Edward S. Herman's ZSpace Page
We have to recognize that in the Imperial New World Order (INWO), with the Soviet Union gone, and an aggressive and highly militarized United States projecting its great power across the globe, destabilizing and devastating in all its major areas of operation in the alleged interest of liberation and stability, a revised set of principles should be discernible. Most of these are hardly new, but even more audaciously than in the past they translate power relationships into affirmations of rights or the denial of these very same rights, with the ensuing double standards applicable pretty much across the board. The real-world significance of these INWO principles thus depends on three factors: (a) whether Washington affirms them for itself (and directly or by implication for its close allies, clients and hangers-on); (b) whether Washington denies them to its enemies; and (c) whether Washington doesn't care one way or the other. As we show below, these power-based affirmations or denials of rights are accepted among the powerful, from the leaders of the Western states, political candidates, and top UN officials, to the establishment media and the intellectuals whose voices can be heard. They represent the institutionalization of a system of power in which justice is inoperative and its perversion hidden in clouds of rhetoric and obfuscation.
1. Aggression rights: The United States enjoys first-class aggression rights and has long been able to violate the UN Charter prohibition against the "supreme international crime" as a matter of course and without the slightest penalty (Vietnam and the whole of Indochina, Panama, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq). Its most important client, Israel, has been able to do the same (Lebanon in 1982 and 2006, along with Syria, Algeria, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories), also without penalty. Among the intellectual and political classes of both countries, the objections raised to these aggressions have been almost entirely pragmatic and concerned with their effectiveness, costs (to the aggressor), and possible mismanagement. But the aggression rights have not been challenged, either within the aggressing states or internationally. The rule of law implicitly applies only to others.
In sharp contrast, in the cases of cross-border invasions by countries on the U.S. and Western enemies-list, such as Vietnam invading Cambodia in 1979 or Iraq occupying Kuwait in 1990, indignation by Western leaders and pundits is intense, and both invaders were severely punished (a retaliatory Chinese invasion of Vietnam, U.S. sanctions against Vietnam, and the Khmer Rouge awarded Cambodia's seat at the UN; Iraq forced out of Kuwait by a massive Security Council-approved U.S.-led war that devastated Iraq and laid the basis for 13 years of sanctions and, ultimately, the March 2003 U.S. invasion). One key difference between 1979 and 1990, however, is that whereas in 1979, the Soviet Union vetoed a draft Security Council resolution calling on Vietnam to withdraw its forces from Cambodia, despite the Australian ambassador's remark that "We cannot accept that the internal policies of any government [Cambodia], no matter how reprehensible, could justify a military attack on it by another government [Vietnam],"[1] during no Council debate following Iraq's August 2, 1990 invasion of Kuwait did a member of the Permanent Five veto a resolution calling for Iraq to withdraw its forces or imposing sanctions on the aggressor. The relevant difference was the existence of the Soviet Union as a world-power in 1979 versus 1990 and beyond.
2. Terrorism rights(and the right to kill large numbers without being labeled terrorist): This parallels aggression rights, as the borderline between terrorism and aggression is fuzzy and is commonly simply a matter of scale; in either case, U.S. actions in bombing and killing are not designated with the invidious words.
The U.S.'s initial "shock and awe" attack on Iraq was openly planned to terrorize Iraqi military personnel and civilians, and the U.S. assaults on Fallujah[2] and elsewhere have had an open terrorist design. The same is true of Israeli military attacks. It is a matter of political form in the West that Israel only "responds" to and "retaliates" against terrorists, but never terrorizes. The introduction to House Resolution 951, adopted on March 5 by the overwhelming margin of 404 to 1 even as Israel's Defense Force was savagely attacking Palestinian refugee camps in the Gaza,[3] proclaims that "the Government of Israel's military operations in Gaza only target Hamas and other terrorist organizations," and adds that "the inadvertent inflicting of civilian casualties as a result of defensive military operations aimed at military targets, while deeply regrettable, is not at all morally equivalent to the deliberate targeting of civilian populations as practiced by Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorist groups."[4] This is straightforward apologetics for Israeli state terror. For one thing, Israeli leaders from Abba Eban to Ariel Sharon and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert today have openly admitted to the aim of terrorizing the Palestinian civilian population. Second, it glosses over the fact that the allegedly "inadvertent" killings of Palestinians by Israelis have exceeded that of the allegedly deliberate Hamas and Palestinian killings of Israelis by a huge ratio (before the second intifada, 25 to 1; since the beginning of the second intifada in 2000, 4.6 to 1).[5] Third, the allegedly "inadvertent" killings by Israel are in actual fact quite deliberate, given that the Israeli forces don't hesitate to use their powerful weapons in crowded civilian areas of Gaza and in Lebanon in the summer of 2006, where the civilian deaths are predictable and numerous.[6]
3. Rights to ethnically cleanse: The West finds ethnic cleansing reprehensible, and sheds a sea of tears over its victims—but only when carried out by, or when it can be imputed to, target entities such as the Bosnian Serbs and Milosevic's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and the Sudan's Muslim government today. In fact, the ethnic cleansing by the Bosnian Serbs was carried out in a largely tit-for-tat process of a civil conflict in which the competing groups (Bosnian Muslims and Croats) did their own share of cleansing. Milosevic in Kosovo did not ethnically cleanse to replace Kosovo Albanians with Serb settlers; the population flights were features of a civil war and then, with the NATO bombing, a much wider war.[7]
Following in this misleading frame, the New Republic finds "Plenty of parallels between Darfur today and Kosovo in 1999....When rebellions came to Kosovo and Darfur, both Belgrade and Khartoum decided to fight the guerrillas by targeting the civilian populations from which they sprang."[8] But TNR's facts are as wrong with respect to Darfur as they are for Kosovo; the only real parallel here lies in the selectivity and ideological uses to which Western powers put the two theaters of conflict. In 2007, an assessment by the UN Environment Program found that "Environmental degradation, as well as regional climate instability and change, are major underlying causes of food insecurity and conflict in Darfur....[T]he region is beset with a problematic combination of population growth, over-exploitation of resources and an apparent major long-term reduction in rainfall. As a result, much of northern and central Darfur is degraded to the extent that it cannot sustainably support its rural population."[9]
On the other hand, the truly genuine case of ethnic cleansing, and one that has had global implications because of the Arab and Muslim resentment that it inspires, has been the steady Israeli expulsion of Palestinians from their lands in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in order to allow Jewish settlements. The phrase "ethnic cleansing" is almost never applied to this case in the West. This despite the fact that it has been openly acknowledged by Israeli leaders for many years that the aim of these settlements is to displace Palestinians with Jews, and that in the process they have killed many thousands, demolished over 18,000 Palestinian homes since the occupation began in 1967,[10] and pushed out scores-of-thousands of non-Jews. John Dugard, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has repeatedly warned of Israel' efforts "to make the city more Jewish," and thereby deprive any future Palestinian state of a capital. "The clear purpose of these changes is to remove any suggestion that East Jerusalem is a Palestinian entity capable of becoming the capital of a Palestinian State," Dugard explains. "The construction of the wall, the expansion of settlements and the de-Palestinization of Jerusalem threaten the viability of a Palestinian State."[11] Yet, in a marvel of Western double standards and hypocrisy, this decades-old systematic ethnic cleansing process has been given positive support by Western leaders and media, and Israel has been honored while its target victims are villainized.[12] Despite the clear Israeli intent to ethnically cleanse, and to steal land belonging to the Palestinians, the process is rationalized in the West on the grounds of Israel's "security needs"—in the racist double standard of the West, Palestinians have no "security needs," and the fact that the latter are mainly responding to Israel's wholesale terror and the dispossession process is ignored. This is the true Israeli "miracle."
4. Subversion rights: Paralleling the aggression-rights enjoyed by the United States, and employed by it even more frequently during the post-World War II period, has been the U.S. right to interfere with and subvert any government of its choice. The counter-revolutionary intervention in Greece (1947-1949), and the overthrows of Mohammad Mosaddeq in Iran (1953) and Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala (1954) during the first decade of the post-war period are outstanding examples of U.S. power already being applied with little constraint.[13] The U.S. "counter-guerrilla" intervention in the Greek civil war witnessed "almost total command of the operation by Americans and the presence of advisers on combat operations," Michael McClintock writes, a practice "that would remain at the top of the agendas of American counterinsurgents from Vietnam to El Salvador."[14] (As McClintock's history ends with the year 1990, we would extend this agenda minimally to cover Colombia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, too.) Regarded by many as the "cradle of U.S. Cold War strategy," as a 1960s U.S. military assessment called it, the intervention in Greece established hallmarks of U.S. counterinsurgency strategy renamed though not superseded in practice by the mythical "Petraeus Doctrine" and the updated U.S. Counterinsurgency Field Manual (2006-2007) now alleged to be on display as part of the U.S. "surge" in Iraq. Yet, beyond the nominal changes in terminology to reflect the "end of the Cold War" and the proclamation of the "War on Terror," in which a "new wave of insurgencies" is fueled, it alleges, not by old-style "communist" subversion but by "weak and failed states" and above all by "non-state actors" or "terrorists," the actual strategy remains the same.[15]
But U.S. subversion policy has taken many forms. In the 1982 study The Real Terror Network, in a section on "The U.S. Natural Right to Subvert,"[16] a table is provided that shows 12 different classes of subversion engaged in by the United States across eight countries in Latin America and the Caribbean between 1950 and 1980. (See Table One in our Appendix, below.) Included are many forms of violence against people and property, many types of bribery, "black propaganda," and the large-scale subsidization of opposition candidates and protest movements such as students' and women's organizations. There is also a summary of the late Philip Agee's description of this multi-leveled process of subversion in Ecuador in the early 1960s. These processes were employed in Brazil (1964) and Chile (1973), and all are still in use today—and we are struck by the similarities between this earlier golden age of subversion and the efforts underway today in theaters such as Iran and Tibet (i.e., western China).[17] But whereas the earlier efforts were cloaked as countering "Communist subversion," today they are allegedly part of "democracy promotion," "transformational diplomacy," the defense of "human rights," and the like.
5. Rights to impose sanctions: Hegemonic power not only provides aggression, terrorism and subversion rights, it also allows the hegemon to impose sanctions on a target, to cause its people to suffer and its leaders to be discredited, usually with international community cooperation. The Soviet Union, Castro's Cuba, Vietnam from 1975 to 1994, Nicaragua under the Sandinistas, Iran since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, Libya, Iraq after the August1990 invasion of Kuwait, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1992 (and the Republic of Serbia through the present day), and Afghanistan under the Taliban, all have been subjected to sanctions pressed by the United States. But it goes almost without saying that the United States and its clients are never subjected to sanctions, even for Nuremberg-class criminality such as aggression and major war crimes; the double standard here is blatant.
In another miracle of double standards, not only is Israel never subjected to sanctions for its endless violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention's protection of civilians in militarily-occupied territory and the collective punishment of the Gaza Palestinians, but since 2006, the "international community" has joined the U.S. -Israel axis in imposing sanctions against these deliberately immiserated, starved, and in every way deprived victims. In the words of eight U.K.-based humanitarian groups, the Israeli siege of the Gaza has turned its roughly 1.5 million people into an "imprisoned population," dismantling their economy, destroying the physical infrastructure, and crippling basic services such as health care and education. Now, at least 80% of the Gaza Palestinians are "dependent on humanitarian assistance" for daily survival. "Israel's policy," these groups report, "affects the civilian population...indiscriminately and constitutes a collective punishment...illegal under international humanitarian law."[18] Describing life for the Gaza Palestinian as "under siege," UN Special RapporteurJohn Dugard notes that they "have been subjected to possibly the most rigorous form of international sanctions imposed in modern times...the first time an occupied people have been so treated....Israel is in violation of major Security Council and General Assembly resolutions dealing with unlawful territorial change and the violation of human rights and has failed to implement the 2004 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, yet it escapes the imposition of sanctions....It is interesting to recall that the Western States refused to impose meaningful economic sanctions on South Africa to compel it to abandon apartheid on the grounds that this would harm the black people of South Africa. No such sympathy is extended to the Palestinian people or their human rights."[19] But we can resolve the Special Rapporteur's wonder once we remember that the real principles of the INWO divorce punishments from genuine crimes, and rewards from good behavior. Power, and power alone, is its ruling principle.
6. Rights to resist aggression: In sharp contrast to the perspective that informs John Dugard's work, the Gaza Palestinians in the eyes of the Western establishment possess no right to resist Israeli attacks, although these assaults are features of an illegal occupation and cruel ethnic cleansing process. In Western ideology, the Palestinian attacks on Israel, while not "aggression," are an intolerable form of "terrorism," not legitimate resistance, and they serve to justify anything powerful Israel chooses to inflict on Gaza as collective punishment. In a press release in early April, the Palestinian National Initiative Secretary-General and member of parliament Mustafa Al-Barghouthi noted that since the Annapolis conference concluded in late November, "Israeli attacks on the Palestinians had increased by 300 percent," while "in the West Bank alone [they had] surged by 46 percent," these West Bank attacks showing that Israel's real objective has "nothing to do with the rocket attacks carried out by Palestinian resistance in Gaza." Through early April, Israel had released 788 Palestinian prisoners since Annapolis, but it detained 2,175 new prisoners; it also increased the number of checkpoints on the West Bank, and continued building the separation wall; and most important, it continued to expand the number of Jewish settlements on the West Bank.[20] John Dugard has even likened Palestinian suicide bombers and Qassam rocket attacks on Israel to the resistance to the German occupation of European countries during World War II. "Common sense...dictates," Dugard argues, "that a distinction must be drawn between acts of mindless terror...and acts committed in the course of a war of national liberation against colonialism, apartheid or military occupation...a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or occupation. History is replete with examples of military occupation that have been resisted by violence....This is why every effort should be made to bring the occupation to a speedy end. Until this is done peace cannot be expected, and violence will continue."[21]
In cross-border attacks where the invader does not possess aggression rights—the Vietnamese in Cambodia, and Iraq in Kuwait—the victims of these illegal attacks do possess resistance rights, and the international community rushes to their aid. In contrast, those who resists attacks by states that possess aggression rights—Israel invading Lebanon in 1982 and 2006, and the United States and its coalition attacking and occupying Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq over the past ten years—lack resistance rights, and their resistance is labeled by invidious terms such as "terrorism." Even though operating inside Lebanon, Hezbollah is thus declared a "terrorist" organization supported by a state-sponsor of terrorism, Iran. In the post-invasion settlement of August 2006, the blue-helmeted UN troops were deployed inside Lebanon rather than inside Israel, even though Israel had invaded Lebanon; the UN's reason for the deployment to Lebanon is to contain Hezbollah and protect the aggressor's northern border.[22] Similarly, the resistance to the U.S. invasion-occupation of Iraq is called "insurgency," as if it were taking place in major Western capitals, rather than in a country occupied by an invader's military. In his testimony before the U.S. Congress in early April, General David Petraeus defined the "fundamental nature of the conflict" inside Iraq as "competition among ethnic and sectarian communities for power and resources," the competing forces including "[t]errorists, insurgents, militia extremists, and criminal gangs," so-called "Al Qaeda in Iraq," Syria, and the "Special Groups" that the U.S. Central Command alleges are working on behalf of Iran.[23] Thus the "fundamental nature of the conflict" excludes any causal role for the state that militarily invaded Iraq, seized its territory, and is now well into its sixth year of savagely repressing the resistance to its occupation, no matter from what quarter. The international community recognizes the right of this particular invader to crush the resistance that it meets by any means. This right to destroy a country in order to save it is an integral part both of aggression rights and the denial of the right to resist aggression.
7. Rights to self defense: Targets of the hegemon possess no right of self-defense. When tiny Guatemala in 1953-1954 and Nicaragua in the 1980s, both under serious threat of attack by the United States, sought arms from the Soviet bloc, this caused outrage and panic in U.S. political and media circles. These were allegedly threatening states and their search for arms could not be legitimate defense, it was a menace to the pitiful giant and the neighbors of the target. Similarly, with Iran on the U.S. hit-list in recent years, even though surrounded by hostile U.S. forces and openly threatened by both the United States and Israel, its right to self-defense is cancelled. Under U.S. prodding the Security Council imposed three rounds of sanctions on Iran's legal nuclear program, and Iran is clearly unable to counter U.S. and Israeli nuclear weapons with any of its own—it is threatened with attack right now, when no serious analyst claims it has any nuclear weapons capability. In short, it has no right to self-defense.
Meanwhile, the United States and Israel can arm-to-the-teeth and threaten war as part of their "security" needs and right to self-defense. But their targets possess no such rights or legitimate needs. As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told an emergency meeting of the Security Council on March 1: "I condemn Palestinian rocket attacks, and call for the immediate cessation of such acts of terrorism....While recognizing Israel's right to defend itself, I condemn the disproportionate and excessive use of force that has killed and injured so many civilians, including children. I call on Israel to cease such attacks."[24] Here we note that this statement was made following four days of ferocious attacks by the Israel Defense Forces on the Gaza Palestinians, leaving by then approximately 120 Palestinians dead, with as many as 60 killed this one day alone, including 39 civilians.[25] Yet in keeping with his office's longstanding protocol, Ban Ki-Moon's address was careful to introduce its statement about Israel's bloody and illegal assault on the Gaza Palestinians with a subordinate clause "recognizing Israel's right to defend itself." As with the hegemon, the hegemon's favorite client only defends itself.
8. Rights to acquire nuclear weapons: The United States and the other Great Powers all enjoy the right to possess nuclear weapons, as does any other state that meets with U.S. approval (i.e., Israel of course, but also India and Pakistan). But for targets like Iran and North Korea, the United States vehemently denies them the right to acquire nuclear weapons; and in the extreme case of Iran, the United States refuses to allow Iran even its legal rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium "for peaceful purposes without discrimination."[26] Instead, the United States uses Iran's alleged less-than-perfect cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and, more important, Iran's refusal to surrender its rights under the NPT, as the basis for derogation, for sanctions, and for plans (excuses) for a long-desired attack on Iran and possible "regime change." Just as the UN and international community have cooperated with the United States in supporting its aggressions in Afghanistan and Iraq, so they go along with the hegemon in denying Iran its peaceful nuclear rights and in fostering the moral environment for another U.S. and Israeli aggression.[27]
Israel of course suffers no penalty whatsoever, either for refusing to join the NPT or for having developed nuclear-weapons in rogue-like fashion as many as 40 years ago.[28] Nor has the U.S. rejection of its NPT-obligations to negotiate "in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race" and on a "treaty on general and complete disarmament" limited the credibility of its calls for the policing and punishment of much lesser NPT-violations by other states.[29] As with virtually everything else within the international order, the greater powers lay claim to rights they deny to the lesser powers, and do so without any regard to their own violations of agreements or international law.
9. Rights to having their civilian victims found worthy of international sympathy: The world community was of course aghast at the Al Qaeda actions of 9/11 that took nearly 3,000 civilian lives on U.S. territory. But even small massacres of Western civilians, such as the murder of eight students at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in West Jerusalem on March 6, are treated with front-page headlines and great indignation. The word "massacre" is regularly applied to such events. Indeed, the attack by the lone Palestinian gunman on the seminary students was described as "savage" by Ban Ki-Moon, and a "barbaric and vicious attack on innocent civilians [that] deserves the condemnation of every nation," in George Bush's words.[30]
On the other hand, the post-9/11 retaliatory killing of well over three thousand Afghanis in U.S. air raids, and the killing of some 127 Gaza Palestinians during the two-week Israel Defense Force's Operation "Hot Winter" (Feb. 27 -March 10), a majority of them unarmed civilians, including many children, are treated in low-key, are not designated "massacres" or "savage," and are regularly given implicit apologetics as "collateral damage" and "tragic errors." Israel may sometimes be criticized for the "disproportionate and excessive use of force" and cautioned to "exercise maximum restraint," but it is never condemned for killing maliciously and deliberately and doing so with a clear and unambiguous chain-of-command that reaches from the pilots at the controls of F-16s or Apache Helicopters up through the ranks of the IDF and stops at the Office of the Prime Minister. "There is a clear distinction between terrorist rocket attacks that target civilians and action in self-defense," U.S. National Security spokesman Gordon Johndroe explained[31]—and few Western establishment figures will fail to make this distinction, and then only at peril to their careers. In an even more dramatic case, then-UN Ambassador's Madeleine Albright's 1996 admission over U.S. television that the deaths of "half-a-million" small children in Iraq, attributable to the U.S.-U.K.-UN- "sanctions of mass destruction," were "worth it," was not only never described as apologetics for a "massacre"—the admission was hardly noted in the West.[32]
We are dealing here with the long-standing distinction between "worthy" and "unworthy" victims, and between "people" and "unpeople," a distinction that has allowed the West to kill and dispossess untold millions of savages, niggers, gooks, hajis, and assorted non-white Westerners for centuries without the slightest damage to its self-perception as morally elevated.[33] True, at this point, it may no longer be acceptable to describe them as niggers (though hajis still appears to be common), but it is OK to note that "we don't do body counts" and occasionally to admit that directly attacking a civilian support base—draining the seas in which the terrorist fish swim—is an acceptable feature of military action. The beauty is that the ancient dichotomy between US and THEM is preserved so well and handled with such aplomb—mainly by silence and an implicit double standard—that it is normalized and unnoticed by the public. Thus, there is the vocal concern over civilian victims in Darfur and Zimbabwe and Tibet, as all three fall within the national territories of Western targets;[34] while benevolent concern over civilian victims is systematically channeled away from Afghanis, Iraqis, Congolese, Colombians, and Palestinians, abused by the West and its clients.
10. "Right to exist"(and the right to demand targets admit one's "right to exist"): This "right" came into existence as a tool to buttress the U.S. and Israeli policy of rejecting a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians, thus prolonging the conflict, leaving boundaries unsettled, and Palestinian land ripe for Israeli expropriation. It gives Israel and its benefactor an ace-in-the-hole for withholding recognition of whomever they choose—non-state actors such as the PLO, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and regional states such as Iran and Syria, and Egypt much earlier—whenever they choose, on the charge that the other party is delinquent in not recognizing "Israel's right to exist." Apart from the fact that negotiations imply recognition and that the material existence of Israel can hardly be threatened, much less denied, by its exceedingly weak antagonists, the propaganda beauty of this right lies in its ambiguity: Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state? Right to be accepted without honoring the right of return of the ethnically-cleansed non-Jewish refugees to their homeland? We believe that this murky "right" is just another device to pre-empt a settlement of the Israel - Palestinian conflict, while Israel continues to dispossess the very people allegedly refusing to recognize its right to exist. Yet, these are matters not discussible in the West, where the affirmation of Israel's right to exist and the demand that it be volunteered without prompting serve above all as a kind of loyalty test andenforcement or disciplinary mechanism.
The truth of these observations is revealed by the fact that usage of the phrase "right to exist" turns up almost exclusively in relation to Israel, and not for any other state or people in the world. To illustrate this, we constructed a series of searches of the Factiva and the Nexis databases for mentions of the exact phrase "Israel's right to exist" over a 31 month period from September 1, 2005 through March 31, 2008; thereafter, we repeated the same searches, but substituted the names of 28 different entities in place of "Israel." (For example, "Palestine's right to exist," "France's right to exist," and so on.) When searching the Factiva database's most comprehensive "All Sources" category, we found 8,689 items that mentioned the phrase "Israel's right to exist," but only 15 that mentioned "Palestine's right to exist," and 7 that mentioned "Palestinians' right to exist." Using the Nexis database to search the New York Times produced similarly one-sided results: Whereas 120 items mentioned "Israel's right to exist," Nexis could find no items (zero) within the New York Times's archive that mentioned any of the other 28 entities as possessing a "right to exist" comparable to "Israel's right to exist." (For our complete results, see Table Two and Table Three in our Appendix below.)
What is this attribute, the right to exist, that relates only to the nuclear-armed and U.S. protected state of Israel, but no other state, no other people, no other race? On the other hand, Palestine's right to exist is a real—we might even say, an existential—issue, as Israel has refused for six decades to admit even the existence of a Palestinian nation, let alone recognize a Palestinian state with clearly defined borders. The structured bias in evidence here runs deep.
Concluding Note: Rights to democratic substance or farce?
Underlying the consolidation of the principles of the Imperial New World Order is the global decline of substantive democracy, as the global political elites have been able to do what they want in service to their interests—the holy trinity of the neoliberal program, militarization, and power-projection—in the face of widespread opposition on the part of the underlying populations. This had a dramatic manifestation in a recent exchange between ABC - TV News correspondent Martha Raddatz and Vice President Dick Cheney. Asked what he thinks about the two-thirds of the American public that says the Iraq war is "not worth fighting," Cheney replied: "So?"[35] The contempt for what the public wants and the widely held belief among the politicians in charge about the public's irrelevance—except as workers, consumers, and as a field whose votes can be harvested once every election cycle—could hardly be more blatant.
Elite contempt for the consent of the governed radiates throughout the U.S. media as well. In an important opinion poll released just two days after the Raddatz - Cheney exchange (and one that in fact used their exchange to highlight the poll's findings), 77% of U.S. respondents agreed with Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that "the will of the people [should] be the basis of the authority of government." A dramatically high 94% said that U.S. government leaders "should pay attention to the views of the people as they make decisions." But when asked whether they believe the United States "is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves," or "run for the benefit of all the people," 80% said "by a few big interests."[36] Remarkably, although conducted during a presidential election year, and devoted to what Americans think about their own political lives, this opinion poll went unreported in the U.S. media, while a separate poll conducted by the same firm that asked people in six different countries what they think about China was reported widely.[37]
The U.S. public was hostile to the Iraq invasion-occupation even before it occurred,[38] as was the global public,[39] and for some years now polls have shown a solid majority in the United States wanting a fairly prompt and complete exit,[40] and a reduction of the role the United States plays globally, particularly in its readiness to use force;[41] but this has had zero effect on U.S. policy, with the Democrats as well as the Republicans failing to respond to what the voting public wants. Polls in Iraq also show a definite majority there want the United States out,[42] but again with zero effect on U.S. policy or the response of leaders of the supposedly democratic states in Europe and elsewhere who have put no pressure on the invader-occupier to withdraw.
It has also been long established that the U.S. public would like to see a smaller military budget, greater infrastructure spending and greater efforts at diplomatic and collective resolution of international issues. A 2007 poll showed that 73 percent of U.S. citizens would favor an agreement for the elimination of all nuclear weapons, an opinion that runs exactly counter to the policies of the Bush administration (which have not been noticeably opposed by the Democratic Party).[43] In keeping with the principle of elite contempt for the consent of the governed, the U.S. government continues to pursue next-generation nuclear weapons capabilities, and does everything in its power to prevent the NPT's disarmament requirement from even being raised in multilateral forums. Abroad as well, public opinion seems to have little effect on policy-makers, who fall readily into line with the ruler of the Imperial New World Order. A series of polls within the Czech Republic these past 16 months report consistent majorities (sometimes reaching as high as 75 percent) that oppose the placement of any component of the U.S. anti-missile program on their territory.[44] But the Czech government rushes toward acceptance, and Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek resists all calls for a national referendum on the issue; in analyst Philip Coyle's words, "Czech government officials have even been known to say that the decision to host the radar is too important to be left to the voters."[45] The same scenario has played out in Poland, with a majority of Poles consistently opposing their country's participation in the U.S. anti-missile program, while Prime Minister Donald Tusk also refuses to permit a referendum on the issue. "The truth is brutal," Tusk explained, "there will not be decisions of a military character approved through universal vote."[46] The publics in Europe's largest countries also oppose the U.S. anti-missile program, with pluralities opposed in Britain (44%) and Italy (49%), and clear majorities in France (58%), Spain (61%), and Germany (71%).[47] In each case, the leadership of these NATO members support the program—which is to say, oppose their own publics. Similarly in Canada, the most recent public opinion poll shows that 59% disagreed with the decision of Parliament to extend their mission to Afghanistan for another three years. Some 70-80% of Poles are opposed to their government's participation in what has become NATO's war in Afghanistan; Tusk as well had strongly opposed participation just before his election, but switched to support after he secured his victory. A French poll showed that 68% opposed Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to send more French troops to Afghanistan.[48]
In short, the consolidation of Imperial New World Order principles rests on the United States and its allies, clients, and hangers-on being pseudo-democracies, ruled by elites free to ignore their own publics—failed states, in effect. This in turn rests on the huge and growing inequalities that have come to prevail, both within and between states, the plutocratization of politics, the erosion of a constitutional public sphere, the gatekeeper and propaganda services of an increasingly centralized media, and publics that thus far have been too easily managed despite the disadvantages the great majority has suffered under this unjust and ever-more threatening regime.
The INWO is not likely to disappear anytime soon, unless it causes its own catastrophic destruction. (By no means impossible, given its trajectory, as "little changes, and much gets worse.") Otherwise, it is not likely to end until the mass of humanity ceases to be manageable, organizes at home and abroad, and fights back.
---- Endnotes ----
[1] Elizabeth Becker, "Soviets Block U.N. Demand for Withdrawal From Cambodia," Washington Post, January 16, 1979. Becker notes that "all nations but those from the Soviet Bloc agreed with the statement" made by the Australian Ambassador.
[2] See Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail, "Five Years On, Fallujah in Tatters," Inter Press Service, April 14, 2008.
[3] See, e.g., "Abed Rabbo Street, East Jabaliya," Narratives Under Siege (6), Palestinian Center for Human Rights, March 4, 2008; and Mohammed Omer, "What I saw in Jabaliya," New Statesman, March 6, 2008.
[4] See House Resolution 951 ("Condemning the ongoing Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli civilians"), March 5, 2008. And for a member-by-member breakdown of the roll call vote, see House Roll Call #93, March 5, 2008. The lone Representative to vote against HR 951 was the Texas Republican and former presidential candidate Ron Paul.
[5] According to the New York Times, "During the first 17 months of the first intifada [1987-],...roughly one Israeli died for every 25 Palestinians killed." (James Bennet, "Mideast Balance Sheet," March 12, 2002.) Data provided by B'Tselem shows that from the start of the second intifada on September 29, 2000 through March 31, 2008, the ratio of Palestinians killed by Israelis to Israelis killed by Palestinians is 4.6 - 1. (See "Fatalities," B'Tselem, Sept. 29, 2000 - March 31, 2008, basing our calculation on the first four categories of data represented there.) According to Hamas' Mahmoud al-Zahar, "in 2007 alone the ratio of Palestinians toIsraelis killed was 40 to 1...." ("No Peace Without Hamas," Washington Post, April 17, 2008.) Although we do not at this moment possess exact mortality data to compare levels of violence during the period since the staging of the "peace" conference at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland (Nov. 26-30, 2007), we believe that the very high level of Israeli military violence against the Gaza Palestinians in 2008, including large-scale attacks that appear to have been timed to coincide with the April 16-17 meetings in Cairo between former President Jimmy Carter and representatives of Hamas, shows the real meaning of Annapolis much better than the rhetoric that filled the air in late November.
[6] As York University Professor of International Law Michael Mandel argues convincingly: Although "there is indeed a moral and legal difference between meaning to kill someone and killing someone accidentally," we "can't possibly judge the morality of collateral damage while leaving out the question of the war itself....It is the immorality and illegality of a war that makes collateral damage a crime. The real alternatives are to make war only when it is necessary and moral and legal, and not to make it when it is not. Then, if you take as much care as possible to avoid injury to non-combatants, nobody will have the right to criticize you when they are harmed, because their harm will be the responsibility of those who started the war..." (emphasis added). See How America Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity (Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2004), esp. "Collateral Damage," pp. 46-56; here p. 49.
[7] Population flows in Kosovo prior to and during NATO's 1999 bombing war correlated, not with a plan of ethnic cleansing and forced expulsion, but with strategic military factors, including the intensity of fighting, the operational presence of the KLA in the various theaters of combat, and the relative density of the national groups living in the areas being contested. Across Kosovo's 29 municipalities, ethnic Albanians did not flee the territory uniformly. Nor were they alone—members of all ethnic groups fled areas where fighting took place. Municipalities in different parts of Kosovo where the KLA's presence was thin saw relatively little fighting and therefore little refugee flow. This was particularly true prior to the start of NATO's bombing war on March 24, 1999. See the report published by the OSCE, Kosovo/Kosova: As Seen, As Told. The human rights findings of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission October 1998 to June 1999, esp. Part III, Ch. 14, "Forced Expulsion," pp. 146-162; and Part V, "The Municipalities," pp. 226-585. Also see the treatment of this matter in Noam Chomsky, A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West (Verso, 2000), p. 114 ff. Chomsky summarized the work of former New York Times reporter David Binder, who "notes 'a curiosity' documented in the OSCE report: 46 percent of the Albanians left Kosovo during the bombing, along with 60 percent of the Serbians and Montenegrins. Thus, 'proportionately more Serbs were displaced during the bombing, and they did not return to Kosovo'" (p. 114). Last, see the testimony of late British journalist Eve-Ann Prentice during the Defense's phase of the trial of Slobodan Milosevic. Asked her opinion about the reasons why so many Kosovo Albanians fled the province during NATO's bombing war, Prentice said, variously, "we were told many times that...ordinary civilian ethnic Albanians...had been told it was their patriotic duty to leave because the world was watching...and that anybody who failed to join this exodus was somehow not supporting the -- the Albanian cause....[T]hey had been told by KLA leaders that their patriotic duty was to join the exodus, was to leave Kosovo, to be seen to be leaving Kosovo." (Testimony of Eve-Ann Prentice,Prosecutor v. Slobodan Milosevic (IT-02-54), February 3, 2006, pp. 47908 - 47909.)
[8] "Balkan Ghosts," Editorial, New Republic, March 12, 2008.
[9] Achim Steiner et al., Sudan: Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment, UN Environment Program, 2007, esp. Ch. 3, Ch. 4, Ch. 5, and Ch. 15; here p. 329. This important report continues: "Although not a novel finding to those working in this field in Darfur, it is not commonly understood outside the region. Yet it has major implications for the prospects for peace, recovery and rural development in Darfur and the Sahel. Indeed, the situation in Darfur is uniquely difficult, but many of the same underlying factors exist in other parts of Sudan and in other countries of the Sahel belt. Darfur accordingly holds grim lessons for other countries at risk, and highlights the imperative for change towards a more sustainable approach to rural development" (p. 329). In published comments on the UN Environment Program's findings, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that, "Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and political shorthand—an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against black rebels and farmers. Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic. Amid the diverse social and political causes, the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change....It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought." ("A Climate Culprit In Darfur," Washington Post, June 16, 2007; also Julian Borger, "Darfur conflict heralds era of wars triggered by climate change, UN report warns," The Guardian, June 23, 2007.) The contrast between these "underlying factors" and the Western chorus of denunciation of Khartoum for perpetrating "genocide" there could not be more stark. Also see David M. Cacarious Jr. et al., National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, CNA Corporation, April, 2007. This "blue-ribbon panel of retired admirals and generals" notes that "[s]truggles that appear to be tribal, sectarian, or nationalist in nature are often triggered by reduced water supplies or reductions in agricultural productivity." It adds that the "situation in Darfur...had land resources at its root....Probably more than any other recent conflict, Darfur provides a case study of how existing marginal situations can be exacerbated beyond the tipping point by climate-related factors" (pp. 15-20). Last, see the very important analysis by Mahmood Mamdani, "The Politics of Naming," London Review of Books, March 8, 2007.
[10] See Jeff Halper et al., "18,000 Homes Destroyed by Israel since 1967," Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.
[11] John Dugard, Report of the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967 (A/60/271), August 18, 2005, esp. the Summary and para. 51-57.
[12] See Gideon Levy, "With friends like these," Haaretz , March 23, 2008.
[13] See, e.g., C.M. Woodhouse, New Ed., The Struggle for Greece 1941- 1949 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003); Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne, Eds., Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2004); and Stephen M. Streeter, Managing the Counterrevolution: The United States and Guatemala, 1954-1961 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2001).
[14] Michael McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerrilla Warfare, Counter-insurgency, and Counter-terrorism, 1940 - 1990 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), pp. 11-17. McClintock cites a New York Timesarticle from December 7, 1947, about the ubiquity of the "enemy" (i.e., the Greek population), which bore the revealing title: "The Front in Greece is Everywhere" (n. 44, p. 466).
[15] David H. Petraeus and James N. Matthis, Counterinsurgency (U.S. Department of the Army, 2006), esp. Ch. 1, "Insurgency and Counterinsurgency," pp. 1-21 - 1-24, where the terminological reorientation from the "Cold War" and counterinsurgency as countering "communism," to the "War on Terror" and counterinsurgencyas countering "terrorism," is quite explicit.
[16] Edward S. Herman, The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda (Boston: South End Press, 1982). See esp. "The U.S. Natural Right To Subvert," pp. 132 - 137; and Table 3-5, "Forms of Subversion Engaged in by the United States in Eight Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1950 - 1980," p. 134.
[17] On possible U.S. Government sponsorship of terrorism-by-proxy inside Iran, see Borzou Daragahi, "Iran says U.S. aids rebels at its borders," Los Angeles Times, April 15, 2008. And on the sudden prominence of protests around Tibet, see Michel Chossudovsky, "China and America: The Tibet Human Rights PsyOp," Centre for Research on Globalization, April 13, 2008.
[18] See The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion (March, 2008), a collaborative assessment by the U.K.-based Oxfam, Christian Aid, and six other organizations. Also see The Gaza Strip -- One Big Prison, B'Tselem, May, 2007.
[19] John Dugard, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied Since 1967 (A/HRC/2/5), September 5, 2006, para. 70.
[20] "Barghouthi: Israeli violations and assaults increased since Annapolis," Palestinian Information Center, April 5, 2008.—Here was see the irrelevance of the February 27 Qassam rocket strikes on Sderot that killed Roni Yichia to Israel's overall policy objectives on the West Bank as well as the Gaza. On the West Bank, what Israel seeks is the completion of the separation wall and the expansion of Jewish settlements; how far the settlements will expand, and by how many in number, remain the only unanswered questions. Clearly, it is not the Qassam rocket strikes on southern Israel in late February that explain the increase in violent and repressive activity on the West Bank since the Annapolis conference was held in the final week of November. Also see David Rose, "The Gaza Bombshell," Vanity Fair, April, 2008.
[21] John Dugard, Human Rights Situation in Palestine (A/HRC/7/17), UN Human Rights Council, January 21, 2008, para. 4.
[22] UN Security Council Resolution 1701 (S/RES/1701), August 11, 2006; "Security Council votes unanimously for an end to hostilities in the Middle East," UN News Center, August 11, 2006.
[23] See General David H. Petraeus, "Report to Congress on the Situation in Iraq," September 10-11, 2007.," April 8-9, 2008, p. 2. (Also see the accompanying charts.) For an earlier example of the "Petraeus Doctrine" and its redefinition of counterinsurgency as "counter-terrorism," see the General's "Report to Congress on the Situation in Iraq
[24] "Secretary-General's statement to the Security Council on the situation in the Middle East," March 1, 2008
[25] "Security Council, Secretary-General, alarmed by deadly violence in Middle East," UN News Center, March 2, 2008.
[26] See Article IV.1, Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, March 5, 1970 (as posted to the website of the IAEA).
[27] See, e.g., Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, "The U.S. Aggression Process and Its Collaborators: From Guatemala (1950-1954) to Iran (2002-)," Electric Politics, November 26, 2007; and Siddharth Varadarajan, "The UN is escalating the Iran nuclear crisis," The Hindu, March 5, 2008.
[28] See Avner Cohen, Ed., "Israel Crosses the Threshold
...
Friday, April 25, 2008
China and America: The Tibet Human Rights PsyOp by Michel Chossudovsky
China and America: The Tibet Human Rights PsyOp
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, April 13, 2008
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8673
The human rights issue has become the centerfold of media disinformation.
China is no model of human rights but neither are the US and its indefectible British ally, responsible for extensive war crimes and human rights violations in Iraq and around the World. The US and its allies, which uphold the practice of torture, political assassinations and the establishment of secret detention camps, continue to be presented to public opinion as a model of Western democracy to be emulated by developing countries, in contrast to Russia, Iran, North Korea and the People's Republic of China.
Human Rights "Double Standards"
While China's alleged human rights violations in relation to Tibet are highlighted, the recent wave of killings in Iraq and Palestine are not mentioned. The Western media has barely acknowledged the Fifth "anniversary" of Iraq's "Liberation" and the balance sheet of the US sponsored killings and atrocities perpetrated against an entire population, in the name of a "global war on terrorism".
There are more than 1.2 million Iraqi civilian deaths, 3 million wounded. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) indicates a figure of 2.2 million Iraqi refugees who have fled their country and 2.4 million "internally displaced persons":
"Iraq's population at the time of the US invasion in March 2003 was roughly 27 million, and today it is approximately 23 million. Elementary arithmetic indicates that currently over half the population of Iraq are either refugees, in need of emergency aid, wounded, or dead." (Dahr Jamail, Global Research, December 2007)
The Geopolitical Chessboard
There are deep-seated geopolitical objectives behind the campaign against the Chinese leadership.
US-NATO-Israeli war plans in relation to Iran are at an advanced state of readiness. China has economic ties as well as a far-reaching bilateral military cooperation agreement with Iran. Moreover, China is also an ally of Russia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in the context of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Since 2005, Iran has an observer member status within the SCO.
In turn, the SCO has ties to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), an overlapping military cooperation agreement between Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan.
In October of last year the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) signed a Memorandum of Understanding, laying the foundations for military cooperation between the two organizations. This SCO-CSTO agreement, barely mentioned by the Western media, involves the creation of a full-fledged military alliance between China, Russia and the member states of SCO/CSTO. It is worth noting that the SCTO and the SCO held joint military exercises in 2006, which coincided with those conducted by Iran. (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Russia and Central Asian Allies Conduct War Games in Response to US Threats, Global Research, August 2006)
In the context of US war plans directed against Iran, the US is also intent upon weakening Iran's allies, namely Russia and China. In the case of China, Washington is seaking to disrupt Beijing's bilateral ties with Tehran as well as Iran's rapprochement with the SCO, which has its headquarters in Beijing.
China is an ally of Iran. Washington's intention is to use Beijing's alleged human rights violations as a pretext to target China, an ally of Iran.
In this regard, a military operation directed against Iran can only succeed if the structure of military alliances which link Iran to China and Russia is disrupted. This is something which German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck understood in relation to the structure of competing military alliances prevalent prior to World War I. The Triple Alliance was an agreement between Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy formed in 1882. In 1907, an Anglo-Russian agreement paved the way for the formation of the Triple Entente made up of France, the U.K. and Russia.
The Triple Alliance ultimately came to an end in 1914, when Italy withdrew from the alliance and declared its neutrality, thereby paving the way for the outbreak of World War I.
History points to the importance of competing military alliances. In the present context, the US and its NATO partners are seaking to undermine the formation of a cohesive Eurasian SCO-CSTO military alliance, which could effectively challenge and contain US-NATO military expansionism in Eurasia, combining the military capabilities not only of Russia and China, but also those of several former Soviet republics including Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan Uzbekistan and the Kyrgyz Republic.
Encircling China
With the exception of its Northern frontier which borders on the Russian Federation, Mongolia and Kazakhstan, China is surrounded by US military bases.
The Eurasian Corridor
Since the 2001 invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the US has a military presence on China's Western frontier, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The U.S. is intent upon establishing permanent military bases in Afghanistan, which occupies a strategic position bordering on the former Soviet republics, China and Iran.
Moreover, the US and NATO have also established since 1996, military ties with several former Soviet republics under GUUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldava). In the post 9/11 era, Washington has used the pretext of the "global war against terrorism" to further develop a U.S. military presence in GUUAM countries. Uzbekistan withdrew from GUUAM in 2002.(The organization is now referred to as GUAM).
China has oil interests in Eurasia as well as in sub-Saharan Africa, which encroach upon Anglo-American oil interests.
What is at stake is the geopolitical control over the Eurasian corridor.
In March 1999, the U.S. Congress adopted the Silk Road Strategy Act, which defined America's broad economic and strategic interests in a region extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia. The Silk Road Strategy (SRS) outlines a framework for the development of America's business empire along an extensive geographical corridor.
The successful implementation of the SRS requires the concurrent "militarization" of the entire Eurasian corridor as a means to securing control over extensive oil and gas reserves, as well as "protecting" pipeline routes and trading corridors. This militarization is largely directed against China, Russia and Iran.
The militarization of the South China Sea and of the Taiwan Straits is also an integral part of this strategy which, in the post 9/11 era, consists in deploying "on several fronts".
Moreover, China remains in the post-Cold War era a target for a first strike nuclear attack by the US.
In the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), China and Russia are identified along with a list of "rogue States" as potential targets for a pre-emptive nuclear attack by the US. China is listed in the NPR as "a country that could be involved in an immediate or potential contingency". Specifically, the Nuclear Posture Review lists a military confrontation over the status of Taiwan as one of the scenarios that could lead Washington to use nuclear weapons against China.
China has been encircled: The U.S. military is present in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straights, in the Korean Peninsula and the Sea of Japan, as well as in the heartland of Central Asia and on the Western border of China's Xinjiang-Uigur autonomous region. Moreover, as part of the encirclement of China, "Japan has gradually been amalgamating and harmonizing its military policies with those of the U.S. and NATO." (See Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Military Alliance: Encircling Russia and China, Global Research, 10 May 2007)
Weakening China from within: Covert Support to Secessionist Movements
Consistent with its policy of weakening and ultimately fracturing the People's Republic of China, Washington supports secessionist movements both in Tibet as wall as in the Xinjiang-Uigur autonomous region which borders onto North Eastern Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In Xinjiang-Uigur, Pakistani intelligence (ISI), acting in liaison with the CIA, supports several Islamist organizations. The latter include the Islamic Reformist Party, the East Turkestan National Unity Alliance, the Uigur Liberation Organization and the Central Asian Uigur Jihad Party. Several of these Islamic organizations have received support and training from Al Qaeda, which is a US sponsored intelligence asset. The declared objective of these Chinese-based Islamic organizations is the "establishment of an Islamic caliphate in the region" (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, America's War on Terrorism, Global Research, Montreal, 2005, Chapter 2).
The caliphate would integrate Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan (West Turkestan) and the Uigur autonomous region of China (East Turkestan) into a single political entity.
The "caliphate project" encroaches upon Chinese territorial sovereignty. Supported by various Wahabi "foundations" from the Gulf States, secessionism on China's Western frontier is, once again, consistent with U.S. strategic interests in Central Asia. Meanwhile, a powerful U.S.-based lobby is channeling support to separatist forces in Tibet.
By tacitly promoting the secession of the Xinjiang-Uigur region (using Pakistan's ISI as a "go-between"), Washington is attempting to trigger a broader process of political destabilization and fracturing of the People's Republic of China. In addition to these various covert operations, the U.S. has established military bases in Afghanistan and in several of the former Soviet republics, directly on China's Western border.
The militarization of the South China Sea and of the Taiwan Straits is also an integral part of this strategy.(Ibid)
The Lhasa Riots
The violent riots in Tibet's capital in mid-March were a carefully staged event. In their immediate aftermath, a media disinformation campaign supported by political statements by Western leaders directed against China was launched.
There are indications that US intelligence played a behind the scenes role in what several observers have described as a carefully premeditated operation.(See our analysis below).
The Lhasa event in mid-March was not a spontaneous "peaceful" protest movement as described by the Western media The riots involving a gang of mobsters were premeditated. They had been carefully planned. Tibetan activists in India associated with the Dalai Lama's government in exile "hinted they were indeed expecting the disturbances. But they refuse to elaborate how they knew or who their collaborators were" (Guerilla News)
The images do not suggest a mass protest rally but rather a rampage led by a few hundred individuals. Buddhist monks were involved in the rampage. According to China Daily (March 31, 2008), the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) based in India, considered by China as a "hard-line organization" affiliated to the Dalai Lama, was also behind the violence. The TYC's training camps are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). (See the text of the Congressional Hearings regarding NED support to the TYC)
VIDEO: THE LHASA RIOTS (CCTV.com China State TV)
VIDEO: The Tibet Riots: What Really Happened
Video footage confirms that civilians were stoned, beaten and in some cases killed. Most of the victims were Han Chinese. At least ten people were burned to death as a result of acts of arson, according to statements by the Tibet government. These statements were confirmed by several eyewitness reports. According to a People's Daily report:
"five shop assistants at a clothing store were burnt to death before they had any chance to escape. A 1.7-meter-tall man named Zuo Yuancun was torched down to chunks of horrid flesh and skeletons. A migrant worker had his liver stabbed and bled by mobsters. A woman was beaten hard by the attackers and had her ear sliced off." (People's Daily, March 22, 2008)
Meanwhile, the Western media casually described the looting and arson as a "peaceful demonstration" which the Chinese authorities suppressed with the use of force. There are no accurate reports (both from Chinese and Western news sources) on the number of casualties resulting from the Chinese police operation launched to repress the riots. Western press reports point to a large scale deployment of more than 1000 soldiers and police in armored vehicles in the Tibetan capital.
Businesses, schools were attacked, cars were set on fire. According to Chinese reports, there are 22 dead and 623 injured. "Rioters set fire at more than 300 locations, mostly private houses, stores and schools, and smashed vehicles and damaged public facilities."
The planning of the riots was coordinated with the media disinformation campaign, which accused the Chinese authorities of having instigated the looting and arson. The Dalai Lama accused Beijing of "disguising its troops as monks" to give the impression that Buddhist monks were behind the riots. The claims were based on a four year old photograph of soldiers dressing up as monks in a theatrical stage performance (See South China Morning Post, 4 April 2008).
The mainland newspaper {People's Daily] said the security forces quelling riots in Lhasa could not possibly have been wearing the uniforms shown in the photograph because they were summer uniforms, unsuitable for the cold March weather.
It also said the PAP had changed to new uniforms in 2005, which feature shoulder emblems. The armed officers shown in the photograph were in old-style uniforms which had been phased out after 2005. ... Xinhua said the photograph was taken during a performance years ago, when soldiers borrowed robes from monks before performing on stage. (Ibid)
The Dalai Lama's claim that the Chinese authorities had instigated the riots, quoted in the Western media, is supported by a statement of a former Communist Party official Mr. Ruan Ming who "claims the CCP carefully staged the incidents in Tibet in order to force the Dalai Lama to resign and to justify future repression of the Tibetans. Mr. Ruan Ming was a speechwriter for former CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang." (quoted in The Epoch Times)
2003 photograph used by the media to accuse China of having deliberately instigated the riots.
"This [2003] photo was apparently made when soldiers were ordered to put on
robes to play as actors in a movie."
See http://buddhism.kalachakranet.org/chinese-orchestrating-riots-tibet.htm
The Role of US Intelligence
The organization of the Lhasa riots are part of a consistent pattern. They constitute an attempt to trigger ethnic conflict in China. They serve US foreign policy interests.
To what extent has US intelligence played an undercover role in the current wave of protests regarding Tibet?
Given the covert nature of intelligence operations, there is no tangible evidence of direct CIA involvement. However, there are various Tibetan organizations linked to the Tibet "government in exile" which are known to be supported by the CIA and/or by the CIA's civilian front organization, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
The CIA's involvement in channeling covert support to the Tibetan secessionist movement goes back to the mid-1950s. The Dalai Lama was on the CIA's payroll from the late 1950s until 1974:
The CIA conducted a large scale covert action campaign against the communist Chinese in Tibet starting in 1956. This led to a disastrous bloody uprising in 1959, leaving tens of thousands of Tibetans dead, while the Dalai Lama and about 100,000 followers were forced to flee across the treacherous Himalayan passes to India and Nepal.
The CIA established a secret military training camp for the Dalai Lama's resistance fighters at Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado, in the US. The Tibetan guerrillas were trained and equipped by the CIA for guerrilla warfare and sabotage operations against the communist Chinese.
The US-trained guerrillas regularly carried out raids into Tibet, on occasions led by CIA-contract mercenaries and supported by CIA planes. The initial training program ended in December 1961, though the camp in Colorado appears to have remained open until at least 1966.
The CIA Tibetan Task Force created by Roger E McCarthy, alongside the Tibetan guerrilla army, continued the operation codenamed "ST CIRCUS" to harass the Chinese occupation forces for another 15 years until 1974, when officially sanctioned involvement ceased.
McCarthy, who also served as head of the Tibet Task Force at the height of its activities from 1959 until 1961, later went on to run similar operations in Vietnam and Laos.
By the mid-1960s, the CIA had switched its strategy from parachuting guerrilla fighters and intelligence agents into Tibet to establishing the Chusi Gangdruk, a guerrilla army of some 2,000 ethnic Khamba fighters at bases such as Mustang in Nepal.
This base was only closed down in 1974 by the Nepalese government after being put under tremendous pressure by Beijing.
After the Indo-China War of 1962, the CIA developed a close relationship with the Indian intelligence services in both training and supplying agents in Tibet." (Richard Bennett, Tibet, the 'great game' and the CIA, Global Research, March 2008)
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which channels financial support to pro-US opposition groups around the World has played a significant role in triggering "velvet revolutions" which serve Washington's geopolitical and economic interests.
The NED, although not formally part of the CIA, performs an important intelligence function within the arena of civilian political parties and NGOs. It was created in 1983, when the CIA was being accused of covertly bribing politicians and setting up phony civil society front organizations. According to Allen Weinstein, who was responsible for setting up the NED during the Reagan Administration: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." ('Washington Post', Sept. 21, 1991).
The NED operates through four core institutes: the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDIIA), theInternational Republican Institute (IRI), the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), and the Center for International Private Enterprise.
The NED provided funds to the "civil society" organizations in Venezuela, which initiated an attempted coup against President Hugo Chavez. In Haiti, the NED supported the opposition groups behind the armed insurrection which contributed to unseating President Bertrand Aristide in February 2004. The coup d' Etat in Haiti was the result of a carefully staged military-intelligence operation. (See Michel Chossudovsky, The Destabilization of Haiti, Global Research, February 2004)
The NED funds a number of Tibet organizations both within China and abroad. The most prominent pro-Dalai Lama Tibet independence organization funded by the NED is the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), founded in Washington in 1988. The ICT has offices in Washington, Amsterdam, Berlin and Brussels. Distinct from other NED funded Tibet organizations, the ICT has a close cozy and " overlapping" relationship with the NED and the US State Department::
Some of ICT's directors are also integral members of the 'democracy promoting' establishment, and include Bette Bao Lord (who is the chair of Freedom House, and a director of Freedom Forum), Gare A. Smith (who has previously served as principal deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor), Julia Taft (who is a former director of the NED, the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, has worked for USAID, and has also served as the President and CEO of InterAction), and finally, Mark Handelman (who is also a director of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights, an organization whose work is ideologically linked to the NED's longstanding interventions in Haiti).
The ICT's board of advisors also presents two individuals who are closely linked to the NED, Harry Wu, and Qiang Xiao (who is the former executive director of the NED-funded Human Rights in China).
Like their board of directors, ICT's international council of advisors includes many 'democratic' notables like Vaclav Havel, Fang Lizhi (who in 1995 – at least – was a board member of Human Rights in China), Jose Ramos-Horta (who serves on the international advisory board for the Democracy Coalition Project), Kerry Kennedy (who is a director of the NED-funded China Information Center), Vytautas Landsbergis (who is an international patron of the British-based neoconservative Henry Jackson Society – see Clark, 2005), and until her recent death, the "mid-wife of the neocons" Jeane J. Kirkpatrick (who was also linked to 'democratic' groups like Freedom House and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies). (Michael Barker, "Democratic Imperialism": Tibet, China, and the National Endowment for Democracy Global Research, August 13, 2007)
(L to R) Elie Weisel, The Dalai Lama, NED chairman Carl Gershman,
and Lowell Thomas Jr. (Washington DC 2005)
Other NED funded Tibet organizations include the Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) referred to earlier. The SFT was founded in 1994 in New York City "as a project of US Tibet Committee and the NED-financed International Campaign for Tibet (ICT). The SFT is most known for unfurling a 450 foot banner atop the Great Wall in China; calling for a free Tibet." (F. William Engdahl, Risky Geopolitical Game: Washington Plays 'Tibet Roulette' with China, Global Research, April 2008).
The SFT together with five other Tibet organizations proclaimed last January "the start of a 'Tibetan people's uprising" ... and co-founded a temporary office in charge of coordination and financing." ( Ibid)
"The NED also funds the Tibet Multimedia Center for "information dissemination that addresses the struggle for human rights and democracy in Tibet," also based in Dharamsala. And the NED finances the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy.(Ibid)
There is a division of tasks between the CIA and the NED. While the CIA provides covert support to armed paramilitary rebel groups and terrorist organizations, the NED finances "civilian" political parties and non governmental organizations with a view to instating American "democracy" around the World.
The NED constitutes, so to speak, the CIA's "civilian arm". CIA-NED interventions in different part of the World are characterized by a consistent pattern, which is applied in numerous countries.
PsyOp: Discrediting the Chinese Leadership
The short-term objective is to discredit the Chinese leadership in the months leading up to the Beijing Olympic games, while also using the Tibet campaign to divert public opinion from the Middle East war and the war crimes committed by the US, NATO and Israel.
China's alleged human rights violations are highlighted as a distraction, to provide a human face to the US led war in the Middle East.
The US sponsored war plans directed against Iran are now acknowledged and justified due to Tehran's noncompliance with the demands of the "international community".
With Tibet making the headlines, the real humanitarian crisis in the Middle East is not front page news.
More generally, the issue of human rights is distorted: realities are turned upside down, the extensive crimes committed by the US and its coalition partners are either concealed or justified as a means to protecting society against terrorists.
A "double standards" in the assessment of human rights violations has been instated. In the Middle East, the killing of civilians is categorized as collateral damage. It is justified as part of the "global war on terrorism". The victims are said to be responsible for their own deaths.
The Olympic Torch
Carefully timed demonstrations on China's human rights violations in Western capitals have been set in motion.
A partial boycott of the Olympic games seems to be underway. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner (a strong protagonist of US interests who has a relationship to the Bilderbergs), has called for a boycott of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. Kouchner said the idea should be discussed at a meeting of EU foreign ministers
The Olympic torch was lit at a ceremony in Greece, which was disrupted by "pro-Tibet activists". The event was sponsored by "Reporters Without Borders", an organization known to have links to US intelligence. (See, Diana Barahona, Reporters Without Borders Unmasked, May 2005). "Reporters Without Borders" also receives support for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
The Olympic Torch is symbolic. The Psychological operation (PsyOp) consists in targeting the Olympic torch in the months leading up the Beijing Olympic games.
At each phase of this process, the Chinese leadership is denigrated by the Western media.
Global Economic Implications
The Tibet campaign directed against the Chinese leadership could backlash.
We are at the crossroads of the most serious economic and financial crisis of modern history. The unfolding economic crisis bears a direct relationship to the US sponsored military adventure in the Middle East and Central Asia.
China plays a strategic role with regard to US military expansionism. So far it has not exercised its veto power in the United Nations Security Council in relation to the several US sponsored UNSC resolutions directed against Iran.
China also plays a central role in the global economy and financial system.
Resulting from an accumulated trade surplus with the US, China's now holds 1.5 trillion dollars worth of US debt instruments (including US Treasury bills). It has the ability to significantly disrupt international currency markets. The US dollar would plunge to even lower levels, were China to sell off its dollar denominated debt holdings.(For further details see: F. William Engdahl, op cit)
Moreover, China is the largest producer of a wide range of manufactured goods which constitute, for the West, a significant share of monthly household consumption. Western retail giants rely on the continued and uninterrupted flow of cheap labor industrial commodities from China.
For the Western countries, China's insertion into the structures of global trade, investment, finance and intellectual property rights under the World Trade Organization (WTO) is absolutely crucial. Were Beijing to decide to curtail its "Made in China" manufacturing exports to the US, America's fragile and declining manufacturing base would not be able to fill the gap, at least in the short run.
Moreover, the US and its coalition partners including the UK, Germany, France and Japan have important investment interests in China. In 2001, the US and China signed a bilateral trading agreement prior to the accession of China to the WTO. This agreement allows US investors, including the major Wall Street financial institutions, to position themselves in Shanghai's financial and trading system as well as in China's domestic banking market.
While China is, in some regards, the West's "cheap labor industrial colony", China's relationship to the global trading system is by no means cast in steel.
China's relationship to global capitalism has its roots in the "Open Door Policy" initially formulated in 1979. (Michel Chossudovsky, Towards Capitalist Restoration. Chinese Socialism after Mao, Macmillian, London, 1986, chapters 7 and 8)
Since the 1980s, China has become the main supplier of industrial goods to Western markets. Any threat against China and/or military venture directed against China's Eurasian allies including Iran could potentially disrupt China's extensive trade in manufactured goods.
China's export oriented industrial base is the source of tremendous wealth formation in the advanced capitalist economies. Where does the wealth of the Walton family, owners of WalMart, originate? WalMart does not produce anything. It imports cheap labor commodities "Made in China" and resells them in the US retail market at up to ten times their factory price.
This process of "import led development" has allowed the Western "industrialised" countries to close down a large part of their manufacturing outlets. In turn, China's industrial sweat shops serve to generate multibillion dollar profits for Western corporations, including the retail giants, which purchase and/or outsource their production to China.
Any threat of a military nature directed against China could have devastating economic consequences, far beyond the familiar upward spiral in the price of crude oil.
Michel Chossudovsky is Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is the author of several international best-sellers including The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, 2003 and America's "War on Terrorism", Global Research, 2005. He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Michel Chossudovsky is also the author of the first comprehensive study on the restoration of capitalism in China, published more than twenty years ago. Michel Chossudovsky, Towards Capitalist Restoration. Chinese Socialism after Mao, Macmillian, London, 1986. He has recently returned from a visit to China. He was in Shanghai and Beijing in March 2008.
Michel Chossudovsky, America's "War on Terrorism", Global Research, Montreal 2005
Click to order
In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky's 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by "Islamic terrorists". Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.
The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.
According to Chossudovsky, the "war on terrorism" is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The "war on terrorism" is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the "New World Order", dominated by Wall Street, the Anglo-American oil giants and the U.S. military-industrial complex.
September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington's agendaconsists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.
Chossudovsky peels back layers of rhetoric to reveal a complex web of deceit aimed at luring the American people and the rest of the world into accepting a military solution which threatens the future of humanity.
The last chapter includes an analysis of the London 7/7 Bomb Attacks.
Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, April 13, 2008
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8673
The human rights issue has become the centerfold of media disinformation.
China is no model of human rights but neither are the US and its indefectible British ally, responsible for extensive war crimes and human rights violations in Iraq and around the World. The US and its allies, which uphold the practice of torture, political assassinations and the establishment of secret detention camps, continue to be presented to public opinion as a model of Western democracy to be emulated by developing countries, in contrast to Russia, Iran, North Korea and the People's Republic of China.
Human Rights "Double Standards"
While China's alleged human rights violations in relation to Tibet are highlighted, the recent wave of killings in Iraq and Palestine are not mentioned. The Western media has barely acknowledged the Fifth "anniversary" of Iraq's "Liberation" and the balance sheet of the US sponsored killings and atrocities perpetrated against an entire population, in the name of a "global war on terrorism".
There are more than 1.2 million Iraqi civilian deaths, 3 million wounded. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) indicates a figure of 2.2 million Iraqi refugees who have fled their country and 2.4 million "internally displaced persons":
"Iraq's population at the time of the US invasion in March 2003 was roughly 27 million, and today it is approximately 23 million. Elementary arithmetic indicates that currently over half the population of Iraq are either refugees, in need of emergency aid, wounded, or dead." (Dahr Jamail, Global Research, December 2007)
The Geopolitical Chessboard
There are deep-seated geopolitical objectives behind the campaign against the Chinese leadership.
US-NATO-Israeli war plans in relation to Iran are at an advanced state of readiness. China has economic ties as well as a far-reaching bilateral military cooperation agreement with Iran. Moreover, China is also an ally of Russia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in the context of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Since 2005, Iran has an observer member status within the SCO.
In turn, the SCO has ties to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), an overlapping military cooperation agreement between Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan.
In October of last year the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) signed a Memorandum of Understanding, laying the foundations for military cooperation between the two organizations. This SCO-CSTO agreement, barely mentioned by the Western media, involves the creation of a full-fledged military alliance between China, Russia and the member states of SCO/CSTO. It is worth noting that the SCTO and the SCO held joint military exercises in 2006, which coincided with those conducted by Iran. (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Russia and Central Asian Allies Conduct War Games in Response to US Threats, Global Research, August 2006)
In the context of US war plans directed against Iran, the US is also intent upon weakening Iran's allies, namely Russia and China. In the case of China, Washington is seaking to disrupt Beijing's bilateral ties with Tehran as well as Iran's rapprochement with the SCO, which has its headquarters in Beijing.
China is an ally of Iran. Washington's intention is to use Beijing's alleged human rights violations as a pretext to target China, an ally of Iran.
In this regard, a military operation directed against Iran can only succeed if the structure of military alliances which link Iran to China and Russia is disrupted. This is something which German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck understood in relation to the structure of competing military alliances prevalent prior to World War I. The Triple Alliance was an agreement between Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy formed in 1882. In 1907, an Anglo-Russian agreement paved the way for the formation of the Triple Entente made up of France, the U.K. and Russia.
The Triple Alliance ultimately came to an end in 1914, when Italy withdrew from the alliance and declared its neutrality, thereby paving the way for the outbreak of World War I.
History points to the importance of competing military alliances. In the present context, the US and its NATO partners are seaking to undermine the formation of a cohesive Eurasian SCO-CSTO military alliance, which could effectively challenge and contain US-NATO military expansionism in Eurasia, combining the military capabilities not only of Russia and China, but also those of several former Soviet republics including Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan Uzbekistan and the Kyrgyz Republic.
Encircling China
With the exception of its Northern frontier which borders on the Russian Federation, Mongolia and Kazakhstan, China is surrounded by US military bases.
The Eurasian Corridor
Since the 2001 invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the US has a military presence on China's Western frontier, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The U.S. is intent upon establishing permanent military bases in Afghanistan, which occupies a strategic position bordering on the former Soviet republics, China and Iran.
Moreover, the US and NATO have also established since 1996, military ties with several former Soviet republics under GUUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldava). In the post 9/11 era, Washington has used the pretext of the "global war against terrorism" to further develop a U.S. military presence in GUUAM countries. Uzbekistan withdrew from GUUAM in 2002.(The organization is now referred to as GUAM).
China has oil interests in Eurasia as well as in sub-Saharan Africa, which encroach upon Anglo-American oil interests.
What is at stake is the geopolitical control over the Eurasian corridor.
In March 1999, the U.S. Congress adopted the Silk Road Strategy Act, which defined America's broad economic and strategic interests in a region extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia. The Silk Road Strategy (SRS) outlines a framework for the development of America's business empire along an extensive geographical corridor.
The successful implementation of the SRS requires the concurrent "militarization" of the entire Eurasian corridor as a means to securing control over extensive oil and gas reserves, as well as "protecting" pipeline routes and trading corridors. This militarization is largely directed against China, Russia and Iran.
The militarization of the South China Sea and of the Taiwan Straits is also an integral part of this strategy which, in the post 9/11 era, consists in deploying "on several fronts".
Moreover, China remains in the post-Cold War era a target for a first strike nuclear attack by the US.
In the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), China and Russia are identified along with a list of "rogue States" as potential targets for a pre-emptive nuclear attack by the US. China is listed in the NPR as "a country that could be involved in an immediate or potential contingency". Specifically, the Nuclear Posture Review lists a military confrontation over the status of Taiwan as one of the scenarios that could lead Washington to use nuclear weapons against China.
China has been encircled: The U.S. military is present in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straights, in the Korean Peninsula and the Sea of Japan, as well as in the heartland of Central Asia and on the Western border of China's Xinjiang-Uigur autonomous region. Moreover, as part of the encirclement of China, "Japan has gradually been amalgamating and harmonizing its military policies with those of the U.S. and NATO." (See Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Military Alliance: Encircling Russia and China, Global Research, 10 May 2007)
Weakening China from within: Covert Support to Secessionist Movements
Consistent with its policy of weakening and ultimately fracturing the People's Republic of China, Washington supports secessionist movements both in Tibet as wall as in the Xinjiang-Uigur autonomous region which borders onto North Eastern Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In Xinjiang-Uigur, Pakistani intelligence (ISI), acting in liaison with the CIA, supports several Islamist organizations. The latter include the Islamic Reformist Party, the East Turkestan National Unity Alliance, the Uigur Liberation Organization and the Central Asian Uigur Jihad Party. Several of these Islamic organizations have received support and training from Al Qaeda, which is a US sponsored intelligence asset. The declared objective of these Chinese-based Islamic organizations is the "establishment of an Islamic caliphate in the region" (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, America's War on Terrorism, Global Research, Montreal, 2005, Chapter 2).
The caliphate would integrate Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan (West Turkestan) and the Uigur autonomous region of China (East Turkestan) into a single political entity.
The "caliphate project" encroaches upon Chinese territorial sovereignty. Supported by various Wahabi "foundations" from the Gulf States, secessionism on China's Western frontier is, once again, consistent with U.S. strategic interests in Central Asia. Meanwhile, a powerful U.S.-based lobby is channeling support to separatist forces in Tibet.
By tacitly promoting the secession of the Xinjiang-Uigur region (using Pakistan's ISI as a "go-between"), Washington is attempting to trigger a broader process of political destabilization and fracturing of the People's Republic of China. In addition to these various covert operations, the U.S. has established military bases in Afghanistan and in several of the former Soviet republics, directly on China's Western border.
The militarization of the South China Sea and of the Taiwan Straits is also an integral part of this strategy.(Ibid)
The Lhasa Riots
The violent riots in Tibet's capital in mid-March were a carefully staged event. In their immediate aftermath, a media disinformation campaign supported by political statements by Western leaders directed against China was launched.
There are indications that US intelligence played a behind the scenes role in what several observers have described as a carefully premeditated operation.(See our analysis below).
The Lhasa event in mid-March was not a spontaneous "peaceful" protest movement as described by the Western media The riots involving a gang of mobsters were premeditated. They had been carefully planned. Tibetan activists in India associated with the Dalai Lama's government in exile "hinted they were indeed expecting the disturbances. But they refuse to elaborate how they knew or who their collaborators were" (Guerilla News)
The images do not suggest a mass protest rally but rather a rampage led by a few hundred individuals. Buddhist monks were involved in the rampage. According to China Daily (March 31, 2008), the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) based in India, considered by China as a "hard-line organization" affiliated to the Dalai Lama, was also behind the violence. The TYC's training camps are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). (See the text of the Congressional Hearings regarding NED support to the TYC)
VIDEO: THE LHASA RIOTS (CCTV.com China State TV)
VIDEO: The Tibet Riots: What Really Happened
Video footage confirms that civilians were stoned, beaten and in some cases killed. Most of the victims were Han Chinese. At least ten people were burned to death as a result of acts of arson, according to statements by the Tibet government. These statements were confirmed by several eyewitness reports. According to a People's Daily report:
"five shop assistants at a clothing store were burnt to death before they had any chance to escape. A 1.7-meter-tall man named Zuo Yuancun was torched down to chunks of horrid flesh and skeletons. A migrant worker had his liver stabbed and bled by mobsters. A woman was beaten hard by the attackers and had her ear sliced off." (People's Daily, March 22, 2008)
Meanwhile, the Western media casually described the looting and arson as a "peaceful demonstration" which the Chinese authorities suppressed with the use of force. There are no accurate reports (both from Chinese and Western news sources) on the number of casualties resulting from the Chinese police operation launched to repress the riots. Western press reports point to a large scale deployment of more than 1000 soldiers and police in armored vehicles in the Tibetan capital.
Businesses, schools were attacked, cars were set on fire. According to Chinese reports, there are 22 dead and 623 injured. "Rioters set fire at more than 300 locations, mostly private houses, stores and schools, and smashed vehicles and damaged public facilities."
The planning of the riots was coordinated with the media disinformation campaign, which accused the Chinese authorities of having instigated the looting and arson. The Dalai Lama accused Beijing of "disguising its troops as monks" to give the impression that Buddhist monks were behind the riots. The claims were based on a four year old photograph of soldiers dressing up as monks in a theatrical stage performance (See South China Morning Post, 4 April 2008).
The mainland newspaper {People's Daily] said the security forces quelling riots in Lhasa could not possibly have been wearing the uniforms shown in the photograph because they were summer uniforms, unsuitable for the cold March weather.
It also said the PAP had changed to new uniforms in 2005, which feature shoulder emblems. The armed officers shown in the photograph were in old-style uniforms which had been phased out after 2005. ... Xinhua said the photograph was taken during a performance years ago, when soldiers borrowed robes from monks before performing on stage. (Ibid)
The Dalai Lama's claim that the Chinese authorities had instigated the riots, quoted in the Western media, is supported by a statement of a former Communist Party official Mr. Ruan Ming who "claims the CCP carefully staged the incidents in Tibet in order to force the Dalai Lama to resign and to justify future repression of the Tibetans. Mr. Ruan Ming was a speechwriter for former CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang." (quoted in The Epoch Times)
2003 photograph used by the media to accuse China of having deliberately instigated the riots.
"This [2003] photo was apparently made when soldiers were ordered to put on
robes to play as actors in a movie."
See http://buddhism.kalachakranet.org/chinese-orchestrating-riots-tibet.htm
The Role of US Intelligence
The organization of the Lhasa riots are part of a consistent pattern. They constitute an attempt to trigger ethnic conflict in China. They serve US foreign policy interests.
To what extent has US intelligence played an undercover role in the current wave of protests regarding Tibet?
Given the covert nature of intelligence operations, there is no tangible evidence of direct CIA involvement. However, there are various Tibetan organizations linked to the Tibet "government in exile" which are known to be supported by the CIA and/or by the CIA's civilian front organization, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
The CIA's involvement in channeling covert support to the Tibetan secessionist movement goes back to the mid-1950s. The Dalai Lama was on the CIA's payroll from the late 1950s until 1974:
The CIA conducted a large scale covert action campaign against the communist Chinese in Tibet starting in 1956. This led to a disastrous bloody uprising in 1959, leaving tens of thousands of Tibetans dead, while the Dalai Lama and about 100,000 followers were forced to flee across the treacherous Himalayan passes to India and Nepal.
The CIA established a secret military training camp for the Dalai Lama's resistance fighters at Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado, in the US. The Tibetan guerrillas were trained and equipped by the CIA for guerrilla warfare and sabotage operations against the communist Chinese.
The US-trained guerrillas regularly carried out raids into Tibet, on occasions led by CIA-contract mercenaries and supported by CIA planes. The initial training program ended in December 1961, though the camp in Colorado appears to have remained open until at least 1966.
The CIA Tibetan Task Force created by Roger E McCarthy, alongside the Tibetan guerrilla army, continued the operation codenamed "ST CIRCUS" to harass the Chinese occupation forces for another 15 years until 1974, when officially sanctioned involvement ceased.
McCarthy, who also served as head of the Tibet Task Force at the height of its activities from 1959 until 1961, later went on to run similar operations in Vietnam and Laos.
By the mid-1960s, the CIA had switched its strategy from parachuting guerrilla fighters and intelligence agents into Tibet to establishing the Chusi Gangdruk, a guerrilla army of some 2,000 ethnic Khamba fighters at bases such as Mustang in Nepal.
This base was only closed down in 1974 by the Nepalese government after being put under tremendous pressure by Beijing.
After the Indo-China War of 1962, the CIA developed a close relationship with the Indian intelligence services in both training and supplying agents in Tibet." (Richard Bennett, Tibet, the 'great game' and the CIA, Global Research, March 2008)
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which channels financial support to pro-US opposition groups around the World has played a significant role in triggering "velvet revolutions" which serve Washington's geopolitical and economic interests.
The NED, although not formally part of the CIA, performs an important intelligence function within the arena of civilian political parties and NGOs. It was created in 1983, when the CIA was being accused of covertly bribing politicians and setting up phony civil society front organizations. According to Allen Weinstein, who was responsible for setting up the NED during the Reagan Administration: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." ('Washington Post', Sept. 21, 1991).
The NED operates through four core institutes: the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDIIA), theInternational Republican Institute (IRI), the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), and the Center for International Private Enterprise.
The NED provided funds to the "civil society" organizations in Venezuela, which initiated an attempted coup against President Hugo Chavez. In Haiti, the NED supported the opposition groups behind the armed insurrection which contributed to unseating President Bertrand Aristide in February 2004. The coup d' Etat in Haiti was the result of a carefully staged military-intelligence operation. (See Michel Chossudovsky, The Destabilization of Haiti, Global Research, February 2004)
The NED funds a number of Tibet organizations both within China and abroad. The most prominent pro-Dalai Lama Tibet independence organization funded by the NED is the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), founded in Washington in 1988. The ICT has offices in Washington, Amsterdam, Berlin and Brussels. Distinct from other NED funded Tibet organizations, the ICT has a close cozy and " overlapping" relationship with the NED and the US State Department::
Some of ICT's directors are also integral members of the 'democracy promoting' establishment, and include Bette Bao Lord (who is the chair of Freedom House, and a director of Freedom Forum), Gare A. Smith (who has previously served as principal deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor), Julia Taft (who is a former director of the NED, the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, has worked for USAID, and has also served as the President and CEO of InterAction), and finally, Mark Handelman (who is also a director of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights, an organization whose work is ideologically linked to the NED's longstanding interventions in Haiti).
The ICT's board of advisors also presents two individuals who are closely linked to the NED, Harry Wu, and Qiang Xiao (who is the former executive director of the NED-funded Human Rights in China).
Like their board of directors, ICT's international council of advisors includes many 'democratic' notables like Vaclav Havel, Fang Lizhi (who in 1995 – at least – was a board member of Human Rights in China), Jose Ramos-Horta (who serves on the international advisory board for the Democracy Coalition Project), Kerry Kennedy (who is a director of the NED-funded China Information Center), Vytautas Landsbergis (who is an international patron of the British-based neoconservative Henry Jackson Society – see Clark, 2005), and until her recent death, the "mid-wife of the neocons" Jeane J. Kirkpatrick (who was also linked to 'democratic' groups like Freedom House and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies). (Michael Barker, "Democratic Imperialism": Tibet, China, and the National Endowment for Democracy Global Research, August 13, 2007)
(L to R) Elie Weisel, The Dalai Lama, NED chairman Carl Gershman,
and Lowell Thomas Jr. (Washington DC 2005)
Other NED funded Tibet organizations include the Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) referred to earlier. The SFT was founded in 1994 in New York City "as a project of US Tibet Committee and the NED-financed International Campaign for Tibet (ICT). The SFT is most known for unfurling a 450 foot banner atop the Great Wall in China; calling for a free Tibet." (F. William Engdahl, Risky Geopolitical Game: Washington Plays 'Tibet Roulette' with China, Global Research, April 2008).
The SFT together with five other Tibet organizations proclaimed last January "the start of a 'Tibetan people's uprising" ... and co-founded a temporary office in charge of coordination and financing." ( Ibid)
"The NED also funds the Tibet Multimedia Center for "information dissemination that addresses the struggle for human rights and democracy in Tibet," also based in Dharamsala. And the NED finances the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy.(Ibid)
There is a division of tasks between the CIA and the NED. While the CIA provides covert support to armed paramilitary rebel groups and terrorist organizations, the NED finances "civilian" political parties and non governmental organizations with a view to instating American "democracy" around the World.
The NED constitutes, so to speak, the CIA's "civilian arm". CIA-NED interventions in different part of the World are characterized by a consistent pattern, which is applied in numerous countries.
PsyOp: Discrediting the Chinese Leadership
The short-term objective is to discredit the Chinese leadership in the months leading up to the Beijing Olympic games, while also using the Tibet campaign to divert public opinion from the Middle East war and the war crimes committed by the US, NATO and Israel.
China's alleged human rights violations are highlighted as a distraction, to provide a human face to the US led war in the Middle East.
The US sponsored war plans directed against Iran are now acknowledged and justified due to Tehran's noncompliance with the demands of the "international community".
With Tibet making the headlines, the real humanitarian crisis in the Middle East is not front page news.
More generally, the issue of human rights is distorted: realities are turned upside down, the extensive crimes committed by the US and its coalition partners are either concealed or justified as a means to protecting society against terrorists.
A "double standards" in the assessment of human rights violations has been instated. In the Middle East, the killing of civilians is categorized as collateral damage. It is justified as part of the "global war on terrorism". The victims are said to be responsible for their own deaths.
The Olympic Torch
Carefully timed demonstrations on China's human rights violations in Western capitals have been set in motion.
A partial boycott of the Olympic games seems to be underway. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner (a strong protagonist of US interests who has a relationship to the Bilderbergs), has called for a boycott of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. Kouchner said the idea should be discussed at a meeting of EU foreign ministers
The Olympic torch was lit at a ceremony in Greece, which was disrupted by "pro-Tibet activists". The event was sponsored by "Reporters Without Borders", an organization known to have links to US intelligence. (See, Diana Barahona, Reporters Without Borders Unmasked, May 2005). "Reporters Without Borders" also receives support for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
The Olympic Torch is symbolic. The Psychological operation (PsyOp) consists in targeting the Olympic torch in the months leading up the Beijing Olympic games.
At each phase of this process, the Chinese leadership is denigrated by the Western media.
Global Economic Implications
The Tibet campaign directed against the Chinese leadership could backlash.
We are at the crossroads of the most serious economic and financial crisis of modern history. The unfolding economic crisis bears a direct relationship to the US sponsored military adventure in the Middle East and Central Asia.
China plays a strategic role with regard to US military expansionism. So far it has not exercised its veto power in the United Nations Security Council in relation to the several US sponsored UNSC resolutions directed against Iran.
China also plays a central role in the global economy and financial system.
Resulting from an accumulated trade surplus with the US, China's now holds 1.5 trillion dollars worth of US debt instruments (including US Treasury bills). It has the ability to significantly disrupt international currency markets. The US dollar would plunge to even lower levels, were China to sell off its dollar denominated debt holdings.(For further details see: F. William Engdahl, op cit)
Moreover, China is the largest producer of a wide range of manufactured goods which constitute, for the West, a significant share of monthly household consumption. Western retail giants rely on the continued and uninterrupted flow of cheap labor industrial commodities from China.
For the Western countries, China's insertion into the structures of global trade, investment, finance and intellectual property rights under the World Trade Organization (WTO) is absolutely crucial. Were Beijing to decide to curtail its "Made in China" manufacturing exports to the US, America's fragile and declining manufacturing base would not be able to fill the gap, at least in the short run.
Moreover, the US and its coalition partners including the UK, Germany, France and Japan have important investment interests in China. In 2001, the US and China signed a bilateral trading agreement prior to the accession of China to the WTO. This agreement allows US investors, including the major Wall Street financial institutions, to position themselves in Shanghai's financial and trading system as well as in China's domestic banking market.
While China is, in some regards, the West's "cheap labor industrial colony", China's relationship to the global trading system is by no means cast in steel.
China's relationship to global capitalism has its roots in the "Open Door Policy" initially formulated in 1979. (Michel Chossudovsky, Towards Capitalist Restoration. Chinese Socialism after Mao, Macmillian, London, 1986, chapters 7 and 8)
Since the 1980s, China has become the main supplier of industrial goods to Western markets. Any threat against China and/or military venture directed against China's Eurasian allies including Iran could potentially disrupt China's extensive trade in manufactured goods.
China's export oriented industrial base is the source of tremendous wealth formation in the advanced capitalist economies. Where does the wealth of the Walton family, owners of WalMart, originate? WalMart does not produce anything. It imports cheap labor commodities "Made in China" and resells them in the US retail market at up to ten times their factory price.
This process of "import led development" has allowed the Western "industrialised" countries to close down a large part of their manufacturing outlets. In turn, China's industrial sweat shops serve to generate multibillion dollar profits for Western corporations, including the retail giants, which purchase and/or outsource their production to China.
Any threat of a military nature directed against China could have devastating economic consequences, far beyond the familiar upward spiral in the price of crude oil.
Michel Chossudovsky is Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is the author of several international best-sellers including The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, 2003 and America's "War on Terrorism", Global Research, 2005. He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Michel Chossudovsky is also the author of the first comprehensive study on the restoration of capitalism in China, published more than twenty years ago. Michel Chossudovsky, Towards Capitalist Restoration. Chinese Socialism after Mao, Macmillian, London, 1986. He has recently returned from a visit to China. He was in Shanghai and Beijing in March 2008.
Michel Chossudovsky, America's "War on Terrorism", Global Research, Montreal 2005
Click to order
In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky's 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by "Islamic terrorists". Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.
The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.
According to Chossudovsky, the "war on terrorism" is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The "war on terrorism" is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the "New World Order", dominated by Wall Street, the Anglo-American oil giants and the U.S. military-industrial complex.
September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington's agendaconsists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.
Chossudovsky peels back layers of rhetoric to reveal a complex web of deceit aimed at luring the American people and the rest of the world into accepting a military solution which threatens the future of humanity.
The last chapter includes an analysis of the London 7/7 Bomb Attacks.
Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky
PARAGUAY CELEBRATES LUGO'S HISTORIC VICTORY
PARAGUAY CELEBRATES LUGO'S HISTORIC VICTORY
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1243/1/
Written by Michael Fox
Monday, 21 April 2008
Lugo Rally
Asunción, Paraguay – Fireworks can still be heard in the distance where thousands of people are in the streets of downtown Asuncion sharing, embracing, reveling, hugging, smothering each other in kisses, and dancing until the early morning.
Fernando Lugo, the opposition candidate and progressive former bishop, has won with just over ten points above his closest challenger Colorado candidate, Blanca Ovelar.
Mark this one down in the books because this moment is already engrained in the hearts of many Paraguayans - both here and across the globe.
People here from age 10 to 100 will never forget it, and it will be talked about for as long as they shall live - regardless of what comes after. It is the beginning of something else, new horizons, a new chapter in this book that is Paraguay, and this is living history. Everyone here realizes it, and tonight, you couldn't help but get teary-eyed as the grandmothers, wrapped in the Paraguayan flag, danced with children in the streets, and cried at the top of their lungs that this is the moment they've been waiting for their whole lives.
Lugo Rally
Tonight, for millions of Paraguayans in this tiny country, and across the globe, nothing else matters. There is nothing else. "I am renewed!" cried a friend at the foot of the Pantheon in the midst of jubilant revelry after the results were announced. "For the first time in our lives, we have hope, we have possibilities... We are a new nation!"
It is not some far off dream. It is the realization of decades of struggle, beneath a repressive dictatorship, which sent thousands of Paraguayans in to exile. It is finally the fall of the dictatorship, a fall which was never fully realized in 1989, as power was passed from dictator Alfredo Stroessner in to the hands of another Colorado party member. It is the realization of truly legitimate elections, which portrayed the will of the people for the first time in as long as anyone here can remember.
Suddenly the massive crowd before us breaks into a spontaneous choir of the Paraguayan national anthem.
"I've never heard our anthem like this before," says my Paraguayan friend, turning to me with a large smile. "It never meant anything before."
It is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard. I am sure that those around me are feeling the same way.
Michael Fox is reporting on the Paraguayan elections for UpsideDownWorld.org. Stay tuned for more...
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1243/1/
Written by Michael Fox
Monday, 21 April 2008
Lugo Rally
Asunción, Paraguay – Fireworks can still be heard in the distance where thousands of people are in the streets of downtown Asuncion sharing, embracing, reveling, hugging, smothering each other in kisses, and dancing until the early morning.
Fernando Lugo, the opposition candidate and progressive former bishop, has won with just over ten points above his closest challenger Colorado candidate, Blanca Ovelar.
Mark this one down in the books because this moment is already engrained in the hearts of many Paraguayans - both here and across the globe.
People here from age 10 to 100 will never forget it, and it will be talked about for as long as they shall live - regardless of what comes after. It is the beginning of something else, new horizons, a new chapter in this book that is Paraguay, and this is living history. Everyone here realizes it, and tonight, you couldn't help but get teary-eyed as the grandmothers, wrapped in the Paraguayan flag, danced with children in the streets, and cried at the top of their lungs that this is the moment they've been waiting for their whole lives.
Lugo Rally
Tonight, for millions of Paraguayans in this tiny country, and across the globe, nothing else matters. There is nothing else. "I am renewed!" cried a friend at the foot of the Pantheon in the midst of jubilant revelry after the results were announced. "For the first time in our lives, we have hope, we have possibilities... We are a new nation!"
It is not some far off dream. It is the realization of decades of struggle, beneath a repressive dictatorship, which sent thousands of Paraguayans in to exile. It is finally the fall of the dictatorship, a fall which was never fully realized in 1989, as power was passed from dictator Alfredo Stroessner in to the hands of another Colorado party member. It is the realization of truly legitimate elections, which portrayed the will of the people for the first time in as long as anyone here can remember.
Suddenly the massive crowd before us breaks into a spontaneous choir of the Paraguayan national anthem.
"I've never heard our anthem like this before," says my Paraguayan friend, turning to me with a large smile. "It never meant anything before."
It is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard. I am sure that those around me are feeling the same way.
Michael Fox is reporting on the Paraguayan elections for UpsideDownWorld.org. Stay tuned for more...
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Diosas y reinas por Eduardo Galeano
Diosas y reinas
Eduardo Galeano
En su próximo libro, Espejos. Una historia casi universal, que estará en la calle a mediados de abril, Eduardo Galeano elabora un inventario general de los hitos y mitos de la historia de los hombres, un repaso caprichoso desde los orígenes hasta hoy, sólo regido por la mirada lírica y lúcida del autor. Como anticipo, Radar ofrece el capítulo dedicado a las mujeres de la antigüedad y la mitología, una suerte de fundación del machismo.
Hindúes
Mitra, madre del sol y del agua y de todas las fuentes de la vida, fue diosa desde que nació. Cuando llegó a la India, desde Babilonia o Persia, la diosa tuvo que hacerse dios.
Unos cuantos añitos han pasado desde la llegada de Mitra, y todavía las mujeres no son muy bienvenidas en la India. Hay menos mujeres que hombres. En algunas regiones, ocho por cada diez hombres. Son muchas las que no culminan el viaje, porque mueren en el vientre de la madre, y muchas más las que son asfixiadas al nacer.
Más vale prevenir que curar, y las hay muy peligrosas, según advierte uno de los libros sagrados de la tradición hindú:
Una mujer lasciva es el veneno, es la serpiente y es la muerte, todo en una.
También hay virtuosas, aunque las buenas costumbres se están perdiendo. La tradición manda que las viudas se arrojen a la hoguera donde arde el marido muerto, pero ya quedan pocas dispuestas a cumplir esa orden, si es que alguna queda.
Durante siglos o milenios las hubo, y muchas. En cambio, no se conoce, ni se conoció nunca, en toda la historia de la India, ningún caso de un marido que se haya zambullido en la pira de su difunta mujer.
Egipcias
Heródoto, venido de Grecia, comprobó que el río y el cielo de Egipto no se parecían a ningún otro río ni a ningún otro cielo, y lo mismo ocurría con las costumbres. Gente rara, los egipcios: amasaban la harina con los pies y el barro con las manos, y momificaban a sus gatos muertos y los guardaban en cámaras sagradas.
Pero lo que más llamaba la atención era el lugar que las mujeres ocupaban entre los hombres. Ellas, fueran nobles o plebeyas, se casaban libremente y sin renunciar a sus nombres ni a sus bienes. La educación, la propiedad, el trabajo y la herencia eran derechos de ellas, y no sólo de ellos, y eran ellas quienes hacían las compras en el mercado mientras ellos estaban tejiendo en casa. Según Heródoto, que era bastante inventón, ellas meaban de pie y ellos, de rodillas.
Victorioso sol, luna vencida
La luna perdió la primera batalla contra el sol cuando se difundió la noticia de que no era el viento quien embarazaba a las mujeres.
Después, la historia trajo otras tristes novedades:
la división del trabajo atribuyó casi todas las tareas a las hembras, para que los machos pudiéramos dedicarnos al exterminio mutuo;
el derecho de propiedad y el derecho de herencia permitieron que ellas fueran dueñas de nada;
la organización de la familia las metió en la jaula del padre, el marido y el hijo varón
y se consolidó el Estado, que era como la familia pero más grande.
La luna compartió la caída de sus hijas.
Lejos quedaron los tiempos en que la luna de Egipto devoraba el sol al anochecer y al amanecer lo engendraba,
la luna de Irlanda sometía al sol amenazándolo con la noche perpetua
y los reyes de Grecia y Creta se disfrazaban de reinas, con tetas de trapo, y en las ceremonias sagradas enarbolaban la luna como estandarte.
En Yucatán, la luna y el sol habían vivido en matrimonio. Cuando se peleaban, había eclipse. Ella, la luna, era la señora de los mares y de los manantiales y la diosa de la tierra. Con el paso de los tiempos, perdió sus poderes. Ahora sólo se ocupa de partos y enfermedades.
En las costas del Perú, la humillación tuvo fecha. Poco antes de la invasión española, en el año 1463, la luna del reino chimú, la que más mandaba, se rindió ante el ejército del sol de los incas.
Hebreas
Según el Antiguo Testamento, las hijas de Eva seguían sufriendo el castigo divino.
Podían morir apedreadas las adúlteras, las hechiceras y las mujeres que no llegaran vírgenes al matrimonio;
marchaban a la hoguera las que se prostituían siendo hijas de sacerdotes
y la ley divina mandaba cortar la mano de la mujer que agarrara a un hombre por los huevos, aunque fuera en defensa propia o en defensa de su marido.
Durante cuarenta días quedaba impura la mujer que paría hijo varón. Ochenta días duraba su suciedad, si era niña.
Impura era la mujer con menstruación, por siete días y sus noches, y trasmitía su impureza a cualquiera que la tocara o tocara la silla donde se sentaba o el lecho donde dormía.
Chinas
Hace unos mil años, las diosas chinas dejaron de ser diosas.
El poder macho, que ya se había impuesto en la tierra, estaba poniendo orden también en los cielos. La diosa Shi Hi fue partida en dos dioses, y la diosa Nu Gua fue degradada a la categoría de mujer.
Shi Hi había sido la madre de los soles y de las lunas. Ella daba consuelo y alimento a sus hijos y a sus hijas al cabo de sus agotadores viajes a través del día y de la noche. Cuando fue dividida en Shi y en Hi, dioses varones los dos, ella dejó de ser ella, y desapareció.
Nu Gua no desapareció, pero se redujo a mera mujer.
En otros tiempos, ella había sido la fundadora de todo lo que vive:
había cortado las patas de la gran tortuga cósmica, para que el mundo y el cielo tuvieran columnas donde apoyarse,
había salvado al mundo de las catástrofes del fuego y del agua,
había inventado el amor, echada junto a su hermano tras un alto abanico de hierbas
y había creado a los nobles y a los plebeyos, amasando a los de arriba con arcilla amarilla y a los de abajo con barro del río.
Romanas
Cicerón había explicado que las mujeres debían estar sometidas a guardianes masculinos debido a la debilidad de su intelecto.
Las romanas pasaban de manos de varón a manos de varón. El padre que casaba a su hija podía cederla al marido en propiedad o entregársela en préstamo. De todos modos, lo que importaba era la dote, el patrimonio, la herencia: del placer se encargaban las esclavas.
Los médicos romanos creían, como Aristóteles, que las mujeres, todas, patricias, plebeyas o esclavas, tenían menos dientes y menos cerebro que los hombres y que en los días de menstruación empañaban los espejos con un velo rojizo.
Plinio el Viejo, la mayor autoridad científica del imperio, demostró que la mujer menstruante agriaba el vino nuevo, esterilizaba las cosechas, secaba las semillas y las frutas, mataba los injertos de plantas y los enjambres de abejas, herrumbraba el bronce y volvía locos a los perros.
Mexicanas
Tlazoltéotl, luna mexicana, diosa de la noche huasteca, pudo hacerse un lugarcito en el panteón macho de los aztecas.
Ella era la madre madrísima que protegía a las paridas y a las parteras y guiaba el viaje de las semillas hacia las plantas. Diosa del amor y también de la basura, condenada a comer mierda, encarnaba la fecundidad y la lujuria.
Como Eva, como Pandora, Tlazoltéotl tenía la culpa de la perdición de los hombres; y las mujeres que nacían en su día vivían condenadas al placer.
Y cuando la tierra temblaba, por vibración suave o terremoto devastador, nadie dudaba:
–Es ella.
Griegas
De un dolor de cabeza puede nacer una diosa. Atenea brotó de la dolida cabeza de su padre, Zeus, que se abrió para darle nacimiento. Ella fue parida sin madre.
Tiempo después, su voto resultó decisivo en el tribunal de los dioses, cuando el Olimpo tuvo que pronunciar una sentencia difícil.
Para vengar a su papá, Electra y su hermano Orestes habían partido de un hachazo el pescuezo de su mamá.
Las Furias acusaban. Exigían que los asesinos fueran apedreados hasta la muerte, porque es sagrada la vida de una reina y quien mata a la madre no tiene perdón.
Apolo asumió la defensa. Sostuvo que los acusados eran hijos de madre indigna y que la maternidad no tenía la menor importancia. Una madre, afirmó Apolo, no es más que el surco inerte donde el hombre echa su semilla.
De los trece dioses del jurado, seis votaron por la condenación y seis por la absolución.
Atenea decidía el desempate. Ella votó contra la madre que no tuvo y dio vida eterna al poder macho en Atenas.
Eduardo Galeano
En su próximo libro, Espejos. Una historia casi universal, que estará en la calle a mediados de abril, Eduardo Galeano elabora un inventario general de los hitos y mitos de la historia de los hombres, un repaso caprichoso desde los orígenes hasta hoy, sólo regido por la mirada lírica y lúcida del autor. Como anticipo, Radar ofrece el capítulo dedicado a las mujeres de la antigüedad y la mitología, una suerte de fundación del machismo.
Hindúes
Mitra, madre del sol y del agua y de todas las fuentes de la vida, fue diosa desde que nació. Cuando llegó a la India, desde Babilonia o Persia, la diosa tuvo que hacerse dios.
Unos cuantos añitos han pasado desde la llegada de Mitra, y todavía las mujeres no son muy bienvenidas en la India. Hay menos mujeres que hombres. En algunas regiones, ocho por cada diez hombres. Son muchas las que no culminan el viaje, porque mueren en el vientre de la madre, y muchas más las que son asfixiadas al nacer.
Más vale prevenir que curar, y las hay muy peligrosas, según advierte uno de los libros sagrados de la tradición hindú:
Una mujer lasciva es el veneno, es la serpiente y es la muerte, todo en una.
También hay virtuosas, aunque las buenas costumbres se están perdiendo. La tradición manda que las viudas se arrojen a la hoguera donde arde el marido muerto, pero ya quedan pocas dispuestas a cumplir esa orden, si es que alguna queda.
Durante siglos o milenios las hubo, y muchas. En cambio, no se conoce, ni se conoció nunca, en toda la historia de la India, ningún caso de un marido que se haya zambullido en la pira de su difunta mujer.
Egipcias
Heródoto, venido de Grecia, comprobó que el río y el cielo de Egipto no se parecían a ningún otro río ni a ningún otro cielo, y lo mismo ocurría con las costumbres. Gente rara, los egipcios: amasaban la harina con los pies y el barro con las manos, y momificaban a sus gatos muertos y los guardaban en cámaras sagradas.
Pero lo que más llamaba la atención era el lugar que las mujeres ocupaban entre los hombres. Ellas, fueran nobles o plebeyas, se casaban libremente y sin renunciar a sus nombres ni a sus bienes. La educación, la propiedad, el trabajo y la herencia eran derechos de ellas, y no sólo de ellos, y eran ellas quienes hacían las compras en el mercado mientras ellos estaban tejiendo en casa. Según Heródoto, que era bastante inventón, ellas meaban de pie y ellos, de rodillas.
Victorioso sol, luna vencida
La luna perdió la primera batalla contra el sol cuando se difundió la noticia de que no era el viento quien embarazaba a las mujeres.
Después, la historia trajo otras tristes novedades:
la división del trabajo atribuyó casi todas las tareas a las hembras, para que los machos pudiéramos dedicarnos al exterminio mutuo;
el derecho de propiedad y el derecho de herencia permitieron que ellas fueran dueñas de nada;
la organización de la familia las metió en la jaula del padre, el marido y el hijo varón
y se consolidó el Estado, que era como la familia pero más grande.
La luna compartió la caída de sus hijas.
Lejos quedaron los tiempos en que la luna de Egipto devoraba el sol al anochecer y al amanecer lo engendraba,
la luna de Irlanda sometía al sol amenazándolo con la noche perpetua
y los reyes de Grecia y Creta se disfrazaban de reinas, con tetas de trapo, y en las ceremonias sagradas enarbolaban la luna como estandarte.
En Yucatán, la luna y el sol habían vivido en matrimonio. Cuando se peleaban, había eclipse. Ella, la luna, era la señora de los mares y de los manantiales y la diosa de la tierra. Con el paso de los tiempos, perdió sus poderes. Ahora sólo se ocupa de partos y enfermedades.
En las costas del Perú, la humillación tuvo fecha. Poco antes de la invasión española, en el año 1463, la luna del reino chimú, la que más mandaba, se rindió ante el ejército del sol de los incas.
Hebreas
Según el Antiguo Testamento, las hijas de Eva seguían sufriendo el castigo divino.
Podían morir apedreadas las adúlteras, las hechiceras y las mujeres que no llegaran vírgenes al matrimonio;
marchaban a la hoguera las que se prostituían siendo hijas de sacerdotes
y la ley divina mandaba cortar la mano de la mujer que agarrara a un hombre por los huevos, aunque fuera en defensa propia o en defensa de su marido.
Durante cuarenta días quedaba impura la mujer que paría hijo varón. Ochenta días duraba su suciedad, si era niña.
Impura era la mujer con menstruación, por siete días y sus noches, y trasmitía su impureza a cualquiera que la tocara o tocara la silla donde se sentaba o el lecho donde dormía.
Chinas
Hace unos mil años, las diosas chinas dejaron de ser diosas.
El poder macho, que ya se había impuesto en la tierra, estaba poniendo orden también en los cielos. La diosa Shi Hi fue partida en dos dioses, y la diosa Nu Gua fue degradada a la categoría de mujer.
Shi Hi había sido la madre de los soles y de las lunas. Ella daba consuelo y alimento a sus hijos y a sus hijas al cabo de sus agotadores viajes a través del día y de la noche. Cuando fue dividida en Shi y en Hi, dioses varones los dos, ella dejó de ser ella, y desapareció.
Nu Gua no desapareció, pero se redujo a mera mujer.
En otros tiempos, ella había sido la fundadora de todo lo que vive:
había cortado las patas de la gran tortuga cósmica, para que el mundo y el cielo tuvieran columnas donde apoyarse,
había salvado al mundo de las catástrofes del fuego y del agua,
había inventado el amor, echada junto a su hermano tras un alto abanico de hierbas
y había creado a los nobles y a los plebeyos, amasando a los de arriba con arcilla amarilla y a los de abajo con barro del río.
Romanas
Cicerón había explicado que las mujeres debían estar sometidas a guardianes masculinos debido a la debilidad de su intelecto.
Las romanas pasaban de manos de varón a manos de varón. El padre que casaba a su hija podía cederla al marido en propiedad o entregársela en préstamo. De todos modos, lo que importaba era la dote, el patrimonio, la herencia: del placer se encargaban las esclavas.
Los médicos romanos creían, como Aristóteles, que las mujeres, todas, patricias, plebeyas o esclavas, tenían menos dientes y menos cerebro que los hombres y que en los días de menstruación empañaban los espejos con un velo rojizo.
Plinio el Viejo, la mayor autoridad científica del imperio, demostró que la mujer menstruante agriaba el vino nuevo, esterilizaba las cosechas, secaba las semillas y las frutas, mataba los injertos de plantas y los enjambres de abejas, herrumbraba el bronce y volvía locos a los perros.
Mexicanas
Tlazoltéotl, luna mexicana, diosa de la noche huasteca, pudo hacerse un lugarcito en el panteón macho de los aztecas.
Ella era la madre madrísima que protegía a las paridas y a las parteras y guiaba el viaje de las semillas hacia las plantas. Diosa del amor y también de la basura, condenada a comer mierda, encarnaba la fecundidad y la lujuria.
Como Eva, como Pandora, Tlazoltéotl tenía la culpa de la perdición de los hombres; y las mujeres que nacían en su día vivían condenadas al placer.
Y cuando la tierra temblaba, por vibración suave o terremoto devastador, nadie dudaba:
–Es ella.
Griegas
De un dolor de cabeza puede nacer una diosa. Atenea brotó de la dolida cabeza de su padre, Zeus, que se abrió para darle nacimiento. Ella fue parida sin madre.
Tiempo después, su voto resultó decisivo en el tribunal de los dioses, cuando el Olimpo tuvo que pronunciar una sentencia difícil.
Para vengar a su papá, Electra y su hermano Orestes habían partido de un hachazo el pescuezo de su mamá.
Las Furias acusaban. Exigían que los asesinos fueran apedreados hasta la muerte, porque es sagrada la vida de una reina y quien mata a la madre no tiene perdón.
Apolo asumió la defensa. Sostuvo que los acusados eran hijos de madre indigna y que la maternidad no tenía la menor importancia. Una madre, afirmó Apolo, no es más que el surco inerte donde el hombre echa su semilla.
De los trece dioses del jurado, seis votaron por la condenación y seis por la absolución.
Atenea decidía el desempate. Ella votó contra la madre que no tuvo y dio vida eterna al poder macho en Atenas.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
In Defense of Rev. Jeremiah Wright By Mel Reeves
Black Agenda Report
I heard that great humanitarian Karl Rove criticizing Dr. Jeremiah Wright's sermon in which he talks about a black and poor Jesus being crucified by the Roman ruling class. He expressed outrage that Dr. Wright would say this. At that point it clarified for me why so many people had rushed to call Dr. Wright's words hateful and racist. The reverend had attacked all of America's sacred cows, including its civil religion, in which the idea of a black Jesus just doesn't fit.
The theology of liberation is a direct challenge to the philosophy and tenets of American Civil Religion. Civil religion, to paraphrase the scholar Robert Bellah, is a public religious dimension that is expressed in a set of beliefs, symbols, and rituals.
Civil religion's philosophy is essentially racial and political, rather than universal or spiritual. It has its own symbols, its own codes, its own holidays and even its own morality. Bellah, in his essay "Civil Religion in America" points out that the adherents of the philosophy have, "an obligation, both collective and individual, to carry out God's will on earth. God's work will be our own." And therein lies our problem.
One of the primary tenets of American civil religion is that the people who came from Europe were the new Israelites or, to be clear, the "Chosen People." These immigrants, like the Israelites of old, had made their "exodus" from Europe and were chosen to take over the "Promised Land." And like the Hebrews of the Old Testament, God had granted them the right to take over this land, by any means necessary. Some know it better as "Manifest Destiny," and according to its tenets and, of course, consistent with the Hebrew scriptures, they were compelled to take over the land of Canaan. Already inhabited, no problem, we are the chosen people, and the Indians, well, "not so much." What followed was the annihilation and dispossession of the Native Americans.
The land that the new Israelites inhabited was hard and unwelcoming. So they reached across the waters and again their canon of scriptures aided them. Their black African brethren -- the descendents of Ham who had been biblically cursed (Genesis 9:25) and designated to be "the lowest of slaves to his brothers" -- were perfectly suited for the task. When they needed to buttress this flimsy justification for dehumanizing their fellow human beings, they used Joshua 9:23, which spoke of another curse of folks, unfavored by God, who were to be Israel's "hewers of wood and carriers of water."
This is why the U.S. government's history of conquest and exploitation can be so easily explained away and there is so little national angst. It was blessed, sanctioned by the Almighty, a part of our destiny. Those others just got in our way and, besides, left to their own devices they would have done far worse. The Native Americans would have killed one another off anyway, and the Africans we kidnapped, would have knocked one another off eventually -- after all, look at them now. So we did them a favor by civilizing them. This kind of racist discourse is still considered acceptable in some circles.
Signs of this religion are everywhere. All one has to do is look at your currency, every bill says, "In God We Trust." Every time you attend an event, the national anthem (the religion's hymn) is played, and you pledge allegiance to its symbol, the flag, and acknowledge "one nation under God." Above the pyramid on the great seal of the United States, words in Latin proclaim, "God has favored our undertaking." It even has its own holidays, Thanksgiving and Memorial Day.
The beauty of civil religion is that it doesn't interfere with any specific religion, which is why conservative and right-leaning Christians have no problem with the doctrine. However, those who use a word other than God to address their Higher Power are looked upon with suspicion and enmity.
Other significant features of the pantheon of civil religion are the philosophical tenets (sacred cows) that keep its adherents from peeping behind the throne. When Dr. Wright criticized the role of "rich white folks" or the ruling rich for making many of our lives and folks in the rest of the world miserable he challenged the long-held myth that "you can get rich if you work hard enough."
Poor white folks and working-class white folks wanted badly to identify with the people who bear their skin color but who are really wealthy and run this country. They badly want to believe that they too can be rich and take their place in the front of the line and be exploiter rather than exploited, boss rather than bossed. Unfortunately, the Horatio Alger tale was a cruel exaggeration, and while a few actually rise above their class status, the rest are stuck. And while working-class whites may look like their richer cousins, the truth is, they are "their color but not their kind."
While pointing out the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as touching on the U.S. failure to stand with the rest of the world against the former Apartheid South Africa, the pastor challenged the blind loyalty that birthed the phrase "my country right or wrong." And this government has been wrong quite a bit. Its military adventures dating back to the pickpocketing of Mexico to its intervention in the Philippines to its more recent plundering of Vietnam and its meddling in Latin American affairs, while deposing leaders it didn't like, were not ordained by God but were dictated by capital's need for new markets, expansion and accumulation. And today U.S. imperialism is wrongfully in Iraq and, yes, Afghanistan as well. And nearly always its victims have been people of color.
Another sacred tenet states that "thou shalt not criticize Israel." And this is not because of a powerful Jewish lobby as many wrongfully interpret but because supporting the Israelis fits the needs and the desires of U.S. imperialism. The Palestinians are an oppressed people and deserve our sympathy and support as well as that of the rest of the world.
Wright even challenged the notion that white life is more valuable than any other and challenged the idea of the sacredness of white womanhood. He took issue with the fact that night after night, the big business press trumpeted the continued search in Aruba for the then considered missing young Alabama girl, Natalie Holloway. What happened to young Holloway was indeed tragic. However, the constant trumpeting of her disappearance and the daily and almost hourly updates and attention paid to her was out of proportion. This was so, especially when one considers that the conflict in Darfur was going on, a war was being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a large part of the mostly colored Third World goes to bed hungry most nights and is being felled by preventable diseases and scourged by new ones such as AIDS. What can one conclude from this strange imbalance and preoccupation?
I read several websites, blogs and news sites in which respondents repeatedly accused Wright of being racist because he said, "The government gives them (poor blacks) drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strikes, and you want them to sing 'God Bless America.'" Of course the song is another hymn in celebration of the civil religion, but the anger directed at him is a result of their unwillingness to believe that this government really does give blacks and especially poor blacks, the back of its hand.
Ultimately what has some folks so up in arms is not that Dr. Wright was angry and seemingly hostile as many would have us believe but, rather, the implications of what he said. What Dr. Wright did more than anything was to challenge all the accepted illusions that allow citizens of all colors, sex and ethnicity to wrap themselves in a fake patriotism buttressed by a made-up religion, which prevents them from looking critically at their country and its policies.
Mel Reeves is an activist based in Miami. He can be contacted at mellaneous19 at yahoo.com.
I heard that great humanitarian Karl Rove criticizing Dr. Jeremiah Wright's sermon in which he talks about a black and poor Jesus being crucified by the Roman ruling class. He expressed outrage that Dr. Wright would say this. At that point it clarified for me why so many people had rushed to call Dr. Wright's words hateful and racist. The reverend had attacked all of America's sacred cows, including its civil religion, in which the idea of a black Jesus just doesn't fit.
The theology of liberation is a direct challenge to the philosophy and tenets of American Civil Religion. Civil religion, to paraphrase the scholar Robert Bellah, is a public religious dimension that is expressed in a set of beliefs, symbols, and rituals.
Civil religion's philosophy is essentially racial and political, rather than universal or spiritual. It has its own symbols, its own codes, its own holidays and even its own morality. Bellah, in his essay "Civil Religion in America" points out that the adherents of the philosophy have, "an obligation, both collective and individual, to carry out God's will on earth. God's work will be our own." And therein lies our problem.
One of the primary tenets of American civil religion is that the people who came from Europe were the new Israelites or, to be clear, the "Chosen People." These immigrants, like the Israelites of old, had made their "exodus" from Europe and were chosen to take over the "Promised Land." And like the Hebrews of the Old Testament, God had granted them the right to take over this land, by any means necessary. Some know it better as "Manifest Destiny," and according to its tenets and, of course, consistent with the Hebrew scriptures, they were compelled to take over the land of Canaan. Already inhabited, no problem, we are the chosen people, and the Indians, well, "not so much." What followed was the annihilation and dispossession of the Native Americans.
The land that the new Israelites inhabited was hard and unwelcoming. So they reached across the waters and again their canon of scriptures aided them. Their black African brethren -- the descendents of Ham who had been biblically cursed (Genesis 9:25) and designated to be "the lowest of slaves to his brothers" -- were perfectly suited for the task. When they needed to buttress this flimsy justification for dehumanizing their fellow human beings, they used Joshua 9:23, which spoke of another curse of folks, unfavored by God, who were to be Israel's "hewers of wood and carriers of water."
This is why the U.S. government's history of conquest and exploitation can be so easily explained away and there is so little national angst. It was blessed, sanctioned by the Almighty, a part of our destiny. Those others just got in our way and, besides, left to their own devices they would have done far worse. The Native Americans would have killed one another off anyway, and the Africans we kidnapped, would have knocked one another off eventually -- after all, look at them now. So we did them a favor by civilizing them. This kind of racist discourse is still considered acceptable in some circles.
Signs of this religion are everywhere. All one has to do is look at your currency, every bill says, "In God We Trust." Every time you attend an event, the national anthem (the religion's hymn) is played, and you pledge allegiance to its symbol, the flag, and acknowledge "one nation under God." Above the pyramid on the great seal of the United States, words in Latin proclaim, "God has favored our undertaking." It even has its own holidays, Thanksgiving and Memorial Day.
The beauty of civil religion is that it doesn't interfere with any specific religion, which is why conservative and right-leaning Christians have no problem with the doctrine. However, those who use a word other than God to address their Higher Power are looked upon with suspicion and enmity.
Other significant features of the pantheon of civil religion are the philosophical tenets (sacred cows) that keep its adherents from peeping behind the throne. When Dr. Wright criticized the role of "rich white folks" or the ruling rich for making many of our lives and folks in the rest of the world miserable he challenged the long-held myth that "you can get rich if you work hard enough."
Poor white folks and working-class white folks wanted badly to identify with the people who bear their skin color but who are really wealthy and run this country. They badly want to believe that they too can be rich and take their place in the front of the line and be exploiter rather than exploited, boss rather than bossed. Unfortunately, the Horatio Alger tale was a cruel exaggeration, and while a few actually rise above their class status, the rest are stuck. And while working-class whites may look like their richer cousins, the truth is, they are "their color but not their kind."
While pointing out the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as touching on the U.S. failure to stand with the rest of the world against the former Apartheid South Africa, the pastor challenged the blind loyalty that birthed the phrase "my country right or wrong." And this government has been wrong quite a bit. Its military adventures dating back to the pickpocketing of Mexico to its intervention in the Philippines to its more recent plundering of Vietnam and its meddling in Latin American affairs, while deposing leaders it didn't like, were not ordained by God but were dictated by capital's need for new markets, expansion and accumulation. And today U.S. imperialism is wrongfully in Iraq and, yes, Afghanistan as well. And nearly always its victims have been people of color.
Another sacred tenet states that "thou shalt not criticize Israel." And this is not because of a powerful Jewish lobby as many wrongfully interpret but because supporting the Israelis fits the needs and the desires of U.S. imperialism. The Palestinians are an oppressed people and deserve our sympathy and support as well as that of the rest of the world.
Wright even challenged the notion that white life is more valuable than any other and challenged the idea of the sacredness of white womanhood. He took issue with the fact that night after night, the big business press trumpeted the continued search in Aruba for the then considered missing young Alabama girl, Natalie Holloway. What happened to young Holloway was indeed tragic. However, the constant trumpeting of her disappearance and the daily and almost hourly updates and attention paid to her was out of proportion. This was so, especially when one considers that the conflict in Darfur was going on, a war was being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a large part of the mostly colored Third World goes to bed hungry most nights and is being felled by preventable diseases and scourged by new ones such as AIDS. What can one conclude from this strange imbalance and preoccupation?
I read several websites, blogs and news sites in which respondents repeatedly accused Wright of being racist because he said, "The government gives them (poor blacks) drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strikes, and you want them to sing 'God Bless America.'" Of course the song is another hymn in celebration of the civil religion, but the anger directed at him is a result of their unwillingness to believe that this government really does give blacks and especially poor blacks, the back of its hand.
Ultimately what has some folks so up in arms is not that Dr. Wright was angry and seemingly hostile as many would have us believe but, rather, the implications of what he said. What Dr. Wright did more than anything was to challenge all the accepted illusions that allow citizens of all colors, sex and ethnicity to wrap themselves in a fake patriotism buttressed by a made-up religion, which prevents them from looking critically at their country and its policies.
Mel Reeves is an activist based in Miami. He can be contacted at mellaneous19 at yahoo.com.
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