Casino Capitalism

This phrase was originally used to describe gambling on the stockmarket but takes on a new and very literal meaning with some of these 'credit default swaps' as described on Moon of Alabama.

Some of these CDS dont have an underlying asset and thus have no connection with the real economy, anymore than gambling at a casino has any connection with real work and value creation (except that it can lead the the ruin of jobs, careers, families and lives - or in the case of CDS, the ruin of the financial sector and the real economy along with it.)

'Credit default swaps' or 'derivatives' are simply a bet or a gamble. And you can bet on anything you like, eg, I'll pay you a dollar now, and if it rains 5mm or more between 4 and 5pm tomorrow, you pay me $100. If you say ok or negotiate a new agreed price, we have a contract.

They can have a useful insurance or hedging purpose, eg a premium paid in case my house gets burned down by a bushfire. But you dont have to own the asset hedged or insured. So what if 20 people who dont own my house also make a bet? There will be a very big payout in total if there is a fire. And they'll have an interest in fire, wont they? Perhaps go for a country drive, carelessly dispose of a cigarette or two, or have a barbecue during a total fire ban?

b:

We are now several month into this and some people still do not 'get it'. I'll try to give a slow but simple answer.

AIG signed insurances against bond defaults in form of Credit Default Swaps in a notional value of more than $450 billion. Some insured bonds defaulted and AIG paid out for these insurances. As it did not have the money to do so, the Bush and Obama administrations decided that the taxpayer should pay.

Up to November $150 billion were given to AIG and on Monday another $30 billion. But AIG still has $300 billion of CDS exposure and will likely make more high losses on that.

When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt -a 'credit event' - people who had insured their holdings of Lehman bonds asked their insurers to pay for their losses. Such a credit event was also triggered when Fannie and Freddie were taken into receivership.

AIG which had written insurances for the debt of those entities faced a big payout and the taxpayer had to cough up the money.

What is the moral justification for this [the taxpayer funded bailout when AIG couldnt pay]?

It was morally okay because the people and institutions insured by AIG were justified to expected the payout as their 'assets', i.e. Lehman bonds had really lost value. They had hedged a real risk like you do when you pay for fire insurance on your house. Insured you are right to expect a payout when your house burns down.

But their is another group of people and institution who got money from the taxpayer through AIG.

This second group never ever owned a Lehman or Freddie or Fannie bond. But they also had bought insurance from AIG against the default of these bonds. These people never invested in 'assets'. They payed a small monthly fee to AIG for a lottery slip and when Lehman failed they had a huge win. They went to AIG, pointed to the 'credit event' and demanded the payout. AIG obliged and the taxpayer gave the money.

Some may ask:

"While it is easy to understand the moral case for bailing out real bondholders that insured against default, what is the moral case for paying out to people who made pure bets? These people never owned a fire insured house at all. Why do they get taxpayer money when my house burns down?"

"If they had be given back the money they payed for the lottery slips, i.e. the small monthly insurance premium, that would probably be understandable, but why do the taxpayers pay out the lottery win when the private lottery organizer is bankrupt?"

Simple answer to those simple questions: Because the administration says so.

There are big numbers behind this.

Of a total of $600 billion real [Lehman Bros] bonds owned by lots of people only $150 billion were credit insured. When Lehman bonds defaulted, owners of $450 billion of its debt lost all their money.

Owners of $150 billion of that debt did not lose any money. They were payed out the insurance they had contracted and the insurers (backed by the taxpayers) carried the loss.

The total economic loss was $600 billion, $450 billion by bond owners and $150 billion by insurances. $600 million left the monetary system - poof.

But on top of that there were written insurances with a notional value of $250-$350 billion that insured people who never had the insured asset but were only playing the lottery. These people demanded money from the insurer and indeed they were payed.

This part of the 'event' did not have a real economic loss. No money left the system.

Instead money was payed from the insurer toward the insurance holder, the buyers of CDS'. As the insurer was backed by the taxpayer every one and his/her children now pays for the enormous lottery win for a few people, who had risked very little. This is money that is moving from the bottom of the society to the top in unprecedented amounts.

What is the moral justification for this?

There is none.

Who are those people who are getting huge payouts from the taxpayer for risking little?

AIG still has $300 billion in CDS exposure. If the Lehman quote of 1/3 real insurance and 2/3 lottery bets is the same with those CDS, which is likely, than a few rich people are waiting for a $200 billion free payout from the taxpayer.

Geithner does not want you or anyone else to know who profits from this scheme without having risked any real money. His rich friends do not want you to know that they are racking in billions of dollars in lottery wins that cost them little money and that the taxpayers are paying out because the private lottery operator went bust. They will pay off Geithner when his job is done and he finally gets kicked out.

People in the known and within the business are not likely to explain this... This is money moving from many persons at the bottom to very few at the top.

Geithner and his masters fear that if the public knew or understood that, they would probably only get the costs of the lottery slip disbursed - if at all.

They want the big one. AIG has still $300 billion at risk that you and your kids will have to pay for.

They want it. And they are getting it. And there is nothing you can do about that.

In comments b spells it out even more brutally:

The whole thing is not about what's cheaper but how do [the rich elite] make the most money out of it.

The Lehman bust made, as explained in my post above, some folks about 200-300bn in cash without having invested much more than a million or two. Did anyone of those people thought of how to make the bust "cheaper" for them - sure they did. If they could have gotten $200bn for a $1 investment they would have taken it.

I am devastate that otherwise intelligent people like you do not get this yet.

IT WAS A SCAM. Lehman was made to go bust because some people made A WHOLE LOT OF MONEY from the Lehman bust - not millions - hundreds of billons!

They "insured" themselves against the bust, then arranged it and the taxpayers paid the "insured" sum. What is so hard to understand with that?

From the taxpayer view there was never ANY need to pay anything at all. Those really insured against losses of assets they owned might have a moral case - might!!!

Those "insured" and never owned the "insured" asset never had a justifiable case to get anything from their bet.

The later make up for two thirds of what the taxpayer is paying out.

Why are the taxpayers, we and our children, paying for these?

---
"Saving Lehman" was never an option. The setup was clear for anyone who could read the market.

The question was and is how to save the taxpayer from taking the losses others take as profits.

If this is true, and I do feel some scepticism that it is as baldly manipulated as all that, then this is simply epic financial and political corruption.

b's solution is to Declare all Credit Default Swaps Null and Void. In comments to this post b is able to point out that a number of informed commentators are also calling for a similar solution to the derivatives nightmare which threatens to bring down the global financial system.

This phrase was originally used to describe gambling on the stockmarket but takes on a new and very literal meaning with some of these 'credit default swaps' as described on Moon of Alabama.

Some of these CDS dont have an underlying asset and thus have no connection with the real economy, anymore than gambling at a casino has any connection with real work and value creation (except that it can lead the the ruin of jobs, careers, families and lives - or in the case of CDS, the ruin of the financial sector and the real economy along with it.)

'Credit default swaps' or 'derivatives' are simply a bet or a gamble. And you can bet on anything you like, eg, I'll pay you a dollar now, and if it rains 5mm or more between 4 and 5pm tomorrow, you pay me $100. If you say ok or negotiate a new agreed price, we have a contract.

They can have a useful insurance or hedging purpose, eg a premium paid in case my house gets burned down by a bushfire. But you dont have to own the asset hedged or insured. So what if 20 people who dont own my house also make a bet? There will be a very big payout in total if there is a fire. And they'll have an interest in fire, wont they? Perhaps go for a country drive, carelessly dispose of a cigarette or two, or have a barbecue during a total fire ban?

b:

We are now several month into this and some people still do not 'get it'. I'll try to give a slow but simple answer.

AIG signed insurances against bond defaults in form of Credit Default Swaps in a notional value of more than $450 billion. Some insured bonds defaulted and AIG paid out for these insurances. As it did not have the money to do so, the Bush and Obama administrations decided that the taxpayer should pay.

Up to November $150 billion were given to AIG and on Monday another $30 billion. But AIG still has $300 billion of CDS exposure and will likely make more high losses on that.

When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt -a 'credit event' - people who had insured their holdings of Lehman bonds asked their insurers to pay for their losses. Such a credit event was also triggered when Fannie and Freddie were taken into receivership.

AIG which had written insurances for the debt of those entities faced a big payout and the taxpayer had to cough up the money.

What is the moral justification for this [the taxpayer funded bailout when AIG couldnt pay]?

It was morally okay because the people and institutions insured by AIG were justified to expected the payout as their 'assets', i.e. Lehman bonds had really lost value. They had hedged a real risk like you do when you pay for fire insurance on your house. Insured you are right to expect a payout when your house burns down.

But their is another group of people and institution who got money from the taxpayer through AIG.

This second group never ever owned a Lehman or Freddie or Fannie bond. But they also had bought insurance from AIG against the default of these bonds. These people never invested in 'assets'. They payed a small monthly fee to AIG for a lottery slip and when Lehman failed they had a huge win. They went to AIG, pointed to the 'credit event' and demanded the payout. AIG obliged and the taxpayer gave the money.

Some may ask:

"While it is easy to understand the moral case for bailing out real bondholders that insured against default, what is the moral case for paying out to people who made pure bets? These people never owned a fire insured house at all. Why do they get taxpayer money when my house burns down?"

"If they had be given back the money they payed for the lottery slips, i.e. the small monthly insurance premium, that would probably be understandable, but why do the taxpayers pay out the lottery win when the private lottery organizer is bankrupt?"

Simple answer to those simple questions: Because the administration says so.

There are big numbers behind this.

Of a total of $600 billion real [Lehman Bros] bonds owned by lots of people only $150 billion were credit insured. When Lehman bonds defaulted, owners of $450 billion of its debt lost all their money.

Owners of $150 billion of that debt did not lose any money. They were payed out the insurance they had contracted and the insurers (backed by the taxpayers) carried the loss.

The total economic loss was $600 billion, $450 billion by bond owners and $150 billion by insurances. $600 million left the monetary system - poof.

But on top of that there were written insurances with a notional value of $250-$350 billion that insured people who never had the insured asset but were only playing the lottery. These people demanded money from the insurer and indeed they were payed.

This part of the 'event' did not have a real economic loss. No money left the system.

Instead money was payed from the insurer toward the insurance holder, the buyers of CDS'. As the insurer was backed by the taxpayer every one and his/her children now pays for the enormous lottery win for a few people, who had risked very little. This is money that is moving from the bottom of the society to the top in unprecedented amounts.

What is the moral justification for this?

There is none.

Who are those people who are getting huge payouts from the taxpayer for risking little?

AIG still has $300 billion in CDS exposure. If the Lehman quote of 1/3 real insurance and 2/3 lottery bets is the same with those CDS, which is likely, than a few rich people are waiting for a $200 billion free payout from the taxpayer.

Geithner does not want you or anyone else to know who profits from this scheme without having risked any real money. His rich friends do not want you to know that they are racking in billions of dollars in lottery wins that cost them little money and that the taxpayers are paying out because the private lottery operator went bust. They will pay off Geithner when his job is done and he finally gets kicked out.

People in the known and within the business are not likely to explain this... This is money moving from many persons at the bottom to very few at the top.

Geithner and his masters fear that if the public knew or understood that, they would probably only get the costs of the lottery slip disbursed - if at all.

They want the big one. AIG has still $300 billion at risk that you and your kids will have to pay for.

They want it. And they are getting it. And there is nothing you can do about that.

In comments b spells it out even more brutally:

The whole thing is not about what's cheaper but how do [the rich elite] make the most money out of it.

The Lehman bust made, as explained in my post above, some folks about 200-300bn in cash without having invested much more than a million or two. Did anyone of those people thought of how to make the bust "cheaper" for them - sure they did. If they could have gotten $200bn for a $1 investment they would have taken it.

I am devastate that otherwise intelligent people like you do not get this yet.

IT WAS A SCAM. Lehman was made to go bust because some people made A WHOLE LOT OF MONEY from the Lehman bust - not millions - hundreds of billons!

They "insured" themselves against the bust, then arranged it and the taxpayers paid the "insured" sum. What is so hard to understand with that?

From the taxpayer view there was never ANY need to pay anything at all. Those really insured against losses of assets they owned might have a moral case - might!!!

Those "insured" and never owned the "insured" asset never had a justifiable case to get anything from their bet.

The later make up for two thirds of what the taxpayer is paying out.

Why are the taxpayers, we and our children, paying for these?

---
"Saving Lehman" was never an option. The setup was clear for anyone who could read the market.

The question was and is how to save the taxpayer from taking the losses others take as profits.

If this is true, and I do feel some scepticism that it is as baldly manipulated as all that, then this is simply epic financial and political corruption.

b's solution is to Declare all Credit Default Swaps Null and Void. In comments to this post b is able to point out that a number of informed commentators are also calling for a similar solution to the derivatives nightmare which threatens to bring down the global financial system.

Casino Capitalism

The Anti-Empire Report March 4th, 2009

The Anti-Empire Report

March 4th, 2009
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

Being serious about torture. Or not.

In Cambodia they're once again endeavoring to hold trials to bring some former senior Khmer Rouge officials to justice for their 1975-79 war crimes and crimes against humanity. The current defendant in a United Nations-organized trial, Kaing Guek Eav, who was the head of a Khmer Rouge torture center, has confessed to atrocities, but insists he was acting under orders.1 As we all know, this is the defense that the Nuremberg Tribunal rejected for the Nazi defendants. Everyone knows that, right? No one places any weight on such a defense any longer, right? We make jokes about Nazis declaring: "I was only following orders!" ("Ich habe nur den Befehlen gehorcht!") Except that both the Bush and Obama administrations have spoken in favor of it. Here's the new head of the CIA, Leon Panetta: "What I have expressed as a concern, as has the president, is that those who operated under the rules that were provided by the Attorney General in the interpretation of the law [concerning torture] and followed those rules ought not to be penalized. And ... I would not support, obviously, an investigation or a prosecution of those individuals. I think they did their job."2 Operating under the rules ... doing their job ... are of course the same as following orders.

The UN Convention Against Torture (first adopted in 1984), which has been ratified by the United States, says quite clearly, "An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture." The Torture Convention enacts a prohibition against torture that is a cornerstone of international law and a principle on a par with the prohibition against slavery and genocide.

Of course, those giving the orders are no less guilty. On the very day of Obama's inauguration, the United Nation's special torture rapporteur invoked the Convention in calling on the United States to pursue former president George W. Bush and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for torture and bad treatment of Guantanamo prisoners.3

On several occasions, President Obama has indicated his reluctance to pursue war crimes charges against Bush officials, by expressing a view such as: “I don't believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” This is the same excuse Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has given for not punishing Khmer Rouge leaders. In December 1998 he asserted: "We should dig a hole and bury the past and look ahead to the 21st century with a clean slate."4 Hun Sen has been in power all the years since then, and no Khmer Rouge leader has been convicted for their role in the historic mass murder.

And by not investigating Bush officials, Obama is indeed saying that they're above the law. Like the Khmer Rouge officials have been. Michael Ratner, a professor at Columbia Law School and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said prosecuting Bush officials is necessary to set future anti-torture policy. "The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it. I don't see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable."5

One reason for the non-prosecution may be that serious trials of the many Bush officials who contributed to the torture policies might reveal the various forms of Democratic Party non-opposition and collaboration.

It should also be noted that the United States supported Pol Pot (who died in April 1998) and the Khmer Rouge for several years after they were ousted from power by the Vietnamese in 1979. This support began under Jimmy Carter and his National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and continued under Ronald Reagan.6 A lingering bitterness by American cold warriors toward Vietnam, the small nation which monumental US power had not been able to defeat, and its perceived closeness to the Soviet Union, appears to be the only explanation for this policy. Humiliation runs deep when you're a superpower.

Neither should it be forgotten in this complex cautionary tale that the Khmer Rouge in all likelihood would never have come to power, nor even made a serious attempt to do so, if not for the massive American "carpet bombing" of Cambodia in 1969-70 and the US-supported overthrow of Prince Sihanouk in 1970 and his replacement by a man closely tied to the United States.7 Thank you Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Well done, lads.

By the way, if you're not already turned off by many of Obama's appointments, listen to how James Jones opened his talk at the Munich Conference on Security Policy on February 8: "Thank you for that wonderful tribute to Henry Kissinger yesterday. Congratulations. As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger."8

Lastly, Spain's High Court recently announced it would launch a war crimes investigation into an Israeli ex-defense minister and six other top security officials for their role in a 2002 attack that killed a Hamas commander and 14 civilians in Gaza.9 Spain has for some time been the world's leading practitioner of "universal jurisdiction" for human-rights violations, such as their indictment of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet a decade ago. The Israeli case involved the dropping of a bomb on the home of the Hamas leader; most of those killed were children. The United States does this very same thing every other day in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Given the refusal of American presidents to invoke even their "national jurisdiction" over American officials-cum-war criminals, we can only hope that someone reminds the Spanish authorities of a few names, names like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Feith, Perle, Yoo, and a few others with a piece missing, a piece that's shaped like a conscience. There isn't even a need to rely on international law alone, for there's an American law against war crimes, passed by a Republican-dominated Congress in 1996.10

The noted Israeli columnist, Uri Avnery, writing about the Israeli case, tried to capture the spirit of Israeli society that produces such war criminals and war crimes. He observed: "This system indoctrinates its pupils with a violent tribal cult, totally ethnocentric, which sees in the whole of world history nothing but an endless story of Jewish victimhood. This is a religion of a Chosen People, indifferent to others, a religion without compassion for anyone who is not Jewish, which glorifies the God-decreed genocide described in the Biblical book of Joshua."11

It would take very little substitution to apply this statement to the United States — like "American" for "Jewish" and "American exceptionalism" for "a Chosen People".

Hell hath no fury like an imperialist scorned.

Hugo Chávez's greatest sin is that he has shown disrespect for the American Empire. Or as they would say in America's inner cities — He's dissed the Man. Such behavior of course cannot go unpunished lest it give other national leaders the wrong idea. Over the years, the United States has gotten along just fine with brutal dictators, mass murderers, torturers, and leaders who did nothing to relieve the poverty of their population — Augusto Pinochet, Pol Pot, the Greek Junta, Ferdinand Marcos, Suharto, Duvalier, Mobutu, the Brazil Junta, Somoza, Saddam Hussein, South African apartheid leaders, Portuguese fascists, etc., etc., terrible guys all, all seriously supported by Washington at one time or another; for none made it a regular habit, if ever, to diss the Man.

The latest evidence, we are told, that Hugo Chávez is a dictator and a threat to life as we know it is that he pushed for and got a constitutional amendment to remove term limits from the presidency. The American media and the opposition in Venezuela often make it sound as if Chávez is going to be guaranteed office for life, whereas he of course will have to be elected each time. Neither are we reminded that it's not unusual for a nation to not have a term limit for its highest office. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, if not all of Europe and much of the rest of the world, do not have such a limit. The United States did not have a term limit on the office of the president during the nation's first 162 years, until the ratification of the 22nd Amendment in 1951. Were all American presidents prior to that time dictators?

In 2005, when Colombian President Alvaro Uribe succeeded in getting term limits lifted, the US mainstream media took scant notice. President Bush subsequently honored Uribe with the American Presidential Medal of Freedom. But in the period leading up to the February 15 referendum in Venezuela, the American media were competing with each other over who could paint Chávez and the Venezuelan constitutional process in the most critical and ominous terms. Typical was an op-ed in the Washington Post the day before the vote, which was headlined: "Closing in on Hugo Chávez". Its opening sentence read: "The beginning of the end is setting in for Hugo Chávez."12

For several years now, the campaign to malign Chávez has at times included issues of Israel and anti-Semitism. An isolated vandalism of a Caracas synagogue on January 30th of this year fed into this campaign. Synagogues are of course vandalized occasionally in the United States and many European countries, but no one ascribes this to a government policy driven by anti-semitism. With Chávez they do. In the American media, the lead up to the Venezuelan vote was never far removed from the alleged "Jewish" issue.

"Despite the government’s efforts to put the [synagogue] controversy to rest," the New York Times wrote a few days before the referendum vote, "a sense of dread still lingers among Venezuela’s 12,000 to 14,000 Jews."13

A day earlier, a Washington Post editorial was entitled: "Mr. Chávez vs. the Jews - With George W. Bush gone, Venezuela's strongman has found new enemies."14 Shortly before, a Post headline had informed us: "Jews in S. America Increasingly Uneasy - Government and Media Seen Fostering Anti-Semitism in Venezuela, Elsewhere"15

So commonplace has the Chávez-Jewish association become that a leading US progressive organization, Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) in Washington, DC, recently distributed an article that reads more like the handiwork of a conservative group than a progressive one. I was prompted to write to them as follows:

Dear People,

I'm very sorry to say that I found your Venezuelan commentary by Larry Birns and David Rosenblum Felson to be remarkably lacking. The authors seem unable, or unwilling, to distinguish between being against Israeli policies from anti-semitism. It's kind of late in the day for them to not have comprehended the difference. They are forced to fall back on a State Department statement to make their case. Is that not enough said?

They condemn Chávez likening Israel’s occupation of Gaza to the Holocaust. But what if it's an apt comparison? They don't delve into this question at all.

They also condemn the use of the word "Zionism", saying that "in 9 times out of 10 involving the use of this word in fact smacks of anti-Semitism." Really? Can they give a precise explanation of how one distinguishes between an anti-Semitic use of the word and a non-anti-semitic use of it? That would be interesting.

The authors write that Venezuela's "anti-Israeli initiative ... revealingly transcends the intensity of almost every Arabic nation or normal adversary of Israel." Really. Since when are the totally gutless, dictator Arab nations the standard bearer for progressives? The ideal we should emulate. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan are almost never seriously and harshly critical of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. Therefore, Venezuela shouldn't be?

The authors state: "In a Christmas Eve address to the nation, Chávez charged that, 'Some minorities, descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ ... took all the world’s wealth for themselves'. Here, Chávez was not talking so much about Robin Hood, but rather unquestionably dipping into the lore of anti-Semitism." Well, here's the full quote: "The world has enough for all, but it turns out that some minorities, descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ, descendants of the same ones who threw Bolivar out of here and also crucified him in their own way at Santa Marta there in Colombia ..." Hmm, were the Jews so active in South America?

The ellipsis after the word "Christ" indicates that the authors consciously and purposely omitted the words that would have given the lie to their premise. Truly astonishing.

After Chávez won the term-limits referendum with about 55% of the vote, a State Department spokesperson stated: "For the most part this was a process that was fully consistent with democratic process." Various individuals and websites on the left have responded to this as an encouraging sign that the Obama administration is embarking on a new Venezuelan policy. At the risk of sounding like a knee-reflex cynic, I think this attitude is at best premature, at worst rather naive. It's easy for a State Department a level-or-so above the Bushies, i.e., semi-civilized, to make such a statement. A little more difficult would be accepting as normal and unthreatening Venezuela having good relations with countries like Cuba, Iran and Russia and not blocking Venezuela from the UN Security Council. Even more significant would be the United States ending its funding of groups in Venezuela determined to subvert and/or overthrow Chávez.
You've got to be carefully taught

I've been playing around with a new book for awhile. I don't know if I'll find the time to actually complete it, but if I do it'll be called something like "Myths of U.S. foreign policy: How Americans keep getting fooled into support". The leading myth of all, the one which entraps more Americans than any other, is the belief that the United States, in its foreign policy, means well. American leaders may make mistakes, they may blunder, they may lie, they may even on the odd occasion cause more harm than good, but they do mean well. Their intentions are honorable, if not divinely inspired. Of that most Americans are certain. And as long as a person clings to that belief, it's rather unlikely that s/he will become seriously doubtful and critical of the official stories.

It takes a lot of repetition while an American is growing up to inculcate this message into their young consciousness, and lots more repetition later on. Think of some of the lines from the song about racism from the Broadway classic show, "South Pacific" — "You've got to be taught" ...

You've got to be taught
from year to year.
It's got to be drummed
in your dear little ear.
You've got to be taught
before it's too late.
Before you are 6 or 7 or 8.
To hate all the people
your relatives hate.
You've got to be carefully taught.

The education of an American true-believer is ongoing, continuous. All forms of media, all the time. Here is Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military officer in the United States, writing in the Washington Post recently:

"We in the U.S. military are likewise held to a high standard. Like the early Romans, we are expected to do the right thing, and when we don't, to make it right again. We have learned, after seven years of war, that trust is the coin of the realm — that building it takes time, losing it takes mere seconds, and maintaining it may be our most important and most difficult objective. That's why images of prisoner maltreatment at Abu Ghraib still serve as recruiting tools for al-Qaeda. And it's why each civilian casualty for which we are even remotely responsible sets back our efforts to gain the confidence of the Afghan people months, if not years. It doesn't matter how hard we try to avoid hurting the innocent, and we do try very hard. It doesn't matter how proportional the force we deploy, how precisely we strike. It doesn't even matter if the enemy hides behind civilians. What matters are the death and destruction that result and the expectation that we could have avoided it. In the end, all that matters is that, despite our best efforts, sometimes we take the very lives we are trying to protect. ... Lose the people's trust, and we lose the war. ... I see this sort of trust being fostered by our troops all over the world. They are building schools, roads, wells, hospitals and power stations. They work every day to build the sort of infrastructure that enables local governments to stand on their own. But mostly, even when they are going after the enemy, they are building friendships. They are building trust. And they are doing it in superb fashion."16

How many young servicemembers have heard such a talk from Mullen or other officers? How many of them have not been impressed, even choked up? How many Americans reading or hearing such stirring words have not had a lifetime of reinforcement reinforced once again? How many could even imagine that Admiral Mullen is spouting a bunch of crap? The great majority of Americans will swallow it. When Mullen declares: "What matters are the death and destruction that result and the expectation that we could have avoided it", he's implying that there was no way to avoid it. But of course it could have been easily avoided by not dropping bombs on the Afghan people.

You tell the true-believers that the truth is virtually the exact opposite of what Mullen has said and they look at you like you just got off the Number 36 bus from Mars. Bill Clinton bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days and nights in a row. His military and political policies destroyed one of the most progressive countries in Europe. And he called it "humanitarian intervention". It's still regarded by almost all Americans, including many, if not most, "progressives", as just that.

Now why is that? Are all these people just ignorant? I think a better answer is that they have certain preconceptions; consciously or unconsciously, they have certain basic beliefs about the United States and its foreign policy, most prominent amongst which is the belief that the US means well. And if you don't deal with this basic belief you'll be talking to a stone wall.
Notes

1. Associated Press, August 1, 2007 ↩
2. Press conference, February 25, 2009, transcript by Federal News Service ↩
3. Agence France Presse (AFP), January 20, 2009 ↩
4. New York Times, December 29, 1998 ↩
5. Associated Press, November 17, 2008 ↩
6. See William Blum, "Rogue State", chapter 10 ("Supporting Pol Pot") ↩
7. See William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 20 ("Cambodia, 1955-1973") ↩
8. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/jones_munich_conference.html ↩
9. Reuters news agency, January 30, 2009 ↩
10. The War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441) ↩
11. Haaretz, leading Israeli newspaper, January 30, 2009 ↩
12. Washington Post, February 14, 2009, column by Edward Schumacher-Matos ↩
13. New York Times, February 13, 2009 ↩
14. Washington Post, February 12, 2009 ↩
15. Washington Post, February 8, 2009 ↩
16. Washington Post, February 15, 2009, p. B7 ↩

–

William Blum is the author of:

* Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
* Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
* West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
* Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6@aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area.

(Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite.)

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned.

www.killinghope.org

The Anti-Empire Report

March 4th, 2009
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

Being serious about torture. Or not.

In Cambodia they're once again endeavoring to hold trials to bring some former senior Khmer Rouge officials to justice for their 1975-79 war crimes and crimes against humanity. The current defendant in a United Nations-organized trial, Kaing Guek Eav, who was the head of a Khmer Rouge torture center, has confessed to atrocities, but insists he was acting under orders.1 As we all know, this is the defense that the Nuremberg Tribunal rejected for the Nazi defendants. Everyone knows that, right? No one places any weight on such a defense any longer, right? We make jokes about Nazis declaring: "I was only following orders!" ("Ich habe nur den Befehlen gehorcht!") Except that both the Bush and Obama administrations have spoken in favor of it. Here's the new head of the CIA, Leon Panetta: "What I have expressed as a concern, as has the president, is that those who operated under the rules that were provided by the Attorney General in the interpretation of the law [concerning torture] and followed those rules ought not to be penalized. And ... I would not support, obviously, an investigation or a prosecution of those individuals. I think they did their job."2 Operating under the rules ... doing their job ... are of course the same as following orders.

The UN Convention Against Torture (first adopted in 1984), which has been ratified by the United States, says quite clearly, "An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture." The Torture Convention enacts a prohibition against torture that is a cornerstone of international law and a principle on a par with the prohibition against slavery and genocide.

Of course, those giving the orders are no less guilty. On the very day of Obama's inauguration, the United Nation's special torture rapporteur invoked the Convention in calling on the United States to pursue former president George W. Bush and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for torture and bad treatment of Guantanamo prisoners.3

On several occasions, President Obama has indicated his reluctance to pursue war crimes charges against Bush officials, by expressing a view such as: “I don't believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” This is the same excuse Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has given for not punishing Khmer Rouge leaders. In December 1998 he asserted: "We should dig a hole and bury the past and look ahead to the 21st century with a clean slate."4 Hun Sen has been in power all the years since then, and no Khmer Rouge leader has been convicted for their role in the historic mass murder.

And by not investigating Bush officials, Obama is indeed saying that they're above the law. Like the Khmer Rouge officials have been. Michael Ratner, a professor at Columbia Law School and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said prosecuting Bush officials is necessary to set future anti-torture policy. "The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it. I don't see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable."5

One reason for the non-prosecution may be that serious trials of the many Bush officials who contributed to the torture policies might reveal the various forms of Democratic Party non-opposition and collaboration.

It should also be noted that the United States supported Pol Pot (who died in April 1998) and the Khmer Rouge for several years after they were ousted from power by the Vietnamese in 1979. This support began under Jimmy Carter and his National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and continued under Ronald Reagan.6 A lingering bitterness by American cold warriors toward Vietnam, the small nation which monumental US power had not been able to defeat, and its perceived closeness to the Soviet Union, appears to be the only explanation for this policy. Humiliation runs deep when you're a superpower.

Neither should it be forgotten in this complex cautionary tale that the Khmer Rouge in all likelihood would never have come to power, nor even made a serious attempt to do so, if not for the massive American "carpet bombing" of Cambodia in 1969-70 and the US-supported overthrow of Prince Sihanouk in 1970 and his replacement by a man closely tied to the United States.7 Thank you Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Well done, lads.

By the way, if you're not already turned off by many of Obama's appointments, listen to how James Jones opened his talk at the Munich Conference on Security Policy on February 8: "Thank you for that wonderful tribute to Henry Kissinger yesterday. Congratulations. As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger."8

Lastly, Spain's High Court recently announced it would launch a war crimes investigation into an Israeli ex-defense minister and six other top security officials for their role in a 2002 attack that killed a Hamas commander and 14 civilians in Gaza.9 Spain has for some time been the world's leading practitioner of "universal jurisdiction" for human-rights violations, such as their indictment of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet a decade ago. The Israeli case involved the dropping of a bomb on the home of the Hamas leader; most of those killed were children. The United States does this very same thing every other day in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Given the refusal of American presidents to invoke even their "national jurisdiction" over American officials-cum-war criminals, we can only hope that someone reminds the Spanish authorities of a few names, names like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Feith, Perle, Yoo, and a few others with a piece missing, a piece that's shaped like a conscience. There isn't even a need to rely on international law alone, for there's an American law against war crimes, passed by a Republican-dominated Congress in 1996.10

The noted Israeli columnist, Uri Avnery, writing about the Israeli case, tried to capture the spirit of Israeli society that produces such war criminals and war crimes. He observed: "This system indoctrinates its pupils with a violent tribal cult, totally ethnocentric, which sees in the whole of world history nothing but an endless story of Jewish victimhood. This is a religion of a Chosen People, indifferent to others, a religion without compassion for anyone who is not Jewish, which glorifies the God-decreed genocide described in the Biblical book of Joshua."11

It would take very little substitution to apply this statement to the United States — like "American" for "Jewish" and "American exceptionalism" for "a Chosen People".

Hell hath no fury like an imperialist scorned.

Hugo Chávez's greatest sin is that he has shown disrespect for the American Empire. Or as they would say in America's inner cities — He's dissed the Man. Such behavior of course cannot go unpunished lest it give other national leaders the wrong idea. Over the years, the United States has gotten along just fine with brutal dictators, mass murderers, torturers, and leaders who did nothing to relieve the poverty of their population — Augusto Pinochet, Pol Pot, the Greek Junta, Ferdinand Marcos, Suharto, Duvalier, Mobutu, the Brazil Junta, Somoza, Saddam Hussein, South African apartheid leaders, Portuguese fascists, etc., etc., terrible guys all, all seriously supported by Washington at one time or another; for none made it a regular habit, if ever, to diss the Man.

The latest evidence, we are told, that Hugo Chávez is a dictator and a threat to life as we know it is that he pushed for and got a constitutional amendment to remove term limits from the presidency. The American media and the opposition in Venezuela often make it sound as if Chávez is going to be guaranteed office for life, whereas he of course will have to be elected each time. Neither are we reminded that it's not unusual for a nation to not have a term limit for its highest office. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, if not all of Europe and much of the rest of the world, do not have such a limit. The United States did not have a term limit on the office of the president during the nation's first 162 years, until the ratification of the 22nd Amendment in 1951. Were all American presidents prior to that time dictators?

In 2005, when Colombian President Alvaro Uribe succeeded in getting term limits lifted, the US mainstream media took scant notice. President Bush subsequently honored Uribe with the American Presidential Medal of Freedom. But in the period leading up to the February 15 referendum in Venezuela, the American media were competing with each other over who could paint Chávez and the Venezuelan constitutional process in the most critical and ominous terms. Typical was an op-ed in the Washington Post the day before the vote, which was headlined: "Closing in on Hugo Chávez". Its opening sentence read: "The beginning of the end is setting in for Hugo Chávez."12

For several years now, the campaign to malign Chávez has at times included issues of Israel and anti-Semitism. An isolated vandalism of a Caracas synagogue on January 30th of this year fed into this campaign. Synagogues are of course vandalized occasionally in the United States and many European countries, but no one ascribes this to a government policy driven by anti-semitism. With Chávez they do. In the American media, the lead up to the Venezuelan vote was never far removed from the alleged "Jewish" issue.

"Despite the government’s efforts to put the [synagogue] controversy to rest," the New York Times wrote a few days before the referendum vote, "a sense of dread still lingers among Venezuela’s 12,000 to 14,000 Jews."13

A day earlier, a Washington Post editorial was entitled: "Mr. Chávez vs. the Jews - With George W. Bush gone, Venezuela's strongman has found new enemies."14 Shortly before, a Post headline had informed us: "Jews in S. America Increasingly Uneasy - Government and Media Seen Fostering Anti-Semitism in Venezuela, Elsewhere"15

So commonplace has the Chávez-Jewish association become that a leading US progressive organization, Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) in Washington, DC, recently distributed an article that reads more like the handiwork of a conservative group than a progressive one. I was prompted to write to them as follows:

Dear People,

I'm very sorry to say that I found your Venezuelan commentary by Larry Birns and David Rosenblum Felson to be remarkably lacking. The authors seem unable, or unwilling, to distinguish between being against Israeli policies from anti-semitism. It's kind of late in the day for them to not have comprehended the difference. They are forced to fall back on a State Department statement to make their case. Is that not enough said?

They condemn Chávez likening Israel’s occupation of Gaza to the Holocaust. But what if it's an apt comparison? They don't delve into this question at all.

They also condemn the use of the word "Zionism", saying that "in 9 times out of 10 involving the use of this word in fact smacks of anti-Semitism." Really? Can they give a precise explanation of how one distinguishes between an anti-Semitic use of the word and a non-anti-semitic use of it? That would be interesting.

The authors write that Venezuela's "anti-Israeli initiative ... revealingly transcends the intensity of almost every Arabic nation or normal adversary of Israel." Really. Since when are the totally gutless, dictator Arab nations the standard bearer for progressives? The ideal we should emulate. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan are almost never seriously and harshly critical of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. Therefore, Venezuela shouldn't be?

The authors state: "In a Christmas Eve address to the nation, Chávez charged that, 'Some minorities, descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ ... took all the world’s wealth for themselves'. Here, Chávez was not talking so much about Robin Hood, but rather unquestionably dipping into the lore of anti-Semitism." Well, here's the full quote: "The world has enough for all, but it turns out that some minorities, descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ, descendants of the same ones who threw Bolivar out of here and also crucified him in their own way at Santa Marta there in Colombia ..." Hmm, were the Jews so active in South America?

The ellipsis after the word "Christ" indicates that the authors consciously and purposely omitted the words that would have given the lie to their premise. Truly astonishing.

After Chávez won the term-limits referendum with about 55% of the vote, a State Department spokesperson stated: "For the most part this was a process that was fully consistent with democratic process." Various individuals and websites on the left have responded to this as an encouraging sign that the Obama administration is embarking on a new Venezuelan policy. At the risk of sounding like a knee-reflex cynic, I think this attitude is at best premature, at worst rather naive. It's easy for a State Department a level-or-so above the Bushies, i.e., semi-civilized, to make such a statement. A little more difficult would be accepting as normal and unthreatening Venezuela having good relations with countries like Cuba, Iran and Russia and not blocking Venezuela from the UN Security Council. Even more significant would be the United States ending its funding of groups in Venezuela determined to subvert and/or overthrow Chávez.
You've got to be carefully taught

I've been playing around with a new book for awhile. I don't know if I'll find the time to actually complete it, but if I do it'll be called something like "Myths of U.S. foreign policy: How Americans keep getting fooled into support". The leading myth of all, the one which entraps more Americans than any other, is the belief that the United States, in its foreign policy, means well. American leaders may make mistakes, they may blunder, they may lie, they may even on the odd occasion cause more harm than good, but they do mean well. Their intentions are honorable, if not divinely inspired. Of that most Americans are certain. And as long as a person clings to that belief, it's rather unlikely that s/he will become seriously doubtful and critical of the official stories.

It takes a lot of repetition while an American is growing up to inculcate this message into their young consciousness, and lots more repetition later on. Think of some of the lines from the song about racism from the Broadway classic show, "South Pacific" — "You've got to be taught" ...

You've got to be taught
from year to year.
It's got to be drummed
in your dear little ear.
You've got to be taught
before it's too late.
Before you are 6 or 7 or 8.
To hate all the people
your relatives hate.
You've got to be carefully taught.

The education of an American true-believer is ongoing, continuous. All forms of media, all the time. Here is Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military officer in the United States, writing in the Washington Post recently:

"We in the U.S. military are likewise held to a high standard. Like the early Romans, we are expected to do the right thing, and when we don't, to make it right again. We have learned, after seven years of war, that trust is the coin of the realm — that building it takes time, losing it takes mere seconds, and maintaining it may be our most important and most difficult objective. That's why images of prisoner maltreatment at Abu Ghraib still serve as recruiting tools for al-Qaeda. And it's why each civilian casualty for which we are even remotely responsible sets back our efforts to gain the confidence of the Afghan people months, if not years. It doesn't matter how hard we try to avoid hurting the innocent, and we do try very hard. It doesn't matter how proportional the force we deploy, how precisely we strike. It doesn't even matter if the enemy hides behind civilians. What matters are the death and destruction that result and the expectation that we could have avoided it. In the end, all that matters is that, despite our best efforts, sometimes we take the very lives we are trying to protect. ... Lose the people's trust, and we lose the war. ... I see this sort of trust being fostered by our troops all over the world. They are building schools, roads, wells, hospitals and power stations. They work every day to build the sort of infrastructure that enables local governments to stand on their own. But mostly, even when they are going after the enemy, they are building friendships. They are building trust. And they are doing it in superb fashion."16

How many young servicemembers have heard such a talk from Mullen or other officers? How many of them have not been impressed, even choked up? How many Americans reading or hearing such stirring words have not had a lifetime of reinforcement reinforced once again? How many could even imagine that Admiral Mullen is spouting a bunch of crap? The great majority of Americans will swallow it. When Mullen declares: "What matters are the death and destruction that result and the expectation that we could have avoided it", he's implying that there was no way to avoid it. But of course it could have been easily avoided by not dropping bombs on the Afghan people.

You tell the true-believers that the truth is virtually the exact opposite of what Mullen has said and they look at you like you just got off the Number 36 bus from Mars. Bill Clinton bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days and nights in a row. His military and political policies destroyed one of the most progressive countries in Europe. And he called it "humanitarian intervention". It's still regarded by almost all Americans, including many, if not most, "progressives", as just that.

Now why is that? Are all these people just ignorant? I think a better answer is that they have certain preconceptions; consciously or unconsciously, they have certain basic beliefs about the United States and its foreign policy, most prominent amongst which is the belief that the US means well. And if you don't deal with this basic belief you'll be talking to a stone wall.
Notes

1. Associated Press, August 1, 2007 ↩
2. Press conference, February 25, 2009, transcript by Federal News Service ↩
3. Agence France Presse (AFP), January 20, 2009 ↩
4. New York Times, December 29, 1998 ↩
5. Associated Press, November 17, 2008 ↩
6. See William Blum, "Rogue State", chapter 10 ("Supporting Pol Pot") ↩
7. See William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 20 ("Cambodia, 1955-1973") ↩
8. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/jones_munich_conference.html ↩
9. Reuters news agency, January 30, 2009 ↩
10. The War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441) ↩
11. Haaretz, leading Israeli newspaper, January 30, 2009 ↩
12. Washington Post, February 14, 2009, column by Edward Schumacher-Matos ↩
13. New York Times, February 13, 2009 ↩
14. Washington Post, February 12, 2009 ↩
15. Washington Post, February 8, 2009 ↩
16. Washington Post, February 15, 2009, p. B7 ↩

–

William Blum is the author of:

* Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
* Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
* West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
* Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6@aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area.

(Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite.)

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned.

www.killinghope.org

The Anti-Empire Report March 4th, 2009

Anti Empire Report Feb 2009 by William Blum

The Anti-Empire Report

February 3rd, 2009
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

Change (in rhetoric) we can believe in.

I've said all along that whatever good changes might occur in regard to non-foreign policy issues, such as what's already taken place concerning the environment and abortion, the Obama administration will not produce any significantly worthwhile change in US foreign policy; little done in this area will reduce the level of misery that the American Empire regularly brings down upon humanity. And to the extent that Barack Obama is willing to clearly reveal what he believes about anything controversial, he appears to believe in the empire.

The Obamania bubble should already have begun to lose some air with the multiple US bombings of Pakistan within the first few days following the inauguration. The Pentagon briefed the White House of its plans, and the White House had no objection. So bombs away — Barack Obama's first war crime. The dozens of victims were, of course, all bad people, including all the women and children. As with all these bombings, we'll never know the names of all the victims — It's doubtful that even Pakistan knows — or what crimes they had committed to deserve the death penalty. Some poor Pakistani probably earned a nice fee for telling the authorities that so-and-so bad guy lived in that house over there; too bad for all the others who happened to live with the bad guy, assuming of course that the bad guy himself actually lived in that house over there.

The new White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, declined to answer questions about the first airstrikes, saying "I'm not going to get into these matters."1 Where have we heard that before?

After many of these bombings in recent years, a spokesperson for the United States or NATO has solemnly declared: “We regret the loss of life.” These are the same words used by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on a number of occasions, but their actions were typically called “terrorist”.

I wish I could be an Obamaniac. I envy their enthusiasm. Here, in the form of an open letter to President Obama, are some of the "changes we can believe in" in foreign policy that would have to occur to win over the non-believers like me.
Iran

Just leave them alone. There is no "Iranian problem". They are a threat to no one. Iran hasn't invaded any other country in centuries. No, President Ahmadinejad did not threaten Israel with any violence. Stop patrolling the waters surrounding Iran with American warships. Stop halting Iranian ships to check for arms shipments to Hamas. (That's generally regarded as an act of war.) Stop using Iranian dissident groups to carry out terrorist attacks inside Iran. Stop kidnaping Iranian diplomats. Stop the continual spying and recruiting within Iran. And yet, with all that, you can still bring yourself to say: "If countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us."2

Iran has as much right to arm Hamas as the US has to arm Israel. And there is no international law that says that the United States, the UK, Russia, China, Israel, France, Pakistan, and India are entitled to nuclear weapons, but Iran is not. Iran has every reason to feel threatened. Will you continue to provide nuclear technology to India, which has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while threatening Iran, an NPT signatory, with sanctions and warfare?

Russia

Stop surrounding the country with new NATO members. Stop looking to instigate new "color" revolutions in former Soviet republics and satellites. Stop arming and supporting Georgia in its attempts to block the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhasia, the breakaway regions on the border of Russia. And stop the placement of anti-missile systems in Russia's neighbors, the Czech Republic and Poland, on the absurd grounds that it's to ward off an Iranian missile attack. It was Czechoslovakia and Poland that the Germans also used to defend their imperialist ambitions — The two countries were being invaded on the grounds that Germans there were being maltreated. The world was told.

"The U.S. government made a big mistake from the breakup of the Soviet Union," said former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev last year. "At that time the Russian people were really euphoric about America and the U.S. was really number one in the minds of many Russians." But, he added, the United States moved aggressively to expand NATO and appeared gleeful at Russia's weakness.3

Cuba

Making it easier to travel there and send remittances is very nice (if, as expected, you do that), but these things are dwarfed by the need to end the US embargo. In 1999, Cuba filed a suit against the United States for $181.1 billion in compensation for economic losses and loss of life during the almost forty years of this aggression. The suit held Washington responsible for the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding and disabling of 2,099 others. We can now add ten more years to all three figures. The negative, often crippling, effects of the embargo extend into every aspect of Cuban life.

In addition to closing Guantanamo prison, the adjacent US military base established in 1903 by American military force should be closed and the land returned to Cuba.

The Cuban Five, held prisoner in the United States for over 10 years, guilty only of trying to prevent American-based terrorism against Cuba, should be released. Actually there were 10 Cubans arrested; five knew that they could expect no justice in an American court and pled guilty to get shorter sentences.4

Iraq

Freeing the Iraqi people to death ... Nothing short of a complete withdrawal of all US forces, military and contracted, and the closure of all US military bases and detention and torture centers, can promise a genuine end to US involvement and the beginning of meaningful Iraqi sovereignty. To begin immediately. Anything less is just politics and imperialism as usual. In six years of war, the Iraqi people have lost everything of value in their lives. As the Washington Post reported in 2007: "It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003."5 The good news is that the Iraqi people have 5,000 years experience in crafting a society to live in. They should be given the opportunity.

Saudi Arabia

Demand before the world that this government enter the 21st century (or at least the 20th), or the United States has to stop pretending that it gives a damn about human rights, women, homosexuals, religious liberty, and civil liberties. The Bush family had long-standing financial ties to members of the Saudi ruling class. What will be your explanation if you maintain the status quo?

Haiti

Reinstate the exiled Jean Bertrand Aristide to the presidency, which he lost when the United States overthrew him in 2004. To seek forgiveness for our sins, give the people of Haiti lots and lots of money and assistance.

Colombia

Stop giving major military support to a government that for years has been intimately tied to death squads, torture, and drug trafficking; in no other country in the world have so many progressive candidates for public office, unionists, and human-rights activists been murdered. Are you concerned that this is the closest ally the United States has in all of Latin America?

Venezuela

Hugo Chavez may talk too much but he's no threat except to the capitalist system of Venezuela and, by inspiration, elsewhere in Latin America. He has every good historical reason to bad-mouth American foreign policy, including Washington's role in the coup that overthrew him in 2002. If you can't understand why Chavez is not in love with what the United States does all over the world, I can give you a long reading list.

Put an end to support for Chavez's opposition by the Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, and other US government agencies. US diplomats should not be meeting with Venezuelans plotting coups against Chavez, nor should they be interfering in elections.

Send Luis Posada from Florida to Venezuela, which has asked for his extradition for his masterminding the bombing of a Cuban airline in 1976, taking 73 lives. Extradite the man, or try him in the US, or stop talking about the war on terrorism.

And please try not to repeat the nonsense about Venezuela being a dictatorship. It's a freer society than the United States. It has, for example, a genuine opposition daily media, non-existent in the United States. If you doubt that, try naming a single American daily newspaper or TV network that was unequivocally against the US invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Panama, Grenada, and Vietnam. Or even against two of them? How about one? Is there a single one that supports Hamas and/or Hezbollah? A few weeks ago, the New York Times published a story concerning a possible Israeli attack upon Iran, and stated: "Several details of the covert effort have been omitted from this account, at the request of senior United States intelligence and administration officials, to avoid harming continuing operations."6

Alas, Mr. President, among other disparaging remarks, you've already accused Chavez of being "a force that has interrupted progress in the region."7 This is a statement so contrary to the facts, even to plain common sense, so hypocritical given Washington's history in Latin America, that I despair of you ever freeing yourself from the ideological shackles that have bound every American president of the past century. It may as well be inscribed in their oath of office — that a president must be antagonistic toward any country that has expressly rejected Washington as the world's savior. You made this remark in an interview with Univision, Venezuela's leading, implacable media critic of the Chavez government. What regional progress could you be referring to, the police state of Colombia?

Bolivia

Stop American diplomats, Peace Corps volunteers, Fulbright scholars, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, from spying and fomenting subversion inside Bolivia. As the first black president of the United States, you could try to cultivate empathy toward, and from, the first indigenous president of Bolivia. Congratulate Bolivian president Evo Morales on winning a decisive victory on a recent referendum to approve a new constitution which enshrines the rights of the indigenous people and, for the first time, institutes separation of church and state.

Afghanistan

Perhaps the most miserable people on the planet, with no hope in sight as long as the world's powers continue to bomb, invade, overthrow, occupy, and slaughter in their land. The US Army is planning on throwing 30,000 more young American bodies into the killing fields and is currently building eight new major bases in southern Afghanistan. Is that not insane? If it makes sense to you I suggest that you start the practice of the president accompanying the military people when they inform American parents that their child has died in a place called Afghanistan.

If you pull out from this nightmare, you could also stop bombing Pakistan. Leave even if it results in the awful Taliban returning to power. They at least offer security to the country's wretched, and indications are that the current Taliban are not all fundamentalists.

But first, close Bagram prison and other detention camps, which are worse than Guantanamo.

And stop pretending that the United States gives a damn about the Afghan people and not oil and gas pipelines which can bypass Russia and Iran. The US has been endeavoring to fill the power vacuum in Central Asia created by the Soviet Union’s dissolution in order to assert Washington's domination over a region containing the second largest proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world. Is Afghanistan going to be your Iraq?

Israel

The most difficult task for you, but the one that would earn for you the most points. To declare that Israel is no longer the 51st state of the union would bring down upon your head the wrath of the most powerful lobby in the world and its many wealthy followers, as well as the Christian-fundamentalist Right and much of the media. But if you really want to see peace between Israel and Palestine you must cut off all military aid to Israel, in any form: hardware, software, personnel, money. And stop telling Hamas it has to recognize Israel and renounce violence until you tell Israel that it has to recognize Hamas and renounce violence.

North Korea

Bush called the country part of "the axis of evil", and Kim Jong Il a "pygmy" and "a spoiled child at a dinner table."8 But you might try to understand where Kim Jong Il is coming from. He sees that UN agencies went into Iraq and disarmed it, and then the United States invaded. The logical conclusion is not to disarm, but to go nuclear.

Central America

Stop interfering in the elections of Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, year after year. The Cold War has ended. And though you can't undo the horror perpetrated by the United States in the region in the 1980s, you can at least be kind to the immigrants in the US who came here trying to escape the long-term consequences of that terrible decade.

Vietnam

In your inauguration speech you spoke proudly of those "who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom ... For us, they fought and died, in places like ... Khe Sanh." So it is your studied and sincere opinion that the 58,000 American sevicemembers who died in Vietnam, while helping to kill over a million Vietnamese, gave their life for our prosperity and freedom? Would you care to defend that proposition without resort to any platitudes?

You might also consider this: In all the years since the Vietnam War ended, the three million Vietnamese suffering from diseases and deformities caused by US sprayings of the deadly chemical "Agent Orange" have received from the United States no medical attention, no environmental remediation, no compensation, and no official apology.

Kosovo

Stop supporting the most gangster government in the world, which has specialized in kidnaping, removing human body parts for sale, heavy trafficking in drugs, trafficking in women, various acts of terrorism, and ethnic cleansing of Serbs. This government would not be in power if the Bush administration had not seen them as America's natural allies. Do you share that view? UN Resolution 1244, adopted in 1999, reaffirmed the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to which Serbia is now the recognized successor state, and established that Kosovo was to remain part of Serbia. Why do we have a huge and permanent military base in that tiny self-declared country?

NATO

From protecting Europe against a [mythical] Soviet invasion to becoming an occupation army in Afghanistan. Put an end to this historical anachronism, what Russian leader Vladimir called "the stinking corpse of the cold war."9. You can accomplish this simply by leaving the organization. Without the United States and its never-ending military actions and officially-designated enemies, the organization would not even have the pretense of a purpose, which is all it has left. Members have had to be bullied, threatened and bribed to send armed forces to Afghanistan.
School of the Americas

Latin American countries almost never engage in war with each other, or any other countries. So for what kind of warfare are its military officers being trained by the United States? To suppress their own people. Close this school (the name has now been changed to protect the guilty) at Ft. Benning, Georgia that the United States has used to prepare two generations of Latin American military officers for careers in overthrowing progressive governments, death squads, torture, holding down dissent, and other charming activities. The British are fond of saying that the Empire was won on the playing fields of Eton. Americans can say that the road to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram began in the classrooms of the School of the Americas.

Torture

Your executive orders concerning this matter of utmost importance are great to see, but they still leave something to be desired. They state that the new standards ostensibly putting an end to torture apply to any "armed conflict". But what if your administration chooses to view future counterterrorism and other operations as not part of an "armed conflict"? And no mention is made of "rendition" — kidnaping a man off the street, throwing him in a car, throwing a hood over his head, stripping off his clothes, placing him in a diaper, shackling him from every angle, and flying him to a foreign torture dungeon. Why can't you just say that this and all other American use of proxy torturers is banned? Forever.

It's not enough to say that you're against torture or that the United States "does not torture" or "will not torture". George W. Bush said the same on a regular basis. To show that you're not George W. Bush you need to investigate those responsible for the use of torture, even if this means prosecuting a small army of Bush administration war criminals.

You aren't off to a good start by appointing former CIA official John O. Brennan as your top adviser on counterterrorism. Brennan has called "rendition" a "vital tool" and praised the CIA's interrogation techniques for providing "lifesaving" intelligence.10 Whatever were you thinking, Barack?

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi

Free this Libyan man from his prison in Scotland, where he is serving a life sentence after being framed by the United States for the bombing of PanAm flight 103 in December 1988, which took the lives of 270 people over Scotland. Iran actually financed a Palestinian group to carry out the bombing — as revenge for the US shooting down an Iranian passenger plane in July, killing 290 — not Libya, which the US accused for political reasons.11 Nations do not behave any more cynical than that. Megrahi lies in prison now dying of cancer, but still the US and the UK will not free him. It would be too embarrassing to admit to 20 years of shameless lying.

Mr. President, there's a lot more to be undone in our foreign policy if you wish to be taken seriously as a moral leader like Martin Luther King, Jr.: banning the use of depleted uranium, cluster bombs, and other dreadful weapons; joining the International Criminal Court instead of trying to sabotage it; making a number of other long-overdue apologies in addition to the one mentioned re Vietnam; and much more. You've got your work cut out for you if you really want to bring some happiness to this sad old world, make America credible and beloved again, stop creating armies of anti-American terrorists, and win over people like me.

And do you realize that you can eliminate all state and federal budget deficits in the United States, provide free health care and free university education to every American, pay for an unending array of worthwhile social and cultural programs, all just by ending our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not starting any new ones, and closing down the Pentagon's 700+ military bases? Think of it as the peace dividend Americans were promised when the Cold War would end some day, but never received. How about you delivering it, Mr. President? It's not too late.

But you are committed to the empire; and the empire is committed to war. Too bad.

Notes

1. Washington Post, January 24, 2009 ↩
2. Interview with al Arabiya TV, January 27, 2009 ↩
3. Gorbachev speaking in Florida, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, April 17, 2008 ↩
4. http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/polpris.htm ↩
5. Washington Post, May 5, 2007, p.1 ↩
6. New York Times, January 11, 2009 ↩
7. Washington Post, January 19, 2009↩
8. Newsweek, May 27, 2002 ↩
9. Press Trust of India (news agency), December 21, 2007 ↩
10. Washington Post, November 26, 2008 ↩
11. http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm ↩

–

William Blum is the author of:

* Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
* Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
* West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
* Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6@aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area.

(Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite.)

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned.

The Anti-Empire Report

February 3rd, 2009
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

Change (in rhetoric) we can believe in.

I've said all along that whatever good changes might occur in regard to non-foreign policy issues, such as what's already taken place concerning the environment and abortion, the Obama administration will not produce any significantly worthwhile change in US foreign policy; little done in this area will reduce the level of misery that the American Empire regularly brings down upon humanity. And to the extent that Barack Obama is willing to clearly reveal what he believes about anything controversial, he appears to believe in the empire.

The Obamania bubble should already have begun to lose some air with the multiple US bombings of Pakistan within the first few days following the inauguration. The Pentagon briefed the White House of its plans, and the White House had no objection. So bombs away — Barack Obama's first war crime. The dozens of victims were, of course, all bad people, including all the women and children. As with all these bombings, we'll never know the names of all the victims — It's doubtful that even Pakistan knows — or what crimes they had committed to deserve the death penalty. Some poor Pakistani probably earned a nice fee for telling the authorities that so-and-so bad guy lived in that house over there; too bad for all the others who happened to live with the bad guy, assuming of course that the bad guy himself actually lived in that house over there.

The new White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, declined to answer questions about the first airstrikes, saying "I'm not going to get into these matters."1 Where have we heard that before?

After many of these bombings in recent years, a spokesperson for the United States or NATO has solemnly declared: “We regret the loss of life.” These are the same words used by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on a number of occasions, but their actions were typically called “terrorist”.

I wish I could be an Obamaniac. I envy their enthusiasm. Here, in the form of an open letter to President Obama, are some of the "changes we can believe in" in foreign policy that would have to occur to win over the non-believers like me.
Iran

Just leave them alone. There is no "Iranian problem". They are a threat to no one. Iran hasn't invaded any other country in centuries. No, President Ahmadinejad did not threaten Israel with any violence. Stop patrolling the waters surrounding Iran with American warships. Stop halting Iranian ships to check for arms shipments to Hamas. (That's generally regarded as an act of war.) Stop using Iranian dissident groups to carry out terrorist attacks inside Iran. Stop kidnaping Iranian diplomats. Stop the continual spying and recruiting within Iran. And yet, with all that, you can still bring yourself to say: "If countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us."2

Iran has as much right to arm Hamas as the US has to arm Israel. And there is no international law that says that the United States, the UK, Russia, China, Israel, France, Pakistan, and India are entitled to nuclear weapons, but Iran is not. Iran has every reason to feel threatened. Will you continue to provide nuclear technology to India, which has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while threatening Iran, an NPT signatory, with sanctions and warfare?

Russia

Stop surrounding the country with new NATO members. Stop looking to instigate new "color" revolutions in former Soviet republics and satellites. Stop arming and supporting Georgia in its attempts to block the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhasia, the breakaway regions on the border of Russia. And stop the placement of anti-missile systems in Russia's neighbors, the Czech Republic and Poland, on the absurd grounds that it's to ward off an Iranian missile attack. It was Czechoslovakia and Poland that the Germans also used to defend their imperialist ambitions — The two countries were being invaded on the grounds that Germans there were being maltreated. The world was told.

"The U.S. government made a big mistake from the breakup of the Soviet Union," said former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev last year. "At that time the Russian people were really euphoric about America and the U.S. was really number one in the minds of many Russians." But, he added, the United States moved aggressively to expand NATO and appeared gleeful at Russia's weakness.3

Cuba

Making it easier to travel there and send remittances is very nice (if, as expected, you do that), but these things are dwarfed by the need to end the US embargo. In 1999, Cuba filed a suit against the United States for $181.1 billion in compensation for economic losses and loss of life during the almost forty years of this aggression. The suit held Washington responsible for the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding and disabling of 2,099 others. We can now add ten more years to all three figures. The negative, often crippling, effects of the embargo extend into every aspect of Cuban life.

In addition to closing Guantanamo prison, the adjacent US military base established in 1903 by American military force should be closed and the land returned to Cuba.

The Cuban Five, held prisoner in the United States for over 10 years, guilty only of trying to prevent American-based terrorism against Cuba, should be released. Actually there were 10 Cubans arrested; five knew that they could expect no justice in an American court and pled guilty to get shorter sentences.4

Iraq

Freeing the Iraqi people to death ... Nothing short of a complete withdrawal of all US forces, military and contracted, and the closure of all US military bases and detention and torture centers, can promise a genuine end to US involvement and the beginning of meaningful Iraqi sovereignty. To begin immediately. Anything less is just politics and imperialism as usual. In six years of war, the Iraqi people have lost everything of value in their lives. As the Washington Post reported in 2007: "It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003."5 The good news is that the Iraqi people have 5,000 years experience in crafting a society to live in. They should be given the opportunity.

Saudi Arabia

Demand before the world that this government enter the 21st century (or at least the 20th), or the United States has to stop pretending that it gives a damn about human rights, women, homosexuals, religious liberty, and civil liberties. The Bush family had long-standing financial ties to members of the Saudi ruling class. What will be your explanation if you maintain the status quo?

Haiti

Reinstate the exiled Jean Bertrand Aristide to the presidency, which he lost when the United States overthrew him in 2004. To seek forgiveness for our sins, give the people of Haiti lots and lots of money and assistance.

Colombia

Stop giving major military support to a government that for years has been intimately tied to death squads, torture, and drug trafficking; in no other country in the world have so many progressive candidates for public office, unionists, and human-rights activists been murdered. Are you concerned that this is the closest ally the United States has in all of Latin America?

Venezuela

Hugo Chavez may talk too much but he's no threat except to the capitalist system of Venezuela and, by inspiration, elsewhere in Latin America. He has every good historical reason to bad-mouth American foreign policy, including Washington's role in the coup that overthrew him in 2002. If you can't understand why Chavez is not in love with what the United States does all over the world, I can give you a long reading list.

Put an end to support for Chavez's opposition by the Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, and other US government agencies. US diplomats should not be meeting with Venezuelans plotting coups against Chavez, nor should they be interfering in elections.

Send Luis Posada from Florida to Venezuela, which has asked for his extradition for his masterminding the bombing of a Cuban airline in 1976, taking 73 lives. Extradite the man, or try him in the US, or stop talking about the war on terrorism.

And please try not to repeat the nonsense about Venezuela being a dictatorship. It's a freer society than the United States. It has, for example, a genuine opposition daily media, non-existent in the United States. If you doubt that, try naming a single American daily newspaper or TV network that was unequivocally against the US invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Panama, Grenada, and Vietnam. Or even against two of them? How about one? Is there a single one that supports Hamas and/or Hezbollah? A few weeks ago, the New York Times published a story concerning a possible Israeli attack upon Iran, and stated: "Several details of the covert effort have been omitted from this account, at the request of senior United States intelligence and administration officials, to avoid harming continuing operations."6

Alas, Mr. President, among other disparaging remarks, you've already accused Chavez of being "a force that has interrupted progress in the region."7 This is a statement so contrary to the facts, even to plain common sense, so hypocritical given Washington's history in Latin America, that I despair of you ever freeing yourself from the ideological shackles that have bound every American president of the past century. It may as well be inscribed in their oath of office — that a president must be antagonistic toward any country that has expressly rejected Washington as the world's savior. You made this remark in an interview with Univision, Venezuela's leading, implacable media critic of the Chavez government. What regional progress could you be referring to, the police state of Colombia?

Bolivia

Stop American diplomats, Peace Corps volunteers, Fulbright scholars, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, from spying and fomenting subversion inside Bolivia. As the first black president of the United States, you could try to cultivate empathy toward, and from, the first indigenous president of Bolivia. Congratulate Bolivian president Evo Morales on winning a decisive victory on a recent referendum to approve a new constitution which enshrines the rights of the indigenous people and, for the first time, institutes separation of church and state.

Afghanistan

Perhaps the most miserable people on the planet, with no hope in sight as long as the world's powers continue to bomb, invade, overthrow, occupy, and slaughter in their land. The US Army is planning on throwing 30,000 more young American bodies into the killing fields and is currently building eight new major bases in southern Afghanistan. Is that not insane? If it makes sense to you I suggest that you start the practice of the president accompanying the military people when they inform American parents that their child has died in a place called Afghanistan.

If you pull out from this nightmare, you could also stop bombing Pakistan. Leave even if it results in the awful Taliban returning to power. They at least offer security to the country's wretched, and indications are that the current Taliban are not all fundamentalists.

But first, close Bagram prison and other detention camps, which are worse than Guantanamo.

And stop pretending that the United States gives a damn about the Afghan people and not oil and gas pipelines which can bypass Russia and Iran. The US has been endeavoring to fill the power vacuum in Central Asia created by the Soviet Union’s dissolution in order to assert Washington's domination over a region containing the second largest proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world. Is Afghanistan going to be your Iraq?

Israel

The most difficult task for you, but the one that would earn for you the most points. To declare that Israel is no longer the 51st state of the union would bring down upon your head the wrath of the most powerful lobby in the world and its many wealthy followers, as well as the Christian-fundamentalist Right and much of the media. But if you really want to see peace between Israel and Palestine you must cut off all military aid to Israel, in any form: hardware, software, personnel, money. And stop telling Hamas it has to recognize Israel and renounce violence until you tell Israel that it has to recognize Hamas and renounce violence.

North Korea

Bush called the country part of "the axis of evil", and Kim Jong Il a "pygmy" and "a spoiled child at a dinner table."8 But you might try to understand where Kim Jong Il is coming from. He sees that UN agencies went into Iraq and disarmed it, and then the United States invaded. The logical conclusion is not to disarm, but to go nuclear.

Central America

Stop interfering in the elections of Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, year after year. The Cold War has ended. And though you can't undo the horror perpetrated by the United States in the region in the 1980s, you can at least be kind to the immigrants in the US who came here trying to escape the long-term consequences of that terrible decade.

Vietnam

In your inauguration speech you spoke proudly of those "who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom ... For us, they fought and died, in places like ... Khe Sanh." So it is your studied and sincere opinion that the 58,000 American sevicemembers who died in Vietnam, while helping to kill over a million Vietnamese, gave their life for our prosperity and freedom? Would you care to defend that proposition without resort to any platitudes?

You might also consider this: In all the years since the Vietnam War ended, the three million Vietnamese suffering from diseases and deformities caused by US sprayings of the deadly chemical "Agent Orange" have received from the United States no medical attention, no environmental remediation, no compensation, and no official apology.

Kosovo

Stop supporting the most gangster government in the world, which has specialized in kidnaping, removing human body parts for sale, heavy trafficking in drugs, trafficking in women, various acts of terrorism, and ethnic cleansing of Serbs. This government would not be in power if the Bush administration had not seen them as America's natural allies. Do you share that view? UN Resolution 1244, adopted in 1999, reaffirmed the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to which Serbia is now the recognized successor state, and established that Kosovo was to remain part of Serbia. Why do we have a huge and permanent military base in that tiny self-declared country?

NATO

From protecting Europe against a [mythical] Soviet invasion to becoming an occupation army in Afghanistan. Put an end to this historical anachronism, what Russian leader Vladimir called "the stinking corpse of the cold war."9. You can accomplish this simply by leaving the organization. Without the United States and its never-ending military actions and officially-designated enemies, the organization would not even have the pretense of a purpose, which is all it has left. Members have had to be bullied, threatened and bribed to send armed forces to Afghanistan.
School of the Americas

Latin American countries almost never engage in war with each other, or any other countries. So for what kind of warfare are its military officers being trained by the United States? To suppress their own people. Close this school (the name has now been changed to protect the guilty) at Ft. Benning, Georgia that the United States has used to prepare two generations of Latin American military officers for careers in overthrowing progressive governments, death squads, torture, holding down dissent, and other charming activities. The British are fond of saying that the Empire was won on the playing fields of Eton. Americans can say that the road to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram began in the classrooms of the School of the Americas.

Torture

Your executive orders concerning this matter of utmost importance are great to see, but they still leave something to be desired. They state that the new standards ostensibly putting an end to torture apply to any "armed conflict". But what if your administration chooses to view future counterterrorism and other operations as not part of an "armed conflict"? And no mention is made of "rendition" — kidnaping a man off the street, throwing him in a car, throwing a hood over his head, stripping off his clothes, placing him in a diaper, shackling him from every angle, and flying him to a foreign torture dungeon. Why can't you just say that this and all other American use of proxy torturers is banned? Forever.

It's not enough to say that you're against torture or that the United States "does not torture" or "will not torture". George W. Bush said the same on a regular basis. To show that you're not George W. Bush you need to investigate those responsible for the use of torture, even if this means prosecuting a small army of Bush administration war criminals.

You aren't off to a good start by appointing former CIA official John O. Brennan as your top adviser on counterterrorism. Brennan has called "rendition" a "vital tool" and praised the CIA's interrogation techniques for providing "lifesaving" intelligence.10 Whatever were you thinking, Barack?

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi

Free this Libyan man from his prison in Scotland, where he is serving a life sentence after being framed by the United States for the bombing of PanAm flight 103 in December 1988, which took the lives of 270 people over Scotland. Iran actually financed a Palestinian group to carry out the bombing — as revenge for the US shooting down an Iranian passenger plane in July, killing 290 — not Libya, which the US accused for political reasons.11 Nations do not behave any more cynical than that. Megrahi lies in prison now dying of cancer, but still the US and the UK will not free him. It would be too embarrassing to admit to 20 years of shameless lying.

Mr. President, there's a lot more to be undone in our foreign policy if you wish to be taken seriously as a moral leader like Martin Luther King, Jr.: banning the use of depleted uranium, cluster bombs, and other dreadful weapons; joining the International Criminal Court instead of trying to sabotage it; making a number of other long-overdue apologies in addition to the one mentioned re Vietnam; and much more. You've got your work cut out for you if you really want to bring some happiness to this sad old world, make America credible and beloved again, stop creating armies of anti-American terrorists, and win over people like me.

And do you realize that you can eliminate all state and federal budget deficits in the United States, provide free health care and free university education to every American, pay for an unending array of worthwhile social and cultural programs, all just by ending our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not starting any new ones, and closing down the Pentagon's 700+ military bases? Think of it as the peace dividend Americans were promised when the Cold War would end some day, but never received. How about you delivering it, Mr. President? It's not too late.

But you are committed to the empire; and the empire is committed to war. Too bad.

Notes

1. Washington Post, January 24, 2009 ↩
2. Interview with al Arabiya TV, January 27, 2009 ↩
3. Gorbachev speaking in Florida, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, April 17, 2008 ↩
4. http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/polpris.htm ↩
5. Washington Post, May 5, 2007, p.1 ↩
6. New York Times, January 11, 2009 ↩
7. Washington Post, January 19, 2009↩
8. Newsweek, May 27, 2002 ↩
9. Press Trust of India (news agency), December 21, 2007 ↩
10. Washington Post, November 26, 2008 ↩
11. http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm ↩

–

William Blum is the author of:

* Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
* Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
* West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
* Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6@aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area.

(Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite.)

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned.

Anti Empire Report Feb 2009 by William Blum

The Anti-Empire Report January 3rd, 2009 by William Blum

The Anti-Empire Report

January 3rd, 2009

www.killinghope.org
America's other glorious war

The Pentagon pushes hard for a large increase in troops for Afghanistan. Barack Obama has been calling for the same since well before the November election. Listen to the drumbeats telling us that the security of the United States and the Free World necessitates increased action in this place called Afghanistan. As urgent as Iraq 2003, it is. Why? What is there about this backward, reactionary, woman-hating, failed state that warrants hundreds of deaths of American and NATO soldiers? That justifies tens of thousands of Afghan deaths since the first US bombing attacks in October 2001?

In early December, reports the Washington Post, "standing at Kandahar Air Field in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the United States is making a 'sustained commitment' to that country, one that will last 'some protracted period of time'." The story goes on to discuss $300 million in construction projects at this one base to house additional American forces, erecting guard stations and towers and perimeter fencing around the barracks area, putting in vehicle inspection areas, administration offices, cold-storage warehouse, a new power plant, electrical and water distribution systems, communications lines, housing for 1,500 personnel who sustain the systems, maintenance shops, warehouses1 ... America's wealth bleeds out endlessly.

Back in April Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, commander of the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division, when asked how long it would take to create "lasting stability" in Afghanistan, replied: "In some way, shape or form ... I think it's a generation."2 "Stability", it should be noted, is a code word used regularly by the United States since at least the 1950s to mean that the regime in power is willing and able to behave the way Washington would like it to behave. It is remarkable, and scary, to read the US military writing about how it goes around the world bringing "stability" to (often ungrateful) people. This past October the Army published a manual called "Stability Operations".3 It discusses numerous American interventions all over the world since the 1890s, one example after another of bringing "stability" to benighted peoples. One can picture the young American service members reading it, or having it fed to them in lectures, full of pride to be a member of such an altruistic fighting force.

For those members of the US military in Afghanistan the most enlightening lesson they could receive is that their government's plans for that land of sadness have little or nothing to do with the welfare of the Afghan people. In the late 1970s through much of the 1980s, the country had a government that was relatively progressive, with full rights for women; even a Pentagon report of the time testified to the actuality of women's rights in the country.4 And what happened to that government? The United States was instrumental in overthrowing it. It was replaced by the Taliban.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, US oil companies have been vying with Russia, Iran and other energy interests for the massive, untapped oil and natural gas reserves in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. The building and protection of oil and gas pipelines in Afghanistan, to continue farther to Pakistan, India, and elsewhere, has been a key objective of US policy since before the 2001 American invasion and occupation of the country, although the subsequent turmoil there has presented serious obstacles to such plans. A planned Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline has strong support from Washington because, amongst other reasons, the US is eager to block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran.5 But security for such projects remains daunting, and that's where the US and NATO forces come in to play.

In the late 1990s, the American oil company, Unocal, met with Taliban officials in Texas to discuss the pipelines.6 Zalmay Khalilzad, later chosen to be the US ambassador to Afghanistan, worked for Unocal7; Hamid Karzai, later chosen by Washington to be the Afghan president, also reportedly worked for Unocal, although the company denies this. Unocal's talks with the Taliban, conducted with the full knowledge of the Clinton administration, and undeterred by the extreme repression of Taliban society, continued as late as 2000 or 2001.

As for NATO, it has no reason to be fighting in Afghanistan. Indeed, NATO has no legitimate reason for existence at all. Their biggest fear is that "failure" in Afghanistan would make this thought more present in the world's mind. If NATO hadn’t begun to intervene outside of Europe it would have highlighted its uselessness and lack of mission. “Out of area or out of business” it was said.

In June, the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives published a report saying Taliban and insurgent activity against the US-NATO presence in Kandahar province puts the feasibility of the pipeline project in doubt. The report says southern regions in Afghanistan, including Kandahar, would have to be cleared of insurgent activity and land mines in two years to meet construction and investment schedules.

"Nobody is going to start putting pipe in the ground unless they are satisfied that there is some reasonable insurance that the workers for the pipeline are going to be safe," said Howard Brown, the Canadian representative for the Asian Development Bank, the major funding agency for the pipeline.8

If Americans were asked what they think their country is doing in Afghanistan, their answers would likely be one variation or another of "fighting terrorism", with some kind of connection to 9-11. But what does that mean? Of the tens of thousands of Afghans killed by American/NATO bombs over the course of seven years, how many can it be said had any kind of linkage to any kind of anti-American terrorist act, other than in Afghanistan itself during this period? Not one, as far as we know. The so-called "terrorist training camps" in Afghanistan were set up largely by the Taliban to provide fighters for their civil conflict with the Northern Alliance (minimally less religious fanatics and misogynists than the Taliban, but represented in the present Afghan government). As everyone knows, none of the alleged 9-11 hijackers was an Afghan; 15 of the 19 were from Saudi Arabia; and most of the planning for the attacks appears to have been carried out in Germany and the United States. So, of course, bomb Afghanistan. And keep bombing Afghanistan. And bomb Pakistan. Especially wedding parties (at least six so far).
Israel and Palestine, again, forever

Nothing changes. Including what I have to say on the matter. To prove my point, I'm repeating part of what I wrote in this report in July 2006 ...

There are times when I think this tired old world has gone on a few years too long. What's happening in the Middle East is so depressing. Most discussions of the everlasting Israel-Palestine conflict are variations on the child's eternal defense for misbehavior – "He started it!" Within two minutes of discussing/arguing the latest manifestation of the conflict the participants are back to 1967, then 1948, then biblical times. Instead of getting entangled in who started the current mess, I'd prefer to express what I see as two essential underlying facts of life which remain from one conflict to the next:

1. Israel's existence is not at stake and hasn't been so for decades, if it ever was, regardless of the many de rigueur militant statements by Middle East leaders over the years. If Israel would learn to deal with its neighbors in a non-expansionist, non-military, humane, and respectful manner, engage in full prisoner exchanges, and sincerely strive for a viable two-state (if not one-state) solution, even those who are opposed to the idea of a state based on a particular religion could accept the state of Israel, and the question of its right to exist would scarcely arise in people's minds. But as it is, Israel still uses the issue as a justification for its behavior, as Jews all over the world use the Holocaust and conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
2. In a conflict between a thousand-pound gorilla and a mouse, it's the gorilla who has to make concessions in order for the two sides to progress to the next level. What can the Palestinians offer in the way of concession? Israel would reply to that question: "No violent attacks of any kind." But that would leave the status quo ante bellum – a life of unmitigated misery for the occupied, captive Palestinian people, confined to the world's largest open air concentration camp.

It is a wanton act of collective punishment that is depriving the Palestinians of food, electricity, water, money, access to the outside world ... and sleep. Israel has been sending jets flying over Gaza at night triggering sonic booms, traumatizing children. "I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza," declared Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmer9, words suitable for Israel's tombstone.

Israel has created its worst enemies – they helped create Hamas as a counterweight to Fatah in Palestine, and their occupation of Lebanon created Hezbollah. The current terrible bombings can be expected to keep the process going. Since its very beginning, Israel has been almost continually engaged in fighting wars and taking other people's lands. Did not any better way ever occur to the idealistic Zionist pioneers?
The question that may never go away: Who really is Barack Obama?

In his autobiography, "Dreams From My Fathers", Barack Obama writes of taking a job at some point after graduating from Columbia University in 1983. He describes his employer as "a consulting house to multinational corporations" in New York City, and his functions as a "research assistant" and "financial writer".

The odd part of Obama's story is that he doesn't mention the name of his employer. However, a New York Times story of 2007 identifies the company as Business International Corporation.10 Equally odd is that the Times did not remind its readers that the newspaper itself had disclosed in 1977 that Business International had provided cover for four CIA employees in various countries between 1955 and 1960.11

The British journal, Lobster Magazine – which, despite its incongruous name, is a venerable international publication on intelligence matters – has reported that Business International was active in the 1980s promoting the candidacy of Washington-favored candidates in Australia and Fiji.12 In 1987, the CIA overthrew the Fiji government after but one month in office because of its policy of maintaining the island as a nuclear-free zone, meaning that American nuclear-powered or nuclear-weapons-carrying ships could not make port calls.13 After the Fiji coup, the candidate supported by Business International, who was much more amenable to Washington's nuclear desires, was reinstated to power – R.S.K. Mara was Prime Minister or President of Fiji from 1970 to 2000, except for the one-month break in 1987.

In his book, not only doesn't Obama mention his employer's name; he fails to say when he worked there, or why he left the job. There may well be no significance to these omissions, but inasmuch as Business International has a long association with the world of intelligence, covert actions, and attempts to penetrate the radical left – including Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)14 – it's valid to wonder if the inscrutable Mr. Obama is concealing something about his own association with this world.
On socialist Cuba's 50th anniversary, January 1, 2009: Notes on the beginning of its unforgivable revolution.

The existence of a revolutionary socialist government with growing ties to the Soviet Union only 90 miles away, insisted the United States government, was a situation which no self-respecting superpower should tolerate, and in 1961 it undertook an invasion of Cuba.

But less than 50 miles from the Soviet Union sat Pakistan, a close ally of the United States, a member since 1955 of the South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the US-created anti-communist alliance. On the very border of the Soviet Union was Iran, an even closer ally of the United States, with its relentless electronic listening posts, aerial surveillance, and infiltration into Russian territory by American agents. And alongside Iran, also bordering the Soviet Union, was Turkey, a member of the Russians' mortal enemy, NATO, since 1951.

In 1962 during the "Cuban Missile Crisis", Washington, seemingly in a state of near-panic, informed the world that the Russians were installing "offensive" missiles in Cuba. The US promptly instituted a "quarantine" of the island – a powerful show of naval and marine forces in the Caribbean would stop and search all vessels heading towards Cuba; any found to contain military cargo would be forced to turn back.

The United States, however, had missiles and bomber bases already in place in Turkey and other missiles in Western Europe pointed toward the Soviet Union. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev later wrote:

"The Americans had surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons, and now they would learn just what it feels like to have enemy missiles pointing at you; we'd be doing nothing more than giving them a little of their own medicine. ... After all, the United States had no moral or legal quarrel with us. We hadn't given the Cubans anything more than the Americans were giving to their allies. We had the same rights and opportunities as the Americans. Our conduct in the international arena was governed by the same rules and limits as the Americans."15

Lest anyone misunderstand, as Khrushchev apparently did, the rules under which Washington was operating, Time magazine was quick to explain. "On the part of the Communists," the magazine declared, "this equating [referring to Khrushchev's offer to mutually remove missiles and bombers from Cuba and Turkey] had obvious tactical motives. On the part of neutralists and pacifists [who welcomed Khrushchev's offer] it betrayed intellectual and moral confusion." The confusion lay, it seems, in not seeing clearly who were the good guys and who were the bad guys, for "The purpose of the U.S. bases [in Turkey] was not to blackmail Russia but to strengthen the defense system of NATO, which had been created as a safeguard against Russian aggression. As a member of NATO, Turkey welcomed the bases as a contribution to her own defense." Cuba, which had been invaded only the year before, could have, it seems, no such concern. Time continued its sermon, which undoubtedly spoke for most Americans:

"Beyond these differences between the two cases, there is an enormous moral difference between U.S. and Russian objectives ... To equate U.S. and Russian bases is in effect to equate U.S. and Russian purposes ... The U.S. bases, such as those in Turkey, have helped keep the peace since World War II, while the Russian bases in Cuba threatened to upset the peace. The Russian bases were intended to further conquest and domination, while U.S. bases were erected to preserve freedom. The difference should have been obvious to all."16

Equally obvious was the right of the United States to maintain a military base on Cuban soil – Guantanamo Naval Base by name, a vestige of colonialism staring down the throats of the Cuban people, which the US, to this day, refuses to vacate despite the vehement protest of the Castro government.

In the American lexicon, in addition to good and bad bases and missiles, there are good and bad revolutions. The American and French Revolutions were good. The Cuban Revolution is bad. It must be bad because so many people have left Cuba as a result of it.

But at least 100,000 people left the British colonies in America during and after the American Revolution. These Tories could not abide by the political and social changes, both actual and feared, particularly that change which attends all revolutions worthy of the name – Those looked down upon as inferiors no longer know their place. (Or as the US Secretary of State put it after the Russian Revolution: The Bolsheviks sought "to make the ignorant and incapable mass of humanity dominant in the earth."17)

The Tories fled to Nova Scotia and Britain carrying tales of the godless, dissolute, barbaric American revolutionaries. Those who remained and refused to take an oath of allegiance to the new state governments were denied virtually all civil liberties. Many were jailed, murdered, or forced into exile. After the American Civil War, thousands more fled to South America and other points, again disturbed by the social upheaval. How much more is such an exodus to be expected following the Cuban Revolution? – a true social revolution, giving rise to changes much more profound than anything in the American experience. How many more would have left the United States if 90 miles away lay the world's wealthiest nation welcoming their residence and promising all manner of benefits and rewards?
Notes

1. Washington Post, December 25, 2008 ↩
2. Reuters, April 29, 2008 ↩
3. http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/Repository/FM307/FM3-07.pdf ↩
4. U.S. Department of the Army, "Afghanistan, A Country Study" (1986), pp.121, 128, 130, 134, 136, 223, 232-3 ↩
5. Globe & Mail (Toronto), June 19, 2008 ↩
6. BBC News, December 4, 1997, "Taleban [sic] in Texas for talks on gas pipeline" ↩
7. Washington Post, November 23, 2001 ↩
8. United Press International, July 17, 2008 ↩
9. Associated Press, July 3, 2006 ↩
10. New York Times, October 30, 2007 ↩
11. New York Times, December 27, 1977, p.40 ↩
12. Lobster Magazine, Hull, UK, #14, November 1987 ↩
13. William Blum, “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower”, pp.199-200 ↩
14. Carl Oglesby, "Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Antiwar Movement" (2008), passim ↩
15. "Khrushchev Remembers" (1971) pp.494, 496 ↩
16. Time magazine, November 2, 1962 ↩
17. Cited by William Appleman Williams, "American Intervention in Russia: 1917-20", in David Horowitz, ed., "Containment and Revolution" (1967). Written in a letter to President Woodrow Wilson by Secretary of State Robert Lansing, uncle of John Foster and Allen Dulles. ↩

–

William Blum is the author of:

* Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
* Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
* West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
* Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6@aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area.

(Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite.)

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned.

killinghope.org

The Anti-Empire Report

January 3rd, 2009

www.killinghope.org
America's other glorious war

The Pentagon pushes hard for a large increase in troops for Afghanistan. Barack Obama has been calling for the same since well before the November election. Listen to the drumbeats telling us that the security of the United States and the Free World necessitates increased action in this place called Afghanistan. As urgent as Iraq 2003, it is. Why? What is there about this backward, reactionary, woman-hating, failed state that warrants hundreds of deaths of American and NATO soldiers? That justifies tens of thousands of Afghan deaths since the first US bombing attacks in October 2001?

In early December, reports the Washington Post, "standing at Kandahar Air Field in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the United States is making a 'sustained commitment' to that country, one that will last 'some protracted period of time'." The story goes on to discuss $300 million in construction projects at this one base to house additional American forces, erecting guard stations and towers and perimeter fencing around the barracks area, putting in vehicle inspection areas, administration offices, cold-storage warehouse, a new power plant, electrical and water distribution systems, communications lines, housing for 1,500 personnel who sustain the systems, maintenance shops, warehouses1 ... America's wealth bleeds out endlessly.

Back in April Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, commander of the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division, when asked how long it would take to create "lasting stability" in Afghanistan, replied: "In some way, shape or form ... I think it's a generation."2 "Stability", it should be noted, is a code word used regularly by the United States since at least the 1950s to mean that the regime in power is willing and able to behave the way Washington would like it to behave. It is remarkable, and scary, to read the US military writing about how it goes around the world bringing "stability" to (often ungrateful) people. This past October the Army published a manual called "Stability Operations".3 It discusses numerous American interventions all over the world since the 1890s, one example after another of bringing "stability" to benighted peoples. One can picture the young American service members reading it, or having it fed to them in lectures, full of pride to be a member of such an altruistic fighting force.

For those members of the US military in Afghanistan the most enlightening lesson they could receive is that their government's plans for that land of sadness have little or nothing to do with the welfare of the Afghan people. In the late 1970s through much of the 1980s, the country had a government that was relatively progressive, with full rights for women; even a Pentagon report of the time testified to the actuality of women's rights in the country.4 And what happened to that government? The United States was instrumental in overthrowing it. It was replaced by the Taliban.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, US oil companies have been vying with Russia, Iran and other energy interests for the massive, untapped oil and natural gas reserves in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. The building and protection of oil and gas pipelines in Afghanistan, to continue farther to Pakistan, India, and elsewhere, has been a key objective of US policy since before the 2001 American invasion and occupation of the country, although the subsequent turmoil there has presented serious obstacles to such plans. A planned Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline has strong support from Washington because, amongst other reasons, the US is eager to block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran.5 But security for such projects remains daunting, and that's where the US and NATO forces come in to play.

In the late 1990s, the American oil company, Unocal, met with Taliban officials in Texas to discuss the pipelines.6 Zalmay Khalilzad, later chosen to be the US ambassador to Afghanistan, worked for Unocal7; Hamid Karzai, later chosen by Washington to be the Afghan president, also reportedly worked for Unocal, although the company denies this. Unocal's talks with the Taliban, conducted with the full knowledge of the Clinton administration, and undeterred by the extreme repression of Taliban society, continued as late as 2000 or 2001.

As for NATO, it has no reason to be fighting in Afghanistan. Indeed, NATO has no legitimate reason for existence at all. Their biggest fear is that "failure" in Afghanistan would make this thought more present in the world's mind. If NATO hadn’t begun to intervene outside of Europe it would have highlighted its uselessness and lack of mission. “Out of area or out of business” it was said.

In June, the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives published a report saying Taliban and insurgent activity against the US-NATO presence in Kandahar province puts the feasibility of the pipeline project in doubt. The report says southern regions in Afghanistan, including Kandahar, would have to be cleared of insurgent activity and land mines in two years to meet construction and investment schedules.

"Nobody is going to start putting pipe in the ground unless they are satisfied that there is some reasonable insurance that the workers for the pipeline are going to be safe," said Howard Brown, the Canadian representative for the Asian Development Bank, the major funding agency for the pipeline.8

If Americans were asked what they think their country is doing in Afghanistan, their answers would likely be one variation or another of "fighting terrorism", with some kind of connection to 9-11. But what does that mean? Of the tens of thousands of Afghans killed by American/NATO bombs over the course of seven years, how many can it be said had any kind of linkage to any kind of anti-American terrorist act, other than in Afghanistan itself during this period? Not one, as far as we know. The so-called "terrorist training camps" in Afghanistan were set up largely by the Taliban to provide fighters for their civil conflict with the Northern Alliance (minimally less religious fanatics and misogynists than the Taliban, but represented in the present Afghan government). As everyone knows, none of the alleged 9-11 hijackers was an Afghan; 15 of the 19 were from Saudi Arabia; and most of the planning for the attacks appears to have been carried out in Germany and the United States. So, of course, bomb Afghanistan. And keep bombing Afghanistan. And bomb Pakistan. Especially wedding parties (at least six so far).
Israel and Palestine, again, forever

Nothing changes. Including what I have to say on the matter. To prove my point, I'm repeating part of what I wrote in this report in July 2006 ...

There are times when I think this tired old world has gone on a few years too long. What's happening in the Middle East is so depressing. Most discussions of the everlasting Israel-Palestine conflict are variations on the child's eternal defense for misbehavior – "He started it!" Within two minutes of discussing/arguing the latest manifestation of the conflict the participants are back to 1967, then 1948, then biblical times. Instead of getting entangled in who started the current mess, I'd prefer to express what I see as two essential underlying facts of life which remain from one conflict to the next:

1. Israel's existence is not at stake and hasn't been so for decades, if it ever was, regardless of the many de rigueur militant statements by Middle East leaders over the years. If Israel would learn to deal with its neighbors in a non-expansionist, non-military, humane, and respectful manner, engage in full prisoner exchanges, and sincerely strive for a viable two-state (if not one-state) solution, even those who are opposed to the idea of a state based on a particular religion could accept the state of Israel, and the question of its right to exist would scarcely arise in people's minds. But as it is, Israel still uses the issue as a justification for its behavior, as Jews all over the world use the Holocaust and conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
2. In a conflict between a thousand-pound gorilla and a mouse, it's the gorilla who has to make concessions in order for the two sides to progress to the next level. What can the Palestinians offer in the way of concession? Israel would reply to that question: "No violent attacks of any kind." But that would leave the status quo ante bellum – a life of unmitigated misery for the occupied, captive Palestinian people, confined to the world's largest open air concentration camp.

It is a wanton act of collective punishment that is depriving the Palestinians of food, electricity, water, money, access to the outside world ... and sleep. Israel has been sending jets flying over Gaza at night triggering sonic booms, traumatizing children. "I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza," declared Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmer9, words suitable for Israel's tombstone.

Israel has created its worst enemies – they helped create Hamas as a counterweight to Fatah in Palestine, and their occupation of Lebanon created Hezbollah. The current terrible bombings can be expected to keep the process going. Since its very beginning, Israel has been almost continually engaged in fighting wars and taking other people's lands. Did not any better way ever occur to the idealistic Zionist pioneers?
The question that may never go away: Who really is Barack Obama?

In his autobiography, "Dreams From My Fathers", Barack Obama writes of taking a job at some point after graduating from Columbia University in 1983. He describes his employer as "a consulting house to multinational corporations" in New York City, and his functions as a "research assistant" and "financial writer".

The odd part of Obama's story is that he doesn't mention the name of his employer. However, a New York Times story of 2007 identifies the company as Business International Corporation.10 Equally odd is that the Times did not remind its readers that the newspaper itself had disclosed in 1977 that Business International had provided cover for four CIA employees in various countries between 1955 and 1960.11

The British journal, Lobster Magazine – which, despite its incongruous name, is a venerable international publication on intelligence matters – has reported that Business International was active in the 1980s promoting the candidacy of Washington-favored candidates in Australia and Fiji.12 In 1987, the CIA overthrew the Fiji government after but one month in office because of its policy of maintaining the island as a nuclear-free zone, meaning that American nuclear-powered or nuclear-weapons-carrying ships could not make port calls.13 After the Fiji coup, the candidate supported by Business International, who was much more amenable to Washington's nuclear desires, was reinstated to power – R.S.K. Mara was Prime Minister or President of Fiji from 1970 to 2000, except for the one-month break in 1987.

In his book, not only doesn't Obama mention his employer's name; he fails to say when he worked there, or why he left the job. There may well be no significance to these omissions, but inasmuch as Business International has a long association with the world of intelligence, covert actions, and attempts to penetrate the radical left – including Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)14 – it's valid to wonder if the inscrutable Mr. Obama is concealing something about his own association with this world.
On socialist Cuba's 50th anniversary, January 1, 2009: Notes on the beginning of its unforgivable revolution.

The existence of a revolutionary socialist government with growing ties to the Soviet Union only 90 miles away, insisted the United States government, was a situation which no self-respecting superpower should tolerate, and in 1961 it undertook an invasion of Cuba.

But less than 50 miles from the Soviet Union sat Pakistan, a close ally of the United States, a member since 1955 of the South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the US-created anti-communist alliance. On the very border of the Soviet Union was Iran, an even closer ally of the United States, with its relentless electronic listening posts, aerial surveillance, and infiltration into Russian territory by American agents. And alongside Iran, also bordering the Soviet Union, was Turkey, a member of the Russians' mortal enemy, NATO, since 1951.

In 1962 during the "Cuban Missile Crisis", Washington, seemingly in a state of near-panic, informed the world that the Russians were installing "offensive" missiles in Cuba. The US promptly instituted a "quarantine" of the island – a powerful show of naval and marine forces in the Caribbean would stop and search all vessels heading towards Cuba; any found to contain military cargo would be forced to turn back.

The United States, however, had missiles and bomber bases already in place in Turkey and other missiles in Western Europe pointed toward the Soviet Union. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev later wrote:

"The Americans had surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons, and now they would learn just what it feels like to have enemy missiles pointing at you; we'd be doing nothing more than giving them a little of their own medicine. ... After all, the United States had no moral or legal quarrel with us. We hadn't given the Cubans anything more than the Americans were giving to their allies. We had the same rights and opportunities as the Americans. Our conduct in the international arena was governed by the same rules and limits as the Americans."15

Lest anyone misunderstand, as Khrushchev apparently did, the rules under which Washington was operating, Time magazine was quick to explain. "On the part of the Communists," the magazine declared, "this equating [referring to Khrushchev's offer to mutually remove missiles and bombers from Cuba and Turkey] had obvious tactical motives. On the part of neutralists and pacifists [who welcomed Khrushchev's offer] it betrayed intellectual and moral confusion." The confusion lay, it seems, in not seeing clearly who were the good guys and who were the bad guys, for "The purpose of the U.S. bases [in Turkey] was not to blackmail Russia but to strengthen the defense system of NATO, which had been created as a safeguard against Russian aggression. As a member of NATO, Turkey welcomed the bases as a contribution to her own defense." Cuba, which had been invaded only the year before, could have, it seems, no such concern. Time continued its sermon, which undoubtedly spoke for most Americans:

"Beyond these differences between the two cases, there is an enormous moral difference between U.S. and Russian objectives ... To equate U.S. and Russian bases is in effect to equate U.S. and Russian purposes ... The U.S. bases, such as those in Turkey, have helped keep the peace since World War II, while the Russian bases in Cuba threatened to upset the peace. The Russian bases were intended to further conquest and domination, while U.S. bases were erected to preserve freedom. The difference should have been obvious to all."16

Equally obvious was the right of the United States to maintain a military base on Cuban soil – Guantanamo Naval Base by name, a vestige of colonialism staring down the throats of the Cuban people, which the US, to this day, refuses to vacate despite the vehement protest of the Castro government.

In the American lexicon, in addition to good and bad bases and missiles, there are good and bad revolutions. The American and French Revolutions were good. The Cuban Revolution is bad. It must be bad because so many people have left Cuba as a result of it.

But at least 100,000 people left the British colonies in America during and after the American Revolution. These Tories could not abide by the political and social changes, both actual and feared, particularly that change which attends all revolutions worthy of the name – Those looked down upon as inferiors no longer know their place. (Or as the US Secretary of State put it after the Russian Revolution: The Bolsheviks sought "to make the ignorant and incapable mass of humanity dominant in the earth."17)

The Tories fled to Nova Scotia and Britain carrying tales of the godless, dissolute, barbaric American revolutionaries. Those who remained and refused to take an oath of allegiance to the new state governments were denied virtually all civil liberties. Many were jailed, murdered, or forced into exile. After the American Civil War, thousands more fled to South America and other points, again disturbed by the social upheaval. How much more is such an exodus to be expected following the Cuban Revolution? – a true social revolution, giving rise to changes much more profound than anything in the American experience. How many more would have left the United States if 90 miles away lay the world's wealthiest nation welcoming their residence and promising all manner of benefits and rewards?
Notes

1. Washington Post, December 25, 2008 ↩
2. Reuters, April 29, 2008 ↩
3. http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/Repository/FM307/FM3-07.pdf ↩
4. U.S. Department of the Army, "Afghanistan, A Country Study" (1986), pp.121, 128, 130, 134, 136, 223, 232-3 ↩
5. Globe & Mail (Toronto), June 19, 2008 ↩
6. BBC News, December 4, 1997, "Taleban [sic] in Texas for talks on gas pipeline" ↩
7. Washington Post, November 23, 2001 ↩
8. United Press International, July 17, 2008 ↩
9. Associated Press, July 3, 2006 ↩
10. New York Times, October 30, 2007 ↩
11. New York Times, December 27, 1977, p.40 ↩
12. Lobster Magazine, Hull, UK, #14, November 1987 ↩
13. William Blum, “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower”, pp.199-200 ↩
14. Carl Oglesby, "Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Antiwar Movement" (2008), passim ↩
15. "Khrushchev Remembers" (1971) pp.494, 496 ↩
16. Time magazine, November 2, 1962 ↩
17. Cited by William Appleman Williams, "American Intervention in Russia: 1917-20", in David Horowitz, ed., "Containment and Revolution" (1967). Written in a letter to President Woodrow Wilson by Secretary of State Robert Lansing, uncle of John Foster and Allen Dulles. ↩

–

William Blum is the author of:

* Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
* Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
* West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
* Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6@aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area.

(Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite.)

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned.

killinghope.org

The Anti-Empire Report January 3rd, 2009 by William Blum

Ruddock: 'No One Told Me'

Former Attorney General takes a leaf out of Howard's book by claiming 'no one told me' when faced with embarrassing facts.

When referring to “the circumstances of [Habib's] rendition [and almost certain torture]”, Ruddock told The Australian, “We were never informed about where he was or what had happened to him”.

Toohey points out:

[Then ASIO chief Dennis] Richardson is a meticulous public servant. He would not tell the senate that ASIO had definitely established where Habib was merely on the basis of supposition. Nor would he tell the senate about something as important as Habib’s “rendition” by the CIA to Egypt, where he was almost certainly tortured, without first ensuring that his minister was informed.

Howard's 'no one told me' approach to awkward issues that he knew he didn't want to know about seems to have been transformed into a general method of administration.

Aggressive war, official propaganda, "state-sponsored lies pursued with a determination reminiscent of the worst regimes of the 20th Century", racism, concentration camps, extra-judicial killings, torture: Howard's government in obsequiously following the Bush regime in a lunge to nazism is more than embarrassing, it is damning and something that they will never be able to live down.

Former Attorney General takes a leaf out of Howard's book by claiming 'no one told me' when faced with embarrassing facts.

When referring to “the circumstances of [Habib's] rendition [and almost certain torture]”, Ruddock told The Australian, “We were never informed about where he was or what had happened to him”.

Toohey points out:

[Then ASIO chief Dennis] Richardson is a meticulous public servant. He would not tell the senate that ASIO had definitely established where Habib was merely on the basis of supposition. Nor would he tell the senate about something as important as Habib’s “rendition” by the CIA to Egypt, where he was almost certainly tortured, without first ensuring that his minister was informed.

Howard's 'no one told me' approach to awkward issues that he knew he didn't want to know about seems to have been transformed into a general method of administration.

Aggressive war, official propaganda, "state-sponsored lies pursued with a determination reminiscent of the worst regimes of the 20th Century", racism, concentration camps, extra-judicial killings, torture: Howard's government in obsequiously following the Bush regime in a lunge to nazism is more than embarrassing, it is damning and something that they will never be able to live down.

Ruddock: 'No One Told Me'

Mad Max in Afghanistan

Nato with their brilliant strategy in Georgia have just successfully cut their own emergency alternative supply route into Afghanistan via Russia. Meanwhile Iran has refused a request for its territory to be used as a supply route. Can't imagine why they would have done that. An airlift of fuel into Afghanistan is impossible due to the huge volumes required.

Moon of Alabama does the math and calculates the resistance can strangle the occupation by targeting the road fuel convoy from the Pakistani port of Karachi to Kandahar and to Kabul via the Khyber pass.

“In the summer months, I would expect to be attacked once or twice a week,” said one manager, unwilling to speak on the record.

“Last week, we were caught up in an attack on a convoy of fuel trucks on a road we are working on. It looked like a war zone, with five diesel tanks burst open by [rocket propelled grenades] and burning diesel flooding out over the road.”

The security companies are circumspect about how many tankers they lose, but he said “multiple dozens” have been lost in the south each month during the summer. In June, fighters set upon a convoy of more than 50 tankers, setting fire to them about 65km south of Kabul....

Forty fuel trucks were destroyed in March near the crossing between the two countries.

However, a western security executive told the FT that for a period last summer some military bases in the south were almost running on empty, “stopping all non-essential movement and offensive operations because of fuel shortages”....

An al-Qaeda member told Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity, "The single strategy of severing NATO's supply lines from Pakistan is the key to success. If the blockage is successfully implemented in 2008, the Western coalition will be forced to leave Afghanistan in 2009, and if implemented next year, the exit is certain by 2010."

Several al-Qaeda cells have apparently been activated in Karachi to monitor the movement of NATO supply convoys....

"Without Russia's support in Afghanistan, NATO would face a new Vietnam, and this is clear to everyone. Militarily, NATO and Russia have a very good and trusting relationship," [Russian Ambassador to Nato] Rogozin said from his Brussels office....

A commenter says:

I would doubt the Russians would seriously imperil Nato supplies lines to Afghanistan. Actually, I would think the more precarious the situation, the more lucrative the operation and thus the Russian oligarchs would be only too happy to deal.

b replies:

Even Russian oligarchs are nationalists ... still you may be right ... why not let NATO slowly bleed to death in Afganistan ...

Mr Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia: Troops. Afghanistan. OUT. NOW!

Nato with their brilliant strategy in Georgia have just successfully cut their own emergency alternative supply route into Afghanistan via Russia. Meanwhile Iran has refused a request for its territory to be used as a supply route. Can't imagine why they would have done that. An airlift of fuel into Afghanistan is impossible due to the huge volumes required.

Moon of Alabama does the math and calculates the resistance can strangle the occupation by targeting the road fuel convoy from the Pakistani port of Karachi to Kandahar and to Kabul via the Khyber pass.

“In the summer months, I would expect to be attacked once or twice a week,” said one manager, unwilling to speak on the record.

“Last week, we were caught up in an attack on a convoy of fuel trucks on a road we are working on. It looked like a war zone, with five diesel tanks burst open by [rocket propelled grenades] and burning diesel flooding out over the road.”

The security companies are circumspect about how many tankers they lose, but he said “multiple dozens” have been lost in the south each month during the summer. In June, fighters set upon a convoy of more than 50 tankers, setting fire to them about 65km south of Kabul....

Forty fuel trucks were destroyed in March near the crossing between the two countries.

However, a western security executive told the FT that for a period last summer some military bases in the south were almost running on empty, “stopping all non-essential movement and offensive operations because of fuel shortages”....

An al-Qaeda member told Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity, "The single strategy of severing NATO's supply lines from Pakistan is the key to success. If the blockage is successfully implemented in 2008, the Western coalition will be forced to leave Afghanistan in 2009, and if implemented next year, the exit is certain by 2010."

Several al-Qaeda cells have apparently been activated in Karachi to monitor the movement of NATO supply convoys....

"Without Russia's support in Afghanistan, NATO would face a new Vietnam, and this is clear to everyone. Militarily, NATO and Russia have a very good and trusting relationship," [Russian Ambassador to Nato] Rogozin said from his Brussels office....

A commenter says:

I would doubt the Russians would seriously imperil Nato supplies lines to Afghanistan. Actually, I would think the more precarious the situation, the more lucrative the operation and thus the Russian oligarchs would be only too happy to deal.

b replies:

Even Russian oligarchs are nationalists ... still you may be right ... why not let NATO slowly bleed to death in Afganistan ...

Mr Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia: Troops. Afghanistan. OUT. NOW!

Mad Max in Afghanistan

Beijing Olympics: Protest Song

The Truth is Still There (free mp3 download)

The Truth is Still There (free mp3 download)

Beijing Olympics: Protest Song

Bin Laden Driver Convicted

link

What next? His barber? Actually they should probably get that bloke too - he's done a shocking job on Bin Laden's facial hair. Get his tailor and his cobbler while you are at it. A man of Mr. Bin Laden's reputed wealth really should be better served.

The 'trial' however was a complete farce. The 'jury' of military officers brought down a guilty verdict and a sentence of five and a half years, but "as soon as the sentence was issued, however, the Pentagon made it clear that it had no intention of releasing Hamdan. It says that it retains the right to keep him in prison for an indefinite period."

A travesty of justice, no more than a show trial. An incompetent show trial at that. This can only do harm to the reputation of the United States, and for no gain. If you are going to have a show trial, you need to get the tortured dupes to admit to some substantial crime, like murder, bombing or sabotage. If the guy is no more than a driver, then all the publicity can only backfire if you bring down a verdict of guilty and an award of a life sentence.

Meanwhile President Bush, a major war criminal, has the chutzpah to "denounce the detention of political dissidents and religious activists" in China ahead of his visit to the Beijing Olympic games.

The Guantanamo Bay concentration camp should be condemned by the Australian Government as well as by all decent observers as a grave injustice which should be immediately closed.

link

What next? His barber? Actually they should probably get that bloke too - he's done a shocking job on Bin Laden's facial hair. Get his tailor and his cobbler while you are at it. A man of Mr. Bin Laden's reputed wealth really should be better served.

The 'trial' however was a complete farce. The 'jury' of military officers brought down a guilty verdict and a sentence of five and a half years, but "as soon as the sentence was issued, however, the Pentagon made it clear that it had no intention of releasing Hamdan. It says that it retains the right to keep him in prison for an indefinite period."

A travesty of justice, no more than a show trial. An incompetent show trial at that. This can only do harm to the reputation of the United States, and for no gain. If you are going to have a show trial, you need to get the tortured dupes to admit to some substantial crime, like murder, bombing or sabotage. If the guy is no more than a driver, then all the publicity can only backfire if you bring down a verdict of guilty and an award of a life sentence.

Meanwhile President Bush, a major war criminal, has the chutzpah to "denounce the detention of political dissidents and religious activists" in China ahead of his visit to the Beijing Olympic games.

The Guantanamo Bay concentration camp should be condemned by the Australian Government as well as by all decent observers as a grave injustice which should be immediately closed.

Bin Laden Driver Convicted

Coalition Adopts Policy on Climate Change that it had before

Coalition adopts policy on climate change that it had before: Isn't this great? After a couple of steps backward and a bit of round and round, the Nelson Turnbull Liberal party has advanced decisively to the position that it held when the dinosaur Howard was rendered extinct at the last election by the biggest issue of the 21st Century: Climate Change.

This is an important lesson too. Now as ever, governments, parties and parliaments don't lead, they follow. Action on climate change will have to be imposed on them from without.

The heads of Woodside Petroleum, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and the Business Council were among those to directly lobby senior West Australian Liberals, including Ms Bishop and Chris Ellison. The corporate giants supported the original Coalition policy. They wanted the Opposition to stay engaged in the debate so Labor's policy, with which they have some concerns, could be fine-tuned and not subject to negotiations with the Greens.

This is ominous, and another clear signal of what is going on. Instead of a carbon tax, a watered down 'trading' system is favoured by the fossil fuel lobby, because it is easier to rort, evade and degrade.

Coalition adopts policy on climate change that it had before: Isn't this great? After a couple of steps backward and a bit of round and round, the Nelson Turnbull Liberal party has advanced decisively to the position that it held when the dinosaur Howard was rendered extinct at the last election by the biggest issue of the 21st Century: Climate Change.

This is an important lesson too. Now as ever, governments, parties and parliaments don't lead, they follow. Action on climate change will have to be imposed on them from without.

The heads of Woodside Petroleum, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and the Business Council were among those to directly lobby senior West Australian Liberals, including Ms Bishop and Chris Ellison. The corporate giants supported the original Coalition policy. They wanted the Opposition to stay engaged in the debate so Labor's policy, with which they have some concerns, could be fine-tuned and not subject to negotiations with the Greens.

This is ominous, and another clear signal of what is going on. Instead of a carbon tax, a watered down 'trading' system is favoured by the fossil fuel lobby, because it is easier to rort, evade and degrade.

Coalition Adopts Policy on Climate Change that it had before

Roubini: severe recession and financial and banking crisis is now unavoidable

link

Back in February 2008 Roubini claimed that:

there is now a rising probability of a “catastrophic” financial and economic outcome, i.e. a vicious circle where a deep recession makes the financial losses more severe and where, in turn, large and growing financial losses and a financial meltdown make the recession even more severe. The Fed is seriously worried about this vicious circle and about the risks of a systemic financial meltdown....

... “nightmare” or “catastrophic” scenario that the Fed and financial officials around the world are now worried about. Such a scenario – however extreme – has a rising and significant
probability of occurring. Thus, it does not describe a very low probability event but rather an outcome that is quite possible.

Well now Roubini is saying that

A severe recession and financial and banking crisis is unavoidable.... a financial meltdown - that I described in my February paper - is now underway and cannot be stopped.

NB. Henry George was correct. It's all about (kapitalized) land value and lending money using (high) land values as collateral. When land values go down after the inevitable and predictable boom, the financial system is bust.

This one is a real doozy because of the triumph of neo-liberalism: the socialism and new-deal hating 'free market' capitalist ideology which has seen the lethal trifecta of privatization, deregulation, and (property) tax cuts combined with the thoroughly ruthless and determined manner in which Wall St has created as much land-value based debt as rapidly as possible, securitized it, and flogged it all over the world as 'toxic paper', regardless of consequences.

According to some commentators the entire US banking system is insolvent.

link

Back in February 2008 Roubini claimed that:

there is now a rising probability of a “catastrophic” financial and economic outcome, i.e. a vicious circle where a deep recession makes the financial losses more severe and where, in turn, large and growing financial losses and a financial meltdown make the recession even more severe. The Fed is seriously worried about this vicious circle and about the risks of a systemic financial meltdown....

... “nightmare” or “catastrophic” scenario that the Fed and financial officials around the world are now worried about. Such a scenario – however extreme – has a rising and significant
probability of occurring. Thus, it does not describe a very low probability event but rather an outcome that is quite possible.

Well now Roubini is saying that

A severe recession and financial and banking crisis is unavoidable.... a financial meltdown - that I described in my February paper - is now underway and cannot be stopped.

NB. Henry George was correct. It's all about (kapitalized) land value and lending money using (high) land values as collateral. When land values go down after the inevitable and predictable boom, the financial system is bust.

This one is a real doozy because of the triumph of neo-liberalism: the socialism and new-deal hating 'free market' capitalist ideology which has seen the lethal trifecta of privatization, deregulation, and (property) tax cuts combined with the thoroughly ruthless and determined manner in which Wall St has created as much land-value based debt as rapidly as possible, securitized it, and flogged it all over the world as 'toxic paper', regardless of consequences.

According to some commentators the entire US banking system is insolvent.

Roubini: severe recession and financial and banking crisis is now unavoidable

A couple of nice quotes by and about Chomsky

Nice quote from Chomsky on the Epic Tragedy of Zionist Israel:

In 1947, when the Truman administration was considering its stance towards the Palestine mandate that Britain was abandoning, the State Departments senior intelligence official, William Eddy, warned that partition 'would only intensify support for Zionist expansion and would represent an endorsement of a theocratic sovereign state characteristic of the Dark Ages.'

For those familiar with the Jewish community in Palestine and its ideological roots, the first prediction might have seemed reasonable enough, but the second an outlandish prospect for the secular socialist idealistic society that had taken root. Both evocative memoir and sober analysis, Ofra Yeshua-Lyths [whose book Chomsky is here reviewing] penetrating study reveals that Eddys grim prediction is not the fantasy it might once have seemed. She reviews the painful course by which the chains of religious orthodoxy from which the early Zionists sought to escape have become hanging cords, as Israeli Jews accept life in a homemade trap constructed from the dedication to expansionism and religious-nationalist domination that shatters aspirations for democracy and enlightenment. These might yet become more than mocking words, she suggests, but not without a willingness to face honestly the internal contradiction in the concept of a democratic Jewish state. [July 2007.]

That's about as good a one or two paragraph summary of the tragic trajectory of Zionism/Israel as could be found anywhere. One of the things I admire about Chomsky is not just his incredible depth of knowledge or his sound moral/philosophic foundation, it's the quality of his judgement and his insight. The best bar none.

Now onto another quote. John Brady Kiesling attracted deserved praise for being one of the very, very few people in the vast Anglo-American (including Australian) defence and government establishments who had the courage to resign in protest against the criminal Iraq war. The fact is, of course, that the 'Nuremberg Defence' ('I was only following orders') is the same defence everyone would use and very, very few people will ever give up their jobs or careers for 'principle'.

Kiesling writes:

Most Greek bookstores carry Greek translations of all the latest books by Noam Chomsky, an American intellectual gifted at connecting all the dots of U.S. behavior into a tidy picture. In 2001 I assured Mr. Tegopoulos, the publisher of Athens’ most popular leftist newspaper, that his favorite American philosopher was clinically insane.” Chomsky, I said, had deduced a vast, invisible mechanism of systematic U.S. oppression and exploitation, one that was not true to human nature and could not have operated over decades without becoming visible to its employees. I reassured Tegopoulos that the U.S. foreign policy apparatus could not conspire its way effectively out of a paper bag.

I feel more charitably disposed toward Chomsky now. The Iraq War proved that the United States does have a small group of extremely intelligent, disciplined, highly competitive individuals competent enough to mobilize the U.S. bureaucracy around a single mission such as regime change in Iraq. Chomsky’s favorite conspirators, the former Troskyites turned neoconservatives, might even have read Chomsky in their youth. Certainly they made the same mistake he did. They confused mastery over the U.S. bureaucratic system with U.S. power to triumph over the real world.

Kiesling might feel more charitably disposed, and we can charitably assume these are honest opinions, but they are a most absurd characterization of Chomsky's outlook. If these are the considered views of someone who resigned the Empire in protest, what would be really frightening would be the views of people inside the Empire - the deluded and the committed, capable of any folly. One recalls the dismal words of the Swedish diplomat as quoted by Barbara Tuchman in The March of Folly: "Know, my son, with what little wisdom the world is governed."

PS. Some other insightful review comments:

The foremost strength of the book is how it critiques not simply the religious establishment but how that establishment and its values have crept into the consciousness of the political-Zionist so-called "Liberal Left". These days, in an era where radicalized criticism of Islamic "religious fundamentalism" has become a mainstream intellectual trend, it is enlightening to meet an author and a work that exposes the political reality to the effect religious fundamentalism was introduced to the Middle East by political Zionism and that the State of Israel is a primary fundamentalist religious actor in the Middle East equations. - Uri Davis

This is a daring book, written in a country where the consensus is oppressive because the political correctness here requires not only proper language but also a proper defense of an improper, oppressive religion by a population which is the most non-religious one on earth. This is shameless hypocrisy. Behind it stands a secular religion, and secular religion is politically a most dangerous 20th-century disease. - Joseph Agassi

Israel Shahak was among the first, I assume, to critique the role of Orthodox Judaism in the disaster, but it now looks like a torrent of commentary is breaking around the subject.

Nice quote from Chomsky on the Epic Tragedy of Zionist Israel:

In 1947, when the Truman administration was considering its stance towards the Palestine mandate that Britain was abandoning, the State Departments senior intelligence official, William Eddy, warned that partition 'would only intensify support for Zionist expansion and would represent an endorsement of a theocratic sovereign state characteristic of the Dark Ages.'

For those familiar with the Jewish community in Palestine and its ideological roots, the first prediction might have seemed reasonable enough, but the second an outlandish prospect for the secular socialist idealistic society that had taken root. Both evocative memoir and sober analysis, Ofra Yeshua-Lyths [whose book Chomsky is here reviewing] penetrating study reveals that Eddys grim prediction is not the fantasy it might once have seemed. She reviews the painful course by which the chains of religious orthodoxy from which the early Zionists sought to escape have become hanging cords, as Israeli Jews accept life in a homemade trap constructed from the dedication to expansionism and religious-nationalist domination that shatters aspirations for democracy and enlightenment. These might yet become more than mocking words, she suggests, but not without a willingness to face honestly the internal contradiction in the concept of a democratic Jewish state. [July 2007.]

That's about as good a one or two paragraph summary of the tragic trajectory of Zionism/Israel as could be found anywhere. One of the things I admire about Chomsky is not just his incredible depth of knowledge or his sound moral/philosophic foundation, it's the quality of his judgement and his insight. The best bar none.

Now onto another quote. John Brady Kiesling attracted deserved praise for being one of the very, very few people in the vast Anglo-American (including Australian) defence and government establishments who had the courage to resign in protest against the criminal Iraq war. The fact is, of course, that the 'Nuremberg Defence' ('I was only following orders') is the same defence everyone would use and very, very few people will ever give up their jobs or careers for 'principle'.

Kiesling writes:

Most Greek bookstores carry Greek translations of all the latest books by Noam Chomsky, an American intellectual gifted at connecting all the dots of U.S. behavior into a tidy picture. In 2001 I assured Mr. Tegopoulos, the publisher of Athens’ most popular leftist newspaper, that his favorite American philosopher was clinically insane.” Chomsky, I said, had deduced a vast, invisible mechanism of systematic U.S. oppression and exploitation, one that was not true to human nature and could not have operated over decades without becoming visible to its employees. I reassured Tegopoulos that the U.S. foreign policy apparatus could not conspire its way effectively out of a paper bag.

I feel more charitably disposed toward Chomsky now. The Iraq War proved that the United States does have a small group of extremely intelligent, disciplined, highly competitive individuals competent enough to mobilize the U.S. bureaucracy around a single mission such as regime change in Iraq. Chomsky’s favorite conspirators, the former Troskyites turned neoconservatives, might even have read Chomsky in their youth. Certainly they made the same mistake he did. They confused mastery over the U.S. bureaucratic system with U.S. power to triumph over the real world.

Kiesling might feel more charitably disposed, and we can charitably assume these are honest opinions, but they are a most absurd characterization of Chomsky's outlook. If these are the considered views of someone who resigned the Empire in protest, what would be really frightening would be the views of people inside the Empire - the deluded and the committed, capable of any folly. One recalls the dismal words of the Swedish diplomat as quoted by Barbara Tuchman in The March of Folly: "Know, my son, with what little wisdom the world is governed."

PS. Some other insightful review comments:

The foremost strength of the book is how it critiques not simply the religious establishment but how that establishment and its values have crept into the consciousness of the political-Zionist so-called "Liberal Left". These days, in an era where radicalized criticism of Islamic "religious fundamentalism" has become a mainstream intellectual trend, it is enlightening to meet an author and a work that exposes the political reality to the effect religious fundamentalism was introduced to the Middle East by political Zionism and that the State of Israel is a primary fundamentalist religious actor in the Middle East equations. - Uri Davis

This is a daring book, written in a country where the consensus is oppressive because the political correctness here requires not only proper language but also a proper defense of an improper, oppressive religion by a population which is the most non-religious one on earth. This is shameless hypocrisy. Behind it stands a secular religion, and secular religion is politically a most dangerous 20th-century disease. - Joseph Agassi

Israel Shahak was among the first, I assume, to critique the role of Orthodox Judaism in the disaster, but it now looks like a torrent of commentary is breaking around the subject.

A couple of nice quotes by and about Chomsky

Middle-East indicators and warnings point to war against Iran

The Vineyard of the Saker: Middle-East indicators and warnings point to war: The Saker joins more commentators than I could mention in predicting war against Iran. The preparations for war are so broad and deep it almost has an air of inevitability to it. As in a number of his articles, the Saker provides an interesting and original-looking analysis of the situation.

The future cannot be predicted so no one can say for certain. However war is certainly possible, and not unlikely. War, if it does come, would likely be disastrous (and criminal), perhaps catastrophically so. Moreover, the whole world is aware of this situation and of this danger.

In these circumstances what I find most appalling is the near-complete silence of the world's leaders, especially its Western leaders, including virtually the entire government, diplomatic, educational and media establishments.

Say it loud and say it now, as John Pilger virtually on his own has done: The US is the Third Reich of our time, bent on aggression against one country after another. It must not be appeased; it must be contained and deterred. War against Iran must not happen.

God Damn America and all its 'friends' and 'allies' if it and they, in near complete passivity and silence, let this war happen.

If the US attacked Iran, it would be a watershed moment for the 21st Century, even more so than the aggression against Iraq. And we're taking names: of those who protest, and those who don't.

The Vineyard of the Saker: Middle-East indicators and warnings point to war: The Saker joins more commentators than I could mention in predicting war against Iran. The preparations for war are so broad and deep it almost has an air of inevitability to it. As in a number of his articles, the Saker provides an interesting and original-looking analysis of the situation.

The future cannot be predicted so no one can say for certain. However war is certainly possible, and not unlikely. War, if it does come, would likely be disastrous (and criminal), perhaps catastrophically so. Moreover, the whole world is aware of this situation and of this danger.

In these circumstances what I find most appalling is the near-complete silence of the world's leaders, especially its Western leaders, including virtually the entire government, diplomatic, educational and media establishments.

Say it loud and say it now, as John Pilger virtually on his own has done: The US is the Third Reich of our time, bent on aggression against one country after another. It must not be appeased; it must be contained and deterred. War against Iran must not happen.

God Damn America and all its 'friends' and 'allies' if it and they, in near complete passivity and silence, let this war happen.

If the US attacked Iran, it would be a watershed moment for the 21st Century, even more so than the aggression against Iraq. And we're taking names: of those who protest, and those who don't.

Middle-East indicators and warnings point to war against Iran

Kevin Carson attacks 'vulgar libertarians' again

Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism: Review: The Mind of the Market, by Michael Shermer The elements Kevin Carson describes as "vulgar" in "right-libertarianism" seem to me the essense of that doctrine.

Its a noble effort to "reform it from within" and I wish Carson all success in that endeavour but I would simply abandon "right-libertarianism" in favour of geo-libertarianism, left-libertarianism, libertarian socialism and elements of classical liberalism.

In my view "right-libertarianism" is a purely reactionary doctrine - classical liberalism sans single tax. You have to fight it tooth and nail and send it back to where it came from. It's particularly insidious because it induces well-intentioned people who might otherwise be radicals to veer from the left and ally with the right. Try and convince me that's not the whole point of it.

I agree the dogma of the 'free market' and the 'invisible hand' is vastly overstated as well. Yes, the 'invisible hand' is a correct and valuable insight, but in general people should be banned from (ab)using this phrase. The popular understanding is now such that to critique the system you do indeed have to dissociate yourself from the 'free market'.

Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism: Review: The Mind of the Market, by Michael Shermer The elements Kevin Carson describes as "vulgar" in "right-libertarianism" seem to me the essense of that doctrine.

Its a noble effort to "reform it from within" and I wish Carson all success in that endeavour but I would simply abandon "right-libertarianism" in favour of geo-libertarianism, left-libertarianism, libertarian socialism and elements of classical liberalism.

In my view "right-libertarianism" is a purely reactionary doctrine - classical liberalism sans single tax. You have to fight it tooth and nail and send it back to where it came from. It's particularly insidious because it induces well-intentioned people who might otherwise be radicals to veer from the left and ally with the right. Try and convince me that's not the whole point of it.

I agree the dogma of the 'free market' and the 'invisible hand' is vastly overstated as well. Yes, the 'invisible hand' is a correct and valuable insight, but in general people should be banned from (ab)using this phrase. The popular understanding is now such that to critique the system you do indeed have to dissociate yourself from the 'free market'.

Kevin Carson attacks 'vulgar libertarians' again

Thousand Year Reich

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen: "He went on to say that the US has 'has been at Israel's side for all of 60 years, it will be for the next 60 years, 100 years and 1,000 years."

At the rate the loathsome ideology of Zionism is collapsing amongst both Jews and non-Jews alike, I wouldnt be surprised if it lasted no more than 12 years, forget about 1,000.

Given the US strategic interest in Gulf oil, it couldnt stay by Israel's side for a day beyond depletion, estimated to be no more than 40 or 50 years hence. That would give Israel around 100 years of existence, after which it would vanish from the map like the little crusader state it is.

NB. If Ehud Barak had accepted Arafat's generous offer at Camp David in 2000 - an Israeli state behind the 1967 Green Line and recognition of a Palestinian state in the remainder - Israel could last indefinitely. But the expansionism and militarism inherent in Zionist ideology prevented and prevents this offer from being accepted, leaving a most uncertain future for the Jewish state.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen: "He went on to say that the US has 'has been at Israel's side for all of 60 years, it will be for the next 60 years, 100 years and 1,000 years."

At the rate the loathsome ideology of Zionism is collapsing amongst both Jews and non-Jews alike, I wouldnt be surprised if it lasted no more than 12 years, forget about 1,000.

Given the US strategic interest in Gulf oil, it couldnt stay by Israel's side for a day beyond depletion, estimated to be no more than 40 or 50 years hence. That would give Israel around 100 years of existence, after which it would vanish from the map like the little crusader state it is.

NB. If Ehud Barak had accepted Arafat's generous offer at Camp David in 2000 - an Israeli state behind the 1967 Green Line and recognition of a Palestinian state in the remainder - Israel could last indefinitely. But the expansionism and militarism inherent in Zionist ideology prevented and prevents this offer from being accepted, leaving a most uncertain future for the Jewish state.

Thousand Year Reich

No Sitefeed

Welcome to the official website of Ilan Pappe. Dr Pappe doesnt have a sitefeed. Neither does Dr. Finkelstein, Dr Hudson or Dr Gaffney. Or even John Pilger.

This suggest the good doctors dont have or use a feed reader either. Once you start subscribing to sitefeeds with a feedreader like Google Reader there's no going back. Talk about killer app. And you wouldn't start or have a blog or website which didnt offer a feed, that's for sure.

NB. The great Dr Richard Stallman does have a sitefeed, but doesnt have comments. Also, as I'm a loyal subscriber, I have found that Dr. Stallman tends to blog what are commonplaces in the radical blogosphere. It might be better if he had a focussed blog on the basic concepts of freedom and free software, but then again, what would I know?

Dr Chomsky doesn't even have his own website. But he's an old-fashioned guy. What's the big deal with the "Internet" when you've got a university library and know how to use it? I hear Dr Chomsky say. And Dr Chomsky has got a secret weapon at his disposal that not even today's Internet can match: the online Lexis-Nexis database. Have to traipse down to the University library in person to load up on that particular WMD.

Instead Dr Chomsky allows his Internet presence to be subsumed under ZNet, who recently had their abortion of a website completely redesigned to make it even more of a mess than it already is. And no, it doesnt seem to include a sitefeed. Well I couldnt find one after a bit of looking. Couldnt find the Chomsky blog either. Instead his content seems to be spread over at least half a dozen different areas.

Its so bad I've noticed that I've effectively stopped reading the Znet space. Which means I've probably been missing a lot of good stuff, not only Chomsky but other good writers they have carried over there.

No, I've found Chomsky's blog on Znet! Shows what you can do if you try hard enough. But still cant find the sitefeed. Hard to believe they dont have one.... Even worse, you have to register (or even pay) to read some if not all of the blog posts. That makes the site literally unreadable such as you do not visit again. A model that died sometime ago.

The other Chomsky site, chomsky.info, has the right idea, and have obviously been trying to make up for the longstanding deficiencies of Znet. Simple, clean homepage - except that the "what's new" or blogsite section is cleverly disguised under "News and Reports". Why do that? Reverse chronological order (of posting). A sitefeed. But it has weaknesses - not everything he writes or says is included (I guess that would be a massive task). No comments. No presence from Chomsky himself. Not everything is fed through the blogsite.

Antiwar.com is perhaps the best example of good webdesign among the antiwar and radical websites. But no comments, as well of course as the harmful impact of right-libertarian philosophy everywhere on the site. And too much reliance on the corporate press.

Commondreams.org is very good. Includes comments, which have been of exceptional quality lately. But not radical enough. Includes a sitefeed, but there are too many articles to take for a sitefeed to be much use. One wants to be more selective (which is why every writer should have their own website where all their articles are posted in addition to being posted elsewhere.)

Counterpunch.org is good. Its biggest fault is the huge waste of screenspace at the top of the homepage. Look at antiwar.com by contrast to see how it can be better used. No comments. No sitefeed, but again one would not want to subscribe to it all, only to selected authors.

Welcome to the official website of Ilan Pappe. Dr Pappe doesnt have a sitefeed. Neither does Dr. Finkelstein, Dr Hudson or Dr Gaffney. Or even John Pilger.

This suggest the good doctors dont have or use a feed reader either. Once you start subscribing to sitefeeds with a feedreader like Google Reader there's no going back. Talk about killer app. And you wouldn't start or have a blog or website which didnt offer a feed, that's for sure.

NB. The great Dr Richard Stallman does have a sitefeed, but doesnt have comments. Also, as I'm a loyal subscriber, I have found that Dr. Stallman tends to blog what are commonplaces in the radical blogosphere. It might be better if he had a focussed blog on the basic concepts of freedom and free software, but then again, what would I know?

Dr Chomsky doesn't even have his own website. But he's an old-fashioned guy. What's the big deal with the "Internet" when you've got a university library and know how to use it? I hear Dr Chomsky say. And Dr Chomsky has got a secret weapon at his disposal that not even today's Internet can match: the online Lexis-Nexis database. Have to traipse down to the University library in person to load up on that particular WMD.

Instead Dr Chomsky allows his Internet presence to be subsumed under ZNet, who recently had their abortion of a website completely redesigned to make it even more of a mess than it already is. And no, it doesnt seem to include a sitefeed. Well I couldnt find one after a bit of looking. Couldnt find the Chomsky blog either. Instead his content seems to be spread over at least half a dozen different areas.

Its so bad I've noticed that I've effectively stopped reading the Znet space. Which means I've probably been missing a lot of good stuff, not only Chomsky but other good writers they have carried over there.

No, I've found Chomsky's blog on Znet! Shows what you can do if you try hard enough. But still cant find the sitefeed. Hard to believe they dont have one.... Even worse, you have to register (or even pay) to read some if not all of the blog posts. That makes the site literally unreadable such as you do not visit again. A model that died sometime ago.

The other Chomsky site, chomsky.info, has the right idea, and have obviously been trying to make up for the longstanding deficiencies of Znet. Simple, clean homepage - except that the "what's new" or blogsite section is cleverly disguised under "News and Reports". Why do that? Reverse chronological order (of posting). A sitefeed. But it has weaknesses - not everything he writes or says is included (I guess that would be a massive task). No comments. No presence from Chomsky himself. Not everything is fed through the blogsite.

Antiwar.com is perhaps the best example of good webdesign among the antiwar and radical websites. But no comments, as well of course as the harmful impact of right-libertarian philosophy everywhere on the site. And too much reliance on the corporate press.

Commondreams.org is very good. Includes comments, which have been of exceptional quality lately. But not radical enough. Includes a sitefeed, but there are too many articles to take for a sitefeed to be much use. One wants to be more selective (which is why every writer should have their own website where all their articles are posted in addition to being posted elsewhere.)

Counterpunch.org is good. Its biggest fault is the huge waste of screenspace at the top of the homepage. Look at antiwar.com by contrast to see how it can be better used. No comments. No sitefeed, but again one would not want to subscribe to it all, only to selected authors.

No Sitefeed

Arthur Silber finally comes out

Arthur Silber, the right-libertarian who, I believe, knew and worked personally with Ayn Rand, has finally admitted he has become an anarchist. A leftist-anarchist no less.

Well, join the crowd. Actually, it has been obvious for some time that Silber was drifting into anarchism. I even began to suspect he was secretly reading Chomsky.

In my case, it was Chomsky that stimulated the interest in anarchism, and I would guess, countless others as well. In fact one of Chomsky's many great contributions had been the popularisation of anarchism as a political philosophy. As far back as 1971 (if not earlier), with his essay Notes on Anarchism, Chomsky has been revealing his debt to anarchist philosophy, or libertarian socialism as he calls it. And it has been a strange, sometimes comical spectacle to observe the endless string of witless critics who attack Chomsky for being "totalitarian", "bolshevik", "stalinist", "maoist" etc. Don't these fools know there is a difference between anarchism and bolshevism? Obviously not, meaning they never read any Chomsky either.

It's a shame, however, that Chomsky was not able to do the same job of elevation and popularisation of another neglected, important philosophy: that of Henry George and his 'Georgist' movement. This, I humbly submit, is worthy of the honour.

By coincidence, the brain dead corporate media columnist Paul Sheahan writes a useless, misleading and uninformative article on the Obama/Wright controversy at the same time as Silber's vastly superior piece appears in my sitefeed. In such a way the internet has exposed the flank of the corporate media.

The rubbishy propaganda produced by corporate hacks like Sheahan, Gerard Henderson, Andrew Bolt etc is presumably the best that money can buy, but is easily outclassed by dozens, if not hundreds of articles in the blogosphere every day. As soon as people learn to construct their own 'newspaper' using sitefeed software like google reader, I cant see these people earning their keep.

Justice seeks Vengeance against the evil of corporate media, and is bounding like a huge, slavering hound toward the exposed flank of a previously invincible foe. Revenge, when it comes, will be swift and deadly.

Or, as they say, go read the whole thing, including the links.

Arthur Silber, the right-libertarian who, I believe, knew and worked personally with Ayn Rand, has finally admitted he has become an anarchist. A leftist-anarchist no less.

Well, join the crowd. Actually, it has been obvious for some time that Silber was drifting into anarchism. I even began to suspect he was secretly reading Chomsky.

In my case, it was Chomsky that stimulated the interest in anarchism, and I would guess, countless others as well. In fact one of Chomsky's many great contributions had been the popularisation of anarchism as a political philosophy. As far back as 1971 (if not earlier), with his essay Notes on Anarchism, Chomsky has been revealing his debt to anarchist philosophy, or libertarian socialism as he calls it. And it has been a strange, sometimes comical spectacle to observe the endless string of witless critics who attack Chomsky for being "totalitarian", "bolshevik", "stalinist", "maoist" etc. Don't these fools know there is a difference between anarchism and bolshevism? Obviously not, meaning they never read any Chomsky either.

It's a shame, however, that Chomsky was not able to do the same job of elevation and popularisation of another neglected, important philosophy: that of Henry George and his 'Georgist' movement. This, I humbly submit, is worthy of the honour.

By coincidence, the brain dead corporate media columnist Paul Sheahan writes a useless, misleading and uninformative article on the Obama/Wright controversy at the same time as Silber's vastly superior piece appears in my sitefeed. In such a way the internet has exposed the flank of the corporate media.

The rubbishy propaganda produced by corporate hacks like Sheahan, Gerard Henderson, Andrew Bolt etc is presumably the best that money can buy, but is easily outclassed by dozens, if not hundreds of articles in the blogosphere every day. As soon as people learn to construct their own 'newspaper' using sitefeed software like google reader, I cant see these people earning their keep.

Justice seeks Vengeance against the evil of corporate media, and is bounding like a huge, slavering hound toward the exposed flank of a previously invincible foe. Revenge, when it comes, will be swift and deadly.

Or, as they say, go read the whole thing, including the links.

Arthur Silber finally comes out

What the [US] Public Really Wants on Iraq

What the Public Really Wants on Iraq: Ruy Teixeira examines polling data to determine what the US public thinks about the war on its fifth anniversay:

The public made up its mind on Iraq quite a while ago, and the surge has had no effect whatsoever on the public’s basic verdict on the war. They believe that the war has been a huge mistake and that we should move expeditiously to remove U.S. troops from Iraq and end the conflict.... The Iraq war, in the public’s view, has been a mistake, with the costs of the war far exceeding its benefits.

Two comments:

1. The questions are phrased strictly in terms of cost/benefit to the United States. The US public is not asked, for example, if it thinks the war was 'legitimate self-defence' or a 'war of aggression.' If it thinks the war is illegal and criminal, the public is not asked if those responsible for it should be prosecuted. It is not asked whether the war benefits Iraqis, or has destroyed them (for example, killing over one million people). This perhaps reflects who is conducting the polls and for what purpose. Chomsky has remarked that the US public is extensively polled so that the rulers do know what they think. Public opinion is then a problem which needs to be managed with public relations and propaganda.

2. The public's view is not reflected in the political system. The Democrats have taken advantage of the public's views to win Congressional seats and perhaps the Whitehouse later this year, but have taken no action to end the war, ie they have not defunded the war or impeached the people responsible.

What the Public Really Wants on Iraq: Ruy Teixeira examines polling data to determine what the US public thinks about the war on its fifth anniversay:

The public made up its mind on Iraq quite a while ago, and the surge has had no effect whatsoever on the public’s basic verdict on the war. They believe that the war has been a huge mistake and that we should move expeditiously to remove U.S. troops from Iraq and end the conflict.... The Iraq war, in the public’s view, has been a mistake, with the costs of the war far exceeding its benefits.

Two comments:

1. The questions are phrased strictly in terms of cost/benefit to the United States. The US public is not asked, for example, if it thinks the war was 'legitimate self-defence' or a 'war of aggression.' If it thinks the war is illegal and criminal, the public is not asked if those responsible for it should be prosecuted. It is not asked whether the war benefits Iraqis, or has destroyed them (for example, killing over one million people). This perhaps reflects who is conducting the polls and for what purpose. Chomsky has remarked that the US public is extensively polled so that the rulers do know what they think. Public opinion is then a problem which needs to be managed with public relations and propaganda.

2. The public's view is not reflected in the political system. The Democrats have taken advantage of the public's views to win Congressional seats and perhaps the Whitehouse later this year, but have taken no action to end the war, ie they have not defunded the war or impeached the people responsible.

What the [US] Public Really Wants on Iraq