2010 September « Aletho News

Israel denying PLC member access to hospital

Ma’an – 20/09/2010

RAMALLAH — Israeli authorities are preventing a sick Palestinian lawmaker from accessing health care, a former European parliamentarian said Monday.

Palestinian Legislative Council member Khalida Jarrar was advised by doctors to undergo urgent brain scans more than two months ago, after tests at a Ramallah hospital revealed concerning results, former European Parliament vice president Luisa Morgantini said.

The former EU official said Jarrar was advised to go to Amman, Jordan immediately as Palestinian hospitals were not equipped to administer the scans required. However for more than six weeks, Israeli security services have prevented Jarrar’s travel due to “security reasons,”

Jarrar’s lawyers obtained an official letter dated 17 August from Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank, which stated there was “no security reason” to prevent the lawmaker’s travel abroad. However, Jarrar said on 30 August she attempted to cross the Allenby Bridge into Jordan and Israeli soldiers prevented her passage, citing “security reasons.”

Jarrar is a lawmaker affiliated with the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and has never been incriminated in, or related to, any violent act, Morgantini added, noting that depriving Jarrar of her right to health showed “only one of many tragic and dark sides of the Israeli military occupation.”

Morgantini appealed to the European Parliament to request that Israel authorities allow Jarrar to access urgently needed medical attention in Jordan, and “to guarantee health and life rights to the Palestinian people.”

September 20, 2010 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | 1 Comment

The impacts of uranium mining on indigenous communities

Heather Tufts | Peace, Earth & Justice News | February 13, 2010

The climate change debate positions nuclear power as a partial solution to carbon emissions according to some scientists and politicians. Uranium mining speculation lacks comprehensive health and safety regulations while the ethics of Canadian exported uranium, which can lead to depleted uranium used in zones of war, needs greater scrutiny. Abandoned uranium mines and the subsequent hazards experienced in forgotten communities have been virtually ignored in Canada leading to tragic, unmitigated circumstances.

The long-term negative impacts of uranium mining can be witnessed in the small, rural community of Deline (North West Territories) which has a Dene population of 800 people. They are located right on the shore of Sahtu (Great Bear Lake) about 300 miles north of Yellowknife. Great Bear Lake is considered to be one of the last great fresh water lakes in the world. This area on the north shore of Sahtu was the site of radium mining from 1934 to 1939, and then a uranium mine from 1943 to 1962.

During the mining era the Dene of Deline, mostly men worked as labourers and as coolies carrying gunny sacks of radioactive uranium ore and concentrates on the transportation route. Waste from both radium and uranium mines were dumped directly into the lake and used as landfill. Port Radium was owned and operated by a Canadian crown corporation but uranium ore and concentrates were extracted, milled and sold to the US Government for the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb during the Second World War.

The mine initially operated under the emergency regulations of the War Measures Act. The circumstances and time-line mean that retroactive mitigation and compensation are an enormous legal challenge and decades later the Dene continue to pay a high price in environmental and health effects. No warnings were issued at the time about the hazardous and toxic nature of these ores and so people took no precautions regarding their drinking water or their traditional foods.

In 1975 young men from Deline were sent to work in the tunnels on a Government training program without masks for radon gas exposure. In 1997 ten young men were sent with only two hours of training to clean up “hot spots” of radioactive soil in Sawmill Bay without shower or decontamination facilities. Once again the Dene people of Deline were not informed of these hazardous exposures but recent information revelations mean that they now live in constant fear of their contaminated land, water and animals with ongoing concerns about their health and survival.

Deline is known as the ‘village of widows’ because most of the men who worked as labourers in the mines have died of some form of cancer. The widows, who are traditional women, were left to raise their families without husbands and breadwinners. As a result they became dependent on welfare and relied on the young men who remained in the community to help supply them with their traditional foods. The women are struggling and the village is seeing the first generation of young men in the history of the Dene grow up without the guidance and teachings of their grandfathers, fathers and uncles. This unfulfilled tradition threatens the cultural and spiritual survival of the only community on the Great Bear Lake.

In 1998 the Dene First Nation lobbied the federal government for compensation and mitigation. On September 6, 2005, Déline community members were given the disappointing findings of a five-year study to examine the health and environmental impacts of the government-owned radium and uranium mine which had operated for almost thirty years in Deline. Although the community had lost 15 former ore transport workers to cancer the report stated that the numbers of deaths were insufficient to prove unequivocally the link to the mine.

By not acknowledging the full health consequences of uranium mining the government offloads the responsibility to compensate or provide justice to the Dené First Nation. To date consultations with government are still underway with anticipated costs for remediation in the millions of dollars. An agreement about cause and affect has not yet been reached. In a related situation in Port Hope Ontario, NDP MP Nathan Cullen called for an investigation in 2007 into Health Canada’s denials of the health risks of uranium contamination with the accusation that profits are influencing policy. These issues remain unresolved in 2010 even though increased uranium mining is imminent in some Canadian provinces.

Uranium exploration near the world famous Thelon Game Sanctuary in Nunavut alarmed the Dené and Inuit communities who are dependent on the caribou herds that use the area for grazing and calving. The current land use plan for Kivalliq (Keewatin) has been in place since 2000 and prohibits uranium mining in the region until Nunavut’s environmental assessment process has reviewed all the related environmental and health impact issues. In contradiction to the local land use plan Nunavut’s Inuit land claims commission adopted a policy in favour of uranium mining returning the legacy of uncertainty to the area. Their policy framework justifies its position with the rationale that uranium mining and nuclear energy could mitigate some of the climate change impacts in the north.

The policy does not account for the quantifiable fossil fuel usage in uranium exploration nor resolves issues about the impacts of nuclear waste storage. They assert that environmental and health concerns related to uranium mining have been resolved but provide no supporting evidence. Opposition gained momentum from the Inuit in Baker Lake and the Hunters and Trappers Association who strongly requested a moratorium on all mining exploration. The vehement opposition to the uranium mine proposal near the Thelon Game Sanctuary eventually led the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board to recommend rejection of uranium exploration at Screech Lake in 2009.

However a junior mining company from Vancouver, Kaminak recently struck a deal with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc (NTI) to allow uranium exploration in the Kivalliq region, about 200 km inland from Whale Cove. The deal, or memorandum of understanding, is unusual for a few reasons. It’s the first time NTI has given permission for a company to hunt for the radioactive material on Inuit-owned land. The deal would give NTI partial ownership of the spin-off company created by Kaminak to search for uranium and the hope of economic progress.

Uranium development in Saskatchewan dates back to the 1930s when the first discoveries were made in the far north. Since that time controversial uranium exploitation has undergone several waves of investment and although it contributes to the nuclear industry and is opposed by many NGOs there has been virtually no opposition from any political party in Canada. Today uranium is one of Canada’s leading exports with the highest percentage being mined in the province of Saskatchewan on indigenous lands.

The wilderness of the north is a land of glacier lakes and pine forests with low lying areas dominated by peat bogs and black spruce. To the west of the Athabasca Basin is a large, unique area of sand dunes. Clean water and land has sustained a wide variety of fish and animals which was the foundation of social and economic development for aboriginal people in the area for many years.

The land is rich in uranium deposits but this hazardous mining industry poses a considerable threat to the natural ecology and the values of people who live on the land. At the heart of this issue is a system of indigenous beliefs and culture which regards them as inseparable from the land, the waters and the animals. Environmental assessment panels have often listened to the submissions of aboriginal people in the area who have expressed deep concerns for the toxicity of uranium mines. The impact of mining on their ancestral lands where they are the traditional custodians contravenes their spiritual and cultural beliefs.

Conversely emerging job opportunities in a struggling northern economy have out of necessity led to the partial cooperation of some native bands with uranium mining projects. In 1993 the La Ronge Indian Band gave their support to the Kitsaki uranium mining development at Rabbit Lake citing increased economic benefits for their community, with the caveat that environmental impacts were closely monitored. Employment opportunities are short-term and hazardous but highly financed propaganda to promote the benefits of uranium mining to northerners potentially trumps aboriginal self-determined, sustainable, economic alternatives.

The often cited rationale that nuclear power is that the quintessential solution to greenhouse gas emissions negates the harsh reality that much of the ore contributes to US weaponry. Activist and author Jim Harding (Canada’s Deadly Secret: Saskatchewan Uranium and the Global Nuclear System) offers a compelling argument against uranium mining by outlining its potential for military weapons: “About 90 percent of the depleted uranium is left in a pile which the military has access to. And there’s lots of uranium there. They take the depleted uranium into their own reactors, bombard it with neutrons, create plutonium for weapons, use the depleted uranium in the casing of H-bombs, and now, since the ‘90s, use that as the heavy metal in the weaponry – the bullets, the anti-tank bullets.”

Harding also argues that the geopolitical uses and long-term environmental effects are being hidden, and outweigh the short-term economic gain by which communities and governments are sometimes wooed. He cites the Harper government’s eager acceptance of nuclear energy as evidence that Canada is going down a path of misplaced intentions.

The potential for economic growth and the need for employment have resulted in some aboriginal labour initiatives in the mining industry. The Athabasca Basin Development Ltd. Partnership (ABDLP) was established in 2002, and is 90% aboriginal owned. ABDLP provides services to both mining exploration companies and the main operating uranium mines in the region. In total, some 600 northerners work for ABDLP in winter road maintenance, freight and transportation, mine camp setup, janitorial services, security and underground mining services, as well as line-cutting for seismic exploration.

However the environmental, health and social impacts of uranium development extraction on Aboriginal communities in the Canadian North remain an urgent concern to many communities. Mining activity has altered the landscape through the construction of roads, new settlements and the underground mine sites. Ore extraction and processing have released dangerous chemicals into the air and water and in spite of the participation of the ABDLP there is still a predominance of non-native labour which has displaced and marginalized local indigenous people. Primarily it is the large multinationals, not the local people who benefit from the multi-million dollar uranium mining industry in Saskatchewan and elsewhere.

In the United States Canadian uranium mining speculation has increased in spite of indigenous opposition and a long legacy of life-threatening damages on Navajo Reservations. Barrick Gold of Canada which netted a 1.5 billion dollar profit in 2006 is active in uranium exploration in New Mexico but it has not committed sufficient funds to adequately address the contamination that has already destroyed four aquifers in Navajo territory. The uranium industry is attempting to convince the public that it will bring high-paying jobs and tax money to the state by buying advertisements in local papers and other news media while paying industry representatives to testify at hearings.

In 2006 the Indigenous World Uranium Summit held in Navajo territory in the U.S. issued the following powerful declaration: “We, the Peoples gathered at the Indigenous World Uranium Summit, at this critical time of intensifying nuclear threats to Mother Earth and all life, demand a worldwide ban on uranium mining, processing, enrichment, fuel use, and weapons testing and deployment, and nuclear waste dumping on native lands.”

More than 300 participants from 14 countries participated in the event, with a variety of topics including international efforts to halt uranium mining, and the devastating effects on health and culture. Indignation grew as they realized that American Indian uranium miners in both the United States and Canada (Saskatchewan and NWT) had been sent to their deaths to work in the uranium mines long after scientists warned of the health hazards of radon gas and radiation.

Notwithstanding the outcry, uranium production in Canada is likely to increase significantly in the coming years. The Harper regime is poised to align its policies with Obama’s renewed pro-nuclear power stance as a solution to climate change! Several new Canadian mines, now planned or under construction, go into operation sometime after 2011. The two largest projects are Cameco’s Cigar Lake mine and Areva’s Midwest mine, both in northern Saskatchewan.

Canada is the world’s largest producer of uranium with about 60% exported to the United States where depleted uranium is manufactured as weapons. Many abandoned uranium mines have left behind a devastating legacy but the nuclear industry has re-branded itself as a viable solution to global warming. The profitable Canadian uranium mining industry lacks serious scrutiny; meanwhile remote indigenous communities are especially vulnerable to hazardous impacts thinly veiled as economic promise.

September 20, 2010 Posted by aletho | Environmentalism, Militarism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular | 1 Comment

The progressive dilemma

By Nick Egnatz | Online Journal | September 20, 2010

A self-described representative democracy in which the only two political parties are both funded and controlled by elite corporate interests is a contradiction in terms. Control of the population through government propaganda and a monopoly corporate media have made the domination of the American working class and poor by the wealthy corporate elite consensual. The enormity of the crime against true democratic values is so complete that substantive reform of the present system is an impossibility.

A dilemma is a situation in which one is forced to choose between equally distasteful options. That has always been our consignment as Americans when we venture to the polls (either vote for a wishy-washy Democrat or let the even worse Republican win). Every two years we are told that the fate of our democracy rests on our decision. Well it doesn’t because we don’t have a democracy, representative or otherwise. We have a plutocracy (rule by the wealthy). Our two political parties answer out of necessity to the corporate world. No one represents the people and the monopoly corporate media will not allow for a discussion of democratic alternatives.

The chickens have come home to roost from the last 30 years of economic neoliberal globalization policies championed by both political parties. Supply side economics of massive tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation of the very modest checks on American capitalism necessitated by the Great Depression have made us the most unequal industrial democracy on earth. Imperial wars of aggression and massive bailouts of the very speculators who engineered the financial collapse leading to the Great Recession have allowed both corporate parties to take the stance that there is no money left for the people’s needs. This is poppycock. How can a consumer driven economy recover if the working class and poor have no jobs or money?

To cut spending on social programs with political cover, Obama came up with the brilliant idea of a budget deficit commission (National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform) made up of bipartisan hacks from both our two corporate parties, representatives from the corporate world of greed and a single union president. Green Party and socialists need not apply and in fact there are no even mildly progressive Democrats (an oxymoron if there ever was one) on the commission. The commission is not a result of legislation from our Congress. It was formed by Executive Order. This is the way dictators govern, but that’s another issue. The commission is charged to cut the Budget Deficit by cutting social programs only and leaving the military spending intact. If and when 14 of the commission’s 18 members agree on policy it will go straight to Congress for a vote with no amendments allowed.

Co-chairman of the commission Alan Simpson, former Republican Senator from Wyoming received some notoriety recently by referring to seniors on Social Security as “lesser people,” calling Social Security a “cow with 310 million tits” and asking the question of Vietnam veterans “what have they done for us lately?’ None of this bothered our President enough to ask for Simpson’s resignation. Their recommendation is due in December, after the midterm election.

We are expected to accept the government propaganda that the unemployment rate is 9.6 percent, when that figure does not include those no longer receiving or who never received unemployment compensation, part time workers desiring full time work or workers disdainfully referred to as having given up looking for work. Including all these would bring the unemployment figure to 22 percent. But that still doesn’t count those working for less than a livable wage, this would easily bring the figure well beyond the 30 percent range. This assault on the working class has been the goal of the neoliberal globalization policy accepted as gospel by both corporate political parties since Ronald Reagan started selling it in the 70’s and 80’s when he set out to save the country from the scourge of a prosperous working class. The Great Communicator pushed his dogma of bad government/good corporations with the same smile he used to push Twenty Mule Team Borax soap to TV viewers years earlier.

More than 3 million families have already been foreclosed and torn from their homes. Another 11 million families are “underwater” (owing more that the home is worth). Research firm First American Core Logic reports that Nevada with 65 percent of home mortgages underwater, Arizona with 48 percent, Florida with 45 percent, Michigan with 37 percent and California with 35 percent lead the nation in this foreboding statistic.

The Republicans propose fiscal austerity for the poor and working class and continued tax cuts for the wealthy corporate class to find our way our of the Great Recession. Obama and the Democrats say that economic growth will do the trick. Both so called solutions are illogical. We are expected to believe that if the big bad bankers would just pretty please start loaning money to businesses, the economy will start humming and everything will be hunky dory?

I’m not an economist, but I have been a small businessman and I have been told on more than one occasion that I have half a brain. The road to recovery is both simple and difficult. For businesses to thrive, for the economy to hum, the business owners simply need customers with money in their pockets. The first step is to put our citizens back to work at a livable wage and the economy will flourish. It will be difficult, to the point of impossibility, for corporate politicians to consider the people at the bottom first, but that is what needs to be done.

We are told that the fall elections are for the control of our country. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are told that we cannot allow the Republican Party of No to win Congress, yet the Democrats have controlled Congress for four years, the White House for two and there has been no challenge to the draconian policies of social spending cuts, endless imperial war and progressively greater and greater inequality. All now completely part and parcel of the fabric of a nation once founded on the single statement that “all men are created equal.” Regardless of which party wins and controls Congress, elite domination of the poor and working class will continue.

Understand that the system is beyond redemption. Recognize that we have exported the cancer of elite domination through globalization across the globe and that the struggle belongs to all the poor and working people of the world. Boycott elections that give credibility to this monstrous system of inequality and class domination. Organize on the basis of class and struggle for the equality that was promised in 1776.

Or you can support the Democratic Party and continue to see more of the same; continued wars, huge military budgets, depressed home prices, foreclosures, abandoned underwater mortgages, progressively greater and greater inequality and Depression Era unemployment. All done while the Democrats complain that they would like to change things, but that they just don’t have the votes or the heart or the balls. The last two they won’t admit to, but we all know better.

I’m not painting a pretty picture, because it isn’t pretty and wishing it was better won’t make it so. Voting for third party candidates, independents or so called progressive Democrats only serves to give legitimacy to an undemocratic system. The first step toward a true participatory democracy is to vocally and publicly boycott elections and renounce the American system of money controlled policies and politics through the two corporate political parties.

Right-wingers and liberal Democrats both love to say that I advocate for some kind of nebulous utopian dream. If you want nebulous from the right tune in to Glen Beck and Sarah Palin’s call for restoring America’s honor. If you want the equivalent from the Democratic Party listen to Obama’s calls for hope and change. Both appeals are long on rhetoric and bereft of specific steps to alleviate the misery corporate America and their two lackey political parties have trickled down on the poor and working class.

This socialist utopian will instead give specific plans for a new birth of democracy in America:

100 percent federal funding for all national elections. Under the proposal below this figure will become minuscule.
No election commercials allowed. This just allows money to pollute politics. Instead require all media outlets to publish and broadcast periodic side by side statements of all the candidates positions on the various issues. Mandate debates in which all the candidates get a chance to state their positions on the issues.
Require run-off elections if no candidate polls more than 50 percent of vote. This will facilitate the growth of alternative parties.
Either eliminate the anti democratic U.S. Senate or require it to do away with the filibuster rule which allows 41 Senators from the smallest states, representing only 11 percent of the U.S. population to halt all legislation with the exception of certain budget votes.
Return U.S. income tax rate on the most wealthy Americans to 90 percent for their excess income over $1 million. For 45 years (1935-1980) the top tax rate was between 70-94 percent. It is now 35 percent and the ever widening gap between rich and poor has made the U.S. the equivalent of a banana republic.
Institute a financial transaction tax on all financial transactions such as stock sales.
Cancel all free trade agreements and renegotiate into fair trade agreements in which tariffs are re-instituted to even the playing field when dealing with nations with substandard wages and environmental regulations. This is in line with the policy instituted by the first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, done at the behest of George Washington and carried forward for almost two centuries. That is until the neo-liberal globalization crowd made their first appearance after WWII and in the last three decades especially have managed to lower tariffs to an average of 2 percent. The rationale behind tariffs is to level the playing field for our workers. If country A has the same wage rate and basic environmental safeguards as we do, a free trade agreement with them is in order. But if country B has a wage rate much lower than ours and pays little attention to environmental safeguards, then we should have tariffs reflecting these differences. Free trade is fine with equal trading partners, but not with countries paying slave wages and polluting the environment like China.
Give workers a seat at the table on all corporate boards with veto privileges as a protection for the American people from corporate dominance.
Do away with the minimum wage and institute a living wage guaranteeing all workers a wage allowing for basic necessities. This will vary with the cost of living in different areas and individual family commitments, but for a single worker with no other dependents in an average area it would presently be about $15/hour.
Institute a massive program similar to the WPA to put all the unemployed to work at a living wage. There is much work to do, let us do it. Our cities need rebuilding, seniors need care, single parents need parenting help, homes need to be made energy efficient, infrastructure needs repair.
For small businesses that show through their tax returns an inability to pay their workers the living wage, have the federal government make up the difference until such time as the small business can support its workers on its own.
Abolish the Federal Reserve Bank and institute a national bank with the power to create money presently given to the Federal Reserve. As the population and economy grows there is a need to create money. If this is not done, it causes deflation and things get progressively cheaper. While that might sound nice at first glance, not creating money would be every bit the disaster that high inflation can be. Imagine buying a home with a mortgage and watching the price drop every year. That’s deflation. We now have that with home prices, but for other reasons. Anyway, the new national bank will have the power to create money and the profit from creating this money will benefit all the people instead of the present banking class.
The mortgage crisis must be addressed. The megabanks and Wall Street brought it on and should be required to adjust all mortgage balances down by the local percentage that home prices have dropped. The federal government might then consider not prosecuting those responsible for the crisis.
Capitalism requires continual growth. This is at odds with the earth’s environment. We need to create a sustainable economy which does not wreak havoc with the earth’s delicate ecosystems. Economic growth is good only when it is environmentally sustainable.
Just as the poor and working class are required to pay social security tax on all their income, require the wealthy to do the same.
Recognize that healthcare is a human right and immediately institute either 100 percent government single payer healthcare for all or have government take over the healthcare apparatus and be both the employer and the payer of all healthcare bills.
End the wars for U.S. Empire overseas. Close our 700 overseas military bases. Cut the total military budget (now in excess of $1 trillion) in half and then half again.
Disband the Central Intelligence Agency and apologize to the people of all the countries in which our CIA engineered coups to overthrow democratically elected governments. A partial list would include Chile, Brazil, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, Greece, Congo and Iran.
End military aid to Israel and break off diplomatic relations with them until such time as they agree to abandon all the illegal settlements in the West Bank, tear down the apartheid wall, end the criminal blockade of Gaza and finally allow the Palestinian people a free and independent state based on the 1967 borders that are recognized by the international community of nations.
The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Democratic Minority Report in 2005 declared that there was a prima facie case that the Bush Administration broke at least seven federal and international laws in taking us into war in Iraq. If we are to be a country of laws, Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell etc. must be investigated and prosecuted.
Those responsible at the highest level for our policy of torture must be prosecuted.
Equal diligence should be given to investigating and prosecuting the financial machinations behind the mortgage derivative bundling and trading scams. If they agree to reduce all mortgages by the local percentage drop in value, rework terms for those facing foreclosure, put already foreclosed families back in their homes and donate the rest of their ill gotten gain to charity, we might want to consider not prosecuting.
The 9/11 Commission Investigation and Report was a complete whitewash. How can there be independence in the investigation when the President is allowed to appoint all the members of the commission? The American people are owed the truth and an independent investigation is absolutely necessary if we are to call ourselves a nation of laws.
A democracy cannot exist without an informed citizenry. Media purveyors must be required to present the full spectrum of news and opinion.

Politicians from both political parties will avoid these issues like the plague. The question is, should you? Or are you content to support politicians who use soaring rhetoric in describing the plight of our people and then line up in support of corporate friendly legislation that continues the race to the bottom for the poor and working class of America? Will your vote for Congress and the U.S. Senate go to a Democratic candidate who supports not a single one of the above proposals? If the answer is yes and you consider yourself a progressive or liberal, what exactly does that mean?

We can’t fix this system by voting, petitioning, marching or lobbying. We have to change the system. The first step is to call the system what it is; monstrous, criminal and undemocratic. The next step is to refuse to participate in elections and to not be bashful in telling others why. This won’t save the world now, but it’s the only hope for the future.

September 20, 2010 Posted by aletho | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | 4 Comments

The food industry, like Big Pharma, controls the FDA and USDA

By Jonathan Benson | Natural News | September 20, 2010

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) recently released a report highlighting the widespread influence of the food industry over food safety policies. According to the study, at least a quarter of those who work for either the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the U.S. Department of Agriculture (UDSA) have admitted that corporate interests regularly force the agencies to change or remove policies that hurt their bottom line, even when those policies protect the public.

The UCS sent 44-question surveys to roughly 8,000 workers from both the FDA and USDA, 60 percent of whom work as field inspectors. Nearly 40 percent of respondents indicated that their agencies’ practices harm public health in order to appease corporate interests, and more than 30 percent indicated that many of the higher-ups at both the FDA and USDA “inappropriately” influence decision making, in addition to having previously worked in the food industry.

“Upper level management does not adequately support field inspectors and the actions they take to protect the food supply,” explained Dean Wyatt, a USDA veterinarian in charge of federal slaughterhouse inspectors, to reporters. “Not only is there lack of support, but there’s outright obstruction, retaliation and abuse of power.”

According to Wyatt, he has been demoted for actually doing his job properly and documenting industry violations. It is highly likely that there are countless others like him who have been reprimanded, muzzled or even punished for doing their jobs.

To make matters worse, more than 30 percent of survey respondents said they believe their agencies are not “moving in the right direction”. And this makes perfect sense, considering that 25 percent indicated their agencies do not even make public health a priority when considering policy decisions.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS…

September 20, 2010 Posted by aletho | Corruption | Leave a comment

“I am sure this occupation will end”

Jody McIntyre writing from , The Electronic Intifada, 20 September 2010

Israeli soldiers fire at protesters in Beit Ommar. (Mamoun Wazwaz/MaanImages)

Since 2005, residents of the occupied West Bank village of Beit Ommar have launched nonviolent demonstrations in protest against the increasing theft of their land at the hands of the five surrounding Israeli settlements, and to call for an end to the Israeli occupation of all Palestinian lands. Despite the brutal response of the Israeli forces, resulting in the death, injury and detention of scores of teenagers from the town, the people of Beit Ommar remain steadfast in their resistance. Jody McIntyre interviews Beit Ommar Popular Committee secretary Ahmed Abu Hashem for The Electronic Intifada.

Jody McIntyre: Please introduce yourself.

Ahmed Abu Hashem: I am the secretary of the Beit Ommar Popular Committee, but I feel like the smallest person. None of us should see ourselves as more important than anyone else, because we are all supporting each other. Many people from the Palestinian Authority and from outside the village have tried to break us, but it will never work.

JM: How has the Israeli occupation personally affected you?

AH: I was first arrested in 1984, and held in administrative detention without charge for three months. The next time was together with my older brother at the start of the first intifada in 1988; he was imprisoned for 14 months, and myself for three and a half years. I was arrested again in 1992, and again in 1994 for a period of 14 months. In 1998, me and my younger brother were both imprisoned for six months. And in 2002 I was held for another six months, and then again in 2004, me and my younger brother were both imprisoned for six months. The last time I was in prison, my mother was run over by an Israeli military jeep, and my brother’s wife was shot, both on the same day. Three months ago I was arrested again and held for four days, where I was interrogated by Captain Tamir from the Israeli intelligence.

We are who we are, and since the first intifada it has been like this for my family … if it’s not me then it’s my brother, or my children, or my brother’s children, or my wife. Of course, we know why we are singled out in this way; it is because we have always worked as activists against the occupation.

It is clear that they are after me now; if they don’t come and invade my home, then they stop me at a checkpoint. In the last fifty days, they have invaded my house 17 times. This morning, I ran into a flying checkpoint at the settlement Gush Etzion, and they gave me a paper ordering me to report to the Israeli intelligence services on Monday morning. The same captain who interrogated me before actually came down to the checkpoint to hand me the paper.

The last time they came to my house they had given me exactly the same paper … I went to the military base as it said I should, and waited from 8:30am until 5:00pm, when I was simply given another paper saying that they would call me again. So I left, and 15 minutes later they called me and said I had to be at Gush Etzion immediately, but I refused to go back.

JM: Why do you think the Israeli military are pursuing you so relentlessly?

AH: They think that they can coerce me with money to become a collaborator, but it couldn’t be further from my thoughts.

I might be an old guy, but I hope to continue working against the wall and the settlements for all of my life.

JM: What motivates you to keep struggling against the occupation?

AH: My father was a part of the fedayeen [peasant] rebellion in 1948 against the first settler population of Gush Etzion, and he was injured by a land mine during the battle. He told me about those experiences at a young age, which definitely inspired me. As a child at school I studied a lot about the occupation; I read about the 1948 war and what exactly the creation and continued expansion of Israel meant to the Palestinians. I think it was a combination of these factors which gave me a determination to always struggle for our liberation.

JM: Have your sons also suffered, as you have, at the hands of the Israeli occupation?

AH: The first time my son Yousif was arrested, he was 12 years old. He’s currently in prison for the third time, at the age of 17. My oldest son is in jail for the second time. My other son, Emad, was shot by an Israeli soldier, and still has shrapnel in his head from the injury. My brother’s two sons were just released after three years in prison; they’re 19 and 21 years old now, so they were both arrested during their studies. Of course, the army wants to arrest the clever kids because they want them to work with the army as collaborators in the university. As for those who do choose to work as collaborators, I think their hearts have died.

I’m one of the few farmers who has continued to work on the land despite it being situated right next to the fence of the Karmet Sur settlement. The land actually belongs to my cousin, but I look after it as an act of defiance against the occupation. The settlers are keen to keep Palestinians off their land, because they want to expand, so they will do anything to stop us farming there. On many occasions I would see the settlers shooting at me, and I would hear bullets flying over my head. Once, the settlers’ security shot my six-year-old son Qossay in the leg with a live bullet. He stayed in the hospital for three days; the bullet had broken the bone in his leg.

Qossay, now eight years old, has completely changed. He used to be terrified of the soldiers, and he would hide under the bed when they invaded our home. But since he was shot he is at the front of every demonstration! Even if there isn’t a demonstration, he’ll go out and confront the soldiers anyway.

JM: Do you think the demonstrations can change the future here?

AH: We are struggling to stop the growth of the settlements, to stop the arrests and to stop the shootings. I don’t know if it will be in my lifetime, or in a hundred years, but I am sure this occupation will be ended.

Jody McIntyre is a journalist from the United Kingdom. He writes a blog entitled “Life on Wheels” which can be found at jodymcintyre.wordpress.com. He can be reached at jody [dot] mcintyre [at] gmail [dot] com.

September 20, 2010 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | 1 Comment

Report: Bush offered to absorb 100,000 refugees in peace deal

Ma’an – September 20, 2010

BETHLEHEM — The Bush administration said it was prepared to absorb 100,000 Palestinian refugees if a peace deal was reached, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday, Israeli media reported.

Speaking at a Geneva Initiative conference in Tel Aviv, Olmert said during negotiations under his premiership with President Mahmoud Abbas that he had offered a solution that would have been in line with the Arab league Peace plan, Israeli daily Haaretz reported.

He also said former US President George W Bush had offered the immediate recognition of 100,000 Palestinian refugees as American citizens as part of a framework of international compensation, the daily reported.

According to UNRWA, the UN agency set up in the wake of Israel’s establishment to assist Palestinian refugees displaced between June 1946 and May 1948, there are 4.7 million Palestine refugees now eligible for UNRWA services.

“One-third of the registered Palestine refugees, nearly 1.4 million, live in 58 recognized refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” UNRWA estimates.

The right of return, sanctioned under international law, has been the focal point of previous negotiations, as Palestinian negotiators seek to ensure refugees’ rights to compensation from Israel and the right to return to their homes now within Israel.

September 20, 2010 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | 2 Comments

Martin Peretz: editor of the New Republic and agent of Israel

Peretz and the dangers of obsessive love

By Lawrence Davidson | September 20, 2010

Peretz and the New Republic

Martin Peretz is editor-in-chief of the New Republic. He acquired that position by simply buying the magazine in 1974. Although he resold it to a group of investors in 2002, they were, and apparently remain, his ideological soul mates for he continues to this day to be the magazine’s executive editor.

Peretz’s New Republic is a far cry from the original magazine. The origin of the New Republic goes back to 1914 when it was established by Herbert Croly and Walter Lippman. From the beginning the magazine was liberal and progressive. Between the world wars I and II it took a stand against the growing ideological enmity that bred the “red scares” and their accompanying violations of the civil rights of Americans. In the 1950s it took a principled stand against both Soviet tyranny and the McCarthy witch hunts. In the 1960s the magazine took a position opposing the Vietnam War.

Little of this survived Peretz’s remaking of the New Republic. Within a year of gaining control he fired most of the staff and shifted the editorial direction toward the center/right. The new New Republic supported Reagan’s foreign adventures, including alliances with terrorists such as the Contras, and later both Persian Gulf wars. Sometimes the magazine would selectively back Democrats. It backed Al Gore (a personal friend of Peretz) for president and waxed elegant about the likes of Joseph Lieberman. One progressive policy the magazine decided to support was universal health care. Peretz claims to be a life-long supporter of the Democratic Party but that has not stopped the ultra-conservative National Review from touting the New Republic as “one of the most interesting magazines in the United States”.

One of the reasons we can get this mixed bag of positions from Peretz’s New Republic is because domestic policy is but a secondary interest of the editor-in-chief. “I care most about foreign policy,” Peretz admits, and there is one aspect of foreign policy toward which he is down right obsessive. That aspect is US-Israeli relations. In more ways than one he keeps declaring that “I am in love with the state of Israel”. And how does he tell the world of his love? Mainly through the pages and blog of the New Republic. He has made it into his mouthpiece, his vehicle for declaring his abiding passion for “Zion.”

Peretz in love

It should be made clear that Peretz’s love of Israel is no ordinary love. It is not like, say, the love the founding fathers must have held for the new United States. No, Peretz’s love is of another order of intensity. It is that sort of passionate and blinding love that defeats reason. For instance, it has caused him to get Israel and the US all mixed up. According to Peretz support of Israel is a litmus test of American good citizenship: “Support for Israel, is deep down, an expression of America’s best view of itself.” I suspect that he got this sentiment from Louis Brandeis, the first leader of the Zionist Organization of American as well as the first Jew appointed to the Supreme Court. Back in 1918 Brandeis declared that to oppose Zionism was to be disloyal to the US (see Lawrence Davidson, America’s Palestine, page 225, note 23).

One fellow who failed the litmus test is Charles W. Freeman Jr., the man Barack Obama momentarily considered for his chief of the National Intelligence Council. Peretz wrote at the time that Freeman was utterly unsuitable for the post. Why? Because he had raised questions about America’s uncritical support of Israel–an act which Peretz characterized as “an offence“. By committing this “offence” Freeman had “questioned the loyalty and patriotism of not only Zionists and other friends of Israel”, but also “the great swath of American Jews and Christian countrymen who believed that the protection of Zion is the core of our religious and secular history…” This is the way Peretz sees the world. And it is, of course, a severely distorted view. When you get so intense about, so in love with, a foreign nation that you insist this outside entity represents “the core of our religious and secular history”, you have, as the saying goes, really gone over the top. Peretz has turned the United States and its national interests into a suburb of Tel Aviv.

In some of my earlier analyses I tried to show that “Zion” is in fact a racist place that does not resemble contemporary America, but rather America before the introduction of civil rights legislation. In today’s Israel, Arab Israelis are systematically discriminated against. Yet, a person who loves blindly will fail to see the faults of his or her lover. He or she may well adopt those faults as virtues and spend an inordinate amount of energy justifying the lover’s sins and castigating all who would be critical. And so it is with Martin Peretz. One way he has shown his perverse and obsessive love of Israel is by taking its anti-Arab line as his own. That has turned him into a bigot.

Back on 6 March 2010 Peretz said, “I can’t imagine any venture requiring trust with Arabs turning out especially well. That is, you will say my prejudice, but some prejudices are built on real facts, and history generally proves me right. Go ahead, prove me wrong.” Such wholesale stereotyping is, to use Peretz’s term, an offence against everyone who has ever had a good Arab friend, who is successfully married to an Arab man or woman, and to the very long and successful diplomatic relations the United States has had with such countries as Saudi Arabia and Jordan. And by making this common sense observation I have, at least strongly suggested, that what Peretz spouts is indeed wrong, and grievously so. But there is no doubt that this nonsense reflects his true feelings. And, it is his obsession with Israel that makes him see the world in this way.

On 4 September 2010 Peretz, again using the New Republic blog, returned to his prejudicial ways. “But frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf [leader of those seeking to create the Islamic cultural centre near ground zero] there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So yes, I wonder whether I need honuor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.” Here, Martin Peretz presents himself as a walking and talking example of how one is almost always wrong when one indulges in gross simplifications and categorizations from the “gut’ or otherwise.

1. Imam Rauf has consistently demonstrated himself to be a moderate and sensible man. He has publicly denounced radicalism in all religions and called on moderates to keep control of the leadership of religious movements.

2. How does Peretz know that hardly anyone of the imam’s supporters “has raised a fuss” about violence? Those supporters number in the thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands. Has he checked them all out?

3. The notion that “routine and random bloodshed … defines their [Muslim] brotherhood” is just the lowest sort of stereotyping. If I asserted that the quite routine and random bloodshed caused by Israeli settlers in the occupied territories defined the “brotherhood” of Judaism, Peretz would go ballistic. Both statements can be properly labelled specious nonsense.

4. Martin Peretz has the First Amendment right to wonder out loud in a fashion that can only undermine the First Amendment. He can even legally do so in an atmosphere of growing and volatile Islamophobia, although in my estimation that is a bit like yelling fire in a crowded theatre. Such public assertions certainly put him in the running for the title of demagogue, but he is probably too impassioned to care. Occasionally, when he is called to task by a major national medium like the New York Times he will back off in a sort of resentful and ill-tempered way, like a little bully confronted by a schoolmaster. But you know that he does not mean it when he says he is sorry. You know he is insincere because, by consistently speaking first and thinking later (if at all), he wears his feelings on his sleeve.

The Harvard connection

This latest outburst of Peretz happens to coincide with a ceremony in his honour planned by Harvard University. It seems that Peretz was once an assistant professor at the prestigious school and that money plus contacts have subsequently taken him beyond that to the status of a school benefactor. We are here reminded of the recent conference on anti-Semitism held at Yale during which radical Zionists put on a display of bigotry disguised as academic research. Now it is Harvard’s turn to host a bigot. It might well be that some of the Harvard bureaucracy are embarrassed at having to fete Peretz (though they did choose Lawrence Summers as their president) but they seem to feel they are stuck with him, and so they cover their position with appeals to free speech. Even Harvard has a First Amendment right to reward a man whose stated desire is to deny the First Amendment rights of an entire American religious minority. According to Harvard’s publicly issued defence, going ahead with the ceremony makes the place “ultimately stronger as a university” engaging in “the robust exchange of ideas”. Well, its their party.

Conclusion

Martin Peretz is a good example of that subset of Americans whose single-minded dedication to Israel makes them, for all intents and purposes, agents of a foreign power. Indeed, in his willingness to pronounce his affection in the most indiscreet way, Peretz can be seen as their spokesman. These folks get very upset when you describe them this way, but that is because they have so mixed up America and Israel that, in their minds, there is no real difference between the two. As the Bard once said, “love is blind and lovers cannot see what petty follies they themselves commit”. Alas, these follies are far from petty.

I once had the dubious pleasure of appearing in a debate with Peretz. I remember him as a small man of nervous temperament. He had a tendency to handle challenges to his position by speaking very fast and very loudly so that you could not get a word in edgewise. Based on this behaviour “I had in my gut the sense” that he was quite capable of going hysterical. Such people usually self-destruct over time and maybe that will be Martin Peretz’s fate. I do hope so.

Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

September 19, 2010 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Islamophobia | Martin Peretz, New Republic, United States, Zionism | 1 Comment

Israel to cut off East Jerusalem villages

Ma’an – 19/09/2010

JERUSALEM — Israel began construction on Wednesday to separate Palestinian neighborhoods in occupied East Jerusalem from the rest of the city, a local committee leader said.

Head of the anti-settlement committee in the Shu’fat refugee camp Khader Salamah said Israeli authorities had erected 9- 12-meter concrete blocks around the military checkpoint at the camp’s entrance, isolating Ras Al-Khamis, neighboring the camp.

The construction would increase the suffering of the 15,000 residents of the camp, particularly elderly or sick residents and schoolchildren, Salamah said.

Israel’s planned construction extended to the Dahiyet As-Salam, Ras Shahadah and Anata villages, which when completed would affect the daily life of around 40,000 residents, Salamah said, adding that residents had instructed a lawyer, Dani Zaidman, to begin legal proceedings against Israeli authorities who had confiscated lands without notifying Palestinian owners.

The local committee was preparing to notify President Mahmoud Abbas and the PLO negotiations department of the consequences of Israel’s plan to isolate Palestinian neighborhoods. Israeli authorities were also at the final stages of constructing a new checkpoint at the entrance to Shu’fat refugee camp similar to the main checkpoints in the separation wall at Qalandiya and Hizma, Salamah said.

During the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur on Friday and Saturday, Israeli forces set up cement road blocks at the entrances to several suburbs of Jerusalem, including Al-Isawiya, northeast of Jerusalem and Sur Bahir in the south.

Fierce clashes had erupted on Thursday at Al-Isawiya, during which nine Palestinians were injured, including a paramedic, and six Palestinians were detained, medic Mohammad E’Beid said.

September 19, 2010 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | 1 Comment

Nablus Restricted

Al-Jazeera | September 19, 2010

A soap factory and an olive oil business in Nablus deal with the harsh realities of the Israeli occupation and its impact on the economy.

September 19, 2010 Posted by aletho | Economics, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

The Destruction of the Mamilla Cemetery: Desecration of a Sacred Site

By Sylvia Schwarz| September 19th, 2010

The Ma’man Allah (Mamilla) Cemetery was the oldest Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem with graves dating back to the seventh century, comprised of 33 acres and tens of thousands of graves. After 1948 the Israeli ministry that maintained the site reassured world leaders that this important religious site would be cared for in perpetuity.

Less than fifteen years later, in the 1960s a park was built in part of the cemetery and a parking lot covered another part. These were followed by a school, football field, underground parking garage, and road. Electrical wires were laid in other sections.

The final few acres were dug up just before the beginning of Ramadan, in the middle of the night (as can be seen on the CNN video) so that Israel can build the Museum of Tolerance in conjunction with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in the United States.

An enormous amount of knowledge was lost with the destruction of the Mamilla Cemetery, according to St. Paul based archaeologist, John E. Landgraf, Ph.D., because the era since the end of the Byzantine period and the beginning of the Islamic conquest (around 638 CE) up to the present day is the least known period of history in the Middle East generally. There is much to be learned by examining skeletal remains, headstones, and tombs. However, the Israeli Department of Antiquities, which has recently been taken over by the Orthodox Rabbinate, does not allow any human skeletal remains to be examined; Jewish remains must be re-interred as quickly as possible out of respect, whereas non-Jewish remains at the Mamilla Cemetery were disposed of along with tombstones and other debris in construction dumpsters.

Dr. Landgraf, who participated in a number of archaeological digs in Israel and the West Bank between 1965 and 1980, said that the Israeli Department of Antiquities was seldom interested in the preservation of remains or artifacts from the Islamic period. In the late 1960s the discovery of Muslim graves at Tell Gezer did not interest the American head archaeologist at the time, and so bulldozers were used to push remains, artifacts, and debris back into the graves.

Archaeological excavations are a way of learning about the past in an orderly fashion. One exposes history a layer at a time, and by careful examination knowledge can be gained of the various eras and cultures. When Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 Israeli archaeologists used bulldozers to excavate the Western (Wailing) Wall area down to the late Roman period, destroying the homes of Palestinians living there at the time, and along with them the 1500-year history of the people who had lived there since the Byzantine period. “Thus there is a loss of continuity in our understanding of the past,” said Dr. Landgraf.

It is ironic that in the midst of mass hysteria over an Islamic center to be built in lower Manhattan, because some people feel that this would be disrespectful to the dead, that a genuine desecration of a sacred place occurs, unreported in most mainstream media. “The unfortunate reality is that Indigenous populations live in a world in which we are never safe from colonizer assaults even when we are dead,” says Wazayatawin, Ph.D., Indigenous Peoples Research Chair and Associate Professor, Indigenous Governance Program, University of Victoria, someone who has worked on behalf of Indigenous peoples in this hemisphere for many years, and sees many parallels with the experience of Palestinians. “The ongoing desecration of Indigenous burial sites, including the Mamilla Cemetery in West Jerusalem, reflects a deeply embedded colonizer mentality that views subjugated peoples as fundamentally inferior and unworthy of even the most basic dignities afforded other human beings,” she says.

Dr. Wazayatawin continues, “The act of erasing a people’s memory from the landscape is a necessary element in the colonization process. In order for the colonizers to legitimize their occupation of another’s land, they must eradicate all memories of the colonized, including even the human remains that demonstrate a deep and powerful connection to the land itself.”

Everywhere in Israel are the eradicated memories of the dispossessed Indigenous people. Old mosques are transformed into bars and nightclubs, so that patrons drink alcohol where Muslims used to pray. The history museum in Jaffa (more of a tourist site than an educational institution) is inexplicably silent about the existence of people in the city between the Roman times and Napoleon’s invasion. Street names are changed from their ancient Arabic names to new Hebrew ones. Golda Meir’s famous comment “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people” reflected her desire, not a reality, but it has been repeated so often that many Israelis believe it. The destruction of a cemetery shows starkly how little regard Israel holds for the humanity of the Palestinians. As Dr. Wazayatawin says, “There is something terribly wrong with a culture that digs up the dead of others. The societal justification for such a crime reveals its own sickness.”

I am an American Jew who began to question Zionism in 1982 after the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon. After reading everything I could on the Israel and Palestine I realized I could no longer remain passive on this issue while Palestinians suffered from Israeli human rights abuses and international law violations. I am actively involved in the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), in a state-wide campaign to get our state to divest from State of Israel bonds, and in other Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns. As I write this in June 2010 there are reasons for optimism as well as pessimism. Pessimism because the repression experienced by Palestinians increases daily. Optimism because the increasing repression is a result of the work that we are doing. I believe we will end Israeli Apartheid in my life time. This issue is all-consuming for me, and so I suppose it’s not horrible that I was laid off from my waste water design engineering job in February 2009 and have been unemployed since.

Here is the Promotion for the “Museum of Tolerance”

Israeli Eradication of History: Disappearing Mosques (alethonews.wordpress.com)
New Israeli military complex planned in Jerusalem (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Scattered in death as in life (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Palestinian cemetery destroyed for new TAU dorms, shopping center (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Israel’s War Against the Dead (alethonews.wordpress.com)

September 19, 2010 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, Video | East Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Mamilla Cemetery, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Wazayatawin | Leave a comment

IMPERIALISM AND IMPERIAL BARBARISM

By JAMES PETRAS | My Catbird Seat | September 19, 2010

Imperialism, its character, means and ends has changed over time and place. Historically, western imperialism, has taken the form of tributary, mercantile, industrial, financial and in the contemporary period, a unique ‘militarist-barbaric’ form of empire building. Within each ‘period’, elements of past and future forms of imperial domination and exploitation ‘co-exist’ with the dominant mode. For example , in the ancient Greek and Roman empires, commercial and trade privileges complemented the extraction of tributary payments. Mercantile imperialism, was preceded and accompanied initially by the plunder of wealth and the extraction of tribute, sometimes referred to as “primitive accumulation”, where political and military power decimated the local population and forcibly removed and transferred wealth to the imperial capitals. As imperial commercial ascendancy was consolidated, manufacturing capital increasingly emerged as a co-participant; backed by imperial state policies manufacturing products destroyed local national manufacturers gaining control over local markets. Modern industrial driven imperialism, combined production and commerce, both complemented and supported by financial capital and its auxiliaries, insurance, transport and other sources of “invisible earnings”.

Under pressure from nationalist and socialist anti-imperialist movements and regimes, colonial structured empires gave way to new nationalist regimes. Some of which restructured their economies, diversifying their productive systems and trading partners. In some cases they imposed protective barriers to promote industrialization. Industrial-driven imperialism, at first opposed these nationalist regimes and collaborated with local satraps to depose industrial oriented nationalist leaders. Their goal was to retain or restore the “colonial division of labor” – primary production exchanged for finished goods. However, by the last third of the 20^th century, industrial driven empire building, began a process of adaptation, “jumping over tariff walls”, investing in elementary forms of ‘production’ and in labor intensive consumer products. Imperial manufacturers contracted assembly plants organized around light consumer goods (textiles, shoes, electronics).

Basic changes in the political, social and economic structures of both the imperial and former colonial countries, however, led to divergent imperial paths to empire-building and as a consequence contrasting development performances in both regions.

Anglo-American financial capital gained ascendancy over industrial, investing heavily in highly speculative IT, bio-tech, real estate and financial instruments. Germany and Japanese empire builders relied on upgrading export-industries to secure overseas markets. As a result they increased market share, especially among the emerging industrializing countries of Southern Europe, Asia and Latin America. Some former colonial and semi-colonial countries also moved toward higher forms of industrial production, developing high tech industries, producing capital and intermediate as well as consumer goods and challenging western imperial hegemony in their proximity.

By the early 1990’s a basic shift in the nature of imperial power took place. This led to a profound divergence between past and present imperialist policies and among established and emerging expansionist regimes.

Past and Present Economic Imperialism

Modern industrial-driven empire building (MIE) is built around securing raw materials, exploiting cheap labor and increasing market share. This is accomplished by collaborating with pliant rulers, offering them economic aid and political recognition on terms surpassing those of their imperial competitors. This is the path followed by China. MIE eschews any attempt to gain territorial possessions, either in the form of military bases or in occupying “advisory” positions in the core institutions of the coercive apparatus. Instead, MIEs’ seek to maximize control via investments leading to direct ownership or ‘association’ with state and/or private officials in strategic economic sectors. MIEs’ utilize economic incentives in the way of economic grants and low interest concessionary loans. They offer to build large scale long term infrastructure projects-railroads, airfields, ports and highways. These projects have a double purpose of facilitating the extraction of wealth and opening markets for exports. MIEs also improve transport networks for local producers to gain political allies. In other words MIEs like China and India largely depend on market power to expand and fight off competitors. Their strategy is to create “economic dependencies” for long term economic benefits.

In contrast imperial barbarism grows out of an earlier phase of economic imperialism which combined the initial use of violence to secure economic privileges followed by economic control over lucrative resources.

Historically, economic imperialism (EI) resorted to military intervention to overthrow anti-imperialist regimes and secure collaborator political clients. Subsequently, EI frequently established military bases and training and advisory missions to repress resistance movements and to secure a local military officialdom responsive to the imperial power. The purpose was to secure economic resources and a docile labor force, in order to maximize economic returns.

In other words, in this ‘traditional’ path to economic empire building the military was subordinated to maximizing economic exploitation. Imperial power sought to preserve the post colonial state apparatus and professional cadre but to harness them to the new imperial economic order. EI sought to preserve the elite to maintain law and order as the basic foundation for restructuring the economy. The goal was to secure policies to suit the economic needs of the private corporations and banks of the imperial system. The prime tactic of the imperial institutions was to designate western educated professionals to design policies which maximized private earning. These policies included the privatization of all strategic economic sectors; the demolition of all protective measures favoring local producers (“opening markets”); the implementation of regressive taxes on local consumers, workers and enterprises while lowering or eliminating taxes and controls over imperial firms; the elimination of protective labor legislation and outlawing of independent class organizations.

In its heyday western economic imperialism led to the massive transfer of profits, interest, royalties and ill begotten wealth of the native elite from the post-colonial countries to the imperial centers. As befits post-colonial imperialism the cost of administrating these imperial dependencies was borne by the local workers, farmers and employees.

While contemporary and historic economic imperialism have many similarities, there are a few crucial differences. For example China, the leading example of a contemporary economic imperialism, has not established its “economic beach heads” via military intervention or coups, hence it does not possess ‘military bases’ nor a powerful militarist caste competing with its entrepreneurial class in shaping foreign policy. In contrast traditional Western economic imperialism contained the seeds for the rise of a powerful militarist caste capable, under certain circumstances, of affirming their supremacy in shaping the policies and priorities of empire building.

This is exactly what has transpired over the past twenty years, especially with regard to US empire building.

The Rise and Consolidation of Imperial Barbarism

The dual processes of military intervention and economic exploitation which characterized traditional Western imperialism gradually shifted toward a dominant highly militarized variant of imperialism. Economic interests, both in terms of economic costs and benefits and global market shares were sacrificed in the pursuit of military domination.

The demise of the USSR and the virtual reduction of Russia to the status of a broken state, weakened states allied to it. They were “opened” to Western economic penetration and became vulnerable to Western military attack.

President Bush (senior) perceived the demise of the USSR as an ‘historic opportunity’ to unilaterally impose a unipolar world. According to this new doctrine the US would reign supreme globally and regionally. Projections of US military power would now operate unhindered by any nuclear deterrence. However, Bush (senior) was deeply embedded in the US petroleum industry. Thus he sought to strike a balance between military supremacy and economic expansion. Hence the first Iraq war 1990-91 resulted in the military destruction of Saddam Hussein’s military forces, but without the occupation of the entire country nor the destruction of civil society, economic infrastructure and oil refineries. Bush (senior) represented an uneasy balance between two sets of powerful interests: on the one hand, petroleum corporations eager to access the state owned oil fields and on the other the increasingly powerful militarist zionist power configuration within and outside of his regime. The result was an imperial policy aimed at weakening Saddam as a threat to US clients in the Gulf but without ousting him from power. The fact that he remained in office and continued his support for the Palestinian struggle against the Jewish state’s colonial occupation profoundly irritated Israel and its zionist agents in the US.

With the election of William Clinton, the ‘balance’ between economic and military imperialism shifted dramatically in favor of the latter. Under Clinton, zealous zionists were appointed to many of the strategic foreign policy posts in the Administration. This ensured the sustained bombing of Iraq, wrecking its infrastructure. This barbaric turn was complemented by an economic boycott to destroy the country’s economy and not merely “weaken” Saddam. Equally important, the Clinton regime fully embraced and promoted the ascendancy of finance capital by appointing notorious Wall Streeters (Rubin, Summers, Greenspan et al.) to key positions, weakening the relative power of oil, gas and industrial manufacturers as the driving forces of foreign policy. Clinton set in motion the political ‘agents’ of a highly militarized imperialism, committed to destroying a country in order to dominate it.

The ascent of Bush (junior) extended and deepened the role of the militarist-zionist personnel in government. The self-induced explosions which collapsed the World Trade Towers in New York served as a pretext to precipitate the launch of imperial barbarism and spelled the eclipse of economic imperialism.

While US empire building converted to militarism, China accelerated its turn toward economic imperialism. Their foreign policy was directed toward securing raw materials via trade, direct investments and joint ventures. It gained influence via heavy investments in infrastructure, a kind of developmental imperialism, stimulating growth for itself and the “host” country. In this new historic context of global competition between an emerging market driven empire and an atavistic militarist imperial state, the former gained enormous economic profits at virtually no military or administrative cost while the latter emptied its treasury to secure ephemeral military conquests.

The conversion from economic to militarist imperialism was largely the result of the pervasive and ‘deep’ influence of policymakers of zionist persuasion. Zionist policymakers combined modern technical skills with primitive tribal loyalties. Their singular pursuit of Israel’s dominance in the Middle East led them to orchestrate a series of wars, clandestine operations and economic boycotts crippling the US economy and weakening the economic bases of empire building.

Militarist driven empire building in the present post-colonial global context led inevitably to destructive invasions of relatively stable and functioning nation-states, with strong national loyalties. Destructive wars turned the colonial occupation into prolonged conflicts with resistance movements linked to the general population. Henceforth, the logic and practice of militarist imperialism led directly to widespread and long-term barbarism-the adoption of the Israeli model of colonial terrorism targeting an entire population. This was not a coincidence. Israel’s zionist zealots in Washington “drank deeply” from the cesspool of Israeli totalitarian practices, including mass terror, house demolitions, land seizures, overseas special force assassination teams, systematic mass arrests and torture. These and other barbaric practices, condemned by human rights organizations the world over, (including those in Israel), became routine practices of US barbaric imperialism.

The Means and Goals of Imperial Barbarism

The organizing principle of imperial barbarism is the idea of total war. Total in the sense that (1) all weapons of mass destruction are applied; (2) the whole society is targeted; (3) the entire civil and military apparatus of the state is dismantled and replaced by colonial officials, paid mercenaries and unscrupulous and corrupt satraps. The entire modern professional class is targeted as expressions of the modern national-state and replaced by retrograde religious-ethnic clans and gangs, susceptible to bribes and booty-shares. All existing modern civil society organizations, are pulverized and replaced by crony-plunderers linked to the colonial regime. The entire economy is disarticulated as elementary infrastructure including water, electricity, gas, roads and sewage systems are bombed along with factories, offices, cultural sites, farms and markets.

The Israeli argument of “dual use” targets serves the militarist policymakers as a justification for destroying the bases of a modern civilization. Massive unemployment, population displacement and the return to primitive exchanges characteristic of pre-modern societies define the “social structure”. Educational and health conditions deteriorate and in some cases become non-existent. Curable diseases plague the population and infant deformities result from depleted uranium, the pre-eminent weapon of choice of imperial barbarism.

In summary the ascendancy of barbarous imperialism leads to the eclipse of economic exploitation. The empire depletes its treasury to conquer, destroy and occupy. Even the residual economy is exploited by ‘others’: traders and manufacturers from non-belligerent adjoining states. In the case of Iraq and Afghanistan that includes Iran, Turkey, China and India.

The evanescent goal of barbarous imperialism is total military control, based on the prevention of any economic and social rebirth which might lead to a revival of secular anti-imperialism rooted in a modern republic. The goal of securing a colony ruled by cronies, satraps and ethno-religious warlords – willing givers of military bases and permission to intervene – is central to the entire concept of military driven empire building. The erasure of the historical memory of a modern independent secular nation-state and the accompanying national heritage becomes of singular importance to the barbarous empire. This task is assigned to the academic prostitutes and related publicists who commute between Tel Aviv, the Pentagon, Ivy league universities and Middle East propaganda mills in Washington.

Results and Perspectives

Clearly imperial barbarism (as a social system) is the most retrograde and destructive enemy of modern civilized life. Unlike economic imperialism it does not exploit labor and resources, it destroys the means of production, kills workers, farmers and undermines modern life.

Economic imperialism is clearly more beneficial to the private corporations; but it also potentially lays the bases for its transformation. Its investments lead to the creation of a working and middle class capable of assuming control over the commanding heights of the economy via nationalist and/or socialist struggle. In contrast the discontent of the ravaged population and the pillage of economies under imperial barbarism, has led to the emergence of pre-modern ethno-religious mass movements, with retrograde practices, (mass terror, sectarian violence etc.). Theirs is an ideology fit for a theocratic state.

Economic imperialism with its ‘colonial division of labor’, extracting raw materials and exporting finished goods, inevitably will lead to new nationalist and perhaps later socialist movements. As EI undermines local manufacturers and displaces, via cheap industrial exports, thousands of factory workers, movements will emerge. China may seek to avoid this via ‘plant transplants’. In contrast barbaric imperialism is not sustainable because it leads to prolonged wars which drain the imperial treasury and injury and death of thousands of American soldiers every year. Unending and unwinable colonial wars are unacceptable to the domestic population.

The ‘goals’ of military conquest and satrap rule are illusory. A stable, ‘rooted’ political class capable of ruling by overt or tacit consent is incompatible with colonial overseers. The ‘foreign’ military goals imposed on imperial policymakers via the influential presence of zionists in key offices have struck a mighty blow against the profit seeking opportunities of American multi-nationals via sanctions policies. Pulled downward and outward by high military spending and powerful agents of a foreign power, the resort to barbarism has a powerful effect in prejudicing the US economy.

Countries looking for foreign investment are far more likely to pursue joint ventures with economic driven capital exporters rather than risk bringing in the US with all its military, clandestine special forces and other violent baggage.

Today the overall picture is grim for the future of militarist imperialism. In Latin America, Africa and especially Asia, China has displaced the US as the principal trading partner in Brazil, South Africa and Southeast Asia. In contrast the US wallows in unwinable ideological wars in marginal countries like Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan. The US organizes a coup in tiny Honduras, while China signs on to billion dollar joint ventures in oil and iron projects in Brazil and Venezuela and an Argentine grain production. The US specializes in propping up broken states like Mexico and Columbia, while China invests heavily in extractive industries in Angola, Nigeria, South Africa and Iran. The symbiotic relationship with Israel leads the US down the blind ally of totalitarian barbarism and endless colonial wars. In contrast China deepens its links with the dynamic economies of South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Brazil and the oil riches of Russia and the raw materials of Africa.

James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He is the author of 64 books published in 29 languages, and over 560 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles. His latest book is War Crimes in Gaza and the Zionist Fifth Column in America (Atlanta:Clarity Pres 2010)

September 19, 2010 Posted by aletho | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Leave a comment

Israeli Company Hired by State Government to Spy on Pennsylvanians

By Dave Lindorff | 09/18/2010

The surprise disclosure that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, through its state Homeland Security Agency, along with a number of local police departments in the state, have been employing a private Israeli security company with strong links to Mossad and the Israeli Defense Force to spy on law-abiding citizens, grows increasingly disturbing when the website of the company, called the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response, is examined.

ITRR’s slick site at TerrorResponse.org features a homepage image of an armor-clad soldier or riot policeman preparing to fire an automatic pistol, while the company boasts of being “the preeminent Isreal/American security firm, providing training, intelligence and education for clients across the globe.”

Image captured from ITRR's website

Image captured from ITRR’s website

The firm, which offers courses locally at the University of Philadelphia, notes that all its course offerings, some of which are taught in Israel, are “approved by the Israeli Ministry of Defense.” The course titles include such compelling topics as: “Tactical Advantage in Combat,” “Civilian Battlefield,” “Undercover/Plainclothes Tactical Operations,” “Israeli Shooting Techniques,” “Arena Combat,” “Hard Entry (Arrest)” and “Principles of Night Operations.” While a number of the titles link to course descriptions, the links to the undercover class and the civilian battlefield class were disabled when this reporter visited the site, which was two days after the company’s role as a state security contractor was exposed.

The description for the Tactical Advantage course, which the website says was designed for military, law enforcement and security personnel, describes the program as “intense, dirty, aggressive and based on Israeli Counter-Terror Schools policy.” It says “This course pushes trainees to the physical and mental edge.”

American organizations which engage in protests and rallies, hearing that reference to the Israeli Counter-Terror Schools policy, might recall the IDF’s handling of the aid flotilla that was boarded on the high seas by IDF troops as they read these lines. That assault, in which the Israelis used 9mm semi-automatic weapons against defenders armed at most with sticks and light chains, left nine flotilla participants, including a young Turkish American, dead.

The Institute of Terrorism Research and Response, which only lists a post-box address in Philadelphia (though in its report on the scandal the Philadelphia Inquirer referred to ITRR as a “Philadelphia-based company with offices in Philadelphia and Jerusalem”), also advertises a subsidiary operation it calls a Targeted Action Monitoring Center (TAM-C), which it claims is “world renowned” and which it says supplies “factual, actionable intelligence to subscribers.” All information gathered by the firm’s staff of “former law enforcement, military and intelligence professionals” is sent to the Israeli headquarters of the TAM-C for processing–a move which effectively insulates it from discovery by any surveillance victims who might seek disclosure under federal or state Freedom of Information laws, or who might sue in court for violation of their civil liberties.

While ITRR, founded in 2004, doesn’t name any of its clients, it says they range from Fortune 100 companies, including the power industry, maritime companies, US infrastructure companies, “the company company charged with protecting oil production facilities,” missionary organizations and pharmaceutical firms, to law enforcement agencies and joint terrorism task forces.

A search on Google for references to ITRR doesn’t turn up much, but there is a report in July 2008 by a Washington-based right-wing site called National Terror Alert, which attributes a warning of a “possible large-scale terror attack” to ITRR. Claiming that it had “intercepted communications from an organization closely associated with international terrorists, to include al Qaeda,” the National Terror Alert organization says TIRR reports that, “Available intelligence and recent events indicate that terrorists have an established capability and current intent to mount an attack on the target and there is some additional information on the nature of the threat. It is assessed that an attack on the target is a priority for the terrorists and is likely to be mounted.”

Nothing came of this “alert,” but it should be noted that a year later, the first head of the new federal Department of Homeland Security, former Republican governor of Pennsylvania Tom Ridge, admitted that the color-coded terror alerts issued by his office had been manipulated to serve Republican political interests. It should also be recalled that the 2008 TIRR “warning” came during the height of the election season, just before the two national party conventions. As the Philadelphia Daily News commented at the time in a headline, “GOP kicks off fall campaign with heightened terror alert.”

But ITRR does much more than just monitor terrorists. Indeed, it seems to be far too busy monitoring legitimate, non-violent and completely legal protest organizations and other political groups to do much real anti-terror work. According to news reports on ITRR’s work for the Pennsylvania Homeland Security Agency and also the Pittsburgh Police Department, it would appear that ITRR was spying on and providing Pennsylvania State Police and Homeland Security with reports on everything from anti-war groups and anti-oil-shale-fracking groups to gay rights groups, animal rights groups, environmental organizations and even Good Schools Pennsylvania, a citizens association formed to back Gov. Ed Rendell’s school reform initiatives. Even a Harrisburg, PA man who likes to bring a 25-foot inflatable pig to demonstrations to symbolize government waste was targeted.

While local news media reports in Philadelphia have suggested that ITRR is just composed of two people, Aaron Richman, an Israeli police captain and security consultant and Michael Perelman, a retired New York City police commander, the website makes it clear that the company actually employs a large number of people in Israel, and may have as many as 15 people working “in the field” in the US.

Its activities are not limited to Pennsylvania either. The firm boasts on its website that “Information provided to clients ranges from issues of global jihad to Mexican Cartel threats along America’s southern border (maybe that’s where Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer got her weird tale, eventually debunked and retracted, of beheadings in the border desert?) to providing guidance of the threat of disorders as a result of international monetary meetings.”

This latter is a reference to the yeoman work ITRR reportedly did for the Pittsburg Police Department in advance of the disastrous G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, which turned into a police riot after the local government and police brought in hundreds of reinforcements from other cities, with cops suited up as though for war, to lock down the city and prevent students from demonstrating against the predations of international capital and international “free trade” agreements. It appears that ITRR had ingratiated its way into the confidence of demonstration planners by having its agents join chat rooms and websites “posing as G-20 opponents.” One wonders whether these same agents may have also acted as agents provocateur.

As the head of Pennsylvania’s Homeland Security Agency, James Powers, who hired ITRR, put it, “We got the information to the Pittsburgh Police, and they were able to cut them off at the pass.”

So much for the Constitutional right to protest!

Several calls for comment made to the Homeland Security Agency and the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency which oversees it went unanswered, but Perelman has released a statement saying “The Institute of Terrorism Research and Response tracks events, givinglaw enforcement a heads-up for the potential of disorder as our bulletins provided to the [state] clearly show…[and] does not follow people, conduct surveillance, photograph, or record individuals.”

This claim is undermined by the details in some of its reports (a select bunch of ITRR weekly “terror” alert report released by the state government after the scandal broke included one on the Brandywine Peace Community, which regularly runs a protest at the Lockheed Martin military contractor plant just northwest of Philadelphia. The report says, “When their focus is not directed at Lockheed itself, protesters will likely gather at the traffic light on the corner of Mall and Goddard to wave signs at cars.” Less this report not sound terrifying enough, the report adds ominously (with no supporting evidence to back its claim) that even so, the event could attract “radical protesters from the ranks of local communist and/or anarchist movements.”

Gov. Rendell, after the story about ITRR’s activities for the state under a no-bid, $125,000/year contract, broke, claimed he was “embarrassed” by the spying on non-violent civic action organizations, and vowed to cancel the contract effective this October.

It is not clear, however, that there will be any information provided about who was spied on over the time the company has been active. Members of both political parties in the state legislature are calling for a General Assembly hearing into ITRR’s activities, but such calls in this closely divided body generally come to little or nothing. Meanwhile, Rendell, a lame duck governor headed for the exit, is unlikely to do anything about the issue beyond saying he’s embarrassed by it. He has said he has no intention of firing Powers.

I know how damaging this kind of spying by state and local governments can be. Back in the mid-1970s, when I and some journalist colleagues owned and ran a small weekly alternative newspaper in Los Angeles, the LA Vanguard, we were among the targets of a massive illegal spying campaign by the paranoid Los Angeles Police Department’s “red squad,” the Public Disorder Intelligence Division. Our staff was actually penetrated by a young red squad officer, who pretended to be a student wannabe journalist in order to try to learn our sources for reports on the LAPD. But we were only one of about 200 groups, ranging from a local anti-nuclear group to the Peace & Freedom Party, a well-known third party in California electoral politics, to the National Organization for Woman and even the office of then City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky.

The reason we all learned about what the LAPD red squad was doing was that one spy was outed, a class-action suit was filed by the ACLU of Southern California, there was discovery ordered by the court, and eventually the city of Los Angeles settled with the victims of the campaign, to the tune of $1.8 million.

The Pennsylvania ACLU may eventually sue Pennsylvania over this latest domestic spying outrage, but the times have changed, and it is hard to be confident that the courts, no great friend of civil liberties at the state level, and packed with Reagan and Bush 1 and 2 appointees at the federal level, will mandate disclosure of the names of groups spied on, much less of the records that were compiled. Furthermore, because the state did this spying through an outside contractor, which is headquartered in Israel, government and police agencies could claim that the records are for the most part out of their hands and beyond the courts’ jurisdiction.

At least one man, Gene Stilp, owner of the giant inflatable pig, already has plans to sue the government in federal court. “When people’s civil rights are trampled it’s a federal issue,” says Stilp, himself a licensed attorney. Stilp says he isn’t satisfied with Rendell’s statement that he is “embarrassed” by the disclosure of ITRR’s contract. “Being embarrassed doesn’t cut it,” says Stilp, who is calling for an investigation into ITRR’s spying activities by the attorney general or the federal government, and full disclosure of which groups and individuals were spied upon.

Another person who has good reason to believe he was probably targeted by ITRR is ThisCantBeHappening!’s own John Grant. Says Grant, “The more I read about this affair, the more disturbing it seems. I’m a Vietnam veteran and part of an organization — Veterans For Peace — that very publicly opposes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We meet monthly and we organize events with other anti-war groups. All First-Amendment-protected, red-blooded American stuff. To think that some self-ordained watchdog group of security freaks is monitoring me and my friends and reporting our activities to God-knows who in the context of ‘terrorism’ — and probably making tons of money doing it — really pisses me off. Governor Rendell should be embarrassed. He should come clean and make public all the groups and people this gang was spying and reporting on. The fact they are somehow connected to Israel — a nation many of us have been critical of — is further reason to clear up what’s going on.”

September 19, 2010 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

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By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | August 28, 2016

Amidst his litany of condemnations, Jonathan Kay reserves some of his most vicious and vitriolic attacks for Kevin Barrett. For instance Kay harshly criticizes Dr. Barrett’s published E-Mail exchange in 2008 with Prof. Chomsky. In that exchange Barrett castigates Chomsky for not going to the roots of the event that “doubled the military budget overnight, stripped Americans of their liberties and destroyed their Constitution.” The original misrepresentations of 9/11, argues Barrett, led to further “false flag attacks to trigger wars, authoritarianism and genocide.”

In Among The Truthers Kay tries to defend Chomsky against Barrett’s alleged “personal obsession” with “vilifying” the MIT academic. Kay objects particularly to Barrett’s “final salvo” in the published exchange where the Wisconsin public intellectual accuses Prof. Chomsky of having “done more to keep the 9/11 blood libel alive, and cause the murder of more than a million Muslims than any other single person.” … continue

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