Saturday, September 26, 2009

THE GOLAN HEIGHTS: WHAT ISRAEL WANTS




Most of the Golan Heights has been under Israeli control since the 1967 war. In many ways this scenic corner of southwestern Syria mirrors, in less extreme terms, the Nackba of 1948. After the takeover tens of thousands of Druze and Circassian residents became refugees in circumstances that remain controversial. Today Israel refuses to allow an estimated 100,000 Druze and Circassian displaced by the conflict to return home. Every week separated families meet with loudspeakers at the cease fire line, it is the only way they have been able to regularly see each other for the last forty years.

Israeli families who live on either side of the Israeli-Syrian border have no such problems. Almost immediately after taking control Israeli settlers, with the encouragement of their government, began colonizing the area. By the 1970's twelve Israeli settlements, illegal under international law which prohibits the transfer of a civilian population to occupied territory, had perched themselves among the hills of the Heights. In 1981 Israel effectively annexed the area with legislation transferring control of the Heights from military control to its Northern District, in a move condemned with only one negative vote by the U.N General Assembly. By 2004 nearly 20,000 Israeli settlers inhabited over thirty settlements, with plans for future migrants in the works.

On a human scale the story of the Golan Heights is similar to the story of the Nackba, but on a strategic level it is entirely different. The Golan was settled for a variety of reasons. Economic settlers pursued rich agricultural land, "[t]hey didn't even try to hide their greed for that land" reported former defense minister Moshe Dayan as he recounted the reasons and the methods for the seizure. The ultra-nationalist religious zealots will naturally support any expansionist policy, even, and especially, at the expense of security, and the Israeli government wants leverage over Syria.
It is true, the Likuid movement is adamant it will never withdraw from Golan, but this has more to do with domestic politicking then any serious commitment. Naturally Israel appreciates control of the water resources emanating from the Heights as well as their military value, but Golan is more valuable to Israeli policymakers as a bargaining chip, here the settlement project in the Golan Heights more closely resembles that in the Sinai than that in the West Bank.

The return of the Golan Heights to Syria will take place within the framework of a peace agreement between Israel and Syria, indeed it will be the basis of a peace agreement between Israel and Syria. By achieving a separate peace with Syria Israel will ply the Alawite-ruled republic from the Iranian orbit, weaken the Palestinian negotiation position, and likely gain concessions regarding Hezbollah, certainly at a minimum disrupt the Iranian supply links to the Lebanese group that serves as the main deterrent against both an attack on Iran and further military adventurism in Lebanon.

But undermining Hezbollah and Iran is a secondary, albeit important issue. Israel recognizes that the principal leverage the Palestinian bring to the negotiating table is the promise of normalizations of relation with surrounding Arab states and full integration into the region. The Palestinians have offered the Saudi Peace Initiative of 2002, endorsed by every Arab state (and almost every other state in the world), as the basis for negotiations. Under the plan Israel would be integrated into the region, the Arab-Israeli Conflict would officially end, and a Palestinian state would be created along the internationally recognized, pre-June 1967 borders.

Eventually Israel will be forced to reach some sort of settlement with its neighbors, but they want that settlement to include as much land as possible. By reaching a separate peace with the Syrians the Israelis will remove a significant regional power, much like they did by reaching a peace deal with Egypt, from the equation and substantially weaken the negotiating positions of the Palestinians. That is much more valuable to the Israelis than a small chunk of Syrian land, and for Syrian President Bashir al-Assad control of the Golan is much more valuable than some abstract devotion to the Palestinian cause.

Friday, September 25, 2009

LEBANON AND THE REFUGEE CRISIS


With dozens of parties, shifting alliances, a confessional based allocation of power, and frequent outbursts of violence there aren't many issues that unite all of Lebanon's political leaders. One of the few areas of agreement was touched on by President Michel Slei­man on Friday in his address before the 64th General Assembly of the United Nations: Lebanon will not allow the permanent resettlement of Palestinian refugees on its territory. The President framed the issue as Lebanese leaders usually do, "in defense of the refugees’ right of return.” However, the leaders of the Mediterranean country, which hosts twelve camps and over 400,000 refugees seem more concerned about maintaining the country's fragile confessional based political system than supporting Palestinian rights.

One only has to look to conditions in the overcrowded refugee ghettos Palestinians are confined to. Israel is not the only country that disregards Palestinian's human rights. In Lebanon even those who were born in the camps are in a state of legal limbo; they can't own property, travel abroad, or hold certain jobs. When fighting broke out between Lebanese troops and militant radicals at the Nahr al-Bared Camp two years ago human rights groups documented instances of arbitrary detention and torture by the military. Opposition to naturalization has nothing to do with support for Palestinians. If the Lebanese supported the Palestinians they would do something substantive to ease their pain. Perhaps citizenship is too sensitive an issue, but is the Lebanese state so insecure it would also be threatened by an end to legalized discrimination?

I oppose Zionism. It is a racist, colonial ideology. If it were my choice all refugees, both Jewish and Palestinian, would receive full reparations and the choice of repatriation in their country of origin or full assimilation in their country of residence. But I am not in charge and I am not naive. This will never happen. Those who support the Palestinians must take a pragmatic approach. While some have devoted themselves to Utopian ideals the Israelis have devoted themselves to the creation of facts on the ground. Facts which make such Utopian solution appear both out of touch and unworkable.

For those who view the Palestinians as nothing more than a political issue, a crowd pleaser, this present approach is the correct one, but for those who care for the fate of the Palestinians and whose primary objective is the reduction of their suffering it is absurd.

It is cruel to leave hundreds of thousands of refugees in a state of limbo, filled with dreams that will never be realized. Those who remain devoted to the cause of al-Awda, in spite of its obstacles, deserve respect, respect for their devotion and their position. No one has the right to take that struggle from them. However, those who reluctantly conclude they will never be allowed to return to their ancestral homeland cannot be held hostage to the political expediency of the rulers of their host countries. These are human beings, not pawns in an ideological battle. Those who support the Palestinian people must support them wherever they are oppressed against whoever oppresses them. The Arab states refusing to assimilate Palestinians, those who discriminate against them, and those who ascend to their suffering are no less culpable than the Israeli government.

This is not a capitulation to Zionism. This is a capitulation to reality. The struggle for the human rights of Palestinians must continue. The resistance must continue. But it must be founded in realism, it cannot have goals it does not have a way to achieve. Fantasies are a luxury the oppressed cannot afford, they are a luxury the allies of the oppressed cannot cling to.

A TRUISM OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

"There is a permanent contradiction between human rights and the foreign policy of a state."
-French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner

Sunday, September 20, 2009

YEMEN AIR STRIKE REQUIRES UN INVESTIGATION

The Yemeni government offered a familiar excuse and a familiar pledge concerning air strikes last week which hit a camp sheltering internally displaced persons, killing at least eighty-seven civilians. The Shia rebels active in the North of the country were to blame, the government said, for hiding in the camp, which officials denied existed. Still, the government said, it would investigate the incident.

That is not good enough. The air strike was a serious crime against humanity which undoubtedly involved the participation of senior officials. The government of Yemen is neither capable of launching a complete and transparent investigation or of taking any official action to address the situation beyond updating their spokesmens' talking points.

Governments guilty of crimes against humanity are rarely capable of anything more than a cover up. This attack requires the investigation of an impartial body capable of holding those guilty accountable, the U.N is the only such body. The U.N must act on the recommendation of its human rights commissioner and send an investigator to probe the air strike and, if appropriate, refer those guilty to the Security Council, which would be required to authorize indictments at the International Criminal Court since Yemen is not a signatory of the Rome Statue establishing the court.

THE WESTERN SAHARA


The story is familiar. Over a hundred thousand refugees languish in camps where many of them have lived for thirty years, others were born refugees, never knowing anything but the camps. The refugees fled the land their ancestors had lived on for nearly a thousand years following a foreign occupation, settlement, and annexation program, the country that displaced them refuses to enter meaningful negotiations and reneged on past agreements. A giant wall cuts off the refugees from 80% of their historic homeland, behind which the occupying power is attempting to establish facts on the ground, the basis for future negotiations, through a massive settlement program. Their political leadership is corrupt, dictatorial, and incompetent. Their international allies exploit their cause for their own political ends while doing little to address their situation.

The story is familiar, but the names are not. This is Africa's last colony, the Western Sahara. Since being claimed at the Berlin Conference, where Europe's colonial powers divided Africa among themselves, in 1884 the Western Sahara has been under foreign occupation, first by the Spanish, then briefly and partially by Mauritania, and now almost completely by the Moroccans.

In 1991 Morocco agreed to abide by international law and the ruling of the International Court of Justice in the Hague and allow the Sahrawis who inhabit the territory the African kingdom claims as its Southern Provinces to vote on independence. Since then Rabat has dragged its feat, sought to undermine the independence movement, and blocked the referendum, seeking to include hundreds of thousands of Moroccan settlers in the poll which it has refused to allow.

Morocco's defiance of international law and contempt for the wishes of the U.N Security Council have included mining the Sahara, the disappearing of hundreds, possibly thousands of civilians, arbitrary detention, politically motivated arrests, ethnic discrimination, torture, among other activities associated with its attempt to colonize the desert territory, have elicited little reaction from the international community which is reluctant to criticize a key regional ally.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

A BREIF OVERVIEW OF THE INVASION OF IRAQ


It has been argued that because Iraq has already been invaded there is little reason for discussing the reasoning behind that invasion. This is a convenient position for many who supported the war, but it fails to understand that any discussion about the invasion of Iraq is only nominally a discussion about the invasion of Iraq. It is a trial of the mindset and ideology that led to the invasion. And as long as that mindset persists, as long as the risk of the disaster of Iraq being visited on another people exists, we can never move on.

The invasion of Iraq was undertaken because Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed an imminent danger to the U.S, ostensibly. When that rationale fell apart the motivations for the war switched to one of spreading democracy and promoting human rights. The efficiency of that switch was as effective and complete as the switch of official state enemies in the book 1984. The invasion of Iraq was about democracy, it had always been about democracy. In the few mentions of the archaic pretext made following the switch it was only to say the war was the result of a failure of intelligence, though the architects of it continued to suggest they made the right decision even in light of the revelation that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.

Every invasion and imperialist enterprise, with the possible exception of the Belgian looting of the Congo, has been accompanied by noble rhetoric. The typical practice of judging leaders by their actions while ignoring their rhetoric is often inverted when looking at one's own nation. However, rhetoric can never justify a war. Saddam Hussein had equally impressive rhetoric when he invaded Kuwait.

As for the stated motivations, easiest to dispel is the claim of WMD. After it was confirmed that no such weapons existed senior policy makers, including the President, answered in the affirmative when asked if they would have invaded in light of this knowledge. Ignoring the issues raised by the Downing Street Memo, this is an implicit admission that the primary case for war made to the public was not what motivated policy makers. The sheer number of pretexts, changed to meet political demands, is in itself enough to cast serious doubt on the official explanation.

Moving on to the next major claim, the claim of spreading democracy and human rights, of planting a democratic seed in the Middle East. This claim can be easily tested with a single question: are the words of the idealistic crusaders seeking a new future for the Middle East consistent with their actions. The answer is decidedly no.

The group of policy makers waging war on Iraq simultaneously maintained close relationships with equally repressive regimes that served their perceived interests, such as Saudi Arabia, and simultaneously undermined democracy in countries where it would harm their perceived interests, such as Haiti and Venezuela. The case of Iraq before the invasion is sufficient evidence to discard any pretense the neocons had for concerns about democracy and human rights.

This was the same group of people who armed Saddam and shielded him diplomatically during the Reagan administration when his worst atrocities were taking place. To a large extent the idealistic crusaders enabled many of the atrocities they were fond of rattling off against Saddam. The relationship between Saddam Hussein and the U.S goes back long before the neocons were in office, it began when he was a twenty-two year old CIA agent tasked with murdering Iraq's Prime Minister and continued until his first real crime, the invasion of Kuwait in violation of American wishes. But the relationship between the two was particularly strong during periods of neocon control.

As the idealistic crusaders celebrated justice in the death sentence handed down to Saddam after a show trial no one thought to suggest that American officials complicit in the same crimes should be similarly dealt with. Indeed, many of those issuing noble pronouncements about the need for those guilty of crimes against humanity to be brought to justice, such as Donald Rumsfeld to name just one prominent example, were complicit in Saddam's crimes against humanity. The American officials who sold Saddam weapons, the CIA officers who gave him lists of thousands of political enemies to be liquidated, the American General who authorized him to put down a Shiite uprising that likely would have ended his rule, the western businessmen who sold him the components he needed to jumpstart his chemical and biological weapons programs, the list goes on, but the principle is that, in international relations, only the defeated are ever guilty of crimes. The crime for which Saddam died was not killing Kurds, the American officials who orchestrated the invasion were guilty of that also, the crime for which he was sentenced, like Noriega before him, was turning on his American masters.

The last major pretext for the invasion was fighting terrorism. But the war was conducted with the prediction by western intelligence services, ultimately realized that invading Iraq would only increase the threat of terrorism. The morality of invading Iraq is not only dispelled by serious lapses in the official reasoning, it is dispelled by the results of the invasion, results that set back the official goals of spreading democracy, fighting terrorism, and promoting human rights.
Supporters of the war make frequent use of an ancient propaganda technique. They ask opponents of the war if the world is better off without Saddam Hussein. They seek to equate the acknowledgment of the cruelty of the enemy with a vindication of their cause. But that is not the question that must be answered. No one ever asks if the world would be better off without George W. Bush, nor does anyone propose the absurdity that an affirmative answer to that question would justify the invasion and destruction of the U.S. No, the question is not whether the world is better off without Saddam Hussein, it most certainly is, but rather whether the world is better off because of the invasion of Iraq.

Massive majorities of Iraqis believe the answer is no. And it is easy to see why. The war sent both the economy and the infrastructure back many years. It sent the educated elites and professional classes into exile, in all it created about five million refugees and internally displaced people, out of a population of just over thirty-million. Iraq Body Count has confirmed 100,000 deaths resulting to the invasion, though it suggests the actual toll is likely much higher. Compare that with seventy-seven politically motivated murders reported by Amnesty International in the last year of the Saddam dictatorship. Civilian casualties were never a concern for U.S general in Iraq, one of whom declared "we don't do body counts" when asked about the issue. Clearly, the invasion accelerated politically motivated deaths on a massive scale.

But even before the invasion, the largest source of deaths in Iraq was not the Saddam dictatorship, monstrous as it was, but the sanctions imposed on the county by the U.S, which starved half a million Iraqi children to death, according to the U.S. A figure Secretary of State Madeline Albright accepted and found to be "a very hard choice," but ultimately "worth it". If the Bush administration were serious about prosecuting criminals to safeguard human rights they did not need to go overseas to do it. Nor did they need to go to the trouble of starting a war. The President could have accomplished that quite easily, if that were his real goal in invading Iraq. But, it is perhaps insulting to take the neocons at their word and extend their logic to its natural conclusions, so I won't go on anymore about that point.

On WMD proliferation, the invasion was again harmful to its stated goals. The attack convinced many nations that the only way they could deter an invasion was by acquiring WMD. The invasion provided an incentive for the acceleration of WMD programs in the third world. Many planners from third world nations felt Iraq was invaded because it did not have WMD, wheras North Korea was safe because it did posses such deterrent. Such comments are not entirely true, North Korea did not have WMD at the time of the Iraq War, though it did have a conventional detterant in the form of artillery pointed at cities and American troops in the south of the penninsula. But what is important here is the perception, the perception that the only way a small, third world nation can detern an attack from the superpower that spends more on defense than the rest of the world combined is to aquire WMD. By invading Iraq the Bush administration provided every weak, but rational despot ample motivation to initiate or accelerate WMD programs.

As for promoting democracy, it is obvious to any honest observer that Iraq is not a democracy. Even the American funded group Freedom House recognizes that Iraq is "not free", even the neocons implicitly acknowledge the point when they praise their favored regional client, Israel, as "the Middle East's only democracy". The invasion of Iraq was never about democracy, it never could have produced democracy. Every foreign policy expert, even the normally hawkish Henry Kissinger and George Kennan, foresaw that. Instead it set democracy back by providing dictators across the region an example of "what democracy would bring". The invasion of Iraq has been a disaster for the U.S, and more importantly for the people of Iraq. Sadly, the arrogant, reckless, and imperialistic mindset that made the invasion of Iraq possible still persists in American political culture. It was just recently that Congressman Dana Rohrabacher exclaimed to an Iraqi witness at a House hearing on the war his indignation that "I have never heard one word of gratitude from the Iraqi people about the 4,300 Americans who lost their lives," he continued "[w]e went to Iraq to try and free your people and now we're being blamed for sectarian violence," he said. "Don't blame us because that type of bloodlust exists in your society," before storming out of the room.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

REALLY?

Attempting to rebut Cal Thomas would be redundant, but his thoughts, if they could be called that, are still important to understanding the right in America.

Invasion by Immigration

Tribune Media Services

PORTSTEWART, NORTHERN IRELAND — The Daily Telegraph’s headline is meant to shock, or at least get the attention of Europeans apathetic about the threat they face: “A Fifth of European Union Will Be Muslim by 2050.”

In a related article “Muslim Europe: the Demographic Time Bomb Transforming Our Continent,” The Telegraph’s lead sentence summarizes the problem: “Britain and the rest of the European Union are ignoring a demographic time bomb: a recent rush into the EU by migrants, including millions of Muslims, will change the continent beyond recognition over the next two decades, and almost no policymakers are talking about it.”

The late British parliamentarian Enoch Powell warned more than 40 years ago that Britain had to be mad to allow in 50,000 dependents of immigrants every year. Powell, who was denounced as a racist and a xenophobe by the intellectual elites, compared it to watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre.

In retrospect, Powell looks like a prophet. According to Oxford demographer David Coleman, Britain’s non-white population is on course “to grow from 9 percent at the last census in 2001 to 29 percent by the year 2051.” Coleman estimates that if Britain continues at its current level of immigration — 191,000 per year by 1999 reports — its population could increase by 15 million by 2050, which will bring change most Britons don’t believe in.

In his new book, “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West,” Financial Times and Weekly Standard columnist Christopher Caldwell lays out in undisputable terms and with irrefutable facts the threat faced by the West. He says it is worse than anything al-Qaida can deliver. Caldwell cites numerous reasons for the predicament faced by Europe (and the United States), including the idea of a European Union, which is quickly eliminating individual identity, culture and money (the one size fits all Euro). Without an identifiable culture, immigrants cannot be assimilated, even if they want to be, which in the case of radical Muslims, argues Caldwell, they don’t.

In addition to massive immigration, Caldwell says, the high birth rate among immigrants, coupled with the low birth rate among white Europeans (barely enough in some countries to replace those who are dying) means that soon 20 percent of Europe’s population would be Muslim.

The rapid population change, writes Caldwell, is startling when you consider that as recently as the mid-20th century there were virtually no Muslims in Western Europe. At the turn of this century, there were between 15 million and 17 million Muslims in Western Europe, including 5 million in France, 4 million in Germany and 2 million in Britain. What is the attraction of these countries, which to some Islamic minds are full of idolatry, hedonism and secularism? All one need do is listen to the radical sermons and the vitriolic statements of certain Islamic leaders and spokesmen and to the radical Islamic media. They say their goal is to subjugate Europe and America to their religion.

At a recent conference near Chicago called “The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam,” Imam Jaleel Abdul Razek responded to a question from the audience about whether the U.S. Constitution or Sharia law should rule the United States when Islam is in control. Razek said Sharia would rule and that the Constitution would have to go.

Caldwell writes that uncontrolled immigration without assimilation “exacts a steep price in freedom. The multiculturalism that has been Europe’s main way of managing mass immigration requires the sacrifice of liberties that natives once thought of as rights.”

Those who support immigration without assimilation claim the West needs more brainy people to run their computers and discover cures for diseases. Why can’t our school systems produce more intelligent people without having to import them? More than “brains” are coming to the West. Those with a radical theological and political agenda are infiltrating us more effectively than our enemies of the 20th century ever dreamed of doing.

Twice in the last century America has delivered Europe from homegrown evil. It won’t be able to do so again when that evil is imported and when America is dealing with immigration problems of its own.


Tuesday, September 15, 2009

WHAT A JOKE

From Ha'aretz:

The chairman of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission on Tuesday told the international community that a nuclear-free Middle East requires a change in regional attitude toward Israel.

In an address to the International Atomic Energy Association in Vienna, Shaul Chorev emphasized Israel's stance that it was prepared in principle to commit to a Middle East free of nuclear weapon.

Chorev also reiterated that Israel has repeatedly asserted it would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the region. It is our vision and policy to establish the Middle East as a mutually verifiable zone free if weapons of mass destruction and their delivery," Chorev told delegates. . .

Friday, September 11, 2009

VICTOR JARA'S LAST POEM

Written in a concentration camp, memorized, and smuggled out by other political prisoners by Chilean poet Victor Jara shortly before he was murdered on September 17, 1973.

We are five thousand
Confined in this little part of town
We are five thousand
How many of us are there throughout the country?

Such a large portion of humanity
With hunger, cold, horror and pain
Six among us have already been lost
And have joined the stars in the sky.

One killed, another beaten
As I never imagined a human being
could be beaten
The other four just wanted to put an end
To their fears

One by jumping down to his death
The other smashing his head against a wall
But all of them
Looking straight into the eyes of death.

We are ten thousand hands
That can no longer work
How many of us are there
Throughout the country?

The blood shed by our comrade President
Has more power than bombs and machine guns
With that same strength our collective fist
Will strike again some day.

Song, How imperfect you are!
When I most need to sing, I cannot
I cannot because I am still alive
I cannot because I am dying

It terrifies me to find myself
Lost in infinite moments
On which silence and shouts
Are the objectives of my song

What I now see, I have never seen
What I feel and what I have felt
Will make the moment spring again.

SALVADOR ALLENDE'S LAST SPEECH

As the military coup was in motion President Allende was offered safe passage out of the country in exchange for resigning and legitimizing the coup. Instead, he chose to die in the Presidential Palace. This is his last speech, delivered to his countrymen as the coup was in progress, hours before his death.

My friends,

Surely this will be the last opportunity for me to address you. The Air Force has bombed the antennas of Radio Magallanes.

My words do not have bitterness but disappointment. May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath: soldiers of Chile, titular commanders in chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself Commander of the Navy, and Mr. Mendoza, the despicable general who only yesterday pledged his fidelity and loyalty to the Government, and who also has appointed himself Chief of the Carabineros [paramilitary police].

Given these facts, the only thing left for me is to say to workers: I am not going to resign! Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever.

They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.

Workers of my country: I want to thank you for the loyalty that you always had, the confidence that you deposited in a man who was only an interpreter of great yearnings for justice, who gave his word that he would respect the Constitution and the law and did just that. At this definitive moment, the last moment when I can address you, I wish you to take advantage of the lesson: foreign capital, imperialism, together with the reaction, created the climate in which the Armed Forces broke their tradition, the tradition taught by General Schneider and reaffirmed by Commander Araya, victims of the same social sector who today are hoping, with foreign assistance, to re-conquer the power to continue defending their profits and their privileges.

I address you, above all, the modest woman of our land, the campesina who believed in us, the mother who knew our concern for children. I address professionals of Chile, patriotic professionals who continued working against the sedition that was supported by professional associations, classist associations that also defended the advantages of capitalist society. I address the youth, those who sang and gave us their joy and their spirit of struggle. I address the man of Chile, the worker, the farmer, the intellectual, those who will be persecuted, because in our country fascism has been already present for many hours -- in terrorist attacks, blowing up the bridges, cutting the railroad tracks, destroying the oil and gas pipelines, in the face of the silence of those who had the obligation to act. They were committed. History will judge them.

Surely Radio Magallanes will be silenced, and the calm metal instrument of my voice will no longer reach you. It does not matter. You will continue hearing it. I will always be next to you. At least my memory will be that of a man of dignity who was loyal to his country.

The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice themselves. The people must not let themselves be destroyed or riddled with bullets, but they cannot be humiliated either.

Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues will open again and free men will walk through them to construct a better society.

Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!

These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason.

WORTHY AND UNWORTHY VICTIMS

A defining principle of states is embodied in the anniversary of September 11, the principle of worthy and unworthy victims. On September 11, 2001 a terrorist attack killed thousands of innocent Americans. That last word, American, is critical. These were worthy victims. Today that attack will be mourned and marked. Flags will fly at half-mast, the names of the victims will be read out in public places, politicians and publications will offer somber, philosophical reflections on the need to safeguard against the evil man is capable of.

On September 11, 1973 another mass-atrocity unfolded. On September 11, 1973 Chile's democratically elected government was overthrown in a fascist coup by the military. As the body of President Salvador Allende was being carried from the flames of the Presidential Palace, as thousands of writers, labor organizers, social activists, and intellectuals were being rounded up, tortured and executed, as Chile began its long decent into fascism, government officials in the U.S were not publicly weeping for the dead, they were celebrating.

Chile's democracy would not be restored until 1990, not until after the economy was destroyed, at least 80,000 Chileans became prisoners of conscious, 30,000 were tortured, 200,000 were made refugees, over 3,200 were murdered by the government, and an international terrorist organization was initiated, that carried out attacks across Latin America and in the United States, that assisted in the attacks of violent, far-right European terrorist organizations, and whose members continue to live freely, even in the U.S, under the protection of the American government (see Michael Townley).

This was not an attack on Americans, it was an attack instigated by Americans, to protect American business interest. These are unworthy victims. They have been doubly killed their memory has been erased. It is not ideologically convenient, it can justify nothing, it has been forgotten, dropped in the memory hole. America is the victim of atrocities, it has always been the victim, it can play no other role than that of the victim. We can weep for vom Rath, whose death was indeed a tragic atrocity, but our victims are not worthy victims. When their fate is not being celebrated it is forgotten so that their story can repeat itself.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

AMERICAN FASCISTS

I wonder what other acts of mass murder he thinks are just some "bullshit" concocted by "propaganda mills". The type of statements this man makes in this interview produced death sentences at Nuremberg.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

A FEW THOUGHTS ON THE AFGHAN ELECTION

Originally written in April, but just as valid today.

Since being installed in the Presidential Palace by American soldiers shortly after the fall of the Taliban Karzai has been content following orders from Washington while siphoning off public funds for the construction of palaces and other trapping of power. He has even described himself as an American puppet. However, there appears to have been some falling out recently. In the last few months Karzai's stature as a courageous democratic visionary has diminished drastically.

Some of his less admirable characteristics were suddenly noticed in the West about the same time as the State Department's man in Afghanistan repeatedly broke with the official line to angrily denounce civilian casualties resulting from NATO military operation, his first real crime. With an election approaching it is likely the Americans will hand over the operations of the Afghan government to a more obedient crony, perhaps their former proconsul and U.N ambassador will, while retaining Karzai as a figurehead or even attempt to oust him all together in favor of a less free-minded visionary.

For seven years Karzai was adored for his courage and honesty while the tribal warlord and his cronies looted government coffers. Karzai would do well to remember the fate of other Washington allies who displayed an independent streak, the fate of Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega should be at the front of his mind. Perhaps the rift will be healed and Karzai's heroic stature will be renewed, if not it will be entertaining to watch the falling out, to watch the sudden concern of western officials for Karzai's corruption, dealmaking with warlords, anti-democratic tendencies, and connections to the drug trade. Certainly real issues, but ones of negligible importance when Karzai was following orders.

THE LATEST SHRIEKS FROM CAL THOMAS

Image: A Palestinian terrorist attempting to exterminate Jews from their historic homeland.

I am well accustomed to propaganda, I understand that accolades to power don't need to base their opinions on evidence or back up their views so long as they can shriek loud enough, I have known this for a long time, but the contemptibly of Cal Thomas's latest rant was still shocking.

Thomas begins by invoking the film Schindler's List which "never ceases to arouse [his] deepest emotions" and before ruminating on "[h]ow could people wantonly kill so many others as a matter of state policy?" That's a good question and one that Thomas, as an apologist for statist violence, is well equipped to explore. But Thomas does not answer it, at least not directly, anyone who reads his column on a regular basis, which in the past has called for the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank might have a few reflections.

Instead Thomas validates Godwin's law, declaring ominously that "[t]here are those who would gladly 'finish the job' the Nazis started," and that the Obama administration in pressuring the Israeli government to implement a plan that will give Israel's enemies the chance to carry out their genocidal ambitions. "Next time," he warns us "it is unlikely there will be an Oskar Schindler to save even a remnant."

The pressure that President Obama is applying towards Israel to freeze construction of illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Thomas informs us, is rooted in the same "blame it on the Jews. It's always their fault" attitude that causes people to blame the Jews for the Holocaust. Never mind that Obama still supports virtually every other violation of international law and humanitarian norms by Israel. Obama has failed to grasp that the Arab world will never come to terms with Israel. Like the NAZIS the Arab world is a bunch of lunatics who strive to murder Jews "simply for being Jewish." Failing to understand this, Thomas instructs us "has been the fundamental flaw in American foreign policy for decades."

Never mind that the Arab States have offered Israel full recognition on its internationally recognized borders, they are nothing more than a bunch of neo-NAZIS bent on destroying Jews wherever they are.

Israel has tried to negotiate. It "has given lots of quid, but has received little quo." Israel is a compassionate nation, but it is absurd to expect it "to stop building homes on its historic territory" without receiving anything in return. Perhaps here it is worth asking Mr. Thomas what do the Palestinian's have left to give in return? They have been ethnically cleansed from 78% of their historic homeland to make way for a state that officially discriminates against them, many cannot even visit the homes where they were born, the homes that they still hold deeds to, the homes that were appropriated by Israel to make way for ethnically pure families, they have been subjected to a forty-year hostile occupation in what remains of their shrinking homelands, they have been canonized, they have been made, in the words of former Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan "to live like dogs", and they have been driven to the point that even the current Israel defense minister Ehud Barak declares that if he were a Palestinian he would "have joined one of the terrorist organizations."

An indignant Thomas answers this question, bemoaning the racist double standards applied to the conflict Thomas declares his outrage that while demanding a freeze to illegal settlements the Obama administration said nothing when "a new Palestinian housing project has begun in Ramallah. . .[o]nly Israel is not allowed to determine where it's own people live."

The goal of this selective outrage, otherwise known as the application of international law, is clear. "It is to overwhelm the Jewish population and eventually eliminate all Jews from the land, not just land that is in dispute and which Israel holds onto because of its legitimate fear that Arab and Muslim nations, having started five wars, might go for number six if they believe they can win the next one. Only a fool would believe otherwise, given their repeatedly stated intentions and behavior." The Saudi Peace Initiative must be written in some code the rest of the world has obviously misinterpreted. Leave it to Cal Thomas to set the record straight.

Monday, September 7, 2009

SOME HONEST COMMENTS

. . .from an ardent Zionist

Israel's Jewish and Zionist character are inherently opposed to true, liberal Western-style democracy (original emphasis). Israel is, by definition, a Jewish state, which means that Jews must be the majority of the population. Israel's people, culture, religion, language, holidays and character are thoroughly Jewish. Even if an Arab has equality before the law and the right to vote, he is automatically culturally alienated from a state which belongs to another people.

. . .All lovers of Israel must realize that Israel, as long as it is a Jewish state, can never be a perfect democracy in the sense of Canada or the United States. This is not meant to criticize or deligitimize Israel- it is simply the stating of a fact.

Similarly, Israel can never have a complete separation of Synagogue and State, as is in the United States. Whatever role religion should play in the public sphere, most Israelis agree that it is important for Judaism to play a role in the Jewish State. For the concept of a Jewish state to have any significance, Israel must have some sort of Jewish character.

Here we see the fundamental flaws of liberal Israel advocacy. Israel will never be a perfect democracy, nor will it ever be thoroughly American or Western, if it is to be Jewish.

. . .Peace is an important goal for Israel, but it is not the most important goal. The quest for peace does not give Israel its right to exist, nor does its democratic government or Western leanings make it the morally superior party. After all, one could easily establish a democratic, Western regime on the stolen lands of another nation, as was the case in Canada, the United or India, for example. After appropriating native land, it is only natural for this country to seek peace with the conquered.

. . .To all those who charge Israel with the most vile of crimes, with "occupation, "ethnic cleansing", "theft of land", our answer most not be of saying that Israel wants peace, or that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle-East. The fact that Israel is the United State's greatest ally is irrelevant to this accusation. Our answer must be that of Simon the Maccabee, which he wrote to the Seleucid king Antiochus: "We have neither taken foreign land nor seized foreign property, but only the inheritance of our fathers, which at one time had been unjustly taken by our enemies. Now that we have the opportunity, we are firmly holding the inheritance of our fathers." There is no "Palestinian people", nor was there ever, nor will there ever be.