William Blum, born 1933

The Anti-Empire Report

Read this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your life

January 13, 2008

by William Blum www.killinghope.org

An Unreasonable Man

I recommend the new documentary about Ralph Nader, which was recently shown on PBS television, "An Unreasonable Man". Its primary focus is on Nader's argument for having run in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections despite the alleged harm done to the Democratic Party candidates. As I've written earlier: The choice facing people like myself was not Ralph Nader or Albert Gore or John Kerry. The choice facing us was Ralph Nader or not voting at all. If Nader had not been on the ballot, we would have stayed home. It's that simple. The film shows a clip of a TV network newscast just after the 2000 election in which star news anchors Katie Couric and Tom Brokaw are discussing this very question, and much to my surprise they both come to this same conclusion -- Nader did not cost the Democrats many votes at all. If he had not been on the ballot, the great bulk of his supporters would NOT have voted Democratic instead.

This escapes Nader's critics, such as the two featured in the film, Nation magazine columnist Eric Alterman and author and 60s icon Todd Gitlin. NASA should check them out -- just mention "Ralph Nader" and they go ballistic. They engage in an orgy of angry name calling, labeling Nader an egomaniac, irrational ... "prefabricated purity" ... "borders on the wicked" ... responsible for the Iraq war and the destruction of the environment ... They don't directly challenge anything of substance amongst the views of Nader or his supporters. They're not at all impressed with what I find most exhilarating -- the unique phenomenon of a noted public political figure consistently standing on principle. Nader's critics can't admit that there's principle involved in all this, for fear of revealing their own lack of that quality, as they cling to defending the indefensible -- the idea that the Democratic Party is a force for even liberal change, never mind progressive.

The film also gives time to other Nader critics, amongst them Michael Moore, whom I admire more than the likes of Alterman or Gitlin. However, it shows Moore speaking during the 2000 campaign in behalf of Nader, telling the audience not to be afraid to vote their conscience; it then shows him in 2004, making fun of those who call for voting for one's conscience -- Yes, the hypocrisy is that blatant. Moore is indeed a strange political animal. The maker of "Fahrenheit 911" and "Sicko" was until not long ago a super-avid supporter of Hillary Clinton (admitting to even a sexual crush on her), and he has supported General Wesley Clark for president, a genuine war criminal for his merciless 78-day bombing assault upon Yugoslavia.

Defenders of the Democrats now ask: "Would Al Gore have invaded Iraq?" Maybe not. He might have invaded Iran instead; that apparently was the first choice of Israel and their American lobby. Remember that the Clinton-Gore administration imposed eight years of heartless and needless sanctions upon the people of Iraq, simultaneously bombing them hundreds of times, costing the lives of more than a million people, ruining the lives of millions more. Al Gore has already invaded Iraq.

It's an old and painful story. Democrats can not be trusted ideologically, not even to be consistently liberal, and certainly not progressive or radical, no matter how much we wish we could trust them, no matter how awful the Republicans may be. In 1968 Democratic Senator Eugene Mccarthy of Minnesota was the darling of the left. He ran in the Democratic presidential primaries on an anti-Vietnam war platform that excited a whole generation of young people. Peaceniks and hippies, the story goes, were getting haircuts, dressing like decent Americans, and forsaking dope, all to be "clean for Gene" and work in his campaign. Yet, in 1980, Gene Mccarthy came out in support of Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter.1

It's most often foreign policy which separates liberals from those further to the left. In the post World War Two period, one of the most revered American liberals was Senator Hubert Humphrey. But he was at the same time a fanatical anti-communist. In 1954 he introduced a bill to outlaw the Communist Party on the grounds that it was "an illegal conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the United States by force and violence and not a legitimate political party." When he became Lyndon Johnson's vice-president in 1965 he supported the Vietnam War. Two years later he was actually moved to declare to American troops in Vietnam: "I believe that Vietnam will be marked as the place where the family of man has gained the time it needed to finally break through to a new era of hope and human development and justice. This is the chance we have. This is our great adventure -- and a wonderful one it is."2

It was the administration of the liberal Jimmy Carter that instigated the Soviet intervention into Afghanistan in 1979, leading to Washington's decisive role in the overthrow of a government which, compared to what replaced it, was extremely progressive.3 It was also Carter who gave Iraq the OK to invade Iran in 1980, with terrible consequences for the two countries.4

No, I don't know what we should do about our leaders. The US electoral process which we're all suffering through right now, which feels like it's been going on non-stop forever, is replete with continual cries from the leading candidates about some kind of "change". Whatever can they mean? They mean nothing. And the media treats it all like some kind of horse race, a spectator sport. Is there any election system in this world as lacking in intellectual discussion, as hopelessly corrupted by money, and as undemocratic as the one Americans are blessed with? Where else in the world is the candidate with the most votes not necessarily the winner? If we could interview each and every American voter to determine exactly why they voted for a particular candidate, compared to what the actual facts are about that candidate, and the results were widely publicized, it would be such a national embarrassment the next election might be called off. What does winning an election mean other than that the sales campaign was successful? An outright auction for the presidency would be more efficient, and more honest.

Another tale of a liberal

Gilbert Harrison, former editor and publisher of the influential Washington magazine, New Republic, departed this world on January 3. I never met the man, but in 1975, while living in London, I submitted a review of former CIA officer Philip Agee's new book, "Inside the Company: CIA Diary", to the magazine. The book was a shocker, providing more detail about CIA covert operations in Latin America than any book ever written, revealing the names of hundreds of CIA officers, agents, and front organizations. The book had not yet appeared in the United States and the New Republic was pleased to have what would be one of the first reviews. At that time the magazine was still firmly in the liberal camp. At last my writing résumé would list something other than the alternative press.

A couple of weeks later, another letter arrived from the magazine's literary editor. She was sorry to inform me that the Editor-in-Chief, Gilbert Harrison, had vetoed publication of my review at the last moment. The article was returned to me, already edited for publication, even with an issue date marked on it. Some years later, I came to appreciate that Harrison was a typical Cold-War, anti-communist liberal -- no matter how progressive their views concerning the individual and society, the basic tenets, assumptions, and objectives of American foreign policy were held sacrosanct. In 1961 the New Republic obtained a comprehensive account of the preparations by the CIA for its upcoming invasion of Cuba. Harrison was a friend of President Kennedy and he dutifully submitted the magazine's planned article to the White House for advice. We thus have a case here of the United States about to initiate what the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called "a war of aggression ... not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime." And an American journalist did not know whether he should expose this. When Kennedy asked that the story not be printed, Harrison complied.5 If the story had been published, it might have led to the cancellation of the invasion, and thus the saving of a few thousand lives on the two sides.

Ironically and sadly, just four days after Harrison's death, Philip Agee died. We had been friends since I met him in England in 1975, shortly after his book came out. Phil was truly a hero. He gave up his career, his financial security, a normal family life, and his safety to work against the CIA in one country after another that was threatened by the Agency -- Cuba, Jamaica, Grenada, Chile, Nicaragua, Venezuela. The CIA revoked his US passport, spread all manner of false stories about him (such as his being in the pay of the KGB), and hounded him in Europe, getting him expelled from the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, and other countries. The Agency had him under surveillance for much of the rest of his life. The extreme strain this put on him may well have contributed to the perforated ulcer which led to his death.

The CIA was, as it still is, a force for dreadful things. What could a man of principle and idealism, with so much inside knowledge of the workings of the Agency, do but devote his life to fighting such a force?

Oh, by the way, the Iraqis don't really want us

Did you miss this? It should have been the lead story in every newspaper and radio and TV program in America. In the Washington Post it was on page 14. In virtually all of the rest of the media it was on page zero, channel zero, 0000 AM or 00.0 FM.

The US military in Iraq hired firms to conduct focus groups amongst a cross section of the population. A summary report of the findings was obtained by the Post. Here are some of the highlights of the report as disclosed by the newspaper:

Until the March 2003 US occupation Sunnis and Shiites coexisted peacefully.

Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the US military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them.

After the United States leaves Iraq, national reconciliation will happen "naturally."

A sense of "optimistic possibility permeated all focus groups ... and far more commonalities than differences are found among these seemingly diverse groups of Iraqis."

Dividing Iraq into three states would hinder national reconciliation. (Only the Kurds did not reject this option.)

Most would describe the negative elements of life in Iraq as beginning with the US occupation.

Few mentioned Saddam Hussein as a cause of their problems, which the report described as an important finding, implying that "the current strife in Iraq seems to have totally eclipsed any agonies or grievances many Iraqis would have incurred from the past regime, which lasted for nearly four decades -- as opposed to the current conflict, which has lasted for five years."

The Washington Post added this note: "Outside of the military, some of the most widespread polling in Iraq has been done by D3 Systems, a Virginia-based company that maintains offices in each of Iraq's 18 provinces. Its most recent publicly released surveys, conducted in September for several news media organizations, showed the same widespread Iraqi belief voiced by the military's focus groups: that a U.S. departure will make things better. A State Department poll in September 2006 reported a similar finding."6

This just in: The US has found the perfect way to counteract such foolish attitudes of the Iraqi people. On January 10, the Associated Press reported: "U.S. bombers and jet fighters unleashed 40,000 pounds of explosives on the southern outskirts of Baghdad within 10 minutes Thursday in one of the biggest air strikes of the war, flattening what the military called safe havens for al-Qaida in Iraq." There was no mention of whether the planes had also dropped pamphlets saying: "We bomb you because we care about you."

On December 20, the legislature of Panama declared the date to be a day of "national mourning" in memory of the American invasion on that day in 1989. "This is a recognition of those who fell on Dec. 20 as a result of the cruel and unjust invasion by the most powerful army in the world," said Rep. Cesar Pardo, of the governing Democratic Revolutionary Party, which holds a majority in the legislature. U.S. officials downplayed the issue. "We prefer to look to the future," said a U.S. Embassy spokesman. "We are very satisfied to have a friend and partner like Panama, a nation that has managed to develop a mature democracy."7 As with their attack on Iraq on March 19, 2003, the United States, with no provocation or international legality (yes, another war of aggression), first bombed Panama, then staged a ground invasion, killing as many as a few thousand, while offering no believable reason for their psychopathic behavior.8

Will we some day see in a free and independent Iraq the setting of March 19 as a day of national mourning?

Some further thought re the 9/11 truth movement

When I say, as I did in last month's report, that I don't think that 9-11 was an "inside job", it's not because I believe that men like Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, et al. are not morally depraved enough to carry out such a monstrous act; these men each has a piece missing, a piece that's shaped like a social conscience; they consciously and directly instigated the current Iraqi and Afghanistan horrors which have already cost many more American lives than were lost on 9/11, not to mention more than a million Iraqis and Afghans who dearly wanted to remain amongst the living. In the Gulf War of 1991, Cheney and other American leaders purposely destroyed electricity-generating plants, water-pumping systems, and sewage systems in Iraq, then imposed sanctions upon the country making the repair of the infrastructure extremely difficult. Then, after twelve years, when the Iraqi people had performed the heroic task of getting these systems working fairly well again, the US bombers came back to inflict devastating damage to them all once more. My books and many others document one major crime against humanity after another by our America once so dear and cherished.

So it's not the moral question that makes me doubt the inside-job scenario. It's the logistics of it all -- the incredible complexity of arranging it all so that it would work and not be wholly and transparently unbelievable. That and the gross overkill -- they didn't need to destroy or smash up ALL those buildings and planes and people. One of the twin towers killing more than a thousand would certainly have been enough to sell the War on Terror, the Patriot Act, and Homeland Security. The American people are not such a hard sell. They really yearn to be true believers. Look how they scream hysterically over Hillary and Obama.

To win over people like me, the 9/11 truth people need to present a scenario that makes the logistics reasonably plausible. They might start by trying to answer questions like these: Did planes actually hit the towers and the Pentagon and crash in Pennsylvania? Were these the same four United Airline and American Airline planes that took off from Boston and Newark? At the time of collision, were they being piloted by people or by remote control? If people, who were these people?

Also, why did building 7 collapse? If it was purposely demolished -- why? All the reasons I've read so far I find not very credible. As to the films of the towers and building 7 collapsing, which make it appear that this had to be the result of controlled demolitions -- I agree, it does indeed look that way. But what do I know? I'm no expert. It's not like I've seen, in person or on film, numerous examples of buildings collapsing due to controlled demolition and numerous other examples of buildings collapsing due to planes crashing into them, so I could make an intelligent distinction. We are told by the 9/11 truth people that no building constructed like the towers has ever collapsed due to fire. But how about fire plus a full-size, loaded airplane smashing into it? How many examples of that do we have?

But there's one argument those who support the official version use against the skeptics that I would question. It's the argument that if the government planned the operation there would have to have been many people in on the plot, and surely by now one of them would have talked and the mainstream media would have reported their stories. But in fact a number of firemen, the buildings' janitor, and others have testified to hearing many explosions in the towers some time after the planes crashed, supporting the theory of planted explosives. But scarce little of this has made it to the media. Likewise, following the JFK assassination at least two men came forward afterward and identified themselves as being one of the three "tramps" on the grassy knoll in Dallas. So what happened? The mainstream media ignored them both. I know of them only because the tabloid press ran their stories. One of the men was the father of actor Woody Harrelson.

NOTES 1 San Francisco Chronicle, October 24, 1980, p.7

2 United Press International (UPI) dispatch from Saigon, October 31, 1967

3 See interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's national security adviser -- http://members.aol.com/bblum6/brz.htm

4 http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile5.html

5 Victor Marchetti and John Marks, "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence"

(1975), p.307; Peter Wyden, "Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story" (1979), p.142-3

6 Washington Post, December 19, 2007, article plus accompanying sidebar; see also the Anti-Empire Report of August 18, 2006, last item, for another Post article demonstrating the belief of the Iraqi people, as well as American military personnel, that things would be better if the US left the country.

7 Associated Press, December 20, 2007

8 For the full details, see William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 50.

The Anti-Empire Report

Read this or George W Bush will be president the rest of your life

by William Blum

www.killinghope.org (December 11 2007)

Another peace scare. Boy, that was close.

The US intelligence community's new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) - "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities" - makes a point of saying up front (in bold type): "This NIE does not (italics in original) assume that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons". The report goes on to state: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program".

Isn't that good news, that Iran isn't about to attack the United States or Israel with nuclear weapons? Surely everyone is thrilled that the horror and suffering that such an attack - not to mention an American or Israeli retaliation or pre-emptive attack - would bring to this sad old world. Here are some of the happy reactions from American leaders:

Senate Republicans are planning to call for a congressional commission to investigate the NIE's conclusion that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003. {1}

National Security Adviser, Stephen J Hadley, said: The report "tells us that the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains a very serious problem". {2}

Defense Secretary Robert Gates "argued forcefully at a Persian Gulf security conference ... that US intelligence indicates Iran could restart its secret nuclear weapons program 'at any time' and remains a major threat to the region". {3}

John R Bolton, President Bush's former ambassador to the United Nations and pit bull of the neo-conservatives, dismissed the report with: "I've never based my view on this week's intelligence". {4}

And Bush himself added: "Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. The NIE says that Iran had a hidden - a covert nuclear weapons program. That's what it said. What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program? ... Nothing has changed in this NIE that says, 'Okay, why don't we just stop worrying about it?' Quite the contrary. I think the NIE makes it clear that Iran needs to be taken seriously. My opinion hasn't changed." {5}

Hmmm. Well, maybe the reaction was more positive in Israel. Here's a report from Uri Avnery, a leading Israeli columnist: "The earth shook. Our political and military leaders were all in shock. The headlines screamed with rage ... Shouldn't we be overjoyed? Shouldn't the masses in Israel be dancing in the streets? After all, we have been saved! ... Lo and behold - no bomb and no any-minute-now. The wicked Ahmadinejad can threaten us as much as he wants - he just has not got the means to harm us. Isn't that a reason for celebration? So why does this feel like a national disaster?" {6}

We have to keep this in mind - America, like Israel, cherishes its enemies. Without enemies, the United States appears to be a nation without moral purpose and direction. The various managers of the National Security State need enemies to protect their jobs, to justify their swollen budgets, to aggrandize their work, to give themselves a mission, to send truckloads of taxpayer money to the corporations for whom the managers will go to work after leaving government service. And they understand the need for enemies only too well, even painfully. Here is US Colonel Dennis Long, speaking in 1992, just after the end of the Cold War, when he was director of "total armor force readiness" at Fort Knox:

"For fifty years, we equipped our football team, practiced five days a week and never played a game. We had a clear enemy with demonstrable qualities, and we had scouted them out. Now we will have to practice day in and day out without knowing anything about the other team. We won't have his playbook, we won't know where the stadium is, or how many guys he will have on the field. That is very distressing to the military establishment, especially when you are trying to justify the existence of your organization and your systems." {7}

In any event, all of the above is completely irrelevant if Iran has no intention of attacking the United States or Israel, even if they currently possessed a large stockpile of nuclear weapons. As I've asked before: What possible reason would Iran have for attacking the United States or Israel other than an irresistible desire for mass national suicide?

The crime of GWS: Governing while socialist

In Chile, during the 1964 presidential election campaign, in which Salvador Allende, a Marxist, was running against two other major candidates much to his right, one radio spot featured the sound of a machine gun, followed by a woman's cry: "They have killed my child - the communists". The announcer then added in impassioned tones: "Communism offers only blood and pain. For this not to happen in Chile, we must elect Eduardo Frei president." {8} Frei was the candidate of the Christian Democratic Party, the majority of whose campaign costs were underwritten by the CIA according to the US Senate. {9} One anti-Allende campaign poster which appeared in the thousands showed children with a hammer and sickle stamped on their foreheads. {10}

The scare campaign played up to the fact that women in Chile, as elsewhere in Latin America, are traditionally more religious than men, more susceptible to being alarmed by the specter of "godless, atheist communism".

Allende lost. He won the men's vote by 67,000 over Frei (in Chile men and women vote separately), but amongst the women Frei came out ahead by

469,000 ... testimony, once again, to the remarkable ease with which the minds of the masses of people can be manipulated, in any and all societies.

In Venezuela, during the recent campaign concerning the constitutional reforms put forth by Hugo Chavez, the opposition played to the same emotional themes of motherhood and "communist" oppression. (Quite possibly because of the same CIA advice.) "I voted for Chavez for President, but not now. Because they told me that if the reform passes, they're going to take my son, because he will belong to the state", said a woman, Gladys Castro, interviewed in Venezuela before the December 2 vote which rejected the reforms; this according to a report of Venezuelanalysis.com, an English-language news service published by Americans in Caracas. "Gladys is not the only one to believe the false rumors she's heard", the report added. "Thousands of Venezuelans, many of them Chavez supporters, have bought the exaggerations and lies about Venezuela's Constitutional Reform that have been circulating across the country for months. Just a few weeks ago, however, the disinformation campaign ratcheted up various notches as opposition groups and anti-reform coalitions placed large ads in major Venezuelan papers. The most scandalous was ... (a) two-page spread in the country's largest circulation newspaper, Ultimas Noticias, which claimed about the Constitutional Reform: 'If you are a Mother, YOU LOSE! Because you will lose your house, your family and your children. Children will belong to the state'". This particular ad was placed by a Venezuelan business organization, Camara Industrial de Carabobo, which has among its members dozens of subsidiaries of the largest US corporations operating in Venezuela. {11}

Chavez lost the December 2 vote (in part, I believe, because of his unrelenting bravado, which turned off any number of his supporters) but he's still a marked man in Washington, which can not stomach the prospect of five more years of the man and his policies. It's not because the United States is looking to grab Venezuela's oil. It's because Chavez is completely independent of Washington and has used his oil wealth to become a powerful force in Latin America, inspiring and aiding other independent-minded governments in the region, like Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador, as well as carrying on close relations with the likes of China, Russia, and Iran. The man does not show proper understanding that he's living in the Yankee's back yard; indeed, in the Yankee's world. The Yankee empire grew to its present size and power precisely because it did not tolerate men like Salvador Allende and Hugo Chavez and their quaint socialist customs. Despite their best efforts, the CIA was unable to prevent Allende from becoming Chile's president in 1970. When subsequent parliamentary elections made it apparent to the Agency and their Chilean conservative allies that they would not be able to oust the left from power legally, they instigated a successful military coup, in 1973.

Here for the record is a brief summary of Washington's charming history in relation to such men, their foreign ideas, and their dubious governments since the end of World War Two:

• Attempted to overthrow more than fifty foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected; successful a majority of the time.

• Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least thirty countries.

• Attempted to assassinate more than fifty foreign leaders.

• Dropped bombs on the people of some thirty countries.

• Helped to suppress dozens of populist/nationalist movements. {12}

Although Chavez has spoken publicly about his being assassinated, and his government has several times uncovered what they perceived to be planned assassination attempts, from both domestic and foreign sources, the Venezuelan president has continued to take repeated flights and attend numerous conferences and meetings all over the world, exposing himself and his airplane again and again. The cases of Jaime Roldos, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, military leader of Panama, should perhaps be considered. Both were reformers who refused to allow their countries to become client states of Washington or American corporations. Both were firm supporters of the radical Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua; both banned an American missionary group, the Summer Institute of Linguistics - long suspected of CIA ties - because of suspicious political behavior; both died in mysterious plane disasters during the Reagan administration in 1981, Torrijos' plane exploding in mid-air. {13} Torrijos had earlier been marked for assassination by Richard Nixon. {14}

Who would have thought? Bush has been vindicated.

We're making progress in Iraq! The "surge" is working, we're told. Never mind that the war is totally and perfectly illegal. Not to mention totally and perfectly, even exquisitely, immoral. It's making progress. That's a good thing, is it not? Meanwhile, the al Qaeda types have greatly increased their number all over the Middle East and South Asia, so their surge is making progress too. Good for them. And speaking of progress in the War on Terror, is anyone progressing faster and better than the Taliban?

The American progress is measured by a decrease in violence, the White House has decided - a daily holocaust has been cut back to a daily multiple catastrophe. And who's keeping the count? Why, the same good people who have been regularly feeding us a lie for the past five years about the number of Iraqi deaths, completely ignoring the epidemiological studies. (Real Americans don't do Arab body counts.) A recent analysis by the Washington Post left the administration's claim pretty much in tatters. The article opened with: "The US military's claim that violence has decreased sharply in Iraq in recent months has come under scrutiny from many experts within and outside the government, who contend that some of the underlying statistics are questionable and selectively ignore negative trends". The article then continued in the same critical vein. {15}

To the extent that there may have been a reduction in violence, we must also keep in mind that, thanks to this lovely little war, there are several million Iraqis either dead or in exile abroad or in bursting American and Iraqi prisons; there must be as well a few million more wounded who are homebound or otherwise physically limited; so the number of potential victims and killers has been greatly reduced. Moreover, extensive ethnic cleansing has taken place in Iraq (another good indication of progress, n'est-ce pas? nicht wahr?) - Sunnis and Shiites are now living more in their own special enclaves than before, none of those stinking mixed communities with their unholy mixed marriages, so violence of the sectarian type has also gone down. {16} On top of all this, US soldiers have been venturing out a lot less (for fear of things like ... well, dying), so the violence against our noble lads is also down. Remember that insurgent attacks on American forces is how the Iraqi violence all began in the first place.

Oh, did I mention that 2007 has been the deadliest year for US troops since the war began? {17} It's been the same worst year for American forces in Afghanistan.

One of the signs of the reduction in violence in Iraq, the administration would like us to believe, is that many Iraqi families are returning from Syria, where they had fled because of the violence. The New York Times, however, reported that "Under intense pressure to show results after months of political stalemate, the Iraqi government has continued to publicize figures that exaggerate the movement back to Iraq"; as well as exaggerating "Iraqis' confidence that the current lull in violence can be sustained". The count, it turns out, included all Iraqis crossing the border, for whatever reason. A United Nations survey found that 46 percent were leaving Syria because they could not afford to stay; 25 percent said they fell victim to a stricter Syrian visa policy; and only fourteen percent said they were returning because they had heard about improved security. {18}

How long can it be before vacation trips to "Exotic Iraq" are flashed across our TVs? "Baghdad's Beautiful Beaches Beckon". Just step over the bodies. Indeed, the State Department has recently advertised for a "business development/tourism" expert to work in Baghdad, "with a particular focus on tourism and related services". {19}

We've been told often by American leaders and media that the US forces can't leave because of the violence, because there would be a bloodbath. Now there's an alleged significant decrease in the violence. Is that being used as an argument to get out - a golden opportunity for the United States to leave, with head held high? Of course not.

I almost feel sorry for them. They're "can-do" Americans, accustomed to getting their way, accustomed to thinking of themselves as the best, and they're frustrated as hell, unable to figure out "why they hate us", why we can't win them over, why we can't at least wipe them out. Don't they want freedom and democracy? At one time or another the can-do boys have tried writing a comprehensive set of laws and regulations, even a constitution, for the country; setting up mini-bases in neighborhoods; building walls to block off areas; training and arming "former" Sunni insurgents to fight Shias and al Qaeda; enlisting Shias to help fight, against whomever; leaving weapons or bomb-making material in public view to see who picks it up, then pouncing on them; futuristic vehicles and machines and electronic devices to destroy roadside bombs; setting up their own Arabic-language media, censoring other media; classes for detainees on anger control, an oath of peace, and the sacredness of life and property; regularly revising the official reason the United States is in the country in the first place ... one new tactic after another, and when all else fails they call it a "success" and give it a nice inspiring action name, like "surge" ... and nothing helps. They're can-do Americans, using good ol' American know-how and Madison Avenue savvy, sales campaigns, public relations, advertising, selling the US brand, just like they do it back home ... and nothing helps. And how can it if the product you're selling is toxic, inherently, from birth, if you're totally ruining your customers' lives, with no regard for any kind of law or morality. They're can-do Americans, accustomed to playing by the rules - theirs; and they're frustrated as hell.

Once is an accident; twice is a coincidence; three times is a conspiracy.

"All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided". -- Karl Marx {20}

I believe in conspiracies. So do all of you. American and world history are full of conspiracies. Watergate was a conspiracy. The cover-up of Watergate was a conspiracy. So was Enron. And Iran-Contra. The October Surprise really took place. For a full year, George W Bush and Dick Cheney conspired to invade Iraq while continually denying that they had made any such decision. The Japanese conspired to attack Pearl Harbor while negotiating with Washington to find peaceful solutions to the issues separating the two governments. There are many people sitting in prison at this very moment in the United States for having been convicted of "conspiracy" to commit this or that crime.

However, it doesn't follow that all conspiracy theories are created equal, all to be taken seriously. Many people send me emails which I'm unable to take seriously. Here are a few examples:

If they try to access my website a few times and keep getting an error message, they ask me if the FBI or Homeland Security or America Online has finally gotten around to shutting me down.

If they send me an email and it's returned to them, for whatever reason, they wonder if AOL is blocking their particular mail or perhaps blocking all my mail.

If they fail to receive a copy of this report, they wonder if AOL or some government agency is blocking it.

If they come upon a news item on the Internet which exposes really bad behavior of the "powers that be", they point out how "the mainstream media is completely ignoring this", even though I may already have read it in the Washington Post or the New York Times. To make the claim that the mainstream media is completely ignoring a particular news item, one would need to have access to the full version of a service like Lexis-Nexis and know how to use it expertly. Google often won't suffice if the news item has not appeared on the website of any mainstream media even though it may be in print or have been broadcast, although the recent creation of Google News has improved chances of finding an item.

With every new audiotape or videotape from Osama bin Laden my correspondents are sure to inform me that the man is really dead and that the tape is a CIA fabrication. In January 2006, when bin Laden, on an audiotape, recommended that Americans read my book Rogue State, the mainstream media was eager to interview me. But a number of my correspondents were quick to inform me and the entire Internet that the tape was phony, implying that I was being naive to believe it; this continues to this day. When I ask them why the CIA would want to publicize and enrich a writer like myself, who has been exposing the intelligence agency's crimes his entire writing life, I get no answer that's worth remembering, often not even understandable.

"Why do you criticize Bush? He's not the real power. He's just a puppet", they ask me. The real power behind the throne, I'm told, is Dick Cheney, David Rockefeller, the Federal Reserve, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberger Group, the Trilateral Commission, Bohemian Grove, et al. Why, I wonder, are the annual meetings of the Bilderberger Group, et al, thought to be so vital to their members and so indicative of their power? To the extent that the Bilderbergerites have access to those in power and are able to influence them, they have this access and power all year long, whether or not they gather together in a once-a-year closed meeting. I think their meetings are primarily a social thing. Money and power likes to enjoy cocktails with money and power. Of course many important political and historical events are indeed the result of certain people of money and power talking to each other and secretly deciding what course of action would be most advantageous to their collective interests, but it doesn't necessarily follow that those who hold public office are merely puppets of these interests. Bush displays his independence every day of the week - independence from Congress, the Constitution, the Republican Party, classic conservative economic policies, the American people, election results, the facts, logic, humanity. George W is his own sociopathic man.

Finally, there's September 11 2001. Amongst those in the "9/11 Truth Movement" I am a sinner because I don't champion the idea that it was an "inside job". I think it more likely that some individuals in the Bush administration knew that something was about to happen involving airplanes - perhaps an old fashioned hijacking with political demands - and they let it happen, to make use of it politically, as they certainly have. But I do wish you guys in the 9/11 Truth Movement luck; if you succeed in proving that it was an inside job, that would do more to topple the empire than anything I have ever written.

Notes

{1} Washington Post, December 7 2007, page 8

{2} New York Times, December 3 2007

{3} Washington Post, December 9 2007, page 27

{4} Washington Post, December 4 2007, page 1

{5} Washington Post, December 5 2007, page 23

{6} "How they stole the bomb from us", December 8 2007, http://zope.gush-shalom.org/index_en.html

{7} New York Times, February 3 1992, page 8

{8} Paul Sigmund, The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile,

1964-1976 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977) page 297

{9} "Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973, a Staff Report of The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (US Senate)" 18 December 1975. page 4

{10} Sigmund, op cit, page 34

{11} Venezuelanalysis.com, November 27 2007, article by Michael Fox

{12} In sequence, details of the five items can be found in Blum's books: Freeing the World, chapter 15; Rogue State, chapters 18, 3, 11,

17; see also Killing Hope for further details.

{13} For further information, see John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2004), passim

{14} Newsweek magazine, June 18 1973, page 22

{15} Washington Post, September 6 2007, page 16

{16} For a good discussion of this see the Inter Press Service report of November 14 2007 by Ali al-Fadhily

{17} Associated Press, November 6 2007

{18} New York Times, November 26 2007

{19} Washington Post, December 5 2007, page 27

{20} Capital, Volume III

William Blum is the author of:-

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War Two

(Common Courage Press, 1995)

Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower (Zed Books, 2002)

West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir (Soft Skull Press, 2002)

Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire (Common Courage Press, 2004)

Portions of the books can be read, and copies purchased, at http://www.killinghope.org and previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

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

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

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

The Anti-Empire Report

Read this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your life

November 6, 2007

by William Blum www.killinghope.org

In a sound-bite society, reality no longer matters Last month, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told assembled world leaders at the United Nations that the time had come to take action against Iran. "None disagrees," she said, "that Iran denies the Holocaust and speaks openly of its desire to wipe a member state - mine - off the map. And none disagrees that, in violation of Security Council resolutions, it is actively pursuing the means to achieve this end. Too many see the danger but walk idly by - hoping that someone else will take care of it. ... It is time for the United Nations, and the states of the world, to live up to their promise of never again. To say enough is enough, to act now and to defend their basic values."1

Yet, later the same month, we are informed by Haaretz, (frequently described as "the New York Times of Israel"), that the same Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni had said a few months earlier, in a series of closed discussions, that in her opinion "Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel." Haaretz reported that "Livni also criticized the exaggerated use that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears."2

What are we to make of such a self-contradiction, such perfect hypocrisy?

And here is Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International: "The one time we seriously negotiated with Tehran was in the closing days of the war in Afghanistan, in order to create a new political order in the country. Bush's representative to the Bonn conference, James Dobbins, says that 'the Iranians were very professional, straightforward, reliable and helpful. They were also critical to our success. They persuaded the Northern Alliance Afghan foes of the Taliban to make the final concessions that we asked for.' Dobbins says the Iranians made overtures to have better relations with the United States through him and others in 2001 and later, but got no reply. Even after the Axis of Evil speech, he recalls, they offered to cooperate in Afghanistan. Dobbins took the proposal to a principals meeting in Washington only to have it met with dead silence. The then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he says, 'looked down and rustled his papers.' No reply was ever sent back to the Iranians. Why bother? They're mad."3

Dobbins has further written: "The original version of the Bonn agreement ... neglected to mention either democracy or the war on terrorism. It was the Iranian representative who spotted these omissions and successfully urged that the newly emerging Afghan government be required to commit to both."4 ... "Only weeks after Hamid Karzai was sworn in as interim leader in Afghanistan, President Bush listed Iran among the 'axis of evil' -- surprising payback for Tehran's help in Bonn. A year later, shortly after the invasion of Iraq, all bilateral contacts with Tehran were suspended. Since then, confrontation over Iran's nuclear program has intensified."5

Shortly after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran made another approach to Washington, via the Swiss ambassador who sent a fax to the State Department. The Washington Post described it as "a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table -- including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups." The Bush administration "belittled the initiative. Instead, they formally complained to the Swiss ambassador who had sent the fax." Richard Haass, head of policy planning at the State Department at the time and now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the Iranian approach was swiftly rejected because in the administration "the bias was toward a policy of regime change."6

So there we have it. The Israelis know it, the Americans know it. Iran is not any kind of military threat. Before the invasion of Iraq I posed the question in this report: What possible reason would Saddam Hussein have for attacking the United States or Israel other than an irresistible desire for mass national suicide? He had no reason, and neither do the Iranians. Of the many lies surrounding the invasion of Iraq, the biggest one of all is that if, in fact, Saddam Hussein had those weapons of mass destruction the invasion would have been justified.

The United States and Israel have long strived to dominate the Middle East, viewing Iraq and Iran as the most powerful barriers to that ambition. Iraq is now a basket case. Iran awaits basketization. And, eventually perhaps, the omnipresent American military bases, closing the base-gap between Iraq and Afghanistan in Washington's encirclement of China, and the better to monitor the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea areas.

There was a time when I presumed that the sole purpose of United States hostile policy toward Iran was to keep the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons, which would deprive the US and Israel of their mideast monopoly and ultimate tool of intimidation. But now it appears that destroying Iran's military capability, nuclear and otherwise, smashing it to the point of being useless defensively or offensively, is the Bush administration's objective, perhaps along with the hope of some form of regime change. The Empire leaves as little to chance as possible.

Cuba and Original Sin Since the early days of the Cuban Revolution assorted anti-communists and capitalist true-believers around the world have been relentless in publicizing the failures, real and alleged, of life in Cuba; each perceived shortcoming is attributed to the perceived shortcomings of socialism -- It's simply a system that can't work, we are told, given the nature of human beings, particularly in this modern, competitive, globalized, consumer-oriented world.

In response to many of these criticisms, defenders of Cuban society have regularly pointed out how the numerous draconian sanctions imposed by the United States since 1960 are largely responsible for most of the problems pointed out by the critics. The critics, in turn, say that this is just an excuse, one given by Cuban apologists for every failure of their socialist system. However, it would be very difficult for the critics to prove their point. The United States would have to drop all sanctions and then we'd have to wait long enough for Cuban society to recover what it's lost and demonstrate what its system can do when not under constant attack by the most powerful nation in the world.

The sanctions (which Cuba calls an economic blockade), designed to create discontent toward the government, have been expanding under the Bush administration, both in number and in vindictiveness. Washington has adopted sharper reprisals against those who do business with Cuba or establish relations with the country based on cultural or tourist exchanges; e.g., the US Treasury has frozen the accounts in the United States of the Netherlands Caribbean Bank because it has an office in Cuba, and banned US firms and individuals from having any dealings with the Dutch bank.

The US Treasury Department fined the Alliance of Baptists $34,000, charging that certain of its members and parishioners of other churches had engaged in tourism during a visit to Cuba for religious purposes; i.e., they had spent money there. (As George W. once said: "U.S. law forbids Americans to travel to Cuba for pleasure."7)

American courts and government agencies have helped US companies expropriate the famous Cuban cigar brand name 'Cohiba' and the well-known rum "Havana Club".

The Bush administration sent a note to American Internet service providers telling them not to deal with six specified countries, including Cuba.8 This is one of several actions by Washington over the years to restrict Internet availability in Cuba; yet Cuba's critics claim that problems with the Internet in Cuba are due to government suppression.

Cubans in the United States are limited to how much money they can send to their families in Cuba, a limit that Washington imposes only on Cubans and on no other nationals. Not even during the worst moments of the Cold War was there a general limit to the amount of money that people in the US could send to relatives living in the Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe.

In 1999, Cuba filed a suit against the United States for $181.1 billion in compensation for economic losses and loss of life during the first forty years of this aggression. The suit held Washington responsible for the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding and disabling of 2,099 others. In the eight years since, these figures have of course all increased. The sanctions, in numerous ways large and small, makes acquiring many kinds of products and services from around the world much more difficult and expensive, often impossible; frequently, they are things indispensable to Cuban medicine, transportation or industry; or they mean that Americans and Cubans can't attend professional conferences in each other's country.

The above is but a small sample of the excruciating pain inflicted by the United States upon the body, soul and economy of the Cuban people.

For years American political leaders and media were fond of labeling Cuba an "international pariah". We don't hear much of that any more. Perhaps one reason is the annual vote at the United Nations on a General Assembly resolution to end the US embargo against Cuba. This is how the vote has gone:

Yes-No

1992 59-2 (US, Israel)

1993 88-4 (US, Israel, Albania, Paraguay)

1994 101-2 (US, Israel)

1995 117-3 (US, Israel, Uzbekistan)

1996 138-3 (US, Israel, Uzbekistan)

1997 143-3 (US, Israel, Uzbekistan)

1998 157-2 (US, Israel)

1999 155-2 (US, Israel)

2000 167-3 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands)

2001 167-3 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands)

2002 173-3 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands)

2003 179-3 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands)

2004 179-4 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau)

2005 182-4 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau)

2006 183-4 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau)

2007 184-4 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau)

Cuba's sin, which the United States of America can not forgive, is to have created a society that can serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model, and, moreover, to have done so under the very nose of the United States. And despite all the hardships imposed on it by Washington, Cuba has indeed inspired countless peoples and governments all over the world.

Long-time writer about Cuba, Karen Lee Wald, has observed: "The United States has more pens, pencils, candy, aspirin, etc. than most Cubans have. They, on the other hand, have better access to health services, education, sports, culture, childcare, services for the elderly, pride and dignity than most of us have within reach."

In a 1996 address to the General Assembly, Cuban Vice-President Carlos Lage stated: "Each day in the world 200 million children sleep in the streets. Not one of them is Cuban."

On April 6, 1960, L.D. Mallory, a US State Department senior official, wrote in an internal memorandum: "The majority of Cubans support Castro ... the only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. ... every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba." Mallory proposed "a line of action that makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the government." Later that year, the Eisenhower administration instituted the embargo.9

Hugo the demon dictator strikes again The latest evidence that Hugo Chavez is a dictator, we are told, is that he's pushing for a constitutional amendment to remove term limits from the presidency. It's the most contentious provision in his new reform package which has recently been approved by the Venezuelan congress and awaits a public referendum on December 2. The lawmakers traveled nationwide to discuss the proposals with community groups at more than 9,000 public events10, rather odd behavior for a dictatorship, as is another of the reforms -- setting a maximum six-hour workday so workers would have sufficient time for "personal development."

The American media and the opposition in Venezuela make it sound as if Chavez is going to be guaranteed office for as long as he wants. What they fail to emphasize, if they mention it at all, is that there's nothing at all automatic about the process -- Chavez will have to be elected each time. Neither are we enlightened that it's not unusual for a nation to not have a term limit for its highest office. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, if not all of Europe and much of the rest of the world, do not have such a limit. The United States did not have a term limit on the office of the president during the nation's first 175 years, until the ratification of the

22nd Amendment in 1951. Were all American presidents prior to that time dictators?

Is it of any significance, I wonder, that the two countries of the Western Hemisphere whose governments the United States would most like to overthrow -- Venezuela and Cuba -- have the greatest national obsession with baseball outside of the United States?

Reason Number 3,467 for having doubts about our God-given free-enterprise system I recently bought my first cellphone and took it with me to Burlington, Vermont, only to discover that it didn't work there. It seems that AT&T/Cingular doesn't have cellphone towers in that area. But other phone companies do have towers there and their subscribers' phones work. Is that not a really clever system?

To have a single national telephone system with all towers available for use by everyone would presumably upset libertarians and others who worship at the shrine of competition.. So instead we're given another charming "market solution", and the beauty of competition is preserved. Why stop there? Just imagine the advantages in being able to call around to find out which fire station will give you the best rate should your house suddenly go up in flames.

An unwelcome guest at the table of respectable opinion In the September edition of this report I presented a review of New York Times reporter Tim Weiner's new book "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA". It was rather critical of the book, particularly as to what has been left out about CIA operations and the effect upon foreign peoples of these operations. The net result of these numerous omissions is to paint a picture of US foreign policy that significantly downplays the actions most destructive to the peace, prosperity, and happiness of the world. It's an old story -- the media decide which issues to cover in the first place; they then decide how many sides there are to an issue; and then they decide what type of coverage is "balanced". The major ideological problem of the American media is that they do not believe that they have any ideology.

But I wondered if I was not being somewhat unfair to Weiner in one or more cases; perhaps he had a good reason for some of his omissions; perhaps in the 700 pages, including 155 pages of small-type notes, I had missed something I thought had been omitted. I decided to send a copy of the review to him, hopefully to get his reaction, and wrote to the Times asking for his email address. I got back an email from Weiner himself which read, in full:

"Dear Mr. Blum: I read your review several days ago. And I've read all your books. best wishes, tw"

No challenges to anything I said; no corrections. I'd be surprised if he's done more than skim a few pages of any of my books. His letter is his way of saying: "I really don't want to hear from you again. Our worlds are not designed for mingling. Our truths are not the same, and neither my publisher nor the New York Times pays me to disseminate yours."

NOTES 1 Haaretz.com (Israeli newspaper), October 1, 2007

2 Haaretz.com, October 25, 2007; print edition October 26

3 Newsweek, October 20, 2007

4 Washington Post, May 6, 2004

5 Washington Post, July 22, 2007, p.B7, op-ed by Dobbins

6 Washington Post, June 18, 2006, p.16

7 White House press release, October 10, 2003

8 Press release from the Cuban Mission to the United Nations, October 17,

2007, re this and preceding three paragraphs.

9 Department of State, "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI, Cuba" (1991), p.885

10 Washington Post, October 31, 2007, p.12

William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2 Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website at "essays". To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area. Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite. Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned.

Read this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your life

October 1, 2007

by William Blum www.killinghope.org

If not now, when? If not here, where? If not you, who? I used to give thought to what historical time and place I would like to have lived in. Europe in the 1930s was usually my first choice. As the war clouds darkened, I'd be surrounded by intrigue, spies omnipresent, matters of life and death pressing down, the opportunity to be courageous and principled. I pictured myself helping desperate people escape to America. It was real Hollywood stuff; think "Casablanca". And when the Spanish Republic fell to Franco and his fascist forces, aided by the German and Italian fascists (while the United States and Britain stood aside, when not actually aiding the fascists), everything in my imaginary scenario would have heightened -- the fate of Europe hung in the balance. Then the Nazis marched into Austria, then Czechoslovakia, then Poland ... one could have devoted one's life to working against all this, trying to hold back the fascist tide; what could be more thrilling, more noble?

Miracle of miracles, miracle of time machines, I'm actually living in this imagined period, watching as the Bush fascists march into Afghanistan, bombing it into a "failed state"; then Iraq: death, destruction, and utterly ruined lives for 24 million human beings; threatening more of the same endless night of hell for the people of Iran; overthrowing Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti; bombing helpless refugees in Somalia; relentless attempts to destabilize and punish Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Gaza, and other non-believers in the empire's god-given mission. Sadly, my most common reaction to this real-life scenario, daily in fact, is less heroic and more feeling scared or depressed; not for myself personally but for our one and only world. The news every day, which I consume in large portions, slashes away at my joie de vivre; it's not just the horror stories of American military power run amok abroad and the injustices of the ever-expanding police state at home, but all the lies and stupidity which drive me up the wall. I'm constantly changing stations, turning the TV or radio off, turning the newspaper page, to escape the words of the King of Lies and the King of Stupidity -- those two twisted creatures who happen to occupy the same humanoid body -- and a hundred minions.

Nonetheless, I must tell you, comrades, that at the same time, our contemporary period also brings out in me a measure of what I imagined for my 1930s life. Our present world is in just as great peril, even more so when one considers the impending environmental catastrophe (which the King of Capitalism refuses to confront lest it harm the profits of those who lavish him with royal bribes). The Bush fascist tide must be stopped.

Usually when I'm asked "But what can we do?", my reply is something along the lines of: Inasmuch as I can not see violent revolution succeeding in the United States (something deep inside tells me that we couldn't quite match the government's firepower, not to mention their viciousness), I can offer no solution to stopping the imperial beast other than: Educate yourself and as many others as you can, increasing the number of those in the opposition until it reaches a critical mass, at which point ... I can't predict the form the explosion will take.

I'm afraid that this advice, whatever historical correctness it may embody, is not terribly inspiring. However, I've assembled four wise men to add their thoughts, hopefully raising the inspiration level. Let's call them the "patron saints of lost causes".

I.F. Stone: "The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing -- for the sheer fun and joy of it -- to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it."

Howard Zinn: "People think there must be some magical tactic, beyond the traditional ones -- protests, demonstrations, vigils, civil disobedience -- but there is no magical panacea, only persistence."

Noam Chomsky: "There are no magic answers, no miraculous methods to overcome the problems we face, just the familiar ones: honest search for understanding, education, organization, action that raises the cost of state violence for its perpetrators or that lays the basis for institutional change -- and the kind of commitment that will persist despite the temptations of disillusionment, despite many failures and only limited successes, inspired by the hope of a brighter future."

Sam Smith: "Those who think history has left us helpless should recall the abolitionist of 1830, the feminist of 1870, the labor organizer of 1890, and the gay or lesbian writer of 1910. They, like us, did not get to choose their time in history but they, like us, did get to choose what they did with it. Knowing what we know now about how these things turned out, but also knowing how long it took, would we have been abolitionists in 1830, or feminists in 1870, and so on?"

Anti-Semitism.

Don't settle for imitations. "The cleanliness of this people, moral and otherwise, I must say, is a point in itself. By their very exterior you could tell that these were no lovers of water, and, to your distress, you often knew it with your eyes closed. ... Added to this, there was their unclean dress and their generally unheroic appearance. ... Was there any form of filth or profligacy, particularly in cultural life, without at least one Jew involved in it? ... nine tenths of all literary filth, artistic trash, and theatrical idiocy can be set to the account of a people ... a people under whose parasitism the whole of honest humanity is suffering, today more than ever: the Jews."

Now who can be the author of such abominable anti-semitism? a)Hasan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon; b)John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"; c)Osama bin Laden; d)Jimmy Carter; e)Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran; f)Norman Finkelstein, author of "The Holocaust Industry".

Each one has been condemned as anti-Semitic. Are you having a problem deciding? Oh, excuse me, I forgot one -- g)Adolf Hitler.1 Does that make it easier? I'll bet some of you were thinking it must have been Ahmadinejad.

The Webster's Dictionary defines "anti-Semite" as "One who discriminates against or is hostile to or prejudiced against Jews." Notice that Israel is not mentioned.

The next time a critic of Israeli policies is labeled "anti-semitic" think of this definition, think of Adolf's charming way of putting it, then closely examine what the accused has actually said or written.

It may, however, be past the time for such a rational, intellectual pursuit; ultra-heated polarization reigns supreme with anything concerning the Middle East, particularly Israel.

In March, at a conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee

(AIPAC) in Washington, one of the speakers, an American "Christian Zionist", asserted: "It is 1938, Iran is Germany and Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler." The audience responded with a standing ovation, one of seven for his talk.2

Then, in May, former Israeli Prime-Minister and current Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu declared that "It's 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs. ... While Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust he is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state."3

Not to be outdone in semi-hysterical propaganda, Israel's president, Shimon Peres, has compared an Iranian nuclear bomb to a "flying concentration camp".4

So why hasn't Iran at least started its holocaust by killing or throwing into concentration camps its own Jews, an estimated 30,000 in number? These are Iranian Jews who have representation in Parliament and who have been free for many years to emigrate to Israel but have chosen not to do so.

For your further apocalyptic enjoyment here are a couple more of Zionism's finest envoys speaking about Iran. Former Speaker of the House in the US Congress, Newt Gingrich: "Three nuclear weapons is a second Holocaust. We have enemies who are quite explicit in their desire to destroy us. They say it publicly, on television, on Web sites. They are fully as determined as Nazi Germany, more determined than the Soviet Union, and these enemies will kill us the first chance they get."5

And Norman Podhoretz, leading neo-conservative editor of Commentary magazine, in an article entitled "The Case for Bombing Iran": "Like Hitler, Ahmadinejad is a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism. ... The plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force -- any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938."6

Though so often condemned, Hitler actually arrived at a number of very perceptive insights into how the world worked. One of them was this: "The great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil ... therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big."7

Ahmadinejad arrived in New York September 24 to address the United Nations. At Columbia University he was introduced by the school's president as a man who appeared to lack "intellectual courage", had a "fanatical mindset", and may be "astonishingly undereducated".8 How many people in the audience, I wonder, looked around to see where George W. was sitting.

"If I were the president of a university, I would not have invited him. He's a holocaust denier," said Hillary Clinton, once again fearlessly challenging the Bush administration's propaganda.9

The above is but a small sample of the hatred and anger spewed forth against Ahmadinejad for several years now. A number of people on the American left, who should know better, have joined this chorus. I therefore would like to repeat, and update, part of something I wrote in this report last December, which was entitled "Designer Monsters".

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a man seemingly custom-made for the White House in its endless quest for enemies with whom to scare Congress, the American people, and the world, in order to justify the unseemly behavior of the empire. The Iranian president, we are told, has declared that he wants to "wipe Israel off the map". He has said that "the Holocaust is a myth". He held a conference in Iran for "Holocaust deniers". And his government passed a new law requiring Jews to wear a yellow insignia, à la the Nazis. On top of all that, he's aiming to build nuclear bombs, one of which would surely be aimed at Israel. What right-thinking person would not be scared by such a man?

However, like with all such designer monsters made bigger than life during the Cold War and since by Washington, the truth about Ahmadinejad is a bit more complicated. According to people who know Farsi, the Iranian leader has never said anything about "wiping Israel off the map". In his October 29, 2005 speech, when he reportedly first made the remark, the word "map" does not even appear. According to the translation of Juan Cole, American professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, Ahmadinejad said that "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." His remark, said Cole, "does not imply military action or killing anyone at all"10, which of course is what would make the remark sound threatening.

At the December 2006 conference in Teheran ("Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision"), the Iranian president said: "The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom."11 Obviously, the man is not calling for any kind of violent attack upon Israel, for the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place peacefully.

Moreover, in June 2006, subsequent to Ahmadinejad's controversial speech, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stated: "We have no problem with the world. We are not a threat whatsoever to the world, and the world knows it. We will never start a war. We have no intention of going to war with any state."12

As for the Holocaust myth, I have yet to read or hear words from Ahmadinejad saying simply, clearly, unambiguously, and unequivocally that he thinks that what we know as the Holocaust never happened. He has instead commented about the peculiarity and injustice of a Holocaust which took place in Europe resulting in a state for the Jews in the Middle East instead of in Europe. Why are the Palestinians paying a price for a German crime? he asks. He argues that Israel and the United States have exploited the memory of the Holocaust for their own purposes. And he wonders about the accuracy of the number of Jews -- six million -- allegedly killed in the Holocaust, as have many other people of all political stripes, including Holocaust survivors like Italian author Primo Levi. (The much publicized World War One atrocities which turned out to be false made the public very skeptical of the Holocaust claims for a long time after World War Two.) Ahmadinejad further asks why European researchers have been imprisoned for questioning certain details about the Holocaust. Which of this deserves to be labeled "Holocaust denial"?

The conference gave a platform to various points of view, including six members of Jews United Against Zionism, at least two of whom were rabbis. One was Ahron Cohen, from London, who declared: "There is no doubt whatsoever, that during World War 2 there developed a terrible and catastrophic policy and action of genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany against the Jewish People." He also said that "the Zionists make a great issue of the Holocaust in order to further their illegitimate philosophy and aims," indicating as well that the figure of six million Jewish victims is debatable. The other rabbi was Moshe David Weiss, who told the delegates: "We don't want to deny the killing of Jews in World War II, but Zionists have given much higher figures for how many people were killed. They have used the Holocaust as a device to justify their oppression." His group rejects the creation of Israel on the grounds that it violates Jewish religious law in that a Jewish state can't exist until the return of the Messiah .13

Another speaker was Shiraz Dossa, professor of political science at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada. In an interview after the conference, he described himself as an anti-imperialist and an admirer of Noam Chomsky, and said that he "was invited because of my expertise as a scholar in the German-Jewish area, as well as my studies in the Holocaust. ... I have nothing to do with Holocaust denial, not at all." His talk, he said, was "about the war on terrorism, and how the Holocaust plays into it. ... There was no pressure at all to say anything, and people there had different views."14

Clearly, the conference -- which the White House called "an affront to the entire civilized world"15 -- was not set up to be a forum for people to deny that the Holocaust literally never took place at all.

As to the yellow star story of May 2006 -- that was a complete fabrication by a prominent Iranian-American neo-conservative author, Amir Taheri.

Ahmadinejad, however, is partly to blame for his predicament. When asked directly about the Holocaust and other controversial matters he usually declines to give explicit answers of "yes" or "no". I interpret this as his prideful refusal to accede to the wishes of what he regards as a hostile Western interviewer asking hostile questions. The Iranian president is also in the habit of prefacing certain remarks with "Even if the Holocaust happened ... ", a rhetorical device we all use in argument and discussion, but one which can not help but reinforce the doubts people have about his views. However, when Ahmadinejad himself asks, as he often has, "Why should the Palestinians have to pay for something that happened in Europe?" he does not get a clear answer.

In any event, in the question and answer session following his talk at Columbia, the Iranian president said: "I'm not saying that it the Holocaust didn't happen at all. This is not the judgment that I'm passing here."

That should put the matter to rest. But of course it won't. Two days later, September 26, a bill (H. R. 3675) was introduced in Congress "To prohibit Federal grants to or contracts with Columbia University", to punish the school for inviting Ahmadinejad to speak. The bill's first "finding" states that "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the destruction of the State of Israel, a critical ally of the United States."

That same day, comedian Jay Leno had great fun ridiculing Ahmadinejad for denying that the Holocaust ever happened "despite all the eye-witness accounts".

How long before the first linking of Iran with 9-11? Or has that already happened? How long before democracy and freedom bombs begin to fall upon the heads of the Iranian people? All the charges of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, along with other disinformation, are of course designed to culminate in this new crime against humanity.

I wonder, in discussing these matters, if I'm running the risk of once again being called "anti-Semitic" by some Internet readers. No one is safe from such charges these days. It should be noted that Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, was accused last year of anti-semitic behavior by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency of New York and the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, important members of the Israel lobby. The accusation was based on a highly egregious out-of-context reading of some remarks by Chavez.16 One doesn't have to be particularly conspiracy minded to think that this was done in collusion with Bush administration officials. As the Reagan administration in 1983 flung charges of anti-Semitism against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, led by Daniel Ortega, who heads it again today.17 Stay tuned. Daniel, watch out.

One final thought. On the Democratic Party's failure to stand up to the Bush fascist tide. Here, from the first-person account of a German living under Hitler in the 1930s, his observation about the leading German political party, the Social Democrats, the Democratic Party of its time: The Social Democrats, he wrote, "had fought the election campaign of 1933 in a dreadfully humiliating way, chasing after the Nazi slogans and emphasizing that they were 'also nationalist'. ... In May, a month before they were finally dissolved, the Social Democratic faction in the Reichstag had unanimously expressed their confidence in Hitler and joined in the singing of the 'Horst Wessel Song,' the Nazi anthem. (The official parliamentary report noted: 'Unending applause and cheers, in the house and the galleries. The Reichschancellor Hitler turns to the Social Democratic faction and applauds.')"18

Burma

It's not that I can't give United States foreign policy any credit when credit is due (please send me examples of the good deeds I've overlooked), but the raison d'être of this report is to try to help readers understand how US foreign policy works, waking people up and making them smell the garbage. American officials are now saying all the right things in support of the protesting Burmese monks. They condemn the Burmese leaders. They have announced new sanctions against the military regime and have called upon the Security Council to consider further steps. "Americans are outraged by the situation," said Bush at the UN last week. But we must remember that all this costs the United States nothing. There's no oil involved. Israel has not yet accused the monks of anti-semitism. There's no issue of terrorism involved, though the government has tried to raise the issue of "terrorism" to win Washington's support. The monks have not made any socialist or anti-imperialist demands. There are no American bases whose removal they've called for. No Burmese troops have been helping the US in Iraq or Afghanistan. Neither Halliburton nor Blackwater has a presence in Burma. In short, nothing that would oblige Washington to compromise, once again, on its alleged principles.

NOTES 1 Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1971, original version 1925), Vol. 1, chapter 2, pp 57-8; chapter 4, p.150

2 The Forward (Jewish newspaper in New York), March 16, 2007 http://www.forward.com/articles/pastor-hailed-bibi-dissed-pollard-rejected-whil/

3 Haaretz.com (Israeli newspaper), http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/787766.html

4 Ibid.

5 The Jerusalem Post, January 23, 2007

6 Commentary Magazine (New York), June 2007

7 "Mein Kampf", op. cit., Vol. 1, chapter 10, p.231

8 Washington Post, September 25, 2007, p.1

9 Washington Post, September 25, 2007, p.6

10 Informed Comment, Cole's blog, May 3, 2006 www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html For a word-by-word breakdown of Ahmadinejad's remark, in Farsi and English, see: Global Research, January 20, 2007, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NOR20070120&articleId=4527

11 Associated Press, December 12, 2006

12 Letter to Washington Post from M.A. Mohammadi, Press Officer, Iranian Mission to the United Nations, June 12, 2006

13 nkusa.org/activities/Speeches/2006Iran-ACohen.cfm; Telegraph.co.uk, article by Alex Spillius, December 13, 2006; Associated Press, December 12,

2006

14 Globe and Mail (Toronto), December 13, 2006

15 Associated Press, December 12, 2006

16 Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, www.fair.org/index.php?page=2805

17 Holly Sklar, "Washington's War On Nicaragua" (1988), p.243

18 Sebastian Haffner, "Defying Hitler" (English edition, New York, 2000), pp.130-1

William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2 Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website at "essays". To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area. Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite. Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned.

The Anti-Empire Report, July 9, 2007

Neocons, theocons, Demcons, excons, and future cons

Who do you think said this on June 20? a)Rudy Giuliani; b)Hillary Clinton; c)George Bush; d)Mitt Romney; or e)Barack Obama?

"The American military has done its job. Look what they accomplished. They got rid of Saddam Hussein. They gave the Iraqis a chance for free and fair elections. They gave the Iraqi government the chance to begin to demonstrate that it understood its responsibilities to make the hard political decisions necessary to give the people of Iraq a better future. So the American military has succeeded. It is the Iraqi government which has failed to make the tough decisions which are important for their own people."1

Right, it was the woman who wants to be president because ... because she wants to be president ... because she thinks it would be nice to be president ... no other reason, no burning cause, no heartfelt desire for basic change in American society or to make a better world ... she just thinks it would be nice, even great, to be president. And keep the American Empire in business, its routine generating of horror and misery being no problem; she wouldn't want to be known as the president that hastened the decline of the empire.

And she spoke the above words at the "Take Back America" conference; she was speaking to liberals, committed liberal Democrats. She didn't have to cater to them with any flag-waving pro-war rhetoric; they wanted to hear anti-war rhetoric (and she of course gave them a bit of that as well out of the other side of her mouth), so we can assume that this is how she really feels, if indeed the woman feels anything.

Think of why you are opposed to the war. Is it not largely because of all the unspeakable suffering brought down upon the heads and souls of the poor people of Iraq by the American military? Hillary Clinton couldn't care less about that, literally. She thinks the American military has "succeeded". Has she ever unequivocally labeled the war "illegal" or "immoral"? I used to think that Tony Blair was a member of the right wing or conservative wing of the British Labour Party. I finally realized one day that that was an incorrect description of his ideology. Blair is a conservative, a bloody Tory. How he wound up in the Labour Party is a matter I haven't studied. Hillary Clinton, however, I've long known is a conservative; going back to at least the 1980s, while the wife of the Arkansas governor, she strongly supported the death squad torturers known as the Contras, who were the empire's proxy army in Nicaragua.2

Now we hear from America's venerable conservative magazine, William Buckley's "National Review", an editorial by Bruce Bartlett, policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan; treasury official under President George H.W. Bush; a fellow at two of the leading conservative think-tanks, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute; you get the picture. Bartlett tells his readers that it's almost certain that the Democrats will win the White House in 2008. So what to do? Support the most conservative Democrat. He writes: "To right-wingers willing to look beneath what probably sounds to them like the same identical views of the Democratic candidates, it is pretty clear that Hillary Clinton is the most conservative."3

We also hear from America's premier magazine for the corporate wealthy, "Fortune", whose recent cover features a picture of Clinton and the headline: "Business Loves Hillary".4

Do those in love with the idea of a woman president care about such things? Have they never heard of Margaret Thatcher, who tried her best to cripple the UK's marvelous National Health Service, amongst a hundred other reactionary policies? Most of Clinton's supporters would love to see the end of the Iraqi daily horror and so they presumably will also ignore Ted Koppel, the newsman of impeccable establishment credentials, who reported recently that he was told by someone who had held a senior position at the Pentagon and occasionally briefs Hillary Clinton on Gulf area matters, that she expects US troops to still be in Iraq at the end of her first term and even at the end of her second term.5

===============

The eternal struggle between the good guys and the bad guys

The United States and its wholly owned subsidiary, NATO, regularly drop bombs on Afghanistan which kill varying amounts of terrorists (or "terrorists", also known as civilians, also known as women and children). They do this rather often, against people utterly defenseless against aerial attack. In the first half of this year, US/NATO forces killed more people than the Taliban and others opposed to the Western occupation did.6 This was immediately followed by a reported 133 additional bombing victims in the first week of July.7

US/NATO spokespersons tell us that these unfortunate accidents happen because the enemy is deliberately putting civilians in harm's way to provoke a backlash against the foreign forces. We are told at times that the enemy had located themselves in the same building as the victims, using them as "human shields".8 Therefore, it would seem, the enemy somehow knows in advance that a particular building is about to be bombed and they rush a bunch of civilians to the spot before the bombs begin to fall. Or it's a place where civilians normally live and, finding out that the building is about to be bombed, the enemy rushes a group of their own people to the place so they can die with the civilians. Or, what appears to be much more likely, the enemy doesn't know of the bombing in advance, but then the civilians would have to always be there; i.e., they live there; they may even be the wives and children of the enemy. Is there no limit to the evil cleverness and the clever evilness of this foe?

Western officials also tell us that the enemy deliberately attacks from civilian areas, even hoping to draw fire to drive a wedge between average Afghans and international troops.9 Presumably the insurgents are attacking nearby Western military installations or troop concentrations. This raises the question: Why are the Western forces building installations and/or concentrating troops near civilian areas, deliberately putting civilians in harm's way?

US/NATO military leaders argue that any comparison of casualties caused by Western forces and by the Taliban is fundamentally unfair because there is a clear moral distinction to be made between accidental deaths resulting from combat operations and deliberate killings of innocents by militants. "No Western soldier ever wakes up in the morning with the intention of harming any Afghan citizen," said Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. "If that does inadvertently happen, it is deeply, deeply regretted."10

Is that not comforting language? Can any right-thinking, sensitive person fail to see who the good guys are?

During its many bombings from Vietnam to Iraq, Washington has repeatedly told the world that the resulting civilian deaths were accidental and very much "regretted". But if you go out and drop powerful bombs over a populated area, and then learn that there have been a number of "unintended" casualties, and then the next day drop more bombs and learn again that there were "unintended" casualties, and then the next day you bomb again ... at what point do you lose the right to say that the deaths were "unintended"?

During the US/NATO 78-day bombing of Serbia in 1999, which killed many civilians, a Belgrade office building -- which housed political parties, TV and radio stations, 100 private companies, and more -- was bombed. But before the missiles were fired into this building, NATO planners spelled out the risks: "Casualty Estimate 50-100 Government/Party employees. Unintended Civ Casualty Est: 250 -- Apts in expected blast radius."11 The planners were saying that about 250 civilians living in nearby apartment buildings might be killed in the bombing, in addition to 50 to 100 government and political party employees, likewise innocent of any crime calling for execution. So what do we have here? We have grown men telling each other: We'll do A, and we think that B may well be the result. But even if B does in fact result, we're saying beforehand -- as we'll insist afterward -- that it was unintended.

It was actually worse than this. As I've detailed elsewhere, the main purpose of the Serbian bombings -- admitted to by NATO officials -- was to make life so difficult for the public that support of the government of Slobodan Milosevic would be undermined.12 This, in fact, is the classic definition of "terrorism", as used by the FBI and the United Nations: The use or threat of violence against a civilian population to induce the government to change certain policies.

Another example of how "the enemy" can't be trusted to act as nice as god-fearing regular Americans ... "Defense officials said they believe at least 22 -- and possibly as many as 50 -- former Guantánamo detainees have returned to the battlefield to fight against the United States and its allies."13 The Defense Department has at times used the possibility of this happening as an argument against releasing detainees or closing Guantánamo.

But is it imaginable, not to mention likely, that after three, four or five years in the hell on earth known as Guantánamo, even detainees not disposed to terrorist violence -- and many of them were picked up for reasons having nothing to do with terrorist violence -- left with a deep-seated hatred of their jailors and a desire for revenge?

===============

Don't believe anything until it's been officially denied.

Those of you who've been reading my musings over the years know that the bombing of PanAm flight 103 in December 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which took the lives of 270 people, has been a major interest of mine. When The Black Book of The American Empire is written someday there should be a mention of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, a Libyan who has spent the last six years in prison charged with the Lockerbie bombing. I and many others, including a number in establishment legal positions, have been arguing for years that the evidence against Megrahi is very thin and unpersuasive. Now a court in Scotland has agreed and has ordered a new appeal for Megrahi. I and other so-called "conspiracy theorists" have been vindicated, although Megrahi is not yet free.

Briefly, the key international political facts are these: For well over a year after the bombing, the US and the UK insisted that Iran, Syria, and a Palestinian group had been behind the bombing, which was widely regarded as an act of revenge for the US shooting down an Iranian passenger plane over the Persian Gulf in July 1988, killing 290 people. (An act the US calls an accident, but which came about because of deliberate American intrusion into the Iran-Iraq war on the side of Iraq.) Then the buildup to the US invasion of Iraq came along in 1990 (how quickly do nations change from allies to enemies on the empire's chessboard) and the support of Iran and Syria was desired for the operation. Suddenly, in October 1990, the US declared that it was Libya -- the Arab state least supportive of the US build-up to the Gulf War and the sanctions imposed against Iraq -- that was behind the bombing after all. Megrahi and another Libyan were fingered.14

The Scottish Court's recent ruling, as logical and justified as it is, is still a great surprise. When it comes to anything associated with the War on Terrorism, the UK and the US are not particularly noted for logic or justice. So what might be the reason they're doing, or allowing, "the right thing" for a change? Could it be that Iran will now be charged with being the instigator and paymaster for the crime and that this will be used to hammer them into submission concerning nuclear power and weapons? Or justify an American attack? But then of course the United States would have to explain why it falsely accused Libya and allowed, and pushed for, an innocent man to be sent to prison for life. A very interesting dilemma. It would be great entertainment to hear George W. Bush trying to explain that one. (Cheney would just refuse to discuss the matter, saying it's "classified". Or tell the questioner to go fuck himself.) The dilemma is further heightened by the fact that it was the administration of George Bush Senior which made the accusation against Libya. His secretary of defense at the time was a gentleman named Richard B. Cheney.

===============

A marriage made in heaven Former White House counsel Harriet Miers once called George W. Bush the most brilliant man she has ever known.15 She's now no longer alone in her bizarre little padded cell. On June 10, during the president's visit to Albania -- arguably the most backward country in all of Europe, today as well as when it was a Soviet satellite -- the joyous townspeople of Fushe Kruje yelled "Bushie! Bushie!" and Albania's prime minister gushed over the "greatest and most distinguished guest we have ever had in all times."

This was reported by Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, and prompted a letter from a reader, which said in part: "Regarding Eugene Robinson's June 12 op-ed ... It was inevitable that somebody would sneer at the Albanian reception of President Bush ... Robinson patronizingly writing of 'a wonderful reverse-Borat moment'. ... U.S. support for Albania following the collapse of communism explains Albanian gratitude to the United States."16

Ah yes, the wonderful collapse of communism and the even more wonderful birth of democracy, freedom, capitalism, and widespread poverty and deprivation in the former Soviet dominion. What actually happened is that the first election in "Free Albania", in March 1991, resulted in an overwhelming endorsement of the Communists. And what did the United States then do? Of course, it proceeded to undertake a campaign to overthrow this very same elected government. The previous year in neighboring Bulgaria, another former Soviet satellite, the communists also won the election. And the United States overthrew them as well.17 These were the first of the non-violent overthrows of governments of the former Soviet Union and its satellites directed and financed by the United States.18

===============

"The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it." Oscar Wilde

Some international stories never come to an end, relegated to the history books and stamped finis. They keep popping up in the news of the day, each time igniting controversy and confusion anew. The dropping of atomic bombs on Japan in World War 2 is a prime example. On June 30, the Japanese Defense Minister, Fumio Kyuma, declared in a speech: "I understand that the bombing ended the war, and I think that it couldn't be helped."19 Kyuma's remark offended survivors of the bombings in Japan who believe the use of atomic weapons was excessive, and he soon had to resign. At the same time, it has undoubtedly pleased many American nationalists who insist that the United States had no choice but to use the bomb, and who resent the stigma the world has long attached to the US for being the first to employ such a dreadful weapon of mass destruction.

Kyuma was correct about one thing. The bombings did end the war. But that's only because the United States wanted the war to end that way, partly so they could see how well the bomb worked, but principally to put the Soviet Union on notice that after the war, if the Russkis put up too much resistance to American imperialistic ambitions, this was a sample of what they could expect. Kyuma could just as correctly have said: "I understand that if the United States had accepted Japan's peace overtures the war could have ended without the use of the atomic bomb." As opposed to the American nationalists' version of history, this version is well documented and established.20

Correction The first item of the last edition of this report included a couple of examples of stereotypical cold war anti-communist thinking. I did not realize it at the time but the examples are derived in large part from an excellent book by Michael Parenti, "The Anti-Communist Impulse", published in 1969, which should have been credited.

NOTES 1 Speaking at the "Take Back America" conference, organized by the Campaign for America's Future, June 20, 2007, Washington, DC; this excerpt can be heard at democracynow.org/ - June 21.

2 Roger Morris, former member of the National Security Council, "Partners in Power" (1996), p.415

3 National Review Online, May 1, 2007

4 Fortune magazine, July 9, 2007

5 National Public Radio, "All Things Considered", June 11, 2007

6 Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2007

7 Washington Post, July 8, 2007, p.16

8 Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2007

9 Chicago Tribune, July 8, 2007, article by Kim Barker

10 Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2007

11 Washington Post, April 22, 1999, p.18

12 William Blum, Rogue State, p.103-4

13 Washington Post, June 22, 2007, p.3

14 For an account of the case written in 2001, see: http://members.aol.com/bblum6/panam.htm. For a slightly updated account written in 2004, see: William Blum, Freeing the World to Death, chapter 10

15 Copley News Service, October 10, 2005

16 Washington Post, June 16, 2007, letter from Andrew Apostolou

17 http://members.aol.com/bblum6/bulgaria.htm

18 For further discussion of this, see Freeing the World to Death, p.166-71

19 Associated Press, July 2, 2007

20 http://members.aol.com/essays6/abomb.htm

The Anti-Empire Report Some things you need to know before the world ends

March 5, 2007

by William Blum

Flash! This just in! The Cold War was not a struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union.

It was a struggle between the United States and the Third World. What there was, was people all over the Third World fighting for economic and political changes against US-supported repressive regimes, or setting up their own progressive governments. These acts of self-determination didn't coincide with the needs of the American power elite, and so the United States moved to crush those governments and movements even though the Soviet Union was playing virtually no role at all in these scenarios. (It is remarkable the number of people who make fun of conspiracy theories but who accepted without question the existence of an International Communist Conspiracy.)

Washington officials of course couldn't say that they were intervening to block economic or political change, so they called it "fighting communism", fighting a communist conspiracy, fighting for freedom and democracy.

I'm reminded of all this because of a recent article in the Washington Post about El Salvador. It concerned two men who had been on opposite sides in the civil war of 1980-1992. One was José Salgado, who had been a government soldier, and is now the mayor of San Miguel, El Salvador's second-largest city.

Salgado enthusiastically embraced the scorched-earth tactics of his army bosses, the Post reports, even massacres of children, the elderly, the sick -- entire villages. It was all in the name of beating back communism, Salgado says he remembers being told. But he's now haunted by doubts about what he saw, what he did, and even why he fought. A US-backed war that was defined at the time as a battle against communism is now seen by former government soldiers and former guerrillas as less a conflict about ideology and more a battle over poverty and basic human rights.

"We soldiers were tricked," says Salgado. "They told us the threat was communism. But I look back and realize those weren't communists out there that we were fighting -- we were just poor country people killing poor country people."

Salgado says he once thought that the guerrillas dreamed of communism, but now that those same men are his colleagues in business and politics, he is learning that they wanted what he wanted: prosperity, a chance to move up in the world, freedom from repression.

All of which makes what they see around them today even more heartbreaking and frustrating. For all their sacrifices, El Salvador is still among the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere -- more than 40 percent of Salvadorans live on less than $2 a day, according to the United Nations. The country is still racked by violence, still scarred by corruption. For some the question remains: Was it all worth it?

"We gave our blood, we killed our friends and, in the end, things are still bad," says Salgado. "Look at all this poverty, and look how the wealth is concentrated in just a few hands."

The guerrillas Salgado once fought live with the same doubts. Former guerrilla Benito Argueta laments that the future didn't turn out as he'd hoped. Even though some factions of the coalition of guerrilla armies that fought in the civil war were Marxist, he said, ideology had nothing to do with his decision to take up arms and leave the farm where his father earned only a few colones for backbreaking work. Nor did ideology play a role in motivating his friends in the People's Revolutionary Army. He remembers fighting "for a piece of land, for the chance that my children might someday get to go to the university."1

The Salvadoran government could never have waged the war as destructively and for as long as it did without a massive influx of military aid and training from Washington -- estimated value: six billion dollars; 75,000 Salvadorans dead; about 20 Americans killed or wounded in combat; dissidents today still have to fear right-wing death squads; scarcely any significant social change in El Salvador; the poor remain as ever; a small class of the wealthy still own the country. But never mind. "Communism" was defeated, and El Salvador remains a loyal member of the empire, sending troops to Iraq.2

This is not merely of historical interest. A civil war still rages in Colombia. Government soldiers and large numbers of right-wing paramilitary forces, with indispensable and endless military support from the United States, battle "communism", year after year, decade after decade. The casualties long ago exceeded El Salvador. The irony is monumental, for of those labeled "communist", a handful of the older ones may have fancied themselves as heirs to Che Guevara 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, but for a long time now the primary motivation of these "left-wing" paramilitary forces has been profits from drugs and kidnapings, obtaining revenge for their comrades' deaths, and staying alive and avoiding capture. Someday the survivors on both sides may well be expressing sentiments and regrets similar to the Salvadorans above, wondering what the hell it was all really about, or at least wondering what the United States's obsessive interest in their country was. (For those who may have forgotten, it should be noted that the Soviet Union has not existed since 1991.)

And someday, as well, survivors on all sides of Washington's "War on Terrorism", may wonder who the real terrorists were.

The Germans have to learn to kill In the September 5, 2005 edition of this report I wrote about the decades-long effort by the United States to wean Japan away from its post-WW2 pacifist constitution and foreign policy and set it back on the righteous path to again being a military power, acting in coordination with US foreign policy needs.

For some years, the United States has of course had the same goal in mind for its other major WW2 foe. But recent circumstances indicate that Washington may be losing patience with the rate of Germany's submission to the empire's embrace. Germany declined to send troops to Iraq and sent only non-combat forces to Afghanistan, not quite good enough for the Pentagon war lovers and their NATO allies. Germany's leading news magazine, Der Spiegel, recently reported the following:

At a meeting in Washington, Bush administration officials, speaking in the context of Afghanistan, berated Karsten Voigt, German government representative for German-American relations: "You concentrate on rebuilding and peacekeeping, but the unpleasant things you leave to us." ... "The Germans have to learn to kill."

A German officer at NATO headquarters was told by a British officer: "Every weekend we send home two metal coffins, while you Germans distribute crayons and woollen blankets."

A NATO colleague from Canada remarked that it was about time that "the Germans left their sleeping quarters and learned how to kill the Taliban."

Bruce George, the head of the British Defence Committee, said "some drink tea and beer and others risk their lives."

And in Quebec, a Canadian official told a German official: "We have the dead, you drink beer."3

Yet, in many other contexts since the end of the war the Germans have been unable to disassociate themselves from the image of Nazi murderers and monsters.

Will there come the day when the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents will be mocked by "the Free World" for living in peace?

Should it be legal under international law to criticize the state of Israel? "On Faith", an Internet feature of the Washington Post and Newsweek magazine, poses questions each week to a panel of more than 50 persons from the world of religion. A recent question was "Can you be critical of Israel and not be anti-Semitic?"

Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University replied: "Much depends on the motives of the critic. The unworthy critics today are easy to find. ... their shrill voices are neither moderated by love nor tinged with sadness. Their desire is to see the Jewish state destroyed. The worthy critics, by contrast, are more scarce. ... their words mingle praise along with reproof. They speak directly, sadly, and always in pain."4

So there you have it. A question so ridiculous on its face that it should not even be raised by two media giants or anyone else with any intellectual pretensions, but is being raised because of the unrelenting pressure of the Israeli lobby in the United States and throughout the world. It then receives an appropriately ridiculous answer.

Can anyone express reservations about a papal decree and not be anti-Catholic? Can anyone be critical of the pilgrimages to Mecca, which often end in tragedy, and not be anti-Islam? Can anyone be critical of the African negligence on the AIDS crisis and not be racist?

For anyone in the world to criticize the US war in Iraq do they have to love the United States? To be taken seriously -- to be judged a "worthy critic" -- must they in the same breath offer some kind of praise for the US? Are we to judge that those who don't do so desire to see the American state destroyed? Can those in Palestine and Lebanon, upon whose heads and homes Israeli bombs fall, be worthy critics of Israeli policies? Are they not speaking "directly, sadly, and always in pain"?

40th anniversary of the March on the Pentagon, coming up March 17; an excerpt from William Blum's memoir. October 21, 1967, the March on the Pentagon, surely one of the most extraordinary and imposing acts of protest and civil disobedience in history -- the government hunkered down in its trenches in the face of an audacious assault upon its seat of power by its own citizens; a demonstration much bigger than the Bonus Marchers of 1932 (those depression-stricken World War One veterans demanding payment on their government bonus certificates NOW, not in some pie-in-the-sky future -- the people peaceably assembled to petition the government for a redress of grievances, violently and humiliatingly squashed by federal troops under the command of a general named MacArthur, and his aide named Eisenhower, and their officer named Patton.)

After a stirring concert at the Reflecting Pool by Phil Ochs surrounded by

150,000 of his closest friends, most of the protestors marched over the Memorial Bridge to the war factory. Never to be forgotten: the roof of the Pentagon when the colossus first came into view and we marched closer and closer -- soldiers standing guard, spaced across the roof from one side to the other, weapons at the ready, motionless, looking down upon us from on high with all the majesty of stone warriors or gods atop a classical Greek temple. For the first time that day I wondered -- not without excitement -- what I was letting myself in for.

This was wholly unlike my first protest at the Pentagon. This was not a group of Quaker pacifists sworn to non-violence, who could bring out the least macho side of even professional military men, and who would be received cordially in the Pentagon cafeteria. Today, we were as welcome and as safe as narcs at a biker rally. Our numbers included many the boys at the Pentagon must have been itching to get their hands on, like those in the Committee to Aid the National Liberation Front, with their Vietcong flags, and SDS, and other "anti-imperialist" groups, who became involved in some of the earliest confrontations that day.

In sharp contrast to the likes of these were the illuminati like Norman Mailer, Marcus Raskin, Noam Chomsky, Robert Lowell, Dwight McDonald -- men in dark suits, white shirts and ties as if to ward off evil spirits with the cross of respectability.

In the vast parking lot to which we were confined, open hostility was kept in check at first, but it was clear that the peace was only an inch deep. Repeated draft-card burnings took place -- a veritable performance, with flaming cards held high and flaunted square in the irises of the soldiers, whose faces were masked in studied indifference. Although this augured conflict of unpredictable dimensions, I found it exhilarating to see all those young people acting so principled and fearless. I was sorry that I was too old to have a card to burn.

Scattered pockets of mild confrontation broke out, soon unfolding into more widespread and serious clashes. At one spot a Vietnam teach-in for the troops was broken up by MPs with clubs. Later, 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers, veterans of Vietnam, entered the scene, bayonets fixed, face to face at last with these people they had been hearing about so much, the privileged little sons of bitches whose incessant crying about international law and morality and god-knows-what-else gave aid and comfort to the enemy, the cowardly little snotnosed draft-dodgers who wallowed in sex and dope while the GIs wallowed in mud and death (and dope as well).

The paratroopers proceeded to kick ass -- after 'Nam this was a church picnic -- and many bruised and battered demonstrators were carried away to waiting prison busses, helping to swell the day's total arrestees to near 700. The protestors, whose only defense was to lock arms, appealed to the soldiers to back off, to join them, to just act human, shouting through a bull horn: "The soldiers are not our enemy, the decision makers are." Though this was a sincere declaration, its failure to sway their attackers gave way to angry, impotent curses of "bastards" and "motherfuckers".

I had no big argument with the idea that the soldiers' bosses were the real enemy, but I had real difficulty with the expressions of "love" for the GIs that some silly hippie types allowed to pass their lips. The soldiers, after all, had made decisions, just as others of their generation had opted for draft evasion or Canada. These soldiers, in particular, were fresh from the killing fields. The idea of "individual responsibility" is not just a conservative buzzword.

Several eyewitnesses told the Washington Free Press that in other areas of the "battlefield" they saw as many as three soldiers drop their weapons and helmets and join the crowd, and that at least one of them was seized and dragged into the Pentagon by MPs soon afterward. Later attempts to obtain information about these soldiers from the Pentagon were met with denials.5

There's no evidence like no evidence "AIDS patients suffering from debilitating nerve pain got as much or more relief by smoking marijuana as they would typically get from prescription drugs -- and with fewer side effects -- according to a study conducted under rigorously controlled conditions with government-grown pot."6

So, yet another study illustrating the absurdity of marijuana use being illegal in the United States. It remains to be seen whether the anti-marijuana forces will even bother to respond with one of their fatuous arguments. My favorite one is that "marijuana use leads to heroin". How do they know? Well, 95%, or 97%, of all heroin users first used marijuana. That's how they know. Of course, 100% of all heroin users first used milk. Therefore, drinking milk leads to heroin?

The sins of omission are more insidious than the sins of commission Diane Rehm has a large and loyal listenership on National Public Radio, and I think she does a pretty good job with her very wide-ranging interviews, but the woman has one deep-seated flaw: She doesn't understand ideology very well -- right from left, conservative from liberal, liberal from radical leftist, and so on. Time and time again she gathers a group to discuss some very controversial issue, and there is not amongst their number a single person of genuine leftist credentials, or even close to it; and from a number of remarks I've heard her make, my guess is that this is not because she has a conservative bias, but rather that she has an inadequate comprehension of what distinguishes left from right; although whoever helps her choosing guests may well be conscious of what they're doing.

The program of February 27, with someone sitting in for Rehm, is a case in point. The topic was Iran -- all the controversial issues surrounding that country were on the table. The discussants were: 1) someone from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the oldest, most traditional private institution in support of US imperialism; 2) someone from the American Enterprise Institute, which makes the CFR look positively progressive; 3) someone from the Brookings Institution, which is about on a par with CFR ideologically. The Brookings representative was Kenneth Pollack, former CIA analyst and National Security Council staffer, who will always be remembered (or at least should be) for his 2002 book: "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq". Can we look forward to his next book, "The Case for Global Warming"?

In a society which pays so much lip service to dissent, free speech, and Town Hall "balanced" discussions, the lineup of Diane Rehm's guests is depressingly typical in the mainstream world. Whether it's the 9-11 Commission, the Iraq Study Group, the Congressional JFK assassination committee, or any of dozens of other congressional investigating committees over the years, the questioning, challenging, progressive point of view is almost always one that cannot be entertained in polite society.

Is capitalism past its sell-by date? The prisoner at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, standing on a box, a pointed black hood over his face, his arms outstretched, electrical wires dangling from his fingers, leading to other parts of his cloaked body ... a symbol, an iconic image of the US war against the people of Iraq.

Now we have, if a photo were available, what could be an iconic image of the US war against the people of America, or at least against their health care -- a paraplegic man, no wheelchair or walker, somehow propelling himself along a street in Los Angeles, a broken colostomy bag dangling from his piteous body, clothed in a soiled hospital gown, dragging a bag of his belongings in his clenched teeth ... This human being had been taken by Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center to a homeless mission, which refused to accept him; the man then hurled himself from the hospital van to the street. Witnesses said that the van driver ignored their cries for help and instead applied makeup and perfume before speeding off.7

This is one of several cases in the recent past of "homeless dumping" in Los Angeles. It's all very understandable, from a bookkeeping point of view. The homeless missions have only so many beds, the hospitals have a budget and the debits and the credits have to balance. It's what happens when a free market in a free society guarantees access to Coca Cola but not to health care.

Doonesbury Has anyone noticed how Doonesbury has gone downhill during most of the past year? Not only is the strip usually not very funny, it's very often not even political; lots of TV-sitcom-type humor. Who needs that? There are plenty of other comic strips like that to choose from. What happened to Garry Trudeau?

NOTES

1 Washington Post , January 29, 2007, p.1

2 For further details of the civil war period see William Blum, "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II", chapter 54

3 Der Spiegel, November 20, 2006, p.24

4 Washington Post, February 24, 2007, p.B9

5 "West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir", http://members.aol.com/bblum6/mem.htm

6 Washington Post, February 13, 2007, p.14

7 Los Angeles Times, February 15, 2007

January 12, 2007 by William Blum

Johnny got his gun

In the past year Iran has issued several warnings to the United States about the consequences of an American or Israeli attack. One statement, issued in November by a high Iranian military official, declared: "If America attacks Iran, its 200,000 troops and 33 bases in the region will be extremely vulnerable, and both American politicians and military commanders are aware of it."1 Iran apparently believes that American leaders would be so deeply distressed by the prospect of their young men and women being endangered and possibly killed that they would forswear any reckless attacks on Iran. As if American leaders have been deeply stabbed by pain about throwing youthful American bodies into the bottomless snakepit called Iraq, or were restrained by fear of retaliation or by moral qualms while feeding 58,000 young lives to the Vietnam beast. As if American leaders, like all world leaders, have ever had such concerns.

Let's have a short look at some modern American history, which may be instructive in this regard. A report of the US Congress in 1994 informed us that:

Approximately 60,000 military personnel were used as human subjects in the

1940s to test two chemical agents, mustard gas and lewisite blister gas. Most of these subjects were not informed of the nature of the experiments and never received medical followup after their participation in the research. Additionally, some of these human subjects were threatened with imprisonment at Fort Leavenworth if they discussed these experiments with anyone, including their wives, parents, and family doctors. For decades, the Pentagon denied that the research had taken place, resulting in decades of suffering for many veterans who became ill after the secret testing.2 In the decades between the 1940s and 1990s, we find a remarkable variety of government programs, either formally, or in effect, using soldiers as guinea pigs -- marched to nuclear explosion sites, with pilots sent through the mushroom clouds; subjected to chemical and biological weapons experiments; radiation experiments; behavior modification experiments that washed their brains with LSD; widespread exposure to the highly toxic dioxin of Agent Orange in Korea and Vietnam ... the list goes on ... literally millions of experimental subjects, seldom given a choice or adequate information, often with disastrous effects to their physical and/or mental health, rarely with proper medical care or even monitoring.3

In the 1990s, many thousands of American soldiers came home from the Gulf War with unusual, debilitating ailments. Exposure to harmful chemical or biological agents was suspected, but the Pentagon denied that this had occurred. Years went by while the veterans suffered terribly: neurological problems, chronic fatigue, skin problems, scarred lungs, memory loss, muscle and joint pain, severe headaches, personality changes, passing out, and much more. Eventually, the Pentagon, inch by inch, was forced to move away from its denials and admit that, yes, chemical weapon depots had been bombed; then, yes, there probably were releases of deadly poisons; then, yes, American soldiers were indeed in the vicinity of these poisonous releases, 400 soldiers; then, it might have been 5,000; then, "a very large number", probably more than 15,000; then, finally, a precise number -- 20,867; then, "The Pentagon announced that a long-awaited computer model estimates that nearly 100,000 U.S. soldiers could have been exposed to trace amounts of sarin gas."4

If the Pentagon had been much more forthcoming from the outset about what it knew all along about these various substances and weapons, the soldiers might have had a proper diagnosis early on and received appropriate care sooner. The cost in terms of human suffering has been incalculable.

Soldiers have also been forced to take vaccines against anthrax and nerve gas not approved by the FDA as safe and effective; and punished, sometimes treated like criminals, if they refused. (During World War II, soldiers were forced to take a yellow fever vaccine, with the result that some 330,000 of them were infected with the hepatitis B virus.5)

And through all the recent wars, countless American soldiers have been put in close proximity to the radioactive dust of exploded depleted uranium-tipped shells and missiles on the battlefield; depleted uranium has been associated with a long list of rare and terrible illnesses and birth defects. It poisons the air, the soil, the water, the lungs, the blood, and the genes. (The widespread dissemination of depleted uranium by American warfare -- from Serbia to Afghanistan to Iraq -- should be an international scandal and crisis, like AIDS, and would be in a world not so intimidated by the United States.)

The catalogue of Pentagon abuses of American soldiers goes on ... Troops serving in Iraq or their families have reported purchasing with their own funds bullet-proof vests, better armor for their vehicles, medical supplies, and global positioning devices, all for their own safety, which were not provided to them by the army ... Continuous complaints by servicewomen of sexual assault and rape at the hands of their male counterparts are routinely played down or ignored by the military brass ... Numerous injured and disabled vets from all wars have to engage in an ongoing struggle to get the medical care they were promised ... One should read "Army Acts to Curb Abuses of Injured Recruits" (New York Times, May 12, 2006) for accounts of the callous, bordering on sadistic, treatment of soldiers in bases in the United States ... Repeated tours of duty, which fracture family life and increase the chance not only of death or injury but of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).6

National Public Radio's "All Things Considered", on December 4 and other days, ran a series on· Army mistreatment of soldiers home from Iraq and suffering serious PTSD. At Colorado's Ft. Carson these afflicted soldiers are receiving a variety of abuse and punishment much more than the help they need, as officers harass and punish them for being emotionally "weak."

Keep the above in mind the next time you hear a president or a general speaking on Memorial Day about "honor" and "duty" and about how much we "owe to the brave young men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the cause of freedom and democracy."

And read "Johnny Got His Gun" by Dalton Trumbo for the ultimate abuse of soldiers by leaders of nations.

The conscience of our leaders

After he ordered the bombing of Panama in December 1989, which killed anywhere from 500 to a few thousand totally innocent people, guilty of no harm to any American, the first President George Bush declared that his "heart goes out to the families of those who have died in Panama".7

When asked by a reporter: "Was it really worth it to send people to their death for this? To get Noriega?", Bush replied: "Every human life is precious, and yet I have to answer, yes, it has been worth it."8

Speaking in November 1990 of his imminent invasion of Iraq, Bush, Sr. said: "People say to me: 'How many lives? How many lives can you expend?' Each one is precious."9

While his killing of thousands of Iraqis was proceeding merrily along in

2003, the second President George Bush was moved to say: "We believe in the value and dignity of every human life."10

In December 2006, the White House spokesman for Bush, Jr., commenting about American deaths reaching 3,000 in Iraq, said President Bush "believes that every life is precious and grieves for each one that is lost."11

Both father and son are on record expressing their deep concern for God and prayer both before and during their mass slaughters. "I trust God speaks through me," said Bush the younger in 2004. "Without that, I couldn't do my job."12

After his devastation of Iraq and its people, Bush the elder said: "I think that, like a lot of others who had positions of responsibility in sending someone else's kids to war, we realize that in prayer what mattered is how it might have seemed to God."13

God, one surmises, might have asked George Bush, father and son, about the kids of Iraq. And the adults. And, in a testy, rather ungodlike manner, might have snapped: "So stop wasting all the precious lives already!"

In the now-famous exchange on TV in 1996 between Madeleine Albright and reporter Lesley Stahl, the latter was speaking of US sanctions against Iraq, and asked the then-US ambassador to the UN, and Secretary of State-to-be: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And -- and you know, is the price worth it?" Replied Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."14

Ten years later, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, continuing the fine tradition of female Secretaries of State and the equally noble heritage of the Bush family, declared that the current horror in Iraq is "worth the investment" in American lives and dollars.15

And don't forget that we can't pull out of Iraq now because it would dishonor the troops who haven't died yet.

The American media as the Berlin Wall

In December 1975, while East Timor, which lies at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, was undergoing a process of decolonization from Portugal, a struggle for power took place. A movement of the left, Fretilin, prevailed and then declared East Timor's independence from Portugal. Nine days later, Indonesia invaded East Timor. The invasion was launched the day after US President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had left Indonesia after giving President Suharto permission to use American arms, which, under US law, could not be used for aggression. But Indonesia was Washington's most valuable ally in Southeast Asia and, in any event, the United States was not inclined to look kindly on any government of the left.

Indonesia soon achieved complete control over East Timor, with the help of the American arms and other military aid, as well as diplomatic support at the UN. Amnesty International estimated that by 1989, Indonesian troops had killed 200,000 people out of a population of between 600,000 and 700,000, a death rate which is probably one of the highest in the entire history of wars.16

Is it not remarkable that in the numerous articles in the American daily press following President Ford's death last month, there was not a single mention of his role in the East Timor massacre? A search of the extensive Lexis-Nexis and other media databases finds mention of this only in a few letters to the editor from readers; not a word even in the reports of any of the news agencies, like the Associated Press, which generally shy away from controversy less than the newspapers they serve; nor a single mention in the mainstream broadcast news programs.

Imagine if following the recent death of Augusto Pinochet the media made no mention of his overthrow of the Allende government in Chile, or the mass murder and torture which followed. Ironically, the recent articles about Ford also failed to mention his remark a year after Pinochet's coup. President Ford declared that what the United States had done in Chile was "in the best interest of the people in Chile and certainly in our own best interest."17

During the Cold War, the American government and media never missed an opportunity to point out the news events embarrassing to the Soviet Union which became non-events in the communist media.

Man shall never fly

The Cold War is still with us. Because the ideological conflict that was the basis for it has not gone away. Because it can't go away. As long as capitalism exists, as long as it puts profit before people, as it must, as long as it puts profit before the environment, as it must, those on the receiving end of its sharp pointed stick must look for a better way.

Thus it is that when Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced a few days ago that he plans to nationalize telephone and electric utility companies to accelerate his "socialist revolution", the spokesperson for Capitalism Central, White House press secretary Tony Snow, was quick to the attack: "Nationalization has a long and inglorious history of failure around the world," Snow declared. "We support the Venezuelan people and think this is an unhappy day for them."18

Snow presumably buys into the belief that capitalism defeated socialism in the Cold War. A victory for a superior idea. The boys of Capital chortle in their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the past century has either been corrupted, subverted, perverted, or destabilized ... or crushed, overthrown, bombed, or invaded ... or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States. Not one socialist government or movement -- from the Russian Revolution to Cuba, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the FMLN in Salvador, from Communist China to Grenada, Chile and Vietnam -- not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home. Even many plain old social democracies -- such as in Guatemala, Iran, British Guiana, Serbia and Haiti, which were not in love with capitalism and were looking for another path -- even these too were made to bite the dust by Uncle Sam.

It's as if the Wright brothers' first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-fearing folk of America looked upon this, took notice of the consequences, nodded their collective heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Man shall never fly.

Tony Snow would have us believe that the government is no match for the private sector in efficiently getting large and important things done. But is that really true? Let's clear our minds for a moment, push our upbringing to one side, and remember that the American government has landed men on the moon, created great dams, marvelous national parks, an interstate highway system, the peace corps, built up an incredible military machine (ignoring for the moment what it's used for), student loans, social security, Medicare, insurance for bank deposits, protection of pension funds against corporate misuse, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institutes of Health, the Smithsonian, the G.I. Bill, and much, much more. In short, the government has been quite good at doing what it wanted to do, or what labor and other movements have made it do, like establishing worker health and safety standards and requiring food manufacturers to list detailed information about ingredients.

When George W. took office one of his chief goals was to examine whether jobs done by federal employees could be performed more efficiently by private contractors. Bush called it his top management priority. By the end of 2005, 50,000 government jobs had been studied. And federal workers had won the job competitions more than 80 percent of the time.19

We have to remind the American people of what they've instinctively learned but tend to forget when faced with statements like that of Tony Snow -- that they don't want more government, or less government; they don't want big government, or small government; they want government on their side.

And by the way, Tony, the great majority of the population in the last years of the Soviet Union had a much better quality of life, including a longer life, under their "failed nationalized" economy, than they have had under unbridled capitalism.

None of the above, of course, will deter The World's Only Superpower from continuing its jihad to impose capitalist fundamentalism upon the world.

Unwelcome guests at the table of the respectable folk

Sen. Joseph Biden, Democrat from Delaware, the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has announced four weeks of hearings focused on every aspect of US policy in Iraq. He really wants to get to the bottom of things, find out how and why things went so wrong, who are the ones responsible, hold them accountable, and what can be done now. The committee will hear the testimony of top political, economic and intelligence experts, foreign diplomats, and former and current senior US officials, like Condoleezza Rice, Brent Scowcroft, Samuel Berger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright and George Shultz.20 All the usual suspects.

But why not call upon some unusual suspects? Why do congressional committees and committees appointed by the White House typically not call experts who dissent from the official explanations? Why not hear from people who had the wisdom to protest the invasion of Iraq and condemn it in writing before it even began? People who called the war illegal and immoral, said we should never start it, and predicted much of the horrible outcome. Surely they may have some insights and analyses that will not be heard from the mouths of the usual suspects.

Likewise, why didn't the September 11 Committee, or any of the congressional committees dealing with the terrorist attack, call upon any of the numerous

9-11 experts who have done extensive research and who question various aspects of the official story?

Traditionally, of course, such committees have been formed to put a damper on dissident questioning of official stories, to ridicule them as "conspiracy theorists", not to give the dissidents a larger audience.

Speaking engagements January 25 -- Flagstaff, AZ March 9 -- Venice, CA March

10 -- Irvine, CA March 17 or 18 -- Columbus, OH

See www.killinghope.org for the details

NOTES

1 Fars News Agency, November 21, 2006

2 Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, "Is Military Research Hazardous to Veterans' Health? Lessons Spanning Half a Century", December 8, 1994, p.5

3 Ibid., passim

4 Washington Post, October 2 and 23, 1996 and July 31, 1997 for the estimated numbers of affected soldiers.

5 "Journal of the American Medical Association", September 1, 1999, p.822

6 Washington Post, December 20, 2006, p.19

7 New York Times, December 22, 1989, p.17

8 New York Times, December 22, 1989, p.16

9 Los Angeles Times, December 1, 1990, p.1

10 Washington Post, May 28, 2003

11 Washington Post, January 1, 2007, p.1

12 Washington Post, July 20, 2004, p.15, statement attributed to President Bush in the Lancaster (Pa.) New Era newspaper from a private meeting with Amish families on July 9. The White House later said Bush said no such thing. Yes, we know how the Amish lie.

13 Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1991, p.1

14 CBS "60 Minutes", May 12, 1996

15 Associated Press, December 22, 2006

16 National Security Archive -- www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/ -- Search ; William Blum, Rogue State, p.188-9

17 New York Times, September 17, 1974, p.22

18 Washington Post, January 10, 2007, p.7

19 Washington Post, March 23, 2006, p.21

20 Washington Post, January 5, 2007

The Anti-Empire Reports: Some things you need to know before the world ends

October 19, 2006

by William Blum

The jingo bells are ringing

"Who really poses the greatest danger to world peace: Iraq, North Korea or the United States?" asked Time magazine in an online poll in early 2003, shortly before the US invasion of Iraq. The final results were: North Korea 6.7%, Iraq 6.3%, the United States 86.9%; 706,842 total votes cast.1

Imagine that following North Korea's recent underground nuclear test neither the United States nor any other government cried out that the sky was falling. No threat to world peace and security was declared by the White House or any other house. It was thus not the lead story on every radio and TV broadcast and newspaper page one. The UN Security Council did not unanimously condemn it. Nor did NATO. "What should we do about him?" was not America Online's plaintive all-day headline alongside a photo of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

Who would have known about the explosion, even if it wasn't baby-sized? Who would have cared? But because all this fear mongering did in fact take place, www.vote.com was able to pose the question -- "North Korea's Nuclear Threat: Is It Time For An International Economic Blockade To Make Them Stop?" -- and hence compile a 93% "yes" vote. It doesn't actually take too much to win hearts and mindless. Media pundit Ben Bagdikian once wrote: "While it is impossible for the media to tell the population what to think, they do tell the public what to think about."

So sometime in the future, the world might, or might not, have nine states possessing nuclear weapons instead of eight. So what? Do you know of all the scary warnings the United States issued about a nuclear-armed Soviet Union? A nuclear-armed China? And the non-warnings about a nuclear-armed Israel? There were no scary warnings or threats against ally Pakistan for the nuclear-development aid it gave to North Korea a few years ago, and Washington has been busy this year enhancing the nuclear arsenal of India, events which the world has paid little attention to, because the United States did not mount a campaign to tell the world to worry. There's still only one country that's used nuclear weapons on other people, but we're not given any warnings about them.

In 2005, Secretary of War Rumsfeld, commenting about large Chinese military expenditures, said: "Since no nation threatens China, one wonders: Why this growing investment?"2 The following year, when asked if he believed the Venezuelans' contention that their large weapons buildup was strictly for defense, Rumsfeld replied: "I don't know of anyone threatening Venezuela - anyone in this hemisphere."3 Presumably, the honorable secretary, if asked, would say that no one threatens North Korea either. Or Iran. Or Syria. Or Cuba. He may even believe this. However, beginning with the Soviet Union, as one country after another joined the nuclear club, Washington's ability to threaten them or coerce them declined, which is of course North Korea's overriding reason for trying to become a nuclear power; or Iran's if it goes that route.

Undoubtedly there are some in the Bush administration who are not unhappy about the North Korean test. A nuclear North Korea with a "crazy" leader serves as a rationale for policies the White House is pursuing anyway, like anti-missile systems, military bases all over the map, ever-higher military spending, and all the other nice things a respectable empire bent on world domination needs. And of course, important elections are imminent and getting real tough with looney commies always sells well.

Did I miss something or is there an international law prohibiting only North Korea from testing nuclear weapons? And just what is the danger? North Korea, even if it had nuclear weapons and delivery systems, and there's no evidence that it does, is of course no threat to attack anyone with them. Like Iraq under Saddam Hussein, North Korea is not suicidal.

And just for the record, contrary to what we've been told a million times, there's no objective evidence that North Korea invaded South Korea on that famous day of June 25, 1950. The accusations came only from the South Korean and US governments, neither being a witness to the event, neither with the least amount of credible impartiality. No, the United Nations observers did not observe the invasion. Even more important, it doesn't really matter much which side was the first to fire a shot or cross the border on that day because whatever happened was just the latest incident in an already-ongoing war of several years.4

Operation Because We Can

Captain Ahab had his Moby Dick. Inspector Javert had his Jean Valjean. The United States has its Fidel Castro. Washington also has its Daniel Ortega. For 27 years, the most powerful nation in the world has found it impossible to share the Western Hemisphere with one of its poorest and weakest neighbors, Nicaragua, if the country's leader was not in love with capitalism.

From the moment the Sandinista revolutionaries overthrew the US-supported Somoza dictatorship in 1979, Washington was concerned about the rising up of that long-dreaded beast -- "another Cuba". This was war. On the battlefield and in the voting booths. For almost 10 years, the American proxy army, the Contras, carried out a particularly brutal insurgency against the Sandinista government and its supporters. In 1984, Washington tried its best to sabotage the elections, but failed to keep Sandinista leader Ortega from becoming president. And the war continued. In 1990, Washington's electoral tactic was to hammer home the simple and clear message to the people of Nicaragua: If you re-elect Ortega all the horrors of the civil war and America's economic hostility will continue. Just two months before the election, in December 1989, the United States invaded Panama for no apparent reason acceptable to international law, morality, or common sense (The United States naturally called it "Operation Just Cause"); one likely reason it was carried out was to send a clear message to the people of Nicaragua that this is what they could expect, that the US/Contra war would continue and even escalate, if they re-elected the Sandinistas.

It worked; one cannot overestimate the power of fear, of murder, rape, and your house being burned down. Ortega lost, and Nicaragua returned to the rule of the free market, striving to roll back the progressive social and economic programs that had been undertaken by the Sandinistas. Within a few years widespread malnutrition, wholly inadequate access to health care and education, and other social ills, had once again become a widespread daily fact of life for the people of Nicaragua.

Each presidential election since then has pitted perennial candidate Ortega against Washington's interference in the process in shamelessly blatant ways. Pressure has been regularly exerted on certain political parties to withdraw their candidates so as to avoid splitting the conservative vote against the Sandinistas. US ambassadors and visiting State Department officials publicly and explicitly campaign for anti-Sandinista candidates, threatening all kinds of economic and diplomatic punishment if Ortega wins, including difficulties with exports, visas, and vital family remittances by Nicaraguans living in the United States. In the 2001 election, shortly after the September 11 attacks, American officials tried their best to tie Ortega to terrorism, placing a full-page ad in the leading newspaper which declared, among other things, that: "Ortega has a relationship of more than thirty years with states and individuals who shelter and condone international terrorism."5 That same year a senior analyst in Nicaragua for the international pollsters Gallup was moved to declare: "Never in my whole life have I seen a sitting ambassador get publicly involved in a sovereign country's electoral process, nor have I ever heard of it."6

Additionally, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) -- which would like the world to believe that it's a private non-governmental organization, when it's actually a creation and an agency of the US government -- regularly furnishes large amounts of money and other aid to organizations in Nicaragua which are opposed to the Sandinistas. The International Republican Institute (IRI), a long-time wing of NED, whose chairman is Arizona Senator John McCain, has also been active in Nicaragua creating the Movement for Nicaragua, which has helped organize marches against the Sandinistas. An IRI official in Nicaragua, speaking to a visiting American delegation in June of this year, equated the relationship between Nicaragua and the United States to that of a son to a father. "Children should not argue with their parents." she said.

With the 2006 presidential election in mind, one senior US official wrote in a Nicaraguan newspaper last year that should Ortega be elected, "Nicaragua would sink like a stone". In March, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the US Ambassador to the UN under Reagan and a prime supporter of the Contras, came to visit. She met with members of all the major Sandinista opposition parties and declared her belief that democracy in Nicaragua "is in danger" but that she had no doubt that the "Sandinista dictatorship" would not return to power. The following month, the American ambassador in Managua, Paul Trivelli, who openly speaks of his disapproval of Ortega and the Sandinista party, sent a letter to the presidential candidates of conservative parties offering financial and technical help to unite them for the general election of November 5. The ambassador stated that he was responding to requests by Nicaraguan "democratic parties" for US support in their mission to keep Daniel Ortega from a presidential victory. The visiting American delegation reported: "In a somewhat opaque statement Trivelli said that if Ortega were to win, the concept of governments recognizing governments wouldn't exist anymore and it was a 19th century concept anyway. The relationship would depend on what his government put in place." One of the fears of the ambassador likely has to do with Ortega talking of renegotiating CAFTA, the trade agreement between the US and Central America, so dear to the hearts of corporate globalizationists.

Then, in June, US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said it was necessary for the Organization of American States (OAS) to send a mission of Electoral Observation to Nicaragua "as soon as possible" so as to "prevent the old leaders of corruption and communism from attempting to remain in power" (though the Sandinistas have not occupied the presidency, only lower offices, since 1990).

The explicit or implicit message of American pronouncements concerning Nicaragua is often the warning that if the Sandinistas come back to power, the horrible war, so fresh in the memory of Nicaraguans, will return. The London Independent reported in September that "One of the Ortega billboards in Nicaragua was spray-painted 'We don't want another war'. What it was saying was that if you vote for Ortega you are voting for a possible war with the US."7

Per capita income in Nicaragua is $900 a year; some 70% of the people live in poverty. It is worth noting that Nicaragua and Haiti are the two nations in the Western Hemisphere that the United States has intervened in the most, from the 19th century to the 21st, including long periods of occupation. And they are today the two poorest in the hemisphere, wretchedly so.

Don't look back

The cartoon awfulness of the Bush crime syndicate's foreign policy is enough to make Americans nostalgic for almost anything that came before. And as Bill Clinton parades around the country and the world associating himself with "good" causes, it's enough to evoke yearnings in many people on the left who should know better. So here's a little reminder of what Clinton's foreign policy was composed of. Hold on to it in case Lady Macbeth runs in 2008 and tries to capitalize on lover boy's record.

Yugoslavia: The United States played the principal role during the 1990s in the destruction of this nation, republic by republic, the low point of which was 78 consecutive days of terrible bombing of the population in 1999. No, it was not an act of "humanitarianism". It was pure imperialism, corporate globalization, getting rid of "the last communist government in Europe", keeping NATO alive by giving it a function after the end of the Cold War. There was no moral issue behind US policy. The ousted Yugoslav leader, Slobodan Milosevic, is routinely labeled "authoritarian" (Compared to whom? To the Busheviks?), but that had nothing to do with it. The great exodus of the people of Kosovo resulted from the bombing, not Serbian "ethnic cleansing"; and while saving Kosovars the Clinton administration was servicing Turkish ethnic cleansing of Kurds. NATO admitted (sic) to repeatedly and deliberately targeting civilians; amongst other war crimes.8

Somalia: The 1993 intervention was presented as a mission to help feed the starving masses. But the US soon started taking sides in the clan-based civil war and tried to rearrange the country's political map by eliminating the dominant warlord, Mohamed Aidid, and his power base. On many occasions, US helicopters strafed groups of Aidid's supporters or fired missiles at them; missiles were fired into a hospital because of the belief that Aidid's forces had taken refuge there; also a private home, where members of Aidid's political movement were holding a meeting; finally, an attempt by American forces to kidnap two leaders of Aidid's clan resulted in a horrendous bloody battle. This last action alone cost the lives of more than a thousand Somalis, with many more wounded.

It's questionable that getting food to hungry people was as important as the fact that four American oil giants held exploratory rights to large areas of Somali land and were hoping that US troops would put an end to the prevailing chaos which threatened their highly expensive investments.9

Ecuador: In 2000, downtrodden Indian peasants rose up once again against the hardships of US/IMF globalization policies, such as privatization. The Indians were joined by labor unions and some junior military officers and their coalition forced the president to resign. Washington was alarmed. American officials in Quito and Washington unleashed a blitz of threats against Ecuadorian government and military officials. And that was the end of the Ecuadorian revolution.10

Sudan: The US deliberately bombed and destroyed a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum in 1998 in the stated belief that it was a plant for making chemical weapons for terrorists. In actuality, the plant produced about 90 percent of the drugs used to treat the most deadly illnesses in that desperately poor country; it was reportedly one of the biggest and best of its kind in Africa. And had no connection to chemical weapons.11

Sierra Leone: In 1998, Clinton sent Jesse Jackson as his special envoy to Liberia and Sierra Leone, the latter being in the midst of one of the great horrors of the 20th century -- an army of mostly young boys, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), going around raping and chopping off people's arms and legs. African and world opinion was enraged against the RUF, which was committed to protecting the diamond mines they controlled. Liberian president Charles Taylor was an indispensable ally and supporter of the RUF and Jackson was an old friend of his. Jesse was not sent to the region to try to curtail the RUF's atrocities, nor to hound Taylor about his widespread human rights violations, but instead, in June 1999, Jackson and other American officials drafted entire sections of an accord that made RUF leader, Foday Sankoh, the vice president of Sierra Leone, and gave him official control over the diamond mines, the country's major source of wealth.12

Iraq: Eight more years of the economic sanctions which Clinton's National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, called "the most pervasive sanctions every imposed on a nation in the history of mankind",13 absolutely devastating every aspect of the lives of the Iraqi people, particularly their health; truly a weapon of mass destruction.

Cuba: Eight more years of economic sanctions, political hostility, and giving haven to anti-Castro terrorists in Florida. In 1999, Cuba filed a suit against the United States for $181.1 billion in compensation for economic losses and loss of life during the first forty years of this aggression. The suit holds Washington responsible for the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding and disabling of 2,099 others.

Only the imperialist powers have the ability to enforce sanctions and are therefore always exempt from them.

As to Clinton's domestic policies, keep in mind those two beauties: The "Effective death penalty Act" and the "Welfare Reform Act". And let's not forget the massacre at Waco, Texas.

Three billion years from amoebas to Homeland Security

"The Department of Homeland Security would like to remind passengers that you may not take any liquids onto the plane. This includes ice cream, as the ice cream will melt and turn into a liquid."

This was actually heard by one of my readers at the Atlanta Airport recently; he laughed out loud. He informs me that he didn't know what was more bizarre, that such an announcement was made or that he was the only person that he could see who reacted to its absurdity.14 This is the way it is with societies of people. Like with the proverbial frog who submits to being boiled to death in a pot of water if the water is heated very gradually, people submit to one heightened absurdity and indignation after another if they're subjected to them at a gradual enough rate. That's one of the most common threads one finds in the personal stories of Germans living in the Third Reich. This airport story is actually an example of an absurdity within an absurdity. Since the "bomb made from liquids and gels" story was foisted upon the public, several chemists and other experts have pointed out the technical near-impossibility of manufacturing such a bomb in a moving airplane, if for no other reason than the necessity of spending at least an hour or two in the airplane bathroom.

NOTES

1 Time European edition online: http://www.time.com/time/europe/gdml/peace2003.html

2 Washington Post, June 4, 2005

3 Associated Press, October 3, 2006

4 William Blum, Killing Hop: US Military & CIA Interventions Since World War II (2004), chapter 5

5 Nicaragua Network (Washington, DC), October 29, 2001 -- www.nicanet.org/pubs/hotline1029_2001.html and New York Times, November 4,

2001, p.3

6 Miami Herald, October 29, 2001

7 The remainder of the section on Nicaragua is derived primarily from The Independent (London), September 6, 2006, and "2006 Nicaraguan Elections and the US Government Role. Report of the Nicaragua Network delegation to investigate US intervention in the Nicaraguan elections of November 2006" -- www.nicanet.org/pdf/Delegation%20Report.pdf See also: "List of interventions by the United States government in Nicaragua's democratic process." -- www.nicanet.org/list_of_interventionist_statments.php

8 Michael Parenti, "To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia" (2000) Diana Johnstone, "Fool's Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions"

(2002) William Blum, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower"

(2005), see "Yugoslavia" in index.

9 Rogue State, pp. 204-5

10 Ibid., pp. 212-3

11 William Blum, "Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire", chapter 7

12 Ryan Lizza, "Where angels fear to tread", New Republic, July 24, 2000

13 White House press briefing, November 14, 1997, US Newswire transcript

14 Story related to me by Jack Muir

The Anti-Empire Report: Some things you need to know before the world ends

September 25, 2006 by William Blum

"Thank you for not putting a bomb in your luggage." "President Bush said the United States is still under the threat of attack and will continue to be right up until Election Day." -- Jay Leno

Hand-in-hand with his threat warnings, Bush keeps telling us how his War on Terror has made us so much safer, bragging that there hasn't been a terrorist attack in the United States in the five years since the one of September 11, 2001. Marvelous. There wasn't a terrorist attack in the United States in the five years before that day either. But thanks to the War on Terror -- particularly the bombing, invasion, occupation, and torture of Afghanistan and Iraq -- numerous new anti-American terrorists have been created since that historic day. The latest confirmation of this, if any more were needed, is the recently leaked National Intelligence Estimate conclusion that "the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and ... the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks."1

Since the first strike on Afghanistan in October 2001 there have been literally scores of terrorist attacks against American institutions and individuals in the Middle East, South Asia and the Pacific, more than a dozen in Pakistan alone: military, diplomatic, civilian, Christian, and other targets associated with the United States, including the October 2002 bombings of two nightclubs in Bali, Indonesia, which killed more than 200 people, almost all of them Americans and citizens of their Australian and British war allies; the following year brought the heavy bombing of the US-managed Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, the site of diplomatic receptions and 4th of July celebrations held by the American Embassy; and other horrendous attacks on US war allies in recent years in Madrid, London, and elsewhere.

A US State Department report of 2004 on worldwide terrorist attacks -- "Patterns of Global Terrorism" -- showed that the year 2003 had more "significant terrorist incidents" than at any time since the department began issuing statistics in 1985, even though the figures did not include attacks on US troops by insurgents in Iraq, which the Bush administration explicitly labels as "terrorist".2 When their report for 2004 showed an even higher number of incidents, the State Department announced that it was going to stop publishing the annual statistics.3

It is extremely difficult and threatening for US and UK officials to accept the correlation between their foreign policies and the rise of terrorists. A spokesman for the Blair government recently declared: "Al-Qaida started killing innocent civilians in the 90s. It killed Muslim civilians even before 9/11, and the attacks on New York and Washington killed over 3,000 people before Iraq. To imply al-Qaida is driven by an honest disagreement over foreign policy is a mistake."4 Vice President Dick Cheney, on more than one occasion, has also pointed out that terrorists were attacking American targets even before 9-11.

The "reasoning" behind such thinking is odd; it's as if these esteemed gentlemen believe that there was no Western foreign policy in the Mideast before September 11, 2001. But of course, even in modern times, there were decades of awful abuse, including the US overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953, multiple bombings of Libya and Iraq, sinking an Iranian ship and shooting down an Iranian passenger plane, habitual support of Israel against the Palestinian people, and much more.5

It can't be emphasized too often or too strongly that terrorism is a political act, it is making a political statement, a statement that can often be summed up in a single word: "retaliation"; terrorism is what people with bombs but no air force have to resort to. The Bush and Blair administrations can not admit to the correlation of terrorism with their policies, but those opposed to their wars should never allow them to avoid the issue. Here are some of the latest examples of this retaliation phenomenon:

-From a New York Times report on the UK group arrested for allegedly planning to blow up multiple planes headed to the US: "'As you bomb, you will be bombed; as you kill, you will be killed,' said one of the men on a 'martyrdom' videotape" ... "One of the suspects said on his martyrdom video that the 'war against Muslims' in Iraq and Afghanistan had motivated him to act." ... "The man said he was seeking revenge for the foreign policy of the United States, and 'their accomplices, the U.K. and the Jews'."6

-From a review of the new book, "The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission" by its chairmen, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton: "In looking into the background of the hijackers, the staff found that religious orthodoxy was not a common denominator since some of the members 'reportedly even consumed alcohol and abused drugs.' Others engaged in casual sex. Instead, hatred of American foreign policy in the Middle East seemed to be the key factor." ... "I believe they feel a sense of outrage against the United States," said Supervisory Special Agent James Fitzgerald. "They identify with the Palestinian problem, they identify with people who oppose repressive regimes and I believe they tend to focus their anger on the United States." ... "Lee Hamilton felt that there had to be an acknowledgment that a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was vital to America's long-term relationship with the Islamic world, and that the presence of American forces in the Middle East was a major motivating factor in Al Qaeda's actions."7

But the War on Terrorism paints terrorists as only irrational madmen or those who loathe freedom, democracy and Western culture, or doing what they do just for the pure, America-hating thrill of it, and so the US and the UK continue to look for military solutions. Writer David Rees predicted a few years ago: "Remember when the United States had a drug problem and then we declared a War on Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore? The War on Terrorism will be just like that."8

Cold War Myths

It's become a commonplace for critics of the wall being built by the United States along the Mexican border to equate it to the Berlin Wall. The same highly negative comparison is evoked in speaking about the Israeli wall being built alongside and through Palestine. Just as the Holocaust is the standard against which acts of mass murder and atrocities are conventionally compared, the Berlin Wall is the standard for judging the erection of a physical barrier which restricts freedom of travel for large numbers of people. The Wall is also employed by conservatives as a symbol of the wickedness and the failure of communism. But what was the Berlin Wall actually about?

During the 1950s, American coldwarriors in West Germany instituted a crude campaign of sabotage and subversion against East Germany designed to throw that country's economic and administrative machinery out of gear. The CIA and other US intelligence and military services recruited, equipped, trained and financed German activist groups and individuals, of West and East, to carry out actions which ran the spectrum from juvenile delinquency to terrorism; anything to make life difficult for the East German people and weaken their support of the government; anything to make the commies look bad. It was a remarkable undertaking. The United States and its agents used explosives, arson, short circuiting, and other methods to damage power stations, shipyards, canals, docks, public buildings, gas stations, public transportation, bridges, etc; they derailed freight trains, seriously injuring workers; burned 12 cars of a freight train and destroyed air pressure hoses of others; used acids to damage vital factory machinery; put sand in the turbine of a factory, bringing it to a standstill; set fire to a tile-producing factory; promoted work slow-downs in factories; killed 7,000 cows of a co-operative dairy through poisoning; added soap to powdered milk destined for East German schools; were in possession, when arrested, of a large quantity of the poison cantharidin with which it was planned to produce poisoned cigarettes to kill leading East Germans; set off stink bombs to disrupt political meetings; attempted to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East Berlin by sending out forged invitations, false promises of free bed and board, false notices of cancellations, etc.; carried out attacks on participants with explosives, firebombs, and tire-puncturing equipment; forged and distributed large quantities of food ration cards to cause confusion, shortages and resentment; sent out forged tax notices and other government directives and documents to foster disorganization and inefficiency within industry and unions ... all this and much more.

Throughout the 1950s, the East Germans and the Soviet Union repeatedly lodged complaints with the Soviets' erstwhile allies in the West and with the United Nations about specific sabotage and espionage activities and called for the closure of the offices in West Germany they claimed were responsible, and for which they provided names and addresses. Their complaints fell on deaf ears. Inevitably, the East Germans began to tighten up entry into the country from the West.

At the same time, the West was bedeviling the East with a vigorous campaign of recruiting East German professionals and skilled workers, who had been educated at the expense of the Communist government. This eventually led to a serious labor and production crisis in the East.9

By August of 1961, the East Germans had had enough. They began the building of their infamous wall. This was not erected to keep their citizens from "truth" or "freedom" -- before the wall many Easterners had commuted to the West for jobs each day and then returned to the East in the evening. But in the Cold War atmosphere every possible means of scoring propaganda points was exploited by both sides and thus was born the legend of the Evil Commie Wall.

"Appeasement" is another Cold War myth dredged up recently by the Bush administration in its desperate attempt to find an argument for the Iraq war that more than 30% of the American population will swallow. There's been more than one occasion of our old friend Rumsfeld labeling as "fascists" anti-American terrorists and those who resist American occupations, and calling Democrats and others not in love with the war "appeasers";10 you know, like Britain allowing the Nazis to devour the Czechs in the hope that Hitler would leave the West alone. The appeasement analogy has long been a favorite of American politicians when it suited their purpose; Eisenhower and Johnson both personally used it, to name but two.

But what happened in 1938 in Munich wasn't so much "appeasement" as it was "collusion". One of Adolf's qualities that appealed so much to the West was his fervent anti-communism. Britain, the United States and other Western governments were counting on the Nazis to turn eastward and put an end once and for all to the Bolshevik menace to God, family and capitalism.11

If to Donald Rumsfeld opposing the war in Iraq is the moral equivalent of appeasing Hitler, to Condoleezza Rice it's the moral equivalent of tolerating slavery in 19th century America. Here she is at her desperate best: "I'm sure that there are people who thought that it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold. I'm sure that there were people who said ... why don't we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves."12

Let freedom and cash registers ring

US Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez has proposed that Cubans hold an internationally monitored referendum to decide whether they want to be ruled by dictators or live in a democracy.13

So what do you think Carlos M. Gutierrez -- formerly a corporate CEO and now a man who goes around the world promoting corporate investment and trade -- means by "a democracy"? Can he imagine a "democratic" society not dominated by corporations which turn everything into a commodity? Is Gutierrez really concerned about the Cuban people having a say over the decisions that affect their lives? Given that so many basic decisions that affect Americans' lives are not made in legislatures but in corporate boardrooms, does he know for a fact that Cubans have any less say over such decisions than Americans do?

The usual American definition of democracy has to do in major part with elections. But even if we accept this simple, and simplistic, definition, the fact remains that, contrary to what Gutierrez, and most Americans assume, Cuba holds elections on a regular basis.

The elections, which observe universal suffrage and a secret ballot, are for seats in the Municipal Assemblies, the Provincial Assemblies, and the National Assembly. There is direct nomination of candidates by the citizenry, not by the Communist Party, which does not get involved in any stage of the electoral process. All candidates have the same public exposure, which is the publication and posting of a biography listing their qualities and history, in very accessible and commonly visited places in the community. There is one deputy in the Municipal Assembly for each 20,000 of population. Candidates must receive over 50% of the vote to be elected, if not in the first round then in a run-off. The 609 members of the National Assembly elect the 31 members of the Council of State. The President of the Council of State is the Head of State and Head of Government. Fidel Castro is repeatedly chosen for this position, purportedly because of his sterling qualities.

I don't know enough detail about the actual workings of the Cuban electoral system to point out the flaws and shortcomings of the above, which most likely exist in practice. But can it be more deadening to the intellect, the spirit, and one's idealism than the American electoral system? From the splashy staged nominating conventions to the interminable boring and insulting campaigns to the increasingly questionable voting and counting processes, all to select one or the other corporate representative ... are the Cubans ready for this? If they were to institute any kind of electoral system in which those candidates with the most money to spend had an advantage, what would keep the CIA from pouring in money-without-end to get their people into office.

This is what we're up against

I recently heard a California farmer interviewed on National Public Radio about the very worrisome e-coli outbreak in spinach. At one point he said that "The United States has the safest agricultural products in the world."14

Hmmm. I wondered how one measured such a thing and whether the guy had actually made a global study of this and could cite any statistics or credible sources. It reminded me of several radio interviews I've had in which I was being very critical of US foreign policy (no surprise there) leading to someone calling in and asking me if I could name a better country. My standard reply has been: "Better in what respect?"

"In any respect," is the standard reply from the caller.

"Well," I say, "what about health care? There are many countries that provide health care to a much larger percentage of their citizens than the United States does and at much cheaper cost, sometimes even for free, like in Cuba. And it's the same with university education."

This is effectively the end of any such conversation.

What condition, I wonder, would have to exist in the US for such people to relinquish their childhood love affair with that magical place called "America"? I have on occasion asked people who reject virtually any criticism of US foreign policy: "What would the United States have to do in its foreign policy to lose your support? What, for you, would be too much?" I've yet to get an answer to that question. I suspect it's because the person is afraid that whatever they say I'll point out that we've already done it.

Author Michael Lewis has observed: "One of the qualities that distinguish Americans from other people is their naive suspicion that any foreigner with half a brain would rather be one of them. ... The most zealous Japanese patriot doesn't for a minute think that other peoples actually want to be Japanese. Ditto the French."

But don't despair, gang. As I've mentioned before, my (very) rough guess is that the people I speak about here constitute no more than 15 percent of the population. I suggest that we concentrate on the rest, who are reachable, and in the past three years countless of them have indeed been reached.

Discovered at last! A difference between the Democrats and the Republicans on foreign policy

This just in! Republican leaders in the House have proposed legislation that will require that anti-war protestors be sterilized. Democrats are refusing to roll over and play dead. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi -- who recently called Hugo Chavez a "thug" for his UN speech -- insists her party will support the measure only if a right of appeal is included.

NOTES 1 New York Times, September 24, 2006, the wording it a Times paraphrase 2 Washington Post, June 23, 2004 and June 28, p.19 3 "Bush Administration Eliminating 19-year-old International Terrorism Report", Knight Ridder Newspapers, April 15, 2005 4 The Guardian (London), August 12, 2006 5 For more information see Blum's essay at: http://members.aol.com/superogue/terintro.htm 6 New York Times, August 28, 2006, p.1 7 Review by James Bamford, New York Times, August 20, 2006, p.15 8 David Rees, "Get Your War On", (Soft Skull Press), p.2 9 For further details, see William Blum, "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2", chapter 8 10 "Rumsfeld says threat to U.S. is from 'a new type of fascism'", Associated Press, August 29, 2006 11 See, for example, Christopher Hitchens, "Chamberlain: Collusion, not appeasement", MonthlyReview (January 1995), a review of Clement Leibovitz, "The Chamberlain-Hitler Deal" (1993) 12 Interview, Essence magazine, October 2006 issue 13 Associated Press, September 15, 2006 14 NPR, Day-to-Day, September 18, 2006, 12:10 PM

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William Blum

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William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2 Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir

Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

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The Anti-Empire Report

The Anti-Empire Report

Some things you need to know before the world ends

August 18, 2006 by William Blum

Saved again, thank the Lord, saved again "Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor -- with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real." General Douglas MacArthur, 1957(1)

So now we've (choke) just been (gasp) saved from the simultaneous blowing up of as many as ten airplanes headed toward the United States from the UK. Wow, thank you Brits, thank you Homeland Security. Well done, lads. And thanks for preventing the destruction of the Sears Tower in Chicago, saving lower Manhattan from a terrorist-unleashed flood, smashing the frightful Canadian "terror plot" with 17 arrested, ditto the three Toledo terrorists, and squashing the Los Angeles al Qaeda plot to fly a hijacked airliner into a skyscraper.

The Los Angeles plot of 2002 was proudly announced by George W. early this year. It has since been totally discredited. Declared one senior counterterrorism official: "There was no definitive plot. It never materialized or got past the thought stage."(2)

And the scare about ricin in the UK, which our own Mr. Cheney used as part of the buildup for the invasion of Iraq, telling an audience on January 10, 2003: "The gravity of the threat we face was underscored in recent days when British police arrested ... suspected terrorists in London and discovered a small quantity of ricin, one of the world's deadliest poisons."

It turned out there was not only no plot, there was no ricin. The Brits discovered almost immediately that the substance wasn't ricin but kept that secret for more than two years.(3)

From what is typical in terrorist scares, it is likely that the individuals arrested in the UK August 10 are guilty of what George Orwell, in 1984, called "thoughtcrimes". That is to say, they haven't actually DONE anything. At most, they've THOUGHT about doing something the government would label "terrorism". Perhaps not even very serious thoughts, perhaps just venting their anger at the exceptionally violent role played by the UK and the US in the Mideast and thinking out loud how nice it would be to throw some of that violence back in the face of Blair and Bush. And then, the fatal moment for them that ruins their lives forever ... their angry words are heard by the wrong person, who reports them to the authorities. (In the Manhattan flood case the formidable, dangerous "terrorists" made mention on an Internet chat room about blowing something up.)(4)

Soon a government agent provocateur appears, infiltrates the group, and then actually encourages the individuals to think and talk further about terrorist acts, to develop real plans instead of youthful fantasizing, and even provides the individuals with some of the actual means for carrying out these terrorist acts, like explosive material and technical know-how, money and transportation, whatever is needed to advance the plot. It's known as "entrapment", and it's supposed to be illegal, it's supposed to be a powerful defense for the accused, but the authorities get away with it all the time; and the accused get put away for very long stretches. And because of the role played by the agent provocateur, we may never know whether any of the accused, on their own, would have gone much further, if at all, like actually making a bomb, or, in the present case, even making transatlantic flight reservations since many of the accused reportedly did not even have passports. Government infiltrating and monitoring is one thing; encouragement, pushing the plot forward, and scaring the public to make political capital from it is quite something else.

Prosecutors have said that the seven men in Miami charged with conspiring to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and FBI buildings in other cities had sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda. This came after meeting with a confidential government informant who was posing as a representative of the terrorist group. Did they swear or hold such allegiance, one must wonder, before meeting with the informant? "In essence," reported The Independent of London, "the entire case rests upon conversations between Narseal Batiste, the apparent ringleader of the group, with the informant, who was posing as a member of al-Qaeda but in fact belonged to the FBI South Florida Terrorist Task Force." Batiste told the informant that "he was organizing a mission to build an 'Islamic army' in order to wage jihad." He provided a list of things he needed: boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios, vehicles, binoculars, bullet proof vests, firearms, and $50,000 in cash. Oddly enough, one thing that was not asked for was any kind of explosives material. After sweeps of various locations in Miami, government agents found no explosives or weapons. "This group was more aspirational than operational," said the FBI's deputy director, while one FBI agent described them as "social misfits". And, added the New York Times, investigators openly acknowledged that the suspects "had only the most preliminary discussions about an attack." Yet Cheney later hailed the arrests at a political fundraiser, calling the group a "very real threat".(5)

Perhaps as great a threat as the suspects in the plot to unleash a catastrophic flood in lower Manhattan by destroying a huge underground wall that holds back the Hudson River. That was the story first released by the authorities; after a while it was replaced by the claim that the suspects were actually plotting something aimed at the subway tunnels that run under the river.(6)

Which is more reliable, one must wonder, information on Internet chat rooms or WMD tips provided by CIA Iraqi informers? Or information obtained, as in the current case in the UK, from Pakistani interrogators of the suspects, none of the interrogators being known to be ardent supporters of Amnesty International.

And the three men arrested in Toledo, Ohio in February were accused of -- are you ready? -- plotting to recruit and train terrorists to attack US and allied troops overseas. For saving us from this horror we have a paid FBI witness to thank. He had been an informer with the FBI for four years, and most likely was paid for each new lead he brought in. In the Sears case, the FBI paid almost $56,000 to two confidential informants and government officials also granted one of them immigration parole so he could remain in the country.(7)

There must be millions of people in the United States and elsewhere who have thoughts about "terrorist acts". I might well be one of them when I read about a gathering of Bush, Cheney, and assorted neocons that's going to take place. Given the daily horror of Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine in recent times, little of which would occur if not for the government of the United States of America and its allies, the numbers of people having such thoughts must be rapidly multiplying. If I had been at an American or British airport as the latest scare story unfolded, waiting in an interminable line, having my flight canceled, or being told I can't have any carry-on luggage, I may have found it irresistible at some point to declare loudly to my fellow suffering passengers: "Y'know, folks, this security crap is only gonna get worse and worse as long as the United States and Britain continue to invade, bomb, overthrow, occupy, and torture the world!"

How long before I was pulled out of line and thrown into some kind of custody?

If MacArthur were alive today would he dare to publicly express the thoughts of his cited above?

Policy makers and security experts, reports the Associated Press, say that "Law enforcers are now willing to act swiftly against al-Qaeda sympathizers, even if it means grabbing wannabe terrorists whose plots may be only pipe dreams."(8)

Commonly, the "terrorists" are watched for many months, then the police pounce on them at a politically opportune time. The reasons in the current case may stem from some aspect of the Blair and Bush administrations being under attack from all sides, including the defeat of super war-supporter Senator Joseph Lieberman (just 36 hours before the British announcement), and the upcoming November elections, when the Republicans will be running on the War on Terrorism issue. "Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big," said a White House official, adding that "some Democratic candidates won't 'look as appealing' under the circumstances."(9)

Referring to the alleged UK terrorism plot, the New York Times reported that: "The White House and the Republican Party had pounced on that news, along with the defeat of Senator Joseph I. Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary by an antiwar candidate, Ned Lamont, to paint the Democrats as weak on national security. Mr. Cheney had gone so far as to imply that the defeat of Mr. Lieberman, a strong backer of the war, would embolden 'Al Qaeda types'."(10)

Vote Republican or the terrorists win!

The announcement of this particular terrorist threat may also be explained by this news item:

"Much of the televised discussion yesterday concerned the investigative tools available in Britain that U.S. officials credit with allowing authorities to get ahead of the plot before it proved catastrophic. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the ability to monitor monetary transactions and communications and to arrest suspects for a period of 28 days on an emergency basis made a significant difference in the case."(11) We should be hearing further from the administration as it tries to take advantage of these tactics. But as of yet neither the US nor the UK authorities have been able to provide any concrete evidence to back up the story that the police raids and mass arrests in Britain thwarted an imminent attack that would have taken the lives of thousands of transatlantic travelers.

The American Empire for Dummies (an excerpt from an unwritten book)

1. The United States is determined to dominate the world, not to mention outer space. This is not a left-wing cliché, the empire's leading lights trumpet Washington's desire, means, and intention for domination, while assuring the world of the noble purposes behind this crusade. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, these declarations have been regularly put forth in policy papers emanating from the White House, the Pentagon, and think tanks closely associated with the national security establishment. They make it perfectly clear that any potential rival to the world's only superpower must be, and will be, seriously challenged. Here is the first of these warnings, from 1992: "We must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."(12)

2. World domination includes dominating the Middle East; one might say particularly the Middle East. (See chapter 3, "Oil", and chapter 6, "Israel". Please note that there is no chapter on "Democracy and Freedom".)

3. In recent times only Iraq, Syria and Iran have stood in the way of US Middle East domination ("remaking the Middle East" is the usual euphemism). Iraq is now a basket case.

The basketizing of Syria awaits only a quasi-plausible excuse, which it was hoped Israel would provide by provoking a hostile Syrian reaction in the recent Israeli-Lebanon war.

The US-Israeli assault on Lebanon was aimed at basketizing Hezbollah so that it couldn't come to the aid of Iran by attacking Israel during the basketizing of Iran; the latter may begin with sanctions, approved by a pliant Security Council. This was one of the key ways the basketizing of Iraq began. Do not believe the canard that France is hostile to US foreign policy. Time and again, both in and out of the Security Council, France has raised a little objection to this point or that point of Washington's policy because it needs to pretend and feel that it's still a great power and has a significant role to play in world affairs, but in the end it smooths the way for the empire.

And Germany against the US war in Iraq? Hardly. Germany has helped the American war effort in half a dozen important ways, including on the ground in Iraq, even while German politicians ran on an anti-Iraq War platform.

Carlos Romulo, former president of the UN General Assembly: "If there is a problem between a weak nation and another weak nation and the UN takes action, the problem disappears. If there is a problem between a strong nation and a weak nation and the UN takes action, the weak nation disappears. If there is a problem between a strong nation and a strong nation and the UN takes action, the UN disappears."

4. World domination also includes Central Asia and its massive oil and gas reserves. Afghanistan with its pipelines and US military bases is vital to this undertaking. Through one war or another in recent years, the United States has managed to establish military bases/facilities throughout the region, including in Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia, vital to protecting the pipelines to the eastern Mediterranean; one of the pipelines will extend to Israel, which, along with Turkey, is expected to play a role in the protection of the area.

The Cuban punching bag ad infinitum I could scarcely contain my surprise. A National Public Radio (NPR) newscaster was speaking, August 1, with an NPR correspondent who had just left a White House press conference and was reporting that the president, in response to a question, had stated that the United States had nothing whatsoever to do with Israeli policies in Lebanon and Gaza. The newscaster, Alex Chadwick, then asked the reporter: "How do you know what to believe from the White House?"

Was this a sign of the long-awaited breath of skepticism blowing in the mainstream media? No, it wasn't. I made the story up. What really happened was that the correspondent reported that the Cuban government had announced that Fidel Castro was going to have an operation and that his brother, Raul Castro, would be replacing him temporarily. Chadwick then asked: "How do you know what to believe in Cuba?"(13)

This also really happened: Jay Leno on his August 7 program: "There's news of a major medical crisis from Cuba concerning Fidel Castro. It looks like he's getting better."

Think of a US president battling a serious ailment and a broadcaster on Cuban TV making such a remark.

Can anyone find a message hidden here? The following quotations all come from the same article in the Washington Post of August 4 by Ann Scott Tyson concerning the Iraqi town of Hit:

"Residents are quick to argue that the American presence incites those attacks, and they blame the U.S. military rather than insurgents for turning their town into a combat zone. The Americans should pull out, they say, and let them solve their own problems."

"We want the same thing. I want to go home to my wife," said an American soldier.

"Another U.S. officer put it more bluntly: 'Nobody wants us here, so why are we here? That's the big question.'"

"If we leave, all the attacks would stop, because we'd be gone."

"The problem is with the Americans. They only bring problems," said watermelon vendor Sefuab Ganiydum, 35. "Closing the bridge, the curfew, the hospital. It's better for U.S. forces to leave the city."

"What did we do to have all this suffering?" asked Ramsey Abdullah Hindi, 60, sitting outside a tea shop. Ignoring U.S. troops within earshot, he said Iraqis were justified to attack them. "They have a right to fight against the Americans because of their religion and the bad treatment. We will stand until the last," he said somberly.

"City officials, too, are adamant that U.S. troops leave Hit."

"I'm the guy doing the good stuff and I get shot at all the time! Nobody is pro-American in this city. They either tolerate us or all-out hate us," said a US Marine major.

"If we do leave, the city will be a lot better and they'll build it a lot better."

This just in: Dubya has just read this article and says the hidden message is that the United States is bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq.

NOTES

1. Vorin Whan, ed. "A Soldier Speaks: Public Papers and Speeches of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur" (1965)

2. The Daily News (New York), February 10, 2006

3. Washington Post, April 14, 2005; United Press International, April 18, 2005

4. Time, July 7, 2006, article by Joshua Marshall; Associated Press, July 14, 2006

5. Sears case: Knight Ridder Newspapers, June 23, 2006; The Independent (London), June 25, 2006; St. Petersburg Times (Florida), June 24, 2006; New York Times, August 13, 2006

6. Associated Press, July 14, 2006

7. Toledo: Associated Press, April 18, 2006; Sears: South Florida Sun Sentinel, July 26, 2006

8. Associated Press, July 8, 2006

9. Agence France Presse, August 11, 2006

10. New York Times, August 17, 2006. p.23

11. Washington Post, August 14, 2006, p.9

12. "Defense Planning Guidance for the Fiscal Years 1994-1999", as quoted in New York Times, March 8, 1992, p.14, emphasis added

13. NPR, Day to Day, August 1, 2006, 12:08 pm

The Anti-Empire Report

By Bill Blum

There are times when I think that this tired old world has gone on a few years too long. What's happening in the Middle East is so depressing. Most discussions of the eternal Israel-Palestine conflict are variations on the child's eternal defense for misbehavior -- "He started it!" Within a few minutes of discussing/arguing the latest manifestation of the conflict the participants are back to 1967, then 1948, then biblical times. I don't wish to get entangled in who started the current mess. I would like instead to first express what I see as two essential underlying facts of life which remain from one conflict to the next:

1) Israel's existence is not at stake and hasn't been so for decades, if it ever was, regardless of the many de rigueur militant statements by Arab leaders over the years. If Israel would learn to deal with its neighbors in a non-expansionist, non-military, humane, and respectful manner, engage in full prisoner exchanges, and sincerely strive for a viable two-state solution, even those who are opposed to the idea of a state based on a particular religion could accept the state of Israel, and the question of its right to exist would scarcely arise in people's minds. But as it is, Israel still uses the issue as a justification for its behavior, as Jews all over the world use the Holocaust and conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

2) In a conflict between a thousand-pound gorilla and a mouse, it's the gorilla which has to make concessions in order for the two sides to progress to the next level. What can the Palestinians offer in the way of concession? Israel would reply to that question: "No violent attacks of any kind." But that would still leave the status quo ante bellum -- a life of unmitigated misery for the Palestinian people forced upon them by Israel. Peace without justice.

Israel's declarations about the absolute unacceptability of one of their soldiers being held captive by the Palestinians, or two soldiers being held by Hezbollah in Lebanon, cannot be taken too seriously when Israel is holding literally thousands of captured Palestinians, many for years, typically without any due process, many tortured; as well as holding a number of prominent Hezbollah members. A few years ago, if not still now, Israel wrote numbers on some of the Palestinian prisoners' arms and foreheads, using blue markers, a practice that is of course reminiscent of the Nazis' treatment of Jews in World War II. 1

Israel's real aim, and that of Washington, is the overthrow of the Hamas government in Palestine, the government that came to power in January through a clearly democratic process, the democracy that the Western "democracies" never tire of celebrating, except when the result doesn't please them. Is there a stronger word than "hypocrisy"? There is now "no Hamas government," declared a senior US official a week ago, "eight cabinet ministers or 30 percent of the government is in jail kidnapped by Israel, another 30 percent is in hiding, and the other 30 percent is doing very little."2 To make the government-disappearance act even more Orwellian, we have Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking in late June about Iraq: "This is the only legitimately elected government in the Middle East with a possible exception of Lebanon."3 What's next, gathering in front of the Big Telescreeen for the Two Minutes Hate?

In addition to doing away with the Hamas government, the current military blitzkrieg by Israel, with full US support, may well be designed to create "incidents" to justify attacks on Iran and Syria, the next steps of Washington's work in process, a controlling stranglehold on the Middle East and its oil.

It is a wanton act of collective punishment that is depriving the Palestinians of food, electricity, water, money, access to the outside world ... and sleep. Israel has been sending jets flying over Gaza at night triggering sonic booms, traumatizing children. "I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza," declared Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert4; words suitable for Israel's tombstone.

These crimes against humanity -- and I haven't mentioned the terrible special weapons reportedly used by Israel -- are what the people of Palestine get for voting for the wrong party. It is ironic, given the Israeli attacks against civilians in both Gaza and Lebanon, that Hamas and Hezbollah are routinely dismissed in the West as terrorist organizations. The generally accepted definition of terrorism, used by the FBI and the United Nations amongst others, is: The use of violence against a civilian population in order to intimidate or coerce a government in furtherance of a political objective.

Since 9-11 it has been a calculated US-Israeli tactic to label the fight against Israel's foes as an integral part of the war on terror. On July 19, a rally was held in Washington, featuring the governor of Maryland, several members of Israeli-occupied Congress, the Israeli ambassador, and evangelical leading-light John Hagee. The Washington Post reported that "Speaker after prominent speaker characterized current Israeli fighting as a small branch of the larger U.S.-led global war against Islamic terrorism" and "Israel's attacks against the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah were blows against those who have killed civilians from Bali to Bombay to Moscow." Said the Israeli ambassador: "This is not just about Israel. It's about where our world is going to be and the fate and security of our world. Israel is on the forefront. We will amputate these little arms of Iran," referring to Hezbollah.5

And if the war on terror isn't enough to put Israel on the side of the angels, John Hagee has argued that "the United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West". He speaks of "a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ."6

The beatification of Israel approaches being a movement. Here is David Horowitz, the eminent semi-hysterical ex-Marxist: "Israel is part of a global war, the war of radical Islam against civilization. Right now Israel is doing the work of the rest of the civilized world by taking on the terrorists. It is not only for Israel's sake that we must get the facts out -- it is for ourselves, America, for every free country in the world, and for civilization itself."7

As for the two Israeli soldiers captured and held in Lebanon for prisoner exchange, we must keep a little history in mind. In the late 1990s, before Israel was evicted from southern Lebanon by Hezbollah, it was a common practice for Israel to abduct entirely innocent Lebanese. As a 1998 Amnesty International paper declared: "By Israel's own admission, Lebanese detainees are being held as 'bargaining chips'; they are not detained for their own actions but in exchange for Israeli soldiers missing in action or killed in Lebanon. Most have now spent 10 years in secret and isolated detention."8

Israel has created its worst enemies -- they helped create Hamas as a counterweight to Fatah in Palestine, and their occupation of Lebanon created Hezbollah. The current terrible bombings can be expected to keep the process going. Since its very beginning, Israel has been almost continually occupied in fighting wars and taking other people's lands. Did not any better way ever occur to the idealistic Zionist pioneers?

But while you and I get depressed by the horror and suffering, the neo-conservatives revel in it. They devour the flesh and drink the blood of the people of Afghanistan, of Iraq, of Palestine, of Lebanon, yet remain ravenous, and now call for Iran and Syria to be placed upon the feasting table. More than one of them has used the expression oderint dum metuant, a favorite phrase of Roman emperor Caligula, also used by Cicero -- "let them hate so long as they fear". Here is William Kristol, editor of the bible of neo-cons, "Weekly Standard", on Fox News Sunday, July 16:

"Look, our coddling of Iran ... over the last six to nine months has emboldened them. I mean, is Iran behaving like a timid regime that's very worried about the U.S.? Or is Iran behaving recklessly and in a foolhardy way? ... Israel is fighting four of our five enemies in the Middle East, in a sense. Iran, Syria, sponsors of terror; Hezbollah and Hamas. ... This is an opportunity to begin to reverse the unfortunate direction of the last six to nine months and get the terrorists and the jihadists back on the defensive."

Host Juan Williams replied: "Well, it just seems to me that you want ... you just want war, war, war, and you want us in more war. You wanted us in Iraq. Now you want us in Iran. Now you want us to get into the Middle East ... you're saying, why doesn't the United States take this hard, unforgiving line? Well, the hard and unforgiving line has been tried, we don't talk to anybody. We don't talk to Hamas. We don't talk to Hezbollah. We're not going to talk to Iran. Where has it gotten us, Bill?"

Kristol, looking somewhat taken aback, simply threw up his hands.

The Fox News audience does (very) occasionally get a hint of another way of looking at the world.

Iraq will follow Bush the rest of his life

Here comes now our Glorious Leader, speaking last week at a news conference at the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, referring to Russian president Vladimir Putin. "I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same thing."9

It's so very rare that Georgie W. makes one of his less-than-brilliant statements and has the nonsense immediately pointed out to him to his face -- "Putin, in a barbed reply, said: 'We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, I will tell you quite honestly.' Bush's face reddened as he tried to laugh off the remark. 'Just wait'," he said.10

It's too bad that Putin didn't also point out that religion was a lot more free under Saddam Hussein than under the American occupation. Amongst many charming recent incidents, in May the coach of the national tennis team and two of his players were shot dead in Baghdad by men who reportedly were religious extremists angry that the coach and his players were wearing shorts.11

As to a "free press", dare I mention Iraqi newspapers closed down by the American occupation, reporters shot by American troops, and phony stories planted in the Iraqi press by Pentagon employees?

The preceding is in the same vein as last month's edition of this report in which I listed the many ways in which the people of Iraq have a much worse life now than they did under Saddam Hussein. I concluded with recounting the discussions I've had with Americans who, in the face of this, say to me: "Just tell me one thing, are you glad that Saddam Hussein is out of power?"

Now we have a British poll that reports that "More than two thirds who offered an opinion said America is essentially an imperial power seeking world domination. And 81 per cent of those who took a view said President George W. Bush hypocritically championed democracy as a cover for the pursuit of American self-interests." The American embassy in London was quick to reply. Said a spokesperson: "We question the judgment of anyone who asserts the world would be a better place with Saddam still terrorizing his own nation and threatening people well beyond Iraq's borders."12

They simply can't stop lying, can they? There was no evidence at all that Saddam was threatening any people outside of Iraq, whatever that's supposed to mean. It may mean arms sales. Following the Gulf War, the US sold around $100 billion of military hardware to Iraq's "threatened" neighbors: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Gulf States, and Turkey.

As to the world being a better or worse place ... only Iraq itself was and is the issue here, not the world; although if the world is a better place, why am I depressed?

The peculiar idea of tying people's health to private corporate profits

Steven Pearlstein is a financial writer with the Washington Post, with whom I've exchanged several emails in recent years. He does not ignore or gloss over the serious defects of the American economic system, but nonetheless remains a true believer in the market economy. In a recent review of a book by journalist Maggie Mahar, "Money-Driven Medicine", Pearlstein writes that the author tries to explain "why health care costs so much in the United States, with such poor results." She has focused on the right issues, he says, "the misguided financial incentives at every level, the unnecessary care that is not only wasteful but harmful, the bloated administrative costs." However, "in making the case that the health-care system suffers from too much free-market competition and too little cooperation, Mahar means to drum up support for a publicly funded national system. But in the end, she mostly makes a convincing case that no health-care system will work unless we figure out what really works and is cost effective and then get doctors, hospitals and patients to embrace it."13

"Unless we figure out what really works and is cost effective" ... hmmm ... like there haven't been repeated studies showing that national health plans in Western Europe, Australia, Canada, and elsewhere cover virtually everyone and every ailment and cost society and individuals much less than in the United States. Isn't that "working"? I spent five years in the UK with my wife and small child and all three of us can swear by the National Health Service; at those times when neither my wife nor I was employed we didn't have to pay anything into the system; doctors even made house calls; and this was under Margaret Thatcher, who was doing her best to cripple the system, a goal she and her fellow Tories, later joined by "New Labour", have continued to pursue.

And then there's Cuba -- poor, little, third-world Cuba. Countless non-rich ill Americans would think they were in heaven to have the Cuban health system reproduced here, with higher salaries for doctors et al., which we could easily afford.

It should be noted that an extensive review of previous studies recently concluded that the care provided at for-profit nursing homes and hospitals, on average, is inferior to that at nonprofits. The analysis indicates that a facility's ownership status makes a difference in cost, quality, and accessibility of care.14

Sale! Western Civilization! New, Improved! $99.99, marked down from $129.99. Sale!

There's currently a call in the United States to get rid of the one-cent coin because it costs 1.2 cents to make the coin and put it into circulation and because many people find the coins a nuisance. I have another reason to get rid of the coin -- hopefully, doing so would put an end to the ridiculous and ubiquitous practice of pricing almost everything at amounts like $9.99, $99.99, or $999.99. Or $3.29 or $17.98. What is the reason for this tedious and insulting absurdity? It began as, and continues to be, a con game -- trying to induce the purchaser to think that he's getting some kind of bargain price: Less than $10! Less than $100! In my local thrift shop, catering almost exclusively to poor blacks and Hispanics, virtually all prices end in .97 or .98 or .99. Every once in a while, when the nonsense has piled up to my nose level, I ask a shop manager or corporate representative why they use such a pricing system. They scarcely have any idea what I'm talking about. Sometimes in a shop when I'm discussing with a clerk the various price options of something I'm thinking of buying, and I say, "Okay, let's see, this model is $60 and ..." S/he'll interrupt me with: "No, it's $59.99."

Is this any way for people to relate to each other? Comes the revolution, and we write a new constitution, Paragraph 99 will ban this practice.

You can't make this stuff up

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." Anatole France, 1844-1924

On April 14 a federal appeals court ruled that the Los Angeles Police Department cannot arrest people for sitting, lying or sleeping on public sidewalks on Skid Row, saying such enforcement amounts to cruel and unusual punishment because there are not enough shelter beds for the city's huge homeless population. Judge Pamela A. Rymer issued a strong dissent against the majority opinion. The Los Angeles code "does not punish people simply because they are homeless," wrote Rymer. "It targets conduct -- sitting, lying or sleeping on city sidewalks -- that can be committed by those with homes as well as those without."15

NOTES

1 Washington Post, March 13, 2002, p.1

2 Washington Post, July 16, 2006. p.15

3 Washington Post, July 3, 2006, p.19

4 Associated Press, July 3, 2006

5 Washington Post, July 20, 2006, p.B3

6 Sarah Posner, The American Prospect, June 2006

7 FrontPageMag.com, Horowitz's site

8 Amnesty International news release, 26 June 1998, AI INDEX: MDE 15/54/98

9 Associated Press, July 15, 2006

10 Ibid.

11 The Independent (London), May 27, 2006, p.32

12 Daily Telegraph (London), July 3, 2006, p.1

13 Washington Post, July 9, 2006, p.F3

14 Washington Post, June 21, 2006, p.9

15 Los Angeles Times, April 15, 2006

The Anti-Empire Report Some things you need to know before the world ends

July 22, 2006

by William Blum

The End Is Near, but first, this commercial.

There are times when I think that this tired old world has gone on a few years too long. What's happening in the Middle East is so depressing. Most discussions of the eternal Israel-Palestine conflict are variations on the child's eternal defense for misbehavior -- "He started it!" Within a few minutes of discussing/arguing the latest manifestation of the conflict the participants are back to 1967, then 1948, then biblical times. I don't wish to get entangled in who started the current mess. I would like instead to first express what I see as two essential underlying facts of life which remain from one conflict to the next:

1) Israel's existence is not at stake and hasn't been so for decades, if it ever was, regardless of the many de rigueur militant statements by Arab leaders over the years. If Israel would learn to deal with its neighbors in a non-expansionist, non-military, humane, and respectful manner, engage in full prisoner exchanges, and sincerely strive for a viable two-state solution, even those who are opposed to the idea of a state based on a particular religion could accept the state of Israel, and the question of its right to exist would scarcely arise in people's minds. But as it is, Israel still uses the issue as a justification for its behavior, as Jews all over the world use the Holocaust and conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

2) In a conflict between a thousand-pound gorilla and a mouse, it's the gorilla which has to make concessions in order for the two sides to progress to the next level. What can the Palestinians offer in the way of concession? Israel would reply to that question: "No violent attacks of any kind." But that would still leave the status quo ante bellum -- a life of unmitigated misery for the Palestinian people forced upon them by Israel. Peace without justice.

Israel's declarations about the absolute unacceptability of one of their soldiers being held captive by the Palestinians, or two soldiers being held by Hezbollah in Lebanon, cannot be taken too seriously when Israel is holding literally thousands of captured Palestinians, many for years, typically without any due process, many tortured; as well as holding a number of prominent Hezbollah members. A few years ago, if not still now, Israel wrote numbers on some of the Palestinian prisoners' arms and foreheads, using blue markers, a practice that is of course reminiscent of the Nazis' treatment of Jews in World War II. 1

Israel's real aim, and that of Washington, is the overthrow of the Hamas government in Palestine, the government that came to power in January through a clearly democratic process, the democracy that the Western "democracies" never tire of celebrating, except when the result doesn't please them. Is there a stronger word than "hypocrisy"? There is now "no Hamas government," declared a senior US official a week ago, "eight cabinet ministers or 30 percent of the government is in jail kidnapped by Israel, another 30 percent is in hiding, and the other 30 percent is doing very little."2 To make the government-disappearance act even more Orwellian, we have Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking in late June about Iraq: "This is the only legitimately elected government in the Middle East with a possible exception of Lebanon."3 What's next, gathering in front of the Big Telescreeen for the Two Minutes Hate?

In addition to doing away with the Hamas government, the current military blitzkrieg by Israel, with full US support, may well be designed to create "incidents" to justify attacks on Iran and Syria, the next steps of Washington's work in process, a controlling stranglehold on the Middle East and its oil.

It is a wanton act of collective punishment that is depriving the Palestinians of food, electricity, water, money, access to the outside world ... and sleep. Israel has been sending jets flying over Gaza at night triggering sonic booms, traumatizing children. "I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza," declared Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert4; words suitable for Israel's tombstone.

These crimes against humanity -- and I haven't mentioned the terrible special weapons reportedly used by Israel -- are what the people of Palestine get for voting for the wrong party. It is ironic, given the Israeli attacks against civilians in both Gaza and Lebanon, that Hamas and Hezbollah are routinely dismissed in the West as terrorist organizations. The generally accepted definition of terrorism, used by the FBI and the United Nations amongst others, is: The use of violence against a civilian population in order to intimidate or coerce a government in furtherance of a political objective.

Since 9-11 it has been a calculated US-Israeli tactic to label the fight against Israel's foes as an integral part of the war on terror. On July 19, a rally was held in Washington, featuring the governor of Maryland, several members of Israeli-occupied Congress, the Israeli ambassador, and evangelical leading-light John Hagee. The Washington Post reported that "Speaker after prominent speaker characterized current Israeli fighting as a small branch of the larger U.S.-led global war against Islamic terrorism" and "Israel's attacks against the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah were blows against those who have killed civilians from Bali to Bombay to Moscow." Said the Israeli ambassador: "This is not just about Israel. It's about where our world is going to be and the fate and security of our world. Israel is on the forefront. We will amputate these little arms of Iran," referring to Hezbollah.5

And if the war on terror isn't enough to put Israel on the side of the angels, John Hagee has argued that "the United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West". He speaks of "a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ."6

The beatification of Israel approaches being a movement. Here is David Horowitz, the eminent semi-hysterical ex-Marxist: "Israel is part of a global war, the war of radical Islam against civilization. Right now Israel is doing the work of the rest of the civilized world by taking on the terrorists. It is not only for Israel's sake that we must get the facts out -- it is for ourselves, America, for every free country in the world, and for civilization itself."7

As for the two Israeli soldiers captured and held in Lebanon for prisoner exchange, we must keep a little history in mind. In the late 1990s, before Israel was evicted from southern Lebanon by Hezbollah, it was a common practice for Israel to abduct entirely innocent Lebanese. As a 1998 Amnesty International paper declared: "By Israel's own admission, Lebanese detainees are being held as 'bargaining chips'; they are not detained for their own actions but in exchange for Israeli soldiers missing in action or killed in Lebanon. Most have now spent 10 years in secret and isolated detention."8

Israel has created its worst enemies -- they helped create Hamas as a counterweight to Fatah in Palestine, and their occupation of Lebanon created Hezbollah. The current terrible bombings can be expected to keep the process going. Since its very beginning, Israel has been almost continually occupied in fighting wars and taking other people's lands. Did not any better way ever occur to the idealistic Zionist pioneers?

But while you and I get depressed by the horror and suffering, the neo-conservatives revel in it. They devour the flesh and drink the blood of the people of Afghanistan, of Iraq, of Palestine, of Lebanon, yet remain ravenous, and now call for Iran and Syria to be placed upon the feasting table. More than one of them has used the expression oderint dum metuant, a favorite phrase of Roman emperor Caligula, also used by Cicero -- "let them hate so long as they fear". Here is William Kristol, editor of the bible of neo-cons, "Weekly Standard", on Fox News Sunday, July 16:

"Look, our coddling of Iran ... over the last six to nine months has emboldened them. I mean, is Iran behaving like a timid regime that's very worried about the U.S.? Or is Iran behaving recklessly and in a foolhardy way? ... Israel is fighting four of our five enemies in the Middle East, in a sense. Iran, Syria, sponsors of terror; Hezbollah and Hamas. ... This is an opportunity to begin to reverse the unfortunate direction of the last six to nine months and get the terrorists and the jihadists back on the defensive."

Host Juan Williams replied: "Well, it just seems to me that you want ... you just want war, war, war, and you want us in more war. You wanted us in Iraq. Now you want us in Iran. Now you want us to get into the Middle East ... you're saying, why doesn't the United States take this hard, unforgiving line? Well, the hard and unforgiving line has been tried, we don't talk to anybody. We don't talk to Hamas. We don't talk to Hezbollah. We're not going to talk to Iran. Where has it gotten us, Bill?"

Kristol, looking somewhat taken aback, simply threw up his hands.

The Fox News audience does (very) occasionally get a hint of another way of looking at the world.

Iraq will follow Bush the rest of his life

Here comes now our Glorious Leader, speaking last week at a news conference at the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, referring to Russian president Vladimir Putin. "I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same thing."9

It's so very rare that Georgie W. makes one of his less-than-brilliant statements and has the nonsense immediately pointed out to him to his face -- "Putin, in a barbed reply, said: 'We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, I will tell you quite honestly.' Bush's face reddened as he tried to laugh off the remark. 'Just wait'," he said.10

It's too bad that Putin didn't also point out that religion was a lot more free under Saddam Hussein than under the American occupation. Amongst many charming recent incidents, in May the coach of the national tennis team and two of his players were shot dead in Baghdad by men who reportedly were religious extremists angry that the coach and his players were wearing shorts.11

As to a "free press", dare I mention Iraqi newspapers closed down by the American occupation, reporters shot by American troops, and phony stories planted in the Iraqi press by Pentagon employees?

The preceding is in the same vein as last month's edition of this report in which I listed the many ways in which the people of Iraq have a much worse life now than they did under Saddam Hussein. I concluded with recounting the discussions I've had with Americans who, in the face of this, say to me: "Just tell me one thing, are you glad that Saddam Hussein is out of power?"

Now we have a British poll that reports that "More than two thirds who offered an opinion said America is essentially an imperial power seeking world domination. And 81 per cent of those who took a view said President George W. Bush hypocritically championed democracy as a cover for the pursuit of American self-interests." The American embassy in London was quick to reply. Said a spokesperson: "We question the judgment of anyone who asserts the world would be a better place with Saddam still terrorizing his own nation and threatening people well beyond Iraq's borders."12

They simply can't stop lying, can they? There was no evidence at all that Saddam was threatening any people outside of Iraq, whatever that's supposed to mean. It may mean arms sales. Following the Gulf War, the US sold around $100 billion of military hardware to Iraq's "threatened" neighbors: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Gulf States, and Turkey.

As to the world being a better or worse place ... only Iraq itself was and is the issue here, not the world; although if the world is a better place, why am I depressed?

The peculiar idea of tying people's health to private corporate profits

Steven Pearlstein is a financial writer with the Washington Post, with whom I've exchanged several emails in recent years. He does not ignore or gloss over the serious defects of the American economic system, but nonetheless remains a true believer in the market economy. In a recent review of a book by journalist Maggie Mahar, "Money-Driven Medicine", Pearlstein writes that the author tries to explain "why health care costs so much in the United States, with such poor results." She has focused on the right issues, he says, "the misguided financial incentives at every level, the unnecessary care that is not only wasteful but harmful, the bloated administrative costs." However, "in making the case that the health-care system suffers from too much free-market competition and too little cooperation, Mahar means to drum up support for a publicly funded national system. But in the end, she mostly makes a convincing case that no health-care system will work unless we figure out what really works and is cost effective and then get doctors, hospitals and patients to embrace it."13

"Unless we figure out what really works and is cost effective" ... hmmm ... like there haven't been repeated studies showing that national health plans in Western Europe, Australia, Canada, and elsewhere cover virtually everyone and every ailment and cost society and individuals much less than in the United States. Isn't that "working"? I spent five years in the UK with my wife and small child and all three of us can swear by the National Health Service; at those times when neither my wife nor I was employed we didn't have to pay anything into the system; doctors even made house calls; and this was under Margaret Thatcher, who was doing her best to cripple the system, a goal she and her fellow Tories, later joined by "New Labour", have continued to pursue.

And then there's Cuba -- poor, little, third-world Cuba. Countless non-rich ill Americans would think they were in heaven to have the Cuban health system reproduced here, with higher salaries for doctors et al., which we could easily afford.

It should be noted that an extensive review of previous studies recently concluded that the care provided at for-profit nursing homes and hospitals, on average, is inferior to that at nonprofits. The analysis indicates that a facility's ownership status makes a difference in cost, quality, and accessibility of care.14

Sale! Western Civilization! New, Improved! $99.99, marked down from $129.99. Sale!

There's currently a call in the United States to get rid of the one-cent coin because it costs 1.2 cents to make the coin and put it into circulation and because many people find the coins a nuisance. I have another reason to get rid of the coin -- hopefully, doing so would put an end to the ridiculous and ubiquitous practice of pricing almost everything at amounts like $9.99, $99.99, or $999.99. Or $3.29 or $17.98. What is the reason for this tedious and insulting absurdity? It began as, and continues to be, a con game -- trying to induce the purchaser to think that he's getting some kind of bargain price: Less than $10! Less than $100! In my local thrift shop, catering almost exclusively to poor blacks and Hispanics, virtually all prices end in .97 or .98 or .99. Every once in a while, when the nonsense has piled up to my nose level, I ask a shop manager or corporate representative why they use such a pricing system. They scarcely have any idea what I'm talking about. Sometimes in a shop when I'm discussing with a clerk the various price options of something I'm thinking of buying, and I say, "Okay, let's see, this model is $60 and ..." S/he'll interrupt me with: "No, it's $59.99."

Is this any way for people to relate to each other? Comes the revolution, and we write a new constitution, Paragraph 99 will ban this practice.

You can't make this stuff up

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." Anatole France, 1844-1924

On April 14 a federal appeals court ruled that the Los Angeles Police Department cannot arrest people for sitting, lying or sleeping on public sidewalks on Skid Row, saying such enforcement amounts to cruel and unusual punishment because there are not enough shelter beds for the city's huge homeless population. Judge Pamela A. Rymer issued a strong dissent against the majority opinion. The Los Angeles code "does not punish people simply because they are homeless," wrote Rymer. "It targets conduct -- sitting, lying or sleeping on city sidewalks -- that can be committed by those with homes as well as those without."15

NOTES

1 Washington Post, March 13, 2002, p.1

2 Washington Post, July 16, 2006. p.15

3 Washington Post, July 3, 2006, p.19

4 Associated Press, July 3, 2006

5 Washington Post, July 20, 2006, p.B3

6 Sarah Posner, The American Prospect, June 2006

7 FrontPageMag.com, Horowitz's site

8 Amnesty International news release, 26 June 1998, AI INDEX: MDE 15/54/98

9 Associated Press, July 15, 2006

10 Ibid.

11 The Independent (London), May 27, 2006, p.32

12 Daily Telegraph (London), July 3, 2006, p.1

13 Washington Post, July 9, 2006, p.F3

14 Washington Post, June 21, 2006, p.9

15 Los Angeles Times, April 15, 2006

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

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at the above website.