New York Times, the dog that didn't bark

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Conspicuous Silences: The New York Times Buries Its Head in the Sinai Sand

by DAVID MORRIS on JUNE 30, 2009

It’s like the Sherlock Holmes case of the dog that didn’t bark . Why does the New York Times ignore or bury news that is unfavorable to the State of Israel?

Two examples follow:

Chas Freeman , and the USS Liberty. One recent, and another a willful silence that has continued for forty-two years.

Example 1: The Chas Freeman Affair

This past February, Chas Freeman was appointed to chair the National Intelligence Council, an advisory body that oversees what intelligence is permitted in official government reports. Ambassador Freeman, a distinguished foreign service officer, is known for his clear-eyed views on Israel and the Mideast.

Alarms blared at the Israel lobby. Immediately AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) began an all-out war to kill his appointment. At stake was whether a special interest group could control what foreign policy viewpoints our public officials are allowed to hold, and in so doing, place another country’s interests ahead of America’s.

"Truth squads" were formed to distribute distortions and slanders to their allies in the media and Washington. Steve Rosen, a former leader of AIPAC, kicked off the smear campaign by questioning Mr. Freeman’s loyalty to America. Media organizations like Fox News reported the accusation while failing to disclose that Rosen, himself, under federal indictment for spying for Israel against the United States.

Mainstream media sat back and gave the lobby a free hand.

The Israel lobby enjoys enormous power in Congress. Robert Dreyfuss in The Nation noted "the campaign by AIPAC…using a lot of muscle behind the scenes" to prompt Senate and House committees to come out against Mr. Freeman. Democrat Steve Israel, along with four other congressmen who are the top five recipients of campaign contributions from pro-Israel groups, pushed Congress to initiate a formal investigation of conjectures and allegations. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, indebted friend of AIPAC, declared the nomination "beyond the pale."

Professor Stephen Walt likened these Congressional attacks "to Joseph McCarthy’s infamous witch hunt against communists in the US government, [that] relied primarily on lies, innuendo, and intimidation." And as American media did in the 1950s, our newspapers, radio, and television in March 2009 played passive accomplices by repeating and reporting only the surface of events.

The editorial page of the NY Times is read by members of Congress and their staffs, and has significant influence. But neither the Times nor mass media considered the mauling of Mr. Freeman and the attendant interference with our democratic processes worth reporters’ time or editorial comment. In fact, the paper did not run a single story dealing with Mr. Freeman until after the day he stepped down.

Greg Marx, discussing the Freeman affair in the Columbia Journalism Review noted, "if you get your news from the New York Times , you were totally oblivious to this story as it unfolded."

The lobby, sensing it had free rein, went in for the kill.

After weeks of trying to defend himself, Mr. Freeman withdrew his nomination. This event prompted the NY Times to publish its first story on the affair. The article was so tepid that Philip Weiss, in his influential Mondoweiss blog, wrote "it looks like a whitewash to me, written for a pro-Israel audience that doesn’t want to read anything negative about ‘our staunch ally.’" Another columnist, James Wall, wrote that the article "sounded strangely like something an AIPAC intern might write."

This pattern of conspicuous silences from the New York Times isn’t new. It began forty-two years ago.

Example 2: USS Liberty

Israeli jet fighters and torpedo boats attacked the American Navy ship USS Liberty in international waters on June 8, 1967 during the Six-Day War. For two hours the Israelis attempted to sink the ship using rocket fire, bombs, napalm, and torpedoes.More than 200 Americans — over half the ship’s 358-man crew — were killed or wounded.

Israel continues to call the "incident" a tragic case of mistaken identity, yet for eight hours prior to the attack on a bright and clear day, Israeli reconnaissance aircraft flew over the Liberty , identifying the ship as American .

In the NY Times the following day, the attack merited only a brief article relegated to page 19. Even as damning evidence of Israeli aggression against the ship has come to light from a variety of reliable sources over the past four decades, the Times has continued to follow its initial policy of burying or ignoring the USS Liberty debacle.

My purpose here is not to rehash the details of the attack, nor to judge the evidence of a joint U.S.-Israeli cover-up. The USS Liberty Memorial provides details for those interested in reading more. My objective, rather, is to examine how mainstream media in general and the NY Times in particular have reported on the USS Liberty as new evidence has surfaced periodically over the past 42 years.

Yet it is difficult to examine reporting that has not been reported.

Over the years, evidence has continued to mount that undermines the official Israeli line of mistaken identity and strengthens the argument that the Israeli attack was deliberate — launched and continued with full knowledge that the USS Liberty was an American ship.

Sources corroborating this interpretation include: 1) testimony from a JAG officerresponsible for the 1967 official inquiry; 2) eye-witness accounts from survivors of theLiberty ; 3) declassification of government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act; and 4) statements and intercepts of Israeli military personnel involved in the attack.

With the notable exception of John Crewdsen’s article in the Chicago Tribune "New Revelations in Attack on American Spy Ship," mainstream media have ignored these developing news stories. Take for example, the comprehensive and independentinvestigation of the Liberty chaired by Admiral Thomas Moorer in 2003, whose findings were not favorable to Israel. Only ten of the 300 leading newspapers in America published the Associated Press’ article on the report, according to Alison Weir. During 2003, the Times ‘ attention was focused more on promoting the war in Iraq than in investigating the truth behind an Israeli attack that killed or wounded 206 Americans.

The New York Times ‘ coverage of the Liberty over the past 42 years is telling. Now and then, in attempts to discredit new evidence and witnesses who came forward, theTimes has relied on columnists William Safire, who doubled as communication consultant to the Israeli government, and Abe Rosenthal, the former managing editor of the Times . In 1991, columnists Evans and Novak obtained copies of incriminating Israeli communications that were intercepted by the CIA on June 8, 1967. In their syndicated column they reported two eye-witness sources confirming that the Israelis knew when they attacked that the Liberty was American. Rosenthal’s hasty effort to debunk their report was amateurish and partisan. Describing Rosenthal’s objectivity, author Eric Alterman said , "I consider myself a defender of Israel. But Abe Rosenthal…he basically uses his column, I believe, as a means of defending Israel whenever possible, even when Israel does things most people feel are not defensible."

When the media raised their curtain of silence about the Liberty , their reports showed a clear pro-Israel bias. For example in 1992, former Ambassador to the United Nations George Ball published a book severely criticizing the official inquiry on the Liberty . Among major US daily newspapers, only the Washington Postdeigned to acknowledged the book’s existence, but to review it, the Post selected a pro-Israel historian who made a career of defending Israel. The review was brief and focused on the Ambassador’s purported anti-Semitism.

American media’s protection of Israel extends to the TV networks. In 1992, for example, NBC produced a documentary on the Liberty promising to let the survivors tell their stories on camera. After the interviews were filmed, NBC assigned a pro-Israel writer and editor to cut, shape, and gloss over information offensive to Israel.

The BBC, by contrast, won an international film award for its documentary "Dead in the Water ." The film presents compelling evidence that Israel did indeed attack the USS Liberty despite knowledge that it was an American ship, and that the Johnson administration orchestrated a hasty inquiry to cover it up.

Today, if you Google "New York Times USS Liberty ," you will find a 2001 TV listing (without review), a 1988 letter to the editor from a survivor of the attack, and not much else. The Times has buried its head in the Sinai sand .

Conclusion

Sherlock Holmes solved the murder case by realizing that the dog didn’t bark a warning because it knew the perpetrator . He was its friend and provider. In matters concerning the Middle East, the New York Times , by playing lap dog to Israel, has become predictable and irrelevant.

This is why the American public is turning away from mainstream media. This is why blogs like this are born.

Source

at 3:02 PM 1 comments

Labels: Wars for Israel

Gilad Atzmon - The Old Testament and the Genocide in Gaza

By Gilad Atzmon

Jan 8th, 2009 at 0:11

"You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you.”

Leviticus, Chapter 26, verses 7-9

"When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations…then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.”

Deuteronomy 7:1-2,

"…do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them…as the Lord your God has commanded you…”

Deuteronomy 20:16

There is not much doubt amongst Biblical scholars that the Hebrew Bible contains some highly charged non-ethical suggestions, some of which are no less than a call for a genocide. Biblical scholar Raymund Schwager has found in the Old Testament 600 passages of explicit violence, 1000 descriptive verses of God's own violent actions of punishment, 100 passages where God expressly commands others to kill people. Apparently, violence is the most often mentioned activity in the Hebrew Bible.

As devastating as it may be, the Hebrew Bible saturation with violence and extermination of others may throw some light over the horrifying genocide conducted momentarily in Gaza by the Jewish state. In broad daylight, the IDF is using the most lethal methods against civilians as if their main objective is to ‘destroy’ the Gazans while showing ‘no mercy’ whatsoever.

Interestingly enough, Israel regards itself as a secular state. Ehud Barak is not exactly a qualified Rabbi and Tzipi Livni is not a Rabbi’s wife. Accordingly, we are entitled to assume that it isn’t actually Judaism per se that directly transforms Israeli politicians and military leaders into war criminals. Moreover, early Zionists believed that within a national home Jews would become 'people like all other people', i.e., civilised and ethical. In that very respect, Israeli reality is pretty peculiar. The Hebraic secular Jews may have managed to drop their God, most of them do not follow Judaic law, they are largely secular, and yet they collectively interpret their Jewish identity as a genocidal mission. They have successfully managed to transform the Bible from being a spiritual text into a bloodsoaked land registry. They are there, in Zion i.e., Palestine, to invade the land and to lock up, starve and destroy its indigenous habitants. Accordingly, it seems as if the artillery commanders and IAF pilots that erased northern Gaza two nights ago were following Deuteronomy 20:16 they indeed did ".. not leave alive anything that breathes.” And yet, one question is left open. Why should a secular commander follow Deuteronomy verses or any other Biblical text?

Some very few sporadic Jewish voices within the left are insisting upon telling us that Jewishness is not necessarily inherently murderous. I tend to believe them that they themselves consider their words as genuine and truthful. But then one may wonder, what is it that makes the Jewish state brutal with no comparison? The truth of the matter is actually pretty sad. As far as we can see, Zionism is the only secular ideological and political Jewish collective around and as it happens, it has proved once again this week that it is genocidal to the bone.

As far as genocide is concerned the difference between Judaism and Zionism can be illustrated as follows: while the Judaic Biblical context is soaked with genocidal references, usually in the name of God, within the Zionist context, Jews are killing Palestinians in the name of themselves i.e., the ‘Jewish people’. This is indeed the ultimate success of the Zionist revolution. It taught the Jews to believe in themselves. To believe in the Jewish state. ‘The Israeli’ is Israel’s God. Accordingly, the Israeli kills in the name of ‘his or her security’, in the name of ‘his or her democracy’. The Israelis destroy in the name of ‘their war against terror’ and in the name the ‘their America’. Seemingly, in the Jewish state, the Hebraic subject reverts to mass killing as soon as he finds a ‘name’ to associate with.

This doesn’t really leave us too much room for speculation. The Jewish state is the ultimate threat to humanity and our notion of humanism. Christianity, Islam and humanism came along with an attempt to amend Jewish tribal fundamentalism and to replace it with universal ethics. Enlightenment, liberalism and emancipation allowed Jews to redeem themselves from their ancient tribal supremacist traits. Since the mid 19^th century, many Jews had been breaking out of their cultural and tribal chain. Tragically enough, Zionism managed to pull many Jews back in. Currently, Israel and Zionism are the only collective voice available for Jews.

The last twelve days of merciless offensive against the Palestinian civilian population does not leave any room for doubt. Israel is the gravest danger to world peace. Clearly the nations made a tragic mistake in 1947 giving a volatile racially orientated identity an opportunity to set itself into a national state. However, the nations’ duty now is to peacefully dismantle that state before it is too late. We must do it before the Jewish state and its forceful lobbies around the world manage to pull us all into a global war in the ‘name’ of one banal populist ideology or another (democracy, war against terror, cultural clash and so on). We have to wake up now before our one and only planet is transformed into a bursting boil of hatred.

The Media , Madona and Michael

Link

The old-Devil and the new-Witch !!

For the coming 15 days ,
I beg of you all to carefully watch
which Media shall mention that Michael Jackson
has converted to Islam , and which Media shall never do it.

Make your own statistics
and then make your own conclusions.


As if ,
it were "wrong" to convert to Islam
as Michael obviously did , therefore it is rather irrelevant.....
but otherwise it is perfectly alright to do as Madona recently did,
....converting to Judaism !!


Bearing in mind that you cannot convert into a "race "
.....although Jews pretend to be a race-people-nation-culture.
When it is normal to convert to Islam , which is
a brotherhood of beleivers , a Religion.....the Religion !!


Madona can now " inherit " the Land of Canaan
while probably Michael Jackson , would in theory
enter the Heavens....without ever stealing Mecca.....
nor stealing Jerusalem.

Bearing in mind that Madona , "legaly" ,
may steal Jerusalem now that she became a Jew....


Back to our story !

Watch the news , please ,
and tell us who or what shall ever reveal to us
and indeed to the large public, that Michael Jackson
died as , a converted-Muslim-person ?
and who shall not mention it ?? and how often ??


Raja Chemayel

Posted by Тлакскала at 11:32 PM

Who may dictate to us about the Dictators ??

Link

The main-stream- Media's and the West ,
have decided to call President AhmadiNejad ,
as being a dictator.... .

Of course it is a matter of opinion
and all opinions are subjective.. ...(even mine)

Do we have facts , supporting
the claim or the theory of "Dictator" ????

How different is Mr. Moussavi ???
Or any other presidential- candidate !!

Let us hear it , por favor !!!.


Raja Chemayel

Posted by Тлакскала at 11:23 PM

Very informative: Iran and Washington’s Hidden Hand

Link

June 30, 2009

Has the CIA Been Caught in Iran’s Cookie Jar, Again?

By ESAM AL-AMIN, counter punch

Only weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist and mouthpiece of the neoconservatives, revealed the target list of the Bush administration as it set out on its post-9/11 war footing. The list included six nations: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, and the Palestinian Authority. While the priority allotted to Afghanistan and subsequently Iraq was not in dispute, the remaining order was in flux.

Israel was given a free hand in dealing with the Palestinian Authority (PA). President George W. Bush completely shunned and isolated PA President Yasser Arafat, until he died under siege in November 2004. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was allowed to use brutal military tactics to crush the Al-Aqsa intifada, reoccupying much of the West Bank, and setting up hundreds of military checkpoints devastating Palestinian life and what remained of the PA.

By January 2002, the Afghan campaign was over as far as Bush was concerned, and preparations for the invasion of Iraq had begun in earnest. Dozens of books have been written explaining in elaborate detail the schemes, plots and deceptions by the neocons for regime change in Iraq. In fact, Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward documented the events and the roles of senior administration officials in a series of books.

As Libyan Leader Muammar Qadhafi watched the toppling of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the spring of 2003, he initiated contact with London and then Washington, trying to identify the conditions needed, in an attempt to avoid Saddam’s fate. By January 2004, Libya agreed to all their conditions: accepting responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing, paying over $3 billion in reparations, signing the Chemical Weapons Ban treaty, and perhaps most importantly, giving up its nuclear program, including handing over all equipment purchased over two decades to the U.S.

On the other hand, Syria faced economic pressure and diplomatic isolation, coupled with veiled and direct threats. By April 2005, Syria withdrew its troops from Lebanon after a 29-year presence. Although American pressure succeeded in forcing Damascus to withdraw from Lebanon, Syria remained a target for regime change within the U.S. defense and intelligence establishment. Its alleged role in supporting the Iraqi resistance against the American occupation, as well as hosting the headquarters of the major Palestinian resistance groups represented its major “sins.”

But the toughest nut to crack among all these targets has always been Iran. Ironically, Iran’s strategic situation vastly improved following the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the overthrow of those regimes. By 2004, Iran’s Shiite allies in Iraq were in control of the government, even as the country was still under American occupation. Further, Iran exercised tremendous influence with Muqtada Sadr’s militia, the main Shiite opposition to the occupation in the streets.

After Bush’s second inauguration in January 2005, the National Security Council had an intense internal debate regarding Iran. The conflict did not center on whether there should be a regime change in Iran, but rather, whether to employ soft or hard power to achieve it. Former Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld advocated a series of escalating military strikes, while former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for the use of soft power. Eventually, the president’s military advisors ended the debate when they cautioned Bush that with the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, engaging Iran militarily would be highly risky and draining for the U.S. armed forces.

Between 2005-2009, the U.S. Congress appropriated more than $400 million for State Department programs designed to “promote democracy,” among other means of employing soft power in Iran. This was implemented, in part, by funding the activities of Iranian dissident groups. By 2008, Congress included money in the budget that would specifically “go to software programmers to develop programs that thwart internet firewalls erected by the government of Iran, ” and for a program to “provide anti-censorship tools and services for the advancement of information freedom in closed societies.”

On May 24, 2007, Brian Ross, ABC News’s Chief Investigative Correspondent broke a story about the elements of soft power utilized by the CIA and authorized by Bush. “Current and former intelligence officials told ABC News that the CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount what is known as a black or covert operations to destabilize the Iranian regime, and it is underway,” he reported. He then added, “Those officials describe the Iranian plan as non-lethal involving a campaign of coordinated propaganda broadcasts, placement of negative newspaper articles, the manipulation of Iran’s currency and international banking transactions.” The ABC correspondent stated, “Propaganda was one of the most important tools utilized by the CIA.”

Three day later, the British Daily Telegraph, detailed CIA plans for “a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple” the regime. The report said that the presidential finding gave the U.S. spy agency, for the first time, “the right to collect intelligence domestically, an area that is usually the preserve of the FBI, from the many Iranian exiles and émigrés within the US.” In the report, an intelligence official was quoted as saying, “Iranians in America have links with their families at home, and they are a good two-way source of information.”

Part of the CIA program, as reported by ABC News and the Daily Telegraph, was “supplying money and weapons, to the militant group, Jundullah, which has conducted raids into Iran from bases in Pakistan.” Since 2007, Iranian officials have announced the capture of dozens of members of violent groups, allegedly tied to the CIA, that carried out bombings around the nation including one that killed 20 people only two weeks prior to the recent elections, on May 30, 2009. The following day, another bombing took place at a campaign office of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Further, about two thousand militia members of the Mujahideen Khalq Organization, a violent group seeking to forcibly topple the Iranian regime by force, have been given sanctuary in Iraq by the American occupation authority, although the group has appeared on the State Department’s list of international terrorist organizations since 1997. The report also quoted Mark Fitzpatrick, a former senior State Department official, now with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, as saying that industrial sabotage was the strategy of choice to combat Iran’s nuclear program “without military action, without fingerprints on the operation.”

The Telegraph report also stated that the CIA was allowed to supply “communications equipment which would enable opposition groups in Iran to work together and bypass Internet censorship” by the regime. The use of this equipment has surfaced prominently in the recent standoff between the government and the opposition in Iran. It should be noted though that this destabilization program by the CIA is totally separate from the State Department’s $400 million program, and is being funded through the CIA budget. Thus, since 2006, the total figure for Iran’s destabilization program could have easily exceeded $1 billion.

During the 1980s, the U.S. Government, and particularly the CIA, was very active in fomenting rebellions, mass unrest and protest movements in Eastern Europe. These efforts have been documented in numerous books and biographies. Former National Security Advisor during the Carter Administration, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, admitted as much in a CNN interview on June 21, 2009.

Commenting on the 1980 founding of the Solidarity movement during the Communist era in Poland, he told his host, “I was up to my ears in dealing with it and trying to steer it and manipulate it.” When asked about regime change in Iran, Brzezinski answered that regime change is desired because it would provide a “greater accommodation” to the U.S., but it requires, among other things, “intelligent manipulation.”

On June 28, CNN program host Fareed Zakaria put a very telling question to Bob Baer, a retired twenty-one year CIA veteran, who served as the top operative in the Middle East for many years. He asked, “Isn’t it true that we do [try to destabilize the regime]? Don’t we fund various groups inside and outside Iran that do try to destabilize the government?” Baer answered, “ Oh absolutely,” then added, “There is a covert action program against Iran where the [U.S.] military is running; a covert action against Iran from Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The overt involvement of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other U.S. Government-funded NGOs in supporting many of the groups and dissidents that led the colored and flowering “revolutions,” is also well documented. The Orange (Ukraine), Rose (Georgia), Tulip (Kyrgyzstan), Cedar (Lebanon), Saffron (Burma) and now Green (Iran) “revolutions” have involved mostly pro-Western groups or Western-favored individuals against nationalists.

The Guardian claimed that USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, and Freedom House were directly involved in supporting these revolutions. The Washington Post and the New York Times also reported substantial Western involvement in some of these events.

According to Saeed Behbahani, a fierce critic of the current Iranian regime, and founder of Mihan TV outside Washington D.C., the American administration exchanged messages with the campaign of Mir Hossein Mousavi in early June. He claims that, at that time, an unidentified Iranian-American businessman, who is close to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, met with Mousavi’s campaign manager, Mehdi Khazali, in Dubai.

The following day, Khazali was prominently interviewed and hailed by the Voice of America’s Persian language broadcast. The VOA claims that its broadcast reaches 15 million Iranians. Other Iranian opposition groups complained that the VOA had adopted a policy of supporting the reformist candidates, and had disregarded those who called for a boycott of the elections to deny the regime legitimacy.

The role of the Western media in the few weeks before and in the aftermath of the elections is illuminating. These same outlets traditionally act as enablers to Washington’s agenda, a role notoriously on display in the lead-up to the Iraq war.

In November 2005, Egypt held elections for its parliament. The elections were held in three stages so they could be easily managed by the regime. When the opposition led by the Kefaya (Enough) Movement and the Muslim Brotherhood scored impressive gains in the first stage, the government initiated a crackdown by beating and arresting the opposition candidates and organizers. Thousands of Egyptians took to the streets in protest of the government’s intimidation tactics and manipulation of the elections. Western TV networks provided scant coverage of these events, and never covered the massive protests or crackdown by government authorities.

Furthermore, earlier this year, during Israel’s 22-day onslaught on Gaza, millions of people around the world, including tens of thousands in the U.S., protested daily the brutality of the Israeli military machine against the defenseless civilians. Despite the fact that over 1,000 people were killed and over 5,000 injured – one third of whom were children- there was hardly the wall-to-wall coverage given to the protests in Iran.

The biased performance of the mainstream media in reporting the Iranian elections can be illustrated through the coverage of the over-votes. Soon after the elections, it was reported that a major proof of fraud was that the participation rate exceeded 100 percent in many districts. The clear implication was that the authorities were so sloppy in their election tampering that they simply stuffed the ballot boxes.

Had media outlets consulted any experts on Iranian elections, they would have discovered the simple explanation. In Iran, there is no requirement to vote in a designated district. People do not carry a voter registration card like American citizens. Each voter has a voting book allowing him or her to vote anywhere in the country. After voting, the book is stamped and the index finger is inked to ensure that no one can vote more than once. This fact was not unique to this election. In many previous elections, many districts had a high turnout when compared to the number of registered voters in that district because many Iranians had voted there while traveling or during their summer vacations.

The example of the over-votes, not only demonstrates gross negligence by the media, but also deliberate deception. On June 22, Abbas Kadkhodaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s Guidance Council (GC), the official body in charge of investigating all 646 complaints filed by the defeated candidates, held a press conference. He gave details about the complaints under investigation by the Council.

Kadkhodaei explained that the main complaint filed by Mousavi related to the elections was that the number of over-votes existed in as many as 170 cities, potentially affecting more votes than the margin between the top two candidates. Kadkhodaei then presented the GC’s preliminary findings, which showed that such over-votes existed (as they had existed in previous elections), but in no more than 50 cities across Iran, affecting no more than three million votes. In other words, there were no more than three million voters who had voted outside their districts. He emphasized that, with 11 million votes between the top two candidates, even if all three million votes were to be excluded (although there is no valid reason to do that), clearly the outcome of the elections would not be affected.

But within minutes the German News Agency followed by Reuters, reported that the GC “admitted” that there were an excess of three million votes in 50 cities, leaving the listener and reader with the impression that these were fraudulent votes, rather than valid votes for people voting outside their districts like the spokesman explained. This report was instantly placed on the front pages of every major Western news media websites. The deception continued and made the front page of every major Western paper the following day.

Opposition groups have relied on Internet communication technology such as text messaging, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and political blogs during their protests. In fact, Secretary Clinton took the unusual step in asking Twitter to change its maintenance schedule to accommodate Iran’s time zone and allow opposition groups the ability to utilize it. What is striking is that most of the postings were in English, not Persian, begging the question: who was the target audience of these tweets? Similarly, why were the protesters holding signs saying, “Where is my vote?” in English, rather than the language spoken by the voters of Iran?

But a study by the website, www.chartingstocks.net, concluded that during three days after the election, the overwhelming majority of Tweets (over 30,000), were manipulated through a handful of accounts; all created within one day of the elections on June 13. It is interesting to note that only 0.6 percent of Twitter accounts are used by Iranians (as compared to 44 percent by Americans).

In a recent interview with the BBC on June 19, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the foreign policy icon and ultimate insider, exposed Washington’s deep involvement in the Iranian affair.

Dr. Kissinger said, “If it turns out that it is not possible for a government to emerge in Iran that can deal with itself as a nation rather than as a cause, then we have a different situation.” Translation: if our preferred candidate did not emerge a winner after using all our soft power… He continued, “Then we may conclude that we must work for regime change in Iran from the outside,” Translation: then the U.S. (or perhaps Israel) may have to resort to hard power, meaning military strikes.

He then added, “But if I understand the president correctly, he does not want to do this as a visible intervention in the current crisis.” Translation: Whatever President Barack Obama is doing in Iran, he wants to make sure that Washington’s hand is invisible.

Obama faces a Persian rebuff

Link

June 30, 2009

By M K Bhadrakumar, atimes

Twitter can now revert to its plan to shut down its Iran services and attend to maintenance work. Twitter goes into recess pleased that it probably embarrassed a resurgent regional power. The United States government owes Twitter a grand salute for having done something where all other stratagems of war and peace failed in the past three decades.

However, Persian stories have long endings. The Iranian regime shows every sign of closing ranks and pulling its act together in the face of what it assessed to be an existential threat to the Vilayat-e faqih (rule of the clergy) system. Even if the US and Britain want to walk away from their nasty spat with Tehran, which would be an eminently sensible and logical thing to do, the latter may not allow them to do that.

When Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used a colorful Persian idiom to characterize European and American officials and when he underscored that the ground on which they stood inevitably gets “soiled”, he made it clear that Tehran will not easily forget the fusillades of mockery that the US and Britain in particular fired over the past fortnight to tarnish its rising regional profile. In a veiled warning, Khamenei said, “Some European and American officials with their idiotic remarks about Iran are speaking as if their own problems [read Iraq, Afghanistan] have all been resolved and Iran remains the only issue for them.”

Iran has had a tortuous history, overflowing with what US President Barack Obama in his Cairo speech called “tension … fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies with regard to their own aspirations”. The “red line” for Tehran through the past three decades has always been any foreign attempt at forcing regime change. That line has been breached.

The Iranian security establishment has begun digging deeper and deeper into what really happened. Gholam Hossein Nohseni Ejei, the powerful Intelligence Minister, has alleged from available data that there has been a concerted attempt to stir up unrest by world powers that were “upset about a stable and secure Iran”, and plots to assassinate Iranian leaders.

Unsubstantiated allegations do not stick. But uncomfortable questions will arise in the coming days and weeks. Doubts arise already about the mysterious death of Neda Aqa-Soltan. Again, the dead included eight trained Basiji militiamen. Who killed them? Indeed, who led the charge of the light brigade?

It is a little-known slice of history that in the countdown to the Anglo-American coup in Tehran against Mohammed Mosaddeq in 1953, the US Central Intelligence Agency lost nerve just as the Tehran street protests – eerily similar to the recent unrest – were about to be staged, but the British intelligence outpost in Cyprus which coordinated the entire operation held firm, forced the pace and ultimately created a fait accompli for Washington.

At any rate, Tehran is going after Britain – “the most treacherous of foreign powers”, to use Khamenei’s words. Marching orders have been given to two British diplomats posted in Tehran, and four local employees working in the British Embassy remain under detention for questioning. This is despite robust gesticulations by London that it is not stepping anything up on Tehran’s streets. A Foreign Office statement in London pleaded that it is Iran’s nuclear program that is driving Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and not outrage over civil rights or the death of innocents.

London is manifestly anxious to vacate the scene as quickly as possible, and hopes it can be business as usual with Iran. But Obama faces a much more complex challenge. He cannot emulate Brown. He needs to get engaged with Iran. The challenge facing Obama is that not only has the Iranian regime not cracked, it has shown incredible resilience.

Regime closes ranks

If the rumor was that the intriguing silence of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani meant he was plotting in the holy city of Qom and challenging Khamenei’s writ, it was not to be so. On Sunday, Rafsanjani openly came out with a statement endorsing Khamenei. We see the unmistakable contours of an understanding.

“The developments following the presidential vote were a complex conspiracy plotted by suspicious elements with the aim of creating a rift between the people and the Islamic establishment and causing them to lose their trust in the [Vilayat-e faqih] system. Such plots have always been neutralized whenever the people have entered the scene with vigilance,” Rafsanjani said.

He lauded Khamenei for extending the Guardians Council’s move to extend the deadline by five days to review issues pertaining to the election and removing ambiguities. “This valuable move by the leader to restore the people’s confidence in the election process was very effective,” Rafsanjani pointed out. In a separate meeting with a delegation of majlis (parliament) members on Thursday, Rafsanjani said his attachment to Khamenei is “endless” and that he enjoys a close relationship with the supreme leader and he fully complies with Velayat-e faqih.

On Saturday, the Expediency Council, which is headed by Rafsanjani, called on defeated candidates to “observe the law and resolve conflicts and disputes [concerning the election] through legal channels”. Meanwhile, Mohsen Rezai, the opposition candidate and former head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, and former majlis speaker Nateq-Nouri, the leading pillar in Iranian politics, have also reconciled.

Thus, Mir Hossein Mousavi stands isolated. Disregarding Mousavi’s demur, the Guardians Council ordered a partial recount of 10% of random ballot boxes across the country in front of state television cameras. The recount reconfirmed late on Monday evening the result of the June 12 poll and advised the Interior Ministry that “the Guardians Council after studying the issues dismisses all the complaints received, and approves the accuracy of the 10th presidential election”.

Monday’s recount showed a slight surge in the votes of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in the province of Kerman. Mousavi is now left with the dicey option to resort to “civil disobedience” but he won’t exercise it – to the dismay of Western commentators whom he apparently impressed as “Iran’s Gandhi”.

If the prognosis was that the speaker of the majlis, Ali Larijani, was showing promise as a potential dissident leader, it also has been debunked. On Monday, while addressing the executive committee meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference at Algiers, Larijani lashed out at the US policy of “interfering” in the internal affairs of Middle East countries. He advised Obama to abandon such policy: “This change will be beneficial both to the region and to the US itself.”

The Obama administration has some hard choices to make. It was sustained criticism and pressure mounted by networks of anti-Iranian groups and powerful lobbies ensconced within the US Congress and the political class – apart from quarters within the security establishment which have an old score to settle with Tehran but have an abominable record of misreading the vicissitudes of Iranian politics – that forced Obama to harden his stance.

Softening the hard stance will be a difficult and politically embarrassing process. Much statesmanship is also needed. The best outcome is that Washington can take a pause and resume its efforts to engage Iran after a decent interval.

A meaningful dialogue in the coming weeks seems improbable. Meanwhile, nitpickings such as the denial of visa for the Iranian Vice President Parviz Davoudi to visit New York to attend the United Nations conference on the world economic crisis do not help. (Davoudi is an advocate of liberal economic perspectives.) Nor will the US’s likely decision to pursue the sanctions route towards Iran at the forthcoming Group of Eight summit meeting in Trieste, Italy, on July 8-10. (In May, Iran surpassed Saudi Arabia as the top oil exporter from the Persian Gulf to China.)

In sum, the Obama administration badly fumbled after a magnificent start in addressing the situation around Iran. As the distinguished policymaker and commentator Leslie H Gelb argues in his new book Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy, Obama had an option “to use the Libyan model, whereby Washington and Tripoli put all cards on the table and traded them most satisfactorily”.

Iran will retaliate

Also, the regional milieu can only work to Iran’s advantage. Iraq remains dangerously poised. The US’s fortunes in Afghanistan swing from possible defeat to avoidance of defeat. Turkey has distanced itself from the European stance apropos the recent developments in Iran. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan have greeted Ahmadinejad’s victory. Moscow eventually concluded the regime wasn’t threatened.

China emerges as the absolute “winner” in correctly assessing from day 1 the undercurrents of Iran’s obscure revolutionary politics. Beijing has never before expressed so openly such staunch solidarity with the Iranian regime in warding off Western pressure. Neither Syria nor Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza showed any inclination to disengage from Iran.

True, Syria’s ties with Saudi Arabia have improved in the past six months and Damascus welcomes the Obama administration’s recent overtures. But far from adopting the Saudi or US agenda toward Tehran, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem questioned the legitimacy of the street protests in Tehran.

He warned last Sunday when Tehran streets were witnessing unrest: “Anyone betting on the fall of the Iranian regime will be a loser. The [1979] Islamic revolution is a reality, deeply rooted in Iran, and the international community [read US] must live with that.”

Moallem called for the “establishment of a dialogue between Iran and the United States based on mutual respect and non-interference in Iran’s affairs”. Equally, success for Saad Hariri as the newly elected prime minister of Lebanon – and the country’s overall stability – will hinge on his reconciliation with rivals allied to Syria and Iran.

All things taken into account, therefore, there has been a policy crisis in Washington. The paradox is that the Obama administration will now deal with a Khamenei who is at the peak of his political power in all his past two decades as supreme leader. As for Ahmadinejad, he will now negotiate from a position of unprecedented strength. Arguably, it helps when your adversary is strong so that he can take tough decisions, but in this case the analogy doesn’t hold.

Ahmadinejad left hardly anything to interpretation when he stated in Tehran on Saturday, “Without doubt, Iran’s new government will have a more decisive and firmer approach towards the West. This time the Iranian nation’s reply will be harsh and more decisive” and will aim at making the West regret its “meddlesome stance”. Most certainly, Tehran will not be replying through the Twitter.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

Two eyewitnesses deny the Basij Involvemen in Neda's assasination

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Tension Between Sarkozy & Netanyahu

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In the PULSE, here

Last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy compared Lieberman to Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the far right wing party in France, and called upon Netanyahu to dismiss him from office and make a coalition with Tzippi Livni instead.

Israel Radio News reports:

In the meeting at the Elysee Palace last week, Sarkozy told Netanyahu that he should dismiss Lieberman and replace him with Tzippi Livni. Lieberman's spokesman said last night that if the report was accurate, this was very grave and was an act of crude meddling by France in Israel's domestic affairs.

Itamar Eichner in Yedioth Ahronoth commented:

Relations between Israel and France have become exceedingly tense of late. The reason for this development is the leaked information from the conversation that French President Nicolas Sarkozy held with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu...

The French president felt sufficiently at ease in that forum to discuss Israeli politics with Netanyahu and to criticize Lieberman severely.

"I've always received Israeli foreign ministers. I met with Tzippi Livni in the Elysee Palace, but with that one (Lieberman) I simply can't meet. I'm telling you, you need to get rid of that man. Get him out of the government and bring in Livni. With her and with Barak you can make history."

Netanyahu came to his foreign minister's defense and said: "You don't need to exaggerate. Lieberman is a very nice person, and in private conversations he speaks differently." Sarkozy wasn't persuaded and said: "In private conversations Jean-Marie Le Pen is also a nice person."

At a different stage of the conversation, Sarkozy also spoke about the possibility that Livni might join the coalition government. "I expect that she'll show responsibility and join the government. I told her that I was disappointed when she didn't do that, and that I thought she'd made a
mistake."

Despite Sarkozy's comment, Barak Ravid in Haaretz reports that Netanyahu still has complete faith in Lieberman...

Posted by G, Z, & or B at 1:18 PM

"Embers and Ashes:" An intellectual's exile, struggle and success

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Atef Alshaer, The Electronic Intifada, 30 June 2009



"My homeland, you have spurned me ... I shall never return to you ... I shall never ever return to you ..."

So ends Hisham Sharabi's compelling autobiography, Embers and Ashes: Memoirs of an Arab Intellectual. Sharabi, a leading Palestinian intellectual who died in 2005, uttered these words to himself on board a plane from Amman, Jordan to the United States in 1949. He studied and taught in the US for the rest of his life, retiring as a professor of history at Georgetown University in 1998. Ably translated from Arabic by Issa J. Boullata, Embers and Ashes is a poignant story of an intellectual's exile and struggle.

Sharabi transports the reader seamlessly from his early life in Palestine, where he was born in 1927, to his studies at the American University of Beirut, and finally his own American experience and life as a university professor at Georgetown. While it occasionally lacks cohesion, the book is unmistakably personal and insightful.

Sharabi's departure from Amman was preceded by tumultuous events in Lebanon where he was a prominent activist in the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), led by Antun Saadeh. Perhaps more than anyone else, it was Saadeh who influenced Sharabi's intellectual trajectory. Saadeh's political line and that of the SSNP was premised on unity between Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. Sharabi depicts Saadeh sympathetically as a man of deep human values: courageous, inspirational and subtly intellectual. But he also shows other aspects of Saadeh's personality:

"He used to speak of the party as if it were an actual government on the verge of taking power. In his personal behavior and public stance, he acted like a man of state. The party in his view was the only political force that stood up to colonialism and could achieve independence. It was the only force that could liberate Palestine. I think that Saadeh underestimated the depth of sectarian, tribal, and feudal feelings in [Lebanon]" (150-151).

There are two issues regarding Saadeh's approach to which Sharabi submitted uncritically, and on which he later seems to renege. Firstly, he did not oppose Saadah's grandiose vision of the Syrian homeland, which shifted from being confined to Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Transjordan, to include Iraq, Kuwait and Cyprus. Secondly, Sharabi embraced Saadah's view that "the individual was a mere means that society used to achieve its aims; and that society represented a firm and abiding 'truth,' whereas individuals fell away like autumn leaves," thereby "ascribing a universality to society and considering society an ultimate ideal in itself" (59-60). However, Sharabi developed a more nuanced and critical view of these matters, particularly in his attribution of a more central and visible role to the individual in society.

Sharabi was also influenced by German philosopher Nicolai Hartmaan, who "considered moral values as justice, courage, love, and friendship to be objective and timeless. For him, those values enjoyed an eternal existence, like Plato's ideals" (129).

Embers and Ashes also provides an insightful reading of the Arab and American intellectual landscape. Sharabi is unsparing in his biting criticism of the intellectual and academic environment in the Arab world and points to serious flaws in education. Nor does he hold back in criticizing Arab universities for failing their students. He attributes to them his slowness in grasping the rigorous methods of learning which he encountered in the US. Stating that "I may forgive those to whom I owe my education for their ignorance and their foolishness. But it is far more difficult to forgive them their arrogance and the moral cruelty they practiced in distorting me and calling it an education" (22). For this discussion alone, Sharabi's book deserves a wide reading, particularly by Arab intellectuals, because it is critical of teachers and professors who are too engrossed in themselves and their self-made grandeur.

Sharabi was born in Jaffa and lived in Acre, and his discussion of Palestine is the familiar but ever-relevant Palestinian yearning for a country that was stolen. He tenderly evokes the image of Acre, the beautiful sea stretching before his eyes, the fertile fields of grain glistening in the eye of the sun, the orange, lemon and olive trees with their scent wafting through; the cascade of houses, finely built and designed; the neighbors sitting peacefully together. But there is often something tragic about Palestinians recollecting or being exposed to images of their towns and villages from which they were expelled in 1948. The Acre that Sharabi knows and evokes before 1948 in his book becomes a less recognizable place as he receives a photograph of it from his Jewish friend, Uri Davis: "familiar, but strange at the same time, in another world ... the remaining Arab inhabitants have been forbidden to live in the new city, outside the wall, and have been forced to live within the walled old city, which has become a casbah to the Jews, visited by foreign tourists wanting to buy locally made articles and to see 'the Arab population of Israel.'" (76).

Sharabi does not dwell on his own significant intellectual contributions as such. In the book, he reflects on his observations and involvement in the SSNP and interactions with events in the Arab world from a distance. He does, however, refer to papers he presented at conferences and gives general comments about his contributions. He considered Zionism as part of an imperial project that could only be understood, and as such dealt with, once there is a proper understanding of the broader context of European colonialism. He also refers to the patrimonial and patriarchal characteristics of Arab societies that weakened their sense of resistance against their aggressors and curtailed their individual freedoms. In this sense, the book provides an incisive reading on many levels of the Arab cultural and political landscape by someone who has been at the thick of major historical events: 1948, the emergence of socialist and nationalist parties in greater Syria and the Arab world and his experience as a Palestinian Arab in America. Sharabi rightly saw value in transmitting his experience and thoughts to new generations, and he does so with distinctive astuteness and sensitivity.

Embers and Ashes is not only a story of exile and struggle, but also of well-deserved resounding success. It is a fitting testament to Sharabi's life as a Palestinian beacon of humanity and intellectual honesty.

Atef Alshaer has first graduated from Birzeit University in Palestine, where he studied English Language and Literature. He holds a doctorate in Linguistics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Related Links

• Purchase Embers and Ashes: Memoirs of an Arab Intellectual

World Peace is More Than Just Silencing of the Guns

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By: Peter Chamberlin

World peace is more than just the silencing of the guns, it is the elimination of the injustice that has compelled the men to reach for those guns in self-defense against the aggression. In the currently building world war (which is based on lies and deceptions), the mission is to identify all of the men who believe in self-defense and eliminate them. Both sides believe that everyone has the right to self-defense, but the aggressors in this war believe that they have a “divine right” (because of their intellectual superiority) to disarm and rule the rest.

The “war on terror” is the intellectual’s war, the neocon intellectuals. To them, most of the human race is an inferior species, sheep, to be led for their own good. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan, look at the economy, to see how smart they really are and just exactly where they are leading us.

We are standing at the edge of the abyss because we have gone along with all the lies. Without “acceptable” lies, the neocons are nothing but arrogant snobs. Without public acceptance of the “official version” of events, there would never have been a terror war. Without the attack upon our families in New York and Washington in 2001, we would not have been “tickled” into taking-up arms in self-defense against the henchmen and patsies our government offered-up to us to cover its own crimes.

For there to be peace in the midst of a war engineered by a would-be master race the cold penetrating light of reality must emasculate the acceptable lies agreed to in secret back room meetings, which allow sheer gangsterism and extortion from weaker adversaries to masquerade as “diplomacy and negotiations.”

The incessant lies emanating from the Pentagon, the White House and especially from the CIA have to be silenced. If the war of terror, based on lies is to be turned into a world at peace, based on simple truth, then we have to illuminate the secret killings in dark places that show the true face of the war against innocence being waged by Nazi-like regime.

It must be shown that we have been embracing the force of true evil that runs and ruins this Nation today. By exposing the accepted lie that the innocent Muslim people who are merely resisting our aggressions upon their homelands are “terrorists,” we remove the blinders we have accepted from the true authors of terror in the terror war. By accepting US and Pakistani military reports on “collateral” kills, we embrace the popular lie that only “militants and terrorists” were killed by the one-eyed “Terminator” drones. We dishonor ourselves and our ancestors by accepting the lies that babies were “militants!”

We have to get solid evidence out to the world. A good place to start would be to follow the wise example set by the Israeli human rights organization “B’Tselem,” by supplying camcorders to Pakistani families in North and South Waziristan, to document the indiscriminate killing of entire families, the “tickling” operations described so cleverly by CIA Director Michael Hayden.

With video evidence (translated into English) of the aftermath of American genocidal attacks it would be much easier to organize resistance to those attacks and serve as evidence in later war crimes trials. It would be beautifully ironic if the American-adopted Israeli tactic of “targeted assassinations” with missiles is exposed by the same video tactic that has revealed Israeli brutality against the helpless in occupied Palestine.

According to Director Hayden, the real value of these attacks with “Hellfire” missiles upon mud-brick family dwellings and religious schools is in the reactions caused by the killings. In other words, the value of the attack is as much in the number of male family members who rise to avenge these terror attacks as it is in the “high value target” occasionally killed. The tactic described by Hayden is the latest manifestation of contemporary American “counter-insurgency” techniques.

The main idea involved in fighting an “insurgency” within a populated area in this manner is to find and co-opt local leaders, like Baitullah Mehsud, around which to create the impression of a growing shadowy “counter-insurgency.” These inept local “contras” get blamed for the ensuing wave of violence committed by US Special Ops, their in addition to the gangster-like attacks they carry-out on their own. These units perform the same task as the Terminator-drones, that of initiating the cycle of retribution. They bomb and murder civilians, in order to motivate their male relatives to take-up arms and avenge their relatives, focusing in particular upon killing of local Shia, to instigate inter-faith conflict.

The concept of fighting a global war by limited means is an evil idea, concocted by the vainest, most self-centered self-worshippers the planet has ever been plagued by. The idea that your intellect is so superior to every other human mind that the best thing that could ever happen to the human race would be for you to rule over them, no matter what it cost in human lives to place you in that position of power, is the idea that drove Adolf Hitler. The men who have brought us the neocon war plan of total world conquest, by limited means, are no less evil, nor less vain than Hitler (the neocon’s favorite bogeyman).

By choosing to fight “the long war,” on a limited basis, they have accepted the idea of killing a major portion of human life, even risking the destruction of the entire planet. The idea of a generational war serves as a sorting mechanism, a gory laboratory for identifying and separating those who will willingly accept the unfair suffering life forced upon them and their families under the new “matrix,” from those persistent independent-minded souls who will resist. The war of terror is to identify potential resisters and to eliminate them, leaving behind only docile malleable slave sheep, to serve as functional “copper-tops.”

The idea that there could ever be world peace as long as the matrix exists is part of the illusion that hinders the formation of a real resistance.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari warned on Friday:

“world peace efforts hampered by credit crunch…The international financial crisis is hampering efforts towards world peace.”

The former Finnish president said a lack of economic development in war-torn countries would make it harder to resolve conflicts:

“It will not help us to solve conflict with no economic development in those countries. It is becoming more and more difficult…We are avoiding taking the tough decisions that are needed.”

This is pure B.S. Contributing to the war of aggression by aiding in reconstruction efforts, while hostilities continue will never bring anything like world peace. The whole idea of “good faith” re-construction by the same monstrous war machine from which the original devastation flowed is an exercise in propaganda and disinformation intended to distract those of us who would form an army of worldwide resistance.

This requires a change of attitude on the part of the aggressor, first, admitting that the US and its allies are the aggressors. The entire terror war has been a manufactured event designed to maintain the US position of global authority. We have to refute the acceptable lie that we have been a victim and that our great war plan simply failed, while we openly admit that the war has been a criminal act of aggression in every conceivable way, from the very beginning. We have committed the most serious crimes in pursuit of our plans to plunder and subjugate the earth, crimes against the human race, crimes against Our Creator, Himself.

We have destroyed entire nations in our mad rush to fend for ourselves and perpetuate our system of inequality that creates immense wealth for true believers by siphoning-off the bread of life from the rest. Until this warfare of greed stops decimating the human race there can never be world peace.

For their ever to be peace, there must be an end to the hostile force that drives men’s aggression and turns simple day-to-day existence into a daily fight for life. The forces that are driving the individual wars that are being merged into one big war, must be stopped. The lands and peoples devastated in their aggression must be rebuilt and compensated for the crimes committed upon them, out of the US Treasury, with money which would formerly have been allotted to further military aggression.

Colonists burn Palestinian crops

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[ 30/06/2009 - 09:25 AM ]

NABLUS, (PIC)-- Jewish settlers attacked Palestinian homes in Assira Qabalia village, south of Nablus city, and set fire to their crops on Monday night, local sources reported.

They said that dozens of settlers from the nearby Yitzhar settlement, established on lands of the village along with other nearby villages, threw firebombs and stones at the houses under the protection of Israeli occupation forces who fired bullets and gas canisters to disperse the citizens who tried to repel the settlers' attack.

A number of citizens were treated for suffocation and injuries from flying glass, the sources said.

They said that the settlers started fires in the village's barley and wheat fields and the IOF soldiers blocked firefighters from reaching the cultivated lands to put off the fire.

In the Gaza Strip, the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, on Monday evening confronted an IOF unit that tried to infiltrate into Zaitun suburb east of Gaza city.

The armed wing said in a communiqué that the Qassam fighters fired two mortar shells at the invading soldiers.

at 9:18 AM

Labels: Ethnic Cleansing

"Amereicans are going to be greeted with flowers & sweets..."

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The US withdrawal has sparked celebrations in Iraq [AFP]

That seemed like ... yesterday! Al Jazeera, here

"...Fireworks continued to light up the sky over Baghdad into the early hours on Tuesday, after thousands of Iraqis, an unprecedented number for a public post-war event, attended a party in a park where singers performed patriotic songs.

"All of us are happy - Shias, Sunnis and Kurds on this day ... the Americans harmed and insulted us too much," Waleed al-Bahadili, an Iraqi attending the celebrations, told the AFP news agency.

Many Iraqis ignored an appeal by Tariq al-Hashemi, the Iraqi vice president, to stay away from crowded places during the US pullback, after more than 250 people were killed in bombings over the past 10 days..."

Posted by G, Z, & or B at 10:49 AM

Gilad Atzmon - Tribal Marxism for Dummies

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By Gilad Atzmon • Jun 30th, 2009 at 8:42 • Category: Analysis, Biography, Gilad Atzmon, Gilad's Choice, Israel, Newswire, Our Authors, Palestine, Religion, Resistance, War, Zionism

"The European left must make a serious critical assessment of this “we know better” attitude and the ways it tends to deal with popular forces in the south as ideologically and politically inferior." Hisham Bustani

“The subsequent emergence of Islamism holds a false promise. While it poses a challenge to Western domination, it is backward looking and inherently unable to deliver progress.” Moshe Machover June 2009

For very many years the Palestinian solidarity discourse was dominated by leftist ideology carried largely by Jewish Marxists. Though the support of Jewish leftists was rather important at an early stage, it lost its primacy and urgency as Palestinian resistance and the Palestinian solidarity discourse evolved into a vivid autonomous discourse based on widely accepted ethical grounds. The Israeli war crimes against Palestinians are now well documented. No one needs the odd kosher ‘righteous Jew’ to approve that this is indeed the case.

And yet, in spite of the clear fact that Palestinian solidarity discourse moved ahead, Jewish Marxists are still insisting upon dictating their tribally orientated pseudo-analytical vision of reality.

Jewish Marxism is very different from Marxism or socialism in general. While Marxism is a universal paradigm, its Jewish version is very different. It is there to mould Marxist dialectic into a Jewish subservient precept. Jewish Marxism is basically a crude utilisation of ‘Marxist-like’ terminology for the sole purpose of the Jewish tribal cause. It is a Judeo-centric pseudo intellectual setting which aims at political power.

Palestinian thinkers were probably the first to realise that the situation in Gaza, Nablus and the refugee camps had little in common with 19th century Europe. This was enough to defy Marxism as a sole analytical political tool. However, the Jewish Marxists had a far more adventurous plan for Palestinians, Arab people and the region in general. They wanted Arabs to become cosmopolitan atheists. They suggested that Arabs should drop ‘reactionary Islam’ and liberate themselves as ‘the Jews did’ a century ago.

Seemingly, Palestinian and Arab intellectuals grasped that the method that successfully transformed Russia into a Soviet Union, at the expense of millions, was not going to liberate them. They obviously realised that the Jewish Marxists did not intend upon bringing millions of Palestinian refugees home either. It wasn’t even set to launch any form of an adequate resistance. It was there to saturate the discourse with empty rhetoric and pseudo-analytical jargon in order to divert the attention from questions having to do with Jewish tribal politics and Jewish identity.

As interesting as it may be, it is actually the Jewish Marxists, those who support Palestinians as long as they drop Islam, who are the ultimate exemplary exponents of Jewish tribal politics. It is the Jewish Marxist rather than the 'Zionist’ who exposes the Jewish political ugly attitude in its worst crude form. This is good enough reason to monitor the Jewish Left and to understand its philosophy. As we will see soon enough, Jewish Marxism is there to suppress any form of engagement with the Jewish question by means of spin. It is there to stop scrutiny of Jewish power and Jewish lobbying. The Judeo Marxist is an imposter prophet who claims to know the answers and yet, for some reason, his reading of historical events is no less than a total catastrophe. None of his predictions stand the reality test.

One of the last prime exponents of Judeo Marxist ideology is Professor Moshe Machover. Machover was born in Tel Aviv, then part of the British Mandate of Palestine, he moved to Britain in 1968. He was a founder of Matzpen, a miniature Socialist organisation in 1962.

Machover’s reading of Zionism is pretty trivial. ‘Israel’, he says, is a ‘settler state’. For Machover this is a necessary point of departure because it sets Zionism as a colonialist expansionist project. The reasoning behind such a lame intellectual spin is obvious. As long as Zionism is conveyed as a colonial project, Jews, as a people, should be seen as ordinary people. They are no different from the French and the English, they just happen to run their deadly colonial project in a different time.

However, as much as Machover is desperate to divert the attention away from the Jewish question, Jewish tribal politics and the Jewish identity, his entire premise can be demolished in a one simple move. If Israel is a ‘settler state’ as he says, one may wonder, what exactly is its ‘motherland? In British and French colonial eras, the settler states maintained a very apparent tie with their ‘motherland’. In some cases in history, the settler state broke from its motherland. Such an event is a rather noticeable one. The Boston Tea Party may ring a bell. However, as far as we are aware, there is no ‘Jewish motherland’ that is intrinsically linked to the alleged ‘Jewish settler state’. The ‘Jewish people’ are largely associated with the Jewish state, and yet the ‘Jewish people’ is not exactly a ‘material’ autonomous sovereign entity. The lack of material Jewish motherland leads to the immediate collapse of Machover’s colonial argument.

Moreover, native Hebraic Israeli Jews are not connected culturally or emotionally to any motherland except their own state. As an ex-Israeli, I can testify that neither my parents nor myself or any of my fellow expatriates have ever been aware of our ties to any other (mother) state except Israel. Accordingly, it may be true that Zionism carries some colonial elements and yet, it is not a colonial project per se, for no one can present a material correspondence between Jewish ‘motherland’ and a Jewish ‘settler state’. The Jewish national project is unique in history and as it seems it doesn’t fit into any Marxist materialist explanation.

We are therefore entitled to assume that Machover’s ‘settler state’ is just another Judeo Marxist spin that is there to divert the attention from the clear fact that Israel is the Jewish state. In order to understand Israel’s unique condition we must ask, “who are the Jews? What is Judaism and what is Jewishness?” In fact answering these questions will help us understand why Machover and other Jewish Marxists invest so much effort producing all those spinning lines. As interesting as it may sound, Machover’s alteration of Marx’s ideology is very similar to the Zionist distortion of the Old Testament.

Machover’s recent publication is a pompous lengthy talk delivered in November 2006 at the Brunei Gallery Lecture Theater (SOAS). For some reason it was published this month by the ‘International Socialist Review’ (ISR).

Considering the embarrassing fact that none of Machover’s prophetic predictions ever stood the reality test, the publication of such an embarrassing paper raises serious concerns regarding the editors of the ISR’s understanding of world current affairs. It would be very interesting to learn from the ISR whether they approve Machover’s suggestion that Islam “is backward looking and inherently unable to deliver progress.” It may also be important to make sure that every Muslim on this planet grasps that an Elder Jew Marxist from London is convinced that they should throw away their Qur’an.

I may as well mention that here in Britain and in some other European countries more than just a few people are concerned with the latest rise of nationalism. Shockingly enough, comparing Machover’s pretentious and supremacist take on Islam with rightwing nationalists reveals a very amusing fact. As it happens, Machover, the supremacist tribal Jew, has managed to locate himself on the right of Nick Griffin and the BNP. While Griffin is kind enough to offer ‘foreigners’ £50,000 to go back to their ‘homeland’, our Kosher Marxist Machover is set to rob the indigenous of his belief on his land. Griffin would not be able to get away saying about Islam that it is 'backward looking'. This is hardly surprising, while Griffin has to meet a vast opposition, Machover would have very little opposition within the left. One reason is obviously due to the fact that Machover and his three Jewish supporters are unnoticeable. Another reason may be that racism and supremacy is, unfortunately, a Jews only territory. As we can see Machover is getting away with it. Hopefully, this will change soon.

Machover launches his 2006 talk raising an interesting question: “How should we think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?”

One may notice that Machover uses the word ‘should’ and ‘we’. This form of speech suggests that the elder may possess the right answers within his intellectual arsenal. Following the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, Machover declares with confidence “We must be clear as to how the issue ought to be approached.”

I may admit that when a Jewish marginal Marxist voice utilises the “we”, ”should” and the “ought”, my red alert light turns on. I recently read about some Bolsheviks who held similar ideas to Machover’s did to Ukrainians peasants in the name of just another “we”.

Machover dares to come with a pretence of an analytical argumentation that will produce a concept of resolution. “Understanding,” he says, “ought to precede judgment.” Someone should remind the Hebraic ‘prophet’, who probably failed to read a single philosophical text in the last 50 years, that ‘understanding’ is itself subject to prior ‘understandings’ and ‘judgments’. In fact Machover’s own systematic failure to understand the power of Islam and Arab resistance is in itself due to his own prior understandings and some severe Judeo Marxist indoctrination.

It would take Machover many thousands of words of pseudo-analytical text before he outlines his vision of ‘Resolution—principles and preconditions’.

“Above all,” he says, “pressure must be applied on Israel to end its military occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights.” “Equal rights”, he affirms are “essential elements that a lasting resolution must embody”. This is quite an astonishing insight from a man who claims to understand the conflict. In spite of his ‘analytical research’ Machover somehow failed to realise that the Jewish state is not going to willingly approve any form of equality, for Jewish political ideology does not succumb to the belief in human equality.

“The right of return,” he continues, is the “ recognition of the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland, to be rehabilitated and properly compensated for loss of property and livelihood.”

This is indeed beautiful and correct and yet, Machover fails to tell us what is going to lead the Israeli Jews to give away their little ‘Jews only state’.

Machover eventually comes with a very simple resolution. “The third and most fundamental element in a genuine resolution is removal of the fundamental cause of the conflict: the Zionist colonisation project must be superseded.” I may stress at this point that Moshe Machover is not one of my satirical fictional characters. He is real and he even has at least 3 Jewish Marxist followers. The crucial question here is how these 4 Judeo Marxists are going to sell this reasonable idea to the Israeli Jews?

Like other deluded solidarity campaigners who fail to realise that the Palestinian future will be determined by ‘facts on the ground’, Machover engages himself in the one state/two state academic resolution discourse. “For a two-state setup to satisfy them, Israel would have to be de-Zionized: transformed from an ethnocratic settler state into a democratic state of all its inhabitants.” For some reason, Machover, who doesn’t even live in Israel, believes that he can tell the Israelis in what kind of country they should live in. “On the other hand, a single state would have to be not merely democratic (and hence secular) but have a constitutional structure that recognizes the two national groups and gives them equal national rights and status.” Once again the Elder Jew Marxist, the embodiment of the ultimate possible marginal voice, is telling the Palestinians and the Israelis that if they want to live together they better be secular. One should admit by now, it indeed takes some chutzpah to be a Judeo Marxist.

After 22 pages of Marxist self-indulgence on the verge of verbal masturbation, the man himself comes with the necessary goods. He admits that he was wasting the time of his listeners.

“Indeed, no genuine resolution is possible in the short or medium term, because of the enormous disparity in the balance of power.”

So in case you happen to wonder what may bring a change. Here it is. ‘Moishe of Arabia’ has two answers to offer. “First, decline in American global dominance” as if Israel is bound to crash with its current allies. As Machover knows, Jews changed their allies rather often in the last century.

“Second,” he continues “a radical-progressive social, economic and political transformation of the Arab East, leading to a degree of unification of the Arab nation—most likely in the form of regional federation.” Seemingly, the archaic Marxist fails to gather the most obvious evolving story, the Arab nation is largely Islam. Arab people are becoming more and more united around their love of Allah and the notion of Ummah. As far as reality is concerned, Islam is the rising force, whether our four Judeo Marxists like it or not, Hamas scored astunning win in the first Palestinian parliamentary election which it has taken part in. Would elections take place in the PA today, the Hamas victory would even be greater. Considering the fact that Islam is the only successful resistance force against Western colonialism and the Zionist war machine, the fact that ISR published Machover’s Judeo-centric intellectually lame analysis is there to prove that the time may be ripe for Socialists and Marxists to save themselves from the Judeo political grip. In 1884, in his invaluable paper ‘On The Jewish Question’ Marx argued that for the world to emancipate itself of capitalism, it should liberate itself of the secular Jew[1]. I do not know much about people liberating themselves. I would narrow it down and argue that for Marxist and socialists to liberate their discourse in accordance with their master mentor, they may have to consider liberating themselves of their tribal infiltrators.

As we saw before, in terms of tolerance and ethics, Machover positioned himself to the right of Nick Griffin and the BNP. In terms of political pragmatism, he is to the right of Shimon Peres and his ‘New Middle East’. Machover has his own plans for a New Middle East. He is going to unite them all and throw their Qur’an away.

By now we are really accustomed to the fact that Machover doesn’t like Islam. “The subsequent emergence of Islamism holds a false promise …Nor can it possibly be a uniting force: on the contrary, it is deeply divisive as between Sunnis and Shias, and has no attraction whatsoever for non-Muslim and secular Arabs (including Palestinians), let alone Hebrews.”

Interestingly enough, Moishe of Arabia comes with these embarrassing lines in November 2006, just 5 months after the Shi'a Hezbollah gave a signal of support to its Sunni brothers in Gaza, reminding Israel that they were just to the north, and wide awake, serving the Israeli army with a humiliating defeat. The Marxist elder comedian gave his 2006 talk less than a year after Hamas has scored a

In fact, many Socialists and Marxists do, especially out of the Anglo-American world. However, those Marxist and Socialists who keep spreading anti-Islam views better just join the Jewish Lobby, Wolfowitz and the Neocons, the NJF They better do it because this is where they belong.

[1]“What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time.” Karl Marx On The Jewish Question, 1844

Tagged as: Bustani, Gilad Atzmon, Israel, Jewish Marxism, Jewish Politics, Machover, marxism, Palestine

Gilad Atzmon is a jazz musician, composer, producer and writer.
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