Who are the Architects of Economic Collapse? Will an Obama Administration Reverse the Tide?

by Michel Chossudovsky

Most Serious Economic Crisis in Modern History

The October 2008 financial meltdown is not the result of a cyclical economic phenomenon. It is the deliberate result of US government policy instrumented through the Treasury and the US Federal Reserve Board.

This is the most serious economic crisis in World history.

The “bailout” proposed by the US Treasury does not constitute a “solution” to the crisis. In fact quite the opposite: it is the cause of further collapse. It triggers an unprecedented concentration of wealth, which in turn contributes to widening economic and social inequalities both within and between nations.

The levels of indebtedness have skyrocketed. Industrial corporations are driven into bankruptcy, taken over by the global financial institutions. Credit, namely the supply of loanable funds, which constitutes the lifeline of production and investment, is controlled by a handful of financial conglomerates.

With the “bailout”, the public debt has spiraled. America is the most indebted country on earth. Prior to the “bailout”, the US public debt was of the order of 10 trillion dollars. This US dollar denominated debt is composed of outstanding treasury bills and government bonds held by individuals, foreign governments, corporations and financial institutions.

“The Bailout”: The US Administration is Financing its Own Indebtedness

Ironically, the Wall Street banks –which are the recipients of the bailout money– are also the brokers and underwriters of the US public debt. Although the banks hold only a portion of the public debt, they transact and trade in US dollar denominated public debt instruments Worldwide.

In a bitter twist, the banks are the recipients of  a 700+ billion dollar handout and at the same time they act as creditors of the US government.

We are dealing with an absurd circular relationship: To finance the bailout, Washington must borrow from the banks, which are the recipients of the bailout.

The US administration is financing its own indebtedness.

Federal, State and municipal governments are increasingly in a straightjacket, under the tight control of the global financial conglomerates. Increasingly, the creditors call the shots on government reform.

The bailout is conducive to the consolidation and centralization of banking power, which in turn backlashes on real economic activity, leading to a string of bankruptcies and mass unemployment.

Will an Obama Administration Reverse the Tide?

The financial crisis is the outcome of a deregulated financial architecture.

Obama has stated unequivocally his resolve to address the policy failures of the Bush administration and “democratize” the US financial system. President-Elect Barack Obama says that he is committed to reversing the tide:

“Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers. In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people.” (President-elect Barack Obama, November 4, 2008, emphasis added)

The Democrats casually blame the Bush administration for the October financial meltdown.

Obama says that he will be introducing an entirely different policy agenda which responds to the interests of Main Street:

“Tomorrow, you can turn the page on policies that put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of men and women all across Main Street. Tomorrow you can choose policies that invest in our middle class and create new jobs and grow this economy so that everybody has a chance to succeed, from the CEO to the secretary and the janitor, from the factory owner to the men and women who work on the factory floor.( Barack Obama, election campaign, November 3, 2008, emphasis added)

Is Obama committed to “taming Wall Street” and “disarming financial markets”?

Ironically, it was under the Clinton administration that these policies of “greed and irresponsibility” were adopted.

The 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act (FSMA) was conducive to the the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. A pillar of President Roosevelt’s “New Deal”, the Glass-Steagall Act was put in place in response to the climate of corruption, financial manipulation and “insider trading” which resulted in more than 5,000 bank failures in the years following the 1929 Wall Street crash.

Bill Clinton signs into law the  Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act, November 12, 1999

Under the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, effective control over the entire US financial services industry (including insurance companies, pension funds, securities companies, etc.) had been transferred to a handful of financial conglomerates and their associated hedge funds.

The Engineers of Financial Disaster

Who are the architects of this debacle?

In a bitter irony, the engineers of financial disaster are now being considered by President-Elect Barack Obama’s Transition Team for the position Treasury Secretary:

Lawrence Summers played a key role in  lobbying Congress for the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act. His timely appointment by President Clinton in 1999 as Treasury Secretary spearheaded the adoption of the Financial Services Modernization Act in November 1999. Upon completing his mandate at the helm of the US Treasury, he became president of Harvard University (2001- 2006).

Paul Volker was chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in the l980s during the Reagan era. He played a central role in implementing the first stage of financial deregulation, which was conducive to mass bankruptcies, mergers and acquisitions, leading up to the 1987 financial crisis.

Timothy Geithner is CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which is the most powerful private financial institution in America. He was also a former Clinton administration Treasury official. He has worked for Kissinger Associates and has also held a senior position at the IMF. The FRBNY plays a behind the scenes role in shaping financial policy. Geithner acts on behalf of powerful financiers, who are behind the FRBNY. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)

Jon Corzine is currently governor of New Jersey, former CEO of Goldman Sachs.

Larry Summers (left) and Timothy Geithner

At the time of writing, Obama’s favorite is Larry Summers, front-runner for the position of Treasury Secretary.

Harvard University Economics Professor Lawrence Summers served as Chief Economist for the World Bank (1991–1993). He contributed to shaping the macro-economic reforms imposed on numerous indebted developing countries. The social and economic impact of these reforms under the IMF-World Bank sponsored structural adjustment program (SAP) were devastating, resulting in mass poverty.

Larry Summer’s stint at the World Bank coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the imposition of the IMF-World Bank’s deadly ” economic medicine” on Eastern Europe, the former Soviet republics and the Balkans.

In 1993, Summers moved to the US Treasury. He initially held the position of Undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs and later Deputy Secretary. In liaison with his former colleagues at the IMF and the World Bank, he played a key role in crafting the economic “shock treatment” reform packages imposed at the height of the 1997 Asian crisis on South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia.

The bailout agreements negotiated with these three countries were coordinated through Summers office at the Treasury in liaison with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Washington based Bretton Woods institutions. Summers worked closely with IMF Deputy Managing Director Stanley Fischer, who was later appointed Governor of the Central Bank of Israel.

Larry Summers became Treasury Secretary in July 1999. He is a protégé of David Rockefeller. He was among the main  architects of the infamous Financial Services Modernization Act, which provided legitimacy to inside trading and outright financial manipulation.

Larry Summers and David Rockefeller

“Putting the Fox in Charge of the Chicken Coop”

Summers is currently a Consultant to Goldman Sachs and managing director of a Hedge fund, the D.E. Shaw Group, As a Hedge Fund manager, his contacts at the Treasury and on Wall Street provide him with valuable inside information on the movement of financial markets.

Putting a Hedge Fund manager (with links to the Wall Street financial establishment) in charge of the Treasury is tantamount to putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.

The Washington Consensus

Summers, Geithner, Corzine, Volker, Fischer, Phil Gramm, Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Rubin, not to mention Alan Greenspan, al al. are buddies; they play golf together; they have links to the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg; they act concurrently in accordance with the interests of Wall Street; they meet behind closed doors; they are on the same wave length; they are Democrats and Republicans.

While they may disagree on some issues, they are firmly committed to the Washington-Wall Street Consensus. They are utterly ruthless in their management of  economic and financial processes. Their actions are profit driven. Outside of their narrow interest in the “efficiency” of “markets”, they have little concern for “living human beings”. How are people’s lives affected by the deadly gamut of macro-economic and financial reforms, which is spearheading entire sectors of economic activity into bankruptcy.

The economic reasoning underlying neoliberal economic discourse is often cynical and contemptuous. In this regard, Lawrence Summers’ economic discourse stands out. He is known among environmentalists for having proposed the dumping of toxic waste in Third World countries, because people in poor countries have shorter lives and the costs of labor are abysmally low, which essentially means that the market value of people in the Third World is much lower.  According to Summers, this makes it far more “cost effective” to export toxic materials to impoverished countries. A controversial 1991 World Bank memo signed by of Chief Economist Larry Summers reads as follows (excerpts, emphasis added):

DATE: December 12, 1991 TO: Distribution FR: Lawrence H. Summers Subject: GEP

“‘Dirty’ Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the Less Developed Countries? I can think of three reasons:

1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality…. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.

2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I’ve always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.

3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. [the demand increases when income levels increase]. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is is 200 per thousand…. “

http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/summers.htm

Summers stance on the export of pollution to developing countries had a marked impact on US environmental policy:

In 1994, “virtually every country in the world broke with Mr. Summers’ Harvard-trained “economic logic” ruminations about dumping rich countries’ poisons on their poorer neighbors, and agreed to ban the export of hazardous wastes from OECD to non-OECD [developing] countries under the Basel Convention. Five years later, the United States is one of the few countries that has yet to ratify the Basel Convention or the Basel Convention’s Ban Amendment on the export of hazardous wastes from OECD to non-OECD countries. (Jim Valette, Larry Summers’ War Against the Earth, Counterpunch, undated)

The 1997 Asian Crisis: Dress Rehearsal for Things to Come

In the course of 1997, currency speculation instrumented by major financial institutions directed against Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea was conducive to the collapse of national currencies and the transfer of billions of dollars of central bank reserves into private financial hands. Several observers pointed to the deliberate manipulation of equity and currency markets by investment banks and brokerage firms.

While the Asian bailout agreements were formally negotiated with the IMF, the major Wall Street commercial banks (including Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and J. P. Morgan) as well as the “big five” merchant banks (Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Salomon Smith Barney) were “consulted” on the clauses to be included in the Asian bail-out agreements. [Note: These are 1997 denominations of major financial institutions]

The US Treasury in liaison with Wall Street and the Bretton Woods institutions played a central role in negotiating the bailout agreements. Both Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, were actively involved on behalf of the US Treasury in the 1997 bailout of South Korea:

[In 1997] “Messrs. Summers and Geithner worked to persuade Mr. Rubin to support financial aid to South Korea. Mr. Rubin was wary of such a move, worrying that providing money to a country in dire straits might be a losing proposition…” (WSJ, November 8, 2008)

What happened in Korea under advice from Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers et al, had nothing to do with “financial aid”.

The country was literally ransacked. Undersecretary of the Treasury David Lipton was sent to Seoul in early December 1997. Secret negotiations were initiated.  Washington had demanded the firing of the Korean Finance Minister and the unconditional acceptance of the IMF “bailout”.

A new finance minister, who happened to be former IMF and World Bank official, was appointed  and immediately rushed off to Washington for “consultations” with his former IMF colleague Deputy Managing Director Stanley Fischer.

“The Korean Legislature had met in emergency sessions on December 23. The final decision concerning the 57 billion dollar deal took place the following day, on Christmas Eve December 24th, after office hours in New York. Wall Street’s top financiers, from Chase Manhattan, Bank America, Citicorp and J. P. Morgan had been called in for a meeting at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Also at the Christmas Eve venue, were representatives of the big five New York merchant banks including Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Salomon Smith Barney. And at midnight on Christmas Eve, upon receiving the green light from the banks, the IMF was allowed to rush 10 billion dollars to Seoul to meet the avalanche of maturing short-term debts.

The coffers of Korea’s central Bank had been ransacked. Creditors and speculators were anxiously awaiting to collect the loot. The same institutions which had earlier speculated against the Korean won were cashing in on the IMF bailout money. It was a scam. (See Michel Chossudovsky, The Recolonization of Korea, subsequently published as a chapter in The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, Montreal, 2003.)

“Strong economic medicine” is the prescription of the Washington Consensus.  “Short term pain for long term gain” was the motto at the World Bank during Lawrence Summers term of as World Bank Chief Economist. (See IMF, World Bank Reforms Leave Poor Behind, Bank Economist Finds, Bloomberg, November 7, 2000)

What we dealing with is an entire ” old boys network” of officials and advisers at the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the IMF, World Bank, the Washington Think Tanks, who are  in permanent liaison with leading financiers on Wall Street.

Whoever is chosen by Obama’s Transition team will belong to the Washington Consensus.

The 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act

What happened in October 1999 is crucial.

In the wake of lengthy negotiations behind closed doors, in the Wall Street boardrooms, in which Larry Summers played a central role, the regulatory restraints on Wall Street’s powerful banking conglomerates were revoked “with a stroke of the pen”.

Larry Summers worked closely with Senator Phil Gramm (1985-2002),chairman of the Senate Banking committee, who was the legislative architect of the  the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act, signed into law on November 12, 1999 (See Group Photo above). (For Complete text click US Congress: Pub.L. 106-102). As Texas Senator, Phil Gramm was closely associated with Enron.

In December 2000 at the very end of the Clinton mandate, Gramm introduced a second piece of legislation, the so-called Gramm-Lugar Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which paved the way for the speculative onslaught in primary commodities including oil and food staples.

“The act, he declared, would ensure that neither the sec nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (cftc) got into the business of regulating newfangled financial products called swaps—and would thus “protect financial institutions from overregulation” and “position our financial services industries to be world leaders into the new century.” (See David Corn, Foreclosure Phil, Mother Jones, July August 2008)

Phil Gramm was McCain’s first choice for Secretary of the Treasury.

Under the FSMA new rules – ratified by the US Senate in October 1999 and approved by President Clinton – commercial banks, brokerage firms, hedge funds, institutional investors, pension funds and insurance companies could freely invest in each others businesses as well as fully integrate their financial operations.

A “global financial supermarket” had been created, setting the stage for a massive concentration of  financial power. One of the key figures behind this project was Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, in liaison with David Rockefeller. Summers described the FSMA as “the legislative foundation of the financial system of the 21th century”.  That legislative foundation is among the main causes of the 2008 financial meltdown.

Financial Disarmament

There can be no meaningful solution to the crisis, unless there is a major reform in the financial architecture, implying inter alia the freezing of speculative trade and the “disarming of financial markets”.  The project of disarming financial markets was first proposed by John Maynard Keynes in the 1940s as a means to the establishment of a multipolar international monetary system. (See  J.M. Keynes, Activities 1940-1944, Shaping the Post-War World: The Clearing Union, The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, Royal Economic Society, Macmillan and Cambridge University Press, Vol. XXV, London 1980, p. 57).

Main Street versus Wall Street

Where are Obama’s “Main Street appointees”? Namely individuals who respond to the interests of people across America.  There are no labor or community leaders on Obama’s list for key positions.

The President-elect is appointing the architects of financial deregulation.

Meaningful financial reform cannot be adopted by officials appointed by Wall Street and who act on behalf of Wall Street.

Those who set the financial system ablaze in 1999, have been called back to turn out the fire.

The proposed “solution” to the crisis under the “bailout” is the cause of further economic collapse.

There are no policy solutions on the horizon.

The banking conglomerates call the shots. They decide on the composition of the Obama Cabinet. They also decide on the agenda of the Washington Financial Summit (November 15, 2008) which is slated to lay the groundwork for the establishment of a new “global financial architecture”.

The Wall Street blueprint has already been discussed behind closed doors: the hidden agenda is to establish a unipolar international monetary system, dominated by US financial power, which in turn would be protected and secured by US military superiority.

Neoliberalism with a “Human Face”

There is no indication that Obama will break his ties to his Wall Street sponsors, who largely funded his election campaign.

Goldman Sachs, J. P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bill Gates’ Microsoft are among his main campaign contributors.

Warren Buffett, among the the world’s richest individuals, not only supported Barak Obama’s election campaign, he is a member of his transition team, which plays a key role deciding the composition of Obama’s cabinet.

Warren Buffett

Unless there is a major upheaval in the system of political appointments to key positions, an alternative Obama economic agenda geared towards poverty alleviation and employment creation is highly unlikely.

Barack Obama. November 7 Press Conference.
Joe Biden (far left), newly appointed chief of staff Rahm Emanuel (far right). Photo: Charles Dharapak

What we are witnessing is continuity.

Obama provides a ” human face” to the status quo. This human face serves to mislead Americans on the nature of the economic and political process.

The neoliberal economic reforms remain intact.

The substance of these reforms including the “bailout” of America’s  largest financial institutions ultimately destroys the real economy, while spearheading entire areas of manufacturing and the services economy into bankruptcy.

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The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order by Michel Chossudovsky In this new and expanded edition of Chossudovsky’s international best-seller, the author outlines the contours of a New World Order which feeds on human poverty and the destruction of the environment, generates social apartheid, encourages racism and ethnic strife and undermines the rights of women. The result as his detailed examples from all parts of the world show so convincingly, is a globalization of poverty. This book is a skilful combination of lucid explanation and cogently argued critique of the fundamental directions in which our world is moving financially and economically. In this new enlarged edition –which includes ten new chapters and a new introduction– the author reviews the causes and consequences of famine in Sub-Saharan Africa, the dramatic meltdown of financial markets, the demise of State social programs and the devastation resulting from corporate downsizing and trade liberalisation. Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages. Published in 12 languages. More than 150,000 copies sold Worldwide. TO ORDER CLICK HERE

Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky

Gaza: The Destruction of a Civilization

“Their whole civilization has been destroyed, I’m not exaggerating.”

“It’s almost unbelievable that the world doesn’t care while this is happening.”

-Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner on Human rights, in reference to the effects of Israel’s continued blockade of Gaza

www.pchrgaza.org/…/gaza_closure/DSC00723.jpg

Courtesy of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights

The former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Mary Robinson, recently described the the impact of Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza on its civilians. Gaza has been under seize, imprisoned, and starved for over two years in response to the democratic election of Hamas in the Palestinian territories. Imagine what would happen if a Muslim, or Western government systematically starved Jewish children in response to the election of the Likud party in Israel!

Most Americans remain unaware of the situation in the Gaza strip; unaware of how the blockade has left over TWENTY percent of it’s children malnourished, and how it is destroying the remnants of Palestinian civilization. If this keeps up, a two state solution will be impossible since there will be nothing left of Palestine, and nobody to make peace with. While some Jews have rightfully spoken against these injustices, it is becoming painfully apparent that the Israeli government and most of it’s citizens are unwilling to make peace and are unwilling to stand by any commitment for a two state solution.

Read the full story below:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7708670.stm

The Promised Land? Obama, Emanuel, and Israel

by John V. Whitbeck

Global Research, November 8, 2008

Counterpunch - 2008-11-07

In the first major appointment of his administration, President-elect Barack Obama has named as his chief of staff Congressman Rahm Emanuel, an Israeli citizen and Israeli army veteran whose father, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was a member of Menachem Begin’s Irgun forces during the Nakba and named his son after “a Lehi combatant who was killed” — i.e., a member of Yitzhak Shamir’s terrorist Stern Gang, responsible for, in addition to other atrocities against Palestinians, the more famous bombing of the King David Hotel and assassination of the UN peace envoy Count Folke Bernadotte.

In rapid response to this news, the editorial in the next day’s Arab News (Jeddah) was entitled “Don’t pin much hope on Obama — Emanuel is his chief of staff and that sends a message”. This editorial referred to the Irgun as a “terror organization” (a judgment call) and concluded: “Far from challenging Israel, the new team may turn out to be as pro-Israel as the one it is replacing.”

That was always likely. Obama repeatedly pledged unconditional allegiance to Israel during his campaign, most memorably in an address to the AIPAC national convention which Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery characterized as “a speech that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning”, and America’s electing a black president has always been more easily imagined than any American president’s declaring his country’s independence from Israeli domination.

Still, one of the greatest advantages for the United States in electing Barack Hussein Obama was the prospect that the world’s billion-plus Muslims, who now view the United States with almost universal loathing and hatred, would be dazzled by the new president’s eloquence, life story, skin color and middle name, would think again with open minds and would give America a chance to redeem itself in their eyes and hearts — not incidently, drastically shortening the long lines of aspiring jihadis eager to sacrifice their lives while striking a blow against the evil empire.

The profound loathing and hatred of the Muslim world toward the United States, which has always had its roots for America’s unconditional support for the injustices inflicted and still being inflicted on the Palestinians, can fairly be considered the core of the primary foreign policy and “national security” problems confronting the United States in recent years. Why would Obama, a man of unquested brilliance, have chosen to send such a contemptuous message to the Muslim world with his first major appointment? Why would he wish to disabuse the Muslim world of its hopes (however modest) and slap it across the face at the ealiest opportunity?

A further contemptuous message is widely rumored to be forthcoming — the naming as “Special Envoy for Middle East Peace” of Dennis Ross, the notorious Israel-Firster who, throughout the 12 years of the Bush the First and Clinton administrations, ensured that American policy toward the Palestinians did not deviate one millimeter from Israeli policy and that no progress toward peace could be made and who has since headed the AIPAC spin-off “think tank”, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Neverthess, since it is almost always constructive to seek a silver lining in the darkest clouds, a silver lining can be found and cited. For decades, the Palestinian leadership has been “waiting for Godot” — waiting for the U.S. Government to finally do the right thing (if only in its own obvious self-interest) and to force Israel to comply with international law and UN Resolutions and permit them to have a decent mini-state on a tiny portion of the land that once was theirs.

This was never a realistic hope. It has not happened, and it will never happen. So it may well be salutary not to waste eight more days (let alone eight more years) playing along and playing the fool while more Palestinian lands are confiscated and more Jewish colonies and Jews-only bypass roads are built on them, clinging to the delusion that the charming Mr. Obama, admirable though he may be in so many other respects, will eventually (if only in a second term, when he no longer has to worry about reelection) see the light and do the right thing. It is long overdue for the Palestinians themselves to seize the initiative, to reset the agenda and to declare a new “only game in town”.

Furthermore, in February, Israel will elect a new Knesset. Bibi Netanyahu, who, most polls and coalition-building calculations suggest, is most likely to emerge as the next prime minister, has one (if only one) great virtue. He is absolutely honest in not professing any desire (however insincere) to see the creation of any Palestinian “state” (whether decent or less-than-a-Bantustan in nature) or to engage in any talks (even never-ending and fraudulent ones) ostensibly about that possibility. His return to power would definitively slam the door on the illusion of a “two-state solution” somewhere over an ever-receding horizon.

This would constitute a blessing and a liberation for Palestinian minds and Palestinian aspirations. Their leadership(s) could then return, after a long, costly and painful diversion, to fundamental principles, to pursuing the goal of a democratic, nonracist and nonsectarian state in all of Israel/Palestine with equal rights for all who live there.

This just goal could and should be pursued by strictly nonviolent means. If the goal is to convince a determined and powerful settler-colonial movement which wishes to seize your land, settle it and keep it (eventually cleansing it of you and your fellow natives) that it should cease, desist and leave, nonviolent forms of resistance are suicidal. If, however, the goal were to be to obtain the full rights of citizenship in a democratic, nonracist state (as was the case in the American civil rights movement and the South African anti-apartheid movement), then nonviolence would be the only viable approach. Violence would be totally inappropriate and counterproductive. The morally impeccable approach would also be the tactically effective approach. The high road would be the only road.

No American president — least of all Barack Obama — could easily support racism and apartheid and oppose democracy and equal rights, particularly if democracy and equal rights were being pursued by nonviolent means. No one anywhere could easily do so. The writing would be on the wall, and the clock would be running out on the tired game of using a perpetual “peace process” as an excuse to delay decisions (while building more “facts on the ground”) forever.

Democracy and equal rights would not come quickly or easily. Forty years passed between when, on the night before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King cried out that he had been to the mountain top and had seen the promised land and when Barack Obama was elected as president of the United States. (The Bible suggests a similar waiting period in the wilderness for Moses.) Forty-six years passed between the installation of a formal apartheid regime in South Africa and the election of Nelson Mandela as president of a fully democratic and nonracist “rainbow nation”.

While it may be be hoped that the transformation would be significantly quicker in Israel/Palestine, it is clear that many who already qualify as “senior citizens” will not live to see the promised land. However, if the promised land of a democratic state with equal rights for all is correctly and clearly perceived and persistently and peacefully pursued, there is ample reason for confidence that Israel/Palestine will one day experience the tearful exaltation of a “Mandela Moment” or an “Obama Moment”, restoring hope in the moral potential both of a nation and of mankind, and that the Jews, Muslims and Christians who live there will finally reach their promised land.

John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel, is author of “The World According to Whitbeck”.

The Zionist Lobby and the War on Iraq: Why the U.S. Really Went to War

One of the most pressing issues discussed during the 2008 Presidential Election between Democratic candidate Obama and Republican candidate John McCain was not surprisingly, the war and occupation of Iraq. Obama’s overwhelming victory on November 4, 2008, without a doubt, energized the anti-war movement—a movement that has waited desperately for the departure of the discredited Bush regime. Obama  claimed during the debates that the Iraq war was a “mistake”, and he had also expressed opposition to the war before it began. Furthermore, the defeated Republican candidate John McCain was one of the most voracious supporters of the war and repeatedly argued during the debates that the so called “surge” was working. In spite of the differences between candidates, it would behoove the anti-war movement to bear in mind that Obama has continuously supported funding for the war during his brief stint in the U.S. senate.  Obama’s alleged anti-war position is further muddied by his rhetoric about shifting the focus of the “War on Terror” to Afghanistan.

The overall state of affairs is especially troubling considering the fact that the war has now dragged on nearly six years, and that close to half of the American public (not to mention 90 percent of the rest of the world; Iraqi’s included) oppose the perpetual occupation of Iraq. In order to build an effective campaign against the war, it is important for the anti-war movement to understand the causes of the Iraq war, including the groups and individuals that lobbied for the war. Simplistic slogans used by the anti-war movement, such as “No blood for oil”, obscure the true motivations behind the decision to go to war, and in doing so, essentially absolve the architects that provoked the war from much of their responsibility.

The origins and precursors of the invasion, included the powerful institutions that lobbied for the war, are seldom discussed by the anti-war movement, much less the Zionist controlled media. The role that the Israel lobby played in manipulating general public opinion, U.S. lawmakers, and the even the presidential administration has been entirely overlooked and suppressed in the debate about the war. In a recent exposee of the power that the Israel lobby wields over American foreign policy, Mearsheimer and Walt (2006: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy) recounted how the Israel lobby and Jewish extremist neocons planned the illegal and unconstitutional invasion of Iraq. The authors painstakingly pointed out how both the Israel lobby and neocon Think Tanks justified the war on the grounds that the removal of Saddam would benefit “ISRAEL’S SECURITY” (they named only Israel; not other countries in the Middle East).. In order to sell the war to the American public of course, they concocted lies about “weapons of mass destruction” (fabrications that were in part supplied by Israeli intelligence), and made patently false claims about alleged ties between Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and bin Laden’s terrorists.

It is important to mention that the authors argued that the claim that American invaded Iraq over oil resources is questionable at best. It is true, however, that the oil industry under Saddam Hussein’s government was nationalized, and profits derived from oil sales were allocated by the government rather than controlled by foreign corporations. Furthermore, the fact that Iraq had vast oil reserves meant that oil revenues could help pay for the war, which as we know, included profitable contracts for some U.S. firms like Halliburton. However, the U.S. could have easily purchased oil under Saddam, most likely at highly favorable prices. It should also be pointed out that U.S. oil cartels also have access to vast oil reserves in other Middle Eastern countries like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

The planners and architects of the Iraq war were not oil companies, but instead Zionist neocons and Jewish supremacist organizations ranging from the Israel lobby (AIPAC), Christian Zionists, and highly influential Zionist Think Tanks such as the Jewish institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), and the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Vice President Dick Cheney and his fellow colluders in PNAC, in particular, were the architects and planners behind the invasion and occupation of Iraq. PNAC has openly advocated “regime change” in Iraq for well over a decade.

The Plans for War

Their reasons for going to war, as already intimated, were motivated largely by unfounded concerns about Israel’s Security. In fact evidence shows that Chaney and his fellow mafia thugs convinced Bush to go to war and abandon his “conservative principles” he outlined during his 2000 election campaign (http://zfacts.com/p/775.html). The Zionist-Nazi PNAC criminals who supported the Iraq war since the 1990’s onward included individuals such as: William Kristol (PNAC Chair), Paul Wolfowitz (former head of the World Bank), Abrams, Scooter Libby, Bolton, Perl, Feith, Wurmser, Rumsfeld, and Fairbanks. These individuals not only have considerable clout in directing the course of U.S. foreign policy, they are also intensely loyal to the most the most right wing elements of Israel’s society, and openly plan on forging a permanent alliance between the America and Israel.

Yes, the war and occupation of Iraq were planned by the most far right and Zionist elements of the American elite over the past decade, and unfortunately, they show no signs of slowing down. Here is a chronology of several key events leading to the Iraq war:

Feith, Wurmser, and Fairbank, all of whom were PNAC associates, issued a report in the 1990’s concerning why the removal of Saddam Hussein was crucial to Israel’s security. The report was delivered in person by Perle to Israel’s prime minister.

In 1998, PNAC issue a letter to President Clinton drawing up a plan to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Bolton and Abrams wrote that “Bombing Iraq wasn’t enough”. This became known as the Wolfowitz plan; part of the U.S. foreign policy strategy known as the Wolfowitz doctrine (a doctrine better known by the American public as the “Bush Doctrine”). In 1999, the Neocons (e.g. Wurmser) issued a book on Israeli/US strategic interests in Iraq and called for ground troops to remove Iraq.

The war planning continued through the 2000 presidential election, and culminated in a 2001 memo written before 9/11. The neocons planned on a minimum of 50,000 troops and argued that “Thousands of Iraqi soldiers would likely change sides and fight.” As far as post a Saddam leadership was concerned, they argued that “Chalabi may be ideal man to lead the opposition. He is rich and upper class” (see http://zfacts.com/p/775.html).

The events of 9/11 became the ultimate selling point for the Iraq war. Did Cheney and company try to find the culprits behind the tragedy of 9/11? No. Instead of launching an investigation into these horrendous events, Cheney tried to block any investigation into 9/11 as grief stricken families lined up and tried to find answers. Meanwhile, he and his fellow Zionists in PNAC were ready to execute a war that they had spent years planning—only now they had a false pretense to attack the sovereign nation of Iraq. On the day of September 11, 2001, Rumsfeld remarked “Go massive. Sweep it all up. Related and not… In the ensuing days”. Perle stated that “even if evidence does not link Iraq” remove Saddam Hussein. Focuses on Iraq, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Authority, [and] little on Bin Laden.” (see http://zfacts.com/p/775.html).

Conclusion

While it is encouraging to see a burgeoning anti-war movement oppose the illegal war and invasion of Iraq that has killed hundreds of thousand of Iraqi’s, crippled their society, and led to the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, it is increasingly important for progressives to examine the true motivations behind the war: The Israel Lobby and their sychophants. The key is to prevent more of Israel’s contrived wars from being sold to the American public. War and violence cannot be adequately confronted, opposed, or prevented unless the “The Master’s of War”, to quote Bob Dylan, are unmasked and their ungodly motivations exposed. Unfortunately, Iraq does not seem to be the last stop for these radical neocons, and the prospects of Obama bringing “change” to the current state of affairs remains sketchy, considering that he stood up in front of an enthusiastic crowd at an AIPAC gathering and explained how he would do “anything…anything” to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear technology. It is up to the progressive community to build a foundation and stop future wars against Iran, Syria, Korea DPR,…,Russia, from becoming reality.

Assyrians: Martyrs in Iraq?

After the U.S.-Zionist led invasion of Iraq, several hundred thousand Iraqi Christians have been forcibly removed from their homes, tortured, or killed. It is estimated that only one quarter of Iraq’s previous Christian population remains. Sadly, these events have been under-reported or entirely ignored in the media, which at the moment, is focused on the ’success of the Surge’, and the farcical presidential election coming up on November 4th. Prior to the invasion, Iraq had a vibrant Christian community (one of the oldest in the world) that generally prospered under the Baath regime. Several senior members of the government, including Tariq Aziz (Member of the Revolutionary Command Council) were part of Iraq’s Christian community.

by Kenneth Timmerman

Global Research, October 27, 2008

Assyrian International News Agency - 2008-10-26

Assyrian Christians are fleeing Iraq in record numbers, following a spate of recent bombing attacks and targeted killings of Christian families in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Over the last month, 13 Assyrian Christians have been murdered in targeted killings in Mosul. A week ago, three Assyrian homes were fire-bombed. Al Jazeera reported last Monday that 15,000 Assyrian Christians have been driven out of Mosul in the last two weeks, some 2,500 families in all.

Failure to prevent the mass exodus of Christians from Iraq will lead to an Islamicized Iraq, a tragic legacy for the presidency of George W. Bush. This can only be averted by taking urgent steps aimed at “anchoring” the Assyrian Christian population in their historic homeland.

Gen. Michel Kasdano, a top aid to the Chaldean bishopric of Beirut - where some of the Christians forced to flee Iraq have sought refuge - met with congressional staff and with members of the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom, to appeal for urgent help. “We’re seeing a new phenomenon since the murder of [Chaldean] Bishop Faraj Rahho in late February,” he told me.

Until recently, Christians under attack in Baghdad and Basra fled to the relative security of the Nineveh Plain in the north, where many found shelter with family members, thinking they could tough it out until better times. No longer, says Gen. Kasdano. “Now, even old people are getting ready to leave,” he told me.

I have visited northern Iraq and refugee families in Amman, Jordan, twice over the last year. The level of despair among refugee families was acute even before the murder of Bishop Rahho. But when I returned to the region in mid-April, it had reached agonizing proportions.

None of the refugees I met in Amman in April expressed any confidence in the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and none wanted to return to Iraq. They preferred the squalor and uncertainty of life in exile to what they felt was certain death if they returned home.

Many of these refugees “will never be resettled but will remain trapped in neighboring countries,” Gen. Kasdano told me.

The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) has taken the Assyrian Christians in Ainkawa and in the Nineveh Plains hostage in their efforts to win more territory in the coming votes on the status of Mosul and Kirkuk.

On Oct. 17, Iraqi security forces arrested six men in connection with the most recent targeted killings of Christians, and found four of them had ties back to the KRG militia, not al Qaeda.

While Kurdish leaders protest they have made efforts to protect freedom of religion and have allowed evangelical Christians to proselytize in Muslim areas, nevertheless they are engaged in a cynical effort to use the Assyrian Christians as political pawns to expand their own power.

To avert an Islamicized Iraq, President Bush should take the following steps:

* Pressure the Iraqi government, and especially the KRG, to uphold their commitment to allow the recruitment and training of 770 Christians into the national police force. For nearly two years, the Kurdish deputy general of the Mosul governerate has blocked this program. Without immediate security, the Assyrian population in northern Iraq will simply flee.

* Support efforts by Assyrian lay leaders, the Chaldean Patriarch and others to convene a meeting in Washington, D.C., of Iraqi minorities, to forge a consensus on how best to anchor and protect Iraq’s Christian population, whether through an autonomous region in the Nineveh Plain, firm guarantees of minority rights under the federal constitution or some combination of the two.

* Fulfill the pledge made in July by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to Mr. al-Maliki to transfer $100 million in development aid to the Nineveh Plain. Until now, the United States has delayed the transfer over concerns that the KRG will pocket the money, as in the past. Instead of transferring fresh funds to Erbil, the United States should make the money available directly to local town councils through US AID, without Kurdish control.

* Pressure the Iraqi national government to guarantee representation of minorities in the upcoming parliamentary and regional elections, under Article 50 of the constitution, which was recently suspended.

Christian leaders learned recently that the State Department has been secretly planning to hold a “summit” meeting on Nov. 19 at George Washington University to decide their fate, in tandem with Muslim groups whose motives remain suspect. This is no way to determine the future of Iraq or of Iraq’s Assyrian population.

Have we become so politically correct that we will protect Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq but allow one of the world’s first Christian populations to be snuffed out because we are afraid to come to their aid?

Kenneth Timmerman is a contributing editor for Newsmax Media, and has visited Iraq twice over the last year.

US Government Report Undermines Zimbabwe Opposition’s Claim of Independence

By Stephen Gowans

The US government had a hand in formulating the policy platform of the Tsvangirai faction of the Movement for Democratic Change, Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, and funded community-based newsletters to create a platform to persuade Zimbabweans to accept Washington’s point of view, according to a US government report. The report boasts that Washington is the undisputed leader in nurturing anti-government civil society organizations in Zimbabwe, operating through a CIA-interlocked organization led by former New York investment banker and Michael Milken right-hand man, Peter Ackerman.

In a November 16, 2007 letter accompanying the US State Department’s “Zimbabwe 2007 Performance Report,” US ambassador to Zimbabwe James McGee wrote that,

“Working closely with like-minded governments, we continued diplomatic efforts to maintain pressure on the Government of Zimbabwe and to remind the regime that fundamental changes…are a prerequisite to reengagement with the international community.”

McGee called for economic reform, translated as abandonment of Harare’s economic program of favoring Zimbabweans over foreign investors, an end to price controls, and privatization of state-owned enterprises.

The neo-liberal, foreign investor-friendly economic policies Washington favors are central to the policy platform of the Tsvangirai faction of the MDC. The State Department document reveals that the MDC’s policy orientation may be based more on US government direction than its own deliberations. According to the report,

“The (US government)…assisted the MDC to effectively identify, research, and articulate policy positions and ideas within Zimbabwe, in the region, and beyond. In particular, (US government) technical assistance was pivotal in supporting (the) MDC’s formulation and communication of a comprehensive policy platform.”

Critics of the party point to the absence of any difference between its policy proposals and those favored in Washington for African countries, an absence that may be explained in the US government’s helping “the MDC to identify, research, and articulate policy positions and ideas, and develop and communicate a policy platform.”

US government assistance to the MDC’s Tsvangirai faction didn’t stop at formulating and articulating a policy platform, the report says, but extended to helping the MDC formulate strategy to oppose the Mugabe government. According to the State Department, the US government,

“provided technical assistance to the MDC…to enable it to conduct regular strategic planning meetings to establish goals, identify key objectives, prioritize activities, and determine performance benchmarks.”

The tone of the report paints Zimbabweans as being incapable of establishing goals, setting priorities, and measuring performance themselves and therefore requiring US assistance to perform basic organizational tasks. It may be that the assistance US advisors provided is more accurately, and less tactfully, called direction.

The technical aid was furnished by the International Republican Institute, the Republican Party arm of the US Congress’s National Endowment for Democracy, whose chairman is John McCain. According to the State Department document, the,

“IRI held a workshop for Tsvangirai’s shadow government at which each shadow minister presented and defended his/her policy positions. A panel of technical experts grilled presenters on the technical content of their policies.”

This assistance was deemed by the State Department to be “critical to building the capacity of (the MDC) to operate effectively and to enable (it) to contend in the (2008) Presidential and Parliamentary elections, and to be prepared to govern.”

On top of helping the MDC shape its policy platform, the report also reveals that the US government helped shape public opinion in Zimbabwe through support for Voice of America broadcasting and community-based newsletters.

While portraying its role as simply one of delivering assistance, the State Department makes clear in its report that the newsletters provided the US government with a platform “to inform Zimbabweans about issues important to them.” Rather than funding community-based journalism, the report reveals that the State Department underwrote the newsletters to use them as vehicles for disseminating US government propaganda.

The State Department report also offers insight into the financial lengths Washington was prepared to go to create and sustain a civil society apparatus to oppose the Mugabe government. In 2007, Washington gave Freedom House and PACT a total of $1.8 million to back civil society organizations that were hostile to the Mugabe government. Freedom House, headed by former Michael Milken right-hand man, Peter Ackerman, is interlocked with the CIA, according to Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent.

In addition, over $400,000 was funnelled to Voice of America to counter Harare’s efforts to jam VOA anti-government broadcasts. Washington had been supporting VOA’s Studio 7, an anti-Mugabe radio program, since 2002. According to the report, “the program consisted of English, Shona and Ndebele broadcasts for an hour and a half per day, five days per week, until July 2007, when broadcasts were expanded to seven days a week.”

To thwart Harare’s jamming efforts, VOA’s broadcast time was expanded, and shortwave radios were distributed to Zimbabweans. In addition, publicity campaigns were undertaken to build Studio 7’s profile “via the distribution of calendars and pens, advertising in the print media and a text messaging campaign.”

The State Department describes Studio 7 as providing a platform for groups opposed to the Mugabe government and its land reform and economic indigenization policies: “the political opposition, exile groups, democracy activists and human rights proponents” – largely the same groups the US government was funding through Freedom House and PACT.

Conspicuously absent from the report’s list of political parties the US government provided “democracy and governance” assistance to in 2007 was Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party. Defenders of US democracy promotion insist that the US government promotes democratic processes aboard, not political parties, but only one party in Zimbabwe received US government assistance: the Tsvangirai faction of the MDC.

That, however, wasn’t Washington’s goal. The report says the US government planned to aid two political parties in Zimbabwe: presumably Tsvangirai’s MDC faction and the MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara. But when the US government approached Mutamabara’s party, it was “rebuffed.” Mutambara has complained publicly about US imperialism and hypocrisy in its foreign policy and has manoeuvred to keep himself free from the taint of being an instrument of Western foreign policy.

To square the circle, and prove that it is promoting democracy and not political parties, the US government calls Tsvangirai’s MDC faction the “democratic opposition.” It is not by accident that the MDC’s full name is “the Movement for Democratic Change,” or that another party that once received US government assistance, Serbia’s the DOS, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, also incorporated the word democracy into its name. The Western mass media mimic the US government designation of the foreign political parties Washington supports as being a “democratic opposition”, thus reinforcing the deception that US support for selected foreign political parties is democracy promotion, not illegitimate interference in the internal politics of other countries.

The report boasts that the US has been “the undisputed leader among the donor community in providing assistance to civil society,” providing “technical assistance and small grants to 29” civil society organizations through its “implementing partners”, Freedom House and PACT. Grants and assistance were provided to improve “strategic planning, communication, proposal writing (and) platform development.”

Proposal writing is emphasized, the report explains, to equip civil society organizations with the skills necessary to land additional grants from private foundations. According to the State Department,

“youth organizations like the Zimbabwe National Students’ Union (ZINASU) and Youth Initiatives for Democracy in Zimbabwe (YIDEZ) are two good examples of…(civil society organizations that were) nurtured through US (State Department) funding from an idea to a level where they are able to stand on their own and attract other funders.”

Defenders of the idea that civil society organizations are not created and guided by US government funding, but represent spontaneously arising grassroots organizations that would exist even if they hadn’t received US government largesse, paint a picture far different from the report’s reference to Washington nurturing civil society organizations from an idea to a level where they’re able to attract other funders and stand on their own.

The MDC insists it is an independent political party, and anti-Mugabe civil society organizations and their defenders are adamant that Zimbabwe’s civil society is not under foreign control. Scholar Patrick Bond has declared an underground anti-Mugabe organization that receives US government-funding to be part of an independent left, while scholar Stephen Zunes says Women of Zimbabwe Arise, a group singled out in the State Department report as receiving US government funding, can in no way be considered an agent of the US government. These defenders of anti-Mugabe organizations appear to be unfamiliar with the pivotal role played by the US government in nurturing and sustaining Zimbabwe’s civil opposition.

The MDC has received considerable assistance and guidance from Washington and the John McCain-led IRI, in developing and articulating its policy platform, and in formulating strategy to defeat the Mugabe government.

In its opposition to Zanu-PF, it has been helped by civil society organizations funded by the US government through Freedom House and PACT, and by US government-funded community-based newsletters and the VOA’s Studio 7, which have served as platforms for disseminating the point of view of the US government and the views of Mugabe-opponents.

The report, then, reveals how the US government has taken advantage of Zimbabwe’s relative openness to intervene in the country’s internal political affairs to try to bring to power a party whose platform it had a hand in formulating.

Harare has taken steps to counter Washington’s illegitimate interventions, including jamming VOA broadcasts, barring journalists and election observers from the US, and banning some NGOs. These measures have been denounced by Washington as “undemocratic” and “authoritarian” and therefore as reasons for intervention. But the causal sequence is backwards.

The measures Washington calls anti-democratic and authoritarian didn’t cause the US to help the MDC write and communicate its policy platform, to nurture and fund government-hostile civil society organizations, and to provide Mugabe’s opponents a vehicle through Studio 7 and community-based newsletters to shape public opinion. On the contrary, all these things caused Harare to take the measures that have been denounced as anti-democratic and authoritarian as a means to limit Washington’s illegitimate interference in Zimbabwe’s democratic space.

Anyone who was truly interested in promoting democracy would press Washington to stop its interference in Zimbabwe, rather than lionize US-backed civil society organizations as a spontaneously arising pro-democracy people’s movement, as an independent left that people should look to understand what’s going on in Zimbabwe (Bond), or as groups that can in no way be considered agents of the US government (Zunes).

Israeli best seller breaks national taboo

by Jonathan Cook Global Research, October 8, 2008 Idea of a Jewish people invented, says historian No one is more surprised than Shlomo Sand that his latest academic work has spent 19 weeks on Israel’s bestseller list – and that success has come to the history professor despite his book challenging Israel’s biggest taboo. Dr Sand argues that the idea of a Jewish nation – whose need for a safe haven was originally used to justify the founding of the state of Israel – is a myth invented little more than a century ago. An expert on European history at Tel Aviv University, Dr Sand drew on extensive historical and archaeological research to support not only this claim but several more – all equally controversial. In addition, he argues that the Jews were never exiled from the Holy Land, that most of today’s Jews have no historical connection to the land called Israel and that the only political solution to the country’s conflict with the Palestinians is to abolish the Jewish state. The success of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? looks likely to be repeated around the world. A French edition, launched last month, is selling so fast that it has already had three print runs. Translations are under way into a dozen languages, including Arabic and English. But he predicted a rough ride from the pro-Israel lobby when the book is launched by his English publisher, Verso, in the United States next year. In contrast, he said Israelis had been, if not exactly supportive, at least curious about his argument. Tom Segev, one of the country’s leading journalists, has called the book “fascinating and challenging”. Surprisingly, Dr Sand said, most of his academic colleagues in Israel have shied away from tackling his arguments. One exception is Israel Bartal, a professor of Jewish history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Writing in Haaretz, the Israeli daily newspaper, Dr Bartal made little effort to rebut Dr Sand’s claims. He dedicated much of his article instead to defending his profession, suggesting that Israeli historians were not as ignorant about the invented nature of Jewish history as Dr Sand contends. The idea for the book came to him many years ago, Dr Sand said, but he waited until recently to start working on it. “I cannot claim to be particularly courageous in publishing the book now,” he said. “I waited until I was a full professor. There is a price to be paid in Israeli academia for expressing views of this sort.” Dr Sand’s main argument is that until little more than a century ago, Jews thought of themselves as Jews only because they shared a common religion. At the turn of the 20th century, he said, Zionist Jews challenged this idea and started creating a national history by inventing the idea that Jews existed as a people separate from their religion. Equally, the modern Zionist idea of Jews being obligated to return from exile to the Promised Land was entirely alien to Judaism, he added. “Zionism changed the idea of Jerusalem. Before, the holy places were seen as places to long for, not to be lived in. For 2,000 years Jews stayed away from Jerusalem not because they could not return but because their religion forbade them from returning until the messiah came.” The biggest surprise during his research came when he started looking at the archaeological evidence from the biblical era. “I was not raised as a Zionist, but like all other Israelis I took it for granted that the Jews were a people living in Judea and that they were exiled by the Romans in 70AD. “But once I started looking at the evidence, I discovered that the kingdoms of David and Solomon were legends. “Similarly with the exile. In fact, you can’t explain Jewishness without exile. But when I started to look for history books describing the events of this exile, I couldn’t find any. Not one. “That was because the Romans did not exile people. In fact, Jews in Palestine were overwhelming peasants and all the evidence suggests they stayed on their lands.” Instead, he believes an alternative theory is more plausible: the exile was a myth promoted by early Christians to recruit Jews to the new faith. “Christians wanted later generations of Jews to believe that their ancestors had been exiled as a punishment from God.” So if there was no exile, how is it that so many Jews ended up scattered around the globe before the modern state of Israel began encouraging them to “return”? Dr Sand said that, in the centuries immediately preceding and following the Christian era, Judaism was a proselytising religion, desperate for converts. “This is mentioned in the Roman literature of the time.” Jews travelled to other regions seeking converts, particularly in Yemen and among the Berber tribes of North Africa. Centuries later, the people of the Khazar kingdom in what is today south Russia, would convert en masse to Judaism, becoming the genesis of the Ashkenazi Jews of central and eastern Europe. Dr Sand pointed to the strange state of denial in which most Israelis live, noting that papers offered extensive coverage recently to the discovery of the capital of the Khazar kingdom next to the Caspian Sea. Ynet, the website of Israel’s most popular newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, headlined the story: “Russian archaeologists find long-lost Jewish capital.” And yet none of the papers, he added, had considered the significance of this find to standard accounts of Jewish history. One further question is prompted by Dr Sand’s account, as he himself notes: if most Jews never left the Holy Land, what became of them? “It is not taught in Israeli schools but most of the early Zionist leaders, including David Ben Gurion [Israel’s first prime minister], believed that the Palestinians were the descendants of the area’s original Jews. They believed the Jews had later converted to Islam.” Dr Sand attributed his colleagues’ reticence to engage with him to an implicit acknowledgement by many that the whole edifice of “Jewish history” taught at Israeli universities is built like a house of cards. The problem with the teaching of history in Israel, Dr Sand said, dates to a decision in the 1930s to separate history into two disciplines: general history and Jewish history. Jewish history was assumed to need its own field of study because Jewish experience was considered unique. “There’s no Jewish department of politics or sociology at the universities. Only history is taught in this way, and it has allowed specialists in Jewish history to live in a very insular and conservative world where they are not touched by modern developments in historical research. “I’ve been criticised in Israel for writing about Jewish history when European history is my specialty. But a book like this needed a historian who is familiar with the standard concepts of historical inquiry used by academia in the rest of the world.” Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net. A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.

Commemorating an “Incomparable” Military Hero: A Patriot of an Oppressed Nation

Vo Nguyen Giap at 97

Vietnam’s Incomparable Military Hero

By G. Dunkel

Sep 4, 2008 10:59 PM

Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, a hero and leader in Vietnam’s struggle against Japanese, French and U.S. imperialism, celebrated his 97th birthday on Aug. 25. Nông Duc Manh, secretary general of the Vietnamese Communist Party, told Giap that he was “an elder of the Vietnamese People’s Army who remained a wonderful example for the younger generations.”

A decisive moment: Giap at the founding of the Vietnam People’s Army.

Besides Manh, other prominent leaders of the Vietnamese party and state also paid Giap a visit on his birthday, along with 30 foreign delegations.

Even his adversaries, like retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Harold Moore, who led a battle against troops Giap commanded in 1965, called Giap “arguably one of the greatest military commanders of the 20th century.”

Using skills developed in his early career in the 1930s as a revolutionary journalist, Giap also described and analyzed the struggles he led. Two of his significant books in English are “Banner of People’s War, the Party’s Military Line” (Praeger, 1970) and “The Military Art of People’s War” (Monthly Review, 1970).

Giap’s parents were fairly well-off farmers from families who opposed the French colonialists then ruling Vietnam. In 1925 he joined a youth group opposed to French occupation. Giap did time in French prisons when he was 19 and joined the Communist Party. After his release, he completed his education and became a teacher, revolutionary journalist and agitator. In the late 1930s he was sent to China to work with Ho Chi Minh in organizing a revolutionary movement among Vietnamese exiles.

During World War II, Japan displaced France as the colonial power in Vietnam. Giap returned home in 1944 to organize against the Japanese occupation. After the August Revolution in 1945 that overthrew Japanese rule, Giap became interior minister in Ho Chi Minh’s government.

But France began reoccupying Vietnam in the fall of 1945. The Communist Party decided that Vietnam needed an army. Giap was picked to form and lead it.

In a 2003 interview, Giap said the army’s goal “was to lean upon military action as a way to organize the masses, produce a military effect beneficial toward revolution, thus developing and reinforcing the political stand of the Viet Minh.” (Journal of Third World Studies) The Viet Minh were the liberation forces who fought the French colonialists and Japanese occupiers.

Giap said that within 48 hours of its founding, “my new army won two successive victories. The first was against the [French] post Phai Khat, the second was at Na Ngan,” just 21 miles away. The intelligence agent who provided the information needed to attack Phai Khat was a 13-year-old named Hoang, while the attack on Na Ngan owed its success to “Duc Long, a man of the region.”

Giap told his troops, “Be bold, quick and aim for certain victories.” He followed this motto from the beginning of the Vietnamese People’s Army until the offensive that led to Vietnam’s liberation in 1975.

Giap led 100,000 troops against the French in the decisive battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Another 100,000 Vietnamese workers, mainly women, provided logistics and carried artillery in pieces on bicycles or their backs, along with ammunition and food for the resistance troops. The French colonial power was astonished by its humiliating defeat.

Concept of people’s war

The Vietnamese people were able to produce such forces by relying on and developing “people’s war,” led by the Communist Party headed by Ho Chi Minh.

Giap explained people’s war in a PBS interview aired in 1999: “It was a war for the people by the people. FOR the people because the war’s goals are the people’s goals—goals such as independence, a unified country, and the happiness of its people. … And BY the people—well, that means ordinary people—not just the army but all people.”

He avowed: “We know it’s the human factor, and not material resources, which decide the outcome of war. That’s why our people’s war, led by Ho Chi Minh, was on such a large scale. It took in the whole population.”

The U.S. provided a great deal of the funds and military supplies that France used before its last soldiers left Vietnam in April 1956. Washington supported the regime that the French left in place in south Vietnam and opposed the elections that were supposed to unite the country, elections that Ho Chi Minh, then north Vietnam’s leader, would surely have won.

As the puppet regime in south Vietnam fell apart, the U.S. stepped up its direct military intervention, first with advisors and then with combat units in 1965. Its strategy was “escalation” until the Tet Offensive in 1968. The Vietnamese liberation forces carried out simultaneous, surprise uprisings in hundreds of towns and villages throughout south Vietnam, with commando strikes against the U.S. Embassy and major U.S. air force bases. The Tet Offensive turned the tide against U.S. forces in Vietnam.

Giap told PBS, “It was the American policy to try and escalate the war. Our goal in the ’68 offensive was to force them to de-escalate, to break the American will to remain in the war. … We did this by confronting them with repeated military, as well as political and diplomatic victories.”

The U.S. lost 58,226 soldiers in its war against Vietnam and suffered a few thousand missing in action. This was more than enough to shred popular support for continuing the war.

Vietnam released figures on April 3, 1995, that a total of 1 million Vietnamese combatants and 4 million civilians were killed in the war. The accuracy of these figures has generally not been challenged.

Even with all these deaths, the U.S. could not break the will of the Vietnamese to wage a people’s war for their national sovereignty and liberation from neocolonialism.

U.S. aggression against Vietnam, however, still continues in the form of lingering, terrible effects from Agent Orange, the herbicide spread over huge areas of south Vietnam by the U.S. Air Force. Even after three generations, 150,000 Vietnamese children suffer from physical and mental abnormalities caused by Agent Orange.

Long live Vietnam and its struggles! Long live Senior Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap!

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Articles copyright 1995-2008 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Exposing the Truth about the Korean War: New Evidence

Among the most devastating, yet often forgotten criminal ventures of Western imperialism in the 20th century was the occupation, division, and ultimate invasion of the Korean peninsula. Of course, the history of this sequence of events is grossly misrepresented in U.S. history books, where the events are told from the perspective of the ruling elite in the military-industrial complex rather than through the lens of the average Korean who lived through the conflict.

Most Americans, and unfortunately many South Koreans erroneously believe (due to decades of anti-people ‘re-education’ and indoctrination from South Korea’s (ROK) military government) that the ‘communist North’ invaded the democratic and sovereign nation of South Korea. The reality, as told by the Government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, The Korean Truth Commission, and notable U.S. historians like Bruce Cummings, is quite different.

After the Japanese Occupation army was successfully driven out of Korea by the Korean resistance led by Comrade Kim Il Sung along with Soviet assistance, the U.S. army occupied the Southern have of the Korean peninsula below the 38th parallel. U.S. policies set in motion a series of events that would lead to the division of the peninsula and a war leading to the deaths of some four million Koreans. In the initial stages of the occupation, the U.S. policy makers refused to recognize the post war Korean government composed of People’s Committees (see work by Bruce Cummings). While communists and other progressive forces participated in People’s committees, Korean nationalists had a particularly strong voice. The U.S. and other capitalist countries had their mind set on other designs for Korea—plans that different fundamentally from the goals of average Koreans. Unlike the collaborationist and sell-out regime of the South, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, i.e., the North, become an independent sovereign nation with a socialist planned economy designed to serve the needs of the population rather than a tiny corporate elite.

In 1945 and 1946 the U.S. occupation forces systematically disbanded the People’s Committees and replaced them with a pro-U.S. elite governing body essentially made up of officials and landlords, many of whom were installed by the Japanese during their occupation of Korea. The U.S. backed South Korean forces (ROK) formally separated from the North and Harvard educated and rightwing puppet Syngman Rhee was installed as head of state (he would later be overthrown in student protests in 1960). Even the CIA admitted in 1948 that the “Korean leadership is provided by that numerically small class which virtually monopolizes the native wealth and education of the country… Since this class could not have acquired and maintained its favored position under Japanese rule without a certain minimum of collaboration, it has experienced difficulty in finding acceptable candidates for political office and has been forced to support imported expatriate politicians such as Syngman Rhee and Kim Ku. These, while they have no pro-Japanese taint, are essentially demagogues bent on autocratic rule.” It would not be long before these demagogues and their imperialist backers would launch an illegal, immoral, and murderous war killing millions.

It was not long before the dictatorial regime of the ROK began preparing for a large scale war with the North. Preparations included the U.S. funded army and mercenaries for cross-border raids on villages in the North. The Korean War, it should be mentioned, was not the result of an “invasion” by the North. In fact, the North was rightfully attempting to reunify their divided country and protect their territorial integrity in the midst of cross border raids and violence.

Preparations and cross border raids do not, in any way, compare to the Gestapo like tactics and grizzly atrocities committed in the South under the watchful eye of the U.S. Mass executions, (another more sinister form of preparation), were carried out against suspected progressives, trade-unionists, communists, leftists and any other element of the new South Korean society that opposed U.S. colonial rule. The majority of the executions, perhaps a hundreds of thousands, took place on the onset of the Korean War in the summer of 1950.

These massacres and imperialist crimes against humanity have been exposed by the heroic efforts by the Korean Truth Commission and others, including some U.S. veterans willing to stand up and recount the events as they really occurred. Previously, many people in Korea had been afraid to speak up (or had already been silenced) by South Korea’s National Security Law and anti-communist laws.

Recently the Truth and Reconciliation commission led by Ahn Byung-Uk has investigated over a thousand incidents of mass executions including several hundred cases in which the U.S. military was directly involved. The press of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—a press truly free press not biased by corporate interests, has repeatedly attempted to tell the world about these crimes. This information has consistently been ignored by the capitalist press until having been brought to light by the Commission.

The South Korean government has recently acknowledged that the military and police were responsible for the deaths over 100,000 civilians. Kim Dong-choon of The Korean Truth Commission, however, stated that the current government estimates about the number of executions were overly conservative. Other estimates are as high as 200,000 or even 300,000, and even these do not include the victims of extra-judicial killings of those suspected of being sympathetic to the liberators during the Korean War.

Physical evidence from hundreds of sites, pictures that have recently resurfaced, and recent eyewitness accounts have added even more proof, and revealed more information about the fascist nature of these atrocities and hidden Holocaust. Photographs of these atrocities showing the mass murder of young men and even children can be seen below. While war crimes trials are not around the corner yet, we ought to praise the progress that has been made in uncovering these horrific crimes.

Photographs of Executions recently published in La Repubblica

http://www.repubblica.it/2006/05/gallerie/esteri/corea-stragi-massa/1.html

Democracy Now
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/7/south_korea_commission_probes_civilian_massacres

Struch, Eric. June 2008. Truth Commission reveals history of Korean War: U.S.-South Korea carried out massacres of civilians. Workers World.

Information on the Cuban 5

Hear an update about the situation of the Cuban 5, and how they were persecuted for infiltrating known terrorist groups

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