ahmadinejad's election in mid-2005, a prominent Israeli
academic and military expert has insisted that Israel can still deter
a nuclear Iran. In two essays published in September and October 2005,
Dr. Ephraim Kam, deputy head of the Jaffee Centre for Strategic
Studies at Tel Aviv University and a former analyst for the Israeli
Defence Forces, wrote that Iran had to assume that any nuclear attack
on Israel would result in very serious U.S. retaliation.

Therefore, even though he regarded a nuclear Iran as likely to be more
aggressive, Kam concluded it is "doubtful whether Iran would actually
exercise a nuclear bomb against Israel -- or any other country --
despite its basic rejection of Israel's existence."

Kam also pointed out that the election of a radical like Ahmadinejad
would not change the fundamental Iranian policy toward Israel, because
even the more moderate government of President Mohammad Khatami had
already held the position that the solution to the Palestinian problem
should be the establishment of a Palestinian state in place of the
Zionist Israeli state. Furthermore, he wrote, Iran's basic motive for
aspiring to nuclear weapons in the first place had not been to destroy
Israel but to deter Saddam Hussein's Iraq and later to deter the
United States and Israel.

Despite the existence of a more realistic appraisal of the actual
power balance and its implications for Iranian behaviour, Israeli
officials do not see it as in their interest to even hint at the
possibility of deterring a nuclear Iran. "They don't talk about that,"
Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born analyst based in Tel Aviv, told IPS,
"because they don't want to admit the possibility of defeat on Iran's
nuclear programme. They want to stop it."

Occasionally, Israeli officials do let slip indications that their
fears of Iran are less extreme than the "second holocaust" rhetoric
would indicate. Last November, Deputy Defence Minister Ephraim Sneh
explained candidly in an interview with the Jerusalem Post that the
fear was not that such weapons would be launched against Israel but
that the existence of nuclear capability would interfere with Israel's
recruitment of new immigrants and cause more Israelis to emigrate to
other countries.

Sneh declared that Ahmadinejad could "kill the Zionist dream without
pushing a button. That's why we must prevent this regime from
obtaining nuclear capability at all costs."

Israel's frequent threat to attack Iran's nuclear facilities is also
at odds with its internal assessment of the feasibility and
desirability of such an attack. It is well understood in Israel that
the Iranian situation does not resemble that of Iraq's Osiris nuclear
reactor, which Israeli planes bombed in 1981. Unlike Iraq's programme,
which was focused on a single facility, the Iranian nuclear programme
is dispersed; the two major facilities, Natanz and Arak, are hundreds
of miles apart, making it very difficult to hit them simultaneously.

In mid-2005, Yossi Melman, who covers intelligence issues for the
daily newspaper Haaretz, wrote, "According to military experts in
Israel and elsewhere, the Israel Air Force does not have the strength
that is needed to destroy the sites in Iran in a preemptive strike..."
He added that that the awareness of that reality was "trickling down
to the military-political establishment".

Javedanfar, Melman's co-author in the forthcoming book on Iran's
nuclear programme, agrees. "There is no way the Israelis are going to
do it on their own," he said.

That is also the conclusion reached by Francona and other Air Force
analysts. Francona recalls that he and two retired U.S. Air Force
generals on the trip to Israel told Israeli Air Force generals they
believe Israel does not have the capability to destroy the Iranian
nuclear targets, mainly because it would require aerial refueling in
hostile airspace. "The Israeli officers recognised they have a
shortfall in aerial refueling," Francona says.

In the end, the Israelis know they are dependent on the United States
to carry out a strike against Iran. And the United States is the
target of an apocalyptic Israeli portrayal of Iran that diverges from
the internal Israeli assessment.


*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst.
His latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road
to War in Vietnam", was published in June 2005.

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Today I'm the only one in class...
By Samir Ibraheem
IRIN
29 January 2007
http://electroniciraq.net/news/2868.shtml


BAGHDAD - I'm 11 years old and an only son. I'm a pupil at
Mansour Primary School in Baghdad. Lately, I have been
feeling very lonely in my class. This week, I was the only
student in class because all my classmates didn't come to
school for various reasons.

Since last September, three of my classmates have been
kidnapped and two have been killed. One was murdered with
his family at home and the other was a victim of a bomb
explosion a month ago. I remember one day when I was
leaving school, four men pulled up in a car and kidnapped
Khadija, one of my friends. She was only 10.

The others have either fled to Jordan and Syria with their
families or their relatives have prohibited them from
coming to school for fear that something might happen to
them.

I live very close to my school. I can walk there in two
minutes. My mother takes me there and picks me up every
day. She prays all the way to school and all the way back
and tells me not to be scared. She says that at least I'm
studying and one day I can be an important man and leave
Iraq forever.

Every time something happens to a child from my school,
the next day all classes are empty and they stay empty for
at least a week. Families and teachers get scared and
desperate.

I remember one day when I was leaving school, four men
pulled up in a car and kidnapped Khadija, one of my
friends. She was only 10. I cried for days on end fearing
she was going to be killed. Her parents sold their house
and car to pay the ransom money and then she was released.
But she was so weak that she had to be hospitalized for
two weeks.

Now she and her family are in Jordan. I miss her, but I
know it is better for all of them.

The only thing that makes me afraid is that if they kidnap
me, I know I'll be killed. My family has no money to pay a
ransom. We don't have a house, a car or any other goods to
sell. So for sure I could be another victim of the terror
that we live with but I have faith that God will protect
me.

Most of our teachers have left the school. I heard that
some of them have traveled abroad and others stopped
working for security reasons on the insistence of their
families. I miss them all. I miss the days when we used to
run in our school and go home on our own, not worried by
the violence.

This week, I asked my mum to keep me at home too because I
was the only child in class but she insisted that I go to
school. I'm scared but I have to obey my mother.

We were 21 students and today I'm the only one in class.

When people ask me if I have hopes that everything will be
fixed and we will have security again, I answer that I
don't because the violence is increasing every day and I
continue to lose friends.

I cannot study any more. I don't have the concentration
and the teachers don't give us lessons as before. What I
study these days is material that I learned two years ago.
I'm not sure that if I study like that I'll turn out to be
that important man who my mother believes I'm going to be.

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Dear friends,


Below is disturbing information we received from Iraq. The execution
of three Iraqi women: Wassan, Zainab and Liqa, without a fair trial,
is expected to take place on March 3.

This is the signal of the opening of an era of "legal" executions in
Iraq. It is a horrible proof that the illegal executions of Saddam
Hussein and other Baath leaders were not "isolated" or "exceptional"
incidents, but that they laid the groundwork for employment by the
Iraqi ruling clique of "judicially sanctioned" executions as a
legitimate "measure" against those who oppose their puppet regime and
the illegal US occupation.

We believe it is vitally important to protest and take action, to
compel the Iraqi authorities to revoke this sentence. Do appeal to
relevant institutions and ask them to intervene to stop this.


Let us all raise our voices. NOW !!


Abdul Ilah Al Bayaty, Member BRussells Tribunal advisory committee.

Ayse Berktay, World Tribunal on Iraq organiser.

Dirk Adriaensens, Member BRussells Tribunal executive committee.

Hana Al Bayaty,  Member BRussells Tribunal executive committee.


The Supreme Iraqi Criminal Court sentenced the death by hanging of
three women, on charges of complicity in the murder of Iraqi police
loyal to the occupation in Baghdad and participation in what the Court
considered Terrorism.


News from a source in the Iraqi Lawyers Union :

The three women are:

- Wassan  Talib  (31 years old). The charge is killing five police
officers through the participation with gunmen in an attack on police.

- Zainab Fadhil (25 years). The charge is attacking a joint patrol of
the Iraqi army and the the American army  last September with her
husband and Her cousin in Baghdad.

- Liqa Omar Muhammad (26 years old). The charge is the participation
with her husband and her brother in the killing of an official from
the Green Zone.

Walid Hayali, lawyer and member of The Iraqi Lawyers Union, said the
Court issued a ruling against the three women under item 156, without
allowing them to engage counsel from a lawyer.

The lawyer asks the whole world to move to stop the execution of the
three women and to Condemn the Court's ruling.

He points out that Liqa Omar Muhammad gave birth to her daughter in
prison a few months ago and is still nursing the child, and

Wassan  Talib has a three-year-old daughter.  He explained that the
three women are now in "Kazimiah prison" in the Kazimiyah region.


The execution is scheduled for 3 March and the trial was not revised
in appeal as there was no lawyer to ask for this.

===

From: Ian Douglas

We hope all endorse, distribute widely, organize and act. Please reply
to hanaalbayaty @ gmail.com


Hanging the womb of Iraq
Stop the executions!
14 February 2007
Statement by Hana Albayaty, Ian Douglas, Abdul Ilah Albayaty, Iman
Saadoon, Dirk Adriaensens and Ayse Berktay


Wassan Talib, 31 years old, Zainab Fadhil, 25 years old, and 'Liqa
Omar Muhammad, 26 years old, face imminent execution in Iraq, all
charged with "offences against the public welfare" by a government
that cannot even provide electricity but fills the streets with dead
bodies. All are in Baghdad's Al-Kadhimiya Prison. Two have small
children beside them. The 1-year-old daughter of Liqa was born in
prison. All women deny the charges for which they face hanging.

Paragraph 156 of the Iraqi Penal Code, under which they were judged,
reads: "Any person who wilfully commits an act with intent to violate
the 'independence of the country or its unity or the security of its
territory and that act by its nature,' leads to such violation is
punishable by death." Iraq's "puppet" government charges these women
with its own crimes.

None of the three women was permitted to see a lawyer. The trials to
which they were subject are illegal under international law. All three
are prisoners of war with protected rights under the Third Geneva
Convention. Their execution would not only be illegal and summary, it
would be utterly immoral. Civilization around the world reviles the
death penalty while Iraq's feudal leaders make a public spectacle of
executions.

In a country where it is evident there is no state or judicial system,
the occupation and its puppet government use, as all repressive
regimes in history, fake tribunals to exterminate those who oppose
them. No legal judgement can be issued while there isn't the civilised
conditions of due process, at least the presence and security of lawyers.

Iraqi women are testament to the life of the nation of Iraq. By
contrast, the US-installed government, in its backwardness, imposes
only a culture of death. Whereas Iraq was the most progressive state
in the region for women's rights, with the US invasion protective
legislation was cancelled. The United States and its local
conspirators, in creating hundreds of thousands of widows and reducing
life in Iraq to a struggle for bare survival, have placed women in the
crosshairs and now on the gallows.

Women are always the first and last victims of war. We celebrate the
numberless acts of resistance of Iraqi women, whether their resilience
in the face of a culture of rape, torture and murder by US and Iraqi
forces, their fortitude in continuing to give life amid
state-sponsored genocide, their dignity as they try to maintain a
semblance of normality for their children and families, their courage
in burying their husbands, sons, daughters or brothers, or in direct
action against an illegal and failed military occupation.

We demand the release of Wassan, Zainab and Liqa and all political
prisoners in Iraq. We call upon all persons, organisations,
parliaments, workers, syndicates and states to withdraw recognition
from this pro-occupation, sectarian Iraqi government. We call for
immediate protest in front of every Iraqi embassy worldwide. There is
no honour in murdering women. Occupation is the highest form of
dictatorship. It is not these three women who should be prosecuted; it
is this government and its foreign paymaster.


Hana Albayaty
Ian Douglas
Abdul Ilah Albayaty
Iman Saadoon
Dirk Adriaensens
Ayse Berktay

===

Statement by Abdul Ilah Albayaty
11 February 2007


Wassan Talib, 31 years old, Zainab Fadhil, 25 years old, and Liqa Omar
Mohammed, 26 years old, accused of belonging to and participating in
the Iraqi resistance, summarily judged in a simulacra of a trial, in
the absence of lawyers, will be executed 3 March 2007 in Baghdad.

Lawyers, persuaded that your very presence is the guarantee of justice
Syndicates and workers who celebrate the international feast of 1 May
in memory of the American workers judged on false accusations

Religious of all religions who carry in you the suffering of Christ,
crucified after a false trial

Marxists revolted by the false trials fabricated by powers like the
one of Rosa Luxembourg

Militants conscious that this could happen to you whatever is your cause

Defenders of human rights, in particular the right to fair trial

Women who give life and of whom the flesh shakes in front of the
atrocity of such executions

Arabs, proud and in solidarity with the sacrifices of the Iraqi people
against the barbarity of the occupation and its puppet government

Civilised beings, human beings who refuse the so-called "legal"
murders perpetrated by states

ALL, let's unite ourselves, raise our voices to scream our
indignation, refuse the horrors and the regression of our
civilisation, and prevent the assassinations of Wassan, Zainab and Liqa.


Abdul Ilah Albayaty

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Shoddy Reporting of Roxbury Mosque Conflict
Overview plus commentary by Joachim Martillo - thorsprovoni@...


ThorsProvoni@... wrote:

Hi,

Only the Globe article is really bad. I consider the AP version the
most journalistically appropriate. My comments are in brackets.


I notice both here and, this morning, on the NPR report, that the
figure of $175,000 is used, set against the $401.000 fair-market-value
assessment, which is the way the David Project always liked to portray
it.  There were other considerations -- the harzardous-waste cleanup
of the site, carried out by the ISB, the maintenance for 10 years of
two playgrounds, and the sevices to Roxbury Commjnity College -- that
brought the actual figue up to the $401,000 of the evaluation.  The
Daivd Project later produced a hokey valuation of something over two
millian, and claimed the ISB got the propert7 at a 91% discount, but
that was all concocted out of the air.

===

The AP article below would have been acceptable when I worked as a
reporter.


Judge dismisses lawsuit over mosque site
February 25, 2007
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/02/25/judge_dismiss\
es_lawsuit_over_mosque_site/


BOSTON --A Suffolk Superior Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit that
claimed it was unconstitutional for the city of Boston to sell land at
a discount price to developers of an Islamic center.

The Islamic Society of Boston is building a 70,000-square-foot mosque
-- the largest in New England -- on a Roxbury parcel it bought from
the city in May 2003.

Judge Sandra Hamlin dismissed Boston resident James Policastro's suit,
which argued that the Boston Redevelopment Authority violated the
constitutional separation of church and state by giving the Islamic
Society a below-market deal.

[The article should have been more explicit that it is a federal
constitutional issue because the Massachusetts constitution has no
equivalent of the establishment clause.]

The judge ruled that Policastro had no legal standing because he did
not file his suit within 30 days of the land sale. He filed suit in
September 2004.

"Policastro's challenge must fail, as it is time-barred by statute,"
Hamlin said. "He has no other legal standing to challenge the sale."

The Islamic Society paid $175,000 for the 45,000-square-foot parcel
that was assessed at $401,000. The group agreed to easily achievable
public benefits -- including maintaining a park, and giving lectures
at Roxbury Community College -- as part of the sale.

Hamlin's ruling said Policastro missed opportunities to challenge the
sale.

"Land sales of this nature ... generally provide for extensive notice
and opportunity for public participation and comment," she wrote.
"Such a process was followed in this matter. Policastro declined to
participate in any way before filing suit."

The city took the parcel by eminent domain in the 1970s. The BRA
selected the Muslim Council of Boston as the developer in 1992, and
switched the developer to the Islamic Society of Boston in 1998. Many
public hearings have been held to discuss the project, Hamlin's ruling
stated.

[As I have pointed out, the BRA first announced considering a Muslim
group as developer in 1989.]

The Islamic Society hopes to complete the $14 million first stage of
the project by September.

Policastro said in published reports that his lawyer may appeal the
ruling.

===

The Herald article has more serious problems.


Judge tosses mosque suit vs. Boston
By Laura Crimaldi
Sunday, February 25, 2007
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=184840


A Suffolk Superior Court judge has thrown out a lawsuit filed by a
Roxbury man who claimed the city of Boston violated the separation of
church and state by cutting a land deal with the developers of a $22
million Islamic center.

      In an eight-page judgment dated Feb. 16, Judge Sandra L. Hamlin
ruled that James C. Policastro failed to file his objections to the
project within the 30-day time period allowed by law.

      "By the time the suit was filed, construction was well under way.
My client had spent and committed to spend millions of dollars," said
Albert L. Farrah Jr., an attorney for the project's developer, the
Islamic Society of Boston.

     "To have allowed Mr. Policastro to come in at that point and upset
what has been in the works for so many years would have been chaotic,"
he said.

      Policastro's suit, which also named the Boston Redevelopment
Authority, claimed that the city sold a land parcel to the Islamic
Society for its mosque at below market value, and as a result,
unconstitutionally subsidized a religion - Islam.

[The article should have stated whether the lawsuit challenged the
sale under the state or federal constitution.]

      "What they've done is they've thrown my case out on a
technicality," Policastro said. "This isn't about Islam. It's about
constitutional rights."

[The author should have explained the meaning of the terms adjective,
substantive and technical because this quotation makes it seem like a
technical (really adjective) decision is somehow less just than a
substantive decision. Adams won the Amistad case on a technical and
adjective ruling, and no one except the Queen of Spain called that
decision unjust.]

     Policastro said he plans to press forward with a public records
request he's made to the redevelopment agency for more documents
concerning the land deal.

[How? Further lawsuit?  FOIA request? Was that really Policastro's
request. I thought it came from the David Project in the defamation
lawsuits.]

     The Islamic Society, which halted work on the mosque six months
ago for monetary reasons, plans to resume construction soon, said
interfaith coordinator Jessica Masse. The group recently raised almost
$2.3 million for the work, $1.3 million of which came from the October
sale of office space in Cambridge, she said.

===

[The Globe article is probably libelous and probably merits a call to
the New York Times lawyers. ]


Lawsuit over mosque site is dismissed
By Stephen Kurkjian, Globe Staff
February 25, 2007
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/02/25/lawsuit_over_\
mosque_site_is_dismissed/


A Suffolk Superior Court judge dismissed a lawsuit that contended the
Boston Redevelopment Authority's sale of a parcel of land in Roxbury
for a price significantly below its appraised value to the Islamic
Society of Boston violated the constitutional separation between
religious groups and the state.

[Why significant rather than discount as in the AP article? $175K is
slightly less than $401K. I buy stuff at just under 50% all the time.]

Judge Sandra L. Hamlin ruled that James C. Policastro of Mission Hill
did not have legal standing to challenge the sale because he did not
file his lawsuit within 30 days of the sale, which the Legislature set
as the BRA's deadline for appealing the agency's decisions. Policastro
filed his suit on Sept. 28, 2004, more than 16 months after the BRA
sold the parcel. The sale price for the parcel was $175,000, and the
society spent another $43,820 to improve the land. It had been
appraised at more than $400,000.

[That means the ISB spent $218,820 or more than half the valuation of
$401,00. It is hardly an unusual discounting.]

The Islamic Society planned to build the largest mosque in New England
on the site, along with a school and a cultural center, but completion
of the project has been delayed by funding problems and controversy
over extremist remarks by two former officials of the society.

[THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH IS REALLY BAD. THE GLOBE IS SUPPOSED TO REPORT
THE NEWS NOT MAKE JUDGMENTS WHETHER THE COMMENTS OF THE DIRECTORS ARE
EXTREMIST. IF THE GLOBE/TIMES DOES NOT RETRACT, THE ISB MAY HAVE TO
SUE KURKJIAN AND THE GLOBE BECAUSE ALLOWING THIS REPORT TO STAND
UNCHALLENGED MIGHT TEND TO SUPPORT THE DEFENDANTS IN THE DEFAMATION
LAWSUITS.]

In her decision, Hamlin rejected Policastro's contention that he was
not bound by the BRA's deadline but instead should be afforded the
court's customary three-year period to bring the suit because he was
contesting the agency's decision on constitutional grounds.

[Federal or state grounds? If federal which it must be because of lack
of establishment clause, Policastro is in the wrong court. The lack of
establishment clause in the Massachusetts constitution gives the
proceeding the flavor of a vexatious suit.]

Hamlin, however, said she was basing her ruling on a 1988 Supreme
Judicial Court decision that held that taxpayers were limited to the
30-day period to appeal decisions of redevelopment agencies.

In an interview yesterday, Policastro said that because he was not
paying for the lawsuit himself, the decision whether to appeal would
be up to his lawyer, Samuel Perkins of Boston. Perkins said yesterday
that he would appeal. Policastro and Perkins both declined to say who
was paying for the lawsuit.

[Interesting. This comment makes the Policastro case look somewhat
sinister. I have been wondering who pays the lawyer for a long time.
It makes me think that the documents obtained via discovery only
disclosed part of the conspiracy, and then I must wonder whether the
Globe might be linked into the case in some way once Policastro's
sugar daddy is identified.]

Perkins said Policastro remains determined to find out why the BRA was
so intent on selling the 45,000-square-foot parcel, located in Roxbury
Crossing, to the Islamic Society. A related suit filed by the David
Project, a nonprofit Jewish advocacy group, to force the BRA to
release all documents related to the sale, remains open.

[The David Project does not describe itself as a Jewish advocacy group
but as an Israeli advocacy group. I am uncomfortable from a
journalistic standpoint that the above paragraph in which a lawyer
discusses "intent" is indirect discourse.  The reporter should have
used a direct quotation.]

"The city isn't getting full payment for the land, and there are a lot
of things that we need to be aware of that we are not," Policastro
said yesterday.

A spokeswoman for the Islamic Society of Boston praised Hamlin's
decision in a statement.

"We are very pleased that the court put an end to the legal campaign
against the Islamic Society of Boston, which is part of a greater
effort by those seeking to oppose area Muslims from building a place
of worship," said Jessica Masse, the society's inter faith
coordinator. "Part of Mr. Policastro's suit demanded that the ISB
return the land and the mosque be torn down. Now this threat is gone.
It is full steam ahead now -- we will see our mosque built to completion."

[Even if it were true that the ISB had underpaid, wouldn't it be more
reasonable for them to simply be asked to pay the difference? -WVNS]

Albert L. Farrah Jr., a lawyer for the Islamic Society, said Hamlin's
decision was a proper one that would discourage legal objections to
redevelopment projects long after contractors had broken ground on the
jobs.

About $12 million has been spent on the project so far, and Masse said
yesterday that the Islamic Society hoped to raise another $2 million
to complete construction of the mosque and part of the school in time
to open by the beginning of the Ramadan season in September.

[This actually looks fair.  3 paragraphs for Policastro and Perkins.
3 paragraphs for Masse and Farrah with the ISB last.]

Stephen Kurkjian can be reached via kurkjian @ globe.com.

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USA Today says Saudi Arabia is leading outreach campaign to Israel in
bid to dent Iranian influence in Middle East


Saudi Arabia reaching out to Israel
02.12.07
Ynet: Israel News
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3363991,00.html


Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have been sending overtures to
Israel and US Jews in a campaign aimed at countering Iran 's rising
sway in the region and denting its nuclear program, USA Today reported
Monday.

Saudi Arabia is keen on shoring up its influence in the Middle East by
brokering a unity deal between rival Palestinian factions and defusing
tensions between the Hizbullah-led opposition and the western-backed
government in Lebanon. Preventing Iraq from sliding into an all-out
civil war is also on the agenda.

The most evident sign of rapprochement came in the form of the
attendance of Saudi Arabia's outgoing ambassador to the US to a
ceremony in Washington held by American Jewish organizations in honor
of a State Department official appointed to fight anti-Semitism.

William Daroff of the United Jewish Communities told USA Today that
Prince Turki al-Faisal's presence at the reception was "unprecedented."

The paper reported that Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates have made
similar outreach gestures towards Israel and American Jews.

US blessing

The overtures have been blessed by the US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice who has said that six Gulf states, alongside Egypt,
Jordan and Israel form a new moderate alignment to counter Iran and
Syria, whom Washington accuses of supporting extremist groups like
Hizbullah and Hamas.

Jamal Kashoggi, an aide to Prince Turki, told USA Today that the
overtures were part of efforts to revive the long-stalled peace
process between Israel and the Palestinians.


Judith Kipper, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign
Relations, told USA Today, "What really concerns pro-US Arab states is
that Iran is setting the political agenda in the region."

Clandestine contacts between Israel and Gulf states were reported
decades ago but have never been so public.

Vice Premier Shimon Peres met with the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin
Khalifa al-Tani after holding a televised debate with Qatari students
in Doha.


In September last year it was reported that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
met with Saudi National Security Advisor Bandar bin Sultan in Jordan.

The United Arab Emirates recently invited a delegation from the
Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations.

Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania are the only three of the 21 Arab states
to recognize Israel.

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To "Win" the War, Tax America's Rich
Nicholas von Hoffman
2/5/2007
http://www.newyorkobserver.com/20070205/20070205_Nicholas_von_Hoffman_politics_n\
icholasvonhoffman.asp


In Iraq and in America, frustration turns to anger and despair.

In America, the frustration grows even among those least engaged in
what is going on. The years pass and nothing changes but the numbers
of the dead and wounded. They may not know that they are still being
lied to, but they see George Bush doing the Trudge and recognize it
for what it is.

The Trudge is the trip abroad where our officials meet the same
officials in the same rooms and walk out of them to make the same
statements they made the last time and the time before the last and
the time before that. The Trudge to China, the Trudge to Israel, the
Trudge to Egypt, to Iraq, to Afghanistan—all to no avail. One Trudge
merges into the next. In her most recent Trudge, Condi Rice announced
to a less-than-breathlessly-awaiting world that "I came here to
Ramallah, as I am going around the Middle East, to say to everyone
that the United States is deeply committed to finding ways to
accelerate progress on the road map. The road map, after all, is the
internationally recognized guide to the establishment of a two-state
solution, and we should fulfill all of its terms.

"I am also here to talk about how we can build on the momentum that is
currently in Palestinian-Israeli relations, to look at the political
horizon and to begin to show to the Palestinian people how we might
move toward the establishment of a Palestinian state …. "

These words came a few days after the United States let it be known
that it is shipping $88 million worth of guns and ammunition to Fatah,
the moderate (or obedient) Palestinian political party, to be used to
fight Hamas, the extremist (or disobedient) Palestinian political
party, which was unruly enough to win the last election in that sad
half-prison/half-Bantustan containing some 3.5 million people.

Fatah was the party of Yasir Arafat, who, while he lived, was
denounced as too corrupt and too dictatorial to be a negotiating
partner. Hamas, now denounced as a collection of Islamo-fascist
fanatics, was once the recipient of money from the Israelis, who built
it up to cancel out Fatah. What Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice are doing in
Palestine is the equal of an Iraqi government hanging. Ponder it: Here
are these millions of Palestinians, literally walled in and trapped on
what little land has yet to be stolen from them, with the United
States government shipping in guns so they can kill each other while
withholding, via the agency of Israel, everything from food to
schoolbooks. And all because the cursed Palestinians voted the Fatah
crooks out of office in favor of overly pious Hamas.

The line of Trudgers arriving in Iraq is a long one. The place is so
dangerous that most Trudgers' arrivals must be kept secret until they
have been safely stored in the Green Zone, that palace of
foreign-policy pipe dreams. Outside the Green Zone, the blood flows.
The United Nations guesses that 34,000 Iraqis died in the non-civil
war last year. Each body contained about a gallon and a half of blood.
When spilled, does that cumulatively constitute a trickle, a stream or
a river?

However fast it runs, there is nothing we can do to staunch it. The
President says that keeping up the flow on Blood River is the way to
win. The commentators say he's doing it for his legacy. We say goddamn
his legacy, but the blood continues to flow as the Trudgers keep on
trudging.

Talk is heard of trying to apply a tourniquet by impeaching Bush. If
it proved to be impossible to successfully impeach and remove a
President from office for having out-of-wedlock sex, what chance is
there of doing it for spilling blood?

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A leading expert on the insurgency clarifies who is shooting whom in
Iraq, the growing power of al-Qaida, the influence of Iran, and the
only thing left for the U.S. to do.


The Iraq insurgency for beginners
By Kevin Berger
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/02/insurgency/index1.html


March 2, 2007 | For somebody in America, Evan Kohlmann has a
remarkably intimate view of the Iraq insurgency. In 2004, he founded
GlobalTerrorAlert.com, a clearinghouse of virtually every communiqué
-- video, audio, Internet, printed -- issued by insurgent groups in
Iraq. For three years, Kohlmann has pored through every one of them,
with the help of Arabic translators, and emerged with a clear-eyed
view of who is fighting whom in Iraq and why. Given his insights,
Kohlmann has been put to work as a consultant by the U.S. Department
of Defense, the Department of Justice, the FBI and the CIA.
Spending time in Kohlmann's archives is an extraordinary experience.
It strips away the cloudy myths of the insurgency steamed up by U.S.
politicians and pundits and leaves you with a bracing portrait of
roving insurgent groups, more like neighborhood gangs, with their own
identities and insignias, progressively growing more violent. I wanted
to talk to Kohlmann for the simple reason that as much as I follow the
news about the Iraq war, I have always felt slightly frustrated at not
knowing who the enemy really is. Kohlmann says I'm far from alone. And
he's talking about people way over my head. "I find it tragic that
people in Washington, D.C., who are the heads of major congressional
committees, and deciding things about Iraq, don't know the difference
between Sunnis and Shiites," he says. Kohlmann insists he is
nonpartisan. He spoke from his office in New York.

Every day you look at Iraq through the lens of insurgent videos and
Internet postings. What do you see?

A picture of fundamentalism. Shiite fundamentalism clashing with Sunni
fundamentalism clashing with American fundamentalism. We have tried
imposing things upon Iraq that are totally foreign to it. Now each
side is unwilling to acknowledge the right of the other to have a
voice in what's going on. It's a disaster.

Describe the insurgency.

You have to be careful when you say "insurgency." You have to
distinguish between the Shiite militias and the actual insurgency,
which is the Sunni groups. Most of the Shiite militia activity is not
directed at the U.S., it's directed at the Sunnis. The Sunni
insurgency, meanwhile, is directed at everyone -- the U.S., the Iraqi
government, the militias.

The best way to divide it up is into three camps. You have Sunni
nationalists, initially a large portion of the insurgency; the
moderate Sunni Islamists, who use Islamic terminology and talk about
establishing a government based on Sharia law; and you have the
Salafists, like the group Al-Qaida in Iraq. To them, the fight is not
about preserving the borders of Iraq, it's about revolution, about
rebuilding something completely new on the basis of some kind of
idyllic Muslim empire.

What drives people to join the insurgency?



I've called up families of fighters and when I ask that question, the
response is always the same: Wouldn't you? They are extremely upset
about what's going on in Iraq. Some of them have a burning hatred for
the U.S. They see the U.S. as imposing its will on their countries.
Some of them have a burning desire to be a missionary and martyr for
Islam. You have people who have broken out of prison and gone to fight
in Iraq. It's now a vacuum sucking in every disaffected voice in the
region.

How has the insurgency evolved?

When the U.S. invasion began in 2003, it was mainly Baathists,
ex-Iraqi military, and Saddam loyalists. They were Iraqi nationalists,
opposed to foreign occupation, who saw Iraq as a competitor with Egypt
for the control of the Arab world. It was an issue of national pride.
Video recordings and communiqués were coming out from everybody who
had an AK-47. But as the war dragged on, some of these groups started
coalescing; others were destroyed. Only the strongest, the most
hardcore, the best financed, the people with the most training,
survived, despite airstrikes and the arrest of their senior leaders by
the U.S. military.

Do you call the insurgents "terrorists"?

No. The nationalist insurgents have done a lot of really brutal
things. But in general they are people opposed to foreign occupation.
If foreign occupation were removed, they wouldn't necessarily sit down
and shake hands with Shiites. But at the end of the day, they would
like to see a peaceful Iraq where Sunnis and Shiites can at least
coexist with each other. Terrorists are people who set off bombs in
marketplaces and deliberately kill innocent civilians for no good
reason. Any suicide bombing is a terrorist act. It's not an insurgent
act. There is no military objective in it. The vast majority of
suicide bombings that take place in Iraq are either the work of
al-Qaida or al-Qaida-linked groups. Al-Qaida are the terrorists.

Who constitutes al-Qaida in Iraq now?

It includes everyone from past conflicts in Afghanistan, Bosnia and
Chechnya to people from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, North Africa, Syria and
Jordan. A growing number of Iraqis continue to join its ranks every
day. The people in the nationalist groups feel intensely hurt to see
Iraq being torn apart. This is their homeland. And now their groups
are taking on an Islamic tinge or else becoming straight-up jihadist
groups controlled by al-Qaida. A lot of people joining the jihadist
groups are now convinced there is no future left for Iraq, that the
only future left is with al-Qaida, the only people who can protect
them is al-Qaida.

David Kilcullen, an astute counterinsurgency expert, told George
Packer in the New Yorker that what drives a lot of young men to become
jihadists is a "sense of adventure, wanting to be in the big movement
of history that's happening right now." Do you agree?

Oh, yeah. For some of these guys, it's like a safari. They see
themselves as knights of the round table. In fact, that's how al-Qaida
now sells the insurgency to them: Are you a chivalrous knight or a
coward?

Has the U.S. invasion, in fact, strengthened al-Qaida?

Definitely. And this is the depressing thing. The hardcore true
believers of al-Qaida at one time were probably 10 percent of the
insurgent groups. Now they're 50 percent. Al-Qaida is growing in
places it shouldn't. You have groups like the Islamic Army of Iraq
that have transitioned from being traditional insurgents to extremist
ones. Or take a popular insurgent group called the 1920 Revolution
Brigades. The very name of the group has a nationalist, not Islamist
meaning. And yet very recently, the head of al-Qaida's Islamic State
in Iraq issued a statement in which he said that people from the 1920
Revolution Brigade were now fighting alongside al-Qaida. The U.S. is
failing miserably at containing the spread of al-Qaida.


  Why are the more moderate Muslim groups siding with al-Qaida?
They have no choice. There's a group called the Iraqi Islamic
Resistance Front. They are far from angels. They recently released a
video of supposedly a chemical rocket attack on a U.S. base in
Samarra. But they were also the subject of a flier that was being
posted around in Ramadi. The flier was signed by al-Qaida and said the
Front was working with the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Iraqi government,
and so is no longer a legitimate group. The Front was furious. They
issued a statement saying, "We're not working with the government,
we're with you guys, so don't issue these kinds of accusations." So
there's a lot of pressure to work with al-Qaida or be targeted by it.

Does that message go out to people on the streets too?

Yeah, sure. That's the sad thing. If you work with the U.S. or the
Iraqi government, you are targeted by al-Qaida. If you work with
anyone else, you are targeted by the Shiites. It's a lose-lose
situation. And what's amazing is this slide has all happened over the
past 12 months. It's pegged to one singular event, the spark, which is
the 2006 bombing of the Askariya Mosque in Samarra. Al-Qaida never
claimed direct responsibility for it but they did call the mosque the
heretical idol and mocked the fact that the Shiites were upset about
it. Afterward, it was saying, "We've been fighting Shiite militias all
along." To broaden its appeal, it said, "We're declaring the formation
of an Islamic state in Iraq. This is no longer just an insurgent
movement. We now have a state that we're fighting for, so come and
join our cause. You're either with us or against us." Sure enough, we
started seeing more groups edging toward al-Qaida's jihadists umbrella
network.

Would al-Qaida have blown up the mosque if the U.S. wasn't in Iraq?

There wouldn't be an al-Qaida in Iraq if the U.S. wasn't there. The
story of al-Qaida in Iraq begins in 2003. We handed al-Qaida exactly
what it was looking for, a real war in the Middle East where it could
lead the way. Al-Qaida is like a virus. It goes for weak victims and
it uses conflicts to breed. Iraq gives al-Qaida a training ground, a
place to put recruits in combat. If they come back from battle, you
have people who have fought together, trained together, you have a
military unit. As Richard Clarke has said, it was almost like Osama
bin Laden was trying to vibe into George Bush the idea: "Invade Iraq,
invade Iraq." This was an opportunity they seized with amazing
alacrity. As brutal and terrifying as what they've done is, you have
to acknowledge they capitalized on an opportunity that we handed them.

What happened to the U.S. message of democracy?

It totally failed. The idea of Western-style democracy in Iraq doesn't
appeal to anyone. It was our own myth. We thought that if we get rid
of Saddam Hussein, people would come together and celebrate and
democracy would reign throughout the Middle East. The people who
thought that up are people who think Iraq is like Texas. Iraq is not
Texas. To Iraqis, tribal affiliations, religion and family mean a lot
more than saying, "I'm from Iraq." You know we're doing a bad job of
communicating our own message when we're losing the propaganda war to
people who cut other people's heads off on camera. Think about it:
People in one of the most Westernized countries in the Middle East
would rather trust al-Qaida than the United States. That's a terrible
sign of things to come.

How many total insurgents are there?
Somewhere in the tens of thousands. I would say al-Qaida, including
the various groups in its alliance, has about 15,000 people, probably
more. To give you an idea of its strength, consider that it has
sacrificed 800 of its own members in suicide bombings. We know that
through direct evidence because al-Qaida has videotaped and recorded
many of the bombings. And remember, those 15,000 are just on the Sunni
side, and constitute just one group out 10 or more.

The U.S. is fighting both the insurgency and Shiite militias, right?

Right. But the Shiites aren't a simple group either. They have divided
themselves into two factions: the pro-Arab Shiites who are Iraqi
nationalists and the pro-Iranian Shiites. There have been some
incidences involving the Shiite Mahdi Army and the U.S. and British
military. But the scope of activity between the Mahdi Army and the
U.S. military is minute. The militias pose less of a day-to-day
insurgent problem and more of a problem in the way they have
infiltrated the Iraqi police force and other Iraqi government
services, particularly the Interior Ministry, and how they arranging
the murder of Sunnis through those agencies. They are creating
instability, and that's the main reason we're going after them. It's
also the No. 1 reason why Sunnis fight and are upset: The Shiite
militias have essentially taken over the law enforcement and are using
it to murder Sunnis.

We invaded Iraq to rectify crimes by Saddam Hussein against the
Shiites, right? We wanted to bring him to justice. What the Sunni
groups are saying is, "How come there's no justice to people who are
drilling holes in people heads right now? Never mind 20 years ago."
They have a point. Dozens of bodies turn up every day in Baghdad but
nobody is paying heed to them. So the Sunnis are saying to the U.S.,
"If you guys are not going to prosecute the people responsible for
this, then we're going to take matters into our own hands." And the
Shiites are saying the same thing. They're saying, "You can't protect
us from al-Qaida's suicide bombers. Your idea of strengthening
security is to crack down on the Mahdi Army, who are the only ones
preventing suicide bombers from coming into Sadr City. Why should we
trust you? We should rely on ourselves. You can't trust anyone but
your own people." It's an arms race. It just builds up and up.

How do the militias stack up against the insurgents in number of
fighters?

There are probably fairly equal numbers of militiamen to Sunni
insurgents, if not more. Given that they're waging open war with each
other, and neither one seems to be winning outright, the answer is
that one doesn't outnumber the other to create an imbalance.

Is a surge of 21,000 new U.S. troops going to help?

I don't think any number of new troops is going to help unless we're
going to station troops on every single corner of every single street
in every single city in Iraq. The problem is the insurgents are not
just a foreign force. You're talking about such a diverse organization
and network, where even major groups, when their leaders are killed or
captured, still persist. They're self-sustaining operations.

Look at Fallujah. In late 2004, we pumped that place full of
overwhelming military force. We went block by block, street by street,
and liquidated the place. We got rid of all the insurgents. We chased
al-Qaida out of there. That was undoubtedly a military victory. But
was that the end of al-Qaida? No, it moved to other cities,
established bases in Ramadi, Samarra and Mosul. And Fallujah itself?
It was relatively stable but in the past year has started to fall
apart. And once again, insurgents are attacking Fallujah.
What do you make of the recent furor over the New Yorker that the U.S.
is taking part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and Syria and
that a "by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of
Sunni extremist groups"?

The idea that the U.S. is bolstering Sunni extremist groups in Iraq
deliberately is pretty ridiculous and sounds awfully conspiratorial to
me. Most of the Sunni groups consider themselves to be antithetical to
the very idea of the United States. Even if we were to offer to help
them for some strange reason, they would never knowingly work with us.
But I can't say the same for Saudi Arabia and other supposed U.S.
allies in the Gulf region, who don't have any soldiers in Iraq at risk
from Sunni insurgents, and who would do just about anything to curb
the expansion of Iran.

Contrary to what U.S. leaders are always saying, do you think the
insurgency, and militias, have, ultimately, won the hearts and minds
of the Iraqi people?

Unfortunately, I do. But I tell you this: Between August and December
of 2005, there was a dramatic loss of influence of al-Qaida in Iraq.
People associated with groups like the Islamic Army in Iraq,
mainstream Sunni insurgent groups, were not so sure about killing
people at a polling station. Al-Qaida was threatening to kill anyone,
Sunni or Shiite, who tried voting. But the Sunni insurgents were
saying, "No, we're not going to let the Shiites take power willingly.
We're going to try and beat them anyway we can." At the time, I could
see the various Iraq tribes saying, "Forget this, al-Qaida, maybe we
can achieve reconciliation with the Shiites." The U.S. could have
capitalized on that friction. But it didn't. A month went by, there
was bickering about the makeup of the government and the results of
the election, and we weren't hands-on enough in trying to broker out
some kind of truce. Then came the bombing of the mosque in Samarra and
it was too late.

What should the U.S. have done to capitalize on the friction at the
time after the elections?

We needed to make sure that the Shiite militias were kept in check.
And that's exactly what we didn't do. Following the bombing of the
mosque, there should have been a serious clampdown. It was a matter of
trying to stop the cycle of reprisals. But we did nothing while the
Shiites went on a rampage.


  Do you think the U.S. should withdraw from Iraq?
I'm afraid not. If we withdraw from Iraq right now, there's no doubt
what will happen. First there's going to be a war for control of
Baghdad and then once Baghdad is ripped to the ground, the battle is
going to spread across Iraq. It could potentially be like Rwanda.
Right now, hundreds of people are being killed each month, which is
awful and horrifying in itself. Imagine if that figure was 100 times
bigger. Also, if we withdraw, a widespread war is going to be entirely
our responsibility. It's easy to say it's Iraqis killing Iraqis. But
nobody else is going to see it that way. Everyone is going to affix
blame to us. We will ultimately cause a situation that forces us to
reinvade Iraq and create even more casualties. It's an awful Catch 22.

I take it you have little faith in the Iraqi government.

The Iraqi government is a joke. A very sad joke. It's beset on all
sides. It's been thoroughly infiltrated by militia groups and has no
sway whatsover among Sunnis, even moderate Sunnis. It is completely
incapable of defending itself, despite whatever bizarre claims Prime
Minister Maliki may make. If we were to withdraw, it would collapse.
An Iraqi government would only work if it included both Shiites and
Sunnis, and there are precious few Sunnis who are working in Iraqi
government, and even the ones who do are under constant threat.

So what's the solution?

We have to give people a reason to stop supporting al-Qaida. And the
only way to do that is to punish the people who are harming them. We
have to show that democratic forces can also hold up justice. Right
now, democracy for Iraqis amounts to Shiites in control of the police
force and running everything. The things that might convince Sunnis to
move back in the other direction would be a real step at trying to
reform the Iraqi police force, the Interior Ministry, and try and
bring some of the individuals in those places, which have committed
gross crimes, including crimes on the scale of Saddam Hussein, to
justice.

Does the Bush administration have the smarts to figure that out?

I'm not sure they do. I thought perhaps, in invading Iraq, they had
some long-term view that nobody else could see. But that hope faded
very quickly. The Bush administration didn't reach out to anyone
credible when they were asking about, for instance, the connections
between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. Anybody with any real knowledge
of the region would have told them there are no connections between
Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. The only people who believed that
nonsense were lunatics.

If I was going to invade Iraq, the first thing I would do is
commission the top history experts, top geographical experts, top
cultural experts, and sit them down at a table and say, "This is what
I'm thinking about doing. Is this feasible?" That was never done.
Nobody in their right mind would have taken a look at Bush's plan and
said, "Oh, yeah, that's going to work." It's not possible that it
could work. Every historic precedent works directly against Bush's
plan. I know it's easy to say, but the best solution is not to have
invaded at all.

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Long-awaited apology from PM `most important' part of settlement,
computer software engineer insists

`I wish I could buy my life back'
Tonda MacCharles
OTTAWA BUREAU
http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/175551


Maher Arar has a long-awaited formal apology finally in hand, $10.5
million and official recognition at last of his innocence.

But there is one thing he lacks.

"I wish, if there is a way, if I could buy my life back. That's my
biggest wish," said the 36-year-old computer software engineer and
father of two.

A deal to settle Arar's lawsuit was reached Jan. 19 between lawyers
for Arar and the Conservative government, approved mid-week by the
federal cabinet, and announced yesterday at a news conference by Prime
Minister Stephen Harper. The payment, believed the highest in a human
rights lawsuit, is formal redress for Canada's role – the sloppy
policing, bureaucratic foot-dragging, and malicious media leaks – in
Arar's nightmare deportation by the United States in 2002 to a year of
torture and imprisonment in Syria.

"On behalf of the government of Canada, I wish to apologize to you,
Monia Mazigh, and your family for any role Canadian officials may have
played in them terrible ordeal that all of you experienced in 2002 and
2003," Harper said, reading from the text of a written apology that
Arar's wife had insisted upon.

"I sincerely hope that these words and actions will assist you and
your family in your efforts to begin a new and hopeful chapter in your
lives."

Arar's deportation called a halt to a promising career. Since his
nightmare began, he hasn't been able to get a job in his field.

And he still remains under an American cloud, with the refusal of the
U.S. government to remove his name from its no-fly list. But for Arar,
the apology and compensation mean a fresh start, official confirmation
at last of his innocence.

Visibly relieved, Arar spoke of lost time with his wife and children,
a lost career, and his lost peace of mind.

"Is there really a price on this? I don't think so. But in a way for
me, really the compensation is a way of acknowledging my innocence and
a message the government is sending me: `Here's a way to help rebuild
your life.'"

But he added, "there's no amount of money that would compensate me for
what myself and my family have gone through. ... The most important
thing for me is the apology."

"It's an historic settlement for an exceptional case," said Arar's
lawyer Julian Falconer.

Paul Cavalluzzo, commission counsel to Justice Dennis O'Connor's
two-year inquiry, agreed, saying there is no other comparable case in
Canada. He noted an Oregon lawyer, also a Muslim, who was wrongly
jailed on suspicions of terrorist links for just two weeks in an
American prison was recently awarded $2 million (U.S.) in
compensation, and he had not been deported to torture.

"Mr. Arar suffered a great deal more than this gentleman," said
Cavalluzzo. "He suffered psychological injury. He suffers from
post-traumatic stress. He cannot get a job. And it goes on. If you
take all of those circumstances into account, I think the government
came to a very fair resolution."

Harper said some Canadians might view the payment as high. "That
figure is within this government's realistic assessment of what Mr.
Arar would have won in a lawsuit. And that is the basis on which we
concluded this settlement," he told reporters.

The Conservative government, which again yesterday made a point of
noting the events "occurred under the last government," will also
cover Arar's legal fees in the lawsuit launched in March 2004. The
deal allows for $1 million in legal costs, said Falconer.

Initially, Arar claimed $400 million in damages. That amount was later
amended to $37 million after O'Connor reported he found no evidence
Canadian officials deliberately participated in or willingly allowed
Arar's deportation, but had wrongly tagged Arar as a terror suspect
and "very likely" led the U.S. to deport him.

Falconer would not break down the $10.5 million in damages for
physical suffering and lost reputation, citing confidentiality. But he
said it was more than justified, pointing to the physical and
psychological torture Arar endured in Syria.

Falconer, an experienced civil litigator, became choked up, and Arar
also appeared moved, when Falconer told of how Arar's wife insisted on
an apology in writing from the Prime Minister from the beginning, "so
that when her children are old enough they have written proof from the
Prime Minister of Maher's innocence."

"No one should have to prove their good name to their children. That
is simply abominable. The Prime Minister and his government deserve
credit for helping to restore these people's lives," Falconer said.

But the Arar family's troubles have not ended. The U.S. government
insists Arar will stay on its border watch list and be refused entry
to that country, despite the findings of the O'Connor inquiry, which
cleared Arar last fall of any suggested links to terrorism.

Yesterday, a U.S. State Department official told Canadian Press Arar's
personal associations and travel history are enough to keep him on a
U.S. watch list, even if they may not warrant Arar's presence on a
Canadian security roster.

But Harper said bluntly yesterday the U.S. is wrong.

"We believe the evidence is clear that Mr. Arar has been treated
unjustly. He should not be on a watch list. I personally believe that
if there was evidence suggesting that any of these suspicions against
Mr. Arar were justified that case would have been made a long time
before today. In our judgment, it has not been made."

Harper said his government will continue to press the U.S. to reverse
its decision, and took a swipe at U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins who
earlier this week called Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day
"presumptuous" in his expectations.

"Canada fully understands, appreciates and shares the United States'
concerns about security," said Harper. "However, this government – the
government of Canada – has every right to go to bat for one of its
citizens when the government believes a Canadian is being unfairly
treated by another country."

Wilkins said while the U.S. appreciated Harper's "clear" expression of
his government's view, it will not change its decision on Arar.

"We are standing by that decision," said the statement.

Syria's ambassador to Canada, Jamil Sakr, refused to comment.

Whether the Arar compensation package sets a precedent for how three
other Muslim Canadians (whose cases were similar to Arar's) will be
treated is not clear. Those cases are set for a year-long review by
former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci.

Lawyer Barbara Jackman, who represents two of the three, says the
unprecedented settlement is good news for Arar, but it is too early to
say how it affects her clients, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin.

The settlement of Arar's lawsuit is unlikely to affect a similar
lawsuit he is attempting to pursue against the U.S. government, said
his American lawyer Maria LaHood.

LaHood said by telephone from New York she hoped the Canadian
settlement will put more pressure on the U.S. executive "to do the
right thing here."

The Conservatives' political opponents, the Liberal and New Democratic
parties, applauded the apology and compensation deal. But both vowed
to continue to press the Harper government to implement all the
recommendations of the O'Connor inquiry.

In fact, the government claims to have responded to all 23
recommendations of the first report, but has not yet responded to the
call for a new oversight body for the RCMP. The other recommendations
included ones for better control over information shared with foreign
governments.

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Dad sues Department of Human Services, says ex-wife was told to keep
teen daughter from him.


MUSLIM MAN CLAIMS RELIGIOUS CONSPIRACY
Gregg Krupa
Detroit News
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070124/LIFESTYLE04/701240389\
/1041


DEARBORN -- A Muslim man says the state Department of Human Services
and a local church are conspiring as part of a custody battle to
prohibit his daughter from practicing Islam and visiting him.

Abraham Ben-Abbad, 38, of Dearborn alleges in a suit filed Monday in
U.S. District Court that the Department of Human Services and a
caseworker, William McDonald, advised Ben-Abbad's former wife that she
need not allow their daughter, Hend Almanasir, 13, to visit her
father, including during Ramadan and on other religious holidays,
despite court orders mandating the visitation.

Arab-American and Muslim organizations in Metro Detroit, which are
monitoring the case closely, say the state should not interfere in a
custody battle with the intent of participating in a decision about
what religion a child should pursue.

"To me, my kids are the most important things in my life," Ben-Abbad
said, breaking into tears at a news conference Tuesday. "Especially,
Hend; she is the oldest. She grew up, and I cared for her most of the
time."

McDonald and the state also allowed a local church, the Dearborn
Assembly of God, on Tireman, to participate in meetings to plan his
daughter's future, according to Ben-Abbad, his lawyer, Shereef Akeel
of Birmingham, the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the
Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The lawsuit alleges that the pastor of the church, Trey Hancock,
offers an outreach program for American women married to Muslim men,
and that his ministry is intent on converting Muslims to Christianity.
The purpose of involving the church in planning for his daughter's
future is to steer her away from Islam, the faith in which she was
raised, Ben-Abbad said and the suit alleges.

Hancock and officials of the church were not available to comment.
When a reporter called the church and identified himself, a man who
answered the phone hung up.

Officials at the state Department of Human Services say they are
unaware of the suit and the allegations.

"However, if it is justified, we would consider an investigation,"
said Maureen Sorbet, a spokeswoman for the department. "Any issue of
religious preference is taken seriously by the department."

While court orders permitting Ben-Abbad's visitation rights remain in
place and were recently reaffirmed by Judge Christopher Dingell of the
Wayne County Circuit Court, McDonald and the department have defied
the orders, according to Ben-Abbad, his lawyer and the civil rights
groups.

Dingell cited the state's defiance in an Oct. 31 order, in which the
judge said he was nonetheless "reluctant to use contempt powers" to
cite the state.


You can reach Gregg Krupa at (313) 222-2359 or gkrupa @ detnews.com.

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No citizenship for foreigners marrying Pakistani women
By Our Staff Reporter, Pakistan
http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=nat2.htm&date=20070216


ISLAMABAD, Feb 15: The government has opposed granting citizenship
rights to foreigners marrying Pakistani women, saying that such a
provision can be used by any country to `plant their agents in
Pakistan', apart from social and economic implications.

The obsevation was made by the government in comments submitted to a
full bench of the Federal Shariat Court, examining Citizenship Act
1951 in exercise of its suo motu powers.

The court, taking note of the fact that under Section 10 of the Act a
married Pakistani man is entitled to obtain Pakistani citizenship for
his foreign wife, was trying to determine if the provision was
discriminatory and repugnant to Islamic principles and violative of
the principles of democracy, equality and social justice.

The government failed to explain why only foreign men and not women
could misuse such a facility.

The Federal Shariat Court's full bench was headed by Chief Justice
Haziqul Khairi and comprised Justice Dr Fida Muhammad Khan and Justice
Salahuddin Mirza.

According to the government, which submitted its response

in consultation with the ministry of interior, the directorate-general
of immigration and passports and the provincial governments, foreign
women marrying Pakistani husbands could not be equated with foreign
men marrying Pakistani women.

The government said it would amount to a blanket approval for all the
foreign nationals to marry Pakistani women and obtain Pakistani
nationality.

Most of them, it said, would misuse the provision, especially illegal
immigrants like Afghan refugees, Bangldeshis and nationals of other
South Asian states who `do not intend to return to their country'.

The government said that citizenship rights like entitlement to vote,
seeking appointment to constitutional posts and equal opportunities in
matters of public appointments might be weighed with their political
or national interests.

Keeping in view the matter's public importance, the Federal Shariat
Court ordered the secretary of the ministry of religious affairs, the
government of Pakistan, the National Commission for Women, the Aurat
Foundation, the Human Rights Commission, Apwa, vice-chairmen of the
Pakistan Bar Council and provincial Bar councils, president of the
Supreme Court Bar Association and presidents of the high court Bar
associations of Sindh, Punjab, the NWFP and Balochistan to file their
comments in three weeks and appear before the Court on March 14.

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From Esther to AIPAC
Gilad Atzmon
CounterPunch
March 3, 2007
www.uruknet.info?p=31096


     "In certain contexts, memory can be subversive; in others, memory
can shield the status quo. When individuals and communities become
vested with memory as a form of identity and specialness, then other
suffering threatens to displace the centrality of our experience.
Instead of a bridge of solidarity to others who are suffering in the
present, suffering in the past can become a badge of honour,
protecting us from the challenges that are before us. Then our
witness, originally powerful, opening questions about God and power,
becomes diluted, can be seen as fake, contrived, even wilfully so. An
industry grows up around you, honours you, and at the same time uses
your witness for other reasons. In the end a confusion results,
externally and internally, until the witness himself can no longer
differentiate between the world of interpretation he helped articulate
and the world that now speaks in his name. Is this what happened to
Wiesel, or is Finkelstein's more acerbic analysis accurate?"[1]

Jewishness is a rather broad term. It refers to a culture with many
faces, varied distinctive groups, different beliefs, opposing
political camps, different classes and diversified ethnicity.
Nevertheless, the connection between those very many people who happen
to identify themselves as Jews is rather intriguing. In the paragraphs
that follow, I will try to further the search into the notion of
Jewishness. I will make an attempt to trace the intellectual,
spiritual and mythological collective bond that makes Jewishness into
a powerful identity.

Clearly, Jewishness is neither a racial nor an ethnic category. Though
Jewish identity is racially and ethnically orientated, the Jewish
people do not form a homogenous group. There is no racial or ethnic
continuum. Jewishness may be seen by some as a continuation of
Judaism. I would maintain that this is not necessarily the case
either. Though Jewishness borrows some fundamental Judaic elements,
Jewishness is not Judaism and it is even categorically different from
Judaism. Furthermore, as we know, more than a few of those who proudly
define themselves as Jews have very little knowledge of Judaism, many
of them are atheists, non-religious and even overtly oppose Judaism or
any other religion. Many of those Jews who happen to oppose Judaism
happen to maintain their Jewish identity and to be extremely proud
about it[2]. This opposition to Judaism obviously includes Zionism (at
least the early version) but it also is the basis of much of Jewish
socialist anti-Zionism.

Though Jewishness is different from Judaism one may still wonder just
what constitutes Jewishness: whether it is a new form of religion an
ideology or if it is just a 'state of mind'.

If Jewishness is indeed a religion, the next questions that have to be
asked are, "what kind of religion is it? What does this religion
entail? What do its followers believe in?" If it is a religion, one
may wonder whether it is possible to divorce from it as much as it is
possible to step out of Judaism, Christianity or Islam.

If Jewishness is an ideology, then the right questions to ask are,
"what does this ideology stand for? Does it form a discourse? Is it a
monolithic discourse? Does it portray a new world order? Is it aiming
for peace or violence? Does it carry a universal message to humanity
or is it just another manifestation of some tribal precepts?"

If Jewishness is a state of mind, then the question to raise is
whether it is rational or irrational. Is it within the expressible or
rather within the inexpressible?

At this point I may suggest to consider the remote possibility that
Jewishness may be a strange hybrid, it can be all of those things at
once i.e., a religion, an ideology and a state of mind.

The Holocaust Religion

     "Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the philosopher who was an observant
orthodox Jew, told me once: "The Jewish religion died 200 years ago.
Now there is nothing that unifies the Jews around the world apart from
the Holocaust." (Uri Avnery[3])

Philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the German born Hebrew University
professor, was probably the first to suggest that the Holocaust has
become the new Jewish religion. 'The Holocaust' is far more than
historical narrative, it indeed contains most of the essential
religious elements: it has its priests (Simon Wiesenthal, Elie Wiesel,
Deborah Lipstadt, etc.) and prophets (Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu
and those who warn about the Iranian Judeocide to come). It has its
commandments and dogmas ('never again', 'six million', etc.). It has
its rituals (memorial days, Pilgrimage to Auschwitz etc.). It
establishes an esoteric symbolic order (kapo, gas chambers, chimneys,
dust, Musselmann, etc.). It has its shrines and temples (Yad Vashem,
the Holocaust Museum and now the UN). If this is not enough, the
Holocaust religion is also maintained by a massive economic network
and global financial infrastructures (Holocaust industry a la Norman
Finkelstein). Most interestingly, the Holocaust religion is coherent
enough to define the new 'antichrists' (the Deniers) and it is
powerful enough to persecute them (Holocaust denial laws).

Critical scholars who dispute the notion of 'Holocaust religion'
suggest that though the new emerging religion retains many
characteristics of an organised religion, it doesn't establish an
external God figure to point at, to worship or to love. I myself
cannot agree less. I insist that the Holocaust religion embodies the
essence of the liberal democratic worldview. It is there to offer a
new form of worshiping. It made self loving into a dogmatic belief in
which the observant follower worships himself. In the new religion it
is 'the Jew' whom the Jews worship. It is all about 'me', the subject
of endless suffering who makes it into redemption.

However, more than a few Jewish scholars in Israel and abroad happen
to accept Leibowitz's observation. Amongst them is Marc Ellis, the
prominent Jewish theologian who suggests a revealing insight into the
dialectic of the new religion. "Holocaust theology," says Ellis,
"yields three themes that exist in dialectical tension: suffering and
empowerment, innocence and redemption, specialness and normalization."[4]

Though Holocaust religion didn't replace Judaism, it gave Jewishness a
new meaning. It sets a modern Jewish narrative allocating the Jewish
subject within a Jewish project. It allocates the Jew a central role
within his own self-centred universe. The 'sufferer' and the
'innocent' are marching towards 'redemption' and 'empowerment'. God is
obviously out of the game, he is fired, he has failed in his historic
mission, he wasn't there to save the Jews. Within the new religion the
Jew becomes 'the Jews' new God', it is all about the Jew who redeems
himself.

The Jewish follower of the Holocaust religion idealises the condition
of his existence. He then sets a framework of a future struggle
towards recognition. For the Zionist follower of the new religion, the
implications seem to be relatively durable. He is there to 'schlep'
the entirety of world Jewry to Zion at the expense of the indigenous
Palestinian people. For the Socialist Jew, the project is slightly
more complicated. For him redemption means setting a new world order,
namely a socialist haven. A world dominated by dogmatic working class
politics in which Jews happen to be no more than just one minority
amongst many. For the humanist observant, Holocaust religion means
that Jews must locate themselves at the forefront of the struggle
against racism, oppression and evil in general. Though it sounds
promising, it happens to be problematic because of obvious reasons. In
our current world order it is Israel and America that happen to be
amongst the leading oppressive evils. Expecting Jews to be in the
forefront of humanist struggle sets Jews in a fight against their
brethren and their supportive single superpower. However, It is rather
clear that all three Holocaust churches assign the Jews a major
project with some global implications.

***

As we can see, the Holocaust functions as an ideological interface. It
provides its follower with a logos. On the level of consciousness, it
suggests a purely analytical vision of the past and present, yet, it
doesn't stop just there, it also defines the struggle to come. It
defines a vision of a Jewish future. Nevertheless, as a consequence it
fills the Jewish subject's unconsciousness with the ultimate anxiety:
the destruction of the 'I'.
Needless to say, a faith that stimulates the consciousness (Ideology)
and steers the unconsciousness (Spirit) is a very good recipe for a
winning religion. This structural bond of ideology and spirit is
fundamental to the Judaic tradition. The bond between the legal
clarity of the halacah (ideology) and the mysteriousness of Jehovah or
even Kabala (spirit) makes Judaism into a totality, a universe in
itself. Bolshevism, the mass movement rather than the political
theory, is built upon the same structure, the lucidity of
pseudo-scientific materialism together with the fear of the
capitalistic appetite. Neoconservative's politics of fear is again all
about locking the subject in the chasm between the alleged forensic
lucidity of WMDs and the inexpressible fright of 'terror to come'.

This very bond between consciousness and unconsciousness brings to
mind the Lacanian notion of the 'real'. The 'real' is that which
cannot be symbolized i.e., expressed in words. The real is the
'inexpressible', the inaccessible. In Zizek's words, 'the real is
impossible', 'the real is the trauma'. Nevertheless, it is this trauma
that shapes the symbolic order. It is the trauma that forms our reality.

The Holocaust religion fits nicely into the Lacanian model. Its
spiritual core is rooted deeply within the domain of the
inexpressible. Its preaching teaches us to see a threat in everything.
It is the ultimate conjunction between the ideology and the spirit
that has materialised into sheer pragmatism.

Interestingly enough, the Holocaust religion extends far beyond the
internal Jewish discourse. In fact the new religion operates as a
mission. It sets shrines in far lands. As we can see, the emerging
religion is already becoming a new world order. It is the Holocaust
that is now used as an alibi to nuke Iran[5]. Clearly, Holocaust
religion serves the Jewish political discourse both on the right and
left but it appeals to the Goyim as well, especially those who are
engaged in merciless killing 'in the name of freedom'[6]. To a certain
extent we are all subject to this religion, some of us are worshipers,
others are just subject to its power. Interestingly enough, those who
deny the Holocaust are themselves subject to abuse by the high priests
of this religion. Holocaust religion constitutes the Western 'Real'.
We are not allowed to touch it or to look into it. Very much like the
Israelites who are entitled to obey their God but never to question him.

***

The Scholars who are engaged in the study of the Holocaust religion
(theology, ideology and historicity), are engaged mainly with
structural formulations, its meanings, its rhetoric and its historical
interpretation. Some happen to search for the theological dialectic
(Marc Ellis), others formulate the commandments (Adi Ofir), some learn
its historical evolution (Lenni Brenner), other expose its financial
infrastructure (Finkelstein). Interestingly enough, most scholars who
are engaged in the subject of Holocaust religion are engaged with a
list of events that happened between 1933-1945. Most of the scholars
are themselves orthodox observants. Though they may be critical of
different aspects of the exploitation of the Holocaust, they all
accept the validity of the Nazi Judeocide and its mainstream
interpretations and implications. Most of the scholars, if not all of
them, do not challenge the Zionist narrative, namely Nazi Judeocide,
yet, more than a few are critical of the way Jewish and Zionist
institutes employ the Holocaust. Though some may dispute the numbers
(Shraga Elam), and others question the validity of memory (Ellis,
Finkelstein), no one goes as far as revisionism, not a single
Holocaust religion scholar dares engage in a dialogue with the
so-called 'deniers' to discuss their vision of the events or any other
revisionist scholarship.

Far more interesting is the fact that none of the Holocaust religion
scholars have spent any energy studying the role of the Holocaust
within the long-standing Jewish continuum. From this point onward, I
will maintain that Holocaust religion was well established a long time
before the Final Solution (1942), well before the Kristalnacht (1938),
well before the Nuremberg Laws (1936), well before the first
anti-Jewish law was announced by Nazi Germany, well before the
American Jewish Congress declared a financial war against Nazi Germany
(1933) and even well before Hitler was born (1889). The Holocaust
religion is probably as old as the Jews.



Jewish Archetypes

In a previous paper I have defined the notion of 'Pre-Traumatic Stress
Disorder' (Pre-TSD) [7]. Within the condition of the Pre-TSD, the
stress is the outcome of a phantasmic imaginary episode set in the
future, an event that has never taken place. Unlike the Post-Traumatic
Stress Disorder, in which stress is realised as the direct reaction to
an event that (may) have taken place in the past, within the state of
Pre-TSD, the stress is formed as the outcome of an imaginary potential
event. Within the Pre-TSD an illusion pre-empts the conditions in
which the fantasy of future terror is shaping the present reality.

As it seems, the dialectic of fear dominates the Jewish existence as
well as mindset far longer than we are ready to admit. Though fright
is exploited politically by Jewish ethnic leaders since the early days
of emancipation, the dialectic of fear is far older than modern Jewish
history. In fact it is the heritage of the Tanach (the Hebrew Bible)
that is there to set the Jew in a pre-traumatic state. It is the
Hebrew Bible that sets a binary framework of Innocence/Suffering and
Persecution/Empowerment. More particularly, the fear of Judeocide is
entangled with Jewish spirit, culture and literature.

I would argue here that the Holocaust religion was there to transform
the ancient Israelites into Jews.

The American anthropologist Glenn Bowman who specialised in the study
of exilic identities offers a crucial insight into the subject of fear
and its contribution to the subject of Identity politics.
"Antagonism," says Bowman, "is fundamental to process of fetishsation
underlying identity, because one tends precisely to talk about who one
is or what one is at a moment in which that being seems threatened. I
begin to call myself such and such a person, or such and such a
representative of an imagined community, at the moment something seems
to threaten to disallow the being the name I speak stands in for.
Identity terms come into usage at precisely the moment in which for
some reason one comes to feel they signifying a being or entity one
has to fight to defend." [8]

In short, Bowman stresses that it is the fear that crystallises the
notion of identity. However, once the fear is matured into a state of
a collective pre-traumatic stress then identity re-forms itself. When
it comes to the Jewish people, it is the Bible that is there to set
the Jews within a state of Pre-TSD. It is the Bible that initiates the
fear of Judeocide.

***

More and more Bible scholars are now disputing the historicity of the
Bible. Niels Lechme in 'The Canaanites and Their Land' argues that the
Bible is for the most part "written after the Babylonian Exile and
that those writings rework (and in large part invent) previous
Israelite history so that it reflects and reiterates the experiences
of those returning from the Babylonian exile."[9]

In other words, being written by home-comers, the Bible incorporates
some hardcore exilic ideology into an historic narrative. Very much
like in the case of the early Zionist ideologist who regarded
assimilation as a death threat, "The communities which aggregated
under the leadership of the Yahwehist priesthood (at the time of the
Babylonian exile) saw assimilation and apostasy not only as social
death for themselves as Judeans but also as attempted deicide. They
resolved to maintain an absolute and exclusive commitment to Yahweh
who they were sure would lead them back to the land from which they
had been expelled. The prescribed blood purity as a means of
maintaining the borders of the national community, thus proscribed
inter-marriage with those surrounding them. They also established a
series of exclusivist rituals that set themselves off from their
neighbours, and these not only included a surrogate form of temple
worship but also a distinct calendar which ritualistically enabled
them to exist in a different time frame than the communities with
which they shared space. All of these diacritical devices served to
mark and maintain difference, but did not prevent them from trading
with and thus being able to sustain themselves amongst the Babylonians."

Looking into Bowman and Lechme's spectacular reading of the Bible and
the Judaic narrative as a manifestation of exilic and marginal
identity may explain the fact that Jewishness flourishes in exile but
rather loses its impetus once it becomes a domestic adventure. If
Jewishness is indeed centred around an émigré collective survival
ideology, than its follower will prosper in Exile. However, that which
maintains the Jewish collective identity is fear. Similar to the case
of Holocaust religion, Jewishness sets the fear of Judeocide at the
core of the Jewish psyche, yet, it also offers the spiritual,
ideological and pragmatic measures to deal with this fear.

Book of Esther

The Book of Esther is a biblical story that is the basis for the
celebration of Purim, probably the most joyous Jewish festival. The
book tells the story of an attempted Judeocide but it also tells a
story in which Jews manage to change their fate. In the book the Jews
do manage to rescue themselves and even to mete revenge.

It is set in the third year of Ahasuerus, and the ruler is a king of
Persia usually identified with Xerxes I. It is a story of a palace,
conspiracy, an attempted Judeocide and a brave and beautiful Jewish
queen (Esther) who manages to save the Jewish people at the very last
minute.

In the story, King Ahasuerus is married to Vashti, whom he repudiates
after she rejects his offer to 'visit' him during a feast. Esther was
selected from the candidates to be Ahasuerus's new wife. As the story
progresses, Ahasuerus's prime minister Haman plots to have the king
kill all the Jews without knowing that Esther is actually Jewish. In
the story, Esther together with her cousin Mordechai saves the day for
their people. At the risk of endangering her own safety, Esther warns
Ahasuerus of Haman's murderous anti-Jewish plot. Haman and his sons
are hanged on the fifty cubit gallows he had originally built for
cousin Mordecai. As it happens, Mordecai takes Haman's place, he
becomes the prime minister. Ahasuerus's edict decreeing the murder of
the Jews cannot be rescinded, so he issues another edict allowing the
Jews to take up arms and kill their enemies, which they do.

The moral of the story is rather clear. If Jews want to survive, they
better find infiltrates into the corridors of power. With Esther,
Mordechai and Purim in mind, AIPAC and the notion of 'Jewish power'
looks like an embodiment of a deep Biblical and cultural ideology.

However, here is the interesting twist. Though the story is presented
as an historic tale, the historical accuracy of the Book of Esther is
largely disputed by most modern Bible Scholars. It is largely the lack
of clear corroboration of any of the details of the story of the Book
of Esther with what is known of Persian History from classical sources
that led scholars to come to a conclusion that the story is mostly or
even totally fictional.

In other words, though the moral is clear, the attempted genocide is
fictional. Seemingly, the Book of Esther set its followers into a
collective Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It makes a fantasy of
destruction into an ideology of survival. And indeed, some read the
story as an allegory of quintessentially assimilated Jews who discover
that they are targets of anti-Semitism, but are also in a position to
save themselves and their fellow Jews.

Keeping Bowman in mind may throw some light here. The Book of Esther
is there to form the exilic identity. It is there to implant the
existential stress, it introduces the Holocaust religion. It sets the
conditions that turn the Holocaust into reality.

Interestingly enough, the Book of Esther (in the Hebrew version) is
one of only two books of the Bible that do not directly mention God
(the other is Song of Songs). In the Book of Esther it is the Jews who
believe in themselves, in their own power, in their uniqueness, in
their sophistication, in their ability to conspire, in their ability
to take over kingdoms, in their ability to save themselves. The Book
of Esther is all about empowerment and the Jews who believe in their
powers.

From Purim to Birkenau

In an article named "A Purim Lesson: Lobbying Against Genocide, Then
and Now"[10], Dr. Rafael Medoff shares with his readers what he
regards as the lesson inherited to the Jews by the Book of Esther. If
to be more precise, it is the art of lobbying which Esther and
Mordechai are there to teach us. "The holiday of Purim" says Medoff,
"celebrates the successful effort by prominent Jews in the capitol of
ancient Persia to prevent genocide against the Jewish people." But
Medoff doesn't stop just there. This specific exercise of what some
call 'Jewish power' has been carried forward and performed by modern
emancipated Jews: "What is not well known is that a comparable
lobbying effort took place in modern times -- in Washington, D.C., at
the peak of the Holocaust."

In the article Medoff explores the similarities between Esther's
lobbying in Persia and her modern brothers lobbying within the FDR's
administration at the pick of WW2. "The Esther in 1940s Washington was
Henry Morgenthau Jr." says Medoff, "a wealthy, assimilated Jew of
German descent who (as his son later put it) was anxious to be
regarded as 'one hundred percent American.' Downplaying his
Jewishness, Morgenthau gradually rose from being FDR's friend and
adviser to his Treasury Secretary."

Clearly, Medoff spotted a modern Mordechai as well, "a young Zionist
emissary from Jerusalem, Peter Bergson (real name: Hillel Kook) who
led a series of protest campaigns to bring about U.S. rescue of Jews
from Hitler. The Bergson group's newspaper ads and public rallies
roused public awareness of the Holocaust -- particularly when it
organized over 400 rabbis to march to the front gate of the White
House just before Yom Kippur in 1943."

Medoff's reading of the Book of Esther provides us with a glaring
insight into the internal code of Jewish collective survival dynamics
in which the assimilated (Esther) and the observant (Mordechai) are
joining forces with clear Judeo centric interests in their minds.

According to Medoff the similarities are indeed shocking. "Mordechai's
pressure finally convinced Esther to go to the king; the pressure of
Morgenthau's aides finally convinced him to go to the president, armed
with a stinging 18-page report that they titled 'Report to the
Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the
Jews.'"

Dr. Medoff is rather ready to draw his historical conclusions.
"Esther's lobbying succeeded. Ahasuerus cancelled the genocide decree
and executed Haman and his henchmen. Morgenthau's lobbying also
succeeded. A Bergson-initiated Congressional resolution calling for
U.S. rescue action quickly passed the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee -- enabling Morgenthau to tell FDR that 'you have either got
to move very fast, or the Congress of the United States will do it for
you.' Ten months before election day, the last thing FDR wanted was an
embarrassing public scandal over the refugee issue. Within days,
Roosevelt did what the Congressional resolution sought -- he issued an
executive order creating the War Refugee Board, a U.S. government
agency to rescue refugees from Hitler."

It is clear beyond doubt that Medoff sees the Book of Esther as a
general guideline for a healthy Jewish future. Medoff ends his paper
saying: "the claim that nothing could be done to help Europe's Jews
had been demolished by Jews who shook off their fears and spoke up for
their people -- in ancient Persia and in modern Washington." In other
words, Jews can do and should do for themselves. This is indeed the
moral of the Book of Esther as well as the Holocaust religion.

What Jews should do for themselves is indeed an open question.
Different Jews have different ideas. The Neocon believes in dragging
America and the West into an endless war against Islam. Emmanuel
Levinas, on the contrary, believes that Jews should actually position
themselves at the forefront of the struggle against oppression and
injustice. Indeed, Jewish empowerment is just one answer among many.
Yet, it is a very powerful not to say a dangerous one. It is
especially dangerous when the American Jewish Committee (AJC) acts as
a modern-day Mordechai and publicly engages in an extensive lobbying
effort for a war against Iran.

When analysing the work and influence of AIPAC within American
politics it is the Book of Esther that we should bear in mind. AIPAC
is more than a mere political lobby. AIPAC is a modern-day Mordechai,
the AJC is modern-day Mordechai. Both AIPAC and AJC are inherently in
line with the Hebrew Biblical school of thought. However, while the
Mordechais are relatively easy to spot, the Esthers, those who act for
Israel behind the scenes, are slightly more difficult to trace.

I believe that once we learn to look at Israeli lobbying in the
parameters that are drawn by the Book of Esther/Holocaust-religion, we
are then entitled to regard Ahmadinejad as the current Haman/Hitler
figure. The AJC is Mordechai, Bush is obviously Ahasuerus, yet Esther
can be almost anyone, from the last Necon to Cheney and beyond.


Brenner and Prinz

In the opening paragraph of this essay I ask what Jewishness stands
for. Though I accept the complexity of the notion of Jewishness, I
tend to additionally accept Leibowitz's contribution to the subject:
Holocaust is the new Jewish religion. However, within the paper I took
the liberty of extending the notion of the Holocaust. Rather than
referring merely to the Shoah, i.e., the Nazi Judeocide, I argue here
that the Holocaust is actually engraved within the Jewish discourse
and spirit. The Holocaust is the essence of the collective Jewish
Pre-Traumatic stress disorder and it predates the Shoah. To be a Jew
is to see the 'other' as a threat rather than as a brother. To be a
Jew is to be on a constant alert. To be a Jew is to internalise the
message of the Book of Esther. It is to aim towards the most
influential junctions of hegemony. To be a Jew is to collaborate with
power.

The American Marxist historian Lenni Brenner is fascinated by the
collaboration between Zionists and Nazism. In his book Zionism In The
Age of Dictators he presents an extract from Rabbi Joachim Prinz's
book published in 1937 after Rabbi Prinz left Germany for America.

"Everyone in Germany knew that only the Zionists could responsibly
represent the Jews in dealings with the Nazi government. We all felt
sure that one day the government would arrange a round table
conference with the Jews, at which ­ after the riots and atrocities of
the revolution had passed ­ the new status of German Jewry could be
considered. The government announced very solemnly that there was no
country in the world which tried to solve the Jewish problem as
seriously as did Germany. Solution of the Jewish question? It was our
Zionist dream! We never denied the existence of the Jewish question!
Dissimilation? It was our own appeal! ... In a statement notable for
its pride and dignity, we called for a conference." [11]

Brenner then brings in extracts from a Memorandum that was sent to the
Nazi Party by the German Zionist ZVfD on 21 June 1933:

     "Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish
condition, which consists above all in an abnormal occupational
pattern and in the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not
rooted in one's own tradition ... On the foundation of the new state,
which has established the principle of race, we wish so to fit our
community into the total structure so that for us too, in the sphere
assigned to us, fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible. ...
Our acknowledgement of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and
sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial
realities. Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these
fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for
maintaining the purity of the Jewish group ... We believe in the
possibility of an honest relationship of loyalty between a
group-conscious Jewry and the German state ... "[12]

Brenner doesn't approve either of Prinz's take nor the Zionist
initiative. Filled with loathing he says, "This document, a treason to
the Jews of Germany, was written in standard Zionist cliches:
'abnormal occupational pattern', 'rootless intellectuals greatly in
need of moral regeneration', etc. In it the German Zionists offered
calculated collaboration between Zionism and Nazism, hallowed by the
goal of a Jewish state: we shall wage no battle against thee, only
against those that would resist thee."

Brenner fails to see the obvious. Rabbi Prinz and the ZVfD were not
traitors, they were actually genuine Jews. They followed their very
Jewish cultural code. They followed the Book of Esther, they took the
role of Mordechai. They tried to find a way to collaborate with what
they correctly identified as a prominent emerging power. In 1969,
Rabbi Prinz confessed that ever "since the assassination of Walther
Rathenau in 1922, there was no doubt in our minds that the German
development would be toward an anti-Semitic totalitarian regime. When
Hitler began to arouse, and as he put it 'awaken' the German nation to
racial consciousness and racial superiority, we had no doubt that this
man would sooner or later become the leader of the German nation."[13]

Whether Brenner or anyone else likes it or not, Rabbi Prinz proves to
be an authentic Jewish leader. He proves to possess some highly
developed survival radar mechanism that fit perfectly well with the
exilic ideology. In 1981 Lenni Brenner interviewed Rabbi Prinz. Here
is what he had to say about the collaborator Rabbi:

     "(Prinz) dramatically evolved in the 44 years since he was
expelled from Germany. He told me, off tape, that he soon realized
that nothing he said there made sense in the US. He became an American
liberal. Eventually, as head of the American Jewish Congress, he was
asked to march with Martin Luther King and he did so."

Once again, Brenner fails to see the obvious. Prinz didn't change at
all. Prinz didn't evolve in those 44 years. He was and remained a
genuine authentic Jew, and an extremely clever one. A man who
internalised the essence of Jewish émigré philosophy: In Germany be a
German, and in America be American. Be flexible, fit in and adopt
relativistic ethical thinking. Prinz, being a devoted follower of
Mordechai, realised that whatever is good for the Jews is simply good.

I went back and listened to the invaluable Brenner interviews with
Rabbi Prinz that are now available on line[14]. I was rather shocked
to find out that actually Prinz presents his position eloquently. It
is Prinz rather than Brenner who provides us a glimpse into Jewish
ideology and its interaction with the surrounding reality. It is Prinz
rather than Brenner who happens to understand the German volk and
their aspirations. Prinz presents his past moves as a proud Jew. From
his point of view, collaborating with Hitler was indeed the right
thing to do. He was following Mordechai, he was probably searching for
an Esther to come. Thus, it is only natural that Rabbi Prinz later
became the President of the Jewish American Congress. He became a
prominent American leader In spite of his 'collaboration with Hitler'.
Simply because of the obvious reason: from a Jewish ideological point
of view, he did the right thing.

Final Words About Zionism

Once we learn to look at Jewishness as an exilic culture, as the
embodiment of the 'ultimate other' we can then understand Jewishness
as a collective continuum grounded on a fantasy of horror. Jewishness
is the materialisation of politics of fear into a pragmatic agenda.
This is what Holocaust religion is all about and it is indeed as old
as the Jews. Rabbi Prinz could foresee the Holocaust. Both Prinz and
the ZVfD could anticipate a Judeocide. Thus, from a Jewish ideological
point of view they acted appropriately. They were committed to their
esoteric ethics within an esoteric cultural discourse.

Zionism was indeed a great promise, it was there to convert the Jews
into Israelites. It was going to make the Jews into people like other
peoples. Zionism was there to identify and fight the Galut (Diaspora),
the exilic characteristic of the Jewish people and their culture. But
Zionism was doomed to failure. The reason is obvious: within a culture
that is metaphysically grounded upon exilic ideology the last thing
you can expect is a successful homecoming. In order to live for its
promise Zionism had to liberate itself of the Jewish exilic ideology,
Zionism had to liberate itself of the Holocaust religion. But this is
exactly what it fails to do. Being exilic to the bone, Zionism had to
turn to antagonising the indigenous Palestinians in order to maintain
its fetish of Jewish identity.

Since Zionism failed to divorce itself from the Jewish émigré
ideology, it lost the opportunity to evolve into any form of domestic
culture. Consequently, Israeli culture and politics is a strange
amalgam of indecisiveness; a mixture of colonial empowerment together
with Galut's victim mentality. Zionism is a secular product of exilic
culture that cannot mature into authentic homegrown perception.


Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He
is the author of two novels: A Guide to the Perplexed and the recently
released My One and Only Love. Atzmon is also one of the most
accomplished jazz saxophonists in Europe. His recent CD, Exile, was
named the year's best jazz CD by the BBC. He now lives in London and
can be reached at: atz@...

Notes

[1] Marc Ellis, Marc Ellis on Finkelstein
[2] http://www.counterpunch.org/
[3] http://www.ramallahonline.com
[4] Marc H. Ellis, Beyond Innocence & Redemption - Confronting The
Holocaust And Israeli Power, Creating a Moral Future for the Jewish
People (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990).
[5] http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/

[6] http://www.amin.org/
[7] http://www.imemc.org/article/21744
[8] Glenn Bowman-Migrant Labour: Constructing Homeland in the Exilic
Imagination, Antrhropological Theory II:4. December 2002 pp 447-468.
[9] Ibid
[10] http://www.wymaninstitute.org/articles/2004-03-purim.php
[11] http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/ch05.htm

[12] Ibid
[13] http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/ch03.htm
[14] http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/clip.php?cid=512

Painting: Azor master (ca. 1430), Esther before Ahasuerus, Koninklijke
Bibliotheek, The Hague

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New Glossy Contemporary Lifestyle Magazine Targets American Muslim Girls


MUSLIM GIRLS GET A VOICE IN MUSLIM GIRL MAGAZINE


CHICAGO--( BUSINESS WIRE)--American teen Muslim girls are much like
teen girls everywhere - so says a recent nationwide study of Muslim
girls aged 14-18 years. The study was conducted on behalf of Muslim
Girl Magazine, a new bi-monthly glossy magazine launched this month to
give 400,000 American Muslim teen girls a lively and uniquely relevant
perspective on contemporary living.

"Our study showed that these girls go to public school, watch a little
too much television, read teen magazines, surf the Internet, use
Google, enjoy YouTube, play video games, shop a lot, talk on the
telephone and spend time just hanging out," says Faye Kennedy, VP at
execuGo Media, the publisher that commissioned the study. "In short,
they are pretty much like most other American teenagers." The study
also highlighted some likely differences: for example, they get news
at Al Jazeera, socialize at IslamiCity and count among their top
hobbies, Qur'an study.

SEE: www.muslimgirlmagazine.com

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The good life in the Green Zone
Monday, February 19, 2007
http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2007/02/good-life-in-green-zone.asp


For Iraqis, there's probably no better symbol of what's wrong with the
U.S. mission in Iraq than the Green Zone -- the fortified and
insulated "Little America" that U.S. forces created in the aftermath
of the invasion.

While brutal violence, lack of basics like food and electricity, and
other crises consumed Iraq -- and still do, 25 more were killed today
-- the out-of-touch opulence enjoyed by U.S. forces in Saddam's palace
seemed almost designed to outrage the very people the Bush
administration claimed they were there to help.

Today's Guardian (London) features an eye-opening excerpt from
Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a damning portrait of the Green
Zone by The Washington Post's former bureau chief in Iraq, Rajiv
Chandrasekaran. The book continues to receive widespread coverage
abroad but little in the U.S.; a paperback edition is due out this
spring. Here's a taste:

Unlike almost anywhere else in Baghdad, you could dine at the
cafeteria in the Republican Palace in the heart of the Green Zone for
six months and never eat hummus, flatbread, or a lamb kebab. The
palace was the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority
(CPA), the American occupation administration in Iraq, and the food
was always American, often with a Southern flavour. A buffet featured
grits, cornbread and a bottomless barrel of pork: sausage for
breakfast, hot dogs for lunch, pork chops for dinner. The cafeteria
was all about meeting American needs for high-calorie, high-fat
comfort food.

None of the succulent tomatoes or crisp cucumbers grown in Iraq made
it into the salad bar. US government regulations dictated that
everything, even the water in which hot dogs were boiled, be shipped
in from approved suppliers in other nations. Milk and bread were
trucked in from Kuwait, as were tinned peas and carrots. The breakfast
cereal was flown in from the US.

When the Americans arrived, the engineers assigned to transform
Saddam's palace into the seat of the American occupation chose a
marble-floored conference room the size of a gymnasium to serve as the
mess hall. Halliburton, the defence contractor hired to run the
palace, brought in dozens of tables, hundreds of stacking chairs and a
score of glass-covered buffets. Seven days a week, the Americans ate
under Saddam's crystal chandeliers. [...]

If you had a complaint about the cafeteria, Michael Cole was the man
to see. He was Halliburton's "customer-service liaison", and he could
explain why the salad bar didn't have Iraqi produce or why pork kept
appearing on the menu. Cole was a rail-thin 22-year-old whose forehead
was dotted with pimples. He had been out of college for less than a
year and was working as a junior aide to a Republican congressman from
Virginia when a Halliburton vice-president overheard him talking to
friends in an Arlington bar about his dealings with irate
constituents. She was so impressed that she introduced herself. If she
needed someone to work as a valet in Baghdad, he joked, he'd be happy
to volunteer. Three weeks later, Halliburton offered him a job. Then
they asked for his CV.

Cole's mission was to keep the air in the bubble, to ensure that the
Americans who had left home to work for the occupation administration
felt comfortable. Food was part of it. But so were movies, mattresses
and laundry service. If he was asked for something, Cole tried to get
it, whether he thought it important or not. [...]

Whatever could be outsourced, was. The job of setting up town and city
councils was performed by a North Carolina firm for $236m [£121m]. The
job of guarding the viceroy was assigned to private guards, each of
whom made more than $1,000 [£513] a day. For running the palace -
cooking the food, changing the lightbulbs, doing the laundry, watering
the plants - Halliburton had been handed hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Green Zone was Baghdad's Little America. Everyone who worked in
the palace lived there, either in white metal trailers or in the
towering al-Rasheed hotel. Hundreds of private contractors working for
firms including Bechtel, General Electric and Halliburton set up
trailer parks there, as did legions of private security guards hired
to protect the contractors. The only Iraqis allowed inside the Green
Zone were those who worked for the Americans or those who could prove
that they had resided there before the war. [...]

Americans drove around in new GMC Suburbans, dutifully obeying the
35mph speed limit signs posted by the CPA on the flat, wide streets.
When they cruised around, they kept the air-conditioning on high and
the radio tuned to 107.7 FM - Freedom Radio, an American-run station
that played classic rock and rah-rah messages. Every two weeks, the
vehicles were cleaned at a Halliburton car wash.

Shuttle buses looped around the Green Zone at 20-minute intervals,
stopping at wooden shelters to transport those who didn't have cars
and didn't want to walk. There was daily mail delivery. Generators
ensured that the lights were always on. If you didn't like what was
being served in the cafeteria - or you were feeling peckish between
meals - you could get a takeaway from one of the Green Zone's Chinese
restaurants. Halliburton's dry-cleaning service would get the dust and
sweat stains out of your khakis in three days. A sign warned patrons
to remove ammunition from pockets before submitting clothes.

Iraqi laws and customs didn't apply inside the Green Zone. Women
jogged on the pavement in shorts and T-shirts. A liquor store sold
imported beer, wine and spirits. One of the Chinese restaurants
offered massages as well as noodles. The young boys selling DVDs near
the palace parking lot had a secret stash. "Mister, you want porno?"
they whispered to me.

Most of the CPA's staff had never worked outside the United States.
More than half, according to one estimate, had got their first
passport in order to travel to Iraq. If they were going to survive in
Baghdad, they needed the same sort of bubble that American oil
companies had built for their workers in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and
Indonesia.

"It feels like a little America," Mark Schroeder said as we sat by the
pool on a scorching afternoon, sipping water bottled in the United
Arab Emirates. Schroeder, who was 24 at the time, had been working for
a Republican congressman in Washington when he heard that the CPA
needed more staff. He sent his résumé to the Pentagon. A few months
later, he was in the Republican Palace.

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RELIGIOUS GROUPS AND PEACE ORGANIZATIONS LINE UP TO SUPPORT THE
ISLAMIC SOCIETY OF BOSTON


Growing Support for ISB Community Civil Rights Claim
http://www.isboston.org/v3.1/viewitem.asp?MenuID=14&DocID=4807&ItemTypeID=3


BOSTON – A number of religious and civic organizations today filed
Amicus Briefs in support of the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) in its
defamation lawsuit against the David Project, the Boston Herald,
Fox-TV, and a number of individuals and organizations who are working
together to halt the construction of a mosque in Roxbury.

"The Islamic Society of Boston is grateful for the extraordinary
support from the numerous organizations which have stepped forward
today to file Amicus Briefs in support of the ISB," said the Society's
interfaith coordinator Jessica Masse. "The Massachusetts Superior
Court has now twice affirmed the ISB's right to seek relief from the
false, Islamaphobic and damaging media campaign mounted against it to
prevent the building of a new mosque and cultural center in Roxbury."

The David Project and other defendants have appealed and continue to
press the courts to throw out the case based on the Massachusetts
anti-SLAPP law, a law that was intended to protect abutting land
owners participating in public processes from strategic lawsuits
brought by developers to intimidate them. They do so despite having
never participated in the multi-year public process that led the BRA
to transfer land in Roxbury to the ISB for the multi-million dollar
mosque.

According to Masse, "The ISB's lawsuit is an important civil rights
case. It seeks to battle discrimination and secure for area Muslims
the same rights of freedom of worship and assembly that all faith and
non-faith based groups in our society hold dear.

"We are overwhelmed by the show of support from our friends and
neighbors. Thanks to the willingness of these groups to come forward
and speak out, there is a growing groundswell of support for the ISB
and its right to combat discrimination by seeking justice in the
courts," Masse added.

The first non-Muslim organization to approach the ISB and ask
questions was Boston's Jewish Voice for Peace. "Because Jews have felt
the effects of discrimination through much of our history, we are
particularly troubled by the actions of the David Project and others
in what appears to be an organized effort to prevent Muslims from
building a place of worship and inter-religious dialogue. Although our
goal is ultimately to promote positive relationships between the
Jewish and Muslim communities, as Boston area Jews, we support the
ISB's right to legal redress in the face of what appears to be a
malicious media campaign against them. It is important that we make a
public statement that the David Project and its allies do not speak
for us." explains Alice Rothchild, co-chair for JVP Boston.

Other groups that have joined in filing an Amicus Brief written by
Boston lawyer Thomas A. Reed, include the American Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee, Tekiah, the Boston Tikkun Community,
Community Change, Inc., The Diocese of St. Francis of Assisi, the
Massachusetts Chapter of the Labor Council for Latin American
Advancement, the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild,
United for Justice and Peace, Cambridge United for Justice and Peace,
Clarendon Church and Dorchester People for Peace. The Muslim Public
Affairs Council has also come forward and filed its own Amicus Brief
in support of the ISB represented by Boston lawyer Max Stern.

The ISB has been contacted by many others who have expressed their
support for the Society and its right to move forward in its lawsuit.
"It has been incredibly gratifying as a lawyer to see the overwhelming
outpouring of support for the ISB. It began with a few who learned of
the ISB's lawsuit and the possibility of filing an Amicus Brief, and
the word spread quickly.

We have heard from many organizations and community leaders and the
very strong sentiment has been that the ISB should have its day in
court," said Heidi Nadel, lawyer for the ISB. On Friday, a Superior
Court judge dismissed the lawsuit initiated by the David Project
against it, the BRA and Roxbury Community College. That lawsuit, filed
in the name of James Policastro in order to keep the role of the David
Project hidden from the public, sought to undo the land deal between
the ISB and the BRA which would have required the ISB to tear down the
already partially built mosque. The Court ruled that if Mr. Policastro
had any real objection to the project, he should have participated in
the multi-year process which led up to the land transfer, but he
failed to do so.

In a 2/25/07 Boston Globe article, Mr. Policastro and his lawyer,
Samuel Perkins, refused to state publicly who paid for the
now-dismissed lawsuit, and Mr. Policastro openly conceded that it
would not be his decision whether to appeal the dismissal of the case.
"The ISB calls upon the Mr. Policastro and his counsel to openly state
who is behind his lawsuit and who financed the effort to stop the
building of a place of worship by area Muslims," Masse noted. "Despite
all that has happened, including our most recent legal victory, we
remain ready to sit down with all those who oppose us, including the
David Project, and with a professional mediator to try and resolve our
differences," said Masse. "Now is the time for healing and
reconciliation. We urge the David Project to rethink its approach as
to how communities here in Boston should inter-act with each other."

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Hillary tells cheering  jewish groups she will bomb Iran for them

Hillary Clinton calls Iran a threat to U.S., Israel
The Associated Press
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/02/america/NA-GEN-US-Clinton-Iran.php


NEW YORK: Calling Iran a danger to the U.S. and one of
Israel's greatest threats, U.S. senator and
presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said "no
option can be taken off the table" when dealing with
that nation.

"U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal: We cannot,
we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or
acquire nuclear weapons," the Democrat told a crowd of
Israel supporters. "In dealing with this threat ... no
option can be taken off the table."

Clinton spoke at a Manhattan dinner held by the
largest pro-Israel lobbying group in the U.S., the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Some 1,700
supporters applauded as she cited her efforts on
behalf of the Jewish state and spoke scathingly of
Iran's decision to hold a conference last month that
questioned whether the Holocaust took place.

"To deny the Holocaust places Iran's leadership in
company with the most despicable bigots and historical
revisionists," Clinton said, criticizing what she
called the Iranian administration's "pro-terrorist,
anti-American, anti-Israeli rhetoric."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly
called the Holocaust a "myth" and said Israel should
be "wiped off the map" and its Jews returned to
Europe.

Iran insists its nuclear program is designed to
produce energy, not weapons. Ahmadinejad said Thursday
his government is determined to continue with its
nuclear program, despite U.N. Security Council
sanctions imposed over its refusal to halt uranium
enrichment, a process that can produce fuel to
generate electricity or for the fissile core of an
atomic bomb.

Clinton, the front-runner for her party's presidential
nomination, called for dialogue with foes of the
United States, saying Iran "uses its influence and its
revenues in the region to support terrorist elements."

"We need to use every tool at our disposal, including
diplomatic and economic in addition to the threat and
use of military force," she said.

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The Jewish community loses credibility when we attack certain
churches.


Bullies on the block
By Martin R. Federman
http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/opinions/?
content_id=2399


I grew up in ethnically diverse Queens, N.Y. Still, one day the
Rexall gang stopped Sheldon, Lloyd and me after Hebrew School,
pushing us around. Our supposed insult was what they expected from a
bunch of "little Yids." Unexpectedly, Lloyd dropped his books,
stomped toward the shul muttering "I'm calling the cops." After some
more shoves and unpleasant language, they took off.

I remembered this recently when reading the Dec. 22 front-page story
in the Advocate of "Jewish activists" targeting Cambridge churches
because of space given or rented to people who question Israeli
policies. These "activists" certainly have the right to disagree
with anyone. There is, however, irony inherent in the belief that
they are protected by free speech, yet the same protection is not
available to others. The rationale usually given (as quoted in the
Advocate's coverage) is that those using the facilities are "hotbeds
of anti-Semitism."

Let's be clear - there are some vicious anti-Semites out there, and
some do use anti-Israel and anti-Zionist rhetoric to cover it. The
targeted churches, however, have warm relations with the Jewish
community and even a history of support for Israel. Nevertheless,
the "activists" cannot abide anyone criticizing any of Israel's
policies. Since they cannot simply silence these voices (freedom of
speech, you know), they use the one indefensible accusation: anti-
Semitism. Since this is rightly a heinous accusation, old friends
are intimidated into doing anything to insulate themselves from it.
Consequently, these churches are frightened into second-guessing any
connection with voices possibly unacceptable to Jews.

A pernicious aspect of these tactics is that they target groups like
Sabeel and its director, the Rev. Naim Ateek. Despite Ateek's
frequent recognition of Israel and his wish to interact with it and
to promote a non-violent strategy within the Palestinian resistance
movement, he has been slandered, his words taken out of context. In
reality, voices like Ateek's are the ultimate threat to those who
claim there are no Palestinian "moderates," lest the lie that "there
is no partner for peace" be exposed. The contemptible strategy
of "activists" like The David Project has been to attack Ateek and
now our Christian neighbors with that label "anti-Semite."

I'm not so worried about the individual "activists." Like the Rexall
bullies of my childhood, we need Lloyds to tell them that we won't
be intimidated. I'm more concerned by The David Projects and CAMERAs
out there with immense resources to disseminate misinformation
dressed as fact. But most frightening is the realization that, as
quoted in the Advocate, these bullies are supported by our
institutional agencies. If the Jewish Community Relations Council,
an agency with a well-deserved history of defending civil rights, is
intervening in conversations with our Christian allies on the side
of our short-sighted Jewish bullies, we are in trouble.
Rather than attacking Christians who have proven to be our allies,
we should be working with them. Only then will we have the
credibility to address the threat of the real anti-Semites.


Martin R. Federman, a Jewish educator, is co-chair of the Boston
Chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace.

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Towards an Arab-American songbook
By David Honigmann
The Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e87b8960-a5cf-11db-a4e0-0000779e2340.html


A few years ago, at a time of stress, Reem Kelani found herself
unable to sing. "Losing my voice was the nearest experience to
death," she says. To get through it, she worked on a setting of her
fellow Palestinian Rashid Husain's poem "Thoughts and Echoes". It
appears, entitled "Yearning", on her CD Sprinting Gazelle: after
some gentle, minor-key piano improvisation from Zoe Rahman, Kelani
starts to hum the melody, before bursting into Husain's melancholy
words.

"Music," Kelani insists, "is everyone's salvation. I made a series
of radio documentaries for the BBC aboutdisplaced people, and an
Armenian Big Mama said to me, you can burn a painting, you can burn
a book, but you can't burn a song. I try to divert my rage and anger
into existing, just being. You have to turn it all into music, or
you'd go mad."

She is resistant, however, to Palestinian radical chic. "People
said: 'Why don't you have a cover with a child throwing stones?' but
I can't stand that kind of emotional pornography." This suspicion
extends to the current vogue for the arabesque. "What a lot of
people think of as Arabic music is pastiche, orientalism. It's white
man's music. There are no quarter tones, no melodic modes."

She scorns the notion of a clash of civilisations based on
religion. "I am a Palestinian first and a Muslimsecond. I refuse the
Islamicisation of the Palestinian question. I believe in an
ecumenical Palestine, with room for all three faiths, without either
Zionists or radical Muslims. It probably won't happen in my
lifetime, but what a goal to work towards." Even so, Kelani refuses
to appear on stage with Israelis and has joined the call for a
cultural boycott of Israel.

After our interview, Kelani and her band play aconcert in the
lecture hall at London's School of African and Oriental Studies as a
warm-up for a tour of Syria under the auspices of the British
Council. In performance, the songs are relentless. Rahman (Mercury
Prize-nominated last year for her jazz album Melting Pot) stirs
ripples of piano underneath Kelani, Rahman's brother Idris growls on
the bass saxophone, and drums and double-bass play Arabic rhythms.
Kelani marches on the spot, waves a scarf,murmurs "Allah" as the
music reaches fever pitch.

Lighter moments come when she expands her repertoire to the songs of
Sayyid Darwish, a bohemian Egyptian composer of the 1920s. Growing
up in Kuwait, she told me earlier, her father was "obsessed with
Gershwin and [Irving] Berlin. It was just like listening to the call
to prayer. Insh'Allah, my next CD will be the Arab-American
Songbook, mixing them with Sayyid Darwish. He and Gershwin were
growing up at thesame time. They both had the blues, they were both
marginalised in their own backgrounds."

And indeed, in the middle of Darwish's suggestive "Zourouni" she
swerves neatly into "I Got Rhythm". When she told me earlier that
she did not "see any difference between jazz and Arabic music", it
sounded a stretch; here, for a moment, the two spin together so fast
they sound like one.

'Sprinting Gazelle' is released on Fuse Records

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Immigration Policy: Is The Other Boot About To Drop?
By Kevin MacDonald
http://www.vdare.com/macdonald/070131_mideast.htm


Almost 3 ½ years ago I published Thinking about Neoconservatism,
analyzing the neoconservative movement in the context of my studies
of the behavior pattern of Jewish groups in the societies where they
live. I concluded neoconservatism was the latest of a long
procession of political and intellectual movements dominated and
essentially controlled by members of the Jewish community, in effect
dedicated to a particular concept of how to promote the interests of
that community. I specifically cited foreign policy and immigration
as hallmark interests.

At the time, and for a couple of years later, this was an
unmentionable theory. I am told certain prominent web sites stopped
linking to VDARE.com after my essay was published. The malign
presence of the SPLC (the "Southern Poverty Law Center", a notorious
ethnically-oriented Political Correctness enforcer) was soon felt on
the scene, not coincidentally, and it named VDARE.COM a "hate
group", a sobriquet more normally associated with groups advocating
violence and other forms of illegality.

But now public debate has changed considerably. Serious antiwar
commentary routinely connects the Iraq/Iran policy problem with the
influence of Israel and her friends in America.  (See here and here
and here.)

So I ask now: will the other boot drop? Will this candor next extend
to the immigration controversy?

The vast majority of Americans live under the comfortable illusion
that theirs is a free country. They suppose that issues are openly
and honestly debated in the newspapers and on talk shows. In this
imaginary world, all issues affecting public policy are on the table
and are constantly scrutinized by the best and the brightest.

But that is simply not the case. In fact, I would go so far as to
argue the opposite—that virtually all of the really critical issues
affecting the United States and its role in the world are actually
excluded from discussion in the elite media or in the political
arena.

The classic case: US policy in the Middle East. Despite the obvious
fact that US support for Israel has crucial implications for war and
peace, the vast majority of Americans are oblivious to what is
really going on in this region.

Most Americans would be appalled to learn the truth about what
former President Jimmy Carter terms "the abominable oppression and
persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid
system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's
citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank." Carter calls
attention to the "enormous imprisonment wall … now under
construction, snaking through what is left of Palestine to encompass
more and more land for Israeli settlers." (Los Angeles Times,
December 8 2006).

Carter's recent book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid0, and his
courageous defense of it, seem finally to be triggering a newly open
discussion of Israeli actions and Jewish influence in the U.S.
Coming on the heels of the work of the University of Chicago's John
Mearsheimer and Harvard University's Stephen Walt on the Israel
Lobby, it highlights many of the same issues. Indeed, Carter has
explicitly endorsed Mearsheimer and Walt's conclusion that American
policy in the Middle East does not reflect genuine American
interests, but instead those of the Israel Lobby. (Carter Shares
Insight On Peace In Mideast, by Marty Rosen, Coastal Post, January 3
2007)

This is why it is possible to hope that the role of Jewish influence
in promoting the epochal change inaugurated by the 1965 Immigration
Act might also now be discussed openly and honestly

Carter is quite clear that open discussion of Israel's policies in
the U.S. has been suppressed:

"This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government
is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-
Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant
contrary voices. It would be almost politically suicidal for members
of Congress … to suggest that Israel comply with international law
or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians….
What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages
of the major newspapers and magazines in the United States exercise
similar self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments
expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents in the Holy Land."

In fact, it is not at all difficult to comprehend how this regime
of "self-restraint" is maintained. President Carter himself, and
Profs. Mearsheimer and Walt, point to pressure by the Israel Lobby
on the media, consequent media self-censorship, and the intimidation
of dissidents.

Carter's book has created the astounding spectacle of a former
president of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize winner being
called an anti-Semite, being condemned by mainstream Jewish
organizations such as the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and
having his offers to give talks at major universities with high
Jewish enrollment rejected. The saga of the book's treatment on
Amazon has been a farce.

The ADL's Abe Foxman is one of many who have used the old canard of
anti-Semitism to condemn both President Carter and Mearsheimer and
Walt. (My favorite title in this genre is by David Horowitz: "Jimmy
Carter: Jew-Hater, Genocide-Enabler, Liar".)

I focus on Foxman's comments because he heads a mainstream Jewish
activist organization and thus reflects the opinions of at least a
major component of the organized Jewish community. (It has long been
noticed that there is a gap between the attitudes of the majority of
American Jews and the attitudes of the established Jewish leaders.
This is especially apparent on issues such as the neoconservative
agenda of regime change in the Middle East and support of
expansionist right-wing governments in Israel.)

The point here is that the Jewish Establishment will strongly resist
any discussion of Jewish influence or dual loyalty in any area of
public policy, no matter how judicious and factually-based it may
be. These Jewish leaders have a strong sense of history. They know
that Jews have repeatedly become elites in European societies. But
they also realize that Jewish power and influence and dual loyalty
have been potent themes of anti-Semitism throughout the ages. And
they know that increases in Jewish power and influence have often
been followed by the rise of rise of anti-jewish movements0
spearheaded by people whose interests have been damaged by that
Jewish power and influence.

The strategy used by the Jewish Establishment is not to condemn the
neocons for acting on their strong emotional and ethnic ties to
Israel and manipulating the Bush administration into the disaster of
Iraq and a looming war with Iran. Nor is it to urge that the Israel
Lobby be scaled back in an effort to bring it more in line with a
reasonable view of American interests. Rather, they go into the full
blown smear and intimidation mode.

Hence the fury among Jewish activists when General Wesley Clark
blurted our that "New York money people" are gung-ho for bankrolling
politicians who will support US involvement in a war against Iran;
and that talk of a war with Iran is common in Israel. As Matthew
Iglesias, himself Jewish, notes: "Everything Clark said … is true.
What's more, everybody knows it's true." (American Prospect, January
23, 2007). But, as we should know by now, truth is irrelevant here.

Partly this is because, thus far, these tactics have been
tremendously effective. The American Jewish Establishment will not
change these tactics until they stop working. After all, it is a
long road from widespread discussion on the internet and occasional
mentions in the above-ground media to having a real influence on the
President and in the halls of Congress. There, change will be much
slower.

This is especially true given the very large role of Jewish money in
funding the newly-resurgent Democrats. On the Republican side, as
Scott McConnell has argued, the neocons may be down, but they are
far from out. And they are still pushing for war against Iran.

I think too that the American Jewish leadership no longer has the
flexibility to use any other strategy. The radical expansionists,
often motivated by religious and ethnic fanaticism, have long been
in control in Israel—since 1967 really. They are the vanguard of the
Jewish community, and as usual, they they pull the rest of the
Jewish community with them0. The moderates (aka "self-hating Jews")
have been shoved aside and do not really count any more. Similarly,
the organized Jewish community in America is dominated by the
expansionists. Jews who do not sign on to Israel's expansionist
agenda are relegated to the fringes.

Indeed, one of the arguments of Mearsheimer and Walt is that Israel
would be far better off if it could not persuade Washington to
support its expansionist agenda. And reasonable Jews like Jerome
Slater are wondering what it takes to "save Israel from itself":

"The real issue is the willed ignorance—the psychological need not
to know—of our community. The price—to the Palestinians, to the
Israelis, and to American national security—is already unbearable,
and it may well soon become apocalyptic."

These comments bring to mind historian Albert Lindemann's statement
in his book Esau's Tears0 (P535)

  "Jews actually do not want to understand their past—or at least
those aspects of their past that have to do with the hatred directed
at them, since understanding may threaten other elements of their
complex and often contradictory identities."

Whether it's about the past or the present, the pattern among Jews
is self-deception0 and willful ignorance.

As in the case of policy in the Middle East, it is no secret that
Jewish organizations were at the forefront of the immigration policy
shift implemented by the 1965 Act. Consider the assessment of
Vanderbilt University historian Hugh Davis Graham in his book
Collision Course: The Strange Convergence of Affirmative Action and
Immigration Policy in America0

"Most important for the content of immigration reform, the driving
force at the core of the movement, reaching back to the 1920s, were
Jewish organizations long active in opposing racial and ethnic
quotas… Following the shock of the Holocaust, Jewish leaders had
been especially active in Washington in furthering immigration
reform. To the public, the most visible evidence of the immigration
reform drive was played by Jewish legislative leaders, such as
Representative Celler and Senator Jacob Javits of New York. Less
visible, but equally important, were the efforts of key advisers on
presidential and agency staffs. These included senior policy
advisers such as Julius Edelson and Harry Rosenfield in the Truman
administration, Maxwell Rabb in the Eisenhower White House, and
presidential aide Myer Feldman, assistant secretary of state Abba
Schwartz, and deputy attorney general Norbert Schlei in the Kennedy-
Johnson administration." (pp. 56–57)

  In the past year, there has been much discussion of illegal
immigration. It tapped into a very large reservoir of public anger
about the lack of control of our borders and, I think, the
transformations that immigration is unleashing. The fact that
illegal immigration is, after all, illegal made it difficult to keep
off the public radar (What part of illegal don't you understand??).

But this contrasts with almost no discussion at all in the
Mainstream Media of the question of the 1,000,000  or so legal
immigrants that come to the U.S. every year—no discussion of their
effect on the economy, social services, crime and competition at
elite universities; no discussion of their effect on the long term
ethnic composition of the U.S. and the displacement of native
populations in various sectors of the economy; and no discussion of
whether most Americans really want all of this. (They don't.) The
fact that large scale legal immigration causes exactly the same
difficulties as large scale illegal inflow is a non-subject.

Those who question the power and influence of the Israel Lobby are
quickly labeled anti-Semites. The terms of choice for anyone who
thinks the U.S. should have any restrictions at all on immigration
are "racist" and "nativist".

It is exactly the same routine: Media self-censorship, pressure on
the media and politicians who stray from official orthodoxy, and
intimidation via labeling, anathematizing, and ultimately loss of
livelihood.

Of course, there are other issues that fall into the same category
of "not fit for public discussion".  Perhaps the main one is the
role of genetic influences on intelligence and behavior.

But the two issues of Israel and immigration relaxation (in the
U.S.) have in common a deep and straightforward Jewish commitment to
particular policies. My contention is that both policies have been
construed by Jewish leaders as being helpful to the security and
political influence of their community.

In the case of Israel, this is self-evident. In the case of
immigration policy, there ample documentation [PDF] of a consistent
interest by the Jewish community, both in America and in Europe, in
ending the hegemony of the host community amongst whom they live.
The measures taken to enforce their chosen objectives suggest there
is indeed an element of truth in what Foxman dismisses as "the old
canard and conspiracy theory of Jewish control of the media,
Congress, and the U.S. government".

I have presented the facts about Jewish influence in both
immigration0 and the Middle East elsewhere. This has been extremely
unwelcome. And it is not at all surprising that the Jewish community
would strenuously resist these conclusions.

Nevertheless, on foreign policy matters what is going on has
obviously become increasingly apparent to a lot of smart people with
intellectual integrity.

As the incoming 110th Congress starts up, a crucial question will be
if this new comprehension will dawn in an area in which, I believe,
it is even more critical: America's post-1965 immigration disaster.


Kevin MacDonald is Professor of Psychology at California State
University-Long Beach.

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Afghan journalists say U.S. soldiers deleted photos, video after
bomb attack and shootings
http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/world/BO45086/


KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghan journalists covering the aftermath of a
suicide bomb attack and shooting in eastern Afghanistan Sunday said
U.S. troops deleted their photos and video and warned them not to
publish or air any images of U.S. troops or a car where three
Afghans were shot to death.

Afghan witnesses and gunshot victims said U.S. forces fired on
civilians in cars and on foot along at least a six-mile stretch of
road in Nangarhar province following a suicide attack against the
Marine convoy. The U.S. military said militants also fired on
American forces during the attack.

The U.S. military and Afghan officials said eight Afghans died and
34 were wounded in the violence. One Marine was also injured.

A freelance photographer working for The Associated Press and a
cameraman working for AP Television News said a U.S. soldier deleted
their photos and video showing a four-wheel drive vehicle in which
three people were shot to death about 100 yards from the suicide
bombing. The AP plans to lodge a protest with the American military.

The photographer, Rahmat Gul, said witnesses at the scene told him
the three had been shot to death by U.S. forces fleeing the attack.
The two AP freelancers arrived at the site about a half hour after
the suicide bombing, Gul said.

"When I went near the four-wheel drive, I saw the Americans taking
pictures of the same car, so I started taking pictures," Gul
said. "Two soldiers with a translator came and said, 'Why are you
taking pictures? You don't have permission."'

It wasn't clear why the accredited journalists would need permission
to take photos of a civilian car on a public highway.

Gul said the U.S. troops took his camera, deleted his photos and
returned it to him. The journalists came across another American,
showed their identification cards, and he agreed that they could
take pictures.

A Western military official who asked not to be identified because
he was not authorized to release the information said the troops
were Marine Special Operations Forces, the Marine Corps component
created in February 2006 of the U.S. Special Operations Command.

"The same soldier who took my camera came again and deleted my
photos," Gul said. "The soldier was very angry ... I told him, 'They
gave us permission,' but he didn't listen."

Gul's new photos were also deleted, and the American, speaking
through a translator, warned him that he did not want to see any AP
photos published anywhere. The American also raised his fist in
anger as if he were going to hit him, but he did not strike, Gul
said.

Lt. Col. David Accetta, a U.S. military spokesman, said he did not
have any confirmed reports that coalition forces "have been involved
in confiscating cameras or deleting images."

Khanwali Kamran, a reporter for the Afghan channel Ariana
Television, was in a small group of journalists working alongside
Gul. Kamran said the American soldiers also deleted his footage.

"They warned me that if it is aired ... then, 'You will face
problems,"' Kamran said.

Taqiullah Taqi, a reporter for Afghanistan's largest television
station, Tolo TV, said Americans were using abusive language.

"According to the translator, they said, 'Delete them, or we will
delete you,"' Taqi said.

A freelance cameraman for AP Television News said that about 100
yards from the bomb site, a U.S. officer told him that he could not
go any closer to the scene but that he could shoot footage. The
cameraman asked not to be named for his own safety.

"Then I started filming the suicide attack site, where there was a
body and U.S. soldiers, and farther away, there was a four-wheel
drive vehicle in which three people were shot to death," he said.

As he was filming, he said, a U.S. soldier and translator "ordered
us not to move." The cameraman said they were very angry and deleted
any footage that included the Americans, as well as part of an
interview from a demonstration. Hundreds of Afghans had gathered to
protest the violence.

Reporters Without Borders condemned the actions of the U.S. forces,
saying they dealt with the press poorly.

"Why did the soldiers do it if they don't have anything to hide? The
situation is very tense in Afghanistan, and the media should be able
to report about it freely and safely," said Jean-Francois Julliard,
a spokesman for the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders.

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Iraqis use internet to survive war
By Andrew North
Tuesday, 13 February 2007
BBC News, Baghdad


Consulting Google Earth can help people work out routes to avoid
Google is playing an unlikely role in the Iraq war. Its online
satellite map of the world, Google Earth, is being used to help
people survive sectarian violence in Baghdad.

As the communal bloodshed has worsened, some Iraqis have set up
advice websites to help others avoid the death squads.

One tip - on the Iraq League site, one of the best known - is for
people to draw up maps of their local area using Google Earth's
detailed imagery of Baghdad so they can work out escape routes and
routes to block.

It's another example of the central role technology plays in the
conflict - with the widespread use of mobile phones, satellite
television as well as the internet - by all sides and for many
purposes.

For some time now, vigilante-style guard forces have been operating
in many neighbourhoods, especially in Sunni areas targeted by Shia
militias.

Many Sunnis see the Shia-dominated police forces as just as much of
a threat, because of evidence of their involvement in kidnappings.

So part of the job of the local guards is keeping them out.

With Google Earth, the Iraq League website suggests, people can also
work out the most likely approach of their attackers.

It's thought that insurgents have also used the map site, examining
the detailed images to pick out potential targets.


'Killed or tortured'

The advice on the Iraq League site - which is actually run from the
UK - begins with a warning to avoid being taken in the first place.

"If they arrest you, you will be killed or tortured."


The key thing is not to fall into the wrong hands
The Iraq League says it is aimed at all Iraqis caught up in the
violence, but it is slanted towards the Sunni community.

"If they tell you we just have a few questions and you will be back
in an hour, don't believe them. You will be dead in an hour or
disappear for months," the warning continues.

Who "they" are is rarely spelt out, apart from the occasional
mention of Ministry of Interior patrols.

To avoid arrest, people should give security training to relatives,
says the site. If they see any suspicious activity, they should ring
the local guard force.

How to blend in

People must change their routes all the time. "You must get another
ID," the site continues, with non-Sunni names.

Certain names, such as Abu Bakr or Omar are common among Sunnis -
but can spell instant death in the hands of Shia death squads.

Anything to distinguish sectarian affiliation should be masked.

Long beards, traditionally associated with devout Sunnis, are out.
Shia men keep beards much shorter.

Sunnis wanting to blend in should do the same, says the survival
guide.

Other sites tell Sunnis how they can make people think they are
Shia.

They are advised to hang images of well-known Shia figures in their
homes and shops, such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most
senior Shia cleric, or Imam Hussein, grandson of the prophet
Muhammad, whose death at Karbala in the 7th Century Shias mourn
every year.

Appeals for help

The Iraq League website has another section displaying calls from
relatives for information on missing loved ones.

This is used by both Sunnis and Shias. "Please help me to find my
husband who was kidnapped travelling from Baghdad to Amman," says
one message. "Gunmen seized him because he is a Shia, but they left
my brother and his family because they are Sunni. Please help me."

But it happened more than six months ago.

There was also an offer of help to a girl injured in the eye by a
mortar attack on her school in Baghdad in late January, an incident
widely covered by the media.

"We can provide medical treatment outside Iraq," the writer said.

Perhaps initiatives like this could also begin the process of
restoring peace. But right now, these sites are focused on survival.

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Silencing critics not way to Middle East peace
Joel Beinin
Sunday, February 4, 2007
San Franciso Chronicle


Last Sunday in San Francisco, the Anti-Defamation League sponsored
"Finding Our Voice," a conference designed to help Jews recognize and
confront the "new anti-Semitism." For me, it was ironic. Ten days
before, my own voice was silenced by fellow Jews.

I was to give a talk about our Middle East policy to high school
students at the Harker School in San Jose. With one day to go, my
contact there called to say my appearance had been canceled. He was
apologetic and upset. He expected the talk would be intellectually
stimulating and intriguing for students. But, he said, "a certain
community of parents" complained to the headmaster. He added, without
divulging details, that the Jewish Community Relations Council of
Silicon Valley had played a role.

I was raised a Zionist. I went to Israel after high school for six
months to live on a kibbutz. I met my wife there. We returned four
years later thinking we'd spend our lives on a kibbutz, working the
land and living the Zionist dream. Why did the council feel the need
to silence me?

In fact, this was not our first run-in. I have long advocated equal
rights for the Palestinians, as I do for all people. I criticize
Israeli policies. I seem to have crossed the council's line of
acceptable discourse. Because I am a Jew, it is not so easy to smear
me as guilty of this "new anti-Semitism." Instead, hosts like the
Harker School, and others, are intimidated, and open dialogue on
Israel is censored.

In 2005, Marin's Rodef Sholom synagogue caved to the council and
revoked my invitation, unless my talk could be accompanied by a
rebuttal. Roy Mash, a board member, resigned in protest. He asked in
his resignation letter whether "given Judaism's long and deep
tradition of concern for justice and ethics, a Jewish venue is (not)
precisely the setting most appropriate for a speaker like Dr. Beinin?"

I was indeed raised to believe that being Jewish meant being actively
committed to social justice. I moved to Israel expecting to pursue
that ideal. Yet much of what I saw there called this into question.

I tended livestock on Kibbutz Lahav, which was established on the
ruins of three Palestinian villages. The Palestinian inhabitants had
been expelled and, because they are not Jewish, were unable to return.
One day, we needed extra workers to help clean manure from the turkey
cages. The head of the turkey branch said we should not ask for
kibbutz members to do the work because, "This isn't work for Jews.
This is work for Arabushim." "Arabushim" is an extremely derogatory
racial term.

I had participated in the civil rights movement in America, picketing
Woolworth's stores that wouldn't serve African Americans. Yet in
Israel I discovered the same, stark racism. How could this bring peace
between Palestinians and Israelis? While still living in Israel, I
began to speak out for equal rights for Palestinians, as I had done
for blacks in America.

Organizations claiming to represent American Jews engage in a
systematic campaign of defamation, censorship and hate-mongering to
silence criticism of Israeli policies. They hollow the ethical core
out of the Jewish tradition, acting instead as if the highest purpose
of being Jewish is to defend Israel, right or wrong.

No one is spared. New York University Professor Tony Judt also moved
to Israel with notions of justice. Judt learned, as I did, that most
Israelis were "remarkably unconscious of the people who had been
kicked out of the country and were suffering in refugee camps to make
this fantasy possible." In October, the Polish Consulate in New York
canceled a talk by Judt after pressure from the Anti-Defamation League
and the American Jewish Committee.

Even former U.S. presidents are not immune. Jimmy Carter has been the
target of a smear campaign since the release of his latest book,
"Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." Carter's most vociferous critics
have not challenged him on the issues. Rather, they discredit him with
personal attacks, even insinuating that the man who has achieved more
than any other American president in Arab/Israeli peacemaking is
anti-Semitic. Why discredit, defame and silence those with opposing
viewpoints? I believe it is because the Zionist lobby knows it cannot
win based on facts. An honest discussion can only lead to one
conclusion: The status quo in which Israel declares it alone has
rights and intends to impose its will on the weaker Palestinians,
stripping them permanently of their land, resources and rights, cannot
lead to a lasting peace. We need an open debate and the freedom to
discuss uncomfortable facts and explore the full range of policy
options. Only then can we adopt a foreign policy that serves American
interests and one that could actually bring a just peace to
Palestinians and Israelis.


Joel Beinin co-edited "The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and
Israel, 1993-2005." Contact us at insight @ sfchronicle.com.

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Robert Fisk on Osama bin Laden at 50, Iraqi Death Squads and Why the
Middle East is More Dangerous Now Than in Past 30 Years
Monday, March 5th, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/05/1515214


Robert Fisk is a veteran war correspondent and one of the world's most
experienced journalists covering the Middle East. He has reported from
across the Arab world for the past thirty years. His latest book is
"The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East." He
joins us in our Firehouse studio. [includes rush transcript]



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Iraq, at least 26 people died today when a suicide bomber struck a
busy commercial district in Baghdad. Over 50 people were injured. In
other reported violence, gunmen killed five people when they opened
fire on Shia pilgrims in two separate incidents around the capital.
Elsewhere in Bagdad, police said that since Saturday, they had found
20 bodies of men who were believed to be victims of Shiite death squads
The latest news comes as more than one thousand US and Iraqi troops
have moved into the Shiite stronghold of Sadr city to conduct
house-to-house searches and street patrols. It marked the largest
operation into the area in more than three years.

Meanwhile in southern Iraq, British-led troops have uncovered an Iraqi
government facility in Basra where Shiite forces were torturing
prisoners and producing bomb-making equipment. The torture was going
on inside the local headquarters of the Iraqi interior ministry"s
domestic intelligence agency.

The news comes amid the backdrop of a planned security conference on
the tenth of March in Iraq. The United States says it will attend the
talks that include both Syria and Iran.

Robert Fisk is a veteran war correspondent and one of the world"s most
experienced journalists covering the Middle East. He has reported from
across the Arab world for the past thirty years. He was in Iraq in the
1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, in the early 1990s during the Persian
Gulf War and most recently during the U.S. invasion and occupation. He
has also reported on the civil wars in Algeria and Lebanon, the
Iranian revolution, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and Israel"s
occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

Robert Fisk joins me in our firehouse studio.

Robert Fisk, chief Middle East correspondent for the London
Independent. He is the author of several books, his latest is "The
Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East."
     AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk is a veteran war correspondent, one of
the world's most experienced journalists in the Middle East. He has
reported from across the Arab world for the past thirty years. He was
in Iraq in the '80s during the Iran-Iraq War, in the early '90s during
the Persian Gulf War, and most recently during the US invasion and
occupation. He has also reported on civil wars in Algeria and Lebanon,
the Iranian revolution, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and
Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Robert Fisk joins me
here in our firehouse studio for the hour. Welcome to Democracy Now!

ROBERT FISK: You're making me feel old, Amy. All these talks of all
the civil wars I've covered, I'm beginning to think it's time I packed
it all in.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, congratulations also on your 2006 Lannan Lifetime
Achievement Prize for Cultural Freedom.

ROBERT FISK: Thanks very much, indeed. Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: You said last night at a large event at Town Hall in New
York, where you were honored and you spoke, that you consider the
award important as a flak jacket. Explain.

ROBERT FISK: Well, if you report the Middle East and you do it fairly
and honorably and you criticize everyone, and that includes Israel,
you're going to get the sticks and stones, sometimes literally. You
get a lot of flak. And when a journalist gets an honor like the Lannan
Award or a journalistic award in Britain, OK, it's flattering, it's
nice. All journalists like that. But particularly in the Middle East,
it's a way of showing that there are other people in the West who say,
"You're doing the right job. Keep it up."

And it's also a lesson to those critics, particularly the particularly
venomous ones, and you and I could think of them straightaway, who try
to destroy your career by lying about you, by accusing you of being
anti-Semitic, anti-Arab, you name it. It's a way of saying, "Well,
hold on a second. Look at this list of awards. Do you think these
people are all the same? Do you not realize that this was for some
reason?" So, it is a flak jacket. It's a protection for journalists
when we get awards for reporting in the Middle East, particularly in
the Middle East.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, your last piece is about bin Laden hitting
fifty.

ROBERT FISK: Yes. Well, I must say I did sort of mention in the same
piece that I think bin Laden is pretty irrelevant now. You know, his
creation is al-Qaeda, and it exists. It's in being. The monster is
born. Chasing bin Laden now, if indeed we are chasing bin Laden now,
is a bit like chasing nuclear scientists and arresting them all after
the invention of the atom bomb. The atom bomb exists. You can't
deconstruct it. So arresting the nuclear scientists won't do any good.

And in a sense, you see, the same applies with bin Laden. His
"achievement" -- I put that in quotation marks -- in his eyes, is the
creation of al-Qaeda. Never before have we had a violent institution
of this kind. And the only way to overcome it is to produce some
justice, which, of course, we don't want to do. We want more and more
violence against al-Qaeda, which, of course, helps al-Qaeda. But the
fact of the matter is that I think bin Laden has achieved, in his
mind, what he wants. And now, if he dies of kidney failure, which I
don't think he's going to do -- I don't believe these stories -- or
whether he falls off a cliff or gets bombed or arrested, I think it's
irrelevant, totally irrelevant.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about your interviews with Osama bin Laden. How many
did you do?

ROBERT FISK: I did three.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the first one.

ROBERT FISK: Well, the first one was in Sudan. A Saudi friend of his,
who had fought with him against the Soviets in Afghanistan, who, mind
you -- he was now a journalist -- he met me at an Islamic conference
in Khartoum, and one Sunday morning, he said, "Robert, I want you to
come and meet someone." And for him, it was a bit of a joke. He knew
bin Laden was out in the desert, where bin Laden's construction teams
-- he was, of course, in the construction business, as most his family
were -- had been building a new road from a little village to the main
highway between Port Sudan and Khartoum to link up so that the
villagers could take part in the national economy.

AMY GOODMAN: Bin Laden's father was a great Yemeni construction
magnate in Saudi Arabia?

ROBERT FISK: A billionaire so, yes. And, indeed, most of bin Laden's
-- or some of bin Laden's money came from the construction business.
He built the roads upon which the Afghan guerrillas took tanks to
fight the Russians. I mean, I actually went in an air raid shelter
twenty-five feet high, built into the living rock of a mountain in
Afghanistan, built by bin Laden during the Russian war, next to a camp
built by the CIA, of course.

But, no, I went out with this guy. We went across the desert past
pyramids you've never seen before. I mean, they're not even in
guidebooks. And we ended up in this desert village, and there was this
man in this long white robe with all these kids dancing in front of
him and people slaughtering chickens and goats and sheep. And my
journalist friend, who knew bin Laden well, went up and spoke to him
in his ear. And I saw bin Laden's eyes flick towards me with palpable
concern. He had never met a Western journalist before. And I was
invited to meet him. I shook hands with him, and he thought I was
going to ask him about terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror,
because he was already being implicated. There were comments by State
Department officials that bin Laden was plotting world terror.

AMY GOODMAN: This is 1993.

ROBERT FISK: Yes. Pretty accurate, actually, if you think about it.
But, anyway, that's what was happening. So anyway, I wasn't really
interested in this. You know, my colleagues had written all this
terror, terror, terror stuff. I wanted to know what created bin Laden
during the war with the Russians, what happened to him, because, you
know, the Saudis wanted to send a Saudi prince to lead an Arab legion
against the Soviet infidels. Unfortunately, the Saudi princes were
keener on living in Monte Carlo than going to Afghanistan, and bin
Laden was the man who led the Arab legion.

So I said to him, "What was it like fighting the Russians? Tell me
about fighting the Russians." And he talked for some time about the
large number of his supporters -- there wasn't al-Qaeda in existence
then -- a large number of Arab fighters who died. There's a mass grave
near Jalalabad -- he told me exactly where it was -- with hundreds of
his own fighters buried in it. And then he recalled an attack on a
Russian firebase, a Russian artillery position in Nangarhar province
-- capital is Jalalabad. And he said, "As we were advancing, a mortar
shell fell at my feet." And he waited for it to explode and kill him.
And he said, "I felt sakina, a calmness" -- it's a religious idea that
you are not worried about death, you are outside this world, you are
linked in with God and the idea of another world, another life. And
the mortar shell didn't explode. There must be many people who wish
that it had, but it didn't.

And, obviously, it was quite clear talking to him that this was a very
important moment in his life. He had conquered fear and the fear of
death. And once you do that, you start discovering perhaps that you
love death, but it's not the same. You remember the famous phrase we
always hear from suicide bombers, "You love life, we love death,"
which is the most frightening thing you can hear. And I think at that
moment, that during that attack on the Russians -- I mean, it was a
Soviet base, a Soviet army base -- I think that must have changed him
in some way. But, you know, as I saw him each time, he changed, too. I
mean, he was growing older.

AMY GOODMAN: You're older than him?

ROBERT FISK: Yeah, I'm about ten years older than him. Yes, that's
right. I don't think -- I mean, he always -- we never discussed age,
but, I mean, he must have guessed I was slightly older than him. He
was always very courteous towards me. And when he stopped to eat, I
would sit on the ground with the al-Qaeda fighters and eat yoghurt and
drink tea with him. He broke off occasionally to pray, as well, which
I, of course, didn't do with him.

But certainly, the next time I met him in Afghanistan, he was a much
more angry man. He was filled with fury at the corruption of the Saudi
royal family. He went into great detail on how many millions of
dollars they stole on this occasion, how many princes have taken these
dollars, and so on. And it looked at that stage as if what he really
wanted to do was to overthrow the Saudi royal family and become caliph
of Arabia. He didn't say that, but I suspect. I mean, Arabia is what
he's interested in. At the end of the day, it's Arabia, not because of
oil, but because of the holy places of Mecca and Medina and his own
religious Salafi beliefs.

But he was already beginning to talk about people having dreams. You
know, in the Wahhabi sect, people believe in what I call "dreamology."
They think that when they have a dream, it's a message coming from
somewhere outside the world. Obviously, you know, you can interpret
the Prophet Muhammad's receiving the message of God as being in a kind
of trance or a dream. Remember, the first message he received, he
talked about how he was wrapped in, and it was felt tight -- that an
angel wrapped him and squeezed him tight. And I think that bin Laden
believes in dreams. I think a lot of al-Qaeda people do. They have
ideas that come to them. We don't. We believe that this is an inactive
but still living brain taking over, just things come through like
stars pass through the heavens, but I think they interpret them or
want to interpret them, which is a very -- something we basically gave
up in the Middle Ages in Europe.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to break, but when we come back, tell us what he
told you on that mountaintop in Afghanistan. We're talking to Robert
Fisk, the veteran war correspondent. His latest book, The Great War
for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, has just come out
in paperback. His earlier book, Pity the Nation: The Abduction of
Lebanon, is coming out in French, and he is traveling to Paris today
for the launch of the book there. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We continue with Robert Fisk, chief Middle East
correspondent for The Independent of London, voted best foreign
correspondent for years by British reporters and editors. His latest
book is called The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the
Middle East. Robert, you're talking about mountaintop in Afghanistan
with Osama bin Laden.

ROBERT FISK: Well, the last time I saw him, which was '97 -- he did
want to see me after 9/11, but I couldn't reach him. An American air
raid was on the road in front of me on my way to see him. But the last
time I saw him, he had moved from his hatred of the Saudis, which was
still there, into a quite clear fury at the United States. He was
starting to talk about them as being crusaders.

And, in fact, the last words he said to me, as we sat in a very
freezing mountaintop -- I spent the night with his al-Qaeda people in
a tent sleeping. I woke up with ice in my hair. And the last words he
said to me, and I have my notebooks, which, of course, I will research
for this book, and his words were, "Mr. Robert, from this mountain
upon which we are sitting, we destroyed the Soviet army and helped to
destroy the Soviet Union," which was an element of truth, though
obviously a usual bin Laden exaggeration. And then he said, "and I
pray to God that He permits us to turn America into a shadow of
itself." Those were his words. And in my notebook, which I actually
took these words down in, I put two lines on each side of the quote.
At the time, I wrote, "Rhetoric?" It wasn't, of course.

And I remember that, you know, on 9/11, I said before, I think, to
you, that I was crossing the Atlantic that day. The plane turned
around, and I got back to Europe and saw, you know, the biblical
crashing of the Twin Towers. I remember thinking, well, New York is
now a shadow of itself, all that dust and fog going across the city. I
was pretty convinced, from the start, that bin Laden was involved. I
still am, of course.

AMY GOODMAN: You have chosen a section of your book --

ROBERT FISK: Highly subversive, highly subversive section.

AMY GOODMAN: -- The Great War for Civilisation, to read, deleting any
curses or anything like that, if you could read a piece.

ROBERT FISK: I've chosen a piece that has no bad language, which is
permitted on British television, but not on American television. Yes,
it fits in rather well with the news today and what you've just been
talking about. It's about the issue of our rationale of how we behave
in Iraq.

[reading] "The Americans and British benefited from these accounts of
terror under Saddam. Would you rather he was still here in Iraq
torturing and gassing his own people? they would ask. Don't you think
we did a good thing by getting rid of him? All this, of course,
because the original reasons for the invasion -- Saddam's possession
of weapons of mass destruction, his links with the outrages of
September 11th, Mr. Blair's 45-minute warning -- turned out to be
lies. But it was a dark comparison that Bush and Blair were making. If
Saddam's immorality and wickedness had to be the yardstick against
which all of our own iniquities were judged, what did that say about
us? If Saddam's regime was to be the moral compass to define our
actions, how bad -- how iniquitous -- did that allow us to be? Saddam
tortured and executed women in Abu Ghraib. We only sexually abused
prisoners and killed a few of them and murdered some suspects in
Bagram in Afghanistan and subjected them to inhuman treatment in
Guantanamo. Saddam was much worse. And thus it became inevitable that
the symbol of Saddam's shame -- the prison at Abu Ghraib --
subsequently became the symbol of our shame, too.

"What was interesting was the vastly different reaction in East and
West to our abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. We `civilised' Westerners
were shocked at the dog-biting and humiliations and torture `our' men
and women administered to the inmates. Iraqis were outraged, but not
shocked. Their friends and relatives -- some of whom have been locked
up by the Americans -- had long ago told them of the revolting
behaviour of the American guards. They weren't surprised by those
iconic photographs. They already knew.

"By early 2004, an army of thousands of mercenaries had appeared on
the streets of Iraq's major cities, many of them former British and
American soldiers hired by the occupying Anglo-American authorities
and by dozens of companies who feared for the lives of their employees
in Baghdad The heavily armed Britons working for well over 300
security firms in Iraq now outnumbered Britain's 8,000-strong army in
the south of the country. Although major US and British security
companies were operating in Iraq, dozens of small firms also set up
shop with little vetting of their employees and few rules of
engagement. Many of the Britons were former SAS soldiers -- hundreds
of former American Special Forces men were also in the country --
while armed South Africans were also working for the occupation
authorities.

"The presence in Iraq of so many thousands of Western mercenaries --
or `security contractors,' as the American press coyly referred to
them -- said as much about America's fear of taking military
casualties as it did about the multi-million-pound security industry
now milking the coffers of the US and British governments. Security
firms were escorting convoys on the highways of Iraq. Armed
plain-clothes men from an American company were guarding US troops at
night inside the former presidential palace where Paul Bremer had his
headquarters. In other words, security companies were now guarding the
occupation troops. When a US helicopter crashed near Fallujah in 2003,
it was an American security company that took control of the area and
began rescue operations. Needless to say, casualties among the
mercenaries were not included in the regular body count put out by the
occupation authorities."

The latest figure that I have as a journalist now is that we now have
in Iraq 120,000 Westerner mercenaries. That's almost equal to the
total number of American troops.

AMY GOODMAN: And in your experience in Iraq, --

ROBERT FISK: Ouch.

AMY GOODMAN: -- having been there, how much did you run into these
mercenaries?

ROBERT FISK: Oh, they would turn up and stay in the same hotel I was
in. They turned up during checkpoints on roads, sometimes wearing
hoods or masks. Why? Why hoods? Why masks? What were they doing? I
would come across them driving vehicles through the streets of
Baghdad, guns pointing out the window. "Get out of the way! Get out of
the way! Get out of the way!" Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch, in the air. Very
similar to the same gangs that Saddam used to use for security
purposes to get people out of the way in vehicles. In fact, the way in
which the occupation authorities have sealed off vast areas of Baghdad
with walls is classic. It wasn't as bad under Saddam. There weren't so
many walls, but it's very similar to the same practice that Saddam's
regime used. In fact, in many ways, what we do has become a kind of
pale mirror of the regime we got rid of. You know, hanging people and
their heads come off when you hang them, this is incredible.

AMY GOODMAN: Congressman John Murtha, the former Marine who basically
channeled the Pentagon and came out early on -- he was first for the
war, came out against and called for withdrawal -- said yesterday that
Abu Ghraib -- that the US military should destroy Abu Ghraib, should
pull the troops out of Saddam's palaces and should close Guantanamo.

ROBERT FISK: Look, we've been through Abu Ghraib so often. First of
all, it was liberated, and we all went in and saw the hangman's noose
and where Saddam's people were executed. Then they announced they
would have to use it briefly as a prison. I said -- immediately I went
to prison. I said, "They'll use it as a prison again," because they
always do, and they did. And then, one Iraqi historian said it should
be turned into a museum of Saddam's horror. This is Kanan Makiya, of
course. And then, after the abuses were made photographically evident
at Abu Ghraib, it was announced by the then-Iraqi government that it
was going to be bulldozed to the ground. And then it was announced
that, after all, it was still needed as a prison, so it would stay as
a prison for more abuses, perhaps. And now, again, we have this
suggestion it should be razed to the ground. Later on, it will be
stated that it will be still needed as a prison. Then we'll hear yet
again that it has to be razed to the ground. You don't realize, unless
you go to Iraq, that this is a circular track. All the stories we
report, we reported last year, and we're going to report them again
next year, believe me.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about Dick Cheney. The so-called
coalition of the willing in Iraq continues to shrink. Two members
recently announced they're withdrawing troops. Denmark says its
battalion will pull out of Iraq by August and increase its troop
presence in Afghanistan. This followed British Prime Minister Tony
Blair's announcement of a pending withdrawal of 1,600 British troops
from Iraq. After Blair made the announcement, Vice President Dick
Cheney issued what some called a tacit criticism of Britain's withdrawal.

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: I want you to know that the American
people will not support a policy of retreat. We want to complete the
mission. We want to get it done right. And then we want to return home
with honor.

AMY GOODMAN: Vice President Dick Cheney.

ROBERT FISK: Well, you've got to remember that at one point it looked
as if the Brits might pull out of the original invasion, and Rumsfeld
made a statement rather similar to Cheney's, saying, well, we can do
it without them. You know, I mean, I'm still wondering what on earth
Britain is doing in Iraq and how we ever got into it. You know, one of
the extraordinary things at the moment about both Iraq and Afghanistan
is that our leaderships, British just as much as Americans', have lied
continually. They've lied about weapons of mass destruction, links
between Saddam and al-Qaeda, 45-minute warnings, as I said.

But this is the first war I've ever covered in which the leadership in
the West bases its policies on its own lies. I mean, it's one thing to
lie to the people, and then you have your own policy of how to pursue
a war, but to pursue the war on the basis of the lies you're telling
the people, this is an entirely new concept in war and strategy in
foreign policy. I've never seen it before.

You know, you have Blair standing up now in the British parliament --
well, less and less, thank goodness; I mean, soon he's going, because
of Iraq, of course, and because of his relationship with Bush-- and he
keeps saying the same thing over and over again: "I absolutely and
completely believe I was right." And that's not good enough. You know,
we can all believe we're right. We can jump off the Empire State
Building believing we can fly, but we won't fly, will we? And Blair
actually thinks that his conviction, his own self-regard, is
sufficient to make up for the factual mistakes that he makes. It's OK,
because he really believed it. That's not the way you go to war.

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think Tony Blair is pulling these troops out,
although at the same time increasing troops in Afghanistan, and what
do you think of that?

ROBERT FISK: I'll tell you why I think he's doing it. I think that the
British military is having serious morale problems. I think that the
British military commanders are getting to a point where they're going
to say, "We can't do this anymore. We're going to resign." When the
Chief of Staff, Dannatt, made his statement at the Ministry of Defense
about four months ago, in which he said, "Look, the longer we stay
there, the more we're exacerbating the situation," it was a great
shock for Blair. This was not a retired officer like Mike Jackson, who
I think very cowardly did not say those things when he was in office.
This was a serving -- this was the guy at the top of the British army,
giving a clear warning: watch out.

And, you know, in Afghanistan, the British are in a very serious
position. They've got units of only twelve or fifteen men in little
villages, and they're being attacked in company strength by the
Taliban, very serious. I mean, I met a British soldier in London. I
was giving a talk at the Dorchester about a week and a half ago. I was
in London. A British officer was talking to me. He said, "You don't
realize how we are being overwhelmed in Afghanistan."

There was a very interesting comment from the British Ministry of
Defense about a month ago -- or five or six weeks ago. They said
British troops are now in the most violent combat they've experienced
since the Korean War. And British defense correspondents sort of put
this up as a great sign: our chaps are fighting just like in Korea.
And I thought, hang on a minute, that's not the point. What happened
in Korea? The Gloucestershire Regiment were overwhelmed by millions of
Chinese troops crossing the Yalu River. We couldn't stand up to the
vast numbers of soldiers that were coming in from the north in Korea.
They were just overrunning us, totally. And what was happening, I
realized immediately, in Afghanistan is that soldiers were being so
totally outnumbered, they were having to retreat out of villages. In
one case, I understand, twelve British troops in a school in a village
were facing 300 Taliban and had to call in US air strikes to destroy
the rest of the village to save themselves.

You know, one story, which has not really come out in the American
press -- I know it's a fact, because I've investigated it fully in
Iraq -- is that in the first battle of Fallujah -- remember, when
there was a ceasefire and then the Iraqis came back, then they had the
second battle and they took the city and managed to destroy much of it
-- in the first battle of Fallujah, there were twelve US Marines
guarding the mayor's office at Ramadi, the neighboring city to the
west, and they were attacked by hundreds of Iraqi insurgents, and that
twelve-man US Marine unit was liquidated. They were totally
eliminated. They were killed, all of them. They were wiped out. And
that is not a story that's gotten the front page, as far as I know, of
the New York Times, but that's what happened. So the dangers you see
that we're now facing, very much -- I don't mean to make too facile a
comparison -- very much the same dangers that the crusaders faced with
overwhelming force from the Muslim armies of the 12th century, is that
the local populations are now so full of fury and anger against us
that they are attacking us in their hundreds, overwhelming force.

AMY GOODMAN: This latest news in Basra, British-led troops have
uncovered an Iraqi government facility where Shia forces were
torturing prisoners and producing bomb-making equipment?

ROBERT FISK: Look, everything's getting better in Basra. That's why
we're leaving, right? I mean, here we go again. You know, my colleague
Patrick Cockburn wrote a very good piece in Iraq not long ago. He said
the problem with British statements, or particularly Blair, who's
saying everything is getting better, is that to prove them wrong, you
have to go to places where you will have your throat cut. So you can't
prove him wrong, so it's OK, he'll get away with it.

Look, there's no doubt that the Iraqi interior ministry is totally --
I mean, it's impregnated with the insurgency, Shiite insurgency, Sunni
and other parts. You know, from the very beginning, we used to have
these reports: men in police uniform have kidnapped Margaret Hassan,
men in army uniform besieged a police station, you know? And I used to
say, hang on, there's not a Wal-Mart factory in Fallujah with
made-to-measure police uniforms. Bring in 300 more men, we've got the
-- no, these are policemen. These are Iraqi soldiers. The Iraqi
security forces have been totally infiltrated by the insurgents of
both sides. That includes interior ministry, prisons, police stations.
This idea, oh, we're going to build up the Iraqi forces until they can
take over -- you know, I love that line from Blair: from now onwards
Iraqis in Basra will write their own history. Yeah, they sure will,
when we go. It's incredible the way they get away with it, these people.

AMY GOODMAN: And the latest news out of Afghanistan, thousands of
angry demonstrators taking to the streets after US forces were
involved in a panicked shooting, which left sixteen civilians dead and
twenty-three injured -- at least that's how it was described -- panic
shooting in The Independent.

ROBERT FISK: No photos, please. That's what you were talking about
also. We will delete you if you take pictures. Look, this is happening
over and over again in Baghdad. A car blows up, a suicide bomber
attacks, so everyone in the area is shot at. You know, at the very
beginning of the invasion, when the Americans reached Baghdad, there
was a frightening circumstance of Highway 11, I think it was. I went
there afterwards, and a US tank column was moving down the road. They
were ambushed, and the tank commander believed that every car on the
road was a potential suicide car, and he ordered his men to fire at
every civilian car. So when I got to the scene, there were smoking
cars. There were women, their clothes blasted off them, naked in the
backs of vehicles, children lying with rugs over them, dead beside the
road. It was a massacre. Now, there was an ambush by the Iraqis. The
Americans were attacked there, but their response was to kill
everything in sight. And I actually talked to the US tank commander --
he's quoted in my book by name -- who said, "Look, I have to defend my
men. I have a duty to defend my men. I'm sorry if innocent people get
killed."

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Robert Fisk, chief Middle East
correspondent for The Independent of London. His latest book is The
Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. We'll be
back with him in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk is our guest, chief Middle East correspondent
for The Independent of London. Robert, you head to Paris today for the
French edition of Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon, then
Cairo and Egypt for the Arabic edition coming out of The Great War for
Civilisation?

ROBERT FISK: Yes. It goes onto the crack of doom. We also have, by the
way, a Bosnian edition next year coming out in Sarajevo. There's
sixteen foreign language editions now.

AMY GOODMAN: But then, you pack up everything and you start your
Middle East reporting again.

ROBERT FISK: Well, I'm still doing Middle East reporting. I mean, I
was in Lebanon for the violence in the streets, of course, in January.
Yeah, from about July onwards, I will be full-time back Afghanistan
and Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, etc.

AMY GOODMAN: You mention Lebanon. Let's talk about the situation there
today. This is where you have been based for the last thirty years.

ROBERT FISK: Thirty-one, almost, now, yeah. Yes, I mean, I was, you
know, like I suppose most Lebanese, I felt, up until July the 12th,
the beginning of the war between Hezbollah and the Israelis last
summer, that maybe Lebanon had a chance. You know, it was being
rebuilt. There wasn't enough money trickling down from the top to the
bottom; it was still a lopsided society with the Shiites being the
poor and the oppressed as usual. But I thought until we came across --
you know, even when the Shiites pulled out of the government, which
was a very serious matter because it meant that once again we were
emphasizing the sectarian nature of Lebanese politics, that there
might be some form of compromise.

But once we had that strike, which turned so violent -- you know, I
turned up on Corniche Mazraa in the western part of Beirut, and there
must have been 7,000 people, Muslims, Shiites and Sunnis, chucking
rocks and stones at each other. There were seven Lebanese soldiers
trying to get between them. I went with them taking pictures. I mean,
the stones were bouncing off the soldiers. People were chucking rocks
from the top of sixteen-story buildings. It was very dangerous. I
thought, civil war was going to restart that day.

And one of the dangerous things at that point was that the young
people who were involved were too young to remember the civil war,
which of course actually ended in 1990. They might have a faint
memory. They would have heard their parents talking about it. And they
didn't realize how quickly it would escalate, how quickly you could
deteriorate. Even Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah -- well, the Hezbollah is a
very disciplined organization, of course -- was shocked at the speed
with which his strike, his civil disobedience strike, descended into
total street violence. Then, of course, two days later, guns came on
the streets.

Very dangerous situation, because it keeps going back into a sort of
semi-denial of the political crisis. We think, OK, well, Lebanon is
out of the news, it's OK again. But the reality is that Lebanon is in
great danger of splintering apart again. And I went out, a short time,
a short while ago, before I came to America, for dinner in a Sunni
area of Beirut. It's a mixed area, but mostly Sunni, and I remember
saying, well, how are you getting on with your Shiite neighbors these
days? And the woman at the table said, well, actually, most of them
have gone on holiday. They've left their keys with their neighbors.
They have gone to stay with relatives elsewhere.

Now, that's how it begins. That's how it happened in Baghdad, people
moving out of Sunni areas, people moving out of Shiite areas, if
they're a different religion. One of the frightening things that
happened during those January days of violence, including the area
where there was shooting used, is that the scenes of street combat
were on the same green line of the civil war. In other words, the old
fracture between east and west, Beirut and parts of West Beirut,
reopened at the exact -- Hazmieh -- exactly the same point. I spent
parts of the civil war at Hazmieh watching the fighting, and there, on
the same piece of road, it broke apart again. It's like, you know, you
keep stitching it up, and it comes undone.

AMY GOODMAN: What about Seymour Hersh's report, where he says that the
Bush administration and Saudi Arabia are pumping money for covert
operations in many areas of the Middle East, including Lebanon, Syria
and Iran, in an effort to strengthen Saudi-supported Sunni Islam
groups and weaken Iranian-backed Shiites. Some of the covert money has
been given to jihadist groups in Lebanon with ties to al-Qaeda.

ROBERT FISK: Look, Seymour Hersh said that we were going to invade
Iraq, and I thought we wouldn't, and he was right and I was wrong. So
when Seymour Hersh says we're going to bombard Iran, I remain silent.
When Seymour Hersh tells me -- he was in Beirut, of course; he met
Nasrallah there -- that we're pumping money into Sunni extremist
groups, I think, well, hang on a second, he got it right and I got it
wrong on Iraq.

Look, the truth of the matter is that these various organizations --
and there are some al-Qaeda-type groups, groupuscules, tiny ones in
Lebanon, and I've met them -- they don't need money from outside.
They've got money. Everyone in Lebanon who's got weapons has money.
It's like the same nonsense: we talk about how the Iranians are
teaching the Iraqi Shiite insurgents to make bombs. Iraqi insurgents
know how to make bombs. They don't need the Iranians to come and teach
them. I don't think a lot of money is reaching these people. What I do
think is that these various extreme groups are quite possibly being
mobilized or encouraged by elements within the -- what we now call the
American-supported Lebanese government -- what a kiss of death that is
for the Siniora government -- encouraged to remain where they are and
to be available in certain circumstances.

You know, a large number of the killings that have taken place in
Beirut are not necessarily carried out by the Syrians. Hariri, I
think, was a Syrian-engineered plot, yes. But, for example, Pierre
Gemayel's murder, a lot of Lebanese say, well, maybe it was another
Christian group behind that. One of the things you find in Lebanon is
that there are various groups, some of them Palestinian -- we call
them extremists or terrorists, whatever you like -- who are available
to help anyone. They can make temporary alliances. They don't need to
be given $5 million on the quiet by someone with American money.

The real danger now, you see, is that with an ideological government
like you have and like we, I suppose, think we have, we constantly
want to assist people who will join us in our campaign. You can go
back to Afghanistan. We wanted the warlords on our side against bin
Laden. Now we're saddled with the warlords, which is why we can't
stamp out the opium trade or the drugs trade. In Iraq, we started --

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that, for people who may not understand the
significance of drugs in Afghanistan.

ROBERT FISK: We basically used the Northern Alliance, Mujahideen, the
non-Taliban, anti-Taliban alliance of guerrillas, who had fought a
terrible, terrifying civil war of rape and murder in Kabul earlier, to
combat on the ground the Talibans, so that we didn't lose so many
soldiers. The principle of war at the moment is that they die and we
live, not the other way around or not both. And because then, in order
to continue the control of Afghanistan, which we're now losing in the
south, we wanted to continue that control without casualties, we
continued to employ with millions and millions of dollars the same
warlords who had been running the poppy trade, as well as fighting
Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.

You know, we forget that the UN in the beginning of 2001 said that the
drugs exports of Afghanistan had fallen by 94% because the Taliban had
banned drugs. The Tony Blair version is that Taliban were in the drugs
trade and it was flourishing, and now it's flourishing again. Once
again, the narrative of history is simply wrong. That's not what
happened.

But in all these various -- Iraq, again, who is funding the interior
ministry militiamen who are murdering people? The interior ministry is
funded by us. We use local gunmen and murderers to do our job for us
and save our soldiers' lives, not very successfully, but that's what
we do. And, of course, we'll do the same if necessary in Lebanon with
all these unsavory groups, all of whom have got blood on their hands.
I mean, there's one Lebanese politician -- he's a friend of mine, I
know him very well -- who ran a militia during the civil war, which
brutally tortured its opponents, committed war crimes, and he met
Condoleezza Rice a few days ago. I mean, you know, we will make
friends with those who want to help us and whom we think are worthy of
our support on the short term. And if -- I mean, who did bin Laden
used to work for when he was fighting the Russians? Us, you know? I
mean, we use these unsavory -- who was Saddam working for for most of
his rule? Us. Who gave him the gas? The components came from the
United States.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to Lebanon and to Palestine and
Israel and to go to the issue of --

ROBERT FISK: Palestine doesn't exist, unless you put quotation marks
around it, Amy. There is no state of Palestine. And I don't think
there is going to be.

AMY GOODMAN: Why not?

ROBERT FISK: Unless the Palestinians can have a cohesive state without
Jewish settlements dotted through it and have East Jerusalem as a
capital, I cannot see there ever being a Palestinian state, in
reality. I mean, you can print stamps or bank notes, and have Ramallah
as your temporary capital. But unless we see UN Security Council
Resolution 242 abided by by all sides --

AMY GOODMAN: Which says?

ROBERT FISK: Retreat of Israeli forces from territories occupied in
the '67 War, in return for security of all states in the area,
including, of course, Israel, and the absolute fact that you cannot
legally acquire land through war. It is illegal to acquire land
through war, which means the settlements or colonies for Jews and Jews
only on Arab land are internationally illegal. Bush has already said
there are facts on the grounds that won't be changed. He's thus said
that these illegal settlements can remain. He's effectively torn up
242 a couple of years ago. Well, I suppose we can still, you know,
have another 242 Resolution. It will be 17- or 18-something-or-other.
But 242 remains. It was supposed to be the basis of the Oslo
Agreement, which failed. It failed because we didn't abide by 242.

Unless Israel goes back to its international frontiers, or at least
the '67 frontiers, I don't think there's going to be peace between
Palestinians and Israelis, and I don't think there's going to be a
Palestine. And most Palestinians realize this. It's only we, who sit
in our beautiful homes in New York or London or wherever in the West
-- or mine's in Beirut, but that's a different matter -- who can talk
about, oh, a one-state solution, a two-state solution, putting the
peace process -- was the cliché -- back on track. Now, it's a road
map. You can't put a road back on track, so I'm sure we'll invent a
new cliché for that. But this is woeful. It's more self-delusion by
us. It's like Bush saying that the Israelis won the war against the
Hezbollah. I'm not sure the Hezbollah did, but the Israelis certainly
didn't. Here again, we're living on our own lies.

AMY GOODMAN: CBS reported just in the last few weeks, the UN estimates
Israel dropped as many as four million bomblets in southern Lebanon
during last year's war with Hezbollah, with as many as 40% failing to
explode on impact.

ROBERT FISK: Which is why thirty-four Lebanese have been killed, let
alone wounded, since the war ended, by those bomblets. Most of them of
course are civilians, or all are civilians, except for one soldier who
was trying to defuse one. And many of those civilians, of course, are
children, because they think they are toys. They pick them up. I've
actually walked across a field and seen them lying there. Yes, and
those bomblets were dropped after the ceasefire hour was stated, when
the Israelis knew the war was going to end, and they soaked the ground
with those bombs, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: In The Great War for Civilisation, you talk about the
weapons manufacturers. What about the cluster bomb manufacturers?

ROBERT FISK: Well, you know, last night when I was speaking at Town
Hall in New York, and I don't like to cheerlead these things, because
I'm a journalist, but I ask in my book and I ask people in Lebanon, as
a newspaper reporter, why don't the victims of these weapons, not just
cluster bombs, but the Lockheed Martin, Boeing, AGM-114C air-to-ground
missile -- it hits an ambulance, it kills people, it did in 1996 --
why don't the victims or survivors sue the arms companies? I actually
took -- and I recall the story here -- I actually took parts of, in
fact, literally the whole US missile in bits that hit an ambulance,
was fired on an ambulance by an Israeli helicopter, Apache,
American-made, in '96, killed three children, two women. And with the
UN, I got all the bits of the missile, including bits from the
corpses. And we found the computer plate, and it was made in Duluth,
Georgia. We found the date on it.

I went to Duluth. I managed to get the missile parts out of Beirut to
Paris with the help of airport security. In Paris, we got Amnesty
International to send it to Washington as a DHL package. I didn't want
to turn up at JFK, you know, reporter found with explosive traces.
Imagine Tom Friedman's comment on that. And I got these parts of the
missile down to Duluth in Georgia to confront the Boeing executives
there, including the developer of the missile. They thought I was
coming to write a piece about this wonderful missile that could be
fired five miles away and go through a baseball loop, you know. And
there was a sort of explosion in the boardroom as I laid out the
pieces of the missile along with the photographs of the dead and
wounded civilians hit by their missile, which was made there, the
building next door to where we were talking.

AMY GOODMAN: And where did it kill people, that you had the example of?

ROBERT FISK: Southern Lebanon. Southern Lebanon. It was on a road -- I
was in front of the vehicle when it was hit. I was driving on the same
road. That's why I knew exactly -- I saw the helicopter.

And the amazing thing was that when I got back to Beirut having run
this story on the front page of the paper -- it's called "Return to
Sender" -- they didn't want the pieces of the missile; actually, they
kept them, but they didn't put them in the Boeing museum -- I was rung
up by a NATO arms expert in Paris. He was a Frenchman. And he said,
"That missile was not sold to Israel, it was sold to the US Marine
Corps." And I said, how -- "come to Paris." We met at the Lutetia
Hotel -- great secrecy -- and he pulled out all the secret lists with
NATO codes showing -- if you read the computer codes on the missile
side, which I can do, you can tell who it was sold to. And he showed
me the "O1," US forces, and then "M" for Marines.

So I went back to Washington immediately, called up the Commandant of
the Marine Corps, got taken by guys to a Marine base outside
Washington, where men in civilian clothes, officers, sat around and
went through it, said, "Well, look, we can tell you the story. These
missiles were a batch of 360 sent with US Marines to Saudi Arabia in
1990, and we used half of them against the Iraqi army in the
liberation of Kuwait in '91. Those half that remained, we were
instructed to drop off at the Haifa munitions pier in Israel as part
of a quid pro quo weapons for the Israelis in return for their
non-participation in the 1990 war against Iraq." So this missile
started off, was sold to the Marines, taken to Saudi Arabia for use
against the Iraqis, dumped on the Israelis and fired into an ambulance
in southern Lebanon, and then taken by me back to its base in --

Now, when I did that, I said, "Hang on, why don't these people sue
Boeing? Is there no responsibility on behalf of the arms makers?" They
say, "Oh, we've given it to the Marines. We're selling it to Israel."
Don't they have a responsibility to follow through? We, in our jobs,
have responsibilities. You know, if you misreport something, at some
point you're going to go on the screen and say, "I got it wrong." And
so am I, if I make mistakes. But these guys are completely -- they're
completely protected.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, we have thirty seconds. What would happen if
the US attacked Iran?

ROBERT FISK: Hell disaster again. You try to get out of one war by
starting another. I think the Iranians would find some way of hitting
back, and it would not be the same kind of war, you see. We're not
talking about a land war. We're talking about bombarding it. And the
Iranians, both as a people, as well as all the mullahs, they would
want to hit back again. It would be a war. It wouldn't stop there. You
can't say, "OK, we're going to stop bombarding. It will carry on."
That's a problem.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, I want to thank you very much for being with
us. Robert Fisk is the author of The Great War for Civilisation: The
Conquest of the Middle East, his earlier book, Pity the Nation: The
Abduction of Lebanon, longtime Middle East correspondent for The
Independent of London. Thanks for joining us.

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Iran 'Fooling' U.S. Military
*Inter Press Service*
Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/iraq/000536.php#more


*NAJAF, Feb 12 (IPS) - New evidence is emerging on the ground of an
Iranian hand in growing violence within Iraq.*

As the United States heads for a confrontation with Iran over
allegations of Iranian involvement in bombings, the massacre in Najaf
last month indicates that Iran could be working also through the Iraqi
government, local leaders in Najaf say.

The slaughter of 263 people in Najaf by Iraqi and U.S. forces Jan. 29
provoked outrage and vows of revenge among residents in and around the
sacred Shia city in the south. The killings have deepened a split
among Shias.

Iran is predominantly Shia, one of the two main groupings within Islam
along with the Sunnis. Iraq has for the first time a Shia-dominated
government, comprising groups that have been openly supportive of Iran.

The people killed were mostly Shias from the Hawatim tribe that
opposes the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq as well as
the Dawa Party. These two pro-Iranian groups control the local
government in Najaf and the government in Baghdad.

The Najaf attack has provoked strong reactions among members of the
Hawatim tribe and among other Shia groups who are not loyal to Iran -
and who became the target in those killings.

An attack on a local tribal leader led to an assault on members of the
tribe by U.S., British and Iraqi forces. The tribe was described by
government officials as a "messianic cult."

Abid Ali who witnessed the Najaf fighting told IPS that a procession
of roughly 200 pilgrims from the Hawatim tribe had arrived in the
Zarqa area near Najaf to celebrate the Ashura festival. Following a
confrontation over the procession, Iraqi army soldiers at a checkpoint
shot dead Hajj Sa'ad Sa'ad Nayif al-Hatemi, chief of the tribe, as he
and his wife sat in their car.

Members of the tribe then attacked the checkpoint to avenge the death
of their chief.

"It was after this that the Iraqi army called in the Americans, and
the planes began bombing civilians," Ali said. "It was a massacre. Now
I believe the internal Shia fighting has entered a very dangerous phase."

Ali added that most people in the area believe the U.S. military was
told by Iraqi security forces loyal to the pro-Iranian government in
Baghdad that "terrorists" or the "messianic cult" was attacking Najaf.
They say the misinformation was intended to mislead occupation forces
into attacking the tribe.

Many Shias in the southern parts of the country and in Baghdad now say
they had been fooled earlier by U.S. promises to help them, but that
the Najaf massacre has dramatically changed their views.

Significantly, the Association of Muslim Scholars, a group of Sunni
Muslims headed by Dr. Harith al-Dhari, issued a statement condemning
the Iraqi-U.S. military attack in Najaf against the Hawatim tribe. The
statement, which seeks to bridge a Shia-Sunni divide, denounced the
killing of dozens of women and children and added, "It was an act of
vengeance and political termination."

"They (the United States) were misled, and their last move in Najaf
shows how the smart Iranians are leading the Americans deeper into
Iraqi sands," Jaafar al-Jawadi, a political analyst from Baghdad told IPS.

"I really admire the way Iranians are dealing with the situation in a
professional way while the Americans are walking with their eyes
closed. They are losing the last Iraqi fort they were hiding behind,
and that was the peaceful way Arab Shias were dealing with occupation."

Jawadi who is also a former Shia politician says he once believed in
U.S. promises of liberation for Iraqis, particularly the Shia
population. Like many other Iraqis, he now believes that the United
States has been used by the pro-Iranian government in Baghdad to carry
out attacks against Shia tribes in southern Iraq who have recently
become more and more anti-occupation.

"I do not really understand what those Americans are doing because now
they are just like an elephant in a china shop, and everything they do
is terribly wrong as if they are committing suicide," Talib Ahmad, a
lawyer and human rights activist in Najaf told IPS.

"Iran is benefiting from that for sure. Americans are simply fighting
for Iran who appears to be the winner in Iraq after all."

Many Iraqis are amazed at the unlimited support the U.S.
administration has been presenting to what many now call an
Iranian-Iraqi government. The new U.S. condemnation of Iran could be a
first sign that the United States is getting wise to the fact that it
is being fooled by Iran.

The U.S. administration is, however, pointing the finger at Iran, and
not at the government in Baghdad that it props up.


(Ali al-Fadhily is our Baghdad correspondent. Dahr Jamail is our
specialist writer who has spent eight months reporting from inside
Iraq and has been covering the Middle East for several years.)

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Card issuance to Afghan DPs suspended
By Abdul Sami Paracha
http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=nat7.htm&date=20070216


KOHAT, Feb 15: The issuance of three-year resident cards to Afghan
displaced persons has been suspended on intervention of the UNHCR
after the number of card holders exceeded the actual figure of
refugees in Kohat.

The registration was suspended on Thursday last following doubts
expressed by UNHCR representatives that after repatriation of Afghan
refugees during the last five years, the number of the refugees was
still the same, said Ibrahim Khattak, administrator of the
Commissionerate of Afghan Refugees.

"The UNHCR has repatriated thousands of refugees after the Afghan
presidential polls and before but those who have managed to come back
somehow are also being issued identity cards for three years. It
surely means that the whole exercise of registration and the
repatriation has become doubtful and futile."

He said there were various reasons creating problems in the
registration process, like the enormous birth rate among Afghan
families. According to their estimates, he said, each family had
increased by three persons since the last census. Another reason is
the coming back of repatriated refugees.

Similarly, most of Afghan labourers are not present in their camps at
the time of census and a vast majority of them do not register,
fearing forced repatriation."The registration process will remain
suspended until a report is submitted about the issue to make sure the
process is carried out in a transparent manner and anomalies are
removed," he added.

It is learnt that in a majority of cases, names of some family members
are missing in the census list on the basis of which the cards are issued.

Gul Agha, whose father has been refused identity card, said: "We gave
names of the whole family to the census staff. Our family had cast
five votes during the Afghanistan presidential elections but nobody
had questioned them. But now the record has been tampered with. Those
who can pay money to `Maliks' are being registered and the poor are
being ignored."

A survey revealed that Afghan Maliks, in connivance with the Nadra
staff, had been registering those refugees whose names were not in
voter or census list on payment of Rs1000 per person.

The last date for issuing identity cards to refugees had been extended
twice and the process was to be completed by February 15.

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Rendering The CIA Useless
John Prados
February 16, 2007
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/02/16/rendering_the_cia_useless.php


This week the European Parliament finished its investigation into the
CIA's use of "extraordinary renditions" to kidnap European citizens
and residents and subject them to torture and imprisonment without
trial. The EU condemned both the practice and 14 member nations for
complying with it, frequently under the direction of non-elected
intelligence officials without knowledge or consent from government
representatives, let alone the public.

Today an Italian court has decided to grant warrants to arrest 26 CIA
personnel allegedly involved in the February 2003 kidnapping in Milan
of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr. The chief of the Italian military
intelligence service and his deputy are defending themselves before
courts in the case. German courts in Munich recently issued arrest
warrants against 13 alleged CIA officers and contract employees in the
January 2004 rendition of German citizen Khaled al-Masri. The German
parliament is reviewing its intelligence service's collaboration with
the CIA. There is widespread outrage in both Europe and the Muslim
world over these practices.

What is the Bush administration response? Shoot the messengers.
General Michael V. Hayden, the current CIA director, was asked a few
months ago about the agency's foreign intelligence partnerships, given
the mounting  investigations of CIA activities. Without touching the
controversial U.S. operations at all, his response was, "If an ally
believes—fears—that we can't keep such activities private, then that
ally is going to be much more reluctant to deal with us."

Much as in the bad old days, the CIA persists in the delusion that
what people say—not what it does—is the issue. The agency is riding
for a fall. Ham-handed American spooks—who depend, by their own
admission, on foreign intelligence services in up to 90 percent of
their operations—have muddied the waters even with our best friends.
The controversial "rendition" program that is at the centerpiece of
Bush counterterrorism efforts has swept up many innocents along with
known terrorists and has sparked trouble for our allies.

In Canada, citizen Maher Arar was apprehended in October 2002 while
making an airline connection in the U.S.—but then rendered to Syria by
the CIA. The chief of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was forced to
resign as a result of Canadian security's contribution to this
travesty. And the Swedish intelligence service was appalled at
high-handed CIA behavior in snatching two Egyptian nationals in that
country in December 2001.

Aside from the U.S. denials and wholesale evasions of
responsibility—the Bush people have refused to take Maher Arar off the
U.S. terrorist watch list (or even apologize), even though the man has
been cleared by a massive royal commission investigation. The effect
of these operations can only sour foreign cooperation with the CIA.

A response in the form of a new long-term development plan at the CIA
is in progress. The plan has two elements relevant here: First, the
agency intends to increase its capability to act unilaterally; second,
the procedure for approving covert operations is to be modified.
Although it is also true the CIA's dependence on foreign services is
excessive and should be reduced, unilateral efforts bear their own
burdens (the Bay of Pigs was such an operation). More important is the
Covert Action Review Group, the unit responsible for approving
proposed activities, which in the new order would not be answerable to
the chief, but to the CIA's deputy director. Today that person would
be Stephen R. Kappes, who, while he is not the top boss and is not
invested with the chief's private vision and knowledge, has experience
picking up the pieces after covert disasters—unlike General Hayden,
with no covert ops background whatever. Moreover, both Kappes and
Hayden are heavily committed to a welter of review boards and progress
management committees required by the new strategic development plan.

Above the level of the CIA, covert operations proposals are supposed
to be approved by higher authorities, reviews that seem to be cursory
in the Bush administration. Tyler Drumheller, former chief of the
CIA's European Division, recounts how he once had to brief Condoleezza
Rice on a rendition operation. "Her chief concern," Drumheller told
Der Spiegel earlier this month , "was not whether it was the right
thing to do, but what the president would think about it." There were
no deliberations on the value of the target or the potential flap that
could be caused by such an intervention.

In addition, the head of the National Clandestine Service—the former
CIA Directorate of Operations—which produces the proposals for covert
operations, is the same cowboy who presided over the agency's
Counterterrorism Center at the height of the renditions program. It
was on his watch that the Masri, Arar and Nasr affairs began. As for
the action teams, Drumheller says they "are drawn from paramilitary
officers who are brave and colorful ... If they didn't do paramilitary
actions for a living, they would probably be robbing banks." These
officers did courageous things in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they
should not be expected to take a broad view of the missions being
proposed. When these officers see themselves in danger of arrest  in
foreign lands, that, too, must have an impact.

The broad international support for the United States after 9/11 has
evaporated, and the old Cold War attitudes in America that accepted
the use of these techniques are long gone. The Bush administration's
covert operations have been as catastrophic as its conventional
military campaign in Iraq, yet it is now posturing itself for
unilateral action. This is a disaster waiting to happen. America needs
a rational foreign policy. The country cannot be saved by a new posse
of covert cowboys.


John Prados is a senior fellow with the National Security Archive in
Washington, D.C. His current book is Safe for Democracy: The Secret
Wars of the CIA.

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