If We Bail Out the Banks, Why Shouldn't We Own Them?

Sliding Down in Anger

By SAUL LANDAU

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1802

"It’s worse than you can imagine,” a Member of Congress confided to me, referring to the downward spiral of the economy. “We just gave all those hundreds of billions to the bankers so they would lend it and they didn’t lend it and they still want more. The bankers don’t know what they’re doing and Tim Geithner [Treasury Secretary] doesn’t know what he’s doing. We all know this is the worst economic slump of our lifetime.”

While the arcane Washington budget processes – each Senator and Member trying to grab something for his or her district or State -- unfold, the poor should start to worry. They have already lost or about to be lose homes, jobs and health care. The propertied classes focus on their major concern: their property, which stands immeasurably higher in their moral guidelines than the lives and welfare of those without or with less.

The remaining masters of the universe on Wall Street still cling to the idea of their own infallibility. “El Duce is always right,” Mussolini said about himself – before the Partisans hanged him.

The capitalists oddly enough believe in capitalism and have done all in their power to spread the word. Their public promoters convinced lots of working people that capitalism and the American flag go together. Capitalism means freedom, so the very notion of nationalizing banks – forget socialism – looms in their minds as akin to the Holocaust.

The big bankers and their corporate brethren have connected to political power, one step below them, by simply throwing money at politicians who eagerly catch it. They also endow think tanks whose mavens will then explain to the gullible public why the United States needs perpetual war – to spread freedom (capitalism).

Count the victims of this cavalier assumption. Since the 1950-3 Korean War, US forces have overthrown -- or attempted to -- governments by force and violence in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Chile, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Brazil, Iran and Indonesia. They encouraged military coups in countless other nations in the third world.

Until the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, the battle against communism justified the interventions. The Reds have since been replaced as the demon by the Terrorists. Thus, Afghanistan and Iraq join the victim nations, with Pakistan inching its way onto the list.

The wars cost the lives of countless US servicemen and women and many more of the natives -- in the name of protecting freedom. To question the worthiness of service in any of the wars – Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf--became tantamount to questioning the flag itself.

The mantra that surrounds the start of all the new wars remains numbingly in place. The President asks young people to fight because the nation’s freedom is at risk. Having said the magic words, the President then goes on to suck money from the taxpayers to “win” the noble struggle. Official language assumes “we” are good and those opposing us are bad. Listen to what Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, told US and European attendees at a security conference. “To win in the Afghanistan-Pakistan war, we need to identify and separate the ‘irreconcilables’ from the ‘reconcilables,’ striving to create the conditions that can make the ‘reconcilables’ part of the solution, even as we kill, capture, or drive out the irreconcilables.” (Remarks at 45th Munich Security Conference, February 8, 2009) Imagine a top British general in 1776 making similar remarks to his fellow officers regarding the populace in the American colonies!

“Reconcilables” means those the United States can buy or intimidate to collaborate with its policy goals. Some people would call them traitors. Later, after US forces withdraw and the “friendlies” become pariahs in their own country, the US government might reconcile itself to bring a few of them to the United States -- as they did with some members of the Hmong people after the Vietnam War.

Bush sent troops to Afghanistan in October 2001 to find and kill Osama bin Laden. Somehow the mission has changed into one of making Afghans reconcile to a US-designed order. This has not worked in Korea, Vietnam or anywhere else where US troops tried to export our – now sinking – way of life to people with different cultures. But it has been expensive.

The harsh fact, unmentioned in the US media, is that the United States, with its vast technological superiority and military power did not win in Korea or Vietnam, cut and ran in Laos and left Cambodia in such a mess that the bloody Khmer Rouge could take power there and slaughter a percentage of the population. Similarly, Washington policy “experts” do not reflect on the fact that all the CIA coups yielded little of permanence. Indeed, the blowback from CIA coups in Iran and Guatemala are still evolving.

The coups in Brazil and Chile have eroded military power in those countries and brought to the presidency socialists who have defied Washington – something that would not have been permitted fifty years ago. But how many of the powerful in the nation’s capital ask the question as budget time comes around: how can we afford to continue spending on wars we never seem to win when the state of our own economy is in virtual collapse?

The current military budget maintains “268 bases in Germany, 124 in Japan, and 87 in South Korea. Others are scattered around the globe in places like Aruba and Australia, Bulgaria and Bahrain, Colombia and Greece, Djibouti, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Romania, Singapore, and of course, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba -- just to name a few. Among the installations considered critical to our national security are a ski center in the Bavarian Alps, resorts in Seoul and Tokyo, and 234 golf courses the Pentagon runs worldwide.” (David Vine, “The Costs of Empire: Can We Really Afford 1,000 Overseas Bases?” FPIF, March 10)

As the Congressman assured me, “the only thing that can put a halt to this military spree is for the public to get wind of how much were pissing away on this overseas nonsense. My God, it’s going to cost more trillions of dollars than we see in this round of bailouts. People have to start asking of the military budget just as they ask of the bank bailouts: do these expenditures really keep us stable?”

The rich and powerful think mainly about preserving and expanding their wealth and power. President Obama must realize that under the emergency powers of his office, he not only has the authority to seize our assets, but also has access to all the assets of America’s richest men for meeting those emergencies that threaten the common good.

It has become apparent to millions of people that the nation faces a severe crisis. One year ago, who could have predicted Congress would bailout banks and monster sized insurance giants, that GM would teeter on the brink of bankruptcy and our fabled way of life would become a joke for millions of recently foreclosed families?

Soon, lots of people will ask: If we bail out the banks then why shouldn’t we control them -- or even own them? The bankers screwed up. Why should they get any of our money? Maybe they’ll even question why Congress should continue funding a massive military institution that hasn’t won a real war since 1945 to the tune of some three quarters of a trillion dollars a year?

Saul Landau is an IPS Fellow, author of A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD (Counterpunch) and director of forty films, available on dvd from roundworldproductions.com

Diary of siege and war: Mad days in the time of a Zionist war

Diary of siege and war: Mad days in the time of a Zionist war By Najwa Chamoun, Translated by: Adib S. Kawar Mar 19, 2009, 22:24

Najwa Chamoun, author, poet and journalist from Gaza

From Gaza… The witness and the martyr…

In the first day of the siege, war poetry runs away, and with it run hordes of kids from their schools, families and nurseries… They ran away in groups and as individuals.

The moon grows to become full in the eyes of the Gazawis, they said, like a baby’s face the son of the moon, the mother cries every time one of her children runs away eaten by the war, till it catches with another in Rafah, I cannot liberate my heart from some guilt that was stuck to it, some of which were imprisoned tears in some place… Condone me O you babyhood of wounded Gaza, and pardon me you “Dalal”, “Amira”… “Nassim” and the rest of the birds, the birds built their nests on their eye lashes, over their dolls and left them bleeding for days running away in freight, and with the thirst of a besieged flower, and in the palm of the fenced Gaza, poetry jumps weeping and runs away… I wish I were a lantern in a child’s hand to ignite its smile and hug it…

The second day of the siege war starts, and a child carrying a piece of bread gored with blood floating between the sky and the earth, laid on a bed in intensive care, his eyes closed, his heart agitated by the noises of warplanes… Who hugs his heart if baby’s milk flows and gets mixed with his blood?!

The fourth and tenth day of siege and war start franticly, and a tank that is not used to cease fire smashing corpses, over the fresh green grass and over a wound it drives… War planes raven faces and throw a rocket here and others there and there at a kid riding his bicycle with joy admixed with fear for being its next precious prey, and a woman soldier who admires the idea to see him cut into two, a half over his bicycle and the other hugging the soil of his besieged slip of land… The woman draftee with her Tel Aviv’s generals clap rejoiced with the unprecedented victory achieved on the Palestinian kid and his armored bicycle… The first day of the second day of the war… windows were closed…

The woman gets baffled with her worry for her children holding each other’s hands and the future they planned for together slipping away… The mother startled with her heart hanged in the sky… The children standing at the window while the room retracting on its wound… The plane detects them on its high-tech screen, The younger baby creeps towards his father in the adjacent room, he stands in between his (the father) arms while praying and stands up, the plane spits its hatred at the children and their flesh got mixed with that of their mother’s. Hissed pain cries escape their splintered chests… The father rambles in the streets trying to collect them from between the claws of fear in vain… The scene remains burning, bleeding and bereaved..

Gaza at sunset

In the second day of the second week, days of war get intermingled, days and nights get mixed, the tragedy remains for you Gaza, shock and agony remain to be the witness for our spilled blood…

I sit watching T.V. only the news take away our souls for them/us it is only the mounting up pains boiling in our blood… Planes get more and more belligerent in their bombardment… A woman breastfeeding her baby is blown up,,, Five martyrs fall in the room and the sixth a neighbor’s son… Gaza is left alone flooded with darkness and blood… mutilated arms on the side road… The remnant of a foot under the rubble of a bombarded home in which only few days ago saw a wedding celebration… Hearts turning up and down in fire, and you alone Gaza waiting for your children limping on one leg, cut off hands on the far away road and you in spite of your bleeding and the phosphoric burs you stand in the waiting list… All sorts of bombs thrown over the heads of the Gazawis and their homes… You stand and the white smoke is rising up, falling down piercing your eyes and escaping your open wounds… You stand by yourself Gaza… In spite of the roaring sea your sons are ascending to the sky… Hears cannot bid them farewell… You are swept in a fainting spell of the smoking wound… You breath the wound burns anew to return to eat your heart.

Children stolen by the ongoing war

MANIFEST

In Rafah “Al-Absi family” the mother and her breastfed baby were wounded, and war steals three of its children, hands pulls them out of the rubble drowned in their own musky blood… the sky hurriedly opens up its doors bandages their open wounds and they turn into pigeons flying in the gardens of paradise… Warm blood like the warmth of Gaza, its shores and sand… The demolished place over the sleeping children shouts…

War steals from her three boys and four girls, the warplane hits them in the head, but the suckling baby girl got burns in the face, wounds in the neck and part of her tongue was cut while the mother is lying in intensive care in Egypt in coma, the father had a broken arm, ten stitches in the back and seven in the head and a house fully demolished……….

Shy is speech from the color of babyhood that cuts up the world’s tongue… Extends a bleeding hand for a long absence; so who would gather the family again together, and who would stop our massacre, genocide, holocaust and what in Hebrew they call the “shoah” that is the Gaza “Mahraqah”?

The second week warplanes shatters the skies of Gaza and leave it armless.

They return to leave Gaza legless.

Warplanes brag and write the number ten in Gaza’s sky.

Warplanes raises the sign of victory!!!…

Warships bombard Gaza’s shores while it was trying to push away words.

Soldiers invade homes in Gaza, while a small baby child was trying to rescue her doll from the ruble of her demolished home, and starts running away from death, soldiers bombard homes with phosphoric bombs while Gaza was rambling running after her children, soldiers insist on playing with her blood while Gaza was trying to carry her dead child is fleeing to the border of God’s kingdom, and Rafah is in total emigration towards the sea street, while he was trying to secure a secure way for his family he was hit with a rocket… to return with a headless body… The intelligence towers in the Sudaniah quarter were targeted too… Notice these are not scenes from a long American war movie… it is a true story from Palestinian life…

In day five of the third week, whispering starts rising about a seize fire or our hearts to seize beating. And with it there starts the rumor in our heads and in the deserted streets except for bombardment, destruction, killing and dislodgment, the rumor runs in the streets without leaving a trace behind it, in a short moment the roaring of warplanes especially a plane without a pilot zigzagging in the sky photographing every motion on the ground, everywhere in every street and lane, and you’d believe that it is concentrating on your own movement and while dreaming of security, did they kill it and crucify it on Gaza’s body, the hudna (ceasefire) fell down dead, as always it is falling down swimming in a pool of its own blood; so that the war of attrition to complete consuming wahat was leftover if ever intact.

Writing in Red

Gaza calmed down from its staggering, his heart jumped out of his chest with the sounds of guns and warplanes, he fell near where he was searching for his fallen child with his naked hands except for fear that was haunting him, another attacked the sky in a one sided battle, he repeated while passing between two buildings that fell in heaps over speech with what was left… I shall sing he repeated in his heart the word peace while war was waging ferociously, savagely and peevishly, and sometimes angry with its victims!!!
‘
He was trying to shout at his frightened wife, while looking for her remnants shattered over the neighbor’s roof top, he touched his wet wound, he stopped silent, tried to stop his trial to look around and see... But saw nothing except his dead/alive body lost between other’s torn off body parts, in a quick movement he tried to put his palm on his mouth to stop it from shouting, he forgot that he was alive in the beginning of war, but now with all what he was seeing and practicing he was not sure of survivor. He retreated to try to turn his eyes to look for a possible more merciful place , he fell in a hole of numbers and mumbled with pain “I don’t want to be just a number”, I have a life, children and a desecrated homeland… Am I that same person who was seated at his desk…sure of what he saw… a corpse without a head, and saw that it has a hand without a body… And saw near it a baby girl’s head without a body heaped over the wall separating life from death, touched his own head with his hand trying to touch the body, his head fell near the shouting!!!

Writing hurts at the demarcation line

In the early days of the war, in an UNRWA school there were no students there playing or studying the language of war, instead there were families that took refuge from the heat of a malicious occupier’s war and its warplanes hunting the children of Gaza. Another night in which Mrs. Ghafrah Swailem” in the Brazil neighborhood in Rafah in the UNRWA school, she said with rising sorrow up to her eyes and shock, they didn’t even give an ultimatum, my children were at home, they hit the house with a rocket and another fell in the hole that the first made, our house was gone, but thanks to God we were not harmed except in the heart, four families live in the same house, all what we own became a heap of rubble, Harrah wept for a place and its memories, Ghafrah sobbed loudly and said, “I don’t sleep, my heart keeps pounding, of course I am afraid of warplanes… Our house has nothing to do with neither tunnels or Hamas, why did they bombard our house why did they assassinate hope and security… Ghafrah kept mumbling, but who would hear you Ghafrah, who would feel or hear the burning in your heart behind this heap of rubble that used to be a house sheltering four family, who would hear the voices of your children… and your grandchildren shouting and weeping in their day of vagabondage, where would they take refuge from mad warplanes that is hunting their dreams and future?!

As for Faten whose suckling baby girl was hit in the first day of the war, a bomb shrapnel tore out her little belly with everything and body around, I didn’t talk with Faten, my legs could not carry me and intensive torture for families that slept on the school’s barren floor, but she was weeping with helplessness and anguish, she didn’t have any documents to use at the hospital where her child is being treated, she didn’t have anything, no clothing for her and her child, and not even money.

While on my way from my house and the nearby school in the Shaborah neighborhood, but in spite of the short distance between the house and the school she ran away because of the noises of these murderous war machines in my sky, warplanes occupied the sky and did not leave us or get tired from killing us and our children even a crawling baby, every step we walked was laden with death, I or the little child that was running trying to catch with my steps smiling and frightened of being the next target of the mad machines that were trying to kill whatever breaths. What a plane that shoots one ton or more rockets at a child mounting his bicycle, a mosque or little children, those soldiers need rehabilitation, they were killed by their generals before the battle started. - Najwa Chamoun

© Copyright 2009 by AxisofLogic.com

This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original source including a "live link" to the article. Thank you!

---

Adib S. Kawar is Palestinian and a daily correspondent for Axis of Logic. He is a tireless worker and fighter for his own rights, those of his family and loved ones - and for all Palestinians.

---

الحصار والحرب
أيام مجنونة في زمن حرب صهيونية
*نجوى شمعون
من غزة ..الشاهد والشهيد

يبدأ اليوم الأول في الحصار الحرب فيهرب الشعر ويهرب معه جموع الأطفال يفر أطفال غزة من مدارسهم ومن أسرتهم ومن حضاناتهم يفرون إلى الله جماعات
يكتمل القمر في عيون الغزيين كوجه طفل ابن القمر قالوا وبكت الأم كلما فر منها طفل أكلته الحرب ونامت لتلتقط الحرب طفلا آخر في رفح، ليس بوسعي أن أحرر قلبي مما علق به بعض ذنوب وبعضها دمع حبيس المكان فاغفري لي يا طفولة غزة الجريحة واغفري لنا يا أميرة ودلال ونسيم وكل الطيور التي عششت الحرب فوق أهدابها فوق دميتها وتركتها نازفة لأيام تركض في خوفها وفي ظمأ زهرة محاصرة و في كف غزة المسيجة يقفز الشعر باكيا ويهرب قتيلا يا ليتني قنديل في يد طفل لأشعل بسمته وأضمه، يبدأ اليوم الثاني من الحصار الحرب وطفل يحمل كسرة خبز مضرجة بالدماء عالقا بين السماء والأرض ملقى فوق سرير العناية المركزة عينيه مغمضة وقلبه الصغير ينفعل مع أصوات الطائرات الحربية من يحضن قلبه إذا ما سال حليب الطفولة واختلط بدمه..

اليوم الرابع والعاشر من حصار وتبدأ الحرب مسعورة ودبابة ما اعتادت مهادنة تدوس فوق الجثث وفوق العشب على جرح تسير، طائرات تفترس الوجوه فتقذف صاروخا هنا وآخر هناك فوق صبي يعتلي دراجته في فرح يشوبه الخوف من أن يكون صيدها الثمين ومجندة تعجبها الفكرة تشطره نصفين نصف, فوق دراجته وآخر يحتضن التراب فتصفق مجندة وجنرالات تل أبيب للنصر الذي أحرز على طفل.. اليوم الأول من الأسبوع الثاني من الحرب، تغلق النوافذ :
ترتبك المرأة خوفا على صغارها المتمسكين بأيدي بعضهم البعض ويفر منهم غد رسموه سويا.. الأم مجفلة وقلبها المعلق بالسماء ..الأطفال يقفون في الشرفة والغرفة منكفئة على جرحها..الطائرة تلتقطهم على شاشتها المتطورة، الطفل الأصغر يحبو ناحية أبيه في الغرفة المجاورة، بين يديه وهو يصلي "أي الأب" يقف الطفل على قدميه، الطائرة ترمي بحقدها على الأطفال يتمزقون ويختلطون بلحم الأم .."صرخات مكتومة للوجع" الأب يهيم على وجهه بالشوارع محاولا أن يلتقطهم من الخوف ..وسدىً يحاول.. يبقى المشهد حارقا ونازفاً وفاجعاً..

غزة تقف على الغياب

في اليوم الثاني وتختلط الأيام علينا في الحرب يختلط الليل والنهار وتبقى الفجيعة يا غزة تبقى اللوعة والصدمة وحدها الشاهد على دمنا..
أجلس أمام التلفاز وحدها الأخبار تأخذنا من أنفاسنا عليهم/ علينا ووحدها ألمنا المتصاعد في دمنا، تتشرس الطائرات في قصفها ترمي أم أخرى ترضع طفلها حليب المكان يسقط في الغرفة خمسة شهداء وسادس ابن الجار ووحدها غزة الغارقة في الظلام وفي الدماء، أيدي مبتورة على الطريق الجانبي من تفرقنا، بقايا قدم تحت أنقاض بيت كانت فيه منذ أيام فرحة عرس، قلوب تتقلب في النار ووحدك غزة تنتظرين أطفالك على قدم واحدة ويدين مبتورتين على الطريق البعيد رغم نزيفك تقفين على لائحة الانتظار ورغم غبارك تنتظرين رغم الحروق الفسفورية لقنابل ألقيت فوق الرؤوس وفوق البيوت تقفين والدخان الأبيض يتصاعد من عينيك ومن بقايا جروحك أنفاس الحريق تظلين وحدك يا غزة رغم هدير البحر يتصاعد أطفالك نحو السماء لا يقوى القلب على الوداع فتغيبين في إغماءة الجرح المدخن تتنفسين فيشتعل الجرح ثانية ويعاود ليأكلك وأنت تصرخين..


أطفال سرقتهم الحرب
أطفال"عائلة العبسي" برفح تصاب الأم ورضيعتها فيما تسرق الحرب ثلاثة أطفال تنتشلهم الأيدي فيما يغرقون بدمهم المسك، تفتح السماء على عجل أبوابها تضمد جراحهم النازفة فيتحولون لحمامات تطير في روض الجنة، دم" دافئ كدفء غزة وشاطئها ورملها صرخ المكان المدمر الجاثم فوق أطفاله النائمين ..
تسرقها الحرب أولادها الثلاثة وأربعة فتيات تصيبهن الحدأة إصابات في الرأس أما الرضيعة حروق في وجهها وجروح ورقبتها وجزء من لسانها قطع أما الأم ففي العناية المركزة بمصر غيبوبة طويلة اقتنصتها والأب يده مكسورة وعشرة غرز في الظهر وسبعة غرز في الرأس وبيت تدمر بالكامل"
خجول هو الكلام يا لون الطفولة يكاد أن يخرس لسان الدنيا.. يمد يداً نازفة للغياب الطويل فمن يلم شمل العائلة ومن يوقف قتلنا جماعات في غزة..
الأسبوع الثاني/طائرات تمزق سماء غزة وتتركها بلا يدين
طائرات تعيد الكرة مرة أخرى وتترك غزة بلا أقدام
طائرات تتبجح وتخط رقم عشرة في سماء غزة
طائرات ترفع شارة النصر..
بوارج حربية تقصف قبالة شاطئ غزة فيما تحاول غزة أن تطرد عن يومها الكلام
جنود يسيطرون على البيوت في غزة فيما تحاول طفلة أن تمسك بدميتها حين بدأ الهروب من الموت، الجند يقصفون البيوت بالقنابل الفسفورية فيما غزة هائمة على وجهها تركض خلف أطفالها.. ويصر الجند على اللعب بدمها فيما تحاول غزة أن تحمل طفلها الميت، غزة بأكملها من الموت تفر إلى حدود الله ورفح في هجرة جماعية ناحية شارع البحر، وفيما يحاول هو أن يؤمن الطريق لأسرته يقصفه صاروخ عاد بجسد دون رأس .. " أبراج المخابرات في منطقة السودانية "ملاحظة:"المشاهد ليست من فيلم حربي.
في اليوم الخامس من الأسبوع الثالث تبدأ الهمهمات بوقف لإطلاق النار أو وقف لقلوبنا ومع بدء الشائعة وهى تسري في النفوس وفي الشوارع المهملة إلا من قصف وقتل وتشريد، الشائعة تركض في الشارع المجاور ولا أثر لها بعد لحظة من صوت الطائرات الحربية وخاصة طائرة تسمى ب "الزنانة" تصور كل شيء وكل مكان وكل شارع وكل حركة حتى تعتقد أنها لربما تصورك وأنت تحلم بالأمن،هل قتلوها أيضا وصلبوها على جسد غزة، الهدنة سقطت قتيلة وستسقط دائماً على أرض غزة لتبدأ حرب الاستنزاف على من تبقى..

الكتابة باللون الأحمر
هدأت غزة من ترنحها، قفز قلبه مع صوت المدافع والطائرات سقط على مقربة منه فيما يحاول أن يفتش عنه يتحسس بيديه العارية إلا من خوف يتصيده بزنانة أخرى هجمت على السماء في معركة من طرف واحد، ردد وهو يعبر بين بنايتين متكومتين على الكلام، مع من تبقى سأغني ردد في قلبه السلام فيما الحرب دائرة متوجسة وشرسة وفي بعض الأحيان خائفة من ضحاياها..
يحاول أن يروض قلبه حين وجده نصفين..
يحاول أن يصرخ في زوجته أن تصمت فيما هى خائفة وهو يلملم بقاياها عن سطح الجار.. انتفض عن محاولته فيما كان الجيران يلامسون جرحه الرطب توقف عن الكلام، حاول أن يوقف محاولته للنظر فلم يجد غير جسده الحي الميت بين الأشلاء، في حركة سريعة وضع يده على فمه كي لا يصرخ "نسى في غمرة الوجع أنه حي في بداية الحرب "أما الآن فلم يعد يوقن بالنجاة، تراجع قليلاً ليشيح بنظره لمكان أكثر رحمة سقط في حفرة الأعداد وتمتم هل أنا حي ميت..؟ تمتم بوجع "لا أريد أن أصبح رقم" لي حياة ولي أبناء ولي وطن مستباح.. هل أنا أنا ذالك الذي كان يجلس خلف مكتبه.. ذلك الواثق مما رأى.. رأى جثة بدون رأس ورأى لها يد ولم يكن لها جسد.. ورأى على مقربة منها رأس طفلة بلا جسد، تكوم على الجدار الفاصل ما بين الحياة والموت، تحسس رأسه وتحسس يده فيما كان يحاول أن يتحسس الجسد سقطت رأسه على مقربة من الصراخ..


الكتابة توجع في مناطق التماس
غفرة لا تنام..
في أول الحرب أول الكلام، في مدرسة من مدارس الوكالة لم يكن هنالك تلاميذ بالمدرسة يلعبون أو يدرسون لغة الحروب بل عائلات هربت من سعير محتل حاقد ومن طائرات حربية تلاحق أطفال غزة، ليلة أخرى تمضيها السيدة" غفرة سويلم "من منطقة"حي البرازيل برفح" في مدرسة الوكالة قالت: بشيء من الحزن الصاعد حتى عينيها وبشيء من الصدمة "حتى ما أعطونا إنذار كان أولادي في البيت ضربوا صاروخ في البيت وألحقوه بصاروخ ثاني ضاعت الدار والحمد لله ربنا سلم الأولاد نحن أربعة عائلات في بيت واحد كل ما نملك أصبح بين الركام وبكت غفرة وبكى معها المكان والذكريات، شهقت غفرة "أنا ما بنام بصبر قلبي بدب للصبح خايفة من الطيران.. دارنا ملهاش علاقة لا بنفق ولا بحماس ليش قصفوا دارنا ليش قتلوا الأمان.. ظلت غفرة تتمتم فمن يسمعك يا غفرة من يسمع لهيب قلبك خلف بيت تكوم مع الصباح ومن يسمع أصوات أحفادك الصارخين في يومهم المشرد فأين يلجئون من طائرات مسعورة تطارد حلمهم ومستقبلهم..
أما فاتن فطفلتها أصيبت في أول أيام الحرب طفلة رضيعة مزقت القذائف بطنها وأصابت ما أصابت لم أتحدث إلى فاتن فلم تعد قدماي بقادرة على كل هذا الزخم من العذاب لعائلات افترشت أرضية المدرسة، أما هى فكانت تبكي بقهر وحرقة لا أوراق لديها للمراجعة في المشفى الذي تعالجت به ابنتها ولا شيء لديها لا ملابس لها ولا لطفلتها ولا أوراق ولا حتى مال..
حين كنت في طريقي من بيتي إلى المدرسة التي لا تبعد كثيرا عن بيتي في منطقة الشابورا تبعد فقط وجع الحمام وسنبلة حبلى بالأطفال، ورغم قصر المسافة بين المدرسة والبيت إلا أنها تباعدت وهربت بدورها الطريق بفعل أصوات هادرة في سمائي، الطائرات التي افترشت السماء لم تبتعد ولم ترحل كانت كل خطوة تشي بالموت وان أكون أنا أو الطفل الذي يركض خلفي مبتسما وخائفا مثلي من أن يكون هدف الطائرة المحلقة بشراسة لتقتل كل متحرك حتى لو كان رضيعاً يزحف.. يا لهذه الطائرات ترمي بصاروخ يزن طن أو أكثر لتقصف طفلاً على دراجته أو تقصف مسجداً أو بيتا بساكنيه أو تقصف أطفال.. الجنود بحاجة للتأهيل بحاجة ليكونوا أكثر إنسانية مع أنفسهم قبل أن يكونوا معنا.. الجنود المساكين قتلوا بأيدي جنرالاتهم قبل أن يبدؤوا المعركة..

*شاعرة وإعلامية من غزة

US Army Confirms Israeli Nukes

March 18, 2009

Military.com|by Bryant Jordan

The Army has let slip one of the worst-kept secrets in the world -- that Israel has the bomb.

Officially, the United States has a policy of "ambiguity" regarding Israel's nuclear capability. Essentially, it has played a game by which it neither acknowledges nor denies that Israel is a nuclear power.

But a Defense Department study completed last year offers what may be the first time in a unclassified report that Israel is a nuclear power. On page 37 of the U.S. Joint Forces Command report, the Army includes Israel within "a growing arc of nuclear powers running from Israel in the west through an emerging Iran to Pakistan, India, and on to China, North Korea, and Russia in the east."

The single reference is far more than the U.S. usually would state publicly about Israel, even though the world knew Israel to be a nuclear power years before former nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu went public with facts on its weapons program in 1986.

Several years later investigative reporter Seymour Hersh published "The Samson Option," detailing Israel's strategy of massive nuclear retaliation against Arab states in the event it felt its very existence was threatened. Israel's nuclear arsenal has been estimated to range from 200 to 400 warheads.

Yet Israel has refused to confirm or deny it's nuclear capabilities, and the U.S. has gone along with the charade.

As recently as Feb. 9 President Barack Obama ducked the question when asked pointedly by White House correspondent Helen Thomas whether he knew of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons. Keeping the blinders on is necessary politically in order to avoid a policy confrontation with Israel.

By law, the U.S. would have to cease providing billions of dollars in foreign aid to Israel if it determined the country had a nuclear weapons program. That's because the so-called Symington Amendment, passed in 1976, bars assistance to countries developing technology for nuclear weapons proliferation.

Given the U.S.'s long history of selective blindness when it comes to Israeli nukes, it's unlikely that the Joint Operating Environment 2008 report compiled by the Army amount to much more than a minor faux pas.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in a March 8 article on the report, observed: "It is virtually unheard of for a senior military commander, while in office, to refer to Israel's nuclear status. In December 2006, during his confirmation hearings as Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates referred to Israel as one of the powers seen by Iran as surrounding it with nuclear weapons. But once in office, Gates refused to repeat this allusion to Israel, noting that when he used it he was ‘a private citizen.' "

© Copyright 2009 Military.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Empire of over 865 U.S. military bases on foreign soil

Empire of bases by Prof. Hugh Gusterson

Global Research, March 18, 2009

Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

Before reading this article, try to answer this question: How many military bases does the United States have in other countries: a) 100; b) 300; c) 700; or d) 1,000. According to the Pentagon's own list PDF, the answer is around 865, but if you include the new bases in Iraq and Afghanistan it is over a thousand. These thousand bases constitute 95 percent of all the military bases any country in the world maintains on any other country's territory. In other words, the United States is to military bases as Heinz is to ketchup. The old way of doing colonialism, practiced by the Europeans, was to take over entire countries and administer them. But this was clumsy. The United States has pioneered a leaner approach to global empire. As historian Chalmers Johnson says, "America's version of the colony is the military base." The United States, says Johnson, has an "empire of bases." Its 'empire of bases' gives the United States global reach, but the shape of this empire, insofar as it tilts toward Europe, is a bloated and anachronistic holdover from the Cold War." These bases do not come cheap. Excluding U.S. bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States spends about $102 billion a year to run its overseas bases, according to Miriam Pemberton of the Institute for Policy Studies. And in many cases you have to ask what purpose they serve. For example, the United States has 227 bases in Germany. Maybe this made sense during the Cold War, when Germany was split in two by the iron curtain and U.S. policy makers sought to persuade the Soviets that the American people would see an attack on Europe as an attack on itself. But in a new era when Germany is reunited and the United States is concerned about flashpoints of conflict in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, it makes as much sense for the Pentagon to hold onto 227 military bases in Germany as it would for the post office to maintain a fleet of horses and buggies. Drowning in red ink, the White House is desperate to cut unnecessary costs in the federal budget, and Massachusetts Cong. Barney Frank, a Democrat, has suggested that the Pentagon budget could be cut by 25 percent. Whether or not one thinks Frank's number is politically realistic, foreign bases are surely a lucrative target for the budget cutter's axe. In 2004 Donald Rumsfeld estimated that the United States could save $12 billion by closing 200 or so foreign bases. This would also be relatively cost-free politically since the locals who may have become economically dependent upon the bases are foreigners and cannot vote retribution in U.S. elections. Yet those foreign bases seem invisible as budget cutters squint at the Pentagon's $664 billion proposed budget. Take the March 1st editorial in the New York Times, "The Pentagon Meets the Real World." The Times's editorialists called for "political courage" from the White House in cutting the defense budget. Their suggestions? Cut the air force's F-22 fighter and the navy's DDG-1000 destroyer and scale back missile defense and the army's Future Combat System to save $10 billion plus a year. All good suggestions, but what about those foreign bases? Even if politicians and media pundits seem oblivious to these bases, treating the stationing of U.S. troops all over the world as a natural fact, the U.S. empire of bases is attracting increasing attention from academics and activists--as evidenced by a conference on U.S. foreign bases at American University in late February. NYU Press just published Catherine Lutz's Bases of Empire, a book that brings together academics who study U.S. military bases and activists against the bases. Rutgers University Press has published Kate McCaffrey's Military Power and Popular Protest, a study of the U.S. base at Vieques, Puerto Rico, which was closed in the face of massive protests from the local population. And Princeton University Press is about to publish David Vine's Island of Shame--a book that tells the story of how the United States and Britain secretly agreed to deport the Chagossian inhabitants of Diego Garcia to Mauritius and the Seychelles so their island could be turned into a military base. The Americans were so thorough that they even gassed all the Chagossian dogs. The Chagossians have been denied their day in court in the United States but won their case against the British government in three trials, only to have the judgment overturned by the highest court in the land, the House of Lords. They are now appealing to the European Court of Human Rights. American leaders speak of foreign bases as cementing alliances with foreign nations, largely through the trade and aid agreements that often accompany base leases. Yet, U.S. soldiers live in a sort of cocooned simulacrum of America in their bases, watching American TV, listening to American rap and heavy metal, and eating American fast food, so that the transplanted farm boys and street kids have little exposure to another way of life. Meanwhile, on the other side of the barbed-wire fence, local residents and businesses often become economically dependent on the soldiers and have a stake in their staying. These bases can become flashpoints for conflict. Military bases invariably discharge toxic waste into local ecosystems, as in Guam where military bases have led to no fewer than 19 superfund sites. Such contamination generates resentment and sometimes, as in Vieques in the 1990s, full-blown social movements against the bases. The United States used Vieques for live-bombing practice 180 days a year, and by the time the United States withdrew in 2003, the landscape was littered with exploded and unexploded ordinance, depleted uranium rounds, heavy metals, oil, lubricants, solvents, and acids. According to local activists, the cancer rate on Vieques was 30 percent higher than on the rest of Puerto Rico. It is also inevitable that, from time to time, U.S. soldiers--often drunk--commit crimes. The resentment these crimes cause is only exacerbated by the U.S. government's frequent insistence that such crimes not be prosecuted in local courts. In 2002, two U.S. soldiers killed two teenage girls in Korea as they walked to a birthday party. Korean campaigners claim this was one of 52,000 crimes committed by U.S. soldiers in Korea between 1967 and 2002. The two U.S. soldiers were immediately repatriated to the United States so they could escape prosecution in Korea. In 1998, a marine pilot sliced through the cable of a ski gondola in Italy, killing 20 people, but U.S. officials slapped him on the wrist and refused to allow Italian authorities to try him. These and other similar incidents injured U.S. relations with important allies. The 9/11 attacks are arguably the most spectacular example of the kind of blowback that can be generated from local resentment against U.S. bases. In the 1990s, the presence of U.S. military bases near the holiest sites of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia angered Osama bin Laden and provided Al Qaeda with a potent recruitment tool. The United States wisely closed its largest bases in Saudi Arabia, but it opened additional bases in Iraq and Afghanistan that are rapidly becoming new sources of friction in the relationship between the United States and the peoples of the Middle East. Its "empire of bases" gives the United States global reach, but the shape of this empire, insofar as it tilts toward Europe, is a bloated and anachronistic holdover from the Cold War. Many of these bases are a luxury the United States can no longer afford at a time of record budget deficits. Moreover, U.S. foreign bases have a double edge: they project American power across the globe, but they also inflame U.S. foreign relations, generating resentment against the prostitution, environmental damage, petty crime, and everyday ethnocentrism that are their inevitable corollaries. Such resentments have recently forced the closure of U.S. bases in Ecuador, Puerto Rico, and Kyrgyzstan, and if past is prologue, more movements against U.S. bases can be expected in the future. Over the next 50 years, I believe we will witness the emergence of a new international norm according to which foreign military bases will be as indefensible as the colonial occupation of another country has become during the last 50 years. The Declaration of Independence criticizes the British "for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us" and "for protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States." Fine words! The United States should start taking them to heart. Hugh Gusterson is a professor of anthropology and sociology at George Mason University. His expertise is in nuclear culture, international security, and the anthropology of science. He has conducted considerable fieldwork in the United States and Russia, where he studied the culture of nuclear weapon scientists and antinuclear activists. Two of his books encapsulate this work--Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War (University of California Press, 1996) and People of the Bomb: Portraits of America's Nuclear Complex (University of Minnesota Press, 2004). He also coedited Why America's Top Pundits Are Wrong (University of California Press, 2005); a sequel, The Insecure American, is in preparation. Previously, he taught in MIT's Program on Science, Technology, and Society.

Global Research Articles by Hugh Gusterson

Concentration Camps to be built in America

Preparing for Civil Unrest in America Legislation to Establish Internment Camps on US Military Bases by Michel Chossudovsky

The Economic and Social Crisis The financial meltdown has unleashed a latent and emergent social crisis across the United States. What is at stake is the fraudulent confiscation of lifelong savings and pension funds, the appropriation of tax revenues to finance the trillion dollar "bank bailouts", which ultimately serve to line the pockets of the richest people in America. This economic crisis is in large part the result of financial manipulation and outright fraud to the detriment of entire populations, to a renewed wave of corporate bankruptcies, mass unemployment and poverty. The criminalization of the global financial system, characterized by a "Shadow Banking" network has resulted in the centralization of bank power and an unprecedented concentration of private wealth. Obama's "economic stimulus" package and budget proposals contribute to a further process of concentration and centralization of bank power, the cumulative effects of which will eventually resul in large scale corporate, bankruptcies, a new wave of foreclosures not to mention fiscal collapse and the downfall of State social programs. (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, America's Fiscal Collapse, Global Research, March 2, 2009). The cumulative decline of real economic activity backlashes on employment and wages, which in turn leads to a collapse in purchaisng power. The proposed "solution" under the Obama administration contributes to exacerbating rather than alleviating social inequalities and the process of wealth concentration. The Protest Movement When people across America, whose lives have been shattered and destroyed, come to realize the true face of the global "free market" system, the legitimacy of the Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and the US administration will be challenged. A latent protest movement directed against the seat of economic and political power is unfolding. How this process will occur is hard to predict. All sectors of American society are potentially affected: wage earners, small, medium and even large businesses, farmers, professionals, federal, State and municipal employees, students, teachers, health workers, and unemployed. Protests will initially emerge from these various sectors. There is, however, at this stage, no organized national resistance movement directed against the administration's economic and financial agenda. Obama's populist rhetoric conceals the true nature of macro-economic policy. Acting on behalf of Wall Street, the administration's economic package, which includes close to a trillion dollar "aid" package for the financial services industry, coupled with massive austerity measures, contributes to precipitating America into a bottomless crisis. "Orwellian Solution" to the Great Depression: Curbing Civil Unrest At this particular juncture, there is no economic recovery program in sight. The Washington-Wall Street consensus prevails. There are no policies, no alternatives formulated from within the political and economic system. . What is the way out? How will the US government face an impending social catastrophe? The solution is to curb social unrest. The chosen avenue, inherited from the outgoing Bush administration is the reinforcement of the Homeland Security apparatus and the militarization of civilian State institutions. The outgoing administration has laid the groundwork. Various pieces of "anti-terrorist" legislation (including the Patriot Acts) and presidential directives have been put in place since 2001, largely using the pretext of the "Global War on Terrorism." Homeland Security's Internment Camps Directly related to the issue of curbing social unrest, cohesive system of detention camps is also envisaged, under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. A bill entitled the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act (HR 645) was introduced in the US Congress in January. It calls for the establishment of six national emergency centers in major regions in the US to be located on existing military installations. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-645 The stated purpose of the "national emergency centers" is to provide "temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster." In actuality, what we are dealing with are FEMA internment camps. HR 645 states that the camps can be used to "meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security." There has been virtually no press coverage of HR 645. These "civilian facilities" on US military bases are to be established in cooperation with the US Military. Modeled on Guantanamo, what we are dealing with is the militarization of FEMA internment facilities. Once a person is arrested and interned in a FEMA camp located on a military base, that person would in all likelihood, under a national emergency, fall under the de facto jurisdiction of the Military: civilian justice and law enforcement including habeas corpus would no longer apply. HR 645 bears a direct relationship to the economic crisis and the likelihood of mass protests across America. It constitutes a further move to militarize civilian law enforcement, repealing the Posse Comitatus Act. In the words of Rep. Ron Paul: "...the fusion centers, militarized police, surveillance cameras and a domestic military command is not enough... Even though we know that detention facilities are already in place, they now want to legalize the construction of FEMA camps on military installations using the ever popular excuse that the facilities are for the purposes of a national emergency. With the phony debt-based economy getting worse and worse by the day, the possibility of civil unrest is becoming a greater threat to the establishment. One need only look at Iceland, Greece and other nations for what might happen in the United States next." (Daily Paul, September 2008, emphasis added) The proposed internment camps should be seen in relation to the broader process of militarization of civilian institutions. The construction of internment camps predates the introduction of HR 645 (Establishment of Emergency Centers) in January 2009. There are, according to various (unconfirmed) reports, some 800 FEMA prison camps in different regions of the U.S. Moreover, since the 1980s, the US military has developed "tactics, techniques and procedures" to suppress civilian dissent, to be used in the eventuality of mass protests (United States Army Field Manual 19-15 under Operation Garden Plot, entitled "Civil Disturbances" was issued in 1985) In early 2006, tax revenues were allocated to building modern internment camp facilities. In January 2006, Kellogg Brown and Roots, which at the time was a subsidiary of Halliburton, received a $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): "The contract, which is effective immediately [January 2006], provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs... The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster. (KBR, 24 January 2006, emphasis added) The stated objectives of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are to: "protect national security and uphold public safety by targeting criminal networks and terrorist organizations that seek to exploit vulnerabilities in our immigration system, in our financial networks, along our border, at federal facilities and elsewhere in order to do harm to the United States. The end result is a safer, more secure America" (ICE homepage) The US media is mum on the issue of the internment camps on US soil. While casually acknowledging the multimillion dollar contract granted to Halliburton's subsidiary, the news reports largely focused their attention on possible "cost overruns" (similar to those which occurred with KBR in Iraq). What is the political intent and purpose of these camps? The potential use of these internment facilities to detain American citizens under a martial law situation are not an object of media debate or discussion. Combat Units Assigned to the Homeland In the last months of the Bush administration, prior to the November 2008 presidential elections, the Department of Defense ordered the recall of the 3rd Infantry’s 1st Brigade Combat Team from Iraq. The relocation of a combat unit from the war theater to domestic front is an integral part of the Homeland Security agenda. The BCT was assigned to assist in law enforcement activities within the US. The BCT combat unit was attached to US Army North, the Army's component of US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM). The 1st BCT and other combat units would be called upon to perform specific military functions in the case of civil unrest: The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.( (See Gina Cavallaro, Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1, Army Times, September 8, 2008). Under the proposed withdrawal of US forces from Iraq under the Obama administration, one expects that other combat units will be brought home from the war theater and reassigned in the United States. The evolving national security scenario is characterized by a mesh of civilian and military institutions: -Army combat units working with civilian law enforcement, with the stated mission to curb "social unrest". - the establishment of new internment camps under civilian jurisdiction located on US military facilities. The FEMA internment camps are part of the Continuity of Government (COG), which would be put in place in the case of martial law. The internment camps are intended to "protect the government" against its citizens, by locking up protesters as well as political activists who might challenge the legitimacy of the Administration's national security, economic or military agenda. Spying on Americans: The Big Brother Data Bank Related to the issue of internment and mass protests, how will data on American citizens be collected? How will individuals across America be categorized? What are the criteria of the Department of Homeland Security? In a 2004 report of the Homeland Security Council entitled Planning Scenarios, pertaining to the defense of the Homeland, the following categories of potential "conspirators" were identified: "foreign [Islamic] terrorists" , "domestic radical groups", [antiwar and civil rights groups] "state sponsored adversaries" ["rogue states", "unstable nations"] "disgruntled employees" [labor and union activists]. In June of last year, the Bush administration issued a National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD 59- HSPD 24) entitled Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security (For Further details see Michel Chossudovsky, "Big Brother" Presidential Directive: "Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security", Global Research, June 2008) Adopted without public debate or Congressional approval, its relevant procedures are far-reaching. They are related to the issue of civil unrest. They are also part of the logic behind the establishment of FEMA internment camps under HR 645. . NSPD 59 (Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security) goes far beyond the narrow issue of biometric identification, it recommends the collection and storage of "associated biographic" information, meaning information on the private lives of US citizens, in minute detail, all of which will be "accomplished within the law": "The contextual data that accompanies biometric data includes information on date and place of birth, citizenship, current address and address history, current employment and employment history, current phone numbers and phone number history, use of government services and tax filings. Other contextual data may include bank account and credit card histories, plus criminal database records on a local, state and federal level. The database also could include legal judgments or other public records documenting involvement in legal disputes, child custody records and marriage or divorce records."(See Jerome Corsi, June 2008) The directive uses 9/11 and the "Global War on Terrorism" as an all encompassing justification to wage a witch hunt against dissenting citizens, establishing at the same time an atmosphere of fear and intimidation across the land. It also calls for the integration of various data banks as well as inter-agency cooperation in the sharing of information, with a view to eventually centralizing the information on American citizens. In a carefully worded text, NSPD 59 "establishes a framework" to enable the Federal government and its various police and intelligence agencies to: "use mutually compatible methods and procedures in the collection, storage, use, analysis, and sharing of biometric and associated biographic and contextual information of individuals in a lawful and appropriate manner, while respecting their information privacy and other legal rights under United States law." The NSPD 59 Directive recommends: "actions and associated timelines for enhancing the existing terrorist-oriented identification and screening processes by expanding the use of biometrics". The procedures under NSPD 59 are consistent with an earlier June 2005 decision which consisted increating a "domestic spy service", under the auspices of the FBI. (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Bush Administration creates "Secret State Police", June 30, 2005) Working hand in glove with Homeland Security (DHS), the proposed "domestic intelligence department" would combine FBI counterterrorism, intelligence and espionage operations into a single service. The new department operating under the auspices of the FBI would have the authority to "seize the property of people deemed to be helping the spread of WMD": They would be able to "spy on people in America suspected of terrorism or having critical intelligence information, even if they are not suspected of committing a crime." (NBC Tonight, 29 June 2005).\ ANNEX Text of H.R. 645: National Emergency Centers Establishment Act This version: Introduced in House. This is the original text of the bill as it was written by its sponsor and submitted to the House for consideration. This is the latest version of the bill available on this website. [SOURCE: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-645] HR 645 IH 111th CONGRESS 1st Session H. R. 645 To direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish national emergency centers on military installations. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES January 22, 2009 Mr. HASTINGS of Florida introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and in addition to the Committee on Armed Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A BILL To direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish national emergency centers on military installations. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the ‘National Emergency Centers Establishment Act’. SEC. 2. ESTABLISHMENT OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY CENTERS. (a) In General- In accordance with the requirements of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish not fewer than 6 national emergency centers on military installations. (b) Purpose of National Emergency Centers- The purpose of a national emergency center shall be to use existing infrastructure-- (1) to provide temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster; (2) to provide centralized locations for the purposes of training and ensuring the coordination of Federal, State, and local first responders; (3) to provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response, and recovery efforts of government, private, and not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations; and (4) to meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security. SEC. 3. DESIGNATION OF MILITARY INSTALLATIONS AS NATIONAL EMERGENCY CENTERS. (a) In General- Not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, shall designate not fewer than 6 military installations as sites for the establishment of national emergency centers. (b) Minimum Requirements- A site designated as a national emergency center shall be-- (1) capable of meeting for an extended period of time the housing, health, transportation, education, public works, humanitarian and other transition needs of a large number of individuals affected by an emergency or major disaster; (2) environmentally safe and shall not pose a health risk to individuals who may use the center; (3) capable of being scaled up or down to accommodate major disaster preparedness and response drills, operations, and procedures; (4) capable of housing existing permanent structures necessary to meet training and first responders coordination requirements during nondisaster periods; (5) capable of hosting the infrastructure necessary to rapidly adjust to temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance needs; (6) required to consist of a complete operations command center, including 2 state-of-the art command and control centers that will comprise a 24/7 operations watch center as follows: (A) one of the command and control centers shall be in full ready mode; and (B) the other shall be used daily for training; and (7) easily accessible at all times and be able to facilitate handicapped and medical facilities, including during an emergency or major disaster. (c) Location of National Emergency Centers- There shall be established not fewer than one national emergency center in each of the following areas: (1) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions I, II, and III. (2) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region IV. (3) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions V and VII. (4) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region VI. (5) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions VIII and X. (6) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region IX. (d) Preference for Designation of Closed Military Installations- Wherever possible, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, shall designate a closed military installation as a site for a national emergency center. If the Secretaries of Homeland Security and Defense jointly determine that there is not a sufficient number of closed military installations that meet the requirements of subsections (b) and (c), the Secretaries shall jointly designate portions of existing military installations other than closed military installations as national emergency centers. (e) Transfer of Control of Closed Military Installations- If a closed military installation is designated as a national emergency center, not later than 180 days after the date of designation, the Secretary of Defense shall transfer to the Secretary of Homeland Security administrative jurisdiction over such closed military installation. (f) Cooperative Agreement for Joint Use of Existing Military Installations- If an existing military installation other than a closed military installation is designated as a national emergency center, not later than 180 days after the date of designation, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of Defense shall enter into a cooperative agreement to provide for the establishment of the national emergency center. (g) Reports- (1) PRELIMINARY REPORT- Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, shall submit to Congress a report that contains for each designated site-- (A) an outline of the reasons why the site was selected; (B) an outline of the need to construct, repair, or update any existing infrastructure at the site; (C) an outline of the need to conduct any necessary environmental clean-up at the site; (D) an outline of preliminary plans for the transfer of control of the site from the Secretary of Defense to the Secretary of Homeland Security, if necessary under subsection (e); and (E) an outline of preliminary plans for entering into a cooperative agreement for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site, if necessary under subsection (f). (2) UPDATE REPORT- Not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, shall submit to Congress a report that contains for each designated site-- (A) an update on the information contained in the report as required by paragraph (1); (B) an outline of the progress made toward the transfer of control of the site, if necessary under subsection (e); (C) an outline of the progress made toward entering a cooperative agreement for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site, if necessary under subsection (f); and (D) recommendations regarding any authorizations and appropriations that may be necessary to provide for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site. (3) FINAL REPORT- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, shall submit to Congress a report that contains for each designated site-- (A) finalized information detailing the transfer of control of the site, if necessary under subsection (e); (B) the finalized cooperative agreement for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site, if necessary under subsection (f); and (C) any additional information pertinent to the establishment of a national emergency center at the site. (4) ADDITIONAL REPORTS- The Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, may submit to Congress additional reports as necessary to provide updates on steps being taken to meet the requirements of this Act. SEC. 4. LIMITATIONS ON STATUTORY CONSTRUCTION. This Act does not affect-- (1) the authority of the Federal Government to provide emergency or major disaster assistance or to implement any disaster mitigation and response program, including any program authorized by the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5121 et seq.); or (2) the authority of a State or local government to respond to an emergency. SEC. 5. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS. There is authorized to be appropriated $180,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2009 and 2010 to carry out this Act. Such funds shall remain available until expended. SEC. 6. DEFINITIONS. In this Act, the following definitions apply: (1) CLOSED MILITARY INSTALLATION- The term ‘closed military installation’ means a military installation, or portion thereof, approved for closure or realignment under the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 (part A of title XXIX of Public Law 101-510; 10 U.S.C. 2687 note) that meet all, or 2 out of the 3 following requirements: (A) Is located in close proximity to a transportation corridor. (B) Is located in a State with a high level or threat of disaster related activities. (C) Is located near a major metropolitan center. (2) EMERGENCY- The term ‘emergency’ has the meaning given such term in section 102 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5122). (3) MAJOR DISASTER- The term ‘major disaster’ has the meaning given such term in section 102 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5122). (4) MILITARY INSTALLATION- The term ‘military installation’ has the meaning given such term in section 2910 of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 (part A of title XXIX of Public Law 101-510; 10 U.S.C. 2687 note).

Dick Chaney's Death Squad

VP Dick Chaney ran a Death Squad out of his White House office for the purpose of assassination of his perceived enemies.

This interview is with investigative reporter Wayne Madson

El FMLN sigue fiel a su proyecto

Entrevista a la ex comandante de FMLN Nidia Díaz

El FMLN sigue fiel a su proyecto

Marcos Salgado

Deci.me

Por primera vez la izquierda llega al gobierno en El Salvador y la forma y el fondo de tal arribo no es un hecho menor. El FMLN, la otrora unidad de los grupos guerrilleros contra los gobiernos dictatoriales y de derecha avalados por los Estados Unidos, ganó las elecciones generales imponiéndose a una amplia campaña de miedo montada desde el oficialismo, el partido ARENA, antes -nada es paradójico- apoyatura civil de los grupos paramilitares que protagonizaron un genocidio nunca ajusticiado. Nidia Diaz es una voz autorizada en este El Salvador que surge. Comandante guerrillera, diputada y actual integrante de la conducción del Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, recorre en esta entrevista con la Radio de la Universidad de Buenos Aires la historia, la esperanza renovada y los desafíos de la nueva hora en el país más pequeño de América Central.

- ¿Qué significa este triunfo en las elecciones presidenciales, tras casi dos décadas del FMLN como partido político de oposición en El Salvador?

- Quiero en primer lugar decir que el triunfo del día 15 de marzo fue construido por todo el pueblos, a lo largo de muchas décadas. En El Salvador realmente nunca ha habido alternancia democrática, han sido gobiernos de turno, o golpes de Estado. Durante décadas en El Salvador se vivió bajo dictaduras militares, y si por el caso un gobierno progresista quería hacer algo siempre era sojuzgado por una política dependiente totalmente, de la administración de turno en los estados unidos. Pero jamás a través de la vía de un proceso político electoral, la izquierda, el centroizquierda, las fuerzas progresistas y democráticas habían tenido la posibilidad de acceder al poder formal y poder administrar el país.

- ¿Qué cambió desde la desmovilización guerrillera hasta ahora para llegar a este escenario?

Después que se desarrolló el conflicto armado que duro doce años y se puso fin a la dictadura a través de los acuerdos políticos -este suceso fue hace 17 años- se inicia un proceso de democratización, el cual fue obstruido, bloqueado en su consolidación por el partido de gobierno, ARENA, que desde 1989 asumió el gobierno. Desde entonces tuvieron ellos el poder real, el económico, e impulsaron un modelo neoliberal que durante esos 17 años fue contradictorio al proceso de democratización que se había iniciado con el pacto de paz. Durante este tiempo se creó la peor crisis que haya tenido nuestro pueblo. Una crisis económica, con pobreza, desempleo, migración, inseguridad. El país se volvió más inseguro. El primer problema de la gente es el alto costo de la vida, la falta capacidad de compra, el segundo el desempleo, la pobreza en general, y tercero la inseguridad ciudadana. eso se ha mantenido como constante durante estos años. Asi llegó la gente a querer un cambio. A cambiar la situación y ya no continuar siendo gobernada por la ARENA, que demostró incapacidad de poder resolver problemas, al contrario. Su modelo, su modo de gobernar autoritario le llevo pues a volver más pobre al pobre y más rico al rico.

- ¿Y cómo llega entonces el Farabundo Martí a ser este instrumento de cambio? Sin duda que la respuesta tiene que ver también con su vida misma...

Yo me honro en formar parte de Frente Farabundo Martí desde su fundación, en 1980 y en la guerrilla desde 1971 he sido parte, como comandante guerrillera. Y fui firmante de los acuerdos de paz, posteriormente fue diputada en el año 94, también fui candidata a la vicepresidencia de la República, actualmente soy diputada en la región centroamericana y he contribuido al proceso de formación del FMLN a su desarrollo, a su incidencia. Por un lado el frente con su lucha durante 30, 40 años ya, en la década de los 70, construyó un poderosos frente popular que buscó poner fin a las dictaduras pero no lo logró a través de las luchas políticas y sociales se tuvo que dar el derramamiento a través de la vía militar, política militar, porque en esos tiempos opinar era un delito, el militarismo que había nos llevó pues a esa confrontación y luego de la guerra civil fuimos a los diálogos, a firmar acuerdos, que pusieron fin a la dictadura. Por esa lucha que lideró el pueblo y el Frente se establecieron libertades y derechos que durante décadas estuvieron suprimidos. Luego, en los últimos 17 años se respira un clima de libertades donde el frente se fue desarrollando hasta convertirse en la primera fuerza política electoral del país. Es toda una acumulación de una izquierda que fue en ascenso, y que lejos de convertirse en una izquierda enana, bonsai, como le apostaron los sectores de poder económico, llegó pues en base a las mismas condiciones que creó y a lo que se logró superar, porque el bloqueo, la distorsión que se generó sobre las instituciones creadas por el pacto de paz ha sido muy grande.

- El oficialismo apostó a que eran enanos...

Ahora están como en un colapso, porque nunca pensaron un mes después de convertirse el FMLN en esa la primera fuerza en las elecciones municipales, se convierte ahora en la izquierda gobernante. que gobernará el país a partir del 1º de junio, junto a una gran alianza política, acumulada durante también todo este tiempo.

- ¿Hasta dónde extenderá la mano el nuevo gobierno?

En esta alianza caben todas las personas que quieren cambiar el país. Por eso se llama la gran alianza por el cambio. Donde Mauricio (NdR: Funes, presidente electo) desarrolló también un amplio movimiento de “amigos de Mauricio”. En ese sentido el frente se convierte pues junto a todos estos sectores en la primera fuerza gobernante, real, de alternancia, que a partir del 1º de junio comenzará a administrar este país desarrollando políticas publicas distintas.

-¿En estos diecisiete años a los que usted hace referencia el FMLN cambió o por el contrario perviven las grandes lineas que le dijeron origen?

El FMLN sigue fiel a su proyecto. Su identidad se preserva, No le digo que no hemos atravesado distintos momentos en nuestro proceso de construcción y desarrollo, pero desde que nos fundamos como partido político y nos inscribimos en el sistema electoral el frente desarrolló principios y valores acumulados durante la década de los 70, de los 80, en cuando al propósito de nuestra lucha, a los valores que nos inspiran. Y son principios plasmados en el papel, y que rigen a las cinco organizaciones que fundamos el Frente Farabundo Martí. Y le incorporamos en el 2001 otro objetivo, que era que la lucha de la transformación democrática tenia como rumbo el socialismo. Así se desarrollaron los postulados de lograr una sociedad con equidad, sin explotación, y equitativa no sólo de género, sino también de medio ambiente. Y una sociedad soberana.

- ¿En qué políticas esenciales concretas se expresará la construcción de esta sociedad?

Nosotros desde hace muchos años tenemos un proyecto de país, una misión de hacia donde queremos llevar El Salvador, y es hacia una sociedad con justicia, democrática, soberana, basada en la equidad y en el desarrollo económico de nuestro pueblo. En ese sentido los programas de gobierno que lanzamos en el 92, en el 94, en el 99 y en el 2004 con Schafik (NdR. Handal, líder histórico del FMLN, fallecido en 2006). Ahora, nosotros desarrollamos las bases del programa para este gobierno a través de un proceso de consulta ciudadana desde septiembre de 2007 hasta agosto de 2008, donde participamos con 33 mesas ciudadanas, que involucraron a todos los sectores, con más 14 consultas departamentales, siete en Estados Unidos, llegando a estructurar el programa de gobierno: “Nace la esperanza viene el cambio”. Así se llama el programa, que fue asumido en una convención nacional del Frente, y ahí estaba Mauricio Funes, que no exactamente viene del Frente pero es un líder social, periodista, y asume el programa. El da su opinión y queda la alianza plasmada con él en términos generales. Después se desarrolla pues la plataforma de lo que fue la campaña y los puntos específicos. Mauricio tiene un plan específico de cómo superar la crisis, la crisis que estamos viviendo y el impacto de la crisis mundial. Tiene el proyecto para la generación del empleo para aliviar inmediatamente la situación, y un proyecto integral de atención y para abrir espacios a la mujer, con equidad e igualdad.

Por último, ¿que relación que se establecerá con los países vecinos, y en particular ante algunas iniciativas en unidad regional, como la Alternativa Bolivariana de las Américas (ALBA) de la que forman parte dos vecinos de El Salvador como Honduras y Nicaragua?

Mauricio va a impulsar una política internacional y de cooperación abierta al mundo, amplia, sin ideologismos. Distinta a lo que vimos hasta ahora en el Salvador. Aqui se ha llegado al grado que nunca hemos tenidos relaciones diplomáticas, ni económicas con Cuba. Somos el único país en todo América Latina que no tienen una modalidad de relación diplomática con Cuba. Y Mauricio ha dicho: “yo llego al gobierno y hablo las relaciones diplomáticas con cuba”. Así, como las tiene Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica y Panamá. Eso se espera ya, porque los intereses que se han dando entre estos países son múltiples. Nosotros nos hemos beneficiado de los médicos que hemos formado en Cuba y de los médicos que ha venido, propiamente cubanos, a combatir el dengue y las epidemias. O cuando la misión milagro que se desarrolla entre Venezuela y Cuba, donde llevamos ya más de siete mil personas curadas de los ojos entre estos dos países. Es decir que hay otros proyectos que tienen que ver con las relaciones entre los pueblos. El gobierno va a priorizar también las relaciones de la integración de Centroamérica, donde estamos trabajando arduamente por definir conceptos para esa integración verdadera, con todos los pueblos, basándose en la cooperación y la complementariedad.

www.deci.me

Sionismo é o Problema

Sionismo é o Problema
por Prof. Lejeune Mirhan

Esta semana recebi de um amigo com quem me correspondo nos Estados Unidos, Steve S., um belo artigo, cujo título em inglês é Zionism is the problem (que pode ser lido em http://www.latimes.com:80/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ehrenreich15-2009mar15,0,6684861.story). Pretendo tratar desse tema esta semana.

Algumas declarações históricas

Não pretendo aqui fazer uma história da origem e desenvolvimento do sionismo, enquanto corrente de opinião de caráter racista, cujo objetivo principal é a construção de um estado judeu em terras históricas pertencentes aos palestinos. Tal processo, como sabemos, inicia-se na segunda metade do século XIX e se intensifica com a ajuda da Inglaterra desde que esta recebeu da Liga das Nações o Mandato sobre a palestina, quando facilitava imensamente a migração judaica para a região.

Já tratamos desse assunto ao longo de anos nesta coluna. Assim como mostramos que Israel não é e nunca foi um estado democrático como a mídia insiste em propagar aos quatro ventos. Ao contrário. É um estado racista, discriminador, que usa a força para impor sua vontade às minorias, que faz dos árabe-palestinos cidadãos de segunda classe, que penaliza quem não professa a religião judaica. Enfim, um estado – único na comunidade das nações que integram a ONU – a não possuir uma constituição e uma fronteira reconhecida internacionalmente, além de ocupar ilegalmente milhares de quilômetros quadrados de terras que a própria ONU destinou aos palestinos em 1947 na fatídica sessão de 29 de novembro.

Quero, antes de entrar nas análises sobre a questão sionista hoje e os impasses que as eleições israelenses de 10 de fevereiro levaram o país, apresentar aos nossos leitores, quase que lhes prestando um serviço, em especial aos estudiosos e apoiadores da causa palestina, um conjunto de declarações de sionistas históricos. Como a história comprovou, tais sionistas, que realizaram atividades bárbaras, que perpetraram massacres em aldeias palestinas, nunca falaram em “Estado de Israel”, mas falavam em Palestina, como aquela região é milenarmente conhecida.

Sempre houve um grande endeusamento na mídia a algumas figuras históricas desse movimento sionista que, nada mais é, do que um projeto de colonização da Palestina, cujos líderes judeus estabeleceram amplas alianças políticas, ora com a potência inglesa, ora com os americanos, de acordo com o sabor de seus interesses estratégicos. Pode parecer incrível, mas até certas alianças e acordos com o Partido Nacional Socialista da Alemanha nazista foram feitos acordos que estimulassem a migração judaica para a Palestina, mas isso é assunto para outro momento.

Vejamos aqui algumas das principais declarações de renomados judeus sionistas. Todas elas foram selecionadas por Ralph Schoenman, que, na juventude, chegou a ser secretário particular do prêmio Nobel da Paz, Bertrand Russel (1). As referências indiretas em suas respectivas páginas são dessa obra.

Chaim Weizmann – ex-presidente da Organização Sionista Mundial

“É bastante aceitável dizer que, se a Palestina cair na esfera de influência britânica e a Grã Bretanha estimular o estabelecimento dos judeus lá, com uma dependência britânica, em 20 ou 3 anos poderemos ter lá um milhão de judeus. Eles desenvolveriam o país, restituiriam a civilização e formariam uma guarda muito, mais efetiva para o Canal de Suez” (Trial and error: the autobiography of Chaim Weizmann, Nova York, Harper, 1949, página 149).

Meus comentários: aqui dois aspectos importantes. A prova de que os sionistas só se referiam à região como “Palestina” e a clara e estratégica aliança com os ingleses, a favor dos sionistas e seu projeto colonial. Destaca-se a quase premonitória cifra de um milhão de judeus migrantes, atingida alguns anos depois da sua previsão.

“As esperanças de seis milhões de judeus da Europa estão nas centradas na imigração. Alguém me perguntou: ‘você pode levar seis milhões de judeus para a Palestina?’. Eu respondi ‘não’. Dos abismos da tragédia eu quero salvar os jovens da Palestina. Os velhos desaparecerão. Eles aguentarão a sorte ou não. Eles são pó, pó econômico e moral num mundo cruel (...). Somente o ramo dos jovens sobreviverá. Eles têm de aceitar isso” (relato ao Congresso Sionista de 1937, sobre seu testemunho junto à Comissão Peel; citado em Yahya, página 55).

Meus comentários: aqui, de forma fria e calculista, Weizmann deixa claro que não defende todo o povo judeu, mas quer salvar apenas os mais jovens, que poderiam migrar para a Palestina e lá estabelecerem colônias e aderirem aos bandos terroristas para matar e expulsar palestinos. Os velhos ficariam à sua sorte. Isso nos lembra uma famosa frase de efeito de Gurion, quando ele afirmou que se tivesse que escolher salvar todas as crianças judiais da Alemanha e Europa, enviando-as para vários países e se só pudesse salvar metade deles, enviando-as para a Palestina, ele afirmou taxativamente que ficaria com a segunda hipótese.

Wladimir Jabotinsky – ideólogo do sionismo

“Todas as pessoas bem intencionadas, salvo os cegos de nascimento, compreenderam há muito a completa impossibilidade de se chegar a um acordo voluntário com os árabes da Palestina para transformar a Palestina de um país árabe em um país de maioria judia. Cada um de vocês tem uma ideia geral da história das colonizações. Tente achar pelo menos um exemplo de colonização de um país que aconteceu com o acordo da população nativa. Tal coisa nunca ocorreu. Os nativos sempre lutaram obstinadamente contra os colonizadores – e não importa que eles tenham cultura ou não. Os companheiros de armas de Hernán Cortez e Francisco Pizarro comportaram-se como bandidos. Os peles-vermelhas lutaram com ardor inflexível contra os colonizadores de bom e de mau coração. Os nativos lutaram porque qualquer tipo de colonização, em qualquer parte, em qualquer época, é inadmissível para qualquer povo nativo. Qualquer povo nativo considera seu país como seu lar nacional, do qual devem ser donos absolutos. Nunca aceitarão outro mestre voluntariamente. Assim ocorre com os árabes. Conciliadores entre nós tentam nos convencer de que os árabes são uma espécie de tolos que serão enganados com formulações que ocultem nossos objetivos básicos. Nego-me redondamente a aceitar essa visão dos árabe-palestinos. Eles têm a mesma psicologia que nós. Olham a Palestina com o mesmo amor instintivo e o mesmo autêntico fervor com que qualquer asteca olhava seu México ou qualquer sioux contemplava a sua pradaria. Qualquer povo lutará contra os colonizadores enquanto lhe reste um fio de esperança de que eles possam evitar o perigo da conquista e da colonização. Os palestinos lutarão dessa forma até que não haja o menor lampejo de esperança. Não importam as palavras com que expliquemos nossa colonização. A colonização tem seu próprio significado, pleno e imprescindível, compreendido por qualquer judeu e por qualquer árabe. A colonização tem um só objetivo. Tal é a natureza das coisas. E tentar mudar seu caráter é impossível. Foi necessário desenvolver a colonização contra a vontade dos árabes palestinos e a mesma situação se dá hoje. Inclusive um acordo com os não palestinos representa o mesmo tipo de fantasia. Para que os nacionalistas árabes de Bagdá, de Meca e de Damasco aceitassem pagar um preço tão alto, eles teriam de negar-se a manter o caráter árabe da Palestina. Não podemos dar nenhuma compensação pela Palestina, nem aos palestinos nem aos demais árabes. Portanto, é inconcebível um acordo voluntário. Qualquer colonização, ainda que a mais restrita deve-se desenvolver desafiando a vontade da população nativa. Portanto, a colonização somente pode continuar e desenvolver-se sob um escudo de força que inclua uma muralha de ferro que jamais possa ser penetrada pela população local. Essa é a política árabe. Formulá-la de qualquer outro modo seria hipocrisia... A censura estúpida de que esse ponto de vista não é ético, respondo: ‘totalmente falso’. Essa é a nossa ética. Não há outra ética. Enquanto os árabes tiverem a menor esperança de impedir-nos, eles não venderão essas esperanças por nenhuma palavra doce nem nenhum bocado apetitoso, porque não nos enfrentaremos com gentalha e som com um povo, um povo vivo. E nenhum povo faz concessões grandes sobre questões tão decisivas, a não ser quando não lhes resta nenhuma esperança, até que tenhamos tampado qualquer brecha na muralha de ferro” (The Iron Wall – O Zheleznoi Stene, Rassvet, 4 de novembro de 1923).

Meus comentários: aqui o reforço de que a região era mesmo “Palestina” e a palavra Israel nunca era dita. Um segundo aspecto, a frieza da confissão aberta de sua “ética” de negar qualquer acordo com os árabes e seguir abertamente com seus ideais colonizadores. Por fim, o desmascaramento de um dos mitos, uma das maiores mentiras que os sionistas contam ao mundo de que aquela terra era uma terra “sem povo”. Esse cidadão é considerado um dos maiores intelectuais do povo judeu.

“É impossível que alguém seja assimilado por outro povo que tenha sangue diferente do seu. Para que seja assimilado, esse alguém tem que trocar de corpo, tem de converter-se em um deles, no sangue. Não pode existir assimilação. Nunca poderemos permitir coisas como o matrimônio misto porque a preservação da integridade nacional só é possível mediante a pureza racial e, para tal, temos de ter esse território onde nosso povo constituirá os habitantes racialmente puros... A fonte do sentimento nacional (...) reside no sangue das pessoas (...) em seu tipo físico e somente nisso (...). a perspectiva espiritual de um homem é determinada previamente pela sua estrutura física. Por isso, não acreditamos na assimilação espiritual. É impossível, do ponto de vista físico, que um judeu nascido de família de sangue puramente judeu possa se adaptar à estrutura espiritual de um alemão ou de um francês. Essa pessoa pode ser totalmente imbuída de fluidos alemães, porém o núcleo de sua estrutura espiritual permanecerá sempre judeu.” (citado por Lenni Brenner em The Iron Wall: revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir, Londres, Zed Books, 1984, página 29).

Meus comentários: aqui uma versão clara e aberta do que Hitler viria a definir como a “raça pura”,a ariana. Condena os casamentos multi-étnicos e usa o termo “raça”, definindo árabes como raça inferior, que nunca poderiam casar-se com judeus, os “mais preparados”.

Joseph Weitz – Chefe do Departamento de Colonização da Agência Judaica em 1940

“Entre nós temos que ter claro que não há espaço algum para que os dois povos permaneçam juntos neste país. Nós não atingiremos nosso objetivo se os árabes permanecerem neste pequeno país. Não há outra maneira a não ser transferir os árabes daqui para os países vizinhos. Todos eles. Nem um único vilarejo, nem uma única tribo deve restar” (A solution to the refugee problem, Davar, 29 de setembro de 1967, encontrada em Uri Davis e Norton Mezvinsky, Editor, Documents from Israel, 1967-1973, página 21).

Meus comentários: aqui a confissão clara e aberta da completa impossibilidade da convivência dos dois povos, da defesa da transferência compulsória dos palestinos para países vivinhos. De fato, dados de 1948 mostram que dos 475 vilarejos e aldeias palestinas existentes nessa época, 358 foram completamente arrasados pelos sionistas e seus bandos terroristas, reduzidos à pó. Apenas uns 90 permaneceram em pé.

Relatório Koening

“Devemos usar o terror, o assassinato, a intimidação, o confisco de terras e o corte de todos os serviços sociais para libertar a Galileia de sua população árabe” (Al Hamishmar, 7 de setembro de 1976).

Heilbrun, presidente do Comitê Pró-Reeleição do general Shlomo Lahat, prefeito de Tel Aviv

“Devemos matar todos os palestinos, a não ser que se resignem a viver aqui como escravos” (Citado por Fouzi El-Asmar e Salih Baransi durante debates ocorridos com Ralph Schoenman em 1983, publicado em seu livro na página 75).

Uri Lubrai – conselheiro para assuntos árabes de Ben Gurion

“Vamos reduzir a população árabe a uma comunidade de lenhadores e garçons” (Sabry Jiris, The arabs in Israel, Monthly Review Press, Nova York, 1976).

Raphael Eitan – Ex-chefe do Estado Maior das Forças Armadas de Israel

“Manifestemos abertamente que os árabes não têm direito algum a ocupar sequer um centímetro do Grande Israel (...). A única coisa que eles entendem e entenderão é a força. Nós utilizaremos a força mais decisiva até que os palestinos venham até nós, engatinhando, de joelhos (...). Quando tivermos ocupado as terras, os árabes não poderão fazer nada mais do que se revolver como baratas drogadas dentro de uma garrafa”. (Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot de 13 de abril de 1983; The New York Times de 14 de abril de 1983).

Meus comentários: aqui, de forma clara e cristalina, em várias passagens, vemos o sentimento que sempre nutriu a liderança sionista, qual seja, a eliminação física e completa da população palestina e árabe em geral de toda a Palestina. Ou, no mínimo a subjugação física e moral, a completa humilhação e escravização. Compara-se a baratas os palestinos. Agora mesmo nas eleições de 10 de fevereiro, onde venceu a direita, Ehud Barak, o grande derrotado do Partido Trabalhista, ministro d Defesa de Israel, fez campanha pedindo votos e atacando o direitista Avigdor Liebermann, que será o provável chanceler do governo de Bibi, afirmando abertamente na sua propaganda na TV: “Quantos palestinos ele já matou?”, ao criticar a inexperiência em guerra do fascista do Partido Israel Beitenu.

Ben Gurion – Fundador do Estado Judeu, em declaração de 1936

“Nós não propomos que proclamemos agora nosso objetivo final, que é de grande alcance – principalmente em relação aos revisionistas que se opõe à partilha. Eu me nego a renunciar a uma grande visão, à visão final que é um componente orgânico, espiritual e ideológico de minhas aspirações sionistas (...). Um estado judeu parcial não é o final, senão somente o princípio. Estou convencido de que nada pode nos impedir de nos estabelecermos em outras partes do país e da região (...). As fronteiras e as aspirações sionistas são de interesse do povo judeu e nenhum fator externo poderá limitá-las (...)”.(Memoirs, Volume III, página 467).

“As fronteiras da aspiração sionista incluem o sul do Líbano, o sul da Síria,a atual Jordânia, toda a Cisjordânia e o Sinai”. (“Report to the World Council of Poale Zion” – antecessor do Partido Trabalhista – em Tel Aviv em 1938, encontrado em Israel Shahak, journal of Palestine Studies, 1981).

“Quando nos convertermos em uma força com peso, como resultado da criação de um estado, aboliremos a partilha e nos expandiremos por toda a Palestina. O Estado será somente uma etapa na realização do sionismo e sua tarefa é preparar terreno para nossa expansão. O estado terá de preservar a ordem, não através da pregação, mas sim com as metralhadoras” (Discurso pronunciado em 1938, do Livro Memórias).

“Deveríamos nos preparar para avançar em uma ofensiva. Nosso objetivo é esmagar o Líbano, a Transjordânia e a Síria. O ponto débil é o Líbano, porque o regime muçulmano é artificial e fácil de ser minado. Teremos de implantar um estado cristão ali e então derrotaremos a Legião Árabe, eliminaremos a Transjordânia; a Síria cairá em nossas mãos. Então nós bombardearemos e ocuparemos Port Said, Alexandria e o Sinai, no Egito” (Michel bar Zoha, Ben Gurion: a Biography, Nova York, Delacorte, 1978).

Meus comentários: aqui também de forma cristalina, o fundador de Israel confessa, nessas várias passagens e discursos, que o plano de partilha da ONU seria apenas o começo para a tomada de toda a Palestina e quiçá, com foi com a guerra de 1967, o Eretz Israel (em hebraico “Grande Israel”, do Tigre, no Iraque ao Nilo, no Egito). O projeto colonialista, aliado com as potências ocidentais era muito grande, incluía quase todo o Oriente Médio. E tudo isso com a força da bala, dos massacres, dos genocídios, amplamente registrados desde 1947, como o de Der Yassim.

Como queríamos demonstrar...

Nas ciências chamadas “exatas”, em especial a física e a matemática, quando terminamos a demonstração de uma equação, quando resolvemos um problema, escrevemos ao final a sigla CQD, “como queríamos demonstrar”. As citações acima compiladas, extraídas de Schoenman, demonstram de maneira cabal pelo menos o seguinte:

1. O projeto sionista é um movimento de colonização, que se articulou com as potências imperialistas do século XX;

2. O objetivo final sempre foi a tomada de todas as terras da Palestina histórica, de forma que a partilha seria apenas uma mera etapa, um passo para a construção de um estado em terras palestinas, quando o grande objetivo seria ampliar o controle territorial, expandindo-o para países como o Líbano, a Jordânia, a Síria e o Egito. Quem sabe até ao Iraque;

3. Sionismo é racismo. As declarações de todos os grandes líderes árabes sempre foram racistas, no sentido de discriminar os árabes e palestinos como cidadãos de segunda classe;

4. Em vários momentos fica claro que o objetivo seria até a eliminação física dos palestinos ou, no mínimo, subjugá-los, humilhá-los e transformá-los em cidadãos de segunda classe.

Essas frases falam por si só. Por isso, esta semana, em véspera do governo fascista de Bibi ser formado em Israel, quando um fascista e racista declarado como Avigdor pode vir a ser ministro das Relações Exteriores, estas frases reforçam, entre nós, lutadores pela causa palestina, a convicção de que estamos certos em nosso caminho e Israel vai se tornando a cada dia um país mais inviável, pelo que vem fazendo há mais de 60 anos contra os palestinos.

(1) Ver livro A História Oculta do Sionismo, da Editora Sundermann, São Paulo, 2008, 243 páginas.

Prof. Lejeune Mirhan
Presidente do Sindicato dos Sociólogos do Estado de São Paulo
Sociólogo, Escritor, Arabista e Professor
Membro da Academia de Altos Estudos Ibero-Árabe de Lisboa
Membro da International Sociological Association
Colunista do Portal Vermelho sobre Oriente Médio
Colunista da Revista "Sociologia" - Editora Escala
Celulares: 11-9887-1963 e 19-8196-3145
Residência: 19-3255-6481
Trabalho: 11-3054-1817

Ego sum pauper. Nihil habeo. Cor dabo".
("Eu sou pobre. Nada tenho. Dou meu coração")

Hoje, milhões de crianças dormirão nas ruas no mundo. Nenhuma delas é cubana