A central thesis of my book Beyond Chutzpah is that whenever Israel faces a public relations debacle its apologists sound the alarm that a "new anti-Semitism" is upon us. So, predictably, just after Israel faced another image problem due to its murderous destruction of Lebanon, a British all-party parliamentary group led by notorious Israel-firster Denis MacShane MP (Labor) released yet another report alleging a resurgence of anti-Semitism (Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry Into Antisemitism, September 2006). To judge by the witnesses (David Cesarani, Lord Janner, Oona King, Emanuele Ottolenghi, Melanie Phillips) and sources (MEMRI, Holocaust Education Trust) cited in the body of the report, much time and money could have been saved had it just been contracted out to the Israel Foreign Ministry.[1]
The single novelty of the report, which mostly rehashes fatuous allegations already disposed of in Beyond Chutzpah, is the new thresholds in idiocy it breaks. Consider the methodology deployed for demonstrating a new anti-Semitism. The report defines an anti-Semitic incident as any occasion "perceived" to be anti-Semitic by the "Jewish community."[2] This is the school of thought according to which it's raining even in the absence of any precipitation because I feel it's raining. It is the dream philosophy of paranoids - especially rational paranoids, for whom alleged victimhood is politically serviceable. The report includes under the rubric of anti-Semitic incidents not just violent acts and incendiary speech but "conversations, discussions, or pronouncements made in public or private, which cross the line of acceptability," as well as "the mood and tone when Jews are discussed." The wonder is that it didn't also tabulate repressed anti-Semitic libidinal fantasies.[3] In the category of inherently anti-Semitic pronouncements the report includes "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis" (only comparisons of contemporary Arab policy to that of the Nazis are permissible) and "theories about Jewish or Zionist influence on American foreign policy" (even if Jewish and Zionist organizations boast about this influence).[4]
Much of the evidence of pervasive British anti-Semitism stretches and strains credulity. The lone item listed under the ominous subheading "The Blood Libel" is a Syrian television series "that would be possible for viewers in the UK to see...if they had suitable satellite receiving equipment."[5] The report also notes the unreferenced "case of a Jewish university lecturer who was subjected to an anti-Semitic tirade from a student in the middle of a lecture and subsequently asked to explain to the university authorities why he had upset the student."[6] Is it anti-Semitic to wonder whether this is a crock? And then it cites the warning of the London Assembly Conservative Group that "there is a risk that in some political quarters 'views on international events can, almost subconsciously, lead to subtly different attitudes to, and levels of engagement with, different minority groups.'"[7] The new anti-Semitism business must be going seriously awry when British conservatives start sounding like Lacan. Finally, it is anti-Semitic for student unions to advocate a boycott of Israeli goods because this "would restrict the availability of kosher food on campus."[8] Maybe Israel can organize a "Berlin airlift" of gefilte fish.
Although claiming that, in the struggle against anti-Semitism, "none of those who gave evidence wished to see the right of free speech eroded," and "only in extreme circumstances would we advocate legal intervention,"[9] the report recommends that university authorities "take an active interest in combating acts, speeches, literature and events that cause anxiety or alarm among their Jewish students," and it registers disquiet that "classic and modern anti-Semitic works are freely available for ordering on the Amazon.com website," and that "the United States in particular has been slow to take action" in closing down "anti-Semitic internet sites."[10] It is at moments like this that even the least patriotic of souls can take pride in being an American.
* * *
1. The report's statement that "we received no evidence of the accusation of anti-Semitism being misused by mainstream British Jewish community organizations and leaders" (para. 79) perhaps speaks more to the selection of the witnesses than the reality.
2. Report, para. 3; cf. para. 73.
3. Quoted phrases from Report "Summary." The police data on an increase in anti-Semitic incidents in itself proves little because, as the report concedes, the spike might be due to more incidents being reported and a coarsening of British life generally, as well as the "spillover" from the Israel-Palestine conflict (Report, paras 28, 29, 59, 64, and Beyond Chutzpah, pp. 81ff.). In addition, there is little evidence of "organized," "politically motivated" anti-Semitic attacks; there is no evidence that perpetrators of anti-Semitic attacks were disproportionately Muslim; and most of the suspects in the incidents were adolescents (Report, paras. 55, 56, 58, 151). For 2005 the report cites a couple incidents that were "potentially" life-threatening (para. 61). It cites no comparative data for other minorities in Britain, although tacitly acknowledging that "the level of prejudice and discrimination by Jews in Britain remains lower," a considerable understatement (para 17). On a related note, it deplores that "less than one in ten [anti-Semitic] incidents reported to the police resulted in a suspect becoming an accused" (para. 69), but cites no comparative data indicating whether this ratio is aberrant.
4. Report, para. 84, 119; cf. para. 148. On a related note the report expresses worry that "the use of language and imagery of the Holocaust has become increasingly widespread in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" (para. 93). Of course, what's new about such imagery in the West is that it's no longer only used against Arabs.
5. Report, para. 99.
6. Report, para, 101.
7. Report, para. 104.
8. Report, paras. 203, 204.
9. Report, paras. 74, 75.
10. Report, paras. 183, 189, 220.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Fake Fox Reporter Kidnapping & Fake American al Qaeda tape
Does religious conversion make you angry?
Ramzy Baroud raises questions about the kidnapping of the two Fox journalists in Gaza (although he has the names of both of them wrong: they are Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig). The shadowy and hitherto unknown group which took responsibility for the incident, the over-the-top demand for the release of all Muslims imprisoned by the U.S. (hardly the most pressing issue in Gaza!), and the bizarre forced 'conversion' to Islam, all stand out. It is notable that the journalists involved, although employees of Fox, were real journalists sympathetic to the Palestinians, who attempted non-propaganda reporting in Gaza, unheard of for Fox (this follows the examples we've seen in Iraq, where the Western kidnap victims are almost always obviously friendly to the Iraqi people). They were originally handcuffed using plastic ties, which sounds like something used by a professional police or military force, not a rag-tag unknown insurgent group.The conversion angle is guaranteed to make right-wing American Christians angry, and is paralleled by the recent tape of fake al Qaeda Adam Gadahn, who, with all the outrages against Islam he could have discussed, decided to focus on conversion of Christians to Islam. The Zionists seem to have picked conversion as the hot button to push to keep the Christian Zionists on the reservation. I've been listening to the shortwave radio, and note that a lot of the Christian Zionists are phoning talk shows reporting themselves 'confused' on what happened in Lebanon, as Biblical prophesy tells them that Israel can never lose. Manipulating Christian Zionists to support Israeli colonialism is a tricky business, like trying to herd cats.
Welcome to the Nightmare - Al Qaeda de Mexico? By JOHN ROSS
Mexico City.
In an epiphany of how he might have to govern Mexico if the left opposition allows him to assume the presidency December 1, right-winger Felipe Calderon had to be helicoptered to the bunker in the deep south of this conflictive capital where the nation's top electoral tribunal, doing business as the TRIFE, was to hand him the certificate attesting that he had, in the judges' less-than-august opinions, won the July 2 election from leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO.).
Upon emerging from the chopper which had been accompanied by a military gunship, the stubby, balding Calderon was quickly hustled into the TRIFE headquarters by the back door a full 90 minutes before the actual ceremony was to commence, a subterfuge necessitated by the presence by thousands of AMLO's enraged supporters, some of whom had already stripped naked.
Calderon's witnesses -- members of his campaign team and functionaries of the archly-rightist PAN party who had the misfortune to arrive by land -- were greeted by clods of earth and screams of "Rateros!" (Thieves) and "Fraude!" (Fraud.) The ritual unfolded under a steady barrage of rotten eggs and tomatoes which AMLO's people kept hurling at the TRIFE bunker, a kind of Aztec version of a U.S. missile silo, to express their unhappiness with the seven-judge panel that had neither heard nor seen any evil in the maladroit machinations of President Vicente Fox, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), and the PAN to steal the election from their candidate.
Three mornings previous, on September 5, just hours before the constitutional deadline for confirming the next president of Mexico, the TRIFE had finally handed down its decision. In thejustices' unanimous judgment, outgoing president Vicente Fox's unconstitutional intromission in the electoral campaign on behalf of Calderon had put the validity of the July 2 balloting "at risk."
Moreover, months of venomous anti-AMLO hit pieces designed by U.S. carpetbagger Dick Morris that labeled Lopez Obrador a DANGER to Mexico in big red letters "unquestionably" impacted the results and were illegally financed by big business councils that included such transnationals as WalMart and Halliburton, a patently criminal act.
In addition, the election was riddled with "arithmetic mistakes." The TRIFE's own recalculation of the actual vote count effected by its much-maligned twin the IFE, demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that Calderon had been credited with hundreds of thousands of votes that could not be substantiated by the number of ballots inside the ballot boxes. A partial recount of 9.7% of the 130,000 "casillas" (precincts) had turned up a total of 237,000 questionable votes that the TRIFE had chosen to annul, a quarter of those cast in the sample, and more than Calderon's supposed margin which had been reduced to 233,000 out of a total 41.5 million cast.
Having duly noticed these egregious outrages, the seven judges concluded that they could not calibrate the impact of such organized criminal activity upon the final outcome and awarded the presidency to one Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinojosa to the great delight and immediate congratulations of Mexico's masters in Washington D.C.
Did the TRIFE go into the tank? Three of the justices are expected to be promoted to the Mexican Supreme Court when and if Felipe Calderon takes over the presidency. A fourth, Alejandro Luna Ramos, who will remain at the helm of the electoral tribunal, is a business partner of PAN topdog "El Jefe" Diego Fernandez de Cevallos. El Jefe won millions for the Ramos family from the Mexico City government before AMLO became mayor in a shady land deal involving the site of the Aztec football stadium. A Ramos sister sits on Mexico's Supreme Court.
Lopez Obrador has suggested that the judges were willing recipients of "canonazos" (cannonades of pesos) to help them better contemplate the "validity" of the election. Porfirio Munoz Ledo, a political chameleon who was Fox's ambassador to the European Union, describes a post-electoral huddle at the home of Chief Supreme Court Justice Mariano Azuela, a Fox ally, where the Presidente warned the "TRIFitos" that should they declare the election null and avoid due to the overwhelming evidence of fraud, the Mexican economy would collapse and anarchy would reign in the streets. Although Munoz Ledo is an unsavory sort, his sources are usually impeccable.
Now that the TRIFE has legitimized the fraud, the IFE brain trust under the gaze of the chief architect of the July 2 debacle, Luis Carlos Ugalde, is moving quickly to destroy the evidence. Following the modus operandi established after the stolen election of 1988 when the then-ruling PRI in connivance with the PAN ordered the ballots to be burnt by the military, the IFE has refused petitions from 16,000 suspicious subscribers to PROCESO magazine and a blue-ribbon commission of prominent members of the civil society to allow them to conduct a citizens recount of the ballots that are now, once again, under the protection of the military. Never! Ugalde and his mafia scoff. The ballots are "inviolable!" "The property of the people!"
But, on the other hand, the ballots are not "documents" open to public scrutiny as guaranteed by law, the IFE contends, and therefore are eminently "burnable" under current electoral stipulations. Ugalde's ruling was described as "metaphysical" by National University law professor John Ackerman. According to the IFE's hypothesis, the ballots were "documents" before they were marked by the voters but now they have been reduced to symbolic "expressions of the people's will" and thus are candidates for the incinerator.
AMLO is sworn to preventing a repeat of the 1988 flimflam and his people are pleading with Azuela's Supreme Court to stay the December date set for the burning. (An Ohio court just stepped in to save what ballots remain from Bush's stealing of that state's electoral votes in the 2004 presidential balloting.) The final arbiter in this dispute may well be (who else but?) the TRIFE.
As illustrated by his armed airlift to the TRIFE silo, Felipe Calderon has a problem meeting the people he intends to govern over the next six years. In his first junket as president-elect, Fecal (as his detractors have dubbed him) took a sentimental journey to his native Morelia, the capital of the narco-ridden western state of Michoacan, where he was scheduled to lay a wreathe at the feet of that city's namesake, Jose Maria Morelos y Pavon, a black defrocked priest who led the guerrilla war against the Spanish Crown several centuries before the 44 year-old Calderon first slithered from his PANista mother's womb.
Calderon's family on all sides is a founding pillar of the PAN, an Opus Dei-like creature of Catholic bankers formed to denigrate Mexico's beloved depression-era "Bolshevik" president Lazaro Cardenas, also a Michoacan native whose grandson, also Lazaro Cardenas, now besmirches that hallowed name as governor. Indeed, Calderon 's trip to Michoacan was designed to split Lopez Obrador's three-party Coalition for the Good of All young Cardenas is titularly a member of the PRD, AMLO's home party, founded by his father Cuauhtemoc after he was swindled out of the presidency in 1988.
But Felipillo never made it to Morales's feet (the good padre probably exhaled a sigh of relief.) Hundreds of AMLO's faithful tore down the barricades, tossed the usual rotten eggs and tomatoes at Calderon's entourage, battled Cardenas's state police and the elite Presidential military guard, and generally made the venue so unsafe that the wreath-laying had to be called off and the president-elect sped into a nearby locked-down convention center for a speech to a carefully-culled audience of "perfumados" (literally the perfumed ones.)
The draconian security measures at the convention center sniffer dogs, metal detectors, pat-down searches were not unwarranted. On the eve of Calderon's confirmation, in Michoacan's second city Uruapan, the capital of the state's "hot lands" where drug cropping accounts for the whole economy, a ski-masked commando burst into a local dance hall, forced the patrons to lie face down on the dance floor under pain of being Swiss cheesed by the automatic weapons they were waving convincingly, and carefully removed five severed human heads from black plastic bags which they artfully arranged in the center of the "pista" (dance floor) with the accompanying message: "the family does not kill for money. It does not kill women. It does not kill innocents. Those who deserve to die, die. Justice is divine."
Al Qaeda de Mexico?
This country has been visited by unspeakable acts of narco-terrorism in the months that Calderon has been blaspheming Lopez Obrador as "a DANGER to Mexico" (thanks Sasha for this observation). Such beheadings are now a regular feature of the cityscapes in Acapulco and Tijuana. Corpses are strewn each month in the rural outback of Sinaloa, Jalisco, Guerrero, Michoacan, and Chiapas. Judges are gunned down on their way to court at La Palma, Mexico's maximum narco-lockup. Published reports speak of a "psychosis of fear" spooking the nation's judiciary. The brains of industry and the stock market are not immune from being splattered all over the street. Last week, the top official of a privatized customs agency part-owned by Fox's financial secretary Francisco Gil, was cut down by professional hit men on a busy Mexico City street as the end-of-the-administration chickens begin to come home to roost. La Jornada, the left daily, has even gone on "suicide" watch officials often blow their brains out or sever their veins with box cutters at such moments in the Mexican political dynamic.
The TRIFE's confirmation of the stealing of the 2006 election has generated an avalanche of accolades for Felipe de Jesus Bush and his crony ambassador Tony Garza were first in line to extend their congratulations all over again (they did so hours after the deeply flawed preliminary vote count came in July 2). Spain's Rodriguez Zapatero and his pals at REPSOL were right behind, looking to get in on the ground floor of the fire sale of privatization Calderon has pledged for PEMEX, the once-nationalized state petroleum enterprise. The U.S. State Department's "democratic" answers to Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, Alan Garcia and Oscar Arias, along with Salvador's fawning Tony Saca chimed in. Improbably, so did Nestor Kirschner. Can Fidel and Lula be far behind?
But to my ear, the most appropriate toast to Felipe Calderon 's confirmation as the next president of this dangerous neighbor nation was one that was not sounded (at least not yet.) In 1994, after Ernesto Zedillo had finally relieved the reviled Carlos Salinas at the wheel of state, the still missing-in-action Subcomandante Marcos scribbled salutations to the new prez that began, much as does this chronicle, "Welcome to the Nightmare."
Post data: Eyeball-to-Eyeball in the Zocalo
This past Sunday, Lopez Obrador's packed-as-usual weekly revival meeting in the Zocalo transpired parallel to Felipe Calderon's "victory" celebration, held appropriately enough in a bullring in an affluent district of the capital. AMLO's numbers, as always, dwarfed his diminutive rival's. The PAN reportedly padded out the crowd by requiring the compulsory attendance of Catholic school children and their parents. The wealthy burghers in the south of the city were said to have obligated their servants to attend.
While the President-elect swore vengeance on his enemies across town, AMLO did not. As always, he let his furious flock call Fecal bad names but eschewed even mentioning his rival. Lopez Obrador had other plans. The seven-week, seven-mile encampment of his followers that so vex upper and middle class "capitolinos" would stay in place through Friday night, September 15, the eve of Mexican Independence Day when AMLO intends to deliver the "Grito" of "Viva Mexico!" to the multitudes gathered in the great square, an honor reserved for the President of Mexico.
But rather than challenging the Mexican military, AMLO's people will then dismantle their encampments and retreat from the Zocalo for 12 hours to allow the Generals and Admirals to conduct their traditional Independence Day parade. "The army belongs to the people, not the government we have no argument with this institution," AMLO explained, seeking to mollify his militants who are reluctant to step back. "Many members of military families voted for us July 2. And besides, the troops are so badly paid that they can't even support their families."
Once the military procession which always features tanks and jet fighter planes is done with Vicente Fox will wave it on from a balcony of the National Palace and receive it at the newly refurbished (by the PRD Mexico City government) Angel of Independence an expected million delegates to Lopez Obrador's National Democratic Convention (CND) will retake the Zocalo and sit in session to install AMLO as the legitimate president of Mexico.
But Fox, who was prevented from delivering his State of the Union address to congress September 1 when Lopez Obrador's senators and deputies stormed the tribune, is said to be obsessed with declaiming his final Grito from the presidential balcony overlooking the Zocalo. Cornered between his hubris and his ambition for a notch in history, and the huge angry crowd seething in the plaza below, the outgoing president could make a fatal mistake by turning the military and/or the military police on AMLO's people to force them out of the Tienanmen-sized square that sits at the heart of Mexico's political life, a move that i and Tlatelolco where in 1968 hundreds of striking students were massacred by the paranoid, anti-communist president Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, and a wound that has never closed here.
Like Sub Marcos so eloquently waxes: "Welcome to the Nightmare."
John Ross's ZAPATISTAS! Making Another World Possible--Chronicles of Resistance 2000-2006 will be published by Nation Books in October. Ross will travel the left coast this fall with the new volume and a hot-off-the-press chapbook of poetry Bomba!--all suggestions of venues will be cheerfully entertained--write johnross@igc.org
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
The Moral Bankruptcy of Israel's Founding Idea - The Coming Collapse of Zionism
By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
Former CIA Analyst
Is it only observers outside the conventional mainstream who have noticed that by its murderous assault on Lebanon and simultaneously on Gaza, Israel finally exposed, for even the most deluded to see, the total bankruptcy of its very founding idea?
Can it be that the deluded are still deluded? Can it truly still be that Israel's bankruptcy is evident only to those who already knew it, those who already recognized Zionism as illegitimate for the racist principle that underlies it?
Can it be therefore that only the already converted can see coming the ultimate collapse of Zionism and, with it, of Israel itself as the exclusivist state of Jews?
Racism has always been the lifeblood of Israel. Zionism rests on the fundamental belief that Jews have superior national, human, and natural rights in the land, an inherently racist foundation that excludes any possibility of true democracy or equality of peoples. Israel's destructive rampage in Lebanon and Gaza is merely the natural next step in the evolution of such a founding ideology. Precisely because that ideology posits the exclusivity and superiority of one people's rights, it can accept no legal or moral restraints on its behavior and no territorial limits, for it needs an ever-expanding geography to accommodate those unlimited rights.
Zionism cannot abide encroachment or even the slightest challenge to its total domination over its own space -- not merely of the space within Israel's 1967 borders, but of the surrounding space as well, extending outward to geographical limits that Zionism has not yet seen fit to set for itself. Total domination means no physical threat and no demographic threat: Jews reign, Jews are totally secure, Jews always outnumber, Jews hold all military power, Jews control all natural resources, all neighbors are powerless and totally subservient. This was the message Israel tried to send with its attack on Lebanon: that neither Hizbullah nor anything in Lebanon that nurtures Hizbullah should continue to exist, for the sole reason that Hizbullah challenges Israel's supreme authority in the region and Israel cannot abide this effrontery. Zionism cannot coexist with any other ideology or ethnicity except in the preeminent position, for everyone and every ideology that is not Zionist is a potential threat.
In Lebanon, Israel attempted by its wildly reckless violence to destroy the nation, to make of it a killing zone where only Zionism would reign, where non-Jews would die or flee or prostrate themselves, as they had during the nearly quarter-century of Israel's last occupation, from 1978 to 2000. Observing the war in Beirut after the first week of bombing, describing the murder in an Israeli bombing raid of four Lebanese army logistics techs who had been mending power and water lines "to keep Beirut alive," British correspondent Robert Fisk wrote that it dawned on him that what Israel intended was that "Beirut is to die . . . . No one is to be allowed to keep Beirut alive." Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz (the man who four years ago when he headed the Israeli Air Force said he felt no psychological discomfort after one of his F-16s had dropped a one-ton bomb on an apartment building in Gaza in the middle of the night, killing 14 civilians, mostly children) pledged at the start of the Lebanon assault to take Lebanon back 20 years; 20 years ago Lebanon was not alive, its southern third occupied by Israel, the remainder a decade into a hopelessly destructive civil war.
The cluster bombs are a certain sign of Israel's intent to remake Lebanon, at least southern Lebanon, into a region cleansed of its Arab population and unable to function except at Israel's mercy. Cluster bombs, of which Israel's U.S. provider is the world's leading manufacturer (and user, in places like Yugoslavia and Iraq), explode in mid-flight and scatter hundreds of small bombs over a several-acre area. Up to one-quarter of the bomblets fail to explode on impact and are left to be found by unsuspecting civilians returning to their homes. UN surveyors estimate that there are as many as 100,000 unexploded cluster bomblets strewn around in 400 bomb-strike sites in southern Lebanon. Scores of Lebanese children and adults have been killed and injured by this unexploded ordnance since the cease-fire last month.
Laying anti-personnel munitions in heavily populated civilian areas is not the surgical targeting of a military force in pursuit of military objectives; it is ethnic cleansing. Fully 90 percent of Israel's cluster-bomb strikes were conducted, according to UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egelund, in the last 72 hours before the cease-fire took effect, when it was apparent that a UN cease-fire resolution was in the works. This can only have been a further effort, no doubt intended to be more or less a coup de grace, to depopulate the area. Added to the preceding month of bombing attacks that destroyed as much as 50 or in some cases 80 percent of the homes in many villages, that did vast damage to the nation's entire civilian infrastructure, that crippled a coastal power plant that continues to spill tons of oil and benzene-laden toxins along the Lebanese and part of the Syrian coastlines, and that killed over 1,000 civilians in residential apartment blocks, being transported in ambulances, and fleeing in cars flying white flags, Israel's war can only be interpreted as a massiv act of ethnic cleansing, to keep the region safe for Jewish dominion.
In fact, approximately 250,000 people, by UN estimate, are unable to return to their homes because either the homes have been leveled or unexploded cluster bomblets and other ordnance have not yet been cleared by demining teams. This was not a war against Hizbullah, except incidentally. It was not a war against terror, as Israel and its U.S. acolytes would have us believe (indeed, Hizbullah was not conducting terrorist acts, but had been engaged in a sporadic series of military exchanges with Israeli forces along the border, usually initiated by Israel). This was a war for Israeli breathing space, for the absolute certainty that Israel would dominate the neighborhood. It was a war against a population that was not totally subservient, that had the audacity to harbor a force like Hizbullah that does not bow to Israel's will. It was a war on people and their way of thinking, people who are not Jewish and who do not act to promote Zionism and Jewish hegemony.
Israel has been doing this to its neighbors in one form or another since its creation. Palestinians have obviously been Zionism's longest suffering victims, and its most persistent opponents. The Zionists thought they had rid themselves of their most immediate problem, the problem at the very core of Zionism, in 1948 when they forced the flight of nearly two-thirds of the Palestinian population that stood in the way of a establishing Israel as an exclusive Jewish-majority state. You can't have a Jewish state if most of your population is not Jewish. Nineteen years later, when Israel began to expand its borders with the capture of the West Bank and Gaza, those Palestinians who it thought had disappeared turned out to be still around after all, threatening the Zionists' Jewish hegemony.
In the nearly 40 years since then, Israeli policy has been largely directed -- with periodic time-outs for attacks on Lebanon -- toward making the Palestinians disappear for certain. The methods of ethnic cleansing are myriad: land theft, destruction of agricultural land and resources, economic strangulation, crippling restrictions on commerce, home demolition, residency permit revocation, outright deportation, arrest, assassination, family separation, movement restriction, destruction of census and land ownership records, theft of tax monies, starvation. Israel wants all of the land of Palestine, including all of the West Bank and Gaza, but it cannot have a majority Jewish state in all of this land as long as the Palestinians are there. Hence the slow strangulation. In Gaza, where almost a million and a half people are crammed into an area less than one-tenth the size of Rhode Island, Israel is doing on a continuing basis what it did in Lebanon in a month's time -- killing civilians, destroying civilian infrastructure, making the place uninhabitable. Palestinians in Gaza are being murdered at the rate of eight a day. Maimings come at a higher rate. Such is the value of non-Jewish life in the Zionist scheme of things.
Israeli scholar Ilan Pappe calls it a slow genocide (ElectronicIntifada, September 2, 2006). Since 1948, every Palestinian act of resistance to Israeli oppression has been a further excuse for Israel to implement an ethnic cleansing policy, a phenomenon so inevitable and accepted in Israel that Pappe says "the daily business of slaying Palestinians, mainly children, is now reported in the internal pages of the local press, quite often in microscopic fonts." His prediction is that continued killing at this level either will produce a mass eviction or, if the Palestinians remain steadfast and continue to resist, as is far more likely, will result in an increasing level of killing. Pappe recalls that the world absolved Israel of responsibility and any accountability for its 1948 act of ethnic cleansing, allowing Israel to turn this policy "into a legitimate tool for its national security agenda." If the world remains silent again in response to the current round of ethnic cleansing, the policy will only escalate, "even more drastically."
And here is the crux of the situation today. Will anyone notice this horror? Has Israel, as proposed at the beginning, truly exposed by its wild summer campaign of ethnic cleansing in Lebanon and Gaza the total bankruptcy of its very founding idea, the essential illegitimacy of the Zionist principle of Jewish exclusivity? Can even the most deluded see this, or will they continue to be deluded and the world continue to turn away, excusing atrocity because it is committed by Israel in the name of keeping the neighborhood safe for Jews?
Since Israel's crazed run through Lebanon began, numerous clear-eyed observers in the alternative and the European and Arab media have noted the new moral nudity of Israel, and of its U.S. backer, with an unusual degree of bluntness. Also on many tongues is a new awareness of growing Arab and Muslim resistance to the staggering viciousness of Israeli-U.S. actions. Palestinian-British scholar Karma Nabulsi, writing in the Guardian in early August, laments the "indiscriminate wrath of an enemy driven by an existential mania that cannot be assuaged, only stopped." American scholar Virginia Tilley (Counterpunch, August 5, 2006) observes that any kind of normal, peaceful existence is anathema to Israel, for it "must see and treat its neighbors as an existential threat in order to justify . . . its ethnic/racial character." Even before the Lebanon war, but after Gaza had begun to be starved, political economist Edward Herman (Z Magazine, March 2006)condemned Israel's "long-term ethnic cleansing and institutionalized racism" and the hypocritical way in which the West and the western media accept and underwrite these policies "in violation of all purported enlightenment values."
Racism underlies the Israeli-U.S. neocon axis that is currently running amok in the Middle East. The inherent racism of Zionism has found a natural ally in the racist imperial philosophy espoused by the neoconservatives of the Bush administration. The ultimate logic of the Israeli-U.S. global war, writes Israeli activist Michel Warschawski of the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem (July 30, 2006) is the "full ethnicization" of all conflicts, "in which one is not fighting a policy, a government or specific targets, but a 'threat' identified with a community" -- or, in Israel's case, with all non-Jewish communities.
The basically racist notion of a clash of civilizations, being promoted both by the Bush administration and by Israel, provides the rationale for the assaults on Palestine and Lebanon. As Azmi Bishara, a leading Palestinian member of Israel's Knesset, has observed (al-Ahram, August 10-16, 2006), if the Israeli-U.S. argument that the world is divided into two distinct and incompatible cultures, us vs. them, is accurate, then the notion that "we" operate by a double standard loses all moral opprobrium, for it becomes the natural order of things. This has always been Israel's natural order of things: in Israel's world and that of its U.S. supporters, the idea that Jews and the Jewish culture are superior to and incompatible with surrounding peoples and cultures is the very basis of the state.
In the wake of Israel's failure in Lebanon, Arabs and Muslims have a sense, for the first time since Israel's implantation in the heart of the Arab Middle East almost 60 years ago, that Israel in its arrogance has badly overreached and that its power and its reach can be limited. The "ethnicization" of the global conflict that Michel Warschawski speaks of -- the arrogant colonial approach of old, now in a new high-tech guise backed by F-16s and nuclear weapons, that assumes Western and Israeli superiority and posits a kind of apocalyptic clash between the "civilized" West and a backward, enraged East -- has been seen for what it is because of Israel's mad assault on Lebanon. What it is is a crude racist assertion of power by a Zionist regime pursuing absolute, unchallenged regional hegemony and a neoconservative regime in the United States pursuing absolute, unchallenged global hegemony. As Palestinian commentator Rami Khouri observed in an interview with Charlie Rose a week into the Lebanon war, Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, having both grown out of earlier Israeli wars of hegemony, are the political response of populations "that have been degraded and occupied and bombed and killed and humiliated repeatedly by the Israelis, and often with the direct or indirect acquiescence, or, as we see now, the direct support of the United States."
Those oppressed populations are now fighting back. No matter how much Arab leaders in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia may bow to the U.S. and Israel, the Arab people now recognize the fundamental weakness of Israel's race-based culture and polity and have a growing confidence that they can ultimately defeat it. The Palestinians in particular have been at this for 60 years, never disappearing despite Israel's best designs, never failing to remind Israel and the world of their existence. They will not succumb now, and the rest of the Arab world is taking heart from their endurance and Hizbullah's.
Something in the way Israel operates, and in the way the United States supports Israel's method of operating, must change. More and more commentators, inside the Arab world and outside, have begun to notice this, and a striking number are audacious enough to predict some sort of end to Zionism in the racist, exclusivist form in which it now exists and functions. This does not mean throwing the Jews into the sea. Israel will not be defeated militarily. But it can be defeated psychologically, which means putting limits on its hegemony, stopping its marauding advance through its neighborhood, ending Jewish racial/religious domination over other peoples.
Rami Khouri contends that the much greater public support throughout the Arab world for Hizbullah and Hamas is "a catastrophe" both for Israel and for the United States because it means resistance to their imperial designs. Khouri does not go further in his predictions, but others do, seeing at least in vague outline the vision of a future in which Israel no longer enjoys ultimate dominion. Gilad Atzmon, an ex-Israeli living in Britain, a jazz musician and thinker, sees Hizbullah's victory in Lebanon as signaling the defeat of what he calls global Zionism, by which he means the Israeli/U.S. neocon axis. It is the Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghani, and Iranian people, he says, who are "at the vanguard of the war for humanity and humanism," while Israel and the U.S. spread destruction and death, and more and more Europeans and Americans, recognizing this, are falling off the Zionist/neocon bandwagon. Atzmon talks about Israel as, ultimately, "an historic event" and a "dead entity."
Many others see similar visions. Commentators increasingly discuss the possibility of Israel, its myth of invincibility having been deflated, going through a South Africa-like epiphany, in which its leadership somehow recognizes the error of its racist ways and in a surge of humanitarian feeling renounces Zionism's inequities and agrees that Jews and Palestinians should live in equality in a unitary state. British MP George Galloway (Guardian, August 31, 2006) foresees the possibility of "an FW de Klerk moment" emerging in Israel and among its international backers when, as occurred in South Africa, a "critical mass of opposition" overwhelms the position of the previously invincible minority and the leadership is able to justify transferring power on the basis that doing so later under duress will be far less favorable. Short of such peaceful transition, along with a move to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Galloway along with many others -- sees only "war, war and more war, until one day it is Tel Aviv which is on fire and the Israeli leaders' intransigence brings the whole state down on their heads."
This increasingly appears to be the shape of the future: either Israel and its neocon supporters in the United States can dismantle Zionism's most egregious aspects by agreeing to establish a unitary state in Palestine inhabited by the Palestinians and Jews whose land this is, or the world will face a conflagration of a scale not fully imaginable now.
Just as Hizbullah is an integral part of Lebanon, not to be destroyed by the bombing of bridges and power plants, the Palestinians before their expulsion in 1948 were Palestine and still are Palestine. By hitting the Palestinians where they lived, in the literal and the colloquial sense, Israel left them with only a goal and a vision. That vision is justice and redress in some form, whether redress means ultimately defeating Zionism and taking back Palestine, or reconciling with Israel on the condition that it act like a decent neighbor and not a conqueror, or finally joining with Israeli Jews to form a single state in which no people has superior rights . In Lebanon, Israel again seemed bent on imposing its will, its dominion, its culture and ethnicity on another Arab country. It never worked in Palestine, it has not worked in Lebanon, and it will not work anywhere in the Arab world.
We have reached a moral crossroads. In the "new Middle East" defined by Israel, Bush, and the neocons, only Israel and the U.S. may dominate, only they may be strong, only they may be secure. But in the just world that lies on the other side of that crossroads, this is unacceptable. Justice can ultimately prevail.
Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.
Cuban-American terrorists negotiate with prosecutors
CUBAN-American terrorists Santiago Alvarez and Osvaldo Mitat pleaded guilty yesterday, September 11, in Fort Lauderdale, to charges of illegal weapons possession, after suddenly negotiating a deal with federal prosecutors to avoid a risky jury trial outside the mafia sanctuary of Miami.
The plea deal reduces the number of charges from three to one, throwing out a charge of arms trafficking that would have carried a 20-year prison term.
Alvarez and Mitat could still remain behind bars for several more years, however, given that the prosecution is seeking a five-year sentence.
The brusque change in legal strategy for the two criminals clearly shows that the Cuban-American mafia considers Miami to be a territory that it dominates sufficiently to manipulate a jury and impose its will.
It implicitly proves correct the lawyers of the Cuban Five who, precisely, say that an impartial trial for them is impossible in Florida.
For two months, lawyers for Alvarez and Mitat unsuccessfully tried to obtain a change of venue, which was repeatedly denied by Judge James Cohn.
According to local press reports, prosecutors intended to show that in 2001, Alvarez financed a terrorist infiltration into Cuba, which had as one of its missions the bombing of the well-known Tropicana nightclub when it was full of people. However, the Cuban-American terrorists Alvarez and Mitat, benefiting from a suspicious immunity granted by President George W. Bush, were not charged with conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism.
Their sentences will be announced on November 14. (J-G.A.)
Israeli Defense Force commander: We fired more than a million cluster bombs in Lebanon
By Meron Rappaport
"What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs," the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war.
Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets.
In addition, soldiers in IDF artillery units testified that the army used phosphorous shells during the war, widely forbidden by international law. According to their claims, the vast majority of said explosive ordinance was fired in the final 10 days of the war.
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The rocket unit commander stated that Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) platforms were heavily used in spite of the fact that they were known to be highly inaccurate.
MLRS is a track or tire carried mobile rocket launching platform, capable of firing a very high volume of mostly unguided munitions. The basic rocket fired by the platform is unguided and imprecise, with a range of about 32 kilometers. The rockets are designed to burst into sub-munitions at a planned altitude in order to blanket enemy army and personnel on the ground with smaller explosive rounds.
The use of such weaponry is controversial mainly due to its inaccuracy and ability to wreak great havoc against indeterminate targets over large areas of territory, with a margin of error of as much as 1,200 meters from the intended target to the area hit.
The cluster rounds which don't detonate on impact, believed by the United Nations to be around 40% of those fired by the IDF in Lebanon, remain on the ground as unexploded munitions, effectively littering the landscape with thousands of land mines which will continue to claim victims long after the war has ended.
Because of their high level of failure to detonate, it is believed that there are around 500,000 unexploded munitions on the ground in Lebanon. To date 12 Lebanese civilians have been killed by these mines since the end of the war.
According to the commander, in order to compensate for the inaccuracy of the rockets and the inability to strike individual targets precisely, units would "flood" the battlefield with munitions, accounting for the littered and explosive landscape of post-war Lebanon.
When his reserve duty came to a close, the commander in question sent a letter to Defense Minister Amir Peretz outlining the use of cluster munitions, a letter which has remained unanswered.
'Excessive injury and unnecessary suffering'
It has come to light that IDF soldiers fired phosphorous rounds in order to cause fires in Lebanon. An artillery commander has admitted to seeing trucks loaded with phosphorous rounds on their way to artillery crews in the north of Israel.
A direct hit from a phosphorous shell typically causes severe burns and a slow, painful death.
International law forbids the use of weapons that cause "excessive injury and unnecessary suffering", and many experts are of the opinion that phosphorous rounds fall directly in that category.
The International Red Cross has determined that international law forbids the use of phosphorous and other types of flammable rounds against personnel, both civilian and military.
IDF: No violation of international law
In response, the IDF Spokesman's Office stated that "International law does not include a sweeping prohibition of the use of cluster bombs. The convention on conventional weaponry does not declare a prohibition on [phosphorous weapons], rather, on principles regulating the use of such weapons.
"For understandable operational reasons, the IDF does not respond to [accounts of] details of weaponry in its possession.
"The IDF makes use only of methods and weaponry which are permissible under international law. Artillery fire in general, including MLRS fire, were used in response solely to firing on the state of Israel."
The Defense Minister's office said it had not received messages regarding cluster bomb fire.
Monday, September 11, 2006
The other September 11 By Pepe Escobar
SANTIAGO, Chile - You don't need an Osama bin Laden to pull a September 11. Forget Boeings-turned-into-missiles crashing into twin towers. Switch for a moment to four military planes bombing a presidential palace - and replay a different September 11 movie starring Dick and Henry. "Dick", of course, is the late US president Richard Nixon. "Henry" was his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. Foreign policy-wise, it's quite an enlightening plot.
Scene 1: Washington, the Oval Office, September 1970. Dr Salvador Allende, a man of culture, grand bourgeois and charismatic founder of the Socialist Party, has just won the presidential election in Chile fair and square, with 36.22% of the votes. Nixon and Kissinger receive Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Richard Helms. Nixon tells Helms, according to Kissinger, that he wants "a major effort to see what could be done to prevent Allende's accession to power. If there were one chance in 10 of getting rid of Allende, we should try it."
Scene 2: Santiago, La Moneda Palace, September 11 of the year 1973, 8am. Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile, is worried about a general called Augusto Pinochet. Radio stations are mute. The navy has taken over Valparaiso - where the president was born. But he worries about his new army commander, chosen less than three weeks ago: "Poor Pinochet, he must have been arrested ..."
General Pinochet is far from arrested: he is conducting a coup. Troops march over Santiago. At 8.30am a solemn military declaration makes treason official. Tanks roll into the city center. At noon, four Stuka planes destroy Allende's private residence on Tomas Moro Street and bomb La Moneda Palace. The president chooses resistance, fighting the troops surrounding the palace and spurning offers of a plane for himself and his family to leave the country. When his capture is imminent, Allende presses his chin against the AK-47 that Cuban leader Fidel Castro gave him, and fires. At 2pm, the military junta takes power. Systematic arrests, torture and executions start almost immediately.
Between these two scenes is the story of a coup that unfolded in slow motion for virtually three years. The United States was still embroiled in Vietnam. Nixon's policy for the whole of Latin America was one word short of "war on terror": "to prevent another Cuba". Nixon simply could not tolerate "that bastard Allende" (in his own words). Chile had the largest copper reserves in the world. Allende was about to nationalize Chilean copper - thus sabotaging the monstrous US corporate profits of Anaconda Copper Mining Co and Kennecott Copper Co, which had been bleeding the country for decades.
The Chilean-destabilization strategy, presided over in detail by Kissinger, developed into a series of operations called Track 1 and Track 2. The CIA tried to stage a coup even before Allende's inauguration on November 1970, giving US$50,000 to a crypto-Nazi gang to kill chief of staff General Rene Schneider on October 22, and bribing generals and admirals. It didn't work.
Allende wanted to develop "a peaceful Chilean way towards socialism". He was elected by workers, peasants and the marginalized, urban lower classes. Educated urban youth celebrated the "socialism of red wine and empanadas" (stuffed pastry). But Washington would prevent any turn to the left by devastating the Chilean economy, deploying mass bribery, spying and blackmail.
Allende in fact was a moderate compared with Chilean popular movements further to the left that occupied factories, lands or just property (1,278 occupations in 1971 alone). Then strikes started to spread (3,200 in 1972). Industrialists sabotaged production. No one could explain how Chilean credit was suddenly cut off in international markets. Loans were suspended.
The CIA, apart from non-stop sabotage, financed strategic strikes - doctors, bank clerks, a very long truck drivers' strike. Conservative newspapers conducted a non-stop vicious disinformation campaign. There were coup rehearsals. And political chaos compounded economic chaos: the Christian Democrats - the centrists - ended up joining the right and the extreme right against Allende.
Nixon got exactly what he wanted. On September 11, US Navy ships monitored all Chilean military bases to warn the plotters about who might be supporting Allende. Pinochet took over and entered history as the definitive, sinister Latin American dictator from central casting.
Dictatorship in Chile coincided with the ascension of neo-liberalism (which in the 1990s would be remixed as "globalization"). Chileans with scholarships had been a fixture of the University of Chicago for years. The charter of neo-liberalism - and Pinochet's Holy Economic Grail - was written by two of them, Sergio de Castro and Arturo Fontaine. Afterward, it was classic division of labor: the armed forces killed while the "Chicago boys" applied neo-liberal economic policies. Military repression assured economic "freedom".
Some other dictators were in place before Pinochet, more were to follow. By the mid-1970s, six US-backed South American dictatorships - Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay - were united in deep secret under the infamous, transnational Operation Condor, a Latino war "of" terror eliminating everyone who was or might become a political adversary.
Condor had two key players: Pinochet in Chile (who kept Condor's centralized computers) and Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay (he died this year in Brazil). The Pinochet regime kept a small lab for the fabrication of botulism soup and nerve gas - which were and remain certified weapons of mass destruction; the chemist responsible later escaped to Uruguay and was assassinated. Orlando Letelier, Chile's ambassador to Washington under Allende in 1970-72, was assassinated under Condor. Who cared? Military fascism was Washington's daily special, every single day.
Pinochet and Condor, in Chile, were responsible for as many victims as September 11: about 3,000, including 1,198 "disappeared". In Argentina, there were officially at least 10,000 dead: for human-rights organizations there were more than 30,000 dead and "disappeared". In Paraguay, there were at least 2,000 dead; in Bolivia at least 350 dead and "disappeared", in Brazil almost 300, in Uruguay almost 200. Families of the "disappeared" are convinced Kissinger knew about everything. He will take his secrets to the grave, as will model dictator Pinochet - who still refuses to die.
Behind the rebuilt La Moneda palace in central Santiago, facing the Ministry of Justice building, there is a statue of Allende. Underneath, the words: "I have faith in Chile and its destiny." These were his last words before he committed suicide, instead of becoming a hostage on South America's September 11.
Scene 1: Washington, the Oval Office, September 1970. Dr Salvador Allende, a man of culture, grand bourgeois and charismatic founder of the Socialist Party, has just won the presidential election in Chile fair and square, with 36.22% of the votes. Nixon and Kissinger receive Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Richard Helms. Nixon tells Helms, according to Kissinger, that he wants "a major effort to see what could be done to prevent Allende's accession to power. If there were one chance in 10 of getting rid of Allende, we should try it."
Scene 2: Santiago, La Moneda Palace, September 11 of the year 1973, 8am. Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile, is worried about a general called Augusto Pinochet. Radio stations are mute. The navy has taken over Valparaiso - where the president was born. But he worries about his new army commander, chosen less than three weeks ago: "Poor Pinochet, he must have been arrested ..."
General Pinochet is far from arrested: he is conducting a coup. Troops march over Santiago. At 8.30am a solemn military declaration makes treason official. Tanks roll into the city center. At noon, four Stuka planes destroy Allende's private residence on Tomas Moro Street and bomb La Moneda Palace. The president chooses resistance, fighting the troops surrounding the palace and spurning offers of a plane for himself and his family to leave the country. When his capture is imminent, Allende presses his chin against the AK-47 that Cuban leader Fidel Castro gave him, and fires. At 2pm, the military junta takes power. Systematic arrests, torture and executions start almost immediately.
Between these two scenes is the story of a coup that unfolded in slow motion for virtually three years. The United States was still embroiled in Vietnam. Nixon's policy for the whole of Latin America was one word short of "war on terror": "to prevent another Cuba". Nixon simply could not tolerate "that bastard Allende" (in his own words). Chile had the largest copper reserves in the world. Allende was about to nationalize Chilean copper - thus sabotaging the monstrous US corporate profits of Anaconda Copper Mining Co and Kennecott Copper Co, which had been bleeding the country for decades.
The Chilean-destabilization strategy, presided over in detail by Kissinger, developed into a series of operations called Track 1 and Track 2. The CIA tried to stage a coup even before Allende's inauguration on November 1970, giving US$50,000 to a crypto-Nazi gang to kill chief of staff General Rene Schneider on October 22, and bribing generals and admirals. It didn't work.
Allende wanted to develop "a peaceful Chilean way towards socialism". He was elected by workers, peasants and the marginalized, urban lower classes. Educated urban youth celebrated the "socialism of red wine and empanadas" (stuffed pastry). But Washington would prevent any turn to the left by devastating the Chilean economy, deploying mass bribery, spying and blackmail.
Allende in fact was a moderate compared with Chilean popular movements further to the left that occupied factories, lands or just property (1,278 occupations in 1971 alone). Then strikes started to spread (3,200 in 1972). Industrialists sabotaged production. No one could explain how Chilean credit was suddenly cut off in international markets. Loans were suspended.
The CIA, apart from non-stop sabotage, financed strategic strikes - doctors, bank clerks, a very long truck drivers' strike. Conservative newspapers conducted a non-stop vicious disinformation campaign. There were coup rehearsals. And political chaos compounded economic chaos: the Christian Democrats - the centrists - ended up joining the right and the extreme right against Allende.
Nixon got exactly what he wanted. On September 11, US Navy ships monitored all Chilean military bases to warn the plotters about who might be supporting Allende. Pinochet took over and entered history as the definitive, sinister Latin American dictator from central casting.
Dictatorship in Chile coincided with the ascension of neo-liberalism (which in the 1990s would be remixed as "globalization"). Chileans with scholarships had been a fixture of the University of Chicago for years. The charter of neo-liberalism - and Pinochet's Holy Economic Grail - was written by two of them, Sergio de Castro and Arturo Fontaine. Afterward, it was classic division of labor: the armed forces killed while the "Chicago boys" applied neo-liberal economic policies. Military repression assured economic "freedom".
Some other dictators were in place before Pinochet, more were to follow. By the mid-1970s, six US-backed South American dictatorships - Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay - were united in deep secret under the infamous, transnational Operation Condor, a Latino war "of" terror eliminating everyone who was or might become a political adversary.
Condor had two key players: Pinochet in Chile (who kept Condor's centralized computers) and Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay (he died this year in Brazil). The Pinochet regime kept a small lab for the fabrication of botulism soup and nerve gas - which were and remain certified weapons of mass destruction; the chemist responsible later escaped to Uruguay and was assassinated. Orlando Letelier, Chile's ambassador to Washington under Allende in 1970-72, was assassinated under Condor. Who cared? Military fascism was Washington's daily special, every single day.
Pinochet and Condor, in Chile, were responsible for as many victims as September 11: about 3,000, including 1,198 "disappeared". In Argentina, there were officially at least 10,000 dead: for human-rights organizations there were more than 30,000 dead and "disappeared". In Paraguay, there were at least 2,000 dead; in Bolivia at least 350 dead and "disappeared", in Brazil almost 300, in Uruguay almost 200. Families of the "disappeared" are convinced Kissinger knew about everything. He will take his secrets to the grave, as will model dictator Pinochet - who still refuses to die.
Behind the rebuilt La Moneda palace in central Santiago, facing the Ministry of Justice building, there is a statue of Allende. Underneath, the words: "I have faith in Chile and its destiny." These were his last words before he committed suicide, instead of becoming a hostage on South America's September 11.
Gore Vidal: America's warrior nation - The legacy of 9/11
The shortcomings of the American leader were alarmingly exposed on the day the terrorists struck. He and his acolytes are now leading their empire towards permanent conflict with lslam
By Gore Vidal
09/10/06 "The Independent" -- -- What a difference five years have made! The greatest nation in the country, as an American statesman once termed us, was attacked by a dozen or so Saudi Arabians who had, with astonishing ease, hijacked several airliners and flew two of them into a pair of New York skyscrapers as well as another into one of the five sides of the Pentagon at Washington, the heart of the greatest, most expensive military machine the world has ever known. I watched all this on CNN; in Italy where I then lived. The visual shock was great, of course. Particularly when our little president was discovered by the ubiquitous TV camera in a Florida school where he was reading to his peers from "The Pet Goat", an inspirational tale calculated to encourage small Americans to stand tall: "like", as he would put it, "they should." An aide interrupts the reading; murmurs something in the presidential ear: the presidential eyes widen. A moment akin to the Confederacy firing on Fort Sumter, or the Japanese sinking the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. Two tall presidents were, happily for us, in office at those times. Lincoln acted with characteristic guile while Roosevelt, thundering anathema as Pontifex Maximus, flung open the doors of the temple of Janus and so the war that would bring us a global empire began while that of the Japanese sun goddess ended. What then did our very own Romulus Augustulus do during the rest of September 11th? He read some more of "The Pet Goat", knowing that his puppet-meister, vice president Cheney, was safely embedded in some secret spot. Then the little emperor was hustled away in Air Force One for a tour of our most luxurious bunkers where he might avoid the attentions of new attackers, should they come.
What, someone asked, was my first response. Amazement at how little protected we were despite all the megalomaniacal posturings during that cold war deliberately set in motion by Harry S (for nothing, as he liked to say) Truman a half century ago with a son et lumière celebration at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is still not known to the American public that every single important commander of World War Two from General Eisenhower in Europe to Admiral Nimitz in the Pacific pleaded with our first really small president not to atomise two cities of a defeated nation desperately trying to surrender. But Truman, and his Metternich, Dean Acheson, wanted to replace Hitler and Fascism with Stalin and Communism. It was under Truman that the ever greater lie came into its glittering own. Despite the unanimous objections of the American military, Truman insisted on dropping two nuclear bombs. I was serving in the Pacific theatre of operations at the time and we were assured, along with the rest of the world, that one million of us would die in the coming invasion of Japan. Did we love the Bomb? Yes, we did. But little did we know that, had we invaded as originally planned, there was no way that we would have encountered the survivors of the Japanese army on the mainland of Asia as they did not have sufficient transport to return to their home islands.
I think it was Vico who noted that busy republics tend to turn themselves into empires. Certainly, the French intellectual godfather to the American republic, Montesquieu, warned that republics which took the empire route would cease to be republics altogether while Vico, in his cyclic view of human societies, saw imperial republics evolving into dictatorships, chaos, barbarism. In the last five years American behaviour in the Middle East has been barbarous and will not soon be forgiven. Meanwhile, the gas-oil junta has hijacked the old American republic through the artful use of great quantities of corporate and church cash in order to falsify the electoral tallies of easily hacked electronic voting machinery; means now exist to nullify or alter any election returns as happened in Florida 2000; in Ohio 2004.
There is a good deal of grim comedy in the words if not the current deeds of the little president. Although he and his co-conspirators relish the use of the big lie (eg turning the dull but genuine war hero John Kerry into a cowardly fraud while ignoring the slackerdom of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld who proudly fought in none of our many wars). Now in an attempt to avoid blame for the Iraq war and further confuse the world about why Iran and Syria must be destroyed Old Rumsfeld and Old Cheney are trotting out dim garbled images of Hitler and appeasement as they pretend that the anti-war American majority favours Islamic fascism. They pretend terrorism is a demonic person. And if we don't stop him in Tehran we'll have to stop him here. This is ludicrous; unfortunately the junta is as ignorant of history and geography as they believe the public to be. Meanwhile, the little president worries about his "legacy" in the history books. But should he get World War Three going there might not be any more history books, a relief to a non-reader like himself, though, lately, he tells us that he is reading Camus and "three Shakespeares". No doubt tragedies. As we know, he lies with zest yet he was actually revealed reading "The Pet Goat" on television and the Greek word for goat is the same as the word for tragedy. If this is code, I am beginning to suspect him of irony, a fatal flaw in Freedom's home. After all, on his first trip to New Orleans, he promised to restore the drowned city. But, as usual, nothing was done. Then this August 29 he was back in town to reassure high school students: "I've come back to New Orleans to tell you the words that I spoke on Jackson Square are just as true today as they were then." And so, of course, they were! Meanwhile, one hopes that some noble humanitarian will finally shut the doors of the temple of Janus which have not been shut since December of 1941 when we went from one war to another and another without a pause - or thought.
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
By Gore Vidal
09/10/06 "The Independent" -- -- What a difference five years have made! The greatest nation in the country, as an American statesman once termed us, was attacked by a dozen or so Saudi Arabians who had, with astonishing ease, hijacked several airliners and flew two of them into a pair of New York skyscrapers as well as another into one of the five sides of the Pentagon at Washington, the heart of the greatest, most expensive military machine the world has ever known. I watched all this on CNN; in Italy where I then lived. The visual shock was great, of course. Particularly when our little president was discovered by the ubiquitous TV camera in a Florida school where he was reading to his peers from "The Pet Goat", an inspirational tale calculated to encourage small Americans to stand tall: "like", as he would put it, "they should." An aide interrupts the reading; murmurs something in the presidential ear: the presidential eyes widen. A moment akin to the Confederacy firing on Fort Sumter, or the Japanese sinking the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. Two tall presidents were, happily for us, in office at those times. Lincoln acted with characteristic guile while Roosevelt, thundering anathema as Pontifex Maximus, flung open the doors of the temple of Janus and so the war that would bring us a global empire began while that of the Japanese sun goddess ended. What then did our very own Romulus Augustulus do during the rest of September 11th? He read some more of "The Pet Goat", knowing that his puppet-meister, vice president Cheney, was safely embedded in some secret spot. Then the little emperor was hustled away in Air Force One for a tour of our most luxurious bunkers where he might avoid the attentions of new attackers, should they come.
What, someone asked, was my first response. Amazement at how little protected we were despite all the megalomaniacal posturings during that cold war deliberately set in motion by Harry S (for nothing, as he liked to say) Truman a half century ago with a son et lumière celebration at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is still not known to the American public that every single important commander of World War Two from General Eisenhower in Europe to Admiral Nimitz in the Pacific pleaded with our first really small president not to atomise two cities of a defeated nation desperately trying to surrender. But Truman, and his Metternich, Dean Acheson, wanted to replace Hitler and Fascism with Stalin and Communism. It was under Truman that the ever greater lie came into its glittering own. Despite the unanimous objections of the American military, Truman insisted on dropping two nuclear bombs. I was serving in the Pacific theatre of operations at the time and we were assured, along with the rest of the world, that one million of us would die in the coming invasion of Japan. Did we love the Bomb? Yes, we did. But little did we know that, had we invaded as originally planned, there was no way that we would have encountered the survivors of the Japanese army on the mainland of Asia as they did not have sufficient transport to return to their home islands.
I think it was Vico who noted that busy republics tend to turn themselves into empires. Certainly, the French intellectual godfather to the American republic, Montesquieu, warned that republics which took the empire route would cease to be republics altogether while Vico, in his cyclic view of human societies, saw imperial republics evolving into dictatorships, chaos, barbarism. In the last five years American behaviour in the Middle East has been barbarous and will not soon be forgiven. Meanwhile, the gas-oil junta has hijacked the old American republic through the artful use of great quantities of corporate and church cash in order to falsify the electoral tallies of easily hacked electronic voting machinery; means now exist to nullify or alter any election returns as happened in Florida 2000; in Ohio 2004.
There is a good deal of grim comedy in the words if not the current deeds of the little president. Although he and his co-conspirators relish the use of the big lie (eg turning the dull but genuine war hero John Kerry into a cowardly fraud while ignoring the slackerdom of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld who proudly fought in none of our many wars). Now in an attempt to avoid blame for the Iraq war and further confuse the world about why Iran and Syria must be destroyed Old Rumsfeld and Old Cheney are trotting out dim garbled images of Hitler and appeasement as they pretend that the anti-war American majority favours Islamic fascism. They pretend terrorism is a demonic person. And if we don't stop him in Tehran we'll have to stop him here. This is ludicrous; unfortunately the junta is as ignorant of history and geography as they believe the public to be. Meanwhile, the little president worries about his "legacy" in the history books. But should he get World War Three going there might not be any more history books, a relief to a non-reader like himself, though, lately, he tells us that he is reading Camus and "three Shakespeares". No doubt tragedies. As we know, he lies with zest yet he was actually revealed reading "The Pet Goat" on television and the Greek word for goat is the same as the word for tragedy. If this is code, I am beginning to suspect him of irony, a fatal flaw in Freedom's home. After all, on his first trip to New Orleans, he promised to restore the drowned city. But, as usual, nothing was done. Then this August 29 he was back in town to reassure high school students: "I've come back to New Orleans to tell you the words that I spoke on Jackson Square are just as true today as they were then." And so, of course, they were! Meanwhile, one hopes that some noble humanitarian will finally shut the doors of the temple of Janus which have not been shut since December of 1941 when we went from one war to another and another without a pause - or thought.
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Veteran social activist Tom Hayden interviews Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon
A Top Cuban Leader Thinks Out Loud
Veteran social activist Tom Hayden interviews Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon
Veteran social activist Tom Hayden interviews Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon
by Tom Hayden
September 10, 2006
Truthdig
'Let's try to imagine what Karl Marx would be doing today.'
It was Sunday, May 21st, and my host posing the question was Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly. It was Alarcon's 69th birthday, and I was having difficulty understanding why he had pressed me to fly down for a visit. The purpose was nothing more than 'two old guys talking,' according to his daughter Maggie, a thirty-something single mom and formidable interpreter of Cuba to many North Americans.
Looking back today, I don't know whether or not Alarcon already knew that his longtime comrade Fidel was diagnosed as needing serious surgery. The question would become a 'state secret,' at Castro's wish. Alarcon is third in line to succeed Fidel after Raul Castro, although it is more likely Alarcon will blend into a collective transitional team.
The prospect of three days' conversation with Ricardo Alarcon reflecting on his long revolutionary experience was too important to put off, and our interviews may be of greater value during the current rampant and reckless speculation over Fidel's status. Few individuals alive have the range of Alarcon's experience, from being a Havana student leader during the Cuban Revolution to Cuba's United Nations ambassador (1965-78 and 1990-92) to foreign minister (1992-93) and National Assembly president since 1993. And so we sat at a seaside restaurant on his birthday with daughter Maggie and his advisor, Miguel Alvarez. A Venezuelan cargo ship passed just offshore.
'I think Marx would be asking what are we doing about all the millions today who are protesting for peace and justice,' said Alarcon in answer to his question. In a recent essay on 'Marx After Marxism' he argued that Marxists should begin to see the world anew. Scoffing at neoconservatives who embrace the end of Marxism (and the end of history itself), Alarcon also emphasizes the need for 'self-critical reflection on our side as well.' In effect, he is proposing a return to the original spirit of Marx before the 20th-century revolutions in his name.
That original Marx organized an early transnational labor movement, with the central demand the eight-hour day, and wrote more theoretical works on 19th-century capitalism. According to Alarcon, that earlier Marx never meant a science-based, inevitable march to socialism based on some objective truth revealed through communist parties. That Marx was a practical revolutionary who himself famously declared 'with all naturalness,' Alarcon points out, 'I am not a Marxist.'
For Alarcon and the Cubans, history always has been contingent, subject to human will and unexpected developments, rather than an unfolding of the inevitable. After Cuba's decades of dependency on the Soviet Union during the Cold War, which caused a degree of 'subordination' to Soviet interests and 'reinforced dogmatism,' Alarcon calls for active exploration of new trends in global capitalism and its oppositional movements. 'Old dogmatists are incapable of appreciating new possibilities in the revolutionary movement,' he says.
All the talk of the United States becoming a sole superpower 'falls to pieces with its bogging down in Iraq' and the derailment of its neo-liberal agenda for Latin America, Alarcon believes.
He identifies new obstacles facing capitalist growth. Every 25 years a population equivalent to the whole planet's numbers in Marx's time is born. Alarcon believes climate changes are irreversible, forests are being transformed into deserts, cities becoming uninhabitable and, as a result, an environmental challenge to capitalism has arisen which requires rethinking of Marxist political economy.
Alarcon revises the Marxist (and Leninist) conceptions of the 19th-century proletariat accordingly. Today there are growing numbers of those from different stations of life 'who do not conform, are unsatisfied and rebel.' 'For the first time, anti-capitalist malaise is manifested, simultaneously and everywhere, in advanced countries and those left behind, and is not limited to the proletariat and other exploited sectors.' And so 'a diverse group, multicolored, in which there is no shortage of contradictions and paradoxes, grows in front of the dominant system.'
'It is not yet the rainbow that announces the end of the storm,' Alarcon says, warning that the diverse movements lack a common theory, are marked by spontaneity more often than organization, and need to develop further without either sectarian factionalism or becoming carried away.
He pauses, points an index finger for emphasis, and tells me 'the most important task for the Latin American left' is to reelect President Luiz Lula da Silva in Brazil. Having met with leftists highly critical of fiscal moderation in power, Alarcon says that 'notwithstanding his faults, if Lula is defeated, all of Latin America will be worse off.' This advice may not sit well with some radical advocates of Latin American revolution, but Alarcon takes a longer view. The recent nationalist electoral wave in Latin America-Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay, Chile, and a near-success in Mexico-inevitably brings dilemmas of governance to the forefront. But for Alarcon and Cuba, the overall changes in Latin America further a benign result, the full integration of Cuba into Latin America after decades of Cold War antagonisms. The permanent embargo by the United States makes the Cubans especially wary of any reversals in the continental process, as the defeat of Lula in the Oct. 1 election would represent.
Alarcon is pragmatic. He believes in the Cuban philosophy that 'the duty of the revolutionary is to make the revolution,' that it must be a 'heroic creation.' But he is aware, perhaps painfully, that revolutions cannot be 'imprinted or copied' and that the 'mandates' of mass movements like those that have elected Lula must be respected. 'There is no alternative in Brazil. The guys who were mad at me for saying this went to meet with the landless movement representatives in Brazil, and they told them the same thing.'
Continuing at a dinner conversation, Alarcon opined that there should be 'many forms of socialism,' depending on the needs of different countries and movements. Even the social-democratic parties, the historical rivals of the European communist parties, have an important role to play today, he said. 'I hope they go through the same sort of introspection we have,' Alarcon said, referring to the tendency of the moderate socialist parties to cut social programs and 'tail' after U.S. military and economic policies. 'I would go further,' he said. 'I don't believe that capitalism cannot be reformed. The Great Society in your country is an example.'
Alarcon seems to be hinting at a role for revolutionaries in shaping a clear alternative to global neo-liberalism, one pushed in the streets by social movements and eventually resulting in a reform of capitalism like the New Deal on a global basis. Differing with some earlier views of Third World liberation, he sees a crucial role for activists and movements inside the North American colossus itself. Whereas earlier Marxists argued that unionized workers were a 'privileged aristocracy' benefiting from the exploitation of the Third World, he says, 'they are not any longer an aristocracy. If you go to North American workers and tell them they are an aristocracy, they will say you are crazy.' He points to the 1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization, in which labor called for 'workers of the world to unite.' Marx, he says, would be 'very interested in North American workers losing jobs to India' and what that means for workers' movements.
His point is that 'the Third World [now] penetrates the First, as dramatically illustrated by the current immigration controversies, rooted as they are in the historic patterns of capitalism needing cheap labor and resources and impoverished workers needing jobs. The Empire harvests its own internal opposition from the May Day 2006 immigrant marches inside the U.S. to the growth of Islamic rage inside the ghettos of east London or housing projects on the edge of Paris.
'To free the immigrants from their exploitation becomes essential to the emancipation of the workers in the developed countries,' those who are undermined by cheap immigrant labor. 'One must help these two [groups of workers] to converge,' both to avoid an upsurge of racism and forge the basis of majority coalitions favoring reforms like a global living wage as the alternative to neo-liberalism's notorious 'race to the bottom.'
What is interesting about these words of a top Cuban leader, spoken freely and without reserve, is how far they diverge from the stereotypes of Cuba as a gray, thought-controlled Marxist dictatorship. Cuba is not a free society by measurements like multiple parties, but Cuba's people, from Alarcon to the neighborhoods, are more conversant about trends in the United States than Americans are about Cuba. The ever-tightening U.S. embargo has boomeranged into a dangerous narrowing of American thinking, demonstrated in recent weeks by one hallucination after another. For example, Sen. Mel Martinez, a Florida Republican, was seen on television several weeks ago opining that Fidel was already dead. The streets of Miami filled with cheering Cuban exiles with no way to influence the island. According to the Los Angeles Times, the 'most obvious interest [in Castro's passing] comes from the gambling and tourist industries,' which were run off the island in 1960 [July 6, 2006]. One Florida-based developer's master plan envisions 'moving out all Cubans currently living in Havana' and replacing them with Miami exiles. The U.S. government is constantly updating its official 'transition plan' to restore both free markets and the Miami exiles, with the emphasis on 'disruption of an orderly succession strategy,' according to the Congressional Research Service [Aug. 23, 2005]. Eighty million U.S. dollars was recently budgeted to support Cuba's opposition groups. 'There are no plans to reach out,' declared White House spokesman Tony Snow after Fidel was hospitalized [Miami Herald, Aug. 2, 2006].
The notion of opening a dialogue with an accomplished diplomat like Ricardo Alarcon is completely out of the question. The Helms-Burton Act forbids any negotiation or loosening of the embargo if Raul Castro remains in power after Fidel.
Voices of realism like the head of the Organization of American States (OAS), Jose Miguel Insulza, say 'there's no transition, and it's not your country' to prepare a transition for [Reuters, May 23, 2006]. 'It just drives the Bush people crazy,' says one former diplomat, referring to the fact that Cuba hasn't collapsed in accord with neoconservative wishful thinking.
The fact is that Cubans will not rise up to welcome a mass influx of mostly white, revenge-oriented exiles from Miami backed by U.S. arms. The neocon analogy with the so-called 'captive nations' of Eastern Europe doesn't fit. Despite all the Cuban people's legitimate criticisms of their government, it remains their government and they will not trade it for a U.S.- installed one. However they complain, Cubans have become more socialist in everyday life than many of them realize, as seen in their common acts of solidarity, their response to the Elian Gonzales showdown, their educational achievements, their healthcare and their social safety nets. They hardly lack for world support and, in Venezuela, have found a solid source of oil and a continental opportunity for their legions of doctors and teachers. ['In the 60s, we only had a revolutionary ideology to export, but now we have valuable human capital,' one Cuban intellectual told me.]
A persistent interest of mine is why Cuba seems to be the only country in the world without street gangs. There certainly is a black market in contraband goods, but nothing like the pandilleras found everywhere else in the Americas. Part of the reason is an extraordinary network of 28,000 social workers who persistently act on the belief that 'some morality remains in everyone,' as opposed to the 'super-predator' theories popular among the neoconservatives.
It seems evident that the Cuban people want reform of their socialist state if and when Fidel passes on, and obviously not the 'regime change' anticipated by the Miami Cubans and their Washington, D.C., patrons. They want a peaceful process controlled by Cubans, not by foreign powers. Who wouldn't? The question is whether the United States government has an interest in normalizing relations with a better, more democratic, more open but still socialist Cuba. Sadly, it is doubtful, because such a Cuba would be a triumphant example to Latin America and the world. And so the United States, along with Miami's Cubans-the armed and aggressive state within a state on American soil-hold out against the 182 nations of the world who condemn the embargo at the United Nations. In fact, our government is holding out against the desires of many of its own capitalists who hunger to invest in Cuba; even The Wall Street Journal has editorialized for repeal of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act [WSJ, Aug. 2, 2006]. A walk through Old Havana reveals some 20 new hotels and 65 restaurants, none with American investors.
Meanwhile, Ricardo Alarcon waits. He has negotiated with the United States before, in secret, during the Clinton era. He managed the Elian Gonzales crisis with aplomb. He is overseeing the case of the Cuban Five-men imprisoned in the U.S. for surveilling Miami-based exiles trying to bomb and sabotage Cuba. Alarcon is an experienced man of this world, one who could facilitate a normalization deal with the United States if ever one was on offer.
Instead, he sits for hours with the likes of me discussing the state of the revolution which he helped start over 50 years ago. He takes care of an invalid wife. He plays with his grandchild, Ricardito. He goes to dinner with a never-ending stream of visitors. He patiently answers reporters. He runs the domestic affairs of the National Assembly. He flies to international conferences.
He even finds time to read 'The Port Huron Statement' line for line in English, with an updated foreword titled 'The Way We Were' (in Spanish, he says, 'como eramos'). He also reads a book of mine on religion and the environment, 'The Lost Gospel of the Earth.' He did so, apparently, to prepare himself for a documentary interview for Cuba's historical archives. When the morning of the interview arrives, he is perfectly ready to ask questions comparing Vietnam with Iraq, Chicago 1968 versus Seattle 1999, or issues of environmental spirituality, without stumbling once in English. When the interview is complete, our several days together have ended as well. 'Sorry, but I have to go back to government business,' he apologizes, and with a hasta luego returns to his daily rounds. I miss him as he drives off. Maybe he knew of Fidel's diagnosis that day, maybe not.
I flew back to Los Angeles that afternoon, carrying the strange feeling that America has embargoed itself from a Cuba that it refuses to recognize. In the weeks following Fidel's surgery, according to friends who spent 10 days on the island, Cuba remains quiet, stable and alert. A transition definitely seems underway, but U.S. officials may be the last to know of it.
Tom Hayden is a member of The Nation's editorial board and a visiting professor at the Claremont Colleges. He has visited Cuba three times, as well as many other Latin American countries. His recent books include 'The Port Huron Statement,' 'Conspiracy in the Streets,' 'Street Wars' and 'The Zapatista Reader.'
A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman. Copyright (c)
2006 Truthdig, L.L.C.
Thoughts on the gusano press-shills
"At least 10 Florida-based journalists were paid by the US government to contribute to anti-Cuba propaganda broadcasts", the Miami Herald says.
"Three writers have been sacked by the Miami Herald newspaper group for an alleged conflict of interest."
-BBC, September 8, 2006
Wait a minute. Ten were shills for the Miami Gusano-Mafia, taking money from the gusanos' US government patrons, and... THREE got fired?! Well, as my friend Ajamu Dillahunt has said more than once, "Who’s press is it?" Think for a moment, and we know. Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Shell, Monsanto. Freeport-McMoran, Coca-Cola, Disney, et alia.
But that isn't what I feel compelled to write about right this minute. I want to accentuate the positive, for a change, because that is what the Imperium fears most, after all. Cuba hasn’t been in their gunsights for decades because of where Cuba has erred, or been driven into circumstances and decisions that failed to match the coffee-house idealism of Librul Amerika. Cuba’s sins are its accomplishments, which are becoming more dangerous to all-of-the-above every day. The reason I want to emphasize accomplishments is because our so called journalists hardly ever do, and then only with some ritual denunciation about "repression" in Cuba from writers who seem to have missed the story of over 2 million prison inmates here in "the Land of the Free."
Funny thing... among those ritual denunciations are frequent throw-away sarcasms about Castro and the Cuban government, suggesting that their claims about hostile US actions are figments of paranoid imaginations. One of those accusations, that US-based journalists took money from the government to write anti-Cuban propaganda, has now been shown — as have most of the Cuban accusations on other counts — to be absoltuely true.
The AP leads its story with:
"Ten South Florida journalists, including three with The Miami Herald's Spanish-language sister paper, received thousands of dollars from the federal government for their work on radio and TV programming aimed at undermining Fidel Castro's communist regime, the Herald reported yesterday."
Note, it is *Fidel's* (not Cuba's) communist *regime* (not government). We never hear about George W. Bush's capitalist regime from these reporters.
The New York Times noted that "while the Castro regime has long alleged that some Cuban-American reporters in Miami were paid by the government, the revelation on Friday, reported in The Miami Herald, was the first evidence of that." Castro's Regime.
Reuters did marginally better:
"At least 10 Florida journalists received regular payments from a U.S. government program aimed at undermining the Cuban government of Fidel Castro", The Miami Herald reported on Friday.
"Total payments since 2001 ranged from $1,550 to $174,753 per journalist", according to the newspaper, which said it found no instance in which those involved had disclosed that they were being paid by the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting.
"That office runs Radio and TV Marti, U.S. government programs broadcast to Cuba to promote democracy and freedom on the communist island. Its programming cannot be broadcast within the United States because of anti-propaganda laws."
At least they called it a government, but then went on to apply the adjective "communist" to the geographical category, island.
Anticommunism is still canonical in Librul Amerika, so not even the so-called librul politicians can give themselves permission to (1) say anything positive about Cuba, or (2) describe the actual Cuban political system without the dubious benefit of a loaded word.
I am going to paste in a short essay by Carl Geiser. Geiser is 96 years old, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War (born in Ohio), who spent a year as a prisoner of war. Then I am going to post a few links about what is happening in Cuba today.
American vs. Cuban Democracy
By Carl Geiser
Some people are dubious about the feasibility of a society based on cooperation instead of competition envisaged in my concept of an “80% Party.” They point out that all governments based on cooperation became corrupt, dictatorial, inefficient, and alienated their citizens enough to bring about their downfall.
The reason given for the blockade of Cuba is to “restore democracy,” but there are huge differences in U.S. and Cuban democracy.
Many forms of democracy have existed in the past, starting with the Greeks, and many forms still exist today. U.S. democracy has changed greatly from 1789, when slaves, women, landless men and indentured servants could not vote. As circumstances changed, we have amended the Constitution 27 times to meet the new needs.
Since 1789, certain rights have not changed: the rights to own land and companies, to hire and fire people and pay them less than the value they produce, are guaranteed by the Constitution, the Supreme Court, the Administration, the army and the police. But our right to a job, a home, medical care, education beyond high school, and a living wage, are not guaranteed.
Cuba has reversed this. In Cuba you cannot buy land, start up private corporations, or hire others to work for you. You are guaranteed a job or unemployment pay, a home, free medical care, and education beyond high school. Even though Cuba is a Third World country with an annual per capita domestic product of about $1700 compared to our $22,000, it does what we cannot do because it distributes the wealth and income it has more rationally.
We have the right to get rich here, though few do. In Cuba, no one can become rich. The minimum wage is 100 pesos a month, the maximum 800. Cuba has set up economic, political, social and cultural structures which reward the individual for working for the common good by modest economic incentives, but more importantly, by the friendship and admiration of those with whom you work, the dignity of citizenship in a sovereign Cuba, a fair share of whatever Cuba produces, and the right to take part in making government and management decisions. Why have the “socialist societies” in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe been overthrown by their own people? Because their leaders became corrupt, were dictatorial, and practiced nepotism leading to incompetence and mismanagement. They alienated people and denied them control over their government’s actions.
Cuba has found a way, not without some difficulty, to have an honest and efficient government guaranteed by the close control people exercise over it. At the base of Cuba’s democracy are the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR). They were formed by the Cuban people at President Castro’s suggestion after counterrevolutionaries threw four bombs into a huge crowd during a 1960 speech.
Each square block elects its own CDR. I met with such a committee in 1990. All legislative changes which affect all Cubans must be submitted for review by the committees and they have three months to return their comments. One member of the CDR was the secretary who kept records of meetings; another was the treasurer who collected 25 centimos from each family every month for block activities; another person was in charge of security and arranged for two people to walk around the block between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. to help anyone in trouble and to prevent anyone from causing trouble; another young woman was the district CDR representative.
Another woman turned out to be the doctor for the block. The people in the block had built a two-story house for her with material supplied by the government. She had a medical history on everyone in the neighborhood, made house calls, and practiced preventative medicine; her income did not depend on people getting sick because she received a fixed salary paid by the government. A small, Afro-Cuban woman was the CDR chairperson. She coordinated the work of the Committee and had a Cuban flag in front of the house. Why? So the police could find her. They couldn’t arrest anyone in the block without the Committee’s permission. No Stalin could arise in Cuba.
And this is just the beginning of democracy in Cuba.
Cuba’s three-stage electoral system
In 1976, the Committees in Defense of the Revolution were supplemented by setting up election districts — about 500 voters in each — to elect a delegate to the district People Power Assembly (PPA). The district PPA then elected a delegate to the provincial PPA, which in turn elected a delegate to the national PPA. In 1991, in order to involve the people more directly in government, the national PPA set up a commission to find the best way to do this. In 1992, a draft of the new electoral procedure was sent to all CDRs for their comments and millions of Cubans discussed the procedure. The result was a new three-stage electoral procedure.
The first stage, as before, was local elections within the 13,685 election districts to choose a district delegate. Anyone 16 or older could vote. No less than two nor more than eight candidates were to be nominated and the winner had to receive over 50 percent of the votes. Several hundred districts had to have a runoff election a week later because no one had received over 50 percent.
The second stage was the formation of district electoral commissions made up of representatives from different organizations (women’s groups, labor, students, farmers, churches, sports, etc.) These representatives then arranged meetings in their factories, institutions and organizations to nominate individuals they thought would serve the common good in its provincial and national PPA. More than 1,600,000 people took part in these meetings. The district PPA had the right to nominate up to half of the candidates and the rest were chosen by the electoral commission from the names submitted for the provincial and national PPA.
A ballot was then prepared with no provision for a write-in candidate. Voters had three choices: 1) to deface their ballot or leave it blank; 2) to vote for one or some of the candidates, and; 3) to vote for the entire slate and thereby show the whole-hearted support for the Revolution. The candidates spent no money, nor did they campaign separately; their names and biographies were published and they all appeared at public meetings. There was no party slate.
The third stage of the new electoral procedure was a secret ballot held on February 24, 1993. The voter turnout was more than 99 percent. The poll watchers were high school students. Seven percent, about a half million voters, defaced or left their ballots blank, indicating that they opposed the Revolution. Another seven percent voted for less than the full slate, while 85 percent voted for the entire slate. The new 500-member national PPA has 115 women, 11 lawyers, two clergymen, and 83 percent had not held the office previously. District, provincial and national delegates receive no perks and have to live off the wages their factory or institution pays them.
The Cuban government does not have a separation of powers as we do. The national PPA has all powers — legislative, administrative and judicial. It sets the general policy and elects an executive council to carry it out. The council sets up commissions for various functions, such as a judicial commission to oversee all of the courts. (In Cuba, you have to study to be a judge just like becoming an engineer.)
An illustration of how the national PPA involves the people in decision-making may be seen by how it tackled three of Cuba’s problems. While Cuba was trading with the Soviet Union, a large quantity of consumer goods were imported. When this stopped, wages and pensions were not reduced, resulting in Cubans accumulating 11 billion pesos, with little to buy, and an 11 billion peso national debt. A second problem exists because the U.S. dollar is now an official currency. Some people have access to dollars and some do not. Some, such as taxi drivers and hotel workers, receive dollars from tips; other people receive dollars from relatives in the United States; and others, such as artists and farmers, can sell their goods on the market. And then there is the so-called “black market,” another source of dollars. Those who have access to dollars can buy goods in the dollar stores that are unavailable to the majority. It has been estimated that 30 percent of the population has access to dollars while the rest do not. And a third problem is the irritation felt by those who do not have access to dollars and cannot use the tourist facilities.
The national PPA asked all factories and institutions to hold conventions to discuss what to do about these problems and any others that needed to be discussed. The response was that 80,000 conventions sent in their suggestions.
People Power Assembly in action
The first result of analyzing the suggestions was a decree-law for the confiscation of personal funds obtained illegally. That was followed by fees for cultural and sports events and for meals previously free. Another law provided for the taxation of funds received from abroad and from tourists. These measures reduced the 11 billion peso national debt by 10 percent in the first four months.
To provide tourist facilities, the government Cubanacan Tourist Agency set aside half of its rooms to be paid for with pesos. Since not everyone could be accommodated, rooms will be provided for newlyweds and those individuals chosen by their colleagues for having worked the hardest for the common good.
Is this democracy? Certainly it is the opposite of what we have. Do these procedures serve the interests of the majority? They certainly do. They involve Cubans in the decision-making process to an extent not conceived of in the United States. This is what makes it possible for Cuba to survive the very severe hardships caused by the collapse of the former socialist countries and the tightened U.S. blockade.
Does our democracy protect the interests of the majority? It protects the interests of the top 20 percent. Since 1980 the real family income has declined rapidly for the bottom 80 percent. Our democracy, which spent close to a half billion dollars to fill offices in the last election, gives us a government bought by those with money. True, we have majority rule and allow third parties. But the result has been a government which always served to generate and protect a growing disparity in income. Nevertheless, until recently most people expected their children to live a better life than they did. Since 1980 the real income of the 80 percent has been dropping while the real income of the 20 percent has been increasing.
There is a world of difference between majority rule that benefits the wealthy at the expense of the rest and majority rule that serves the interests of the majority. Most of the world’s 368 billionaires, whose wealth equals that of the poorest 2,800,000,000 , live where majority rule works on their behalf; if their rule is threatened, they replace it with dictatorship. Let us beware. U.S. citizens are free to travel to Cuba, but if you spend money there, the sentence can be a $250,000 fine and 10 years in the slammer, a heavy price to learn what is going on there. Hundreds of U.S. citizens have openly defied the law without being prosecuted. The authorities may realize it might be difficult to get a jury to convict. After all, the United Nations General Assembly has voted to condemn the U.S. blockade.
I am not advocating a blind adoption of Cuban procedures for the U.S. We will have to find our own way. The organizing of the “80% Party” could be a peaceful way of changing to a democratic rule that serves the interests of the majority. The Oklahoma City bombing and formation of armed militias should be a warning to us that we have little time to lose, for some Americans whose living standards are falling are thinking of more violent means to bring about change. We must bring them into the 80% Party.
Cuba’s first priority is growing food. Until 1990, Cuba had imported much of its food in exchange for sugar. With the collapse of the socialist countries in Europe and the effects of the U.S. blockade, it can no longer do so. The investment in educating agricultural scientists and setting up agricultural institutes in the 1980s is paying off now. They are replacing chemical fertilizer with organic fertilizer and crop rotation, pesticides with biological controls, outdated technology with state-of-the-art technology appropriate to the season, area and crop. They are also introducing biological control of plant diseases and are producing micorrhizae to aid plant root uptake of mineral nutrients, the first country known to do so. Cuba is showing the way we and the rest of the world will have to grow our food without polluting our soil, air and water. We will have to find our own way to rule in the interest of the majority if we are to eliminate from our nation increasing poverty, homelessness, illiteracy, crime, drugs, unemployment, racial and ethnic discrimination. And we don’t have much time to do it. Scientists tell us that if we continue on the present course, the cost will be tremendous. The future of our planet is at stake.
***
Cuban Disaster Preparedness (Compare to US Government Response to Katrina)
Cuban Progress on Gender
Cuban Education
Cuban Medical System
Cuban Sustainable Agriculture Efforts
Cuban Environmental Protection Programs
While no one is claiming there is a Utopia in Cuba, it just seems important to point out — contrary to all the bullshit from the capitalist press — that when we look at any index of social improvement, the political will of Cuba, in the face of incessant attack, has been mobilized to improve those indices for the general population. There seems to be a surfeit of those prepared to tell us what is wrong in Cuba; but given what I see around me right now, in the US of A, my interest inclines not toward what “we” might teach Cuba, but what Cuba might have to teach us.
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