I arrived at the bridge, went through the routinized luggage and security screenings and headed for the passport window. The woman in the occupying army at the window asked me questions when it was my turn. She asked me what I was planning to do in "Israel," a word and question that makes my blood boil given that I was clearly trying to enter Palestine.  Although I have spent extended periods of time living in Palestine since the summer of 2005, this is the first time I did not say that I was doing research as my reason for entering. This question normally got all sorts of questions, too, but at least it did not implicate my friends, something I had been unwilling to do before now. When I first went to Palestine in 2005 I used names of colonists, because I would much rather to have them questioned, but since 2006 when I adopted a policy of anti-normalization I refuse to speak to or normalize with a single colonist other than the occupying soldiers I am forced to deal with at the border and at checkpoints. I had arranged beforehand with my friend to say that I would be staying with him since he lives in Jerusalem and I wanted to make sure that I did not get one of those new stamps that said I can only enter the West Bank (my real plan was to stay in Doha, but I did not want to give additional names of friends). I was also asked how long I would be staying, and even though I had only planned to come for the weekend, I said I was not sure because I wanted to avoid getting one of the increasingly frequent stamps that is only for one week. I was worried that it would have implications for longer visits in the future. In the past I have always been given the three-month visa at the bridge (I've never entered the airport in occupied Lydd). But there have been occasions in the past when I wanted to come just for a wedding, just for the weekend when I was still given a three-month visa. 

The occupying female soldier gave me a piece of paper to fill out and told me to wait. I'm used to the waiting part, but not this paper. It's new. It asked for basic information such as the address where you live, your employer, phone numbers and email address, as well as who you will be staying with and their contact information. I filled it out and waited. After about an hour one of the occupying private security contractors came over  and asked for my paper and told me to wait. But first he wanted to know about my other passport. He read the back page and noted the two-year expiration on my passport and said he knew I had another one. I said that I don't have it with me. He said, well maybe we'll check your luggage to see if it is there. I said it isn't and I don't have another passport (which, of course, is not true). I said if you need to see that passport in order for me to enter then you need to send me home now. Finally, he said that he did not need to see it in order for me to enter. There were at least a dozen people ahead of me. So I waited. After another two hours (around 7 PM) he returned to ask me questions. He wanted to know more about my friend. He wanted to know his age, what he did for a living, where he worked, where he lived exactly, how I know him, etc. I told him you have his phone number and you may call him and ask him yourself, but I don't see how this is any of your business (he never did call my friend). I replied only that he is my age and that he lives in the Old City in Al Quds. Then he asked me questions about how long I was staying for and where I would go. I said that I didn't have any definite plans. He didn't like that answer and so I said, okay I'm staying for one week. Is that a better answer? He didn't like that answer either and said I had to sit down again.

I waited with others, mostly Palestinians with American or Jordanian passports, although there was a young, white American couple studying Arabic in Amman who had already been held since 2 PM. Eventually all of these people were allowed in after a good 7 hours of waiting each. The occupying private security contractor returned and asked me the same questions a couple more times. Then he said I would have to have an interrogation with someone from the "Israeli" Ministry of Interior and a body search (which they never got around to). This was also nothing new. Usually I do get questioned and have to wait anywhere between 5-7 hours. But I've never gone at night before. Usually their questions are also mostly about my research and sometimes about things they seem to find on Google about me. 

By 10 PM  or so there were only about five people still waiting, all Palestinians with huwiyyas. They decided at this point that they would check my suitcase and purse. They told me to sit down, but I told them no I wanted to watch them go through my clothes, toiletries, and books. They said I can take my money out of my purse before they go through that. I had two change purses, one with Jordanian cards and money, the other with my Arab Bank ATM card and money from the occupying entity. They said I could not take the change purses, but that I could only take the cash. They wanted to take all of my cards–ID cards, credit cards, everything–into another room away from my field of vision. I told them no. I've been through this process numerous times before and never have they tried to do this. Eventually they said I could keep my ATM cards, but that my huwwiya, driver's license, and bank account cards (detailing my account information) would have to go into the other room. I said no. They also wanted to take my SIM cards for my Jawal and Zain (Jordanian) phones into the other room as well. I said no. I don't trust thieves with my personal papers. They had my passport; that was enough. There were about 12 occupation private security contractors and police around me looking through my things at this time. They were asking questions about my religion because somehow the Arabic-English dictionary in my purse is a clue about my religion. They were, as always, very curious about the books in my bag and examined them with a fine-tooth-comb, including my Bedford Anthology of World Literature, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, and Edward Said's The Question of Palestine. They were also going over my student attendance sheets (which are in Arabic) and my syllabi, which were in my bag. 

Eventually they let me pack up my suitcase and told me to go back and wait. At this point there were three of us left. Two brothers from Ramallah and me. They were allowed to leave at around 5 minutes to midnight when the bridge closes. I was made to wait until about 1 AM. I asked for my passport several times as I still didn't know what they were going to do, but they told me that I'd get it when they decided I'd get it. After midnight, after all the floors had been washed and the terminal was empty, all the occupying soldiers and private contractors stood around laughing and doing nothing. But still no passport. I was alone for at least an hour. Eventually I heard one of them speaking in Arabic to the jordanian mukhabarat on his walkie-talkie and I knew then that they were calling for a bus and that somewhere there had been two other men also waiting to be deported. I got on the bus and returned to Jordan. I was told by one of the occupying police that I "should never bother to try returning to Israel again."

The story above is, of course, ordinary. This happens regularly to activists invested in liberating Palestine. It happens even more frequently to Palestinians trying to enter their own country. Perhaps I was denied entry because I refused to talk about my friend or would not submit to their search in full. I know that there is a game at the bridge. That one is supposed to be polite, sometimes laugh or smile. I don't know how to do that with murderers and thieves and I don't know that I want to learn how to do that. The anger that I feel when I see that flag symbolic only of a history of massacres and massive land theft at the border makes me irate. Perhaps it would have enabled me to see my friends. But it is also not clear that this is not related to my work with ISM in the past (including a day in jail for protesting in Bil'in) or my work with the BDS movement that they saw online, although they did not question me about that yesterday. In any case, if I never have to hear their language or see their flag again it will not be too soon. Although I don't think it has hit me yet what this means, on some level it is an honor to be denied entry because of my failure to submit to the rules of the colonist.

Marcy Newman is a literature professor at Amman Ahliyya University and an Organizing Committee member with the US Campaign for the Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel (usacbi.org).

Cassese notes the “obvious discipline and sophistication of those behind the attack.”  He explores at length the theoretical ethos of the work being undertaken, a step he terms “indispensable.” He concludes that

“All the organs of the STL are not unmindful of the host of hurdles they will have to face, both at present and when they begin to discharge their judicial mandate fully. But they are prepared to surmount those hurdles with intrepidity. After all, the undertakings of anybody struggling for the realization of human rights, and in this case, for the vindication of the rights of the victims and the punishment of the authors of very serious misdeeds, is a labour of Sisyphus.”

Intrepid as they may be, however, it must be remembered what the tale of Sisyphus has come to symbolise: a task that accomplishes nothing beyond its own futile implementation.  The mythological figure, you will recall, was subject to the eternal punishment of pushing a boulder up a hill, waiting for it to roll back down, and then pushing it up again and again.  

 The complex mysteries of unsolved assassinations in Lebanon, Cassese suggests, may always remain just that.  It is ironic timing then, that just as the STL published its report, we find other perplexing news reports on this complex business of assassinations in the Middle East.  There is the admiration expressed for a British/Israeli “spy.”  And there is the audacious pride exhibited over the recent “Dubai mission.”

“He exemplified how to fulfill a public mission,” said Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in praise of David Kimche, who died of cancer 8 March.  Born and bred in Britain, Kimche emigrated to Palestine in 1946, where he went to work for the Zionist project of Israel.  As agent and later deputy head of the Mossad, as well as director-general of the Foreign Ministry, Kimche “took to his grave,” says the Jerusalem Post, “scores of secrets about Israeli clandestine activities that were not only classified information, but in many cases were without documentation and filed only in his brain.”

Israeli media champions this “master of disguise” who posed as a British businessman, a journalist, or maybe a diplomat, with his “extraordinary talent for winning people’s confidence,” noting that the “work he did in Arab countries is inestimable.”

Following the killing of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, for instance, Kimche “helped direct Israel's spectacular revenge” with the aid of its European agents: a string of assassinations in Lebanon and across Europe.  “The aim was not so much revenge but mainly to make them frightened,” Kimche stated.  “We wanted to make them look over their shoulders and feel that we are upon them. And therefore we tried not to do things by just shooting a guy in the street—that’s easy.”

Easy indeed. 

Kimche was well-suited to his position, as he was “known for his elegant English accent and courteousness, and these qualities sometimes deceived people, as he could be very cunning, determined, and even cruel.”  He was just the man to woo the Francophile, Christian Phalangists in Lebanon, in order to set the groundwork of allies for the Israeli military invasion in 1982, when assassinations were camouflaged amongst the carnage of the brutal onslaught that ensued. 

Yet inexplicably, Kimche inspired an aura of admiration rather than disgust.  The BBC labels him a “spymaster,” a “descendant of a prominent Swiss Jewish family.”  Haaretz finds him “similar in style to the characters described by the British author John le Carre in his spy novels.”

(Quote sources: Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, BBC)

It seems there are many who admire the Bondian license to kill.  American media giant ABC expresses amusement that “After Dubai Hit, Sales of Mossad Merchandise Soar.”   The “tale of an Israeli hit squad swooping into an Arab country to kill a Palestinian militant commander,” ABC reports, “has sparked pride” in Israel.  Quoting a representative of Israel-Catalog.com, t-shirts reading “don’t mess with the Mossad” are now best sellers.  “Before the Mossad operation no one was really interested in these t-shirts, but now everyone wants one.”  Many varieties are available, including “Mossad’s Dubai Operation” (now on “weekly special”) and “I’m Gail Folliard’s alibi.”  This last one is particularly noteworthy.  As Folliard is wanted by Interpol for an arrest warrant issued by the UAE for Crimes against Life and Death, it is a fair indication of the extent that cover-up is routinely endorsed in this complex business of assassination. 

The Western-Middle Eastern collusion is far from an isolated incident.  On 9 March Dubai's police chief accused Israel of “vast falsification” of travel documents, noting that dozens of false passports have been uncovered:

“Israel is falsifying Western passports on a large scale. We discover forged passports on a daily basis.  The world must stop an operation of vast falsification of official documents (that) a formal body (Israel's spy agency Mossad) is carrying out.  It is shameful for the European countries that a country which claims to be a state of law is falsifying their passports.  This is an unprecedented phenomenon for one country to forge the documents of another, [which is] usually done by criminal gangsters, not states.” [AFP]

Meanwhile, an Israeli supermarket has created a new advertising campaign.  Mocking the security camera footage showing suspected assassins in Dubai, the commercial shows actors carrying tennis rackets, and wearing hats, glasses and wigs — the same disguises worn by the alleged killers — as they make their way through store aisles. “We offer killer prices,” announces the advertisement's tagline.  The advertising executive responsible claims “It's a funny take of this event.” [AP] 

“Event”?  An assassination, an international scandal steeped in fraud and political greed, is laughed off as an “event” suitable for parody.  Clever salesmen ridicule the justice system to joe-public, who parades the untouchable crime and criminal on his t-shirt.  A cold-blooded con-man who ordered executions like room service is remembered for his cunning and polished accent. 

 Assassinations in and around Lebanon have for years been challenged only by gossip.  Yet in this complex business of international intrigue, we see $51.4 million in the first year alone being spent in a Netherlands office building to house a “Special” Tribunal for Lebanon.  A tribunal that hopes somehow it might balance its aim to “render expeditious and true justice and to accomplish the truth-seeking mission entrusted upon it by its founding instruments” on the one hand. . . with a boulder-pushing Sisyphus on the other.

Noam Chomsky had once observed an insightful nature of such 'conspiracies', as the open shared natural goals stemming from the very nature of its definition, which could therefore, no more be termed a conspiracy than both GM and Ford endeavoring to maximize their profits at all cost be termed a 'global corporate conspiracy'.

I have always added to that, the equally un-remarkable observation that a hungry lion anywhere in the world pouncing upon a lamb is similarly no global conspiracy by the world's lions to eat up all the lambs on the planet. That is just the nature of the bestial predators when its 'might defines right'. The higher cerebral concepts of 'right', 'wrong', 'moral', 'immoral', etc., do not even exist among any primal predators, for these only behave according to their nature. Pious platitudes, if they could be argued by the lion or the snake for instance, would in fact only be disseminated to the lambs and the mice to make them an even easier morsel to acquire!

The only thing that occasionally deters such exercise of primacy is a collective natural response like the one observed in the 'Battle at Kruger' park. Indeed, the quest for the holy grail of extracting voluntary servitude from the masses of mankind is the key idea of cultivating a willingly compliant public in order for the illuminated ones becoming their stewards for life. In Bertrand Russell's' timeless characterization, to extract voluntary servitude such that: "

Thus we observe that from Plato to Nietzsche, from the philosopher-king to the 'Ubermensch', all have argued the necessity of ruling upon the sheepish masses as the 'divine' imperative of the 'enlightened ones'. Indeed, Zbigniew Brzezinski even sub-titled his seminal book "The Grand Chessboard" with its egotistical subtitle "American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives", merely extending that idea of 'Ubermensch' rule from the most 'enlightened ones', to the most powerful sole-superpower!

The same theme exists among the 'Chosen Peoples', to deem their primacy upon the goyim their inherent nature, their divine destiny. The 'Ubermensch' are suckled these lessons in their mothers milk to acquire those imperatives across generations in perhaps the same way as the generations of corporate executives and CEOs who inherently know that they need to continually enhance the valuation of their company's stock performance in a capitalist system.

So, when these 'divine' ubermensch creatures who are beyond good and evil, behave in their primal predatory natural manner across time and space, across evolution or creation, are they being 'conspiratorial'?

In the Chomsky-Ebrahim nomenclature, perhaps not.

In the Ron Paul nomenclature, it is merely a shared 'Conspiracy of Ideas'  in which 'CFR exists, the Trilateral Commission exists', and that, it is only 'an ideological battle' wherein:

These are real things, it's not somebody made these up, it's not a conspiracy, they don't talk about it, and they might not admit about it, but there has been money spent on it …

According to such legalism, smart conspirators, if powerful enough, could affect the enaction of conducive federal statutes, or prevent the enaction of adverse ones, that would enable them to get away with many morally reprehensible systems and acts. The Federal Reserve System for instance, falls into this category. A legalized extortion racket to enslave the public in perpetual debt for the issue and supply of their own national currency. Similarly, bootlegging is a federal crime one decade, a respectable business the next! And internationally, it is the enaction of laws under WTO which defines what is criminal and what isn't - not the raping and harvesting of developing nations that goes on under its conspiratorial rubric!

Thus suffice it to say, the word 'conspiracy' even has legal semantics, albeit rather limited. It is limited because it is easy to circumvent an abhorrence and call it legal when the king makes the laws.

But the multitudinous connotations of this word do not stop there. It also has a 'tin-hatted' or 'kookish' implication in furtherance of the devilish art of political science based state-craft. This was indeed implied by Congressman Ron Paul in his afore-quoted speech when he stated regarding the North American Union: "

In fact, some of the best cloaking devices for clandestine covert-operations and hidden agendas have been invented by the most brilliant minds - here is one exposition for instance from Ezra Pound: "invent two lies and have the public keep arguing which one of them might be true". Another is by Leo Strauss - the erudite teacher of the majority of the neo-cons - called "Noble Lies". A third by the White House, often referred to as "plausible deniability", okay may be it was invented by the DIA, the grand-daddy of all intelligence agencies. This thinly-veiled euphemism for deception to protect the leadership if things go badly in covert-operations became public knowledge during the Iran-Contra scandal, the televised coverage of which had gripped the American nation for months, including myself. And this wasn't just a rogue operation with ad hoc deniability cover by patriotic agents as most in the public are led to believe. Deniability is official government policy vis a vis any covert operation dating back to President Truman's signing of NSC 10/2. That directive made the introduction of 'plausible deniability' a requirement for CIA's clandestine operations in case they were ever blown while still active. Below is an excerpt from

'Management of Covert Actions in the Truman Presidency

Lastly, we also have the 'limited hangout' and 'modified limited hangout' conspiracies to mislead the public in case 'plausible deniability' for governmental wrong-doing doesn't work. This modus operandi of accepting partial mea culpa for something less consequential in order to mask the more egregious crimes was amply demonstrated by Richard Nixon during the waning years of his presidency. A good description of it with excerpts from the Nixon tapes planning the red herrings is on Wikipedia.

It should now be self-evident that while still active, or while mileage is being extracted from a clandestine operation recently concluded, or some egregious wrong-doing, all references to it must be squashed or dismissed, inter alia, by labeling them as kookish 'conspiracy theories'. And when blown, to have the cover story ready for 'plausible deniability', and/or some version of 'limited hangout'. What are these if not real conspiracies to mask real clandestine covert-operations and wrong-doings?

Thus, if it is axiomatically asserted that there is no such thing as a real conspiracy theory, then that really works wonderfully in the interest of the cloak-makers because it makes one forget the perspectives of history.

And this complex Machiavellian deception game behind alleging 'kookishness' bears exposing fully: invent two or more lies, not just one, and keep the good hearted well meaning peoples in the 'populist democracy' occupied debating which one of them might be true, for it would hardly matter what conclusions they reached. And wherever they ended up, to perhaps yank one of the lies from underneath them by conclusively showing it to be false thus conveniently demonstrating a baseless 'conspiracy theory' in order to keep that notion alive in the public imagination. This consequently delegitimizes in the public mind serious researchers' efforts in uncovering any covert-operation while its secrecy is of paramount necessity. Afterwards, after faits accomplis, after statute of limitations expiring, it makes little difference if historians and con-fession artists make a pecuniary gain peddling what is inconsequential history to the newer evolving realpolitik du jour. The recognition of this self-evident truth of the matter and its utility to Machiavellian statecraft was boldly narrated even in the New York Times (Ron Suskind, Oct. 17, 2004):

Cass R. Sunstein of Harvard Law School, the man who is today President Obama's Information Czar in the White House, in his 2008 paper titled Conspiracy Theories, called this process of the creation of diabolical red herrings, introducing 'beneficial cognitive diversity' through 'cognitive infiltration'. The paper has to be read in its entirety in order to be appreciated for its brazen and open appeal to Machiavelli.

So many complex semantics for the simple term 'conspiracy theory' - it's not just mere nomenclature - that this overview of its usefulness to statecraft was necessary in order to situate anything with such a bombastic title as 'The Capitalist Conspiracy', in its proper social-political-legal-conspiratorial context.

And an equally insightful and rational response to this question of long enduring conspiracy for world domination, is added to the motivational mix by G. Edward Griffin in the video below:

Thus, Griffin aptly noted: "The New World Order Is Not New", but a common objective borne of natural inclination to primacy which apparently transcends time, space, geography and race. It naturally increases in its scope in proportion to the vistas of power it acquires. And it automatically attracts to its cause the coterie of sycophants and useful idiots essential in realizing its overarching agendas. It is helped along, as W. Cleon Skoussen uncannily observed in his commentary in 'The Naked Capitalist':

'The real value of Tragedy and Hope … [is the] bold and boastful admission by Dr. Quigley that there actually exists a relatively small but powerful group which has succeeded in acquiring a choke-hold on the affairs of practically the entire human race. Of course we should be quick to recognize that no small group could wield such gigantic power unless millions of people in all walks of life were -in on the take- and were willing to knuckle down to the iron-clad regimentation of the ruthless bosses behind the scenes. As we shall see, the network has succeeded in building its power structure by using tremendous quantities of money (together with the vast influence it buys) to manipulate, intimidate, or corrupt millions of men and women and their institutions on a world-wide basis.' (pg. 6)

Subsequent manipulation of global events through statecraft machinations become trivial when one has already taken over the state's machinery and its many essential instruments of policy-making. The upshot of it all is that it becomes a moot point what label one might give to this empirical predatory behavior. Zbigniew Brzezinski even openly proclaimed its pertinence to statecraft in the very first sentence of his book mentioned earlier: 'Hegemony is as old as mankind'. The undeniable fact remains that world-government has been a long historical passion of oligarchs! The quest for the hegemony of the entire world has been their natural enduring conspiracy for world government. And it is finally coming to its grand fruition in our own time as most useful idiots still mindlessly chatter on about 'conspiracy theories'.

Another one has more serious problems, she was in a car accident and she has no health insurance. She has no car insurance either, so now she will lose her license. How will she get to her job?

Someone else wants a girlfriend, he thinks then he'll be happy. He lives with his parents and battles depression. He's a little underweight, but it's just in his genes. He thinks it's the end of the world.

The everyday issues that consume people are really not that serious. If they are mine or yours, none of it really matters compared to the big ones that no one likes to think about. We're just too overwhelmed by our day to day lives to wonder what things might possibly be like on the other side of the globe.

Often what we think might be our biggest problems, would be outright luxuries to another people! I like to think that if I've got a roof over my head, clothes on my back, a pound or two to spare, fresh water to drink then hey, I'm pretty fortunate!

**********************************************************************************

We've got parties and plans and shopping and fun. We've got Starbucks and Disneyland and Hollywood and sun. We've got everything we want and even that much more. We've got famines and genocides and climate change and war. But we never think of THOSE things, life's too painful for that; to worry about people on the other side of the map! You see the bad stuff's only for those who live in foreign places and we'll never have to look upon the horror in their faces

So we'll stuff our face with muffins made with nuts grown in Brazil.
We drill holes in foreign places for our gas tanks we fill
We use ancient trees to wipe our butts.
build bigger homes to hold our stuff.
Is it possible we have enough?
ENOUGH!

Source: http://idreamofroses.blogspot.com/2010/02/personal-problems-in-privliged-society.html

A leader writer in the Observer newspaper (“Israel can accelerate peace by exercising restraint” http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/21/observer-editorial-israel-palestine , 21 February) really must be taken to task over the language that was used in the column. In seeking to analyse the Israel-Palestine situation the writer slipped into the sort of terminology that serves to highlight the difficulties of discussing this issue in a non-partisan fashion. Being particular about the terminology used is not mere semantics, for it can and does reveal an underlying mindset. Nowhere is the old saying “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter” more accurately applied than in discussions about the conflict in the Holy Land.

The Observer claims that “Israel and the Palestinians are in a state of perpetual war”, so it is surely unreasonable and inaccurate for the writer to refer subsequently in the same article to Palestinian “terrorists”. Wars have combatants on opposing sides but the post-9/11 American-led narrative – with the “war on terror” – has blurred the distinction to the extent that it is now acceptable – indeed, de rigueur – to refer to anyone struggling against Western hegemony as a terrorist. It is surprising that a newspaper like the Observer has fallen for this deception. It is equally surprising that the conflict between the Israeli occupiers and the occupied Palestinians is actually described as a “perpetual war”, implying that this is a conventional confrontation between two sides each having some degree of equivalence in terms of military capabilities; it isn’t and they don’t. Israel is a nuclear state with an army equipped with the most up-to-date technology imaginable. The Palestinians are a largely civilian population; even a future Palestinian state will, if Israel has its way (which it no doubt will), be forbidden from having its own army beyond lightly-armed “security” forces whose task is and will remain, according to the Oslo accords, to uphold the security of Israel first and foremost.

Resistance against military occupation is, of course, entirely legitimate, and yet the Observer refers to such resistance as “terrorism”, following the Sharon doctrine in its entirety. For it was Ariel Sharon who in an act of opportunism said in the wake of 9/11: “Now the American people know what we [in Israel] have been going through.” Say something loud enough and long enough and people will begin to believe it, and most sections of the media play their role to perfection.

“The surest way to accelerate a peace is for Israel to break free of the self-defeating cycle of using extreme force as the preferred form of self-defence,” claims the Observer. Here is the crux of the matter: Israel occupies a land and when the people therein resist the occupation, Israel is using “self-defence”. Thus is justification applied to the apartheid Wall cutting across and through Palestinian land; the check-points, the curfews, the passes, the blockade, the house demolitions, the dispossession, the assassinations: all are part of Israel’s “self-defence”. The original sin of occupation is overlooked or forgotten, it has become “facts on the ground”, one of those obscene phrases which, like “collateral damage”, make a mockery of international law and basic justice.

Even if Israel was to “break free of the self-defeating cycle of using extreme force” as the Observer claims, why would that place any “obligations on Israel's neighbours to normalise relations”? Why would any self-respecting state want to normalise relations with an “occupying power in disputed territory”? The state of Israel does indeed have “the levers to effect changes on the ground that would instantly move a resolution to the conflict closer”. It could end that occupation and remove the grounds for resistance, placing “obligations on Israel's neighbours to normalise relations” with a degree of moral and legal superiority that is missing entirely at present. Anything less and nothing of any significance will happen.

The final sentence of the Observer’s leader column reveals that the writer has adopted – I shall be generous and say subconsciously   a mindset that sees the Palestinians and their rights as the problem, not the Israeli occupation. “The international community must act to give [Israel] the confidence to compromise.” With what stretch of the imagination and logic does the ending of an illegal military occupation and colonisation of the occupied land constitute a “compromise”? The international community should be insisting – backed up with sanctions and boycotts if necessary – that Israel fulfils its obligations under international laws and conventions; such obligations cannot and should not be placed on the negotiation table as items for discussion and “compromise”.

Language is of vital importance when discussing such sensitive issues, so it is important to be accurate. Israel has a well-funded hasbara (propaganda) campaign and, no matter how well-intentioned, by dint of the terminology it uses that particular leader column falls into the hasbara category. There is no excuse for this in a newspaper with the Observer’s credentials.
 
source: http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/resources/commentary-and-analysis/701-the-observer-israel-and-the-language-of-war

 TRANSLATED BY CONSUELO CARDOZO for TLAXCALA

The Observer, Israel y el lenguaje de la guerra
Un escritor prominente del periódico The Observer (Israel can accelerate peace by exercising restraint [Israel puede apresurar la paz ejerciendo moderación], 21 de febrero) realmente debería ser reprendido por el lenguaje que usa en la columna. Al buscar analizar la situación Israel-Palestina, el escritor cae en la suerte de terminología que ayuda a resaltar las dificultades de discutir esta problemática sin tomar partido. Cuidar la terminología que se usa no es mera semántica pues puede revelar y de hecho revela una perspectiva subyacente. Como en ninguna otra parte, en las discusiones sobre el conflicto en Tierra Santa se aplica con mayor precisión el viejo dicho de que “quien para unos es terrorista, para otros es guerrero libertario”.

The Observer asegura que “Israel y la gente palestina están en un estado de guerra perpetua”, de modo que es irrazonable e impreciso que el escritor se refiera luego en el mismo artículo a los “terroristas” palestinos. Las guerras tienen combatientes a ambos lados pero la narrativa influenciada por sucesos posteriores al 9/11 – con la “guerra al terror” – ha disipado la diferencia, al punto en que ahora es aceptable – de hecho, es de rigor – referirse a cualquiera que luche contra la hegemonía occidental como un terrorista. Es sorprendente que un periódico como The Observer haya caído en este engaño. Es igualmente sorprendente que el conflicto entre los israelíes que ocupan y los palestinos que son objeto de la ocupación se describa en la actualidad como una “guerra perpetua”, implicando una confrontación convencional entre dos lados y un cierto grado de equivalencia entre ambos en términos de capacidad militar; ni es lo primero ni hay lo segundo. Israel es un estado nuclear con un ejército equipado con la tecnología más actualizada que se pueda imaginar. La gente palestina es mayormente una población civil; inclusive un futuro estado palestino tendrá prohibido tener su propio ejército, si Israel se sale con la suya (que sin duda lo hará), más allá de las fuerzas de “seguridad” ligeramente armadas cuya tarea es y seguirá siendo, según los acuerdos de Oslo, mantener la seguridad de Israel antes que nada.

La resistencia a la ocupación militar es, por supuesto, indiscutiblemente legítima, mas The Observer se refiere a ella como “terrorismo”, siguiendo la doctrina Sharon en su integridad pues fue Ariel Sharon quien, en un acto de oportunismo, dijo tras el 9/11: “Ahora la gente americana sabe por lo que hemos estado pasando nosotros [en Israel].” Cuando se dice algo con suficiente énfasis y por suficiente tiempo, la gente comienza a creerlo y muchos sectores de los medios de comunicación desempeñan su papel a la perfección.

“La vía más segura para apurar la paz es que Israel se libere del ciclo contraproducente de optar por usar la fuerza extrema para defenderse,” asevera The Observer. Aquí está el quid de la cuestión: Israel ocupa tierras y cuando la gente en ellas se resiste a la ocupación, Israel “se defiende”. De este modo se justifica el Muro de apartheid que cruza y atraviesa la tierra palestina; los puntos de control, los toques de queda, los pases, el bloqueo, las demoliciones de casas, la desposesión, los asesinatos: todo es parte de lo que hace Israel “en defensa propia”. El pecado original de la ocupación se obvia o se olvida, se ha convertido en “un derecho que da la fuerza”, una de esas frases obscenas que, cual “daño colateral”, se mofan de la ley internacional y de la justicia elemental.

Aún si Israel fuera a “liberarse del ciclo contraproducente de optar por usar la fuerza extrema,” como afirma The Observer, ¿por qué con ello “obligaría a sus vecinos a normalizar sus relaciones”? ¿Por qué querría algún estado que se respete normalizar relaciones con un “poder que ocupa un territorio en disputa”? El estado de Israel tiene en efecto “los mecanismos para efectuar cambios sobre el terreno que conllevarían una instantánea resolución del conflicto”. Podría dar por terminada la ocupación y eliminar las razones de la resistencia, “obligando a sus vecinos a normalizar relaciones” con un grado de superioridad moral y legal totalmente ausente al momento. Cualquier otra cosa que sea menos que esto asegura que nada ocurra que sea de algún modo significativo.

La oración final de la columna principal de The Observer revela que el escritor ha adoptado – Seré generoso y diré subconscientemente – una perspectiva que ve a la gente palestina y a sus derechos como un problema y no así a la ocupación israelí. “La comunidad internacional debe actuar para dar [a Israel] la confianza de transigir.” ¿Bajo qué concepto y con qué lógica constituye “transigencia” el finalizar una ocupación militar ilegal y la colonización de la tierra ocupada? La comunidad internacional debería estar insistiendo – apoyada en sanciones y en boicot de ser necesario – en que Israel cumpla con sus obligaciones según leyes y convenciones internacionales; dichas obligaciones no pueden ni deben ser puestas en la mesa de negociaciones como elementos a discutir y a “transigir”.

El lenguaje es de vital importancia cuando se discute problemáticas así de delicadas por lo que es importante ser preciso. Israel tiene una campaña de hasbara (propaganda) bien financiada y, sin importar cuán bien intencionada sea, esa columna en particular, por la terminología que usa, cae dentro de la categoría de hasbara. No hay excusa alguna para esto en un periódico que tiene las credenciales de The Observer.

Egyptian plain-clothes policemen detain a demonstrator in Mahala, April 2008. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Pro-democracy protests in Iran top the news agenda, but similar tensions in Egypt pass unreported

WRITTEN BY JACK SHENKER – Here's a thought experiment: pick a random Middle Eastern country led by an unpopular autocrat whose legitimacy is being challenged by a growing wave of public dissent. Add in widespread allegations of electoral fraud, and increasingly violent confrontations on the street between protesters and security services — clashes that have left many civilians dead. Now imagine this politically volatile state is a major player in the area, and that change at the top could have an explosive effect on the geopolitical dynamics of the entire region. How much press coverage do you think it would receive in the west?

For the sake of convenience, let's keep things manageable by narrowing that down a bit. How many news articles do you think such a country would generate in the British broadsheets over the years 2008 and 2009? If you guessed at 7,098, well done: you're spot-on. Pub quiz aficionados may also wish to jot down the figure of 3,305 — an equally correct answer.

Confused? So are many Egyptians, who have seen their intense and sometimes deadly struggle against the repressive regime that rules them almost completely sidelined by the international media. Not only has their country attracted less than half the volume of newsprint lavished on Iran in the past two years, but the vast majority of Egypt-focused articles tend to concentrate on matters relating to tourism or archaeology, whereas nearly all the Iranian coverage is political in nature. 

Cool disinterest

When you boil the figures down to hard news, the chasm between the media's fetishising of Iran and their cool disinterest in Egypt yawns even wider. In June 2009 — the month when disputed Iranian elections brought thousands of anti-government protesters into conflict with riot police and left blood running through the streets — Iran was featured in 742 articles. In April 2008 — the month when an attempted Egyptian general strike brought thousands of anti-government protesters into conflict with riot police and left blood running through the streets — Egypt made an appearance in 28 pieces, almost none of which mentioned Mahalla (the town at the heart of the unrest).

Of course, this sort of content analysis is highly subjective and open to interpretation. Moreover, the circumstances in Iran and Egypt are by no means identical, and could hardly be expected to inspire a perfectly matching number of column inches. Yet popular feeling against the Mubarak oligarchy here is just as real as anti-Ahmadinejad sentiment in Iran, and the potential for monumental political upheaval just as substantial.

There is no space in this forum to detail all the ways in which the unelected political elite of the Arab world's biggest country consistently reject democratic freedoms, subvert the rule of law to protect their hegemony, and encroach on the human rights of that country's citizens day in, day out. A brief perusal of this week's country report on Egypt by Human Rights Watch would provide a taste, however — the organisation helpfully points out that despite the media frenzy over the number of post-election arbitrary detentions in Iran, Egypt's estimated tally of detentions without charge is 150 per cent higher.

Nor is there room to describe the full breadth and strength of the grass-roots reaction these injustices have triggered in Egypt, from the spread of a strike wave so large it has been labelled "the largest social movement the Middle East has seen in half a century" to the astonishing trend of local communities not only facing down the bullets and tear gas of riot police, but doing so with such vigour that fleeing security officers have been forced to bunker down in their own headquarters to protect themselves from the masses. 

Expensive lobbying

I would urge anyone who rejects the premise that Egypt is as unstable as Iran to take a look at the spine-tingling photos and videos of demonstrations against Hosni Mubarak in Mahalla back in April 2008, including the iconic image of hundreds of angry Egyptians bearing down with their feet on a flattened poster of the president. They are eerily reminiscent of the scenes accompanying the fall of dozens of 20th-century dictators, from Saddam Hussein to rulers of the former Soviet-bloc countries. And yet they have barely been seen outside Egypt, in common with the face of Mohamed ElBaradei — the Nobel laureate who is spearheading the opposition movement against Mubarak, yet whose unexpected leadership challenge has also been largely ignored in the west.

Whichever way you splice the figures, the disparity in media attention between Cairo and Tehran is inescapable. You can draw only one conclusion: western media outlets apply vastly different editorial judgements to these two countries and, as a result, readers at home are consuming a heavily skewed diet of Middle Eastern news. The issue is not, as some have suggested, why Egyptians remain so placid in the face of oppression from their political masters. They don't. The question is why nobody cares.

The short answer is that Mubarak and his acolytes are grossly misunderstood in the west, partly as a result of highly effective lobbying by professional outfits in London, Washington and the other corridors of power. The Egyptian government is listed as a client by two top K Street lobbying firms, the Podesta and Livingston Groups.

Although the exact cost of their services is confidential, the fact that Podesta charged up to $13m over ten years to help the Turkish government persuade movers and shakers on Capitol Hill that there was no such thing as an Armenian genocide suggests the Egyptian regime is shelling out an awful lot on polishing its image. Meanwhile, one-third of Egyptian children are suffering from malnutrition.

The deeper answer, though, is that Mubarak's PR people are able to do such a good job because the vision they project of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) ticks all the boxes when it comes to western policymaker wish-lists. Mubarak, they insist, is a force for stability in a tempestuous neighbourhood. Without him, the Muslim Brotherhood would sweep to power and light the fuse of Islamist revolution across the region. He is also praised for being a financial reformer, a gutsy friend of the free market who has dragged Egypt kicking and screaming into the global economy and has dazzling growth rates to show for it.

All this is false. As has been argued time and again by independent analysts, think tanks and some better-informed journalists, the Muslim Brotherhood is a vastly complex and diffuse organisation that forms only one part of a wide-ranging Egyptian opposition movement. There is no reason to think it would command majority support in the event of genuinely fair elections. Meanwhile the presumed existence of this Islamist Sword of Damocles gives Mubarak carte blanche in the international arena to arrest and torture his opponents and render dissidents invisible.

When it comes to the economy, despite more money than ever flowing into Egypt, no less than 90 per cent of the population has become poorer in real terms on Mubarak's watch. And the number of Egyptians living below the poverty line has doubled.

Unstinting western support for the despotic, corrupt cabal of Mubarak's cronies, against the will of the people, is not a force for stability; it is a recipe for disaster. Yet western backing for the NDP and the relentless promotion of Mubarak as a "moderate" continue, to the tune of $2bn a year from Washington — more money than any other recipient of US aid bar Israel. 

Colour stories

So much for the western policy framework. What is scary is the extent to which the stance of the western media mirrors the values of our political masters, following blindly when they should be thinking sceptically, leaving battles shrouded in darkness where they should be shining a light.

Against a backdrop of immense turmoil, what topics has the international press chosen to write about in Egypt over the past couple of years? Artificial hymens, Beyoncé concerts and the pyramids have all figured high on the list, alongside a multitude of other cultural "colour" stories, designed to put a smile on your face over breakfast.

The slightest hint of opposition activity in Iran is guaranteed acres of coverage, whereas the equivalent in Egypt is permitted a mention only if it fits the preconceived notion of Egypt as a relatively tranquil space, disrupted only by the strange and often comedic fallout from an ongoing war between secular and religiously conservative values. Hence debates over the niqab and the slaughtering of pigs make the grade, whereas policemen shooting unarmed civilians dead, or hundreds of thousands of workers going on strike over the impact of government-backed neoliberal reform projects, are left buried in obscurity.

What is so disheartening is not that foreign editors have to use filters, both consciously and subconsciously, to sift through all the news coming out of a country and decide what is fit to print. Rather, it is that the filters they use, even in the supposedly liberal media, seem to provide cover for and chime so closely with the policy stance of western politicians — which is in turn aligned with Mubarak's propaganda. Allowing dictators to set news values when it comes to coverage of their countries isn't just a disservice to readers; just as the media take their cue from politicians, so politicians let their priorities be shaped by the media.

This helps create an endlessly reverberating media/politics echo chamber, sounding skewed descriptions of the state of affairs in Egypt that are constantly affirmed by politicians and journalists alike. All this feeds back into the very problem that fuels it. Were the British public to be more conscious of political realities in a destination that more than a million of them visit on holiday each year, the British government might be a bit more wary of showering Mubarak with public praise. As it is, journalists, diplomats and politicians treat him with kid gloves. This is "churnalism" at its most destructive.

Conspiracy theorists can look away now. As a journalist who reports for British newspapers from Cairo, I am only too aware how difficult it is to assess the news value of stories from far-flung places, and how inevitable it is that the tone of coverage gets coloured by the political landscape at home. But it is precisely because of this, because it is so much smoother to follow the herd, that it is imperative for the media to question their governments' perspective on what matters. Because, by working in Egypt, I have also been made aware how often dramatic events here are sidelined by the press while equivalent developments in Iran provoke banner headlines — simply because western governments have thrown in their lot with one totalitarian leader and pitted themselves against another.

The end result is fact-distortion and myth-making. As Bertrand Russell put it:

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinise it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

It may be easier to let the timbre and beat of international journalism follow the well-worn groove of political consensus, but that doesn't make it right. Those reading and watching at home deserve better. So do those who have died in pursuit of justice and freedom, wherever they may be.

source: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/01/western-media-egypt-iran (thanks Rima for the tip).

The same thing happened regarding my phone and my cell phone, where I used to get unknown phone calls at night very often. I had to change them and keep their numbers secret. My lawyer advised me to keep all suspicious e-mails as evidence for the police in case my lawyer takes the case to court. 

Last summer I went with my family to Cyprus to spend one week vacation. I found out that they are following me even there. I did not believe myself unless I was sure of that. When we came home to Norway I found that the roses in the garden were cut and thrown on the ground, and a tree was half cut by a knife to be easily seen. Under the tree there was a lighter which I had never seen before. The lighter was obviously put there as a symbol of fire. 

I informed the Norwegian police, and the Norwegian intelligence service. I also informed the academic circles, and the media in Norway and the world stating clearing that Zionists were behind this. I made it clear that if they aim to stop my voice they will for sure fail. My voice is the voice of the children I saw with their bodies torn out by the Israeli F16. My voice is the voice of all Palestinians who long to go back home and to be free and to live in peace. My voice is trying to convey the story of my nation who did no wrong to anybody, but who paid heavily with 61 years of the pain of exile, 41 years of occupation and injustice.

My voice is addressing the consciousness of humanity, regardless of faith or ideology, country or color. Because as Professor Howard Zinn taught us, we need to view the history of humans not only through wars and conflicts, but also through solidarity and care. For that reason I hate nobody except occupation and injustice. I believe in the coexistence between Palestinians and Jews in one democratic state where all can live in equality and peace away from the culture of hate and wars and conflicts. But I strongly doubt that this goal can be reached while the apartheid state of Israel is strong. Therefore the solution in my view is to delegitimize the apartheid state of Israel with the hope that this can occur peacefully and to construct a new society where Jews and Palestinians can live on equal footing.

One month ago I decided to stop writing articles because I needed time to work on a book. I am a historian in the first place and not a political analyst. But I was anxious that if I stopped writing they might think they had scared me. They for sure could not because I am too old to be scared, and too stubborn to be intimidated. And more, because I know that I defend the culture of peace and justice, and they defend the culture of war and occupation. The haters are too blind to see the beautiful picture of Palestine in the future, where the voices of prayers go in harmony to the sky from the synagogues, churches and mosques. This is my dream, which I share with all the oppressed Palestinians alongside all the peace and justice lovers on earth.

Dr. Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian-Norwegian historian in the Middle East, who has written extensively on social and political issues in the region.

SOCIALIST WORKER –

WHEN HURRICANE Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, George W. Bush displayed a callous disregard for the Black victims of the disaster.

When his administration finally responded, it deployed the National Guard and armed Blackwater personnel to impose order, rather than putting the priority on providing food, shelter and safe water. Kanye West's words during an NBC Concert for Hurricane Relief–"George Bush doesn't care about Black people"–were proved right.

On the surface, the response of the Obama administration to the horrific earthquake that struck Haiti last week couldn't seem more different. "I have directed my administration to respond with a swift, coordinated, and aggressive effort to save lives," Obama declared. "The people of Haiti will have the full support of the United States in the urgent effort to rescue those trapped beneath the rubble, and to deliver the humanitarian relief–the food, water and medicine–that Haitians will need in the coming days."

His words were a stark contrast to the ravings of the racist right. Rush Limbaugh claimed that Obama's speech was an attempt to win support among "both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country," and that "we've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax." Writing in the New York Times, conservative columnist David Brooks dismissed the idea that aid could help Haiti in this crisis–because Haiti's culture is "more progress-resistant than others."

Compared to such statements, Obama's sympathetic response and promises of aid may seem decent and just. But in the week since the earthquake, it has become clear that the U.S. isn't pursuing a humanitarian policy.

Though it is an opponent of the Obama administration, the conservative Heritage Foundation accurately described the aims that are driving U.S. policy in Haiti:

The U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti's long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region.

While on the ground in Haiti, the U.S. military can also interrupt the nightly flights of cocaine to Haiti and the Dominican Republic from the Venezuelan coast and counter the ongoing efforts of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to destabilize the island of Hispaniola. This U.S. military presence, which should also include a large contingent of U.S. Coast Guard assets, can also prevent any large-scale movement by Haitians to take to the sea in rickety watercraft to try to enter the U.S. illegally.

Meanwhile, the U.S. must be prepared to insist that the Haiti government work closely with the U.S. to insure that corruption does not infect the humanitarian assistance flowing to Haiti. Long-term reforms for Haitian democracy and its economy are also badly overdue.

However impolitic–the piece was quickly removed from the Heritage web site–this actually describes the policy that Barack Obama is carrying out.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

IF THE Obama administration were pursuing a humanitarian policy in Haiti, it wouldn't have appointed George Bush to join former President Bill Clinton in overseeing fundraising for disaster relief.

Not only did Bush spectacularly fail the victims of Hurricane Katrina, but his administration orchestrated a political destabilization campaign against Haiti's democratically elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Bush imposed sanctions on the country that undermined Aristide's presidency and impoverished the masses. The U.S. then backed a right-wing coup that toppled the government in 2004.

Appointing Bush to oversee aid to Haiti is like putting Nero in charge of the fire department.

Then there's the mismatch between Obama's words about "full support" and the pittance his administration plans to spend to address the crisis–just $100 million. As Bill Quigley, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, wrote, "A Kentucky couple won $128 million in a Powerball lottery on December 24, 2009. The richest nation in the history of the world is giving Powerball money to a neighbor with tens of thousands of deaths already?"

Moreover, a week into the disaster, while U.S. officials, privileged Americans and rich Haitians received quick relief, the promised aid hasn't reached the mass of Haitian people.

Amid a crisis where the first 48 hours are decisive in saving people's lives, the United Nations–and the U.S. in particular–failed to come anywhere near addressing the needs of the 3 million people impacted by the earthquake.

Every minute that aid gets delayed means more people dying from starvation, dehydration, injury and disease–and yet by Monday, the UN only planned to distribute food and water to 95,000 people.

An estimated 1.5 million people are homeless and sleeping in the streets, as many as 200,000 have died, and with each tick of the clock, the toll grows higher. Why could the U.S. not rush aid to Haiti? Why were American helicopters and transport planes so late in starting aid drops?

The U.S. and UN claimed that damage to Haiti's airport, port and roads impeded delivery of doctors, nurses, food, water and rescue teams. But the U.S. always seems to find ways around such obstacles when it comes to invading countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. Clearly the means exist to deliver aid quickly to a country an hour away from Florida.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

SO DID the U.S. relief operation fail to live up to its mission? The truth is that disaster relief for the poor is not the mission in Haiti, just as it wasn't the priority in New Orleans or any other disaster.

Instead of rushing aid to Haiti's poor, the Obama administration has prepared a military occupation, claiming that armed forces are necessary to control what they expected to be angry Black people.

The corporate media coverage shifted from its initial sympathy with victims of the disaster to churning out scare stories about looting. "[M]arauding looters emptied wrecked shops and tens of thousands of survivors waited desperately for food and medical care," Reuters claimed. "Hundreds of scavengers and looters swarmed over wrecked stores in downtown Port-au-Prince, seizing goods and fighting among themselves."

In other words, the media took a few isolated conflicts and blew them up into an implication that Haiti's poor are a violent threat–and the real obstacle to relief efforts.

These scare stories in turn became a justification for not delivering aid. Writer Nelson Valdes reported:

The United Nations and the U.S. authorities on the ground are telling those who directly want to deliver help not to do so because they might be attacked by "hungry mobs." Two cargo planes from Doctors Without Borders have been forced to land in the Dominican Republic because the shipments have to be accompanied within Port-au-Prince by U.S. military escorts, according to the U.S. command.

When asked why the U.S. hadn't used its C130 transport planes to drop supplies in Port-au-Prince, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said, "It seems to me that air drops will simply lead to riots."

Of course, precisely the opposite is case. People will riot because they lack food and water.

The real situation is quite different. As author Richard Seymour wrote:

The striking fact, patiently reported by observers on the ground, is that Haiti is not gripped by anarchy, "mob rule," mass slaughter or anything of the kind. There was probably no more violent crime this weekend, and probably less than in some American cities. Instead, while aid is obstructed, Haitians have cooperated to undertake rescue efforts and administer aid without the assistance of relief workers.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez rightly describes Obama's military intervention as "occupying Haiti undercover." The U.S. has taken control of Haiti's main airport and seaport, and is in the process of deploying 10,000 U.S. troops to bolster the 9,000 UN troops already occupying the island. Half of the soldiers will police Port-au-Prince, and half will be deployed on military vessels surrounding the island.

In a puff piece meant to support this occupation, Time magazine perhaps unintentionally revealed the colonial nature of the operation. "Haiti," they write, "for all intents and purposes, became the 51st state at 4:53 p.m. Tuesday in the wake of its deadly earthquake. If not a state, then at least a ward of the state."

The U.S. is using its position of power to impose its control over the country and impede relief efforts, turning away planes from Doctors Without Borders, the Mexican government and the Caribbean Community and Common Market. Jarry Emmanuel, the air logistics officer for the World Food Program, complained, "There are 200 flights going in and out every day, which is an incredible amount for a country like Haiti. But most of those flights are for the United States military. Their priorities are to secure the country."

In a stunning video report from Port-au-Prince, an Al Jazeera reporter said:

Most Haitians here have seen little humanitarian aid so far. What they have seen is guns, and lots of them. Armored personnel carriers cruise the streets. UN soldiers aren't here to help pull people out of the rubble. They're here, they say, to enforce the law.

This is what much of the UN presence actually looks like on the streets of Port-au-Prince: men in uniform, racing around in vehicles carrying guns. At the entrance to the city's airport where most of the aid is coming in, there is anger and frustration. Much-needed supplies of water and food are inside, and Haitians are locked out.

"These weapons they bring," [an unidentified Haitian says], "they are instruments of death. We don't want them; we don't need them. We are a traumatized people. What we want from the international community is technical help. Action, not words."

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

AS ANGER among Haitians simmers over the lack of real relief, it is only a matter of time before heavily armed U.S. and UN forces open fire and kill innocent Haitians.

Already, on Wednesday evening, CBS News reported, "Controlled chaos turned to confrontation near the airport in Port-au-Prince today, when UN peacekeepers were ordered to clear the street filled with Haitian men seeking jobs. The force was made up of Jordanian, Pakistani and Indian forces that were unable to speak Creole, English or French. They did their talking with nightsticks and rubber bullets. At least one rubber bullet was seen fired into the crowd. No one was seriously injured."

U.S. ships are in the process of surrounding the island. Some will provide floating hospitals. But they are also there to prevent an exodus of refugees out of Haiti.

Under some pressure, Obama granted Temporary Protected Status to Haitian refugees currently in the U.S.–but only for 18 months. At the same time, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has announced that any Haitians who attempt to enter the U.S. will be returned to Haiti.

The Obama administration is already coordinating plans for the restructuring of Haitian society–in the interest of international capital. It is implementing what author Naomi Klein calls the "Shock Doctrine"–when capitalist powers use economic or natural disasters to impose neoliberal programs, such as opening up national markets to multinational corporations, privatization of state-owned companies and cuts to the minimum wage.

The UN's special envoy to Haiti, Bill Clinton, had been hard at work implementing such proposals before the crisis. He cut deals with cruise ship companies to dock on Haiti's northern coast and pushed the re-development of the Haitian sweatshop industry.

Now Obama, Clinton and Bush will further impose neoliberal "reforms." Already, the International Monetary Fund has extended $100 million in loans to Haiti during the crisis, and all of that money comes with strings attached. As the Nation's Richard Kim wrote:

The new loan was made through the IMF's extended credit facility, to which Haiti already has $165 million in debt. Debt relief activists tell me that these loans came with conditions, including raising prices for electricity, refusing pay increases to all public employees except those making minimum wage, and keeping inflation low. They say that the new loans would impose these same conditions. In other words, in the face of this latest tragedy, the IMF is still using crisis and debt as leverage to compel neoliberal reforms.

While the U.S. sends soldiers to police Haiti instead of providing humanitarian aid, Haitians in the U.S., Haiti solidarity activists and unions are mobilizing to meet the needs of the Haitian poor–and help empower them to take control over their society. In one powerful example, the National Nurses Organizing Committee is in the process of mobilizing 7,000 nurses from the U.S. to volunteer in Haiti to provide medical care.

As activists continue to donate money to organizations like the Haiti Relief Fund and Partners in Health that aim to empower Haitian grassroots institutions, we must make several demands on the Obama administration.

First, we must demand that Obama immediately stop the military occupation of Haiti, and instead flood the country with doctors, nurses, food, water and construction machinery. Soldiers with guns will only make the situation worse.

Second, the U.S. must also end its enforcement of Jean-Bertrand Aristide's exile and the ban on his party, Fanmi Lavalas, from participating in elections. Haitians, not the U.S., should have the right to determine their government.

Third, we must demand that the U.S., other countries and international financial institutions cancel Haiti's debt, so that the aid money headed to Haiti will go to food and reconstruction, not debt repayment.

And we must agitate for Obama to indefinitely extend Temporary Protected Status to Haitians in the U.S.–and open the borders to any Haitians who do flee the country.

Only through agitating for these demands can we stop the U.S. from imposing its Shock Doctrine for Haiti at gunpoint.

What you can do

Donations and aid are desperately needed in Haiti. Here are some organizations with connections to the grassroots movements in the country.

The Haiti Emergency Relief Fund, organized by the solidarity organization Haiti Action, delivers resources directly to grassroots organizations. It was founded in 2004 after the coup d'etat that forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of office.

For more information, including a telephone contact, go to the Canada Haiti Action Network Web site.

The Zanmi Lasante Medical Center is located in the Central Plateau of Haiti and delivers health care through a network of clinics. The health center survived the earthquake and delivering aid to the disaster zone. You can donate to the center through the U.S. non-profit organization Partners in Health.

SOPUDEP is a pioneering school in Petionville. The resources of the school and its teachers are being mobilized to assist the neighboring population. You can support the school via the Canadian-based Sawatzky Family Foundation. 

http://socialistworker.org/2010/01/19/humanitarian-aid-or-occupation

The attack shocked a complacent world into finally seeing Israel's merciless ferocity against the Palestinians already hounded, herded and imprisoned in compounds throughout their land, if not actually driven out. More than sixty years of Western devotion to Israel's security was blown wide open as truth shattered spin in three weeks of carnage and devastation.

Dead bodies do not lie and neither do the maimed and the disfigured. Thousands have been left to make sense of the horrors they saw and the hollow aftermath to which they have been abandoned. Landscapes of rubble as far as the eye can see are still testament to the homes once standing in villages and towns, the homeless now huddled in tents while they wait one year on for materials to re-build. Little food, contaminated water, rationed fuel and electricity and the barest of medical supplies are just more of many cruel and wanton deprivations pushing Palestinian society to the limits of endurance.

This is Gaza: a population of 1.5 million people kept in formaldehyde by Israel's crippling siege. It is a human catastrophe that has many enablers. World leaders have shut their eyes to the crimes witnessed and documented countless times over by human rights groups. World media continuously sidesteps the truth and deliberately ignores international efforts to highlight the humanitarian crisis. Together they are complicit in Israel's dehumanisation of a people.

We are also complicit if we remain silent and do nothing. It is not enough to know and empathise. Change can only come from people being engaged – learning, thinking, communicating, and being prepared to act.

Almost 2000 internationals have taken action. Some 200 are in Jordan after a three-week trek through Europe in the Viva Palestina convoy of trucks filled with humanitarian aid while another 300 joined them from Greece, Turkey and Jordan; and then, there are the 1400 who have landed in Egypt from all over the world for the scheduled Gaza Freedom March on 31 December. Neither group has been given clearance to enter Gaza. This is where the rest of us who were unable to join these brave souls can bring some power to bear.

There simply is no time to waste. Letters, faxes, emails must be written to governments, embassies and media outlets. Not one letter, not one time, but a constant stream. We have to urge friends and families to write as well.

We have to urge governments to put pressure on Egypt to open the Rafah crossing and pressure on Israel to lift the siege. We have to hound the media like they hound us when they sniff a story. And Gaza is a story that needs to be told. The marchers and the convoy bringing aid to a besieged Gaza are only a part of that story. The real story is Israel's ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from their homeland.

Israel must be held to account because it is the instigator of all this misery. Israel has acted with impunity for far too long. It is a bully in world affairs and our leaders and media are all shamefully intimidated. Only people coming together collectively can change that dynamic – and we must come together, before we too become craven hostages to Israel's criminal enterprise.

Standing up for Palestinian human rights is not anti-Semitic because the Palestinians are also a Semitic people. Nor is it anti-Israel, but rather a protest against Israel's Zionist policies and practices designed to permanently fragment and dissipate Palestinian society. So brutal is its Zionist agenda and so contrary to Judaic teachings that many Jews are already speaking out in shame at what is being done in their name.

As decent and honourable citizens of the world, we too need to speak out in shame at what we have allowed to occur for far too long. Terrible crimes have been committed and some predict that even more terrible ones are to come. The reality is that all along we have been witnessing a slow genocide and we have allowed guilt, pragmatism and self-interest to stand in the way of our common humanity. The world needs to say "enough" and refuse to indulge Israel's Zionist leaders and advocates whose free ride has taken them to the heady heights of arrogance. That universal effort needs to begin before the bitter winter freezes any kind of hope in Gaza and it needs to be sustained for as long as it takes to free all of Palestine. Anything less, will hasten a 21st century genocide.

Sonja Karkar is the founder of Women for Palestine and co-founder of Australians for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia.

Source: http://paltelegraph.com/opinions/views/3498-israel-must-be-held-to-account-for-the-misery-in-gaza

It’s also a fact that the Zionist state that was implanted into the Arab World body more than 62 years ago, is fully supported by the US, the EU and many in the so-called World Community, even though this rogue body is illegal and does not abide by any of the international laws and resolutions.

I know of no Arab person, and certainly, no Arab Palestinian, who is not grateful for the support our people and struggle for liberation and freedom get from Internationals, be it vocal or material .The fact is, many Internationals were killed, wounded or jailed by the Zionist rogue state, simply because they were standing in defense of a defenseless people. These people will always be etched in our memory and history and one day soon, when Palestine is liberated from the River to the Sea, will be honored as true freedom fighters. All through our struggle, many from pretty much everywhere on this globe joined – with no preset conditions – our march for freedom and they gave it their all.

What these freedom fighters had, which many in the current supporters of Palestine lack, is the true understanding of our struggle, which is really very simple to understand: Our homeland is colonized by a foreign force, and our people due to this colonization were forced to flee their homes and homeland, and have been scattered all over the map for more than 6 decades, but for not one moment did they gave up their dream of going back to Palestine. For not one moment did they believe that they will never liberate Palestine, even though, they can understand the huge odds against them. If the true supporter of the struggle understands this, then our struggle will become that much easier.

Without understanding that ‘Israel’ is the core problem in the Arab World, and trying to fashion methods to cripple this colonizing body, all will fail. It’s crucial for all the Internationals who are working in support of Palestine to work against the Zionist colonizers of Palestine. This work should start by forcing their respective governments to stop any kind of support of ‘Israel’, and should continue by facing the Zionists. Doing it face to face in defense of the defenseless Palestinians, like many did and are still doing on the ground in colonized Palestine.

That’s why it’s hard to understand why anyone would want to send medical supplies in a break the siege effort through Egypt, and not cut through the borders from Lebanon or Jordan, (which is closer), and be in direct contact with the rogue state that is imposing the siege on the Palestinian people in the first place. Egypt and Jordan and Saudi Arabia, etc., are implicated in much more than enforcing the siege, but the address for imposing that siege and committing war crimes is ‘Israel’. Why the Internationals are not doing this is beyond anyone’s understanding. It’s the only method that will guarantee the collapse of the siege and the collapse of the state that is imposing it.

So unless these Internationals believe that they can export revolution into Egypt, so the traitor Mubarak Regime can collapse and the border between Gaza and Egypt then can be cracked open, I for one can not see the reason for not tackling the core problem, i.e., ‘Israel’ head on, unless they believe that a heart disease can be treated by putting a band aid on it. 

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Obama took some courses in political theory at Harvard. But the speech he gave upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize — an undeserved distinction that still arouses reactions ranging from amusement to indignation — reveals that he did not learn the subject well and that his flawed interpretation of the doctrine of "Just War" merits an “F” in political theory

According to Ellen Meiksins Wood, one of the most learned specialists on the subject, this doctrine has always been characterized by a tremendous flexibility, allowing it to be adjusted to the needs of the ruling classes in their various ventures of conquest. While its original formulation goes back to St. Augustine and St. Thomas, it was the pen of the Spanish Dominican Francisco de Vitoria that produced a timely justification for the conquest of the Americas and the submission of its aboriginal populations. The Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius, in a similar fashion, applied the doctrine to the plundering practiced by the commercial companies created to carve up the new world.

Looking for support from this tradition, Obama declared that a war is just "if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the force used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence." In this way the original version of the doctrine undergoes a further redefinition to better respond to the needs of the empire and ends by camouflaging itself with the theory of "Infinite War", drawn up by the reactionary theoreticians of the "New American Century" and vigorously adopted by George W. Bush Jr. to justify his abuses from one end of the planet to another. Even after successive modifications, the imperialists did not believe that the “Just War” doctrine was sufficiently flexible to provide an ethical justification for their predations. One had to go further and the theory of "Infinite War" was the answer.

Despite the changes that have progressively undermined its argument, the "Just War" doctrine required the fulfillment of certain conditions before waging a war: (a) it must be a just cause; (b) it must be declared by a competent authority, for a legitimate reason, and after exhausting all other means; (c) there must be a high probability of achieving the desired ends; and (d) the means should be proportionate to those ends. Over the centuries, the periodic "modernizations" introduced by the theorists of "Just War" relaxed these conditions to the point that they lost all practical significance.

In his speech, Obama made a passionate defense of the war in Afghanistan — supported, he said, by 42 other nations, including Norway — while also declaring in a pompous exhibition of optimism that the war in Iraq was nearing its end. Apparently the endless succession of deaths, mostly innocent civilians, occurring daily in that country because of the U.S. presence is for this occupant of the White House a trifling matter that does not dampen the triumphalist declarations spewed out by the U.S. establishment and media for the purpose of manipulating public opinion in that country.

But even apart from these considerations, it is evident that not even the very broad criteria outlined by Obama in his speech are adhered to by Washington in the case of its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: 1) the military occupation was not a last resort, because almost all the international community insisted, and continues to insist today, on the possibility of finding a diplomatic, non-military solution to the conflict; 2) one cannot speak of self-defense when the enemy one must defend against — "international terrorism" — is defined in such a vague fashion that its precise identity and the nature of its threat are impossible to pinpoint; 3) the lack of proportion between the attacked and the attacker reaches astronomical dimensions, given that the strongest military power in the history of mankind shows no mercy against defenseless populations, impoverished and equipped with rudimentary war equipment; and, finally, 4) if there is anyone who has not been spared by the destructive fury of the U.S. armed forces, it is the civilian populations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

To sum up, there was not and there is not a just cause for having unleashed these massacres, a point that is crucial to the traditional theory. Unless, of course, Obama still believes that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (a perverse lie cooked up by Bush Jr., Cheney, Rumsfeld and company, with the complicity of the U.S. political leadership and the “free press” of the West), or that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein — mortal enemies — shared an anti-imperialist political project, or that the Afghan people entrusted bin Laden to carry out the attacks on 9/11 and therefore deserve to be punished. There was no just cause for either of these U.S. military adventures — as there was none previously in Vietnam, or Korea, or Grenada, or Panama, or the Dominican Republic — and it is no mere coincidence that Obama avoided any mention of this traditional clause in his speech. In his peculiar vision, which is the vision of the empire’s ruling circles, "Just War" becomes "Infinite War".

In line with this doctrine, Obama also violates the traditional clause which states that to begin a war a nation must have a reasonable likelihood of achieving the agreed upon objective. And if there is something that recent history has shown over and over again, it is that terrorism will not disappear from the face of the earth as a result of waging a war against it. In his speech, Obama cited a passage from Martin Luther King — "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." But, immediately afterward, he argued that as head of state, sworn to protect and defend his country, he cannot be guided only by the teachings of King or Mahatma Gandhi when faced with the threats that afflict the U.S.

The paranoid and pathological-to-the-core line of the neoconservative ideologues reappears on the lips of this champion of U.S. liberalism: the ever-present threat to the well being and security of the American people, whether coming from Communists, populism, drug trafficking, Islamic fundamentalism or international terrorism. But these threats, more imaginary than real, are a necessary ingredient in justifying the unlimited and ceaseless expansion of military spending and the enormous profitability that this provides to the giant oligopolies that depend on the immense business of war. Without those threats, it would be impossible to justify the dominance of the military-industrial complex and the lavish subsidies it receives, year after year, from money paid by U.S. taxpayers. Nor would the unfettered, rampant militarization of U.S. have been possible, projected outwardly with an aggressive foreign policy and inwards with the overwhelming presence of repressive forces and intelligence agencies, a process propelled by the anti-terrorist legislation enacted by Bush Jr. that debased much of the existing political and civil liberties in the U.S.

The end result of this indifference to the traditional clause requiring that military action have a high probability of achieving its initially specified goals is none other than the complete independence of the military enterprise. As Meiksins Wood points out clearly in her brilliant Empire of Capital, according to  this new version of the theory, military response is justified even when there is no possibility of attaining any success. Or, worse yet, under these new conditions, imperialist military aggression no longer requires a specific goal or a clearly defined and identified enemy. War needs no clearly defined goals and becomes an end in itself, a goal which is unattainable and, therefore, endless. Far from being an exceptional situation, war becomes a permanent activity: an endless war against an unidentifiable enemy whose changing contours — today a communist, tomorrow a populist, next "international terrorism", etc. — are drawn up with absolute and perverse arbitrariness by the empire’s Ministry of Truth, whose mission is none other than to distort reality, manipulate public opinion, and “manufacture” the consensus needed by the ruling class, as pointed out by Noam Chomsky in his path-breaking analyses on this subject. It is not an exaggeration to say that George Orwell's worst predictions about the production of disinformation not only have come true but have been surpassed by the U.S. cultural apparatus. Thanks to this mechanism of ideological manipulation and control, the production and sales of this immense military-industrial complex are immunized against the vagaries of the economic cycle. Endless war is another way of saying unending and permanent profits.

The acerbic comments of Bill Clinton's former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, sum up well the spirit and the assumptions underlying this latest downgrading of the traditional doctrine of “Just War”: “what’s the point of having such a formidable military if we can't use it.” That is what it is all about, the necessary use and periodic destruction of this imposing military machine so that the businesses of the military-industrial complex can prosper. With her flippant arrogance, Albright exposed what many ideologues of the empire so very carefully avoid saying.

Obama's speech was disappointing. As much as the Nobel Peace Prize has been devalued — remember that it was granted to a war criminal like Henry Kissinger — the president of the United States should have at least been capable of developing an argument that, without resorting to an implausible pacifism, would have distanced him somewhat from the ideological tone set by Bush Jr. and his cronies. He did not. In fact, there is good reason to suspect that some of his speech writers are holdovers from his disastrous predecessor.

Such continuity would not be surprising. Obama confirmed as his Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who had been appointed by Bush Jr., and more recently proposed Philip Goldberg (who was expelled from Bolivia by President Evo Morales on September 10, 2008, for his blatant involvement in the separatist efforts of Santa Cruz governor, Ruben Costas) as Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research. The rosy hopes fueled by the irrational "Obama-mania" and nurtured by seraphic progressive souls today seem more illusory and absurd than ever.   

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About the author

Atilio a. Boron is a guest author at Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity, of which David Brookbank is a member. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author and translator are cited.

URL of this article on Tlaxcala: http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=9639&lg=en

If Looks Could Kill

And thus, we are all witnessing the continuation of the collective lovefest, pushed to a higher level, as no longer is Obama “capable” of imposing imperialist agendas in areas targeted for “liberation” on behalf of the grand caravan of “The Coalition of the Willing”, he is actually doing precisely that. It goes beyond simply leading the world’s most powerful nation and defending the US from harm, because here we have the entire narrative of the “good war”, the “just war”, the fight against terrorism, which Obama expresses in his acceptance speech as a few angry men who harm hundreds of innocent people. He cannot fathom that under his command, the United States does the same thing, but with total impunity. In Afghanistan at least one hundred innocent civilians were killed by a few men flying US Air Force planes http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/05/dozens-of-civilians-killed-in-afghanistan-air-raid-report/, and this was not an isolated attack, it is simply one that had been reported. This act, when done by the Republicans, was immediately condemned by those who consider themselves to be “anti-war”. The complaints never seemed to last longer than a few days and they had no practical efficacy whatsoever, but the feeling was that it was wrong, it was putting America in a worse position and that one should protest, not really for the Afghanis or Iraqis, but for the sake of the image of the USA. All of this has simply faded out because their man, the charming and attractive Obama is doing it, and his narrative of the Good War, they believe, is going to be enough to do the trick. Certainly, there is nothing new about the utilisation of rhetoric and image to make effective propaganda. What would really be sad is if those who identify with Obama because of his attractive image identified with all the hypocrisy he represents, and the lack of awareness that he is as imperialistic and as warmongering as any president before him, none excluded. If looks could kill, they probably will.

Original Manuscript of Kafka's The Trial in Marbach

WRITTEN BY MARY RIZZO

“Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested.” 

I doubt that anyone has read that devastating incipit from Kafka’s “The Trial” without feeling a bolt of emotion. In its naked simplicity, crude force and powerful arrangement, we see facets of an entire universe in one sentence, where an internal state of mind clashes head-on with a deed taking place. Where a sense of confusion and disparagement meets with the reality of an arbitrary act. The subject attempts to immediately rationalise and understand a situation of a grave personal violation, and we, the reader, without knowing anything at all, sympathise with him, basically under the assumption that whatever follows, we will be on his side. But there is an ambiguity contained even in this scene, an ambiguity that continues throughout the book with the presentation of mental states of guilt, resignation, retreat from clarification and in the end, stoicism that leads to the rejection of personal freedom. As we read, we alternately can identify with Josef K. and resign ourselves to fate or we want to shake him out of his complacency. We at times can even step into his shoes, put down the book and say to ourselves, “yes, this is true”. It is this emotional experience that effects us in a different way each time we face this book (and like all great books, gives us more upon successive reading), that makes the reading experience active, personal and vibrant. 

“The Trial” could only begin with that evocative sentence, but what makes this book an ever-unfolding experience for those who have loved it is the fact that we really don’t know exactly how it would have read if Kafka himself published it and we can leave interpretative and narrative spaces to one day fill. On a literary level, we know that it was published posthumously and without explicit indications of its construction. It is written that the confusing way that Kafka had of organising his manuscripts led to an arbitrary arrangement of the chapters, and even the exclusion of “A Dream” in the corpus of the novel in the edition most of us know, is said by some to be a very bad judgment call made by Max Brod, who we shall be addressing shortly. Indeed, critical editions surface from time to time where speculations on the arrangement of the chapters emerge, including a particularly interesting one following the template of Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”. There are editions that carry variations and where slight details are modified or even autobiographical footnotes that delight and inform the reader are inserted. Will we ever know the integral version of the book as the author may have intended it? That depends upon Israel.  

For scholars, being able to access the original manuscripts of writers is essential for quite a few reasons. First, one can see the evolution of the thought process by observing the construction of the phrases themselves, the cancellations, the notes, the possible choices that the author leaves for himself before arriving at a definitive solution, and secondly, because it gives historical valence to the work of art itself. Coming into contact with the original manuscript is as close as one can come to sitting next to a writer who clarifies things that are unclear or if we are lucky, he pulls back curtains that we didn’t even know were there so that we can see something different. I can say for myself that I had an epiphany two years ago while examining the original manuscript of one of the most important Italian poems “L’infinito” by Giacomo Leopardi. I was in a state of pure commotion as I saw with my own eyes and could feel his pen crossing off a word that was good, and changing it to one that was perfect… How could there have been “a version” of this poem that fuses the interior with the infinite? It was odd to feel that the sentiment expressed in that poem had an evolution. But realising that it did, and that it was a product of a dynamic human thought, a moment in time, and therefore ineffable and comprised of many facets, I entered for a moment into his mind, seeing how he was now confronting a reality, an incarnation of his thought, and refining it both within himself and beyond himself, just like the subject of the poem. It was a sensation of understanding of him that left me in awe, feelings that I hadn’t at that point experienced, even after years of reading and admiring his work. 

Kafka himself is an interesting element as far as biography goes, and facts of his life are always mentioned in critical studies of his work, and therefore, documents that point to his life, even those that are personal such as letters and notes, add to the comprehension of his opus… and the controversy surrounding the disappearance or lack of access to his documents can only increase as his role as a precursor in existential literature and the testimony of Old Europe in its modernist struggle makes his work as contemporary as ever. 

I personally have felt enormous attraction to him not only for intriguing aspect of the “double” existence he lead as a functionary at an insurance company by day and writer by night, but for something much more banal, the biographical similarities to my own family which help me to piece together a world that has been permanently dismembered and therefore, one I feel an irresistible but impossible nostalgia for. His family originated from the same village as part of my family did; there is the experience of leaving the village for Prague, the tuberculosis, infant mortality… all the stories that one hears about a private saga are there in a literary figure. Of course, he belonged to a different social class and even spoke a different mother tongue than my family did, but part of me believes something is there that can still give insight and drop tiny bits of information that can be examined as perhaps the missing piece, some little detail that fits in with things to make sense of the world that was remembered, but left unspoken. This itself explains to me one of the reasons I embrace him intimately, so that I could comprehend something about a world close to me, but only in an evocative way, bound in a shroud that is tightly sealed and forever distant. But there is a universal attraction to his work: the very ambiguity of his storytelling is oddly reassuring, because one knows there is always a chance for a new interpretation of the signs that take the connotations of a meaningful symbolic order that will one day unfold, leaving a promise and hope that all the absurdities will one day be logical. Although contextually there is the realisation that the deepest meaning is one that the reader gives, because the work itself is not one of redemption, and one can dig as deep as one wants, redemption will not be found there. Things are desperate, so what else is new? 

And yet… one is swept within the womb of the human language, with its fragility and its force, believing that it is capable of expressing the hope of a different and more just world, even where that hope is never uttered. 

Kafka can mean a great deal to millions of people, and many of them want to gain more knowledge. This is possible, of course, through the study of the original manuscripts, and the library of Marbach in Germany has been the pilgrimage site of many a scholar. Yet, if Israel has its way, this manuscript will have to leave Europe, and be “returned” to Israel, as well as the rest of the Kafka documents that are hidden, have yet to be studied and are subject to a bizarre law of “Jewish heritage”, and because of that law, will probably never see the light of day. 

Israel has a law which imposes that material that they consider “important to the Jewish people” be prohibited from leaving the country. The law even states that they will accept a photocopy… but we all know how trustworthy Israel is, and apparently, so do its citizens, and many are simply not caving in to this pressure. In fact, it is reasonable to imagine that thousands of documents of importance not only to the Jewish people, but to humanity as a whole, have taken the road of clandestine sales and then disappearance, in order for their owners to avoid being forced to relinquish them or sell them for a fraction of their value to the Jewish State. Unable to sell literary material to libraries and cultural institutions, (because no library is going to buy a photocopy of a document) ownership passes through secret sales and exportation or, in the case of the bulk of the manuscripts of Kafka, is stored somewhere, perhaps never to be seen. 

Kafka never lived in Israel, nor did he visit. His confidante and doctor, Max Brod, did though, he took to Palestine all of the documents that Kafka had entrusted to him: with the promise that he would personally destroy them. Brod did no such thing, bless his soul, in fact, he made attempts to give some order to the manuscripts, and saw to the publication of six volumes of previously unpublished works, as well as having been his most supportive friend and intimately aware of both the literary Kafka and the human Kafka, and therefore the best suited to reconstructing, rather than destroying. I believe it was no mean feat to deny the will of his close friend, just as it must have been complicated to assemble the material. Helping him in this task was his own private secretary, Esther Hoffe, another Bohemian transplanted to the nascent Jewish State. Upon Brod’s death, entering into possession of the precious documents was Hoffe. She had been able to sell a few of the manuscripts abroad, but the deal was blocked moments before the documents were about to be transferred to their new owner. Upon her own death, her daughters became the owners of this material, and they have refused to surrender it to Israel. Law or not, they do not want to have the State expropriate or obtain for an unfair price something that they believe it has no rights to, or at least, this is what one might be lead to thinking for their resolve in not “collaborating” with the demands made on them to let the Jewish State be the arbiter and custodian of the manuscripts. Included in the group of documents are said to be Brod’s diary, some of Kafka’s drawings and the correspondence that he himself managed to not destroy.  

Once again, Israel is demanding rights to something that does not belong to them. In this case, it does not belong to them or to the Jewish people, and not even to the Hoffe sisters, but belongs to the legacy of Franz Kafka. If we consider his expressed wishes to have a ritual bonfire made of all his writing, and even Dora had burnt some of his stories and a theatrical piece upon his request, we can imagine that this entire situation would not have pleased him in the slightest. With the pressure being made to surrender this material under certain conditions, it is likely that the world may never have access to the material which is rumoured to be quite voluminous and varied, and the study of this giant in literature will remain hindered. All of this due to the Israeli need of claiming rights and ownership to something, for its absolute determination to horde everything that it thinks it has an “ethnic” right to. Is there such a thing as Jewish literature, and is it determined by style or by “blood”, and is Kafka an exemplar of it? Would Kafka himself have identified his work as being patrimony of “the Jewish people” or, would he have felt that others were playing with his fate, just like his most famous character Josef K. thought? 

And, to the point, is it possible that a State can claim rights to material that was brought over from somewhere else, disregarding the fact that this State that did not even exist in Kafka’s lifetime, nor when Brod moved there in 1939? And further, is it not absurd that it is deciding that he is its representative and his handwritten work must remain on Israeli soil? It is implying that a writer whose material happened to find its way to Israel by contingent circumstances and not by election of the author, (who was already violated by the negation of his testament) is held hostage there as a symbol and confined to the status of “a Jewish writer” and if scholars want to study manuscripts, they have to go to Israel to do it, recognising first and foremost that the writer belongs to the State of Israel, then to the Jewish people, and incidentally, maybe is just a human whose entire life and culture was something else. Kafka was a European, a Bohemian, a part of that city of Prague that so totally coloured his perception no less than his travels in central Europe and northern Italy contributed to his attitude. Israel has nothing to do with his work, at least judging by the published material. 

But Israel, just like it has done to the land of Palestine, decides to take what it wants and claims rights to it based on racial, religious and ethnic criteria. It denies the actual historical circumstances, and is hoping to rewrite history and within a generation, everyone will believe that Kafka was born in Tel Aviv and that he was a prominent figure in Jewish cultural affairs. It does not take a lot of work to construct a lovely “Kafka historical centre and library” where students will go to glance at the showcases and see multimedia exhibits while on their way to the gift shop. 

This would indeed be a metamorphosis that would have terrified Kafka. Someone will be telling lies about Franz K.

There was one way in which President Obama’s escalation speech brought significant relief to the 59% of people in this country, as well as the overwhelming majorities of people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East and elsewhere who oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan: It was a pretty lousy speech. That is, it had none of the power, the lyricism, the passion for history, the capacity to engage and to persuade virtually every listener, even those who may ultimately disagree, that have characterized the president’s earlier addresses.

And for that failure, we should be very grateful.

Because everything else in this politically and militarily defensive speech reflected accountability not to President Obama’s base, the extraordinary mobilization of people who swept this anti-war and anti-racist candidate into office, but rather to the exigencies of Washington’s traditional military, political, and corporate power-brokers who define “national security.”

In a speech like this, widely acknowledged to be setting the framework for the security/foreign policy/military paradigm for the bulk of Obama’s still-new presidency, location matters. West Point was crucial partly for tactical reasons (nowhere but a military setting, with young cadets under tight command, could the president count on applause and a standing ovation in response to a huge escalation of an unpopular war). But it was also important for Obama to claim West Point as his own after Bush’s 2002 speech there, an address that first identified preemptive war as the basis of the Bush Doctrine and a new foreign policy paradigm.

There was an important honesty in one aspect of President Obama’s speech. All claims that the U.S. war was bringing democracy to Afghanistan, modernizing a backward country, and liberating Afghan women, are off the agenda — except when the Pentagon identifies them as possible “force multipliers” to achieve the military goal. And that goal hasn’t changed — “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.” So now it’s official. It’s not about Afghanistan and Afghans at all — it’s all about us.

It’s a good thing the White House has dropped that rhetoric as the past eight years has brought few social improvements. Afghanistan ranks second to last in the UN’s Human Development Index, and just in the last few weeks UNICEF identified Afghanistan as one of the three worst places in the world for a child to be born. As for improving the lives of women Afghanistan retains the second-highest level of maternal mortality of any country in the world — even after eight years of U.S. occupation. Is further military escalation likely to change that? Ironic Timing

Less than two days after his escalation speech, Obama will host a jobs summit at the White House. Whatever his official message, the millions of unemployed in the U.S. know that 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan adds $30 billion this year to the already out-of-control war budget — and means that the only jobs available will be in the military. What clearer example could there be of the Afghanistan war as a war against poor people — those who die in Afghanistan and those left jobless and desperate here at home? A week later, Obama travels to Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. Not even the best speechwriters will be able to portray sending thousands of young women and men across the world to kill and die as evidence of the newest Nobel laureate’s commitment to global peace.

And the day of the speech itself was World AIDS Day. The UNAIDS noted that all of its country goals — treatment for 6–7 million people, screening 70 million pregnant women, providing preventive services to 37 million people — could be accomplished with just $25 billion. That’s what the United States will spend fighting in Afghanistan in just three months. Timing matters.

The result was a speech that reflected Obama’s centrist-in-chief effort to please all his constituencies. Some will be quite satisfied. Mainstream Republicans were delighted. They were careful not to praise too much, but as Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss noted, President Obama’s escalation was “the right analysis, the right decision.” General McChrystal, Obama’s handpicked top commander in Afghanistan, was quite satisfied: He had asked for 40,000 new troops, and got 30,000 U.S. troops and a promise (we’ll see…) of 5,000 more from NATO and other allies. More significantly, he and Bush hold-over Secretary of Defense Robert Gates got the president’s endorsement of a full-scale counterinsurgency plan.

Mainstream Democrats were likely delighted — assertion of their party’s military credentials, with talk of a “transition to Afghan responsibility” to soothe their constituents’ outrage. They may be uneasy about the additional costs, but could take solace in Obama’s promise to “work closely with Congress to address these costs as we work to bring down our deficit.” Just how anyone would “address” these spiraling billions remains unclear.

The ones not happy — besides the young cadets in the audience, other soldiers facing new and endlessly renewed deployments, and their families — are the massive numbers of people who swept Obama into office on a mobilized tide of anti-war, anti-racist and anti-poverty commitments. Talk of beginning a “transition” 18 months down the line, with NO commitment for an actual troop withdrawal, isn't going to satisfy them.

And President Obama seemed to know that. So he resorted to an old tactic, long relied on by George W. Bush: book-ending his speech with the trope of 9/11, pleading for a return to the moment “when this war began, we were united — bound together by the fresh memory of a horrific attack, and by the determination to defend our homeland and the values we hold dear. I refuse to accept the notion that we cannot summon that unity again.” What Obama left out, and perhaps hoped that we have forgotten, was that the human solidarity that created such unity in the wake of the 9/11 attacks — not only across the United States, but around the world as well — began to erode as soon as the war in Afghanistan began. Because we knew then, as we know today, that the war in Afghanistan was never legitimate, was never moral, was never going to keep us safe,” and was never a “good war.”

What Did the Speech Say?

* Thirty thousand new U.S. troops will be sent to Afghanistan “at the fastest possible pace.” In July 2011, 18 months from now, the U.S. will “begin to transfer our forces out of Afghanistan.”

* No more “blank checks” to the Afghan government; the U.S. expects those it assists to combat corruption and “deliver for the people,” and that those “who are ineffective or corrupt to be held accountable.”

* The U.S. goals in Afghanistan are to “deny al Qaeda a safe haven. We must reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government. And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan’s Security Forces and government, so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan’s future.”

* The government of Pakistan is our friend and ally, and “our success in Afghanistan is inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan.”

* Unlike the Soviets and other earlier empires in Afghanistan, the U.S. has “no interest in occupying your country. We will support efforts by the Afghan government to open the door to those Taliban who abandon violence and respect the human rights of their fellow citizens. And we will seek a partnership with Afghanistan grounded in mutual respect.”

What Was Left Out

* The 18-month timeline references only the “beginning” of transferring U.S. troops out of Afghanistan; there was no reference to finishing transfer of all troops out of Afghanistan and ending the occupation. The words “exit” or “exit strategy” do not appear in the speech, and the word “withdraw” appears only in a reference to what the U.S. will NOT do.

* There was absolutely no explanation of how this year’s $30 billion additional costs for the 30,000 more troops, on top of the billions more already in the pipeline, would be paid for. Obama referred only to his intention to consult with Congress to “address” these costs while bringing down the deficit. The inevitable impact this spending would have on jobs, health care, or climate change was ignored.

* The speech assumed Afghan support for the U.S. occupation, ignoring the massive evidence to the contrary. Just hours before Obama spoke, the Wall Street Journal stated matter-of-factly that “when the U.S. forces enter an area, the levels of violence generally increase, causing anger and dissatisfaction among the local population.” It quoted a pro-Karzai parliamentarian who said, “If new troops come and are stationed in civilian areas, when they draw Taliban attacks civilians will end up being killed.”

* Obama paid no attention to the increasingly visible opposition to the Karzai government and the U.S. occupation from the majority Pashtun population — whose southern and eastern Afghanistan territory will be the operations center for the new troop escalation. The Journal quoted a shopkeeper in the southern city of Kandahar who said, “If we get more troops, there will be more bloodshed. Only Afghans themselves can solve this problem.” The Pashtuns, who make up the majority of the Taliban, are increasingly defining Afghanistan’s civil war as an ethnic war against supporters of the old U.S.-backed Northern Alliance, whose Tajik and Uzbek militants now make up the majority of the Afghan National Army.

* There was no reference to the U.S.-paid mercenaries (both local and internationals, all paid through U.S. contractor corporations) in Afghanistan, whose numbers rose by 40% just between June and September, now totaling 104,101, and already outnumbering U.S. troops.

* While claiming the U.S. may not have the same interests as earlier empires, Obama has now acknowledged that the U.S. is occupying Afghan land not to protect Afghan interests, but to protect the U.S. and U.S. citizens.

* There was no acknowledgement of the widely held view that there are fewer than 100 members of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and perhaps as few as 300 over the border in Pakistan — so the U.S. will now be deploying more than 100,000 of its own troops, plus tens of thousands of NATO and other allied troops, in a global, lethal, impoverishing war to go after 400 people.

* Obama spoke of Afghanistan as a war of necessity, saying “We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, 19 men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people.” He ignored the fact that none of the hijackers were Afghans, none lived in Afghanistan (they lived in Hamburg), none trained in Afghanistan (they trained in Florida), and none went to flight school in Afghanistan (that was in Minnesota).

* Obama spoke of the existing involvement of NATO and other allied governments, and asked for additional troop commitments; he did not mention the massive opposition to the war all those government face (70% opposition in the UK, the highest troop contributor), with several countries pulling their troops out. He described the “broad coalition of 43 nations that support our aims,” but ignored the reality that many of those nations have deployed troops numbering only in the double or even single digits — one from Georgia, two from Iceland, four from Austria, seven each from Ireland and Jordan, 10 from Bosnia, etc.

* The speech acknowledged that the recent election of President Karzai was “marred by fraud,” but maintained the fiction that Karzai’s presidency is somehow still “consistent with Afghanistan’s laws and constitution.” There was no acknowledgement of the widespread Afghan view of Karzai as simultaneously corrupt, incompetent, and dependent on the U.S. occupation, and that trying to win “hearts and minds” to back a government lacking local legitimacy ensures failure.

* Describing an alleged “partnership” with Pakistan, Obama ignored the danger of a U.S. troop escalation further destabilizing Pakistan, and sidelined the fact that recent polls indicate 59% of Pakistanis view the U.S. as the greatest threat, more than three times as those who see arch-rival India as the most threatening, and almost six times more than those who identify the Taliban. Obama stayed silent about the on-going special forces and drone strikes in Pakistan, with no indication whether his future escalation will include ratcheting up those attacks.

* There was no reference to the need for a broad regional diplomatic strategy; the word “India” did not appear in the speech and Obama ignored Islamabad’s concerns vis-à-vis India, which shape much of Pakistan’s historic support for the Taliban and other insurgent forces in Afghanistan. He thus disregarded the most important regional dynamics at work.

* While referencing the U.S. “transition” out of Iraq, Obama didn't acknowledge the level of violence continuing there, where more civilians continue to die than are dying in Afghanistan, nor the 113,731 mercenaries bolstering the U.S. military there. While proposing Iraq as a model for getting U.S. troops out, he ignored the reality that there are still 124,000 U.S. troops occupying Iraq.

Anti-War Escalation Needed

Near the end of his speech, Obama tried to speak to his antiwar one-time supporters, speaking to the legacy of Vietnam. It was here that the speech’s internal weakness was perhaps most clear. Obama refused to respond to the actual analogy between the quagmire of Vietnam, which led to the collapse of Johnson’s Great Society programs, and the threat to Obama’s ambitious domestic agenda collapsing under the pressure of funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, he created straw analogies, ignoring the massive challenge of waging an illegitimate, unpopular war at a moment of dire economic crisis.

Obama also did not acknowledge that about 30% of all U.S. casualties in the 8-year war in Afghanistan have occurred during the 11 months of his presidency. He did not remind us that the cost of this war, with the new escalation, will be about $100 billion a year, or $2 billion every week, or more than $11 million every hour. He didn’t tell us that the same one-year amount, $100 billion, could cover the cost of ALL of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals: clean water, health care, primary education and vaccinations for the people of every one of the poorest 21 countries in the world.

He didn’t ask us to consider what adding another $100 billion — let alone $500 billion, or half a TRILLION dollars over the next five years — to the already ballooning deficit will do to our chances for real health care reform.

President Obama didn’t ask us that. But we know the answer to that question. We need to build a movement that can respond to that answer, that can respond to the new challenges of these new conditions — because while this is not a new war, we face a new political moment. We need to build new alliances into a movement that can bring this war and occupation to a rapid end, so that we can begin to make good on our real obligations to the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as to the people of our own country who struggle to find jobs, health care, and climate justice. We need to build a movement with roots in the trade unions, in the labor movement, and among those struggling for economic rights, particularly among communities of color. We have to push Congress to make good on their “concerns” regarding this new escalation by refusing to pay for it, and to support those members of Congress who are trying to do just that. Congress hasn’t given Obama a blank check for this war yet — not even a $30 billion check. And there’s still time for us to make sure they don’t.

We have a lot of work to do.

Copyright © 2009, Institute for Policy Studies

Phyllis Bennis is co-author with David Wildman of the forthcoming Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer and fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.

(but I got it from Slept On Magazine: http://www.slepton.com/slepton/viewcontent.pl?id=2975)

Attempts at reform which have come in from the outside world and been imposed from the West over the past 200 years have remained as state and government projects, due to the unwillingness of the powerful elite to engage in democratic processes, which is, in turn, why these attempts at reform are not usually internalized by society as a whole. Those who set out with the goal of changing this situation first need to think carefully before taking steps. Unfortunately, what happens in Turkey is that we first take steps forward, and then start thinking. This could be seen as a bit of an Ottoman tradition, actually.

Of course, in making reforms, we will reap benefits from the West. But we also need to make some semantic interventions into our conceptual framework. The key concepts arising from Western or other cultural wealth of experiences naturally include world views, philosophies and background plans which are directly related to other nations' institutions and political structures. If we simply import these concepts without altering them, they cannot help us; these are concepts which need to be arranged according to our own physical, social and historical development. After all, the Quran itself changed some of the meanings in the language of the society to which it came. While Arabic words maintained the same form, their meaning underwent deep-rooted changes. Likewise, the philosopher Farabi borrowed some basic concepts from Greek metaphysics and philosophy, altering them, and even re-defining some entirely. Had Muslim scholars not done this, Greek philosophy would have remained an archaic resource, and would have been useless in the creation of modern knowledge.

It was in the 19th century that this opportunity presented itself to us. But the figures of the Tanzimat, the Meşrutiyet and the Republic eras of Turkey all formed their relations with the West on a symbolic level, not thinking to form relations on a conceptual level. It was Sultan Mahmut II who first formed these incorrect relations: borrowing jazz music, offering alcoholic drinks at official meetings, changing outfits, replacing the sarık with the fez, then later the fez with the hat, banning the headscarf, intervening in the wearing of beards by men, and so on. These were all models accepted in the 20th century which derived from Mahmut II.

I talked a bit above about the relations between the Abbasis and Greek philosophy, and how it was not on the level of “awe and symbols,” but rather on a smart and conceptual level. This was true also for their relations with Indian, Babylonian, Iranian, Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures. Note that Muslims did not translate Greek literature, mythology, tragedies and poetry into Arabic. They translated instead the philosophy and knowledge. Their goal in doing this was to benefit from the wealth of experience and knowledge of other cultures and civilizations, and to use their own religion and abilities to engage in their own semantic changes to all this. Looked at from this perspective, the modernization of Ottoman-Turk was unsuccessful; it cannot be an example to the Islamic world. What we need to take instead as an example is the above-mentioned Abbasi model.

We could use these Abbasi methods today to help us in finding solutions and providing new frameworks through which to interpret and understand our problems with democracy, civil society, and so on. Of course, this does not mean we will simply affect whichever changes grab us at the moment with these concepts. But at the same time, we ought not to simply import concepts from the West as they are, and should instead alter and shape them according to our own culture, history and society. When we grapple with the process of societal change, and deal with it according to this sort of framework, then we can use our own inner dynamics to change.

Todays Zaman (via TimeTurk)

source: http://en.timeturk.com/ali-bulac-what-we-get-from-the-west,-and-how-to-use-it–894-yazisi.html

In Response to Jeff Gates' At What Cost the Israel Lobby?
Jeff Gates at www.criminalstate.com, on the issue of Israeli Nuclear weapons, after exploring JFK's (perceived) role, observes of the immediate pertinent question at hand:

'Special Standard for a Special Friend Due to its “special relationship” with the U.S., Tel Aviv remains a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. … What about Israel? What has their lobby been doing? … At what point will Americans say: Enough!' — Jeff Gates, At What Cost the Israel Lobby? October 12, 2009

This response to Mr. Gates' outstanding article contrarily examines two of its key highlights: 1) Israel's Nuclear Weapons program; and 2) Israel Lobby.

Israel's Nuclear Weapons Program
My view on the Israeli Nuclear Weapons program has always been principally based on Theodor Herzl's view of the Jewish mission in Palestine, that: 

We can be the vanguard of culture against barbarianism, as he endeavored to justify Der Judenstaat to imperial powers du jour, predicting: 

The antisemites WILL BECOME our most loyal friends, the antisemites nations will become our allies.

Every generation of Zionist statesmen and stateswomen since then, has emphasized that indispensable role of Zionistan as a frontier outpost of the West:

There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, they are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to different galaxy.

That was Moshe Katsav, Israel's President, in June 2001. And this is George W. Bush, as the erstwhile President of the United States, while representing the sole-superpower at Israel's 60th B-day bash in May 2008: 

Our two nations both faced great challenges when they were founded. And our two nations have both relied on the same principles to help us succeed. We built strong democracies to protect the freedoms given to us by an Almighty God. ( Celebrating Israel's 60th Birthday in the 60th year of the Nakba by Bible Burning in Zionistan ).

That century year old linkage of shared ethos and sharing of same principles manifests itself in the Israeli-American relationship. It is a lot more than AIPAC and JINSA. It has to do with who the oligarchs are, and what might be their overarching agenda with respect to the Zion that will light up all the world.

The visible politicians running governments are merely the 'errand boys' who implement only their great benefactors' agendas. While Theodor Herzl and the World Zionist Federation are credited with founding Israel, the fact that it was done with Rothschild money is rarely if ever mentioned. Even by the antagonists of Israel! Notice that the Balfour Declaration was issued to Lord (Lionel) Rothschild. Why to him? The world's financial powers control both nations, as well as those of the European continent.

So, fast forwarding past the palpably obvious Israel Lobby factor, to being that 'Ubermensch' vanguard of culture against barbarianism, the farthest outpost of Western culture and civilization, Zionistan is an integral part of the world superpower equation that is being ridden hard by its ideological-financial oligarchs. In both, its la mission civilisatrice agenda, as well as a proxy henchman on the Grand Chessboard when public opinion won't allow the greatest democracy on earth to play havoc with others itself (in idyllic times now past of course).

This is what I wrote in Chapter 2  of Prisoners of the Cave in 2003, and I remain un-persuaded, still, that this is an inaccurate perception of the reality of hegemony:

Excerpt:

While the number of ~200 is often quoted, even today, it is an old number. The current actual size of Israel's nuclear arsenal is likely to be in the thousands, comprising an assorted cocktail of Armageddon inflicting gifts of the Jews to modern civilization.

How Israel got its nuclear weapons is an interesting tale, not to be rehearsed here. As a key ally of America through the Cold War, it is very likely that some of Israel's warheads remained aimed at the Soviet Union, as much as Israel's own enemies in the region. The Soviets were likely made aware of this because that is why they could never belligerently threaten Israel on the side of their own Arab client-states during the 1973 Arab Israeli war and essentially stayed out of it, while America openly supported Israel. And that is also what likely emboldened Israel to preemptively take out the Iraqi Nuclear reactor nearing completion in 1981 that was being built with Russian assistance, with no retaliation from the Soviets. And this was going on even as Iraq was being supplied with conventional weapons of mass destruction by America and the West and goaded on to fight Iran's Islamic revolution to neutralize it - using the Iraqis as the front foot soldiers to take the brunt of the casualties, with a nuclear armed Israel as the backup armor. I am quite certain that had Iran's counter offensive prevailed over Iraq and taken over Baghdad, that Israel would have struck with a preemptive Nuclear strike on Iran - as the immediate interests of America and Israel merged on the borders of Iran (apart from the continued out flow of oil). Thus nuclear arming of Israel was a necessity for America seen in this light - as almost an extension of America in the Middle East. An idea that JINSA has diligently pursued, to build up Israel's defenses to have it prevail over all its neighbors by wielding its nuclear club.

End Excerpt

While it is stated by many, including Mr. Jeff Gates, that JFK was against nuclear arming Israel, his notorious letter to David Ben Gurion notwithstanding, it isn't entirely clear to me. JFK was just as beholden to Jewish money to get him elected ab initio, as every US president of recent memory. The 1951 picture below from Jeff's article, of a young JFK congressman in the home of the butcher of Palestine, David Ben Gurion, just three years into the founding of Israel on Palestinian blood and soil, screams louder than any words ever can. It appears kosher to fraternize with blood-drenched victorious founders of a nation, so long as they have kill[ed] in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

Yes, in this age and time, a country still remains oppressed by another, worse still, they are both African countries. Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (the people are known as Saharawi) is a former colony of the Spanish protectorate which is rich in mineral resources like phosphate mineral rock, it also has some of the best fishing grounds in the world, and its off-shore oil resources are currently being explored.

When Spain pulled out of the colony in 1975, it didn’t finish the decolonisation process and Morocco as its neighbour quickly invaded and took over. Mauritania also seized part of the land but soon returned it to the Saharawi and made peace with the Polisario Front, the political movement that continued to fight against Morocco.

Africa’s Last Colony: Spain’s Error, Morocco’s Sin aptly describes the situation and dire circumstances under which the Saharawi live. Water poisoning, torture, forced disappearances and other inhumane situations are some of the conditions under which the Saharawi live.

The book relays the experience of the author, Ike Abonyi who visited the country; Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic. In his foreword, he laments that the story of the country as being an emotional one which has since been ignored by the rest of the world.
The book is divided into three parts with an easy to read and understandable style.  Its full title is apt; Africa’s Last Colony: Spain’s Error, Morocco’s Sin; An African Journalist’s Diary On Western Sahara.

The foreword was written by Prof. Nuhu Yaqub, the immediate past Vice Chancellor of the University of Abuja who described it as a timely addition to literature on Africa’s decolonization process. Yaqub also agrees that many Africans even enlightened ones are ignorant of a country called Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, not to mention its struggle for independence from Morocco.

His foreword decries the hypocrisy of some of the Western countries who claim to uphold human rights; (France, Germany and Spain) for turning a blind eye to Morocco’s flagrant abuse of human rights. He adds that it is Nigeria’s duty to the African continent to assist Western Sahara secure its independence.

The first part of the book collates the history of Western Sahara, its history with Spain, Spain’s pullout, and Morocco/Mauritania invasion of the country. It also explains how Mauritania returned the land it had seized while Morocco stubbornly held on to its seized part.

Abonyi and other analysts blame Spain for not finishing the decolonisation process i.e., handing over to the Polisario Front, a political group which had been formed in 1973 to fight Spanish colonial rule.

Despite the 1975 ruling of the International Court of Justice that Western Sahara was a country on its own at the time of its colonisation by Spain, its sovereignty still belonged to its people, while Morocco refused to leave the occupied land and the war with the Polisario Front continued. In 1992, the United Nations brokered a cease-fire and passed referendum on self-determination of the Saharawi people but Morocco refused to allow it.

Over 150,000 Saharawi are internally displaced refugees living on a daily ration provided by the United Nations Food Programme while many are hounded into detention without trials or forced into exile.

In the second part, Abonyi narrates his personal experience on the trip to the country; how as a presidential guest, his bed was a six-inch mattress usually used in boarding schools in Nigeria. According to him, the camp has enjoyed some peace in the last 17 years, but most young Saharawi are disillusioned especially since Morocco simply exploits the resources of the country for itself alone, while ignoring the needs of the Saharawi.

The narration by Abonyi would elicit sympathy from every reader; he narrates how young Saharawi have lost their limbs, and in some cases their lives, with explosion of the mines, which Morocco has placed at the 2500km long wall erected on occupied Western Sahara.

He also narrates gory details of about 140 inmates of the Rehabilitation Centre for Victims of Mines and War located at the headquarters of administrative headquarters of the Saharawi camp.

The third part of Africa’s Last Colony is a collection of interviews with some dignitaries of Saharawi Government. In the interview, President Mohammed Abdulaziz praised Nigeria’s attitude towards other African nations, and its leadership role in the African continent. Other dignitaries who spoke to Abonyi include Mohamed Salem, the Commander of the Saharawi Military School, and Mohammed Yeslem Beisat, who is the Minister of African Affairs.

The author raises some very important questions; why did Spain not complete the decolonisation process by handing over to the Polisario Front? Why is the commonness of religion, language and geography not helping solve the problem between the two nations? Who manufactures and provides the weapons being used by the Moroccans to unleash terror on the Saharawi?  Which other countries are benefitting from Morocco’s exploitation of the Saharawi? What is the role of France, as the former colonial master of Morocco, in the whole situation?

Some other questions begging for answers are; why is the rest of the Arab world adopting an indifferent approach to the oppression of their ‘brothers’? How much pressure are the African Union and other regional organisations applying to Morocco especially as Western Sahara is also being recognised as a sovereign state.

Africa’s Last Colony brings to fore a true but pitiable situation that, while other people have moved on to battling internal problems such as ethnicity, nepotism and so on, an African nation is being deprived of self-rule by another African nation. The gruesomeness of the situation is that soldiers readily torture and kill, without a war situation in Saharawi, regardless of age or gender.

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/features/arts/2009/oct/27/arts-27-10-2009-002.html

In an unusual decision, the Norwegian Nobel Committee put an end to seven months of searching among the 205 nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize and conferred it upon Barack Obama.  The Norwegian committee's decision provoked very mixed international reactions: ranging from stupefaction to huge laughter.  The statement by the organization's president, Thorbjorn Jagland got straight to the point: "It's important for the Committee to recognize those people who are struggling and idealistic, but we cannot do that every year.  We must from time to time go into the realm of realpolitik.  It is always a mix of idealism and realpolitik that can change the world."  The problem with Obama is that his idealism remains at the level of rhetoric, while in the world of realpolitik, his initiatives could not be more antagonistic to the search for peace in this world.

Perhaps the common denominator in the special night prayers at West Bank mosques during Ramadan is a plea for Palestinian unity and an end to internal divisions that constitute a national crisis. It appears that the Palestinians must remain patient for some time longer before present factional fractures become a thing of the past. They are constantly told that every new proposal to reconcile Fatah and Hamas is the "last chance", to the extent that the phrase has become meaningless. When the said proposals fail, it is but a manifestation of how deep the fissures are that run between the two sides.

By all appearances, the fate of the plan presented recently by Cairo to end this standoff — which Egyptian officials hastily described as the "last chance" — will be similar to its predecessors. The document, of which Al-Ahram Weekly has received a copy, deals with two topics. First, it contains all the points of agreement reached by Fatah and Hamas in previous talks. Second, it proposes reconciliatory formulas to resolve issues of outstanding contention between the two sides. These include creating a factional committee to include all the factions, and that would be responsible for the administration of the Gaza Strip until elections are held. It also contains suggestions about the conditions in which elections should be held, security issues, political detainees, establishing a reconciliation committee, and where the factions stand on all matters.

Regarding the disparity between the movements' positions on the political agenda of the proposed national unity government, Cairo recommends the creation of a joint committee bringing together representatives from all the Palestinian factions in Gaza to implement the agreement. This committee will play the role of a governing body, and will be responsible for improving the political environment ahead of elections for the presidency, legislature and Palestinian National Council (PNC). It would also oversee the implementation of inter-Palestinian reconciliation, reconstruction in the Gaza Strip, and end bickering by the two factions regarding elections.

The Egyptians want to see agreement on presidential, legislative and PNC elections in the first half of 2010, and that all parties commit to it. Also, that the elections for the PNC should be based on representation both inside and outside Palestine. Meanwhile, legislative elections should be based on a mixed electoral system, where 75 per cent of members are elected on lists, and 25 per cent according to districts, with a two per cent margin as the requirement for victory. Cairo's ideas also include dividing the West Bank and Gaza Strip into 16 electoral districts where elections are overseen by Arab and international monitors.

As for the wrangle over the security format in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Egypt is suggesting that President Mahmoud Abbas issue a decree creating a Supreme Security Committee comprised of professional security officers by agreement. It would carry out its duties under Egyptian and Arab supervision and follow up on the implementation of what is agreed in Cairo. At the same time, Palestinian security forces would be re-established with the help of Egypt and Arab countries.

In what appears to be an accommodation to Hamas's demands, the restructuring of the security apparatus would include both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The plan recommends some 3,000 members of the police, national security and civil defence forces in the Gaza Strip as soon as an agreement is signed. This number will gradually increase according to an agreed mechanism until legislative elections are held. All materials required for these forces will be provided by Egypt and other Arab countries.

The proposal further suggests that the security apparatus will be categorised as national security forces, internal security forces, as well as intelligence forces. Accordingly, any existing or future forces would be integrated into one of the three categories.

A proposed national reconciliation committee would be responsible for drafting a "Charter of Honour" that would prohibit a return to armed infighting. The committee would also decide on the mechanism and means of applying what is agreed upon. On the very sensitive issue of political detainees, the Egyptian scheme proposes that both Fatah and Hamas put together lists of detainees based on the most recent figures. After verification, copies of the lists would be submitted to Egypt and a human rights group, chosen by agreement, by a set date. Each side would in principle release all prisoners before the implementation of the reconciliation agreement.

In response to Fatah's request, the plan states that after the detainees are released each side would present Egypt with a list of detainees who will not be set free and the reason for this decision. These reports would also be submitted to the leaderships of Fatah and Hamas. After the reconciliation agreement is signed, efforts would continue, with the participation of Egypt, to reach a final settlement on the issue of detainees.

While Palestinian factions welcomed the Egypt proposal in general, they voiced cautioned objections. At first, Fatah disagreed with the omission of 25 January 2010 as the date for presidential and legislative elections. Later, however, it recanted and agreed to hold elections in the first six months of next year. Fatah also remains critical of the creation of a committee to administer the Gaza Strip, because this would legitimise the Hamas government. Fatah also opposes suggestions pertaining to security, because that too would give credibility to the security apparatus created by Hamas after it took control of the Gaza Strip.

On the other side, Hamas refuses to postpone the issue of political detainees held in Palestinian Authority prisons until an agreement is signed, because it believes the issue is a top priority. The movement also rejects the idea of a committee charged with implementing the reconciliation agreement, but is willing to hear more details about the nature of the committee, how it will be formed, and its framework.

As for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), it asserts that the proposal to hold elections according to a mixed electoral system contradicts an agreement reached in Cairo in March 2009. The group also warns against dealing with the proposed factional committee to administer the Gaza Strip, because it would institutionalise divisions. It is also critical of the proposed security forces in the Strip. Meanwhile, the Islamic Jihad movement asserted that some ideas in the Egyptian proposal leave the door open for both sides to find loopholes and continue bickering.

Palestinian writer Talal Okal believes the most recent ideas from Cairo are similar to previous suggestions, all ignoring to reconcile the political differences between Fatah and Hamas. "The initiative is void of any thoughts on the core political differences that exist," Okal argued. Hamas, Okal continued, will only accept a political agenda based on "respecting" agreements signed by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Fatah rejects this in favour of a clause stipulating "commitment" to these agreements.

Ignoring this crucial issue of contention, asserts Okal, is a major oversight in the Egyptian proposal. "For a long time now, we have not heard about discussions on this issue," he said. "It is not possible to reunite the Palestinians without reaching a common political vision, especially in light of serious US and international efforts to revive the settlement process." Okal is sceptical that the international community seeks to reconcile deeply divided Palestinians, because division leave the Palestinians more vulnerable to pressure and compromise.

"Division will benefit the US because it would make it easy for Washington to propose ideas that benefit Israel." In a pessimistic tone, Okal noted that in order to implement the Egyptian framework other agreements would need to be struck, along with specific mechanisms for implementation. "Otherwise, the Egyptian proposal only constitutes an attempt at saving face, or a warning to the parties that Israel might pre- empt with an act of aggression that would dash any hope of dialogue," opined Okal.

While everyone ignores the Israeli position and its influence on the fate of Palestinian reconciliation, Israel's vice premier and minister of regional cooperation, Silvan Shalom, told Israeli Radio Sunday that the Israeli government believes that achieving Palestinian national unity "is proof that [Abbas] has abandoned reaching a settlement". Shalom added: "restoring national unity will give credibility to Hamas's role as an influential political player. And if so, it would not be possible to reach a political settlement that guarantees Israel's interests."

In sum, all signs indicate that occasional mediation efforts and proposals will not succeed in ending severe internal Palestinian fractures, not only because of the gravity of differences between Fatah and Hamas, but more importantly because of outside meddling.

Source: Al Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/965/re1.htm